Gale Library of Daily Life
American Civil War
Gale Library of Daily Life
American Civil War VOLUME 1
Steven E. Woodworth EDITOR
Gale Library of Daily Life American Civil War Steven E. Woodworth, Editor Project Editor: Angela Doolin Editorial: Mark Drouillard, Andrea Fritsch, Carly S. Kaloustian, Brad Morgan, Darcy L. Thompson Rights Acquisition and Management: Beth Beaufore, Barb McNeil, Jackie Jones, Kelly Quin Imaging: Lezlie Light Product Design: Pamela A. Galbreath Composition: Evi Seoud Manufacturing: Drew Kalasky
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Cover image credits: ‘‘Color Lithography Showing the Battle of Gettysburg,’’ ª Bettman/Corbis ‘‘Soldier from the 22nd New York State Militia near Harpers Ferry, Virginia, 1861,’’ ª Corbis ‘‘Battle Damaged House in Atlanta,’’ ª Corbis Text credits: The excerpt on p. 226 by Bertram Wallace Korn is from American Jewry and the Civil War, Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951. Copyright ª 1951 The Jewish Publication Society, renewed 1979. Reproduced by permission. Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all copyright notices, the credits constitute an extension of the copyright notice.
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Contents VOLUME 1 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xiii
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xv
A Chronology of the American Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xix
Introduction
......................................................................
xxvii
A Soldier’s Life A Soldier’s Life Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
Recruitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
Volunteerism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
Conscription. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
Drill Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
Food and Rations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
Shelter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
Uniforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22
Mascots
..............................................................................
24
Sanitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
Desertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28
A Soldier’s Pastimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33
Music
...............................................................................
35
................................................................................
36
Vices
Diaries and Letters from Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
Furloughs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
44 v
Contents
Prisons and Prisoners of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
45
Living as a Prisoner of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
49
African American Prisoners of War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
52
Prisoner Exchange and Parole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
Women on the Battlefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
Women Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
60
Visiting Wives and Relatives
......................................................
61
Prostitutes and Other Camp Followers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
65
Child Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
67
African American Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
Immigrant Soldiers
................................................................
75
Native American Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
77
Spies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
Foraging and Looting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
Interaction between Soldiers and Civilians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
88
Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
Family and Community Family and Community Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
95
The Domestic Ideal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
96
Northern Domestic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Southern Domestic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
101
Clothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
104
Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
106
Diet
...............................................................................
Food Shortages
vi
99
109
..................................................................
110
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
113
Women and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
116
Free Blacks and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
118
The Morrill Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
121
Education in the Confederacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
122
Common Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
123
Role of West Point
..............................................................
126
Family Separation and Reunion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
129
Parenting and Childrearing
.....................................................
135
Motherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
137
Fatherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
140
Children and Childrearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
143
Extended Families
146
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Contents
Courtship and Marriage
.........................................................
149
Men on the Home Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
152
War Widows and Orphans
......................................................
153
Volunteer Work to Support Troops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
158
Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
162
Fraternizing with the Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
166
Diaries and Letters from Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
168
Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
172
Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
174
Class Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
175
Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
179
Religion Religion Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
183
Protestant Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
184
Revivals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
190
The Sunday School Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
194
Religion and Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
196
Religion and Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
199
Abolitionism
.......................................................................
201
The Slavery Apologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
205
Hymns
..............................................................................
209
Religious Tracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
211
Young Men’s Christian Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
214
U.S. Christian Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
216
Catholic Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
220
Unitarianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
224
Judaism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
226
Chaplains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
227
Army Missionaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
232
Popular Culture Popular Culture Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
235
Performing Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
236
Minstrel Shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
240
Theater. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
241
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Contents
Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
243
War Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
246
Slave, Abolitionist, and Civil Rights Songs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
248
Army Bands
......................................................................
250
Dancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
252
Lyceum Lectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
254
Fraternal Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
256
Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
258
Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
261
Holidays
............................................................................
263
Agricultural Fairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
264
Newspapers and Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
266
Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
269
Children’s Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
272
Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
275
War Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
280
Civilian Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
284
Reading and Reading Groups
..................................................
287
Vices on the Home Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
290
Gambling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
292
Alcohol
...........................................................................
294
Smoking and Tobacco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
296
Annotated Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
301
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
311
VOLUME 2 A Chronology of the American Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xiii
Health and Medicine
viii
Health and Medicine Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
Battlefield Wounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
Field Hospitals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
Comrades and the Ambulance Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
Triage and Surgery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
Evacuation Hospitals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23
Surgeons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
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Contents
Nursing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Army Nurses
.......................................................................
Volunteer Nurses
..................................................................
32 36 38
Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
42
Public Health and Sanitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
United States Sanitary Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
48
Sanitary Fairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
52
Civilian Health Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
Advances in Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
58
Work and Economy Work and Economy Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
61
Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
62
Northern Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
67
Southern Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
70
Factories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
Arms Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
Shipbuilding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
Textiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
81
Agriculture
..........................................................................
85
............................................................................
88
Black Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
Blockade and Blockade Running . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
93
War Profiteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
99
Currency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
100
Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
104
Shortages
Child Labor
......................................................................
106
Paid Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
108
Women Laborers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
110
Technological Advances in Agriculture and Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
112
Politics Politics Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
115
Abolitionists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
116
Civil Liberties and Censorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
120
Election of 1860 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
125
Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
130
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Contents
Lectures and Speeches
...........................................................
133
Gettysburg Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
138
Jefferson Davis’s Speech of Resignation from the U.S. Senate . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
142
Davis’s and Lincoln’s Inaugural Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
144
The Emancipation Proclamation
...............................................
148
Letters to the President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
151
Support for the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
154
Prosecessionists/Southern Nationalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
158
Proslavery Advocates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
162
Northern Support for the War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
165
Opposition to the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
168
Northern Copperheads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
171
Southern Union Loyalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
175
Pacifism and Conscientious Objectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
178
Draft Riots and Draft Resisters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
180
Propaganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
183
Rallies, Lectures, and Speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
186
Political Humor and Cartoons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
188
Biased Newspaper Reporting
...................................................
191
.....................................................................
193
Party Politics
Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
197
Slave Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
199
Slaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
201
Freedpeople . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
205
Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
207
Plantation Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
209
Culture and Leisure
..............................................................
212
Spirituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
215
Religion Practiced by Slaves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
216
Dance among Slaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
219
Race and Racial Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
221
Free Blacks
.........................................................................
224
Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
226
Reconciliation and Remembrance
x
Reconciliation and Remembrance Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
229
The Lost Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
230
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Contents
The Reconciliation Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
235
Veterans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
239
Memorial and Decoration Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
244
Battlefield Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
247
Wartime Commemoration and Monuments
..................................
251
Chickamauga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
254
Shiloh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
257
Vicksburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
260
Gettysburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
263
Antietam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
267
National Cemeteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
269
Veterans’ Organizations
.........................................................
273
Blue-Gray Reunions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
274
African American Commemorations
..........................................
276
Souvenirs and Relics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
278
Unit and Regimental Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
280
Obituaries and Local Memorials to the Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
281
Annotated Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
285
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
295
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
xi
Preface With its vast consequences and appalling cost the Civil War, the subject of a voluminous literature, can seem overwhelming. Lincoln, Lee, and all the rest bestride an almost mythical landscape, and even across the chasm of the intervening century and a half, the war seems larger than life. The war’s grand scale is probably part of the reason that so many Americans find its study to be fascinating and exciting. Nonetheless, textbook histories of the Civil War can sometimes be a little unsatisfying, even unreal. As human beings, we naturally desire to know the past on a human scale. Somehow history seems more authentic when we can feel the humanity of the participants by learning the homely details of their daily lives—the kinds of things people usually did not write down, or alluded to only tangentially, mainly because such things simply seemed too obvious to mention. What would it have been like to have lived during those times—to have been a soldier, a civilian, or a slave? What did people wear, eat, read, or do in their spare time? What jobs did they pursue to earn their livings? What was important to them? The purpose of this text is to provide a reference source that will give ready answers to questions such as these and provide insights into how Americans lived and thought during the Civil War years. This set aims at covering many facets of everyday life in the Civil War. The daily life of soldiers is considered, from recruitment—or conscription—to training, to what soldiers ate, what they wore, the weapons they carried, even the music their bands played. As for civilians, this set looks at family and community life, and considers the roles and experiences of men, women, and children, black and white. It describes what civilians ate and wore, and how they earned their living. Popular culture and leisure activities come in for attention, with articles or sections on literature, music, theater, minstrel shows, and the lyceum movement, among other topics. There is also a section on work and the economy, which gives attention to people in various walks of life—from farmers to factory workers to businessmen, planters, and slaves. For obvious reasons, political conflict loomed even larger than normal in the everyday lives of Americans during the Civil War era. Thus, this set devotes another section to that subject, dealing with election battles small and large, as well as with the political causes that inspired people’s loyalty. Yet another topic the project explores is that of health and medicine during the Civil War. Both the practice of civilian physicians on the home front and the grim work of army surgeons in field hospitals are examined. Religion was extremely important to many Americans during the Civil War era, and so it too rightly claims attention within the pages that follow. Because the memory of the Civil War remained fresh and intense in the minds of Americans for generations after the guns fell silent, the war gave rise to such things as the institution of Memorial Day, the erection of monuments, and the founding of parks on some of the conflict’s most famous battlefields. Thus, the last section of this set looks at such expressions of collective memory, as well as at the movement toward reconciliation between North and South.
xiii
Preface
Although this two-volume project was conceived as a reference book, readers will also find enjoyment in reading it from cover to cover. Rather than a stultifying list of alphabetical entries, as one finds in most reference works, this set offers a logically arranged progression of topics. Readers who wish to consult the set as a reference source may easily do so by using the table of contents and index, but those who simply want to learn more about everyday life in the Civil War era can read sequentially through the sections on various aspects of American life in the 1860s. Finally, let me add that I am deeply grateful to a number of people for the indispensible help they have rendered to this project. Brad Morgan, an editor for Gale Cengage Learning, first suggested to me the idea of producing this work and oversaw the early stages of development. Later, Angela Doolin took over as the in-house editor at Gale and has done a splendid job with the really difficult and sometimes no doubt onerous work of shepherding the project through its various stages—the selection of authors, collection of articles, and assembly of the final manuscript—leaving me the much more pleasant tasks of writing about the Civil War and deciding which topics to cover and which authors to consult. David Slay took time out from the writing of a very promising doctoral dissertation (since completed) to serve as my assistant editor for this project, and the work has profited greatly from his keen editorial eye and voluminous knowledge of the Civil War era. I could not have done it without him. And, of course, the various authors who have shared their particular expertise by writing individual articles for the project have all made important contributions to its ultimate value.
xiv
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Contributors Christina Adkins
Doctoral Candidate, Program in the History of American Civilization Harvard University Civilian Photography The Lost Cause Newspapers and Magazines War Photography William Backus
Veterans’ Organizations Steven Barleen
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Northern Illinois University Factories Manufacturing Northern Manufacturing Southern Manufacturing
Anurag Biswas
Freelance Writer Advances in Medicine Alcohol Triage and Surgery Carol Brennan
Freelance Writer Arms Manufacturing Army Nurses Education in the Confederacy Fraternizing with the Enemy Political Humor and Cartoons Public Health and Sanitation Rallies, Lectures, and Speeches Refugees Role of West Point Sanitary Fairs Surgeons United States Sanitary Commission Volunteer Nurses
Michael Kelly Beauchamp
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Texas A & M University Pacifism and Conscientious Objectors Prosecessionists/Southern Nationalists Proslavery Advocates Megan Birk
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Purdue University Children and Childrearing
William H. Brown
Editor North Carolina Office of Archives and History Chickamauga Draft Riots and Draft Resisters Slaves Southern Union Loyalists Unit and Regimental Histories Judith P. Bruce
Freelance Writer Lectures and Speeches Amy Crowson
Instructor, Department of History Miles College Civilian Health Care Jocelyn M. Cuffee
Jamie Bronstein
Professor, Department of History New Mexico State University Child Labor Labor Paid Labor Women Laborers Deliah K. Brown
Professor, Department of History Texas Southern University Judaism
Assistant Professor, Department of Legal Research and Writing Western New England College School of Law Abolitionists Kwasi Densu
Instructor, Department of Political Science Clark Atlanta University The Morrill Act Plantation Life Religion Practiced by Slaves xv
Contributors
Ondra Krouse Dismukes
Doctoral Candidate, Department of English The University of Georgia Dance among Slaves Thomas J. Fehn
Undergraduate Student, Department of History Hinds Community College Holidays Rebecca J. Frey
Freelance Writer and Editor Civil Liberties and Censorship Family Separation and Reunion Protestant Christianity Carol J. Gibson
Independent Scholar Army Bands Lisa Guinn
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities Ferris State University Feminism Scott Hancock
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Africana Studies Gettysburg College Free Blacks and Education Keith S. He´bert
Historian Georgia Historic Preservation Division Disease Election of 1860 Nursing David F. Herr
Associate Professor, Department of History St. Andrews Presbyterian College Agriculture Propaganda Support for the War Allison E. Herrmann
Graduate Student, Department of History American University Veterans xvi
Kevin Hillstrom
Freelance Writer Northern Lights Writers Group African American Prisoners of War African American Soldiers Child Soldiers Conscription Desertion Diaries and Letters from Soldiers Drill Training Equipment Food and Rations Foraging and Looting Furloughs Immigrant Soldiers Interaction between Soldiers and Civilians Living as a Prisoner of War Mascots Music Native American Soldiers Prisons and Prisoners of War Recruiting Resistance Sanitation Shelter A Soldier’s Pastimes Spies Sports Uniforms Vices Volunteerism Diane Hulett
Assistant Professor, Department of English Morris College Volunteer Work to Support Troops Jeffrey William Hunt
Director Texas Military Forces Museum Battlefield Wounds Comrades and the Ambulance Corps Field Hospitals Gettysburg Raymond Pierre Hylton
Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences Virginia Union University Opposition to the War
Eric R. Jackson
Director, Institute for Freedom Studies Northern Kentucky University Abolitionism Minstrel Shows Sandra Johnston
Lecturer, Department of English and Modern Languages University of Maryland Eastern Shore Housing Religious Tracts The Young Men’s Christian Association Brian Matthew Jordan
Research Assistant, Department of Civil War Era Studies Gettysburg College Davis’s and Lincoln’s Inaugural Addresses Mark S. Joy
Chair, Department of History and Political Science Jamestown College Currency Richard C. Keenan
Professor Emeritus, Department of English and Modern Languages University of Maryland, Eastern Shore Blockade and Blockade Running Photography Pamela L. Kester
Freelance Writer Common Schools The Sunday School Movement Textiles Jenny Lagergren
Freelance Writer Evacuation Hospitals Games Motherhood Anthony A. Lee
Lecturer, Department of History
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Contributors
University of California, Los Angeles Culture and Leisure Talitha L. LeFlouria
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Howard University Women and Education Jeanne M. Lesinski
Freelance Writer Children’s Literature Diaries and Letters from Home Immigration Slave, Abolitionist, and Civil Rights Songs Spirituals Sports Connie L. Lester
Assistant Professor, Department of History University of Central Florida Agricultural Fairs Samuel Livingston
Assistant Professor, Department of History Morehouse College Plantation Life Robert P. McParland
Assistant Professor, Department of English Felician College Reading and Reading Groups Aileen McTiernan
Juris Doctor Candidate, School of Law Rutgers University, Camden Crime Gambling George A. Milite
Freelance Writer and Editor Education Party Politics The Slavery Apologists Technological Advances in Industry and Agriculture Benjamin L. Miller
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History University of Florida Army Missionaries U.S. Christian Commission
Matthew M. Mitchell
Graduate Student, Department of History Tulane University Jefferson Davis’s Speech of Resignation from the U.S. Senate
Kerry L. Pimblott
Graduate Student, Department of History University of Illinois, Urbana– Champaign Lyceum Lectures Music Performing Arts
Caryn E. Neumann
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History Miami University of Ohio at Middletown Clothing Dancing Diet Food Food Shortages Obituaries and Local Memorials to the Dead Prostitutes and Other Camp Followers Religion and Slavery Visiting Wives and Relatives Women on the Battlefield Women Soldiers Jennifer Ann Newman
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Auburn University Southern Domestic Life Debra Newman Ham
Professor, Department of History Morgantown University Extended Family Parenting and Childrearing War Widows and Orphans James Onderdonk
Associate Director, Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Gettysburg Address Revivals Adrienne M. Petty
Assistant Professor, Department of History The City College of New York Smoking and Tobacco Vices on the Home Front
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Adam J. Pratt
Graduate Student, Department of History Louisiana State University Fatherhood John L. Reilly
Instructor, Department of Communications and Modern Languages Cheyney University of Pennsylvania Literature Theater Stephen Rockenbach
Assistant Professor, Department of History and Philosophy Virginia State University Biased Newspaper Reporting Class Tensions The Emancipation Proclamation Men on the Home Front Northern Copperheads The Reconciliation Movement War Music Christopher D. Rodkey
Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Division of Religion Drew University Fraternal Organizations War Profiteers Donald Roe
Department of History Howard University Northern Support for the War David W. Rolfs
Upper School Teacher, Department of History Maclay College Preparatory School Chaplains xvii
Contributors
Daniel Sauerwein
Graduate Student, Department of History University of North Dakota Letters to the President Souvenirs and Relics
Free Blacks Freedpeople Hymns Race and Racial Tensions Slave Markets Robbie C. Smith
Jodi M. Savage
Equal Employment Opportunity Officer, Coney Island Hospital New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation Religion and Reform Jeffery Seymour
Interim Curator The National Civil War Naval Museum Shipbuilding Robert S. Shelton
Associate Professor, Department of History Cleveland State University Black Market David H. Slay
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History Texas Christian Univeresity African American Commemorations Emancipation Family
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Park Ranger Vicksburg National Military Park Prisoner Exchange and Parole Vicksburg Timothy B. Smith
Department of History and Philosophy University of Tennessee at Martin Antietam Battlefield Sites Blue-Gray Reunions Memorial and Decoration Days National Cemeteries Shiloh Wartime Commemoration and Monuments
Minoa Uffelman
Assistant Professor, Department of History Austin Peay State University Unitarianism Micki Waldrop
Freelance Writer Courtship and Marriage The Domestic Ideal Northern Domestic Life Shortages Steven E. Woodworth
Professor, Department of History Texas Christian University Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople Family and Community Health and Medicine Politics Popular Culture Reconciliation and Remembrance Religion A Soldier’s Life Work and Economy
J. Douglas Tyson
Teacher, Department of Social Studies Ridley School District Evacuation Hospitals Recovery
Angela M. Zombek
Doctoral Candidate, Department of History University of Florida Catholic Christianity
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
A Chronology of the Civil War 1858 August–October Incumbent U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and challenger Abraham Lincoln hold a series of debates. Douglas maintains that he does not care about slavery and is content to let the people in each western territory ‘‘vote it up, or vote it down.’’ Lincoln counters that slavery is a moral wrong and should not be allowed to spread. 1859 October 16 Abolitionist John Brown leads nineteen men in a raid on the U.S. armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Ten of the raiders are killed. Brown and seven others are captured. December 2 John Brown is hanged at Charlestown, Virginia, for murder, conspiring with slaves to rebel, and for treason against Virginia, though he had never been a citizen of that state.
is consistent with the thinking of the Founding Fathers.
May 3 The Democratic National Convention, meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, breaks up when Southern delegates use convention rules to block the nomination of the majority’s choice, Stephen A. Douglas.
May 9 Southerners who had formerly belonged to the defunct Whig and Know-Nothing parties meet in Baltimore, Maryland, to form the Constitutional Union Party and nominate John Bell of Tennessee for president.
May 16 Abraham Lincoln wins the presidential nomination of the Republican National Convention, meeting in Chicago.
1860
June 18 The Democrats meet again in Baltimore, Maryland, but Southern delegates walk out when the majority rejects their demand for a federal slave code for the territories. The remaining delegates nominate Douglas.
February 27 Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech at the Cooper Union in New York City, arguing that the goal of the Republican Party— preventing the further spread of slavery—
June 28 Southern delegates who had bolted the Democratic convention meet in Richmond, Virginia, and nominate Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. xix
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November 6 In the presidential election, Lincoln wins a majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the popular vote.
February 11 Davis leaves his plantation in Mississippi to travel to Montgomery for his inauguration. Abraham Lincoln leaves Springfield, Illinois, to travel to Washington for his inauguration.
November 10 The South Carolina legislature authorizes a special convention to consider the question of the state’s secession. Both of South Carolina’s U.S. senators resign their seats and leave Washington.
February 18 Jefferson Davis is inaugurated president of the Confederacy.
December 20 The South Carolina convention, meeting in Charleston, adopts an ordinance of secession.
April 6
March 4 Lincoln is inaugurated.
Lincoln informs South Carolina governor Francis Pickens that U.S. ships will attempt to resupply Fort Sumter with food only and will not insert reinforcements unless resistance is made.
1861 January 9 The unarmed steamer Star of the West attempts to enter Charleston Harbor carrying supplies and reinforcements for Fort Sumter, but Rebel cannon opens fire and forces it to turn back. Union gunners within Fort Sumter do not return fire. Mississippi secedes. January 10 Florida secedes. January 11 Alabama secedes. January 19 Georgia secedes.
April 11 Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate forces around Charleston, demands the surrender of Fort Sumter. April 12 When Fort Sumter’s commander, Maj. Robert Anderson, refuses Beauregard’s order to surrender, Confederate guns open fire on the fort. April 13 Fort Sumter is surrendered.
January 26 Louisiana secedes.
April 15 Lincoln calls on the states to muster 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion—the first of many calls for troops.
February 1 Texas secedes.
April 17 Virginia secedes.
February 8 A convention of the seceded states, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopts a constitution for the new Confederate States of America.
April 19 A proslavery mob attacks Massachusetts militia passing through Baltimore on their way to Washington. May 6
February 9 The convention in Montgomery elects Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederate States. xx
Arkansas and Tennessee secede.
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June 10 A small force of Federal troops advancing from Fort Monroe meet defeat at Big Bethel, Virginia. June 18 Lincoln signs legislation creating the United States Sanitary Commission, an organization tasked with coordinating the efforts of civilians who desire to aid Union soldiers by serving as volunteers in hospitals or by providing food, clothing, or other items. July 21 A Federal army advancing from Washington toward the new Rebel capital at Richmond, Virginia, meets a humiliating defeat near a stream known as Bull Run. July 27 Lincoln gives command of the Union troops in Virginia to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. August 10 Union and Confederate troops clash at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, resulting in another Confederate victory. August 28 Union naval forces capture Fort Hatteras on the North Carolina coast. October 21 A Union reconnaissance probe suffers a disastrous defeat at Balls Bluff, Virginia, leading to the creation of the Congressional Join Committee on the Conduct of the War. November 7 Union naval forces capture Port Royal Sound on the South Carolina coast. November 8 Capt. Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stops the British mail steamer Trent and removes Confederate envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell, who had been bound for Europe. The incident creates a severe diplomatic crisis between the United States and Great Britain. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
November 15 The national committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association organizes the United States Christian Commission for the purpose of bringing comfort and Christian witness to the men of the Union armies. 1862 February 6 Union forces led by Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote capture Fort Henry, in Tennessee, opening the Tennessee River to Union incursion as far south as northern Alabama. February 8 Union amphibious forces capture Roanoke Island on the coast of North Carolina. February 16 Grant strikes again, this time capturing Fort Donelson, Tennessee, and 15,000 prisoners and opening the Cumberland River all the way to Nashville. Along with the surrender of Fort Henry, this marks the most important turning point of the war. March 7–8 A Union army under the command of Samuel R. Curtis defeats Confederates at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. April 6–7 A Confederate army commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston attacks Grant’s Union army in what becomes known as the Battle of Shiloh, near the Tennessee River in the southern part of that state. Johnston is killed and Grant is victorious. April 25 A Union fleet commanded by David G. Farragut captures New Orleans. May 5 McClellan’s Union army, advancing on Richmond from the east, fights and wins the Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia. xxi
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May–June The small Confederate army of Thomas J. ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson wages a successful campaign in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, distracting Union attention from McClellan’s campaign near Richmond. May 31 The Confederate army defending Richmond, commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, attacks McClellan’s army at what comes to be called the Battle of Fair Oaks (or the Battle of Seven Pines). The attack is a failure. Johnston is wounded and replaced by Robert E. Lee. June 6 Union naval forces capture Memphis, Tennessee.
June 25–July 1 In a series of fierce attacks known as the Seven Days’ Battles, Lee forces McClellan to withdraw from the outskirts of Richmond to Harrison’s Landing on the James River, twenty-five miles away. July 22 Lincoln reads the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William H. Seward suggests he delay public announcement of the proclamation until after the next Union victory, so that it will not be interpreted as an act of desperation. August 28–30 Lee defeats the Union army of Maj. Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run. September 17 Having crossed the Potomac River into Maryland, Lee’s army faces its Union antagonist, this time once again under the command of McClellan, along Antietam Creek. The badly outnumbered Confederates narrowly escape destruction, and Lee finds that he has no choice but to retreat back into Virginia. xxii
September 22 Lincoln publicly issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation: ‘‘That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves, within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.’’ October 3–4 Union forces under the overall command of Ulysses S. Grant defeat Earl Van Dorn’s Confederate army at the Battle of Corinth, Mississippi. October 8 The Union army commanded by Don Carlos Buell defeats Braxton Bragg’s Confederate army at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. November 4 The Democrats make significant gains in the mid-term Congressional elections. November 7 For the last time, Lincoln removes the dawdling McClellan from command of the Union army in the East. December 13 McClellan’s successor, Ambrose Burnside, leads the Army of the Potomac to defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Lee is once again victorious. December 21 Confederate cavalry destroys Grant’s supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi, forcing him to give up his attempt to reach the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg from the rear. December 29 William T. Sherman leads a direct Union frontal assault on Vicksburg and suffers a severe defeat at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. December 31 Union General William S. Rosecrans, the successor of Buell, clashes with Bragg’s army at the Battle of Stone’s River. Rosecrans wins a victory by the narrowest of margins. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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1863 January 1 Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation: ‘‘I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free.’’ March 3 Lincoln signs legislation setting up federal conscription. April 2 In the so-called Richmond ‘‘Bread Riot,’’ citizens of the Confederate capital, including many women, riot, complaining of lack of food but engaging in much looting of non-food items.
April 30 Grant’s army lands on the east bank of the Mississippi River below Vicksburg and begins a rapid campaign to get at the Confederate fortress from the rear. May 1–4 The Army of the Potomac, now under the command of Joseph Hooker, meets another humiliating defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, though the battle results in the wounding of Stonewall Jackson. May 10 Jackson dies. May 14 Grant captures Jackson, Mississippi, and turns toward Vicksburg. May 16 Grant defeats Confederate general John C. Pemberton in the Battle of Champion’s Hill, fought between Jackson and Vicksburg. May 18 Grant bottles up Pemberton and his 30,000 Confederate troops inside the Vicksburg defenses and lays siege to the fortress. June 16 Lee’s army once again crosses the Potomac into Maryland. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
June 27 Lincoln removes Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac and appoints Maj. Gen. George G. Meade in his place. July 1–3 Once again the eastern armies meet in a bloody but inconclusive clash. This time they fight in Pennsylvania, at Gettysburg. After the battle, Lee, who has gotten the worse of the encounter, has to retreat back into Virginia. Within a few weeks the armies are back in their pre-campaign positions, as has been the case with all of the other major campaigns east of the Appalachians. July 4 In a stunning blow to the Confederacy, Pemberton surrenders Vicksburg and 30,000 troops to Grant. Within days the entire Mississippi River is under Union control, and the Confederacy is severed from its three westernmost states, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
July 13 Large mobs in New York City, including many Irish immigrants, riot against the draft, committing numerous atrocities against African Americans. September 9 Union troops occupy Chattanooga, Tennessee. September 10 Union troops take Little Rock, Arkansas. September 18–20 In northwestern Georgia, Bragg’s Confederate army, heavily reinforced by other Southern forces, attacks Rosecrans’s advancing Union army and defeats it at the Battle of Chickamauga. Rosecrans retreats into Chattanooga, and Bragg virtually besieges him there. October 13 In a widely watched election, Ohio voters resoundingly reject antiwar Democratic gubernatorial candidate Clement L. Vallandigham in favor of prowar Republican John Brough. xxiii
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October 16 Lincoln gives Grant command of all Union armies west of the Appalachians, including Rosecrans’s besieged force at Chattanooga. October 27 Grant, having gone to Chattanooga in person, successfully reopens a supply line to the besieged army there. November 23–25 Grant trounces Bragg in the Battle of Chattanooga, capturing dozens of cannon and thousands of prisoners. Bragg’s battered army retreats to Dalton, Georgia, where Davis will soon replace Bragg with Joseph E. Johnston. December 8 Lincoln issues his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, offering pardons to low-ranking Rebels willing to take an oath of future loyalty to the United States.
May 8–21 Grant and Lee clash again at Spotsylvania Court House, ten miles closer to Richmond. As with the Battle of the Wilderness, casualties are appalling. June 1–3 Grant and Lee meet yet again at Cold Harbor, Virginia, just outside Richmond. Once again fighting results in high casualties and no decisive outcome, but Grant is now scarcely ten miles from the center of Richmond. June 8 The Republican Party, now styling itself the National Union Party, convenes in Baltimore and nominates Lincoln for a second term.
June 15 Sliding his army around behind Richmond, Grant strikes at Petersburg, nexus of the rail lines entering the Confederate capital from the south. Lee counters and a deadlock ensues, with both sides gradually extending their trench lines.
1864 March 9 Lincoln makes Grant a lieutenant general, the highest rank in the Union army, and gives him command over all of the nation’s armies. April 12 Confederate troops under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest massacre surrendering Union troops, many of them African American, at Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi River in Tennessee. May 5–6 Grant’s grand offensive begins. Grant accompanies the Army of the Potomac, still under the direct command of Meade, as it advances and tangles inconclusively with Lee’s Confederates in the Battle of the Wilderness.
June 27 Sherman suffers a setback in his advance toward Atlanta, losing several thousand men in an unsuccessful attack on Kennesaw Mountain. Not long after, he finds a way to get around the mountain and its defenders, and his advance continues. July 4 Congress adjourns, leaving the Wade-Davis Bill for Lincoln to sign. Instead, he pocketvetoes it, believing its conditions for the reconstruction of the rebellious states are too harsh.
July 20 John Bell Hood, who had replaced Johnston as commander of the Confederate army in Georgia, attacks Sherman on the outskirts of Atlanta, in what comes to be known as the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Sherman’s Federals prevail.
May 7 Sherman, now commanding the western Union armies, begins to advance from Chattanooga toward Atlanta. xxiv
July 22 Hood attacks again, triggering the Battle of Atlanta. Again Sherman’s men are victorious. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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July 28 For the third time in eight days Hood launches a major attack on Sherman. Again Sherman wins, but he cannot get quite enough leverage to pry Hood out of Atlanta. Here, as at Richmond and Petersburg, deadlock ensues. August 5 U.S. naval forces under the command of Rear Admiral David G. Farragut successfully take control of Mobile Bay, on the Gulf coast of Alabama, closing it as a port for blockaderunners. August 23 Lincoln privately writes that he does not believe he will be reelected. The Democratic assertion that the war is a failure seems to be resonating with the voters. August 31 The Democratic National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominates George B. McClellan. September 2 Sherman’s troops march into Atlanta after forcing Hood’s Confederates to evacuate. The Democrats’ antiwar platform suddenly looks very foolish. October 19 Union troops operating in the Shenandoah Valley under the command of Philip H. Sheridan administer a crushing defeat to the Confederate army of Jubal A. Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek. November 8 Voters in the North give Lincoln a resounding victory at the polls in reelecting him for a second term. November 16 Sherman sets out from Atlanta on the March to the Sea. December 13 Sherman’s army makes contact with Union naval forces near Savannah, having completed the March to the Sea. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
December 15–16 Hood’s Confederate army, which had slipped around into Tennessee, is routed by a Union army commanded by George H. Thomas. December 21 Sherman’s troops occupy Savannah following the retreat of the Confederate garrison. 1865 January 15 Union amphibious forces capture Fort Fisher, effectively closing Wilmington, North Carolina, as the last Confederate port open for blockade-runners. January 31 The U.S. House of Representatives approves the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery throughout the United States. Already approved by the Senate, the amendment heads to the states for ratification. Jefferson Davis, with the prompt approval of the Confederate senate, appoints Robert E. Lee commander of all Confederate armies. February 1 Sherman’s army marches north from Savannah, crossing into South Carolina, aiming to march across that state and North Carolina to join Grant in Virginia and finish off Lee. February 3 Lincoln and Seward meet with three Confederate emissaries on board the steamer River Queen in Hampton Roads, just off Fort Monroe, Virginia, to discuss possible peace terms. Lincoln is prepared to make concessions but will not accede to the Confederates’ non-negotiable demand that their states be treated as an independent nation. February 17 Sherman’s troops march into Columbia, South Carolina. That night the city burns, though it remains unclear whether the fires were set by Sherman’s men, retreating Confederates, newly freed slaves, escaped prisoners of war, or all or some combination of the above. xxv
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March 19–21 Joseph E. Johnston, now commanding Confederate troops in the Carolinas, makes a desperate attempt to stop Sherman at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina, but is forced to withdraw. Sherman’s army moves on inexorably. April 1 At the Battle of Five Forks, a detachment of Grant’s forces led by Philip H. Sheridan crushes Lee’s western flank, gravely endangering the continued flow of supplies to Lee’s army and Richmond.
April 2 Grant launches a predawn assault along the entire length of his lines, and the Confederate defenses crumble. Lee’s troops resist just long enough to allow the Confederate government to flee Richmond, then make their own escape.
April 3 Union troops occupy Richmond while most of Grant’s forces continue to pursue Lee’s fleeing army west of the city.
April 6
April 18 Sherman and Johnston sign a preliminary agreement for the surrender of Johnston’s army. A truce is maintained until the surrender is finalized eight days later. April 26 Union cavalry catches up with John Wilkes Booth and an accomplice in rural Virginia. Booth refuses to surrender and is fatally shot. May 4 Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor surrenders the forces of his Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana.
May 10 Union cavalry captures the fleeing Jefferson Davis near Irwinville, Georgia.
Grant’s leading units catch up with the rear of Lee’s column and defeat it at the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, capturing 8,000 Confederates —about a third of the men Lee has left.
May 12 The last skirmish of the war is fought at Palmito Ranch, Texas.
Lee meets with Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and surrenders what is left of the Army of Northern Virginia.
May 26 Confederate Gen. Simon B. Buckner formally surrenders the remaining Confederate troops still at large west of the Mississippi.
April 9
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April 14 In a formal ceremony, Robert Anderson, now a retired brigadier general, raises over Fort Sumter the flag he had lowered there four years and one day earlier. That evening Lincoln is assassinated by proConfederate actor John Wilkes Booth while attending a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington.
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Introduction The Civil War was the most cataclysmic event in American history up to its time, and in some ways its impact remains unsurpassed. It changed America more than any other war—with the possible exception of the Revolutionary War. Yet even the Revolution did not create as much social change as did the conflict of the 1860s, and no other American war cost as much or left such deep scars on segments of American society. Understanding American history, and what the nation has become today, requires an understanding of the Civil War. The Civil War was almost unique in the nation’s experience in the degree to which it touched the lives of ordinary people. Never before had any war brought its destruction to the doorsteps of so many Americans. The Revolutionary War had been fought on American soil, but the Civil War was fought over a much broader expanse of territory and among a much larger population—and in the latter war the combatants on both sides were American. Since the Civil War, no organized enemy military force has fought on American soil (with the exception of a couple of small and sparsely populated islands in the Aleutians during World War II). The Civil War was the last time that Americans living in the interior of the country had the experience of hiding in their cellars to escape shelling or of seeing contending armies sweep past their houses in the midst of battle. It was the last time that Americans—whether citizens of Georgia or of Pennsylvania— experienced the entry of hostile, marauding soldiers into their homes or became war refugees in their own country. In a way and to an extent that remains unprecedented, the conflict of the 1860s brought warfare home to the average American. In doing so, it left deep scars and created animosities that have continued, in some ways, down to the present day. Southerners still complain of the devastation wrought by Sherman—even in places far from anywhere the general or his troops ever visited during the war. The Civil War was also unparalleled in its impact on society. Some 3.5 million African Americans—40 percent of the population of the prewar Southern states—went from slavery to freedom as an immediate result of the war. Once they were free, the question facing the nation was what their status would be in postwar society. Northern abolitionists assumed that the freedpeople’s status would and should be that of full participants in American society. White Southerners, with the support of many white Northerners as well, were determined that such should not be the case. The resulting political struggle, waged after the guns had fallen silent and the vast armies had disbanded, was at the heart of Reconstruction, which lasted for almost twelve years after the end of the war. In another sense, however, Reconstruction was simply a low-intensity continuation of the war, and one that white Southerners ultimately won. The task of transforming 3.5 million persons from slaves to full participants in American society proved to be more than one generation of Americans could accomplish, and completion of the process was left for a later generation. Still, the war had, in the space of four years, seen more progress toward
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the ultimate goal of racial equality than had occurred in the century before or would occur over a subsequent period nearly a century in length. The Civil War also had massive economic effects. The economy of the South was devastated both by the physical destruction wrought by the war and by the end of slavery. Contrary to popular mythology, both Union and Confederate armies behaved in about the same way toward the territory of their enemies. The difference was that Union armies spent much more time and covered a great deal more ground inside enemy territory. The result was massive destruction of the Southern railroad network and of the South’s relatively few factories. Warehouses and cotton gins were also targets for the torches of Union soldiers. This left the South’s infrastructure badly damaged at war’s end. Far more damaging, however, was the loss of almost all of the South’s capital, which had been overwhelmingly invested in slaves. Along with this there was the unseen damage caused by the fact that European cotton mills had for four years been mostly cut off from their accustomed supply of Southern-grown cotton. During that time Europeans had discovered that Egypt and India were also good places from which to acquire the valuable fiber, and the market for American cotton was never as strong again. Thus, as the South struggled to rebuild its infrastructure and to reshape its entire economy on the basis of free labor, it also had to contend with perennially disappointing prices for its major cash crop. The process of economic recovery took a long time, and some of the economic effects of the war could still be felt in the South well into the twentieth century. Finally, the Civil War stands out for its cost in lives. During the four years between 1861 and 1865, some 620,000 Americans died while fighting in the Union or Confederate armies—out of a total prewar population of about 32 million. Even in terms of raw numbers, that grim casualty figure has never been matched by any of America’s subsequent wars, and as a percentage of the total population, the number of Civil War dead surpasses by many times American losses in any other conflict. As for anything that had gone before, the comparison is even more striking. The entire American loss of life in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War—combined—was exceeded by the single 1862 Battle of Shiloh, and subsequent Civil War battles proved even more deadly. The conflict of the 1860s was on a scale unlike anything Americans had ever imagined. Never before or since has such a large percentage of the nation’s population suffered bereavement. As one might expect of an epoch that looms so large in the nation’s history, the Civil War has been the subject of an enormous literature. It is doubtful if anyone really knows the total number of books that have been written on the war. Some estimates have placed that total as high as 70,000—more than one book per day since the war ended. Nor has the pace of publication slackened. Civil War books continue to appear at a rate that averages more than one per day. Battles, armies, generals, and political leaders have come in for much of this attention, but, especially in more recent years, almost every aspect of the war has been studied—including the participation of ethnic groups ranging from Germans to American Indians to Hispanics, the economy, labor, riots of various sorts, women on the home front, female nurses, and the impact of the war on various local communities, whether in the war’s path or far from the scenes of conflict. Even the presence of women in both armies, neither of which allowed any female enlistment, has become a recent topic of more than one book. About four hundred women passed themselves off as men and enlisted under false pretenses, a subterfuge made possible by the cursoriness of the medical examinations Civil War soldiers received at the time of their enlistment. There are books on the lives of children during the Civil War, literature during the Civil War, and children’s literature during the war. Quite naturally, the wartime experience of African Americans has also become an important subject of study. Clearly, each generation of Americans since the final surrenders at Appomattox and Durham Station has considered the Civil War eminently worthy of historical investigation. How then did Americans experience the Civil War on a day-to-day basis? About 3.3 million men, or roughly one in ten Americans living at that time, spent at least part of the Civil War years as a soldier. The wartime lot of a soldier consisted of long periods of intense boredom punctuated by brief episodes of stark terror, along with a great deal of
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Introduction
discomfort—cold, heat, drenching rain, little or very unpalatable food, parching thirst. Most Civil War soldiers, not surprisingly, were American-born whites, but the armies also included many soldiers with different backgrounds. Ten of thousands of recent German immigrants fought for the Union. Similar numbers of Irish immigrants also served, some on one side, some the other. Most significantly, 160,000 African Americans, most of them newly freed slaves, served in the Union armies. The other 90 percent of Americans lived lives on the home front that were also profoundly affected, albeit more subtly, by the ongoing conflict. The strains that the war placed on family and community ties changed some things and left others the same. Family life during and after the Civil War continued to be shaped by the culture’s domestic ideal, which cherished the concept of the home as a haven from the rigors and stresses of life. Women were seen as the pure guardians and cultivators of this sort of home. The stresses of war sometimes compelled women to depart from this ideal by taking on tasks around the farm that had previously been relegated to men or by working outside the home. Women saw this not as liberation, but as a burden and were happy to return to their accustomed domestic roles when their husbands came home. Not surprisingly, medical care was much in demand in the midst of a war that killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Yet bullets and shells were not the chief killers, and soldiers were not the only ones who were in need of medical care. In the Civil War, as in all pre-twentieth-century wars on which we have solid information, disease killed more soldiers than did enemy action. Disease was somewhat less rampant outside the camps of the army, but even in settled civilian areas it could threaten the lives of citizens of any age or class to a degree that modern Americans would find shocking. While the state of medical science seems woefully primitive by today’s standards, physicians of the Civil War era strove to provide the best possible care and made a number of significant improvements during the war years. The Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz famously noted, ‘‘War is politics carried on by other means.’’ During the mid-nineteenth century it sometimes seemed that politics was war carried on by other means. Political difference as a motivator of conflict is central in any war, but in the American Civil War its importance was particularly significant. Absent barriers of language and nationality, differing political opinion was all that separated the opposing sides. Americans as a group paid far more attention to their politics than now, and political battles were hotly contested, even when the contestants were not bearing arms against one another in open warfare. Throughout the war, the North continued to have a functioning two-party system. The presence of two parties helped channel political disagreement in relatively constructive ways, though Lincoln certainly had to contend with much opposition from Northern Democrats. The South, on the other hand, lacked a two-party system, and thus political differences within the Confederacy tended to become more radically polarized. Tensions between factions supporting and opposing Confederate president Jefferson Davis produced a political situation within the Confederate government that was, in at least some ways, more difficult than that faced by Lincoln in the North. Despite the looming presence of the war, Americans still enjoyed many of the diversions and pleasures they had known during peacetime. Novels were written and eagerly read by many elements of the population. Theatergoing was popular as well, though some, especially the devout, tended to frown on both the theater and the novel as possibly degrading and of interest only to the idle. Lyceums, with their educational function, were seen as more edifying and were also highly popular. Although perhaps one-fifth of the nation’s male population would put on the uniform of the Union or Confederacy at some point during the conflict, the civilian economies of both sections had to continue to function if their societies were to continue to wage war. Fields had to be tilled, crops had to be harvested, and factory machinery had to be kept running. Farming, still the most common occupation in America, faced and met new challenges. Without the help of sons who were serving in the army, farmers produced bigger harvests than ever by using agricultural machinery, such as Cyrus McCormack’s mechanical reaper. An increasing number of Americans worked in factories.
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Especially in the textile industry, these workers included women as well as men. Either way, factory work was much more common in the North than in the South. Slaves, of course, continued in their accustomed prewar tasks until the war either freed them or prompted their masters to try to move them to places where they would be less likely to be in the path of the liberating Union army. The United States in the mid-nineteenth century was strongly influenced by Christianity. The diaries and letters of Americans of that era clearly reveal how important a part religion played in daily life. The war disrupted worship in many civilian settings, as pastors went off to serve as army chaplains, or passing armies, primarily in the South, appropriated church buildings or engaged in conflict that made church attendance impractical. Religious practice was most severely disrupted in areas of the South not under the direct control of either army, as in these regions lawless bands of draft-dodgers and deserters from both sides made it risky to venture abroad for any purpose, religious or otherwise. Some churches saw substantial drops in civilian attendance and membership. On the other hand, within the armies themselves, both Northern and Southern, massive religious revivals took place. While some of these stirrings were more flamboyant than others and while postwar attention has tended to focus on the Confederate side, a substantial segment of virtually every field army of the war frequently engaged in religious meetings— preaching services, prayer meetings, or the like—whenever the opportunity was available. Even within the South, where wartime civilian religious observance had suffered the greatest setback, the influx of new converts from the armies assured that Christianity would be at least as strong after the war as it had been before. The lives of Americans during the Civil War were a fascinating mix of the ordinary and the unusual. People of all types, civilians and soldiers alike, strove in many different ways simply to survive and to adjust their previous activities to the special demands of what proved to be the worst conflict in the nation’s history.
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American Civil War
A Soldier’s Life n
A Soldier’s Life Overview
During the course of the Civil War more than three million men served as soldiers in the armies of the North and South. For them, daily life during the conflict consisted of a multitude of new experiences, many of them unpleasant and most of them much different from anything the men would have encountered had they remained at their peaceful homes. For nearly one in ten Americans during the four years of the war, their status as a soldier was the prime factor that determined the contours of dayto-day existence. The largest demographic cohort of the Civil War soldiers was composed of young white men born in the United States who had grown up on farms before the war. The typical soldier—if the concept of ‘‘typical’’ can even be applied to a group as diverse as the Civil War combatants—was in his early twenties. Yet those who wore the blue or the gray (or sometimes butternut and a variety of other colors, particularly in Confederate uniforms) varied broadly among themselves, and significant groups of soldiers differed in some notable way from the demographic profile of the majority of soldiers. The most notable of these varied groups, by all odds, were the African Americans. They had a special motivation to fight because the war had come about as a result of the enslavement of their ethnic group and had become, by the time it was two years old, an open and direct struggle for the freedom of their people. More than 160,000 of them served exclusively in the Union Army and Navy. A handful were inducted into the Confederate Army in the closing weeks of the war, but the Confederate authorities never issued them rifles, and it remains highly debatable whether they would actually have fought for the Confederacy. The African Americans who did see combat with the Union Army showed just as much aptitude for soldiering as their white comrades— much to the surprise of some whites, whose racist assumptions had led them to believe that blacks would not fight. Nevertheless, black soldiers’ experience of daily
life during the war differed in a number of ways from that of their white counterparts. Another notable group of Civil War soldiers were the immigrants. Of course, all Americans spring from immigrant stock, whether their ancestors crossed the Atlantic or Pacific by ship or walked across the Bering Strait during the Ice Age. These soldiers, however, were much more recent arrivals, having been born overseas or being the first generation born on American soil to immigrant parents. Especially numerous among them were the Germans, many of whom had come for economic opportunity in the New World, while some, especially the more prominent, had fled the repercussions of the unsuccessful German revolutions of 1848. A number of Union regiments were almost completely ethnically German; they marched and fought to orders given in the German language. The Union Army’s Eleventh Corps, numbering in the neighborhood of 10,000 men, contained enough Germans to be known collectively as the ‘‘Dutch Corps.’’ Its hard-luck reputation reinforced the prejudice in some nativists’ minds that Germans made poor soldiers; however, the performance of many individual German regiments both in and out of the Eleventh Corps proved that idea to be mistaken. The Irish also fought for the Union in large numbers; unlike the Germans, however, a smaller but still noticeable contingent of the sons of Erin also soldiered in the Confederate ranks. No one ever doubted that the Irishmen would fight, but their wartime service helped win them a little higher measure of respect than a nativist-influenced prewar society had shown them. The special circumstances of these German and Irish soldiers, and those of a smaller number of immigrants from such other countries as Italy or Poland, made their daily life during the war significantly different from that of the typical Civil War soldier. While the Germans, Irish, and other nationalities in the Civil War armies represented the most recent immigrants to North American, another unusual group among the Civil War soldiers consisted of the descendents of the
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earliest arrivals. American Indians served on both sides during the war. In some cases, they were able to put to use their special skills in woodcraft and scouting. At other times, especially in the region known as the Indian Territory (what later became the state of Oklahoma), Union Indian fought Confederate Indian, and the struggle took on all of the vicious characteristics that usually accompany internecine warfare among people of any ethnicity. Like the recent immigrants, American Indians had to ask themselves whether the conflict then dividing the continent was their own fight or someone else’s. Yet another group of Civil War soldiers who experienced daily life in ways that differed from the majority were the child soldiers. These could include boy musicians, especially drummers, or the large number of teenaged youth who successfully lied about their age in order to get themselves inducted into the army and experience the great adventure of war. Alonzo Woodworth was a strapping lad of fourteen in the fall of 1861 when he succeeded in convincing the mustering officer in his northeast Indiana community that he was four years older than he was. Duly inducted, he went to war as a member of the Forty-fourth Indiana Volunteer Regiment. His youth, however, made him particularly susceptible to the many diseases that afflicted Civil War soldiers, and he spent most of the war in and out of army hospitals and felt the effects of those years on his health for the rest of his life. The daily life of a soldier could be a different matter when a lad of tender years found himself in uniform. As had been said of the soldier’s lot in other wars, so the men who served in the Civil War armies experienced long periods of intense boredom punctuated by brief interludes of stark terror. A few of them wrote vivid accounts of their experiences in battle, but the daily life of the Civil War soldiers had much more to do with the mundane realities of camp, march, and drill. It was with details of such matters that the soldiers filled their diaries and their many letters home. Writing the letters themselves was one of the chief ways the soldiers beguiled the time and assuaged their often intense feelings of homesickness. In the letters one reads of food and how it was prepared—such curious culinary creations as hardtack and salt pork fried together in grease or an item in the Union ration known as desiccated vegetables, sometimes referred to by the soldiers as ‘‘desecrated vegetables.’’ Oddly enough, perhaps, desiccated vegetables became quite a favorite of many of the Union soldiers, rating just behind the highly esteemed ration of navy beans—or army beans, as that service preferred to call them. The most vital component of the ration as far as the soldiers were concerned, however, was coffee. Issued in the bean, coffee was ground with rifle butts and boiled in whatever container was handy. If constraints of time completely forbade the few minutes necessary to build a fire and make the liquid beverage, the soldiers would, on occasion, chew their coffee beans. Overall, the monotonous
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and unpalatable nature of army rations predisposed some of the troops to engage in foraging—the taking of food from enemy civilians—and that in turn provided another pungent aspect to the daily life of those both in and out of the army. The everyday lives of the soldiers also included such elements as drill—the seemingly endless hours of military exercises necessary for their units to maneuver effectively on the battlefield. Keeping reasonably warm and dry in inclement weather was another frequent concern of the men in blue and gray. Their ability to do so depended much on the equipment their armies issued them. Both sides usually had tents, and Union soldiers might also receive a poncho or a rubber or oilcloth sheet. Confederates usually had to obtain their supplies of such waterproofing equipment by capture. For the long hours of idle time in camp, after they had written every word they could think of to the folks back home and had attended to the many chores involved in keeping fed and sheltered and maintaining military discipline, the soldiers resorted to a wide array of pastimes. Music, either informal from individual soldiermusicians or the more regular if not more skillful efforts of the regimental bands, helped keep spirits up, as did an assortment of mascots. Many regiments had dogs, but one Union regiment had an eagle, and one Confederate regiment, a camel. The new game of baseball, which the soldiers sometimes called ‘‘driveball,’’ gained popularity from its frequent play in the camps, though it was not, as legend would have it, invented by General Abner Doubleday. The daily life of the Civil War soldiers represented a mixture of the homely and the exotic, the boring and the terrifying, which made it strikingly different from that experienced by civilians before, during, or after the war. The essays that follow delve into some of the most interesting and important aspects of the circumstances the soldiers faced every day. Steven E. Woodworth
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Recruitment RECRUITMENT : AN OVERVIEW
Kevin Hillstrom VOLUNTEERISM
Kevin Hillstrom CONSCRIPTION
Kevin Hillstrom
RECRUITMENT: AN OVERVIEW Of the approximately three million men who fought in the American Civil War, more than 620,000 did not survive. The majority of these fatalities—360,000 from the Union side, 260,000 from the Confederate rolls—
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Recruitment: An Overview
Confederate and Union armies were comprised of volunteers at the outset of the Civil War. However, as men began to see the brutality of a long fight, many became reluctant to enlist, compelling both armies to pass conscription laws to replenish their depleted ranks. The Library of Congress Volunteering down Dixie.
stemmed from disease and other causes rather than from battlefield wounds. But the carnage on the field of battle was nonetheless appalling. In one early clash, for example— the Battle of Shiloh of April 1862—more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined. While the soldiers who fought under the banners of the Union and Confederacy were not a monolithic group, most were young. About one-half of all Northern men who were between the ages of sixteen and twentyfour in 1860, for example, fought in the war at some point (Rorabaugh 1986, p. 696), and an even greater percentage of young Southerners took up arms for the Confederacy. But beyond this unsurprising preponderance of young recruits, there was no one type of Civil War soldier. Recruits were of many different nationalities and had widely different occupations; furthermore, while most troops were young, some were quite old—indeed, ages varied across a roughly fifty-year span (Sutherland 1989, p. 2). The men who took up arms for the Blue and Gray also held a multitude of reasons for participating. Many on both sides were motivated by patriotism and other high-minded principles. Others were swept into the army by peer pressure and community expectations, the promise of adventure, or the prospect of proving their
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manhood through the crucible of war. All of the aforementioned factors were pivotal in accounting for the initial rush of volunteers that filled the ranks of the Northern and Southern armies in the opening months of the war. As the Civil War ground on, however, both armies suffered astonishing rates of attrition. With each passing month, the list of soldiers who had succumbed to enemy bullets or illness grew longer, and generals on both sides beseeched their political leaders for reinforcements. This posed a dilemma for both U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, for volunteers were by then few and far between. Both administrations responded by imposing military drafts on their people. This decision to resort to the draft—widely known as conscription—was enormously unpopular and triggered outright rebellion in some areas, particularly in the North. Conscription measures were deeply flawed because they contained numerous service exemptions that were, by and large, only available to middle-class or affluent men. As the inequities of the conscription systems became evident in both the North and South, farming and working-class families without the financial resources to secure exemptions began to complain bitterly. Charges that the war had become ‘‘a
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rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight’’ were heard again and again during the last two years of the war, both around the campfires of marching armies and in homes where fathers, sons, and brothers had long been absent. But while conscription measures in both the North and South became notorious for their divisiveness and corrupt implementation, they ultimately served their purpose of replenishing the ranks of the Blue and Gray. In the latter case, however, the replenishment was only temporary, and it never reached the level necessary for the Confederacy to continue the fight against a foe with superior military and industrial resources. Conscription actions in the South saw steadily diminishing returns, and by the end of 1864 it was clear to even the most optimistic Confederate partisan that defeating the Yankees was impossible if the South ran out of soldiers. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Michael, and Larry M. Logue, eds. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Rorabaugh, William J. ‘‘Who Fought for the North in the Civil War? Concord, Massachusetts, Enlistments.’’ Journal of American History 73, no. 3 (1986): 695–701. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Kevin Hillstrom
VOLUNTEERISM In the first year of the Civil War, both the Union and Confederacy relied on volunteers to form the backbone of their armies. On March 6, 1861, the newly minted Confederate States of America (CSA) issued a call for 100,000 volunteers willing to defend the allied secessionist states against Northern ‘‘tyranny.’’ Five weeks later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a similar call for 75,000 men to rally to the side of the existing federal army, which had shriveled to a mere 16,000 professional soldiers after thousands of Southerners resigned their commissions. Three weeks after this, the president issued an appeal for an additional 60,000 soldiers and sailors. Lincoln’s first call to arms had required only ninety-day enlistments, but most of the men who answered his second call signed up for three-year enlistments.
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A Rush to Join The requests for volunteers issued by Lincoln and his Confederate counterpart, President Jefferson Davis, were met with a thunderous response. In fact, the mood was almost celebratory in the war’s first few weeks. Thousands of men in both the North and South, their emotions at a fever pitch after years of steadily escalating tension and bombastic political rhetoric, were enormously relieved that the hour of reckoning seemed to finally be at hand. These men did not have to be convinced to volunteer; they went gladly, their steps lightened by patriotic pride and certainty of victory. Indeed, one key factor in the initial flood of applicants to join both armies was a pronounced fear that the war might end so quickly that the volunteer in question would not get an opportunity to snare his own share of combat glory. ‘‘The war was greeted in its first few weeks almost as a festival,’’ confirmed one scholar. ‘‘People went out and celebrated, both in the North and the South. There were parades, bands playing, flags flying; people seemed almost happy’’ (Catton 1981, p. 40). Volunteers for the Blue and Gray rushed to those colors for many of the same reasons. Countless idealistic and naive young men—including thousands of teen boys who lied about their age—enlisted not only to defend grand principles, but also out of a desire for adventure. Another important factor in the initial flood of volunteer enlistments in both the North and South was peer and community pressure. The divided nation of the mid-nineteenth century was, despite the rapid growth of some cities, still predominantly an empire of villages, towns, and ethnically distinct neighborhoods. In most of these enclaves, neighbors were on a firstname basis with one another and anonymity was not an option. Healthy young men who did not join their peers in the enlistment line, then, were often subject to ridicule or outright condemnation. As one historian observed, ‘‘not a few fellows found their way to recruiting depots only after being pushed by the questioning glances of neighbors, disdainful jeers of uniformed swains, and resounding haughtiness of fair maids’’ (Sutherland 1989, p. 3). In both the North and South, the importance of personal and family honor, and allegiance to town and county, were crucial incentives to enlistment. This was greatly intensified by the fact that platoons, companies, and regiments were usually composed of men from the same county—and often from the same town or village. The knowledge that one could enlist, train, and fight with other young men who had attended the same school or church, or even serve side by side with relatives and friends, was a powerful incentive to join the cause.
Preserving White Supremacy While Northerners and Southerners volunteered for many of the same reasons, there was an additional
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Volunteerism
Appealing to help. Initial appeals by presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis garnered thousands of soldiers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. However, the Northern army did not accept free blacks in its ranks until the second year of the conflict. Schomburg Center/Art Resource, NY
rationale at work in the Confederacy. In the secessionist South, where a majority of military-age white males fought in the war at some point (and where an estimated 20 percent of that demographic group perished), much of the volunteer push was explicitly linked to the preservation of a ‘‘way of life’’ built on the twin foundations of white supremacy and black slavery. As historian Gary Gallagher observed in The Confederate War (1997), the Confederate government was able to mobilize 75 to 80 percent of its white male population of military age over the course of the war. This success was due in no small measure to the ‘‘peculiar institution’’ of slavery—and the South’s determination to defend the practice to its last breath. As a practical matter, the South’s ability to gather such a high percentage of white males into its armies was directly attributable to the fact that the continued enslavement of an agricultural work force that included nearly 800,000 male slaves freed up white males to join the military in far greater numbers than otherwise could have been managed. The cultural mandate to preserve slavery, however, may have been just as great an impetus to enlistment in many areas of the South. Enlistees were motivated not just by the desire to preserve slavery as a system of labor, but by a fear of what might happen if the racial hierarchy were overturned. One young Confederate volunteer—a planter’s son who joined the army with a slave servant in tow—offered a typical assessment
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of the stakes involved in a letter home: ‘‘The time for action on the part of our entire race is swiftly passing, and unless [fellow white Southerners] all awake and get up on their feet like men, they may be compelled to forever crawl upon the ground like worms’’ (Logue 2002, p. 46).
Cogs in the Military Machine Whether donning the colors of the Confederacy or the Union, soldiers in the first great wave of volunteers found themselves enmeshed in military machines that were quite similar in their structure and operating philosophy. For instance, both federal governments relied on individual states to raise their respective armies from the war’s outset. These state-based regiments remained the cornerstone of both assembled forces for the war’s duration, and though they had been raised for national service, their primary identification and allegiance was often to their home state. This state of affairs put heavy pressure on state governors. They knew that they would get the credit if their state met its enlistment quota goal—and the blame if it failed to do so. With this in mind, governors in both the North and South tackled the task with zeal. They strong-armed state legislatures (who were generally compliant in this area anyway) to acquire additional funding with which to accelerate the enlistment process. Massachusetts Governor John Andrew (1818–1867), for
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Volunteer soldiers getting off a steamboat in Indiana. States throughout the Union and Confederacy sent soldiers to face the enemy. Troops in many volunteer army units often consisted of men from the same town or region, allowing soldiers to train, live, and fight with individuals with whom they were familiar. The Library of Congress
instance, used state funds to charter steamboats and railroad facilities for the transportation of enlistees, as well as to provide food, clothing, and shelter for volunteers until they received supplies from the federal government. His energetic leadership in these and other areas made Massachusetts one of the first Northern states to meet (and then exceed) its quota of volunteers. Governors in both the North and South were also empowered to select various community leaders and military veterans to lead the recruitment process at the village, city, county, and district levels. Oftentimes, these community leaders received military commissions in return for their help. These commissions became official as soon as the regiment they were responsible for overseeing was raised and sworn in.
Of Companies and Regiments In both armies, enlistees were assigned to fifty-man platoons, many of which were composed entirely of men from the same township or county. Two platoons com-
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prised a company, and ten companies formed a regiment. It was the regiment—consisting of roughly one thousand men of various ranks, many from the same region of the country—that was the basic military unit for both the Blue and the Gray. Regiments frequently had their own insignia and nicknames, and most carried unique battle flags, generally handmade by women from the soldiers’ towns and villages. Colorful sobriquets were not the exclusive domain of regiments, though. Within many Yankee and Rebel regiments, individual companies also christened themselves with cocky nicknames that often made explicit reference to the town or region from which the regiment’s membership hailed. In his classic The Life of Johnny Reb (1943), historian Bell Irvin Wiley rattled off a representative sampling of company names that could be found sprinkled among the Confederate forces, including the Tallapoosa Thrashers, Bartow Yankee Killers, Chickasaw Desperadoes, Southern Rejecters of Old
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Conscription
Abe, Cherokee Lincoln Killers, and South Florida Bull Dogs. Once a company was formally organized and recognized by the authorities, its soldiers went about the process of electing their own company officers. This odd procedure was commonplace in both the North and South, and underscores the improvisational quality that typified the frantic efforts of both sides to create a working military force. The positions that were most often filled in this manner were those of captains and lieutenants, but some regiments elected all of their noncommissioned and commissioned officers, from corporals to colonels. This led in some cases to the elevation of inept individuals, who were selected purely on the basis of their personal popularity. After officers were elected, military training could begin in earnest. But the volunteers who filled the ranks of the Blue and Gray during the first two years or so of the Civil War were not professional soldiers, and frequently balked at efforts to rein in their proudly individualistic ways. This tension remained palpable in both armies from the opening days of the war to its conclusion.
An Overwhelming Response The response to the call for volunteers to march under the Union and Confederate flags quickly swamped federal authorities. The war departments in both Washington, DC, and Montgomery, Alabama (Richmond, Virginia, did not become the Confederate capital until May 6, 1861) were completely unequipped to handle the flood of new soldiers, and the first few weeks of army-building became an administrative nightmare for both sides. The situation became so bad in the North that the War Department urged star recruiters such as Illinois Governor Richard Yates (1818–1873) to ease up on enlistment efforts until it was better prepared to accommodate new troops. By early 1862 more than 700,000 troops had been enrolled in the Union army—all of them volunteers. But the initial ninety-day enrollment period for the first wave of volunteers had proven to be laughably optimistic, so by the time the War Department sent out the call for another 300,000 volunteers in early July 1862, the service commitment was for a much more realistic three-year term. Less than one year later, in March 1863, the continued demand for still more troops forced the U.S. government to take the momentous step of instituting the first of its military drafts. This controversial turn to conscription reflected a stark reality in the North: The first two years of the war had exhausted its supply of genuine ‘‘volunteers’’ and it would now have to turn to less enthusiastic men to fill the Union ranks. This is not to say that voluntary enlistment ended when the draft began; to the contrary, volunteerism continued to
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account for the majority of new troops. Historians agree, however, that many of the men who technically volunteered for military duty during the draft era did so in reaction to the conscription threat, not out of patriotic pride or other high-minded motivations. Down in the South, meanwhile, the initial call for 100,000 volunteers had also been easily met. But these enlistees had only been asked to serve for six months or a year. As it became evident that the war was going to drag on longer than many people on either side had believed, Confederate officials authorized in April 1862 the conscription of another 300,000 men who would serve for three years—or until the war ended. As in the North, the draft was hugely controversial in the South, but it was somewhat successful in replenishing the Confederacy’s increasingly soldier-starved army. It encouraged thousands of draft-age men to volunteer rather than face the uncertainties of the draft, and conscription itself scooped up thousands of others. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, rev. ed. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Logue, Larry M. ‘‘Who Joined the Confederate Army? Soldiers, Civilians, and Communities in Mississippi.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Kevin Hillstrom
CONSCRIPTION For much of the Civil War, both the Union and Confederate armies relied on conscription—mandatory military service—to replenish their battered companies and regiments. During 1861 and 1862 the Confederacy won the Battles of First and Second Bull Run, McDowell, First Winchester, Port Republic, Gaines Mill, and Fredericksburg, split honors at Antietam and Perryville, and lost at another eighteen engagements. The Confederacy’s
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Balloting for conscripts for the Union draft. During the Civil War, both the North and South relied
on mandatory military service to rebuild their armies. The practice of drawing draftees was so unpopular it caused disillusionment and even violence. The Art Archive/ Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
casualties in 1861–1862 totaled a much greater percentage of its population than the percentage lost by the Northern states. Given this reality, the Confederacy was the first side to reluctantly turn to conscription, also known as ‘‘the draft’’ due to its many casualties in the first years of the war. The Confederate Congress passed its first conscription act on April 16, 1862. This measure, designed to add another 300,000 soldiers to the Rebel ranks, required non-exempt white males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five to sign up for possible military service. The United States followed suit eleven months later, on March 3, 1863, when the U.S. Congress passed the first of four wartime conscription acts. These conscription measures by the South and North ultimately accounted for about 20 percent of the soldiers who fought in the Civil War. More importantly, the mere threat of conscription convinced many other young men to claim some measure of direction over their own lives by ‘‘volunteering’’ for military service. In both the North and South, however, the imposition of military drafts—and the exemptions that went primarily to the affluent or politically connected— proved to be enormously unpopular. Antidraft riots beleaguered many Northern cities, and in the South many citizens viewed the imposition of conscription as an affront to self-proclaimed values of personal freedom
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and states’ rights. ‘‘What will we have gained,’’ Georgia Governor Joseph Brown (1821–1894) angrily declared, ‘‘when we have achieved our independence of the Northern States if in our efforts to do so, we have . . . lost Constitutional Liberty at home?’’ (Robbins 1971, p. 93)
Conscription in the North The 1863 conscription act passed by the U.S. Congress in March 1863 required all able-bodied male citizens between twenty and forty-five, as well as immigrants who had sworn their intention to be naturalized, to register for military service. Draftees, also known as conscripts, were required to serve three-year terms. They received the same pay and federal bounties as three-year volunteers. Federal conscription laws also provided mechanisms for enforcement of the draft, including funding for a new government agency that included enrollment officers (who were organized by congressional district), boards of enrollment, provost marshals, and a provost marshal general in Washington, DC. The institution of a draft troubled many Northerners. By the time it took effect many had become alarmed by the war’s slide into stalemate and by the shocking amount of blood already shed. Questions about the Lincoln administration’s respect for personal liberty and constitutional freedoms also abounded. But as the historian David Williams (2005) notes, there was an
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economic dimension as well: Many feared that families would slide into destitution should breadwinners be drafted—and the soldier’s measly pay of thirteen dollars per month did nothing to allay these fears or to serve as an inducement. Lincoln and other Republicans were keenly aware of public opposition to conscription. Indeed, antiwar Democrats focused much of their political energy on denunciations of the draft, and this stance increasingly looked like a winning theme in their quest to make Lincoln a oneterm president. Nonetheless, Lincoln issued four separate draft orders during the last two years of the war—in October 1863, March 1864, July 1864, and December 1864. The infusions of manpower they brought about proved pivotal in securing an eventual Union victory in the war. During this span of time, however, major flaws in the draft became starkly apparent. Most of these flaws were in the realm of exemptions.
Draft Exemptions When the Lincoln administration, the U.S. Congress, and the War Department decided to impose a military draft, they recognized that certain service exemptions had to be included, both in the interests of military efficiency and public acceptance. As a result, exemptions were granted to men who were mentally or physically unfit, selected officials within state and federal governments, and only sons who provided primary support for widower mothers or infirm parents. The act also exempted aliens who had neither voted nor declared their intention to become American citizens. There was initially no exemption for conscientious objection based on religious beliefs, but exemptions were eventually added that permitted Quakers and other conscientious objectors to work in noncombat positions (such as hospital work). None of these exemptions aroused widespread public indignation or protest. But two other exemptions folded into the 1863 conscription law were breathtakingly brazen in providing loopholes for middle-class and wealthy white men of draft age. The first of these loopholes was a stipulation that permitted a man who was drafted to pay a $300 commutation fee and thus be excused from service (until his number was drawn in a subsequent draft, at any rate). Because $300 amounted to a decent annual income for many American men, the price tag prevented all but wealthy men from exploring this loophole. This provision remained in effect until July 1864, when it was finally abolished in response to the public outcry. The second controversial loophole was one that allowed drafted men to hire substitutes to serve in their stead; if they could quickly find someone willing to serve, and could pay them the going market rate, they were off the hook. (Northerners who were conscripted had ten days in which to pay commutation, find a substitute, or report for duty.)
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These two exemptions made it clear to many Northern soldiers—and their families waiting anxiously back home—that the Civil War was turning into ‘‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’’ Other citizens reached the same conclusion, and within weeks of passage of the 1863 conscription law, a new level of skepticism and cynicism about the war was detectable on many Northern city streets. During this time, for example, a parody of the patriotic recruiting song ‘‘We Are Coming Father Abraham’’ became popular in many urban areas. One representative verse of the parody, dubbed ‘‘Song of the Conscripts,’’ went as follows: We’re coming Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more, We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore, Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree, We are the poor who have no wealth to purchase liberty. (Williams 2005, p. 274).
How the Draft Worked Far from ending recruitment drives, in the North the military draft actually served to galvanize recruiting by states, cities, and other government organizations, because the draft was not imposed on any locality that had met its quota of recruits through volunteerism. The country was divided up into congressional districts, each of which was supposed to provide an apportionment of soldiers based on its population. If counties (or entire states) could meet their quota through volunteer enlistments, they did not have to use conscription to make up the ‘‘deficiency.’’ This state of affairs gave rise to a bounty system, in which towns and cities offered a lump-sum cash payment to any man who enlisted voluntarily. This ‘‘bounty’’ was often further supplemented by contributions from county boards of commissions, state legislatures, the federal government, and even private citizens or organizations. These bounties became as high as $1,000 in the latter stages of the war. Not surprisingly, these astounding sums led some ethically challenged but enterprising young men to become ‘‘bounty jumpers’’—men who would enlist at one locale in order to collect the bounty, then disappear and do the same thing in another location. One bounty jumper reportedly executed this maneuver more than thirty times before he was finally apprehended and thrown into prison. Another shady profession that blossomed in the wake of the United States’ conscription laws was that of the substitute broker. For a fee, these men took on the task of finding substitutes for wealthy clients who had been served with draft notices. In many cases, however, brokers preyed on the most vulnerable members of society—alcoholics, the impoverished or homeless, the mentally ill—when rounding up substitutes. They then
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bribed doctors and other officials to get these downand-out substitutes approved for military duty. These and other men brought in by the substitute and bounty systems generally made for poor-quality soldiers. This reality did not go unnoticed by military leaders such as Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822– 1885), who lamented at war’s end that not one soldier in eight who was brought in by the high-bounty system ever became a decent front-line soldier. Nor did it escape the notice of fellow soldiers, who loathed high-bounty troops, and often set out to make their lives miserable. All told, more than three-quarters of a million names were enrolled during the two-year life of the Union conscription act. But only a little over 46,300 entered the army as actual draftees. In addition, almost 87,000 draftees evaded service by paying a commutation fee, and another 73,600 soldiers enrolled in the ranks as substitutes for wealthier countrymen (Donald 2001, p. 229). Thousands of others—possibly tens of thousands— avoided the draft by volunteering. And finally, there were those who responded to the threat of conscription with subterfuge or by fleeing.
Other Methods of Evading the Draft Many Northern men evaded military service by ignoring conscription notices. This decision—whether it stemmed from cowardice, ideological opposition to the war, or concern for the welfare of family members—usually involved relocation to an area of the country that was inhospitable to conscription officers. The relatively unpopulated and thinly policed western territories were a particularly attractive destination for draft evaders, as was Canada. In these parts of North America, the vast spaces could easily swallow up a man or family that wished to disappear from the government’s sight. For example, an officer stationed in California would find that tracking down deserters and draft dodgers was a nearly impossible task due to the sheer size of the state and the indifference of the population to the war (Williams 2005, p. 266). Other draftees tried to avoid conscription by giving false identities or feigning blindness, deafness, or some other serious physical malady. Others hurriedly proposed to sweethearts or family friends in the mistaken belief that the Conscription Act excused married men from military service (in actuality, it merely put married men over the age of thirty-five on secondary draft status). Still others bribed draft administrators in order to avoid reporting for duty. Another novel—and effective—response to the threat of conscription was the emergence of ‘‘draft insurance’’ societies or clubs. In these clubs, which popped up in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and other larger cities of the North, each member contributed a sum of money that would be used to hire a substitute or pay a commutation fee should any fellow member receive a conscription notice. Members thus
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diluted the financial pain while simultaneously receiving ironclad protection from the battlefield.
Violent Opposition to Conscription In some parts of the North, public unhappiness with federal conscription laws boiled over into violence. Intimidation of draft officers was commonplace in many cities and counties—and in some cases the threats were so serious that it was difficult for authorities to find people willing to hire on as draft officers. Some of this hostility had an organizational basis, and conscription administrators sometimes voiced genuine alarm about the number of antidraft societies springing up in their midst. One provost marshal in New Jersey, for instance, reported that ‘‘organizations are formed or forming in nearly all the districts in New Jersey to resist the draft’’ (Murdock 1971, p. 85). Tensions over the draft in some areas frequently became so great that bloodshed was virtually inevitable. One highly publicized explosion of draft-related violence occurred in the coal towns of Pennsylvania. According to historian Bruce Catton in Reflections on the Civil War (1981), mine workers in the region had long been trying to form unions in an effort to be more justly compensated for their dangerous and exhausting toil. When several leaders in the unionization effort were plucked from the ranks by the local provost marshal and carted off to the military, the frustrated miners lashed out in rage. Over the next several days they rioted across the countryside, reserving special violence for area draft offices. The most deadly and infamous of the draft riots to afflict the Union, however, occurred in July 1863 in New York City. Many white city residents—and especially the city’s large Irish population—opposed Lincoln and the emancipation cause in the first place, as they viewed free blacks as major competitors for scarce jobs, and after the passage of the Conscription Act their anger was further stoked by the bombastic rhetoric of antiLincoln city newspapers and political leaders such as Democratic Governor Horatio Seymour (1810–1886). On July 11, 1863, the city’s drawing of the first draftees’ names commenced, and this proved to be the match that set off the powder keg. White mobs formed and marauded through the streets, cutting telegraph wires, burning the provost marshal’s headquarters, and attacking police. Eventually, African Americans became the special focus of the mob’s wrath, and throughout the city blacks were beaten and lynched, and had their homes burned to the ground. All in all, 119 New Yorkers were killed in the 1863 draft riots and more than 300 African Americans were wounded. In addition, thousands of African American families fled the city in fear for their lives.
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A conscription poster. Early Confederate success on the battlefield nonetheless resulted in heavy casualties. Starting with a smaller population from which to draw soldiers, the South began conscripting troops in early 1862 to augment their numbers. MPI/Hulton Archive/ Getty Images
The Cornerstone of the Union Army Conscription thus was a mixed blessing for the Union cause. It did provide the army with much-needed infusions of new soldiers, either through outright conscription or volunteerism stemming from the threat of the draft. But the quality of the soldiers caught by the conscription net was uneven at best, and some commanders saw conscripts as little more than cannon fodder. It was the volunteers who had first signed up for the Union cause in the heady days after Fort Sumter who remained the backbone of the army to the very end. Virtually all of them had lost close friends to the war and had been away from their families for nearly three years—but they reenlisted in early 1864 to finish the job when they could have gone home.
Conscription in the South Saddled with significant disadvantages in terms of manpower, military equipment, and other resources, the Confederacy was forced to play the conscription card a full year before the Union did. First, however, the South needed to ensure that the soldiers it already had on hand stayed put. In the early spring of 1862, Confederate
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president Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress were confronted with the looming possibility that much of the Southern army—comprised of volunteers who had accepted twelve-month enlistments the previous spring—might return to their homes. Determined to stave off this threat, lawmakers passed an act that offered lucrative signing bonuses and generous furloughs for veterans who reenlisted. Then, on April 16, 1862, the Confederate Congress passed the first conscription law in American history. This act to legalize compulsory military service—service that Davis described as ‘‘absolutely indispensable’’ to the future of the Confederacy—applied to white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five (later amended to age forty-five). Eager to blunt the impact of the draft, the South sweetened the pot for potential enlistees before conscription even came into effect, by promising cash bonuses and choice of unit assignments to those who volunteered. These inducements had the desired effect, as thousands of Southerners who had not been moved to join in the war’s beginning months now stepped forward. According to historian Albert Burton Moore, author of Conscription and Conflict in the
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Confederacy (1924), the Confederate War Department later estimated that fully three-fourths of those who volunteered to march under the Rebel flag did so to avoid the stigma of conscription. Within the army ranks, meanwhile, news of the conscription measures elicited a range of emotions. On the one hand, soldiers felt a measure of relief that new men would be arriving to help them shoulder the burden of warmaking. But many Rebel soldiers saw conscription as blatantly unconstitutional and as a sign of the South’s desperate situation.
Exemptions to the Conscription Act As was the case with the Union draft laws that followed a year later, Confederate conscription measures included a number of service exemptions. Eager to minimize disruptions on the domestic front and keep its army supplied with necessary staples, the Confederate conscription law permitted men engaged in a wide range of professions to be excused from enlistment. Schoolteachers (of at least twenty pupils), college professors, ministers, mail carriers and postmasters, druggists, assorted state and federal officials, telegraph operators, railroad and ferry workers, blacksmiths, tanners, millers, printers, newspaper editors, and workers in cotton mills, mines, and foundries all had the option of claiming an exemption. The announcement of these exemptions prompted a flurry of career changes in some parts of the South. For example, a number of men—including some with virtually no formal education— abruptly opened schoolhouses and promised to teach students for free if they could entice twenty students from the surrounding area to enroll. In addition, wealthy Southerners—like their counterparts to the north—had the option of paying a commutation fee or hiring a substitute to serve in their stead. Finding a substitute was the preferred method of sidestepping military service, but this option soon became the sole province of the very rich. By the end of 1863, substitutes were demanding thousands of dollars for their services, and in some parts of the South the fee reached as high as $10,000. An advertisement for a substitute in one newspaper offered to pay ‘‘in cash, land, or negro property.’’ Another offered a 230-acre farm. All told, at least 50,000 wealthy Southerners evaded military service by hiring substitutes (Williams 2005, p. 76). The most unpopular and controversial exemption, however, was the ‘‘twenty-slave’’ exemption. This provision released one slave owner or overseer from military duty for every twenty slaves under their direction. Plantation owners with hundreds of slaves were thus able to excuse not only themselves but also their most valuable foremen from the army. Most wealthy Southern landowners were quick to take advantage of this loophole (though it should be noted that a number of them were exempt from the draft anyway because of their age). According to scholar William Kauffman Scarborough in
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Masters of the Big House (2003), only thirty-one (11.4 %) of the Confederacy’s 272 largest slaveholders (those owning 250 slaves or more) saw military service during the Civil War, and only four of them died on duty. By contrast, nearly half of the South’s military-aged white males served at one time or another, and one-third of those did not survive the war.
Anger and Disillusionment Wealthy Southern landowners defended their absence from the Rebel ranks, noting that they played an important role as producers of food, clothing, and other essential goods for both the army and the wider public. But their emphasis on lucrative cotton production over badly needed staple crops such as corn diluted their claims that they were practicing their own brand of patriotism, and fellow Southerners recognized that every time a wealthy man evaded military service, the army turned more avidly to financially defenseless prospects such as poor farmers. As one Virginian angrily wrote to the Confederate War Department, It is impossible to make poor people comprehend the policy of putting able-bodied, healthy, Mr. A in such light service as collecting tithes and money at home, when the well known feeble & delicate Mr. B.—who is a poor man with a large family of children depending on him for bread—is sent to the front. . . . I beseech you to be warned of the coming storm—the people will not always submit to this unequal, unjust and partial distribution of favor and wholesale conscription of the poor while the able-bodied & healthy men of property are all occupying soft places. (Escott 1978, p. 119)
Frustration with the inequities of the draft combined with other factors—fear, concern for vulnerable family members, disenchantment with the Davis administration— to create a significant draft evasion problem. Some men avoided the front lines by joining home guard or militia companies (which were supposed to be manned by seniors and teenage boys). Others fled to Mexico. But some, especially those living in communities that had become disillusioned about the war and the Confederate leadership, simply ignored the law. In these areas, convictions for draft dodging were few. During the campaigns of 1864 the Confederate army became dangerously depleted, in part because desertion was emerging as a serious problem. Richmond responded by eliminating some exemption loopholes and expanding the age restrictions for enlistment to the minimum of seventeen and the maximum of fifty. But these measures took a toll on the South’s factories and railroads, which increasingly struggled to operate with skeleton crews.
Mixed Feelings toward Conscripts Meanwhile, Southerners who submitted to the draft or served as substitutes for more well-heeled countrymen were treated with suspicion or contempt by the dedicated
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veterans who had been wearing the Gray since the war’s opening weeks. These attitudes were understandable, but they did not advance the Confederate cause, as they hardly made it likely that already unwilling conscripts would develop into first-class troops—and indeed, few did. Despite these hard feelings, Rebel veterans often voiced a deep desire to force ‘‘stay-at-homes’’ into service. These battle-scarred soldiers recognized the truth of a basic equation: The larger the Confederate force was, the better its chances of victory over its foe. But even here, the Rebel veteran made exceptions for brothers, sons, and fathers who remained back home supporting their family. In the view of many soldiers, a family that sent one representative into the meat grinder of the Civil War had amply fulfilled its duty and defended its honor. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Michael, and Larry M. Logue, eds. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, revised edition. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Moore, Albert Burton. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. New York: Macmillan, 1924. Reprint, New York: Hillary House, 1963. Murdock, Eugene C. One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971. Robbins, John. ‘‘The Confederacy and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.’’ Georgia Historical Quarterly 55 (Spring 1971): 83–101. Scarborough, William Kauffman. Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-NineteenthCentury South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
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Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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Drill Training
Drills and training were an integral part of Civil War military life, especially in the opening year of the conflict when both North and South were seeking to mobilize armies out of their respective civilian populations. Neither side distinguished itself in this regard, in part because each army was saddled with a large number of inexperienced officers who knew little or nothing about drill or military tactics. This was a vexing problem for both the Union and the Confederacy. Another complication in drill and training was the strong individualistic streak of many Yankee and Rebel soldiers. Accustomed to a hefty measure of independence and self-direction in their everyday lives, many enlistees chafed at the tedious hours spent at drill.
The Drill Routine In both the Union and Confederate armies, drill exercises and other training were interspersed throughout the day at camp. By day’s end, several hours had typically been devoted to drill (the amount of time spent on drill diminished significantly as the war intensified, however). Fighting formations were generally linear and had to be practiced to ensure that the soldiers could function in the necessary combat structures. Company sergeants usually conducted the drills with supervision from company commanders and field officers. Veterans of the Mexican-American War and regular officers who had already been in the federal army prior to the war tended to be the biggest sticklers for training. These men had a greater appreciation for the importance of efficient movements on the battlefield, and they also saw drill as a way of building discipline and obedience. But even in units led by these men, training was often halting and haphazardly executed. Whether directed by knowledgeable military veterans or novices appointed as a result of political connections or recruiting skills, drilling routines elicited reactions from the rank and file that ranged from patient understanding to fuming indignation. The latter reaction was particularly evident in the South, where many equated being forced to submit to military discipline with being reduced to the status of a slave. Similar sentiments were also evident within the Union ranks. ‘‘We are almost drilled to Death now,’’ complained one Pennsylvanian volunteer in a letter to a friend. ‘‘My Dear Boy, Playing Soldier and Soldiering in reality is two very different things I can assure you’’ (Sutherland 1989, p. 8). Writing to his sister, a private from Indiana cited drill as a perfect example of how
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A company of infantry near Harpers Ferry. Turning civilians into soldiers often meant long hours of drill training in the field, a tedious task disliked by Union and Confederate troops alike. Recruits found the training dull and obeying orders challenging. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
[a] soldier is not his own man[;] . . . you fall in and start. You here feel your inferiority, even the Sargeants is hollering at you to close up, Ketch step, dress to the right, and sutch like, the man in youre reer is complaining of youre gun not being held up. Perhaps you will let this [cause you to] make some remark when you will be immediately tolde by a Lietenant to be silent in ranks or you will be put in the guard house. (McPherson 1997, p. 47)
serpentine in character) to a fighting formation (which often required assumption of box-like or shield-like forms). Because these maneuvers involved the complex coordination of large numbers of men, and often had to be achieved under fire, few commanders ever considered their men to be adequately drilled and emphasized extensive practice. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Importance of Drill Most companies, whether marching under the Stars and Stripes or the Confederate flag, did not spent much of their time on target practice or other firearms-related drills. This decision was based on a widely held assumption that most soldiers were frontier types who were already proficient with the muzzle-loading rifles that predominated in the war. In reality, however, many enlistees came from urban areas in which hunting was not a widespread pastime, and some green soldiers did not even know how to load their muskets upon reporting for duty. The South, which had a more rural character than the North and a higher percentage of hunters and trappers in its ranks, was not hurt as badly as the North by this misconception, but even it fielded companies that were woefully undertrained in shooting and weapon maintenance. Most drill activity was instead focused on marching and fighting formations. Specifically, a great deal of attention was paid to teaching soldiers how to efficiently switch from a marching formation (which was generally
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Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, rev. ed. Ed. Bruce McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Kevin Hillstrom
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Food and Rations
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Food and Rations
In the realm of food rations, the experiences of both Union and Confederate troops during the Civil War were similar in many respects. Each army set up commissary departments that in many operational aspects were mirror images of the other, and the typical soldier— whether a Yankee or a Rebel—endured periods in which food was scarce, particularly as the war progressed. Soldiers on both sides sought to supplement their army rations in similar ways as well, usually through foraging or visits to area sutlers (authorized civilian merchants). As the war progressed, it was the quantity of food (rather than quality) that most concerned the typical soldier (Sutherland 1989, p. 10). The main difference in food rations between the armies of the South and North lay in the degree of deprivation. Whereas Union soldiers complained mightily— and with merit—about the rations they received, they nonetheless consumed sufficient food supplies to keep bellies full and malnutrition at bay, at least for the most part. Confederate soldiers were not as fortunate; as the war dragged on and the South’s military fortunes turned for the worse, food scarcity became a significant problem for many Confederate troops.
Feeding the Troops One of the first priorities of both sides in the weeks and months leading up to the Civil War was to set up commissary departments. In the North, the War Department was able to use the existing structure that was already in place for the federal army (though it had to overhaul it to accommodate the much greater demands of an expanded military). The Confederacy adopted a similar food distribution structure, in large measure because it was the system with which Southern officers who had resigned from the U.S. Army were familiar. Boiled down to its essentials, the primary responsibility of these departments was to buy food for the soldiers and store and distribute the rations as needed. Because refrigeration (using blocks of ice) was not practical in camp or on the march, both armies relied heavily on salted or smoked meats and canned or dried vegetables. When the war began, the South adopted the official U.S. Army food ration structure for individual soldiers. The official daily ration for soldiers in camp included pork or bacon; fresh or salt beef; and cornmeal, bread, or flour. These staples were supplemented by rations that were doled out at the company level, such as beans, potatoes, peas, rice, coffee, tea, molasses, sugar, salt, pepper, and irregular dispensations of various types of vegetables or fruits. Fresh fruit, vegetables, and dairy products virtually disappeared from the soldiers’ diet during the war, although some soldiers were able to ‘‘liberate’’ these goods from the civilian population during the course of military operations.
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ON FEAST AND FAMINE James H. Clark, a Union soldier of the 115th New York Regiment, details his quotidian wartime experience in his 1865 book The Iron Hearted Regiment. One of his daily concerns included food and rations. While the army did supply a ration to each soldier, he endured times of scarcity: September 16—I paid a silver quarter of a dollar for a poor breakfast, the same for dinner, and one quarter of a dollar for a little cider. September 18—Could not get anything to eat at any price. Money was of no value to purchase food, than grains of sand. The soldiers were ordered out of nearly every house which they stopped at (p. 31). In contrast, soldiers’ journeys also occasionally brought them to places where any palate could be satisfied. In Zenas T. Haines’s 1863 book Letters from the Forty-Fourth Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862-3, Haines describes their trip through Newburn as a veritable trove of delicacies: Newburn has become quite a jolly place to live in. It is filled with Yankee jimcracks, ranging all the way from top-boots to preserved strawberries. The market supplies splendid Northern apples, Southern ditto, honey, cider, ginger cakes, crackers, fish, preserved meats and fruits, oysters, pickles, condensed milk, chocolate, sugar, tea, coffee. It is wonderfully convenient to be so near to all these little comforts ... gingerbread, pies, and even apple-dumplings, are brought to us by the negroes in profusion, while the sutlers furnish us with butter, cheese, sardines, and all the main essentials of luxurious living. Our regular rations are not to be sneezed at, although at present a scarcity of hops has thrown us back on hardtack. We are treated to beef steaks, excellent rice soups, fish, etc. (pp. 48–49). In times of both famine and feast, food was always on the soldier’s mind. CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clark, James H. The Iron Hearted Regiment: Being an Account of the Battles, Marches and Gallant Deeds Performed by the 115th Regiment N.Y. Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1865. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Haines, Zenas T. Letters from the Forty-Fourth Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862–3. Boston: Herald Job Office, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.gale group.com/.
Neither the U.S. army nor the Confederate one was able to meet its official ration-dispensation goals on a regular basis once the war started. Getting food to soldiers in semipermanent encampments, however, was
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much easier than keeping up with companies on the move. Many soldiers on the move became accustomed to operating on half-rations (or on even less). This was especially true in the South, which fell so far short of its ration-distribution goals by the spring of 1862 that it quietly reduced its official food-ration targets. Food rations that did make it to the armies, whether they were encamped or on the march, were rarely prepared with much concern for making the food palatable. Commissary cooks and their supervisors were primarily concerned with stretching existing food resources as far as possible and delivering food to soldiers’ plates with dispatch. Aesthetic considerations of taste and presentation were not primary in their food-preparation chores. ‘‘Our boys threaten a riot every day for the bad beef and spoiled bread issued to us,’’ warned one unhappy Wisconsin soldier (Sutherland 1989, p. 10). Another Union soldier, a corporal from Illinois, no doubt spoke for many in his company when he bitterly wrote, ‘‘the boys say that our ‘grub’ is enough to make a mule desert, and a hog wish he had never been born’’ (Donald 2001, p. 247). Ignorance and indifference about careful food handling and sanitation also took its toll; diarrhea and other intestinal ailments were commonplace in the ranks of both the North and South.
Salt Pork, Hardtack, and Coffee The core staples in the diet of both Rebel and Yankee were salt pork (usually fried), the hard, square biscuits known as ‘‘hardtack,’’ and black coffee. Salt pork was easily the most widely consumed meat during the war, although perennial salt shortages in the South (which during the prewar years had acquired most of its salt from the North) made the food difficult to come by in Southern camps as the war ground on. Hardtack was widely reviled for its rock-like character and the frequency with which it became infested with weevils and other insects. Fresh hardtack could be chewed, but most hardtack was consumed weeks or months after it had been made. These batches were virtually impossible to choke down without first soaking them in bacon grease, condensed milk, coffee, soup, or water. Black coffee, meanwhile, outranked even tobacco as a necessity for most soldiers. One of the most valuable items in the kit of just about every Civil War soldier, from the infantry private to the artillery captain, was a metal can (usually tin) that he could use to boil coffee. Coffee rations were usually doled out in bean rather than ground form because of concerns that contractors would dilute ground coffee—a legitimate precaution given the venality of some Civil War–era contractors. Soldiers were thus responsible for grinding their own coffee. Most accomplished this task by using rifle butts as a sort of pestle to mash the beans into powder. ‘‘In the morning, in camp, you could tell when the boys were getting up
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by the rhythmic clinking, grinding noise that came up from in front of every tent’’ (Catton 1981, p. 42).
Supplemental Sources of Food Occasionally, Civil War soldiers received packages of cookies, cakes, and other delights from loved ones back at home. These packages elicited a complex range of emotions in many recipients. On the one hand, soldiers savored the contents of these gift packages, which almost always were heavily weighted toward items that were known to be personal favorites. But such mail inevitably conjured up memories of the last meal the soldier had eaten back home before heading off to war—typically an extravagant feast from the family larder prepared by parents, wives, or siblings in the full knowledge that they might never see their departing relative again. As the war progressed, Confederate and Union forces on the move also supplemented their army rations through fishing and hunting expeditions. Participation in these officially sanctioned expeditions was highly desirable, for it offered an escape from tedious camp chores and spiritually uplifted soldiers, who were reminded of past hours spent in the family fields and woods of Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Alabama, or Tennessee. Many soldiers also turned to army sutlers, though this resource was beyond the financial means of some troops, especially in the last couple of years of the conflict. These civilian merchants sold a wide range of food and other items to soldiers with the official sanction of regimental commanders. Canny sutlers quickly realized that they could reap their greatest profits from the sale of food, and so they devoted a good percentage of their stockpile of goods to fresh fruit, onions, cheese, butter, condensed milk, cookies and cakes, and other products.
Union Foraging For Rebel and Yankee companies moving through the country’s eastern and western theaters, the civilian farms and general stores that lay in the vicinity of their camps and marching paths made up another resource. Both armies resorted to what was termed ‘‘foraging’’—though this designation was little more than a self-serving euphemism for plundering the livestock and foodstuffs of civilians who could themselves be facing malnutrition or worse. Some Union commanders forbade foraging, and many soldiers in the ranks looked at the practice as immoral and disgraceful. As the war progressed, however, and Union troops became increasingly weary of their meager, unappetizing, and unvarying commissary rations, the practice spread. As one soldier from Maine recounted, ‘‘despite most stringent orders against foraging, every morning the ground between the different encampments of the regiments was covered with sheep skins and feathers from turkeys, geese and hens that had given their lives,
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Food and Rations
Dinner in the camp. While troops in both blue and gray received only basic food provisions from their respective armies, many soldiers supplemented their meager rations with foods foraged from the forest or local farms. Union blockages and lack of diversification in agriculture led to greater problems in the South, where soldiers were chronically underfed and civilian larders were emptied by invading Union fighters. Photograph by Mathew Brady. The Library of Congress.
during the preceding night, for the relief of the hungry soldiers’’ (Robertson 1988, pp. 73–74). Union plundering of Southern farms reached its greatest heights (or its nadir, depending on one’s viewpoint) during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous March through Georgia and the Carolinas in late 1864 and early 1865. As Sherman cut a methodical path through the heart of the Confederacy, he embraced foraging as official army policy. Seizing whatever they wished from the farms and stores that Sherman’s army passed by, his men did destroy a great deal, including much livestock, but Sherman’s orders directed that they should endeavor to leave each family enough food to get through until the next harvest. These orders were actually carried out at least some of the time. Armed with this official sanction, Sherman’s troops routinely carried off food and other supplies by the wagonload from surrounding hamlets and farms. ‘‘We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South,’’ the general declared. ‘‘But we can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it’’ (Grimsley 1997, p. 118).
Impressment and Hunger in the South In the South, soldiers and civilians alike suffered from food shortages for much of the war. Factors responsible for the steadily diminishing availability of food included the effectiveness of Union naval blockades, the South’s comparatively undeveloped railroad systems, and Federal
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occupation of vital agricultural areas, including Tennessee, Georgia, and large swaths of the Shenandoah Valley. Levels of hunger in the civilian population were further intensified by government impressments of crops and livestock for consumption by the army. ‘‘By the end of the war many staples had permanently disappeared from the southern diet. . . . Rats became a familiar item in many diets. President Davis was quoted as saying that he saw no reason for not eating them, for he thought they would be ‘as good as squirrels.’ But rats never became as popular as mule meat’’ (Donald 2001, p. 457). The food situation became so desperate that some Southern cities were rocked by food riots in the last two years of the war. The diminishing availability of food inevitably had a negative impact on Confederate troops in the field. After the first year of war, Rebel soldiers were almost perpetually underfed. Their plight was further exacerbated by the incompetence and corruption of the commissary general of the Confederate Army, Lucius B. Northrop, who became widely hated. In the latter stages of the Civil War, shortages of food rations became so severe that growing numbers of Rebel troops took to robbing fellow Southerners. ‘‘Impressment’’ of food was particularly commonplace among cavalry units, which had both greater mobility than their infantry counterparts and greater freedom from supervision. This grim development was difficult to witness for those Rebel soldiers who resisted the urge to plunder. ‘‘[Southerners] talk about the ravages of the enemy in
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Shelter
their marches through the country,’’ wrote one disillusioned Confederate soldier. ‘‘But I do not think that the Yankees are any worse than our own army’’ (Mitchell 1988, p. 163). In the final analysis, however, most scholars agree that few Confederate military units ever succumbed to outright starvation or died as a direct result of acute malnutrition. But malnutrition undoubtedly was a contributing factor in the deaths of sick or wounded soldiers on both sides, and food shortages contributed to the cloud of dread that shadowed Southern troops in the latter stages of the war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1860–1865. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Williams, David. Johnny Reb’s War: Battlefield and Homefront. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2000. Kevin Hillstrom
of neat lines of tents stretching off into the distance. Within these tent quarters, soldiers either slept on cots or slept on the ground (sometimes on beds of straw). In either case, they usually warmed themselves with blankets and rubber ponchos to ward off the night chill. While on the march or during battles that stretched on for more than one day, Civil War soldiers generally slept under the stars or under trees with nothing but a blanket—and sometimes a fire—to keep them warm. Rainy evenings spent in a cold trench were miserable experiences, especially because soldiers who found themselves in such circumstances usually knew that they would be facing enemy gunfire when dawn broke. Armies on the move also occasionally made use of barns or abandoned farmhouses for shelter.
Winter Camps Accommodations for both Union and Confederate soldiers generally improved during the winter, a season of respite from the bloody battles that marked the rest of the year. Staying in one place for the winter afforded soldiers the opportunity to build one-room log cabins— some of which were outfitted with primitive but functional fireplaces and wooden floors. The interior of these structures often featured a smattering of mismatched chairs and battered furniture (usually empty kegs and ammunition chests and the like). Other soldiers created dugouts out of logs and canvas. These were typically just large enough to house two men. Other odd designs—many featuring some novel combination of straw, logs, fly tents, and rubber ponchos—also dotted many winter camps. Tents remained a fixture of winter camps as well, especially in regions where building materials were scarce. But the Confederate Army never had enough tents, and many of its soldiers were forced to improvise their own makeshift protection (Wiley 1992 [1943], p. 62). Finally, larger barracks were erected in some winter camps. These were typically of a twin-gabled ‘‘shotgun’’ design that slotted sleeping areas in long double rows. Such structures were favored by some commanders because they could house a large number of troops at one time, but soldiers were less enamored of these quarters because of their cramped conditions and the complete absence of privacy. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The ordinary Civil War soldier protected himself from the elements primarily through the use of tents that ranged in size from small ‘‘pup tents’’ to large Sibley tents capable of accommodating a dozen troops. Both training camps (especially early in the war) and field camps of armies that believed they would not be relocating any time soon were veritable ‘‘tent cities,’’ composed
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Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
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Uniforms
HEADQUARTERS Union and Confederate military commanders were responsible for the coordination of a host of wartime activities, including troop movements, resupply efforts, and the development of attack and defense strategies. General headquarters thus served as the ‘‘nerve centers’’ of the various armies roaming across the different sections, or ‘‘theaters,’’ of the countryside during the war. The generals and other officers who manned these headquarters were responsible for overseeing the activities and affairs of all of the component parts of the army under their command, from the infantry, artillery, and cavalry corps that constituted the heart of their army to signalmen, engineers, and quartermaster and commissary departments. When armies were on the move, large tents were often reserved to serve as headquarters at the end of the day, when camp was made. These tents had to be large because they not only provided shelter and administrative space for the commanding general and his staff officers, but also for a wide assortment of other support staff. These staffers included a variety of clerks, personal assistants and aides, couriers, and a cook assigned exclusively to feed the commander and his staff. Army headquarters in both armies were typically outfitted with a dedicated guard unit as well, which generally included an infantry battalion and a cavalry escort. When wintering over—or when a suitable structure was discovered on the march—army commanders often utilized large stone farmhouses, barns, or plantation homes as their headquarters. These luxurious accommodations were savored by staff officers and other personnel attached to headquarters, and they departed these home-like surroundings with great reluctance. But whether headquarters was a stately mansion or a weathered canvas tent, the activities executed therein-preparation of battlefield reports, casualty lists, notes on sanitation, strategy sessions-were the same. KEVIN HILLSTROM
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Kevin Hillstrom
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When extended stays were expected, Union troops constructed tent cities to provide shelter. During times of travel and on the battle front, however, soldiers slept on the ground, exposed to the elements. Abraham Lincoln with George McClellan.
ª Bettmann/Corbis BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, revised edition. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1988.
the conflict wore on, however, this finery disappeared, to be replaced by the dusty, tattered blue and gray uniforms long associated with the War Between the States. Clothing shortages deepened with each passing month, paralleling the growing death toll on both sides, and by the closing months of the war many members of the Confederate Army shuffling across the countryside were literally shoeless and clad in rags.
Uniforms
One striking element of the American Civil War was the way in which the characteristics, quality, and quantity of clothing and shoes made available to the soldiers that filled the ranks of the Union and Confederate armies reflected the overall progress and direction of the larger war. In the heady early days of the conflict, soldiers on both sides dressed in trousers, shirts, and coats that were so vibrantly colored they almost appeared celebratory. As
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A Parade of Colors in the North When the Union Army first gathered in the spring of 1861, the volunteer companies that poured into Washington, DC, and other training centers wore a wide range of uniforms. Some regiments arrived in the brilliant red pants, blue belts, and turbans and fezzes of the Algerian Zouaves, the famed French infantry units that had been created in Africa in the 1830s. Others cobbled together unique
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Problems of Quality
Union army uniforms. Union army uniforms during the United States Civil War: (L–R) Private, Reg. Cavalry; General U.S. Grant’s uniform; Line Officer, Artillery; Duryeas Zouave; Hawkin’s Zouave; Private, Reg. Infantry; Line Officer, Duryea’s Zouave; Campaign Uniform, Infantry; Private, Reg. Artillery. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
wardrobes based on local tastes, ethnic allegiances, and availability of materials. In numerous instances, regiments from the same state reported for duty in wildly varying colors. In some cases, commanders devoted a fair amount of time and energy to questions of appearance. When John Gibbon (1827–1896) took command of a brigade of combined Wisconsin and Indiana troops in May 1862, for example, he determined that proper uniforms would lead to a boost in morale, pride, and greater cohesiveness. With these goals in mind, Gibbon authorized the issuance of new uniforms that included long, dark-blue frock coats, standard army hats, and white leggings. His troops accepted the dark blue coats and regulation headwear, but balked at the leggings—Gibbon’s main effort to differentiate his soldiers from the larger Union force. As historian Jeffrey Wert noted in A Brotherhood of Valor (1999), Gibbon brushed aside his soldiers’ complaints about the leggings until he awoke one morning to discover that sometime during the night, his horse had been outfitted with four of the leggings. Many other Union soldiers, however, took peacocklike pride in their colorful and unique finery, and some of these outfits endured well into the second year of the war. As the months passed, though, Union soldiers— like their Confederate counterparts, who showed up for war in similarly variegated uniforms—came to recognize that the wide assortment of uniform types made it difficult to distinguish comrades from foes. As reports of deaths from friendly fire proliferated, especially after the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Northern troops became more favorably disposed to federal attempts to establish a more uniform dress code. All uniform colors except the regulation light and dark blue were banned by the War Department in 1862, and by the early winter months of 1863 most of the army had been supplied with uniforms of that color scheme.
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Union soldiers maintained their allegiance to homespun clothing and broken-in work shoes in large part because the quality of government-issued uniforms and shoes in the war’s opening months often was atrocious. Harper’s Weekly reported that when it rained, Union troops ‘‘found their clothes, overcoats, and blankets scattering to the winds in rags, or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust’’ (Donald 2001, p. 238). Complaints of this sort were legion, and the War Department began shifting away from the most corrupt and venal of the clothing contractors. Adding insult to injury, the common soldier frequently had to pay out of his own pocket for these poor-quality items. Each Yankee private had a clothing allowance of $3.50 per month; if he did not use the full allotment, he was free to pocket the remainder. But long hours of marching and explosive bouts of fighting took a heavy toll on clothing, which was usually substandard to begin with. Many soldiers were forced to spend more than their small clothing allowance to keep themselves outfitted, and any amount of additional spending was deducted from their regular monthly $13 paycheck. Such stories became less commonplace after the first year of the war as the durability of government-issued uniforms dramatically improved. Still, the wool fabric was suffocating in the summertime—especially in the South—and many of the uniforms were somewhat illfitting. Soldiers could do nothing about the former issue, but they addressed the latter problem by embracing a haphazard but ultimately effective bartering system. When shipments of new coats, pants, and shoes reached regiments in camp or in the field, soldiers typically waded in a mad scramble and grabbed whatever they could, reasoning—usually accurately—that they could later trade for garments and footwear of a more suitable size and fit (Shannon 2002, p. 96). Of all the items in a soldier’s personal wardrobe, the one that often received the most attention was footwear. The quality and fit of a soldier’s footwear determined whether a ten- or twenty-mile march would leave the soldier with tired but intact feet or a horror of bloody blisters. Most shoes resulted in the latter condition, for most of the footwear issued by the War Department was singularly unimpressive. In numerous instances, in fact, contractors did not differentiate between left and right shoes in their factories. They simply squared off the toe of every shoe they made, reasoning that the shoes could be used for either foot. Such shoes created an ideal environment for the cultivation of painful blisters. Nonetheless, even shoes that fit poorly were prized by their owners, for the alternative—marching barefoot— was even more daunting scenario. This basic reality led many Union soldiers to steal shoes and boots off the feet of the battlefield dead, and when ‘‘foraging’’ of Southern
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farms and plantations became common in the last years of the war, functional shoes were among the most highly sought after items in any household.
Shortages in the South In the South, the Confederate government had great difficulty obtaining uniforms for its soldiers from the war’s outset. The newly formed Confederate army had no uniforms in stock, and it would take time to manufacture new ones or arrange for their shipment from Europe. Some troops received uniforms from state authorities, but this did not do much to offset the problem, as uniforms were in short supply at the state level as well. Civilian women pitched in to help fill the void, but many were not skilled seamstresses. The Confederate army that took shape in 1861 thus featured a cornucopia of uniform styles and colors. Some arriving volunteers were garbed as though they were embarking on a hunting excursion into the woods behind their homes. Others arrived dressed in the colorful uniforms they had worn for parade purposes as members of militia organizations. And still others reported for duty in clothing created by local women’s societies. When Virginians from the Shenandoah Valley arrived at their regional training center in Harpers Ferry, then, it was little surprise that each company had its own distinctive garb: red shirts and gray trousers for the Mountain guards; gray jackets and trousers for the West Augusta Guards and Augusta Rifles; and blue shirts, gray trousers, and U.S. Navy caps for the Southern Guards (Wert 1999, p. 14). As was the case in the North, difficulties in differentiating friend from foe on the battlefield led the Confederate War Department to select gray as the official color of the army. The wide assortment of styles and splashes of colors that had previously marked Rebel encampments disappeared, to be replaced by a somber blend of gray and ‘‘butternut.’’ The latter color was a direct result of Union blockades that forced the South to conjure up its own garment dyes. The butternut tint was a yellowish-brown color created by a dye made of copperas, walnut hulls, and other ingredients. This dye became so widely used that both Yankee and Rebel troops began to use the term butternuts for Confederate forces.
Competition for Clothing and Shoes Throughout the South, shortages of coats, pants, shirts, and shoes continued for the duration of the war. The Confederate War Department’s difficulties in this regard stemmed from several factors. Increased production by Southern factories offset losses caused by Union blockades to some degree, but the productivity of the Confederate manufacturing sector declined as the war dragged on, due to the conscription of workers and territorial gains by Northern troops. In addition, individual states shielded their uniform and footwear output
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Civil War uniforms of the Confederate army: ( L–R ) North Carolina militia; Private, Reg. Infantry; Washington Artillery; Montgomery True Blue; Field Officer, Infantry; General Lee’s uniform, Private, Reg. Cavalry; Louisiana Tiger; Louisiana Zouave; and Private, Reg. Artillery. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc. Confederate army uniforms.
from Richmond and from other states, to ensure that their own soldiers were adequately outfitted. This practice worked well for a state like North Carolina, which had many more textile factories than surrounding states, but it exacerbated shortages in states with less productive capacity. These shortages became acute and constant in some parts of the army within the space of two years. When General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia set out for Maryland in August 1862, for example, one Virginian commented bleakly, ‘‘there is not a scarecrow in our cornfields that would not scorn to exchange clothes with [the passing soldiers]’’ (Williams 2000, p. 15). During the winters, the dearth of warm coats and other clothing sometimes became a matter of life and death. One Southerner recounted his shock when his regiment came across a group of Confederate sentries that had literally frozen to death: When we arrived there we found the guard sure enough. If I remember correctly, there were just eleven of them. Some were sitting down and some were lying down; but each and every one was as cold and as hard frozen as the icicles that hung from their hands and faces and clothing—dead! They had died at their post of duty. Two of them, a little in advance of the others, were standing with their guns in their hands, as cold and as hard frozen as a monument of marble. (Williams 2005, pp. 206–207)
Barefoot Soldiers The direst shortages experienced in the Confederate army lay in the realm of footwear. As the Civil War progressed, many Rebel soldiers were reduced to marching barefoot or wrapping rags around their feet. ‘‘Most . . . marches were on graveled turnpike roads, which were very severe
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on the barefooted men and cut up their feet horribly,’’ recalled one Southern surgeon in a letter home. ‘‘When the poor fellows could get rags they would tie them around their feet for protection’’ (Dean 2002, p. 397). Shortages of shoes were so severe that some Confederate regiments became utterly dependent on scavenging shoes from the battlefield. As one historian observed, ‘‘the practice of reshoeing at the expense of dead and live Yankees was so common that the remark became trite among troops, ‘All a Yankee is worth is his shoes’’’ (Wiley 1992, p. 115). Perhaps the most infamous instance in which large numbers of Confederate soldiers were forced to go to war barefoot occurred in the winter of 1864–1865. Over the course of a long and arduous campaign through Tennessee, thousands of men in the bedraggled ranks of General John Bell Hood’s army were forced to march barefoot through heavy sleet and snow. As they marched, their unprotected feet smeared tracks of blood through the white snow (Wiley 1992, p. 121). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dean, Eric T., Jr. ‘‘ ‘Dangled over Hell’: The Trauma of the Civil War.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Wert, Jeffry D. A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Williams, David. Johnny Reb’s War: Battlefield and Homefront. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2000. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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Civil War soldiers on both sides of the conflict carried much of the same gear in their packs. Standard accouterments included such essential items as mess kits (plate, knife, fork, and spoon), cups and tin cans for drinking and grinding coffee, sewing kits (called housewives by Union troops), pocketknives, wool blankets, oilcloth groundsheets (which were much more common in Northern regiments than Southern ones), canteens, firearms, cartridge boxes, and bayonets. Rations were carried in the soldier’s haverpack. Other commonplace but nonessential items toted by infantry soldiers in both the Union and Confederate armies included pipes and tobacco pouches, straight razors, Bibles, writing kits, family portraits, harmonicas and other small musical instruments, matchsafes, handkerchiefs, change purses, combs, towels, and soap. These personal items were supplemented by wagondrawn supplies used by entire companies or regiments, like cooking materials, spades, tents, and the like. Troops received staple items from federal or state authorities, but other supplies were either brought from home upon enlistment, delivered to grateful soldiers from home via mail service, lifted from the battlefield or civilian residences, or procured—usually at exorbitant rates—from civilian merchants known as sutlers. Soldiers also occasionally raided sutlers’ tents late at night and helped themselves to what they needed. As was the case with shoes and uniforms, both the North and South grappled with shoddy workmanship and perennial supply shortages in many equipment categories. Some Union blankets, for example, were so poorly made that they provided little warmth and quickly fell apart (Shannon 2002, p. 97). Confederate supply shortages were further exacerbated by a tendency on the part of many state authorities to hoard uniforms, blankets, and other supplies manufactured within their borders for the exclusive use of their own troops. The North was able to use its vastly superior industrial capacity to address many of its supply shortages over time, but Southern problems with equipment quality and shortfalls became more acute as the war progressed. These problems—due to losses of territory (and hence manufacturing productivity), an inadequate transportation network, and severe shortfalls in raw materials for factory production—finally became so great that the Confederate Army became starved for many necessary types of equipment.
The Rifle: The Soldier’s Most Important Piece of Equipment The most valuable piece of equipment possessed by Rebel and Yankee soldiers was the rifle. At the war’s outset, soldiers on both sides were almost exclusively armed with various types of smoothbore muskets that
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Equipment
AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE IN THE CIVIL WAR: THE UNION ARMY BALLOON CORPS The Civil War saw the formation of the first organization for aerial reconnaissance, the Union Army Balloon Corps. Although the corps was considered a branch of the Union Army, it was organized and staffed by civilians, headed by the Chief Aeronaut, Thaddeus S. C. Lowe (1831–1913), appointed to that position by Abraham Lincoln in the summer of 1861. Lincoln became interested in employing balloons for military reconnaissance after hearing about their use by the French Army. Lowe was an experienced balloonist who had financed his education in chemistry and meteorology by giving people rides in a balloon he had built himself as a teenager. He had become a noted weather expert by the time of the Civil War and was making plans for a transatlantic balloon crossing when the war broke out. Lowe brought his own balloon, the Enterprise, to Washington in June 1861 to demonstrate its potential to the president. Lowe’s balloon contained a telegraph key and was connected by a telegraph wire to the White House. From a height of 500 feet above a nearby armory, Lowe sent a telegraph message to Lincoln: Balloon Enterprise Washington, DC June 18, 1861 To the President of the United States: Sir: This point of observation commands an area nearly fifty miles in diameter. The City with its girdle of encampments presents a superb scene. I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch from an aerial station, and in acknowledging indebtedness for your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the service of the country. Yours respectfully, T. S. C. Lowe. (Abbott 1864, p. 108) Lowe selected a team of aeronauts who assisted him in observing battlefields around the Potomac River and the peninsula from 1861 through 1863, when the corps disbanded due to problems with military oversight of the civilian aeronauts. In those two years, however, the balloon corps demonstrated its ability to assist Union gunners in improving the accuracy of their artillery fire. In addition to carrying out the first successful aerial reconnaissance during a major war, Lowe was also responsible for the invention of the aircraft carrier. Lowe had an old coal barge, the
were accurate to no more than 100 yards or so (many weapons had an effective range that was considerably less than this). This assortment of armaments included squirrel rifles, shotguns, muskets dating back to the War of 1812, so-called Mississippi Rifles (also known as the U.S. Army Model 1841 Rifle or the Whitney Rifle), and other privately owned firearms toted to the front by enlistees.
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Army inflates aerial balloon. Northern and Southern armies each used aerial balloons in a limited way to learn information about their opponent’s troop strength and movements. Mathew Brady Collection/US Army/National Archives/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
General Washington Parke Custis, converted for river transport of his balloons and a generator he had invented to produce the hydrogen gas used to inflate the balloons. The deck of the Parke Custis was cleared of everything that might entangle the ropes used to tether the balloons. From November 1861 through the spring of 1862 Lowe’s barge was towed by a Navy gunboat, the U.S.S. Coeur de Lion, up and down the Potomac River so that Lowe and the other aeronauts could observe the movements of Confederate troops during the Peninsula Campaign. Although the Union Army Balloon Corps was in operation for only two years, it was successful enough that the Confederate Army attempted to copy it, but failed because of the lack of skilled pilots and suitable materials for constructing balloons. Lowe’s use of balloons for military purposes was revived by the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Spanish-American War (1898) and by a balloon school operated by the Army at Fort Omaha in Nebraska during World War I. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, John Stevens Cabot. The History of the Civil War in America. New York: Henry Bill, 1864. Hoehling, Mary Duprey. Thaddeus Lowe, America’s One-Man Air Corps. New York: Messner, 1958.
Around the same time that the Civil War broke out, however, a revolution in rifle technology was taking place. A new kind of bullet called the Minie´ ball was introduced; this new type of ammunition enabled the rapid and efficient loading of a muzzle-loading rifle, dramatically increasing range and accuracy. The Minie´ ball could also be loaded fairly quickly, which was another important
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consideration. Within a matter of months, this new firearms technology—which at the war’s outset was limited primarily to sniper squads and other specialized regiments—was spreading like wildfire through the ranks of both the Federal and Confederate armies. It was not until 1863, however, that gun manufacturers in the North and South were finally able to catch up with the feverish demand for the new rifled weapons. The two most popular rifle types to use the new Minie ball were the American-made Springfield rifle and the British-made Enfield rifle. The Springfield became the ‘‘workhorse weapon’’ of the Union army in particular, but even at war’s end Springfields and Enfields accounted for only about 40 percent of all the shoulder arms used by the two governments (Davis 1991, pp. 54, 58). In 1863, in fact, the Union War Department officially recognized 121 different models of rifles, muskets, carbines, pistols, and revolvers and the Confederacy was even less discriminating. For both governments, however, this created logistical headaches, as a huge variety of types of ammunition had to be made available to troops (Davis 1991, p. 58). Besides the Enfield and Springfield rifles, other specific models that were extensively used included breechloading rifles such as the Sharps, Maynard, Burnside, Morse, and Star guns, the sixteen-shot Henry repeaters, and various short-barreled carbines (the latter were often used by cavalry). In addition, the Union Army purchased approximately 106,000 Spencer carbines and rifles. The Spencer repeating rifle fired a magazine of seven cartridges and could be reloaded in thirty seconds, even by a soldier on horseback. These weapons were so potent that Federal forces thus armed came to view themselves as virtually invincible on the field of battle—a belief that was substantiated by battlefield results at places like Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and Petersburg.
Changing the Face of War The advent of new rifle technology during the Civil War might not have been so devastating had field commanders been quicker to adjust to the evolving tactical landscape. Soldiers armed with Springfield, Enfield, Spencer, and Henry rifles were transformed into deadly foes that could pick enemy soldiers off with far greater accuracy—and at far greater distances—than ever before. Close combat became a thing of the past; out of 245,000 wounds treated by surgeons in Federal hospitals during the course of the war, for example, fewer than 1,000 were saber or bayonet wounds (Hummel 1996, p. 188). Many generals preferred flank attacks, but these were not always possible. Instead, they were bound to keep using frontal attacks until a better way could be found of achieving results. And these attacks did sometimes prove effective, albeit at a high casualty rate. As the months passed, however, army commanders and their lieutenants gradually adapted to the new reality and adjusted their infantry tactics. They abandoned fron-
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tal assaults over open terrain, made greater use of forest and other natural cover, and made much more extensive use of man-made entrenchments. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1988. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Common Soldier of the Civil War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973. Kevin Hillstrom
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Animal mascots were a fixture in many Union and Confederate camps during the Civil War. Dogs and horses were the most common mascots, but during the course of the war a virtual Noah’s Ark of animals played this role, ranging from cats, domesticated raccoons, and sheep to such exotic good luck charms as a camel (belonging to the 43rd Mississippi Infantry) and a bear (mascot of the 12th Wisconsin Volunteers). The morale-boosting benefits of keeping an animal mascot around were obvious to even the most dimwitted officer. These animals served as a reminder of pets back home, and playing with and caring for them gave troops a diversion from the tedium of camp and marching. Many mascots became strongly identified with their regiments, and some became legendary.
Famous Mascots A number of the most famous and beloved of Civil War mascots were dogs. One such creature was Sallie, a brindle Staffordshire bull terrier that served as regimental mascot for the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer infantry from the time she was a young pup. She accompanied the regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg but fell to Confederate fire in the war’s final weeks, dying at the Battle of Hatcher’s Run in Virginia in February 1865. Sallie is memorialized on the 11th Pennsylvania monument at the Gettysburg National Military Park.
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Sanitation
Another legendary Union mascot was Jack, a bull terrier mascot of the 102nd Pennsylvania infantry. Jack reportedly accompanied his masters into several major battles, including the Wilderness campaigns and the siege of Petersburg. Some accounts even report that he was captured at one point by enemy soldiers, and that the regiment was so desperate to get him back that they exchanged a Confederate soldier for the dog. The most famous of Civil War mascots, however, was probably ‘‘Old Abe,’’ a bald eagle that served as official mascot for Company C of the 8th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers. Raised by Chippewa Indians in northern Wisconsin, then sold to a Wisconsin family that gave the bird to the regiment, Old Abe was a regular fixture at recruitment events and parades. The eagle also accompanied the soldiers into battle, tethered to a perch alongside the regimental colors. Confederate soldiers repeatedly tried to kill this ‘‘Yankee buzzard,’’ believing its death would sap the enemy’s morale. These attempts failed, but the regiment reluctantly decided that the eagle’s days were numbered if it kept bringing the bird onto the battlefield. With this in mind, the members of the 8th Wisconsin retired Old Abe from active duty in September 1864 and presented the eagle to the state of Wisconsin as a gift. Authorities then used lithographic images of the bird to raise money for soldier relief and the Chicago Sanitary Commission. Old Abe lived for another sixteen years after the war ended. Kept in a cage in the state capital, he was a popular attraction for visitors. The eagle finally died in 1881. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Animal Mascots of the Civil War.’’ Fort Ward Museum Online. http://oha.alexandriava.gov/. Seguin, Marilyn W. Dogs of War and Stories of Other Beasts of Battle in the Civil War. Brookline Village, MA: Branden Publishing, 1998. Kevin Hillstrom
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Civil War army camps were notorious as filthy, fetid places and breeding grounds for disease. As one soldier lamented, a military camp in wartime was more often than not essentially ‘‘a city without sewerage’’ (quoted in Hummel 1996, p. 192). These conditions were created by a combination of indifference to basic hygiene, careless disposal of human and animal waste, limited access to clean water, close quarters, and complete ignorance of the ways in which disease-carrying bacteria could move from soldier to soldier.
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OLD ABE When soldiers left their homes, they deeply missed their families, wives, and neighbors. Such separation from the home and hearth was mitigated in many sectors of the military by the adoption of mascots, or regimental pets. Mascots have included such unusual pets as geese, hens, pigeons, owls, foxes, hedgehogs, bears, scorpions, raccoons, goats, llamas, and lion cubs as well as the usual dogs and cats (Cooper 2002, pp. 174–181). They have accompanied armies—and navies—into battle since at least the seventeenth century to bolster the troops’ morale. Mascots were comforting objects for every soldier’s affection far away from home. In addition, mascots were also thought to be symbols of good luck that would bring the soldiers or sailors who cared for them safely home from war (Cooper 2002, pp. 171–173). The Union Navy allowed mascots on board ship; the USS Monitor had a black cat as its mascot (Hoehling 1993, pp. 190–191), while a naval surgeon aboard the USS Fernandina was given a live owl that he kept as a mascot in the vessel’s sick bay (Boyer 1963, p. 65). Perhaps the most famous of these military mascots during the American Civil War, however, was a bald eagle, lovingly nicknamed ‘‘Old Abe’’ by the Eighth Wisconsin Infantry. As Adelaide Smith, an army nurse, recounts in her memoir, ‘‘Old Abe’’ was the soldiers’ best friend and not only became a symbol of pride and victory for the men in his regiment, but also a legendary figure throughout the Union. The Eighth Wisconsin Infantry had some time before sent home their mascot ‘‘Old Abe,’’ the hero of twenty battles and many skirmishes. The eagle was taken from its nest by an Indian and presented to Company C., where it became the pet of the regiment. During attacks he was carried at the front on a standard, near the flag—sometimes held by a long cord or chain—he would rise up flapping his great wings, and screeching defiance at the enemy loudly enough to be heard along the line. His reputation made thousands of dollars at fairs and elsewhere. His portrait was painted, and hangs in the Old South Church, Boston. The State pensioned Old Abe and supported an attendant to care for him. He died at last of old age, and his skin is stuffed and safely preserved in the state archives at Madison, Wisconsin. (Smith 1911, pp. 205–206) CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boyer, Samuel P. Naval Surgeon: Blockading the South, 1862–1866, ed. Elinor and James A. Barnes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963. Cooper, Jilly. Animals in War. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2002. Hoehling, A. A. Thunder at Hampton Roads. New York: Da Capo Press, 1993. Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse during the Civil War. New York: Greaves Pub. Co., 1911.
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Sanitation In most cases the only sink is merely a straight trench some thirty feet long, unprovided with pole or rail; the edges are filthy, and the stench exceedingly offensive; the easy expedient of daily turning fresh earth into the trench being often neglected. . . . From the ammoniacal odor frequently perceptible in some camps it is obvious that men are allowed to void their urine, during the night, at least, wherever convenient. (Williams 2005, pp. 208–209)
These failures, coupled with the crowded and poorly ventilated shelters in which soldiers were housed, enabled a wide range of dreaded diseases to stalk the Civil War camps of Rebel and Yankee soldiers. It also became fairly commonplace for new companies, upon reporting for duty, to endure outbreaks of childhood illnesses such as measles and mumps. Virtually the only exceptions to these squalid conditions were the camps of the regular federal army or those led by West Pointers. In these camps, it was far more likely that at least a few sensible sanitation guidelines would be posted—and obeyed.
Perils for the Wounded
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author and army nurse. While serving as an army nurse, Little Women author
Louisa May Alcott recorded her experiences amid the filth, stench, and disease of a Union hospital. Without knowledge of how wounds become infected, hospital staff placed little priority on cleanliness and sanitation. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY
Squalid Conditions Most military camps, whether flying the flag of the Union or the Confederacy, acquired a decidedly grimy appearance—and foul odor—over time. Nearby water supplies were often treated carelessly, resulting in contamination from the waste of soldiers or their horses. As long as the water looked relatively clean, soldiers (and cooks) believed that it was perfectly acceptable to use. In addition, many camps failed to adequately separate privies from cooking tents, or to implement basic ‘‘housekeeping’’ measures that would have spared some troops from typhoid, dysentery, and other maladies that struck down thousands of soldiers during the course of the conflict. As a result, germ-spreading flies routinely transferred germs from human waste to food stores. One inspector touring Union camps outside Washington, DC, described a grim but typical scene:
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When Confederate and Union troops were on the move during the spring, summer, and fall, they gained respite from the more permanent camps that were such fertile breeding grounds for disease. But although the escape from crowded and poorly ventilated tents and barracks reduced exposure to airborne communicable diseases, it also increased exposure to the natural elements and often made clean drinking water harder to come by. More importantly, if an army was on the march, that generally meant that combat was approaching, and poor sanitation standards posed an enormous threat to wounded soldiers who managed to survive the battlefield. During the Civil War, scientific and medical knowledge and training was far inferior to what it would be a mere generation later. This essential reality, combined with the sheer volume of casualties in the war, made medical treatment an extremely dicey proposition for wounded troops. Neither field surgeons nor doctors at hospital facilities hundreds of miles from the front lines had any knowledge of the root causes of infections or even basic germ theory. Indeed, army hospitals were notorious breeding grounds for disease. One glimpse at a typically overwhelmed facility explained why: ‘‘A more perfect pestilence box than this I never saw,’’ exclaimed the author Louisa May Alcott, who served as an army nurse at Union Hotel Hospital in Washington, DC. ‘‘Cold, damp, dirty, full of vile odors from wounds, kitchens, and stables’’ (Robertson 1984, p. 94). Blood poisoning, erysipelas, pneumonia, and even the measles ravaged army hospitals, and with the medical knowledge and technology of that era, these diseases proved difficult, if not impossible, to treat (Ward 1994, p. 219).
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Sanitation
‘‘RULES FOR PRESERVING THE HEALTH OF THE SOLDIER’’ On July 12, 1861, the U.S. Sanitary Commission published a report containing its ‘‘Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier.’’ Written by William H. Van Buren, M.D., and signed by twelve other members of the commission, these rules were shortly afterward reprinted in Harper’s Weekly. Diet and food preparation were among the issues the report addressed. Food rations for the Union Army were generous by the standards of other nineteenth-century armies; as the commissioners noted, ‘‘the amount allowed for each man is greater in quantity than the similar allowance for any European soldier’’ (Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861, p. 542). Some of the recommendations for food preparation, however, would no longer be accepted, given present-day knowledge that vitamins are destroyed by overcooking: ‘‘The bread must be thoroughly baked, and not eaten until it is cold. The soup must be boiled at least five hours, and the vegetables always cooked sufficiently to be perfectly soft and digestible’’ (p. 542). Similarly, the commission’s recommendations about water intake are no longer followed: Water should be always drank [sic] in moderation, especially when the body is heated. The excessive thirst which follows violent exertion, or loss of blood, is unnatural, and is not quenched by large and repeated draughts; on the contrary, these are liable to do harm by causing bowel complaints. Experience teaches the old soldier that the less he drinks when on a march the better, and that he suffers less in the end by controlling the desire to drink, however urgent. (p. 542) On the other hand, many of the commission’s recommendations were sensible, such as their remarks concerning vaccination against smallpox: ‘‘Every officer and soldier should be carefully vaccinated with fresh vaccine matter, unless already marked by small-pox; and in all cases where there is any doubt as to the success of the operation it should be repeated at once’’ (p. 542). The vaccine in question was supplied by the Surgeon General. Considerable detail was devoted to personal hygiene and camp sanitation: There is no more frequent source of disease, in camp life, than inattention to the calls of nature. Habitual neglect of nature’s wants will certainly lead to disease and
Conditions were particularly appalling around surgical tables. Equipment was never sterilized, and often water shortages prevented surgeons from even washing their hands. Instead, surgeons would wipe their hands and instruments on towels (Robertson 1984, p. 94). Thus, surgeons passed on diseases and caused infections in the patients they treated. Given these fundamental flaws in medical treatment, it is little wonder that for every Civil War soldier who lost his life on the battlefield, two others were felled by disease.
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suffering. A trench should always be dug, and provided with a pole, supported by uprights, at a properly selected spot at a moderate distance from camp. ... The strictest discipline in regard to the performance of these duties is absolutely essential to health, as well as to decency. Men should never be allowed to void their excrement elsewhere than in the regularly established sinks. In a well regulated camp the sinks are visited daily by a police party, and a layer of earth thrown in, and lime and other disinfecting agents employed to prevent them from becoming offensive and unhealthy. ... The tents for the men should be placed as far from each other as the [Army] Regulations and the dimensions of the camp permit (never less than two paces); crowding is always injurious to health. No refuse, slops, or excrement should be allowed to be deposited in the trenches for drainage around the tents. Each tent should be thoroughly swept out daily, and the materials used for bedding aired and sunned, if possible; the canvas should be raised freely at its base, and it should be kept open as much as possible during the daytime, in dry weather, in order to secure ventilation, for tents are liable to become very unhealthy if not constantly and thoroughly aired. ... On a march, take especial care of the feet. Bathe them every night before sleeping, not in the morning. Select a shoe of stout, soft leather, with a broad sole, and low heel. (p. 542) And the commissioners did not neglect morale: ‘‘The men should not be over-drilled. It is likely to beget disgust for drill, and to defeat its object. ... When practicable, amusements, sports, and gymnastic exercises should be favored among the men, such as running, leaping, wrestling, fencing, bayonet exercise, cricket, baseball, foot-ball, quoits, etc’’ (p. 542). REBECCA J. FREY
SOURCE: ‘‘Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier.’’ In Report of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Washington, DC: 1861. Reprinted in Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861, p. 542.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. The Civil War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
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Ward, Geoffrey, with Ric Burns and Ken Burns. The Civil War. New York: Vintage, 1994. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Common Soldier of the Civil War. New York: Scribner, 1973. Kevin Hillstrom
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Desertion and related lesser offenses, such as going AWOL (absent without leave), bedeviled both the Confederate and Union armies during the American Civil War. Estimates of the total number of desertions vary depending on historic sources and individual definitions of desertion, but historians generally put the number of Union desertions from military duty somewhere between 200,000 and 260,000 troops and the number of Confederate deserters at somewhere in excess of 100,000 troops. The North, however, had a far larger military in the first place, and a greater pool of potential replacements to replenish it with. As a result, desertions never threatened to cripple the overall Union war effort. By contrast, in the South the military margin for error was much less, and the pool of replacements much shallower. So while the number of deserters as a percentage of the total Confederate army was not that much greater than the percentage of deserters within the Union ranks, Southern desertion had a much more severe impact on military operations and morale. As the war turned decisively against the South in the last two years of the conflict, rates of desertion soared in many Confederate units, and historians cite desertion as a leading factor in the South’s military collapse.
Answering Desperate Calls from Home The great majority of Civil War soldiers—even those who endured horrendous battles and deadly skirmishes on multiple occasions—never abandoned their military obligations, even in their darkest hours of doubt and fear. Soldiers who rallied to the cause in the opening months of the conflict had a particularly low rate of desertion—and a correspondingly high intensity of loathing for those soldiers, whether volunteer or conscript, who slipped out of the line before the war was over. For these veteran soldiers, notions of honor and duty sustained their motivation throughout the years (McPherson 1997, p. 168). Tens of thousands of other soldiers, however, left the ranks of the North and South before they had fulfilled their military obligations. The factors behind these premature departures were legion. Some slipped away out of cowardice—a failure to control and manage the fear that afflicted all Civil War soldiers. Many other soldiers deserted for more complicated reasons, however. For example, numerous soldiers reluctantly slipped away for home under cover of darkness or in the chaos of battle
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out of concern for loved ones. This was especially true of some Confederate soldiers, who knew in the war’s latter stages that much of the South was being overrun by enemy troops and sought to protect their families back home. This agony of divided loyalties was further deepened by beseeching letters from home. ‘‘It is useless to conceal the truth any longer,’’ wrote one North Carolina soldier in early 1865. ‘‘Most of our people at home have become so demoralized that they write to their husbands, sons and brothers that desertion now is not dishonorable’’ (Robertson 1988, p. 136). Some letters from loved ones even warned soldiers that failure to immediately set off for home meant certain doom for family members. One Alabama soldier, for example, received a letter from home in 1864 informing him that ‘‘if you put off a-coming, ’twont be no use to come, for we’ll all hands of us be out there in the grave yard with your ma and mine’’ (Martin 2003 [1932], p. 172). One of the better-known desertion trials of the Civil War concerned Confederate Private Edward Cooper, whose defense was based in part on one of these ‘‘please come home’’ letters—from his wife. This letter was reportedly a major factor in convincing authorities to spare Cooper’s life. ‘‘I have been always proud of you, and since your connection with the Confederate army, I have been prouder of you than ever before,’’ his wife’s letter stated. ‘‘I would not have you do anything wrong for the world, but before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die. Last night, I was aroused by little Eddie’s crying. I called and said, ‘what is the matter, Eddie?’ And he said, ‘O Mamma, I am so hungry.’ And Lucy, Edward, your darling Lucy; she never complains, but she is growing thinner and thinner every day. And before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die’’ (Moore 1880, p. 237). This peril to loved ones—whether real or imagined— has been cited by historians as a contributing factor in the higher desertion rates among married soldiers than unmarried ones, as well as the higher desertion rates among privates than officers. Many of the latter came from comparatively affluent backgrounds and thus had families that were better able to sustain and protect themselves during the war.
Erosion of Morale Myriad other factors contributed to soldiers’ decisions to desert, either for home or for destinations that promised anonymity or opportunities to construct new lives. The Confederate Army’s intensifying difficulties in procuring basic food and supplies for its soldiers undoubtedly played a role in rising desertion rates. In addition, the South had growing difficulty meeting its payroll obligations as the war went on. Both armies, meanwhile,
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Desertion
Execution of five deserters. Both the North and South realized early that desertion would plague their armies. The punishment for deserting varied by severity, ranging from paycuts and increased manual labor to branding and death. Illustration by Alfred R. Waud. The Library of Congress.
experienced greater problems with desertion when they tried to transfer soldiers far from home. In the case of Confederate troops, the desire to be close to home increased as the war progressed and Northern troops pushed further and further into Southern territory, possibly endangering family members. In some cases, opposition to transfers to distant locales was so strong that large-scale desertions occurred. Another contributor to diminished morale—and thus higher rates of desertion—in both Union and Confederate units was the decision by each side to build up its military units in response to mounting casualties. As gaps in regiments and divisions were filled with conscripts and other replacements, the esprit de corps that had predominated in the all-volunteer force was supplanted by tensions between the new arrivals and veteran volunteers who viewed the former as useless and untrustworthy. In some instances, the hostility of fellow regimental members was enough to make already unenthusiastic conscripts want to desert. Other desertions stemmed from a growing sense among the infantry rank and file that the Civil War was ‘‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.’’ This conviction, which could be amply supported by even a cursory
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glance at the socioeconomic inequities contained within the conscription acts of the Federal and Confederate governments, was further underscored by the furlough programs that both militaries instituted, which made it easier for wealthy soldiers to periodically return home. The failure of military authorities to grant deserved furloughs was especially commonplace in the increasingly soldier-strapped South. Confederate authorities tried to assuage the anger of troops with promises of future compensation, appeals to duty, and assorted excuses, but to little avail: Thousands of frustrated troops simply went home without permission (Wiley 1992, p. 139).
Punishments for Desertion From the opening months of the Civil War, both the North and South recognized that desertion posed a potentially serious threat to their respective causes. With this in mind, the administrations of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln, as well as leading military officers from both armies, kept up a steady a drumbeat of entreaties and threats to keep their men from slipping away. Washington, DC, and Richmond, VA, even resorted to proclamations that promised pardons and general am-
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‘‘THE EXECUTION OF DESERTERS’’ In September of 1863 Harper’s Weekly published an illustration depicting the execution of five deserters, drawn by staff artist Alfred Rudolph Waud (1828–1891). Waud appended some brief remarks on the necessity of capital punishment for deserters: The crime of desertion has been one of the greatest drawbacks to our army. If the men who have deserted their flag had but been present on more than one occasion defeat would have been victory, and victory the destruction of the enemy. It may be therefore fairly asserted that desertion is the greatest crime of the soldier, and no punishment too severe for the offense. But the dislike to kill in cold blood-a Northern characteristic-the undue exercise of executive clemency, and in fact the very magnitude and vast spread of the offense, has prevented the proper punishment being applied. That is past; now the very necessity of saving life will cause the severest penalties to be rigorously exacted. The picture represents the [five] men who were sentenced to death in the Fifth Corps for desertion at the moment of their execution. Some of these had enlisted, pocketed the bounty, and deserted again and again. The sentence of death being so seldom enforced they considered it a safe game. They all suffered terribly mentally, and as they marched to their own funeral they staggered with mortal agony like a drunken man. Through the corps, ranged in hushed masses on the hill-side, the procession moved to a funeral march, the culprits walking each behind his own coffin. On reaching the grave they were, as usual, seated on their coffins; the priests made short prayers; their eyes were bandaged; and with a precision worthy of praise for its humanity, the orders were given and the volley fired which launched them into eternity. They died instantly, although one sat up nearly a minute after the firing; and there is no doubt that their death has had a very salutary influence on discipline. REBECCA J. FREY
SOURCE: ‘‘The Execution of Deserters.’’ Harper’s Weekly, September 26, 1863, p. 622.
nesties to deserters willing to return to military duty and thus remove the ‘‘stain’’ upon their honor. These official efforts met with some limited success, but punishment (and the threat thereof) quickly emerged as the primary officially sanctioned means of addressing the desertion issue. Punishments for desertion ranged greatly, depending on the perceived severity of the offense and the personal characteristics of the authorities imposing
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the sentence. For example, soldiers found guilty of being absent without leave usually were punished with some combination of pay forfeiture and increased manual labor. Those who were found guilty of the far more serious crime of desertion, however, might be sentenced to branding (often with a C to denote a Coward or a D to denote a Deserter), public flogging, extended imprisonment, or even death by execution. According to historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996), the Union and the Confederacy executed a total of five hundred of their own troops during the course of the Civil War. This total exceeds the total number of executions in all other American wars combined. Two-thirds of the executions that took place during the Civil War were for the crime of desertion. Almost invariably, they were staged publicly, so as to send a harsh warning to anyone contemplating leaving ranks. These executions undoubtedly had their intended effect in some cases. But in others, the brutal spectacles seemed to engender a deeper demoralization among some witnesses. A Rebel soldier from Florida, for example, was profoundly shaken after he witnessed the execution of a young deserter who spent the last moments of his life desperately begging for mercy. The soldier called the execution ‘‘one of the most sickening scenes I ever witnessed[;] . . . [it] looked more like some tragedy of the dark ages, than the civilization of the nineteenth century’’ (Dean 2002, p. 414). A Union soldier from Indiana expressed similar sentiments after witnessing an execution of a deserter from his army. ‘‘I don’t think I will ever witness another such a horror if I can get away from it,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I have seen men shot in battle but never in cold blood before’’ (Dean 2002, p. 414).
Escalating Levels of Desertion After the Civil War turned decisively against the South in mid-1863, rates of desertion from the Confederate forces rose dramatically. ‘‘In the wake of Gettysburg the highways of Virginia were crowded daily with homeward-bound troops, still in possession of full accouterments; and, according to one observer, these men ‘when halted and asked for their furloughs or their authority to be absent from their commands, . . . just pat their guns defiantly and say, ‘this is my furlough,’ and even enrolling officers turn away as peaceably as possible’’ (Wiley 1992, p. 143–44). As the months passed, entire garrisons and companies quietly left the Confederate ranks. Many of these deserters separated and returned to their far-flung homes. Others banded together into outlaw groups that sustained themselves by robbing local communities or military stores. In some areas of the South, these guerrilla bands became so powerful that they became a threat to the Confederate detachments that were sent to neutralize them. The need to send such detachments put a
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A Soldier’s Pastimes: An Overview
further drain on an army that was already groaning under the methodical, unrelenting pressure of a foe with superior resources. By the time the final hours of 1864 were ticking away, desertion had reached epidemic levels in many Confederate units. Sentries walked away from their posts, infantrymen crept from their trenches under cover of darkness, and cavalrymen turned the heads of their mounts away from the front and toward home. Even Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), the most respected and beloved military leader of the entire South, was powerless to stop some defections from the battered ranks of his Army of Northern Virginia. According to historian Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb (1992), the Confederate War Department reported that there were a total of 198,494 officers and men absent and only 160,198 present in the armies of the Confederacy on the eve of surrender (pp. 144–145). These figures confirm that although desertion constituted a problem for the North, its impact was far more crippling for the South.
Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Ward, Geoffrey C., with Ric Burns and Ken Burns. The Civil War. New York: Vintage, 1994. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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A Soldier’s Pastimes A SOLDIER ’ S PASTIMES : AN OVERVIEW
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alotta, Robert I. Stop the Evil: A Civil War History of Desertion and Murder. San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978. Dean, Eric T., Jr. ‘‘ ‘Dangled over Hell’: The Trauma of the Civil War.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. Martin, Bessie. A Rich Man’s War, a Poor Man’s Fight: Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army. Library of Alabama Classics Series. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003. Originally published as Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Moore, John W. History of North Carolina: From the Earliest Discoveries to the Present Time, Vol. 2. Raleigh, NC: Alfred Williams, 1880. Power, J. Tracy. Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
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Kevin Hillstrom SPORTS
Kevin Hillstrom MUSIC
Kevin Hillstrom VICES
Kevin Hillstrom
A SOLDIER’S PASTIMES: AN OVERVIEW Civil War soldiers spent relatively little time in actual combat. Most of their days were spent either on the march or in camp, where tedious chores and mundane interactions were the norm. Encampments, however, were not bereft of color or excitement. To the contrary, the fiercely individualistic and restless souls who filled the ranks of both the Union and Confederate armies devised a variety of means by which to relieve the boredom of camp. These pastimes took dramatically different forms, depending on the background, orientation, and character of the individuals involved. For example, both religious study and gambling thrived in this environment. For both Rebel and Yankee soldiers, the campfire served as the military equivalent of the family hearth or local tavern when it came to social interaction. With the rising of the moon, wrote one Union soldier from New York State, ‘‘[e]very tent becomes a little illuminated pyramid. Cooking-fires burn bright along the alleys. The boys lark, sing, shout, do all these merry things that make the entertainment of volunteer service’’ (Sutherland 1989, p. 13). In these circles, men sang ribald lyrics, shared tales of hunting exploits from their pre– Civil War existences, speculated about enemy troop
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movements, and spoke with pride and longing about wives, sweethearts, and children back home. Frequently, they engaged in these conversations while simultaneously playing a game of checkers or mending frayed socks, shirts, or pants.
Bible Studiers and Amateur Thespians Civil War soldiers frequently whiled away the hours by joining with their fellows to pursue some interest or diversion. For example, primitive but entertaining theatrical productions and minstrel shows were organized in many regiments, and some of these shows were so ambitious and spirited that they attracted local civilians as well as fellow soldiers. Occasionally, thespians in the ranks even organized benefit performances, with the profits earmarked for poor civilians or seriously wounded soldiers. A great many soldiers found both spiritual replenishment and fraternal nourishment through formal religious services. Regimental chaplains were the most visible and essential members of these organized gatherings, for they not only led worship services on Sundays but spent the rest of the week tending to the private spiritual needs of soldiers and comforting maimed or wounded troops. Some religiously inclined men, however, held prayer meetings or Bible study sessions even without the guidance of a chaplain. Their efforts to maintain their spiritual ties to God were actively encouraged by a host of nondenominational religious organizations such as the American Tract Society and the Bible Society of the Confederate States. The principal mandate of these organizations was to place Bibles, hymnals, moral tracts, and other spiritually uplifting or comforting reading materials into the hands of war-weary soldiers. These societies found a ready audience for their efforts, in both the Union and Confederacy, when outbreaks of evangelical revivalism rippled through the ranks of increasingly disillusioned and desperate soldiers. Finally, energetic and ambitious soldiers in both the Union and Confederate ranks organized army chapters of fraternal societies and benevolent associations. Of these various societies and associations, the freemasons were probably most adept at expanding their membership in wartime. In fact, extensive freemason networks existed in both the Northern and Southern armies by the time the war drew to a close in the spring of 1865.
Literature and Letters Another major recreational pastime among literate Civil War soldiers was reading, and a smattering of regiments, such as the 13th Massachusetts, even maintained their own modest libraries of classic literature. Aside from the Bible, which was by far the most popular book in both armies, the majority of reading material in Union and Confederate tents consisted of popular contemporary periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illus-
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trated Newspaper, and Southern Illustrated News or cheap and lurid novels of questionable literary merit. ‘‘Those reading materials that generally flooded an army were twenty-five cent thrillers, Beadle’s famous ‘Dime Novels,’ and picture books offering ‘spirited and spicy scenes,’’’ observed one Civil War historian. ‘‘While some field missionaries reported disgustingly that ‘licentious books’ and ‘obscene pictures’ were to be found in encampments, more men North and South simply read what was available. A Baptist missionary observed early in the war that ‘the soldiers here are starving for reading matter. They will read anything’’’ (Robertson 1988, p. 84). Civil War soldiers also spent a great deal of time poring over correspondence from loved ones back home. Notes from wives, children, parents, and friends were absolutely essential to the morale of countless soldiers on both sides of the conflict. ‘‘We can only pity the man who goes empty away from the little group assembled about the mail bag, and rejoice with him who strolls away with a letter near his heart,’’ related one soldier (Catton 1996, p. 371). Indeed, soldiers read letters from home over and over again, and they jealously protected these fragile reminders of their prewar existence from the grime of camp and the elements as best they could. Rebel and Yankee soldiers also devoted a great deal of time to their own letter-writing, and many troops—from officers to newly arrived recruits— kept journals that documented their experiences in great detail.
Seeking Relief in Strange Places Perhaps inevitably, given the loose, shambling quality of military discipline and the emotional need for a release from the grim business of war, practical jokes reached epidemic proportions in both the Union and Confederate armies. Some of these pranks were mild and unimaginative, such as hiding a fellow soldier’s mess kit or rifle. But others were both clever and harrowing. For example, during wintertime pranksters occasionally covered the openings of chimneys with boards or other materials— creating clouds of black smoke guaranteed to chase a hut’s coughing and angrily cursing inhabitants outside into the cold. Soldiers sometimes even sought respite from the tedium of camp life or sentry duty through fraternization with enemy soldiers, with whom they felt a bond of shared experience. Evidence of this feeling of kinship is widely scattered throughout the letters and diaries of Civil War soldiers. ‘‘Although intercourse with the enemy was strictly forbidden,’’ wrote one Pennsylvanian soldier, ‘‘the men were on the most friendly terms, amicably conversing and exchanging such commodities as coffee, sugar, tobacco, corn meal and newspapers’’ (Hays 1908, p. 271). Another Union soldier recounted similar tableaux—and emphasized that such fraternization
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Sports
was treated almost as standard operating procedure in some areas: It was a singular sight to see the soldiers of two great hostile armies walking about unconcernedly within a few yards of each other with their bayonets sticking in the ground, bantering and joking together, exchanging the compliments of the day and even saluting officers of the opposing forces with as much ceremony, decorum, and respect as they did their own. The keenest sense of honor existed among the enlisted men of each side. It was no uncommon sight, when visiting the picket posts, to see an equal number of ‘‘graybacks’’ and ‘‘bluebellies’’ as they facetiously termed each other, enjoying a social game of euchre or sevenup and sometimes the great national game of draw poker, with army rations and sutler’s delicacies as the stakes. (Hays 1908, p. 271)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Billings, John D. Hardtack and Coffee; or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life. Boston: G. M. Smith, 1887. Reprint, Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, rev. ed. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Hays, Gilbert A. Under the Red Patch: Story of the Sixty-Third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–1864. Pittsburgh, PA: Sixty-Third Pennsylvania Volunteers Regimental Association, 1908. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
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Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching on: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003. Kevin Hillstrom
SPORTS Throughout the Civil War, Yankee and Rebel troops alike turned to sports as one of the principal means of passing the interminable hours in camp. This was especially true during the warmer months. Many of the sporting contests held in army camps were individual in nature: shooting matches, footraces, wrestling matches, and boxing contests. But team sports, when they were organized, never lacked for willing participants. Moreover, team sports such as baseball, which was particularly popular in Union regiments, consistently attracted large audiences of soldiers who were more than happy to yell out encouragement—and pointed criticism. Baseball, in fact, began as a gentlemen’s team sport rather than a game for farmers, blue-collar workers, or urban immigrants. According to the Smithsonian Institution, baseball can be traced back to a group of well-todo New Yorkers who met in a vacant lot in 1842 to play what quickly became a popular game. Other sources trace the game back to some upper-class young men from Philadelphia who crossed the Delaware in 1831 for regular games of what was called ‘‘two old cat’’ with teams from New Jersey (Kirsch 2003, p. 3). Within a few years there were other teams and organized leagues up and down the East Coast; Massachusetts players had their own distinctive set of rules. By 1861 there were at least 200 baseball clubs in the New York area (including northern New Jersey) alone. Baseball spread westward to Ohio and Kentucky by the late 1850s, but it remained a Northern team sport until after the Civil War; it did not interest the Southern aristocracy. Baseball became a team sport for men of all classes when the Civil War began, when some of the well-off New York players came to Washington as Union soldiers. They discovered that some office clerks in the Treasury Department had already organized the Washington Base Ball Club, which had a team called the Washington Nationals. Soldiers and civilians quickly organized games, which the New Yorkers usually won. The games helped to break down class divisions, as players were valued for their skills rather than their social backgrounds. Officers played alongside enlisted men as equals rather than military superiors. Supply shortages often necessitated a certain level of ingenuity when sporting contests were devised. Enterprising bowlers, for example, turned to cannonballs, while baseball equipment often consisted of little more than a farmer’s fence rail (the bat) and a walnut or rock wrapped in fabric (the ball). In some cases rags were bundled together and tied with string to form a ball.
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Observing and taking part in sporting events occupied soldiers during periods of quiet and provided a dose of levity to balance the horrors of the battlefield. George Eastman House/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Soldiers posing before boxing match.
The playing field was located wherever there was a patch of reasonably flat ground; in Washington the teams played on the grounds of the Capitol, on the Ellipse, or inside the forts surrounding Washington. When armies wintered over, participation in outdoor sports dwindled except for the odd day when unseasonably warm or sunny weather prevailed. During these winter months, poker tables and chess and checkers boards became the primary fields of competition. One exception to this rule, however, was the popularity of snowball fights. Most of these battles were brief skirmishes featuring a few soldiers on either side. On occasion, however, snowball fights blossomed into fullblown conflicts between entire companies. In these instances, soldiers followed the orders of officers just as they did on real fields of battle, and prisoners were sometimes taken. When serious snowball fights developed, participants often ‘‘loaded’’ their snowballs with rocks, bullets, or chunks of ice. These projectiles caused painful injuries on numerous occasions, but their use was generally regarded as completely in keeping with the brawling spirit of the contest. As one participant in a snowball clash between two New Hampshire regiments recounted, ‘‘tents were wrecked, bones broken, eyes blacked, and teeth knocked out—all in fun’’ (Robertson 1984, p. 71).
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In spite of the occasional sports-related injury, sports were considered psychologically beneficial to the troops. It is noteworthy that the U.S. Sanitary Commission wholeheartedly recommended sports and ‘‘gymnastic exercises’’ as ways to maintain morale in camp in their 1861 report (Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861) on preserving soldiers’ health.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kirsch, George B. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter, 5 (10). ‘‘The 1860s—When Men Were Men and They Played Baseball in Washington.’’ Available online at http://civilwarstudies.org/. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. U. S. Sanitary Commission. ‘‘Report of the U.S. Sanitary Commission: Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier.’’ Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1861, p. 542. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Music
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Kevin Hillstrom
MUSIC As the Civil War progressed, music emerged as one of the primary means by which soldiers on both sides of the conflict passed the time and lifted their spirits. ‘‘Men left for war with a song on their lips,’’ observed one scholar. ‘‘They sang while marching or waiting behind earthworks; they hummed melodies on the battlefield and in the guardhouse; music swelled from every nighttime bivouac’’ (Robertson 1988, p. 85). The music associated with the war, created in an era when singing in public was much more commonplace than it is today, provides a rich and evocative picture of the hopes, fears, and motivations of the common soldier. Many of the lyrics and melodies produced during—and inspired by—the war, in fact, continue to rank as among the most famous songs in American history.
Sentimental and Patriotic Most Civil War songs that were popular among the infantry and artillery units—the companies that bore the brunt of the war’s terror and destruction—were unabashedly maudlin in nature. To be sure, several songs with patriotic themes, such as ‘‘John Brown’s Body,’’ ‘‘Yankee Doodle,’’ ‘‘Dixie,’’ and ‘‘Battle Cry of Freedom,’’ were quite popular. Other songs that struck a chord with soldiers and anxious loved ones alike directly addressed the brutal realities of war. For example, composer George F. Root’s song ‘‘Just Before the Battle, Mother,’’ includes the following lyrics: ‘‘Comrades brave are round me lying, / Filled with thoughts of home and God; / For well they know that on the morrow, / Some will sleep beneath the sod’’ (1863). But if patriotic or otherwise war-themed songs were popular, so too were sentimental ones that celebrated the simple comforts of home or the lovely attributes of sweethearts, and, indeed, songs that dwelled on prewar life or imagined life after the war greatly outnumbered those devoted to military themes. Of the sentimental songs, ‘‘Home Sweet Home’’ was by far the most popular in both Union and Confederate camps. But the emotions it conjured up sometimes made commanders uneasy. In the winter of 1862–1863, for example, Union commanders forbade regimental bands with the Army of the Potomac from playing the song, for fear it would undermine the morale of homesick troops (Robertson 1984, p. 68). Not surprisingly, separation from wives and sweethearts was a theme that repeated itself again and again in Civil War songs favored by soldiers. Popular Civil War songs with a wistfully romantic bent included ‘‘Lorena,’’
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‘‘Annie Laurie,’’ ‘‘All Quiet along the Potomac Tonight,’’ ‘‘Annie of the Vale,’’ ‘‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’’ ‘‘Her Bright Eyes Haunt Me Still,’’ ‘‘Sweet Evelina,’’ and ‘‘Juanita.’’ Religion was another subject that drew soldiers in, and hymns emerged as popular expressions of Christian belief in both armies. Soldiers who could play harmonica, fiddle, or banjo were highly prized at evening sing-alongs, and in some cases entire companies became emotionally invested in protecting the musical instruments possessed by these accompanists. Talented musicians in the ranks also became the cornerstones of organized dancing events and glee club performances. These bursts of merrymaking never failed to lift the spirits of tired and battle-worn men, and discerning military commanders actively encouraged song, dance, and music on the march or in camp. Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) went so far as to bluntly assert that an army without music would be impossible.
Civil War Bands Military bands sanctioned and supported by the War Departments in Washington and Richmond also served an important morale-boosting function. Military brass bands accompanied many companies into service during the opening months of the conflict, and as the war progressed company and regimental bands provided musical accompaniment for marching drills, evening concerts for soldiers (and sometimes civilians) at wintertime encampments, and even nights of musical escape for troops weary from a long day’s march or battle. The quality of many of these bands ranged from mediocre to poor, due to the difficulty of procuring instruments and a shortage of trained musicians. On occasion, even soldiers who were starved for entertainment voiced discontent with the quality of the music that band members coaxed from their instruments. One Mississippi soldier, for example, lamented that his regiment’s band ‘‘has been practicing for more than a week but are not learning very fast. I think I am getting very tired of hearing the noise they make’’ (Moore 1959, p. 66). Yet what the band members lacked in training and skill, they compensated for with enthusiasm and a keen understanding of the types of songs that could best rally and encourage the troops at the end of a tedious day of marching or during a cold snap in wintertime. Moreover, interspersed among the undistinguished company and regimental bands one could occasionally find groups of genuine skill and talent. Historian Bruce Catton (1996) noted that the 26th North Carolina Regimental Band was populated to a considerable extent by the sons of Moravian immigrants who had settled around Salem and nurtured a social culture that placed great emphasis on musical literacy and expression. These talented musicians were also dedicated soldiers, and at the Battle of Gettysburg they served as stretcher-bearers and assistants
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to field surgeons who were swathed from head to foot in blood and gore at the end of each day’s fighting. Yet their greatest contribution to the regiment was as musicians. After the first bloody day of fighting at Gettysburg, the band performed a concert that reinvigorated flagging spirits throughout the regiment. ‘‘We . . . found the men much more cheerful than we were ourselves,’’ remembered one band member. ‘‘We played for some time . . . and the men cheered us lustily’’ (Catton 1996, p. 356). The songs and music of the Civil War also underscored the kinship that existed between the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Songs like ‘‘Home Sweet Home’’ and ‘‘Annie Laurie’’ were equally popular with Rebel and Yankee soldiers, and on more than one occasion, band performances by soldiers from one army soothed the spirits not only of comrades, but also of the brave but homesick soldiers on the opposing front lines. In Soldiers Blue and Gray (1988), historian James I. Robertson Jr. recounts one of the most famous of these incidents. In December 1862 Union and Confederate forces gathered to face each other outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia. As evening fell over the land, bands from the two sides engaged in a sort of ‘‘battle of the bands,’’ taking turns playing partisan favorites. The night air then became quiet for a time until a lone Union bugler played a mournful version of ‘‘Home Sweet Home’’ for the assembled armies. ‘‘As the sweet sounds rose and fell on the evening air,’’ recalled one soldier from New Hampshire, ‘‘all listened intently, and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in all those assembled thousands’’ (Robertson 1988, p. 85). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, rev. ed. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Moore, Robert. A Life for the Confederacy, ed. James W. Silver. Jackson, TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1959. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Root, George F. ‘‘Just Before the Battle, Mother.’’ In The Bugle-Call. Chicago: Root & Cady, 1863. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Kevin Hillstrom
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VICES Civil War soldiers generally had access to only a limited number of diversions to help them pass the time when they were not marching, fighting, or attending to camp chores. Reading, letter-writing, and conversation filled some of the long idle hours, but many in the ranks of both the Confederate and Union armies were illiterate. For these men—and also for many of the more educated soldiers—filling the long hours required more exciting diversions. Of all the so-called ‘‘vices’’ that infiltrated the fabric of both Union and Confederate armies, gambling was the most flagrant and ubiquitous. Various card and dice games were particularly popular, but as countless letters and journal entries attest, Yankees and Rebels alike rushed to wager their meager salaries on just about anything they could think of, from footraces and boxing matches to cockfights and raffles. Companies that were located near small rivers and streams even organized high-stakes sailing races by fashioning small boats out of scraps of wood and paper. And when playing cards could not be acquired due to paper shortages or lack of funds, enterprising soldiers simply fashioned their own, sometimes decorating them with the likenesses of political leaders (Wiley 1943, p. 53). Many soldiers who were unlucky or unskilled in games of chance found themselves bereft of funds within a few days—or even hours—of receiving their pay. As one Union soldier lamented in a letter to a friend, ‘‘[I was] only paid a week ago and have not a cent now, having bluffed away all that I did not send home. I don’t think I will play poker any more’’ (quoted in Robertson 1984, p. 62). This state of affairs further exacerbated the problem of theft in some companies, as cash-strapped soldiers turned to thievery to compensate for their losses at the gaming tables.
Throwing Away Evidence of Sin Much of this fixation on poker and other forms of gambling would have scandalized family members or churchgoing neighbors back home—a fact of which soldiers were well aware. Indeed, the prevailing view among good Christian folk of the Civil War era was that cards were ‘‘tools of the devil.’’ This led many soldiers to engage in behavior that might have seemed comical, had it not been driven by the fear of death in battle. Poker-playing Yankees and Rebels became notorious for tossing decks of playing cards into the woods as they made their way to the field of battle. They did this to ensure that cards would not be among the personal effects returned to loved ones should they not survive the fighting. The scene at the end of a pitched battle, however, was markedly different. As dusk fell over the land, survivors of the day’s carnage could often be found back in the woods, searching out the cards they had discarded
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Vices
General Wilcox at a cockfight. Soldiers filled their free time with a number of diversions, including reading and writing letters for family members back home. Other soldiers looked to pass the time by gambling on nearly anything, from card games to cockfights. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
earlier that day so that they could celebrate their survival with a long night of poker.
Brawling and Drinking Fistfights between soldiers—and occasional clashes between entire units of soldiers—also bedeviled army commanders in both the North and South. Boredom, testosterone, and ethnic pride all contributed to the frequency with which brawling erupted in Civil War camps. Some outfits (such as certain Irish contingents) became notorious for their pugnacious ways, and a few regiments became so riddled with brawling that their capacity for fighting the enemy came into question. The 7th Missouri, for example, once had 900 fights break out in a single day. This is a remarkable tally on its face, but it is even more stunning given the fact that the entire regiment only had 800 soldiers in its ranks by that time. Another incitement to brawling—and insubordination in general—was alcohol. Army regulations placed significant restrictions on the consumption of liquor or other forms of alcohol by enlisted men, and even officers were supposed to practice restraint in this area. Troop movements and limited discretionary income further discouraged purchases of whiskey from sutlers or other
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merchants, and most camps experienced ‘‘dry spells’’ during which alcohol was virtually absent. Most soldiers with a taste for whiskey, however, were not discriminating about the quality of the liquor they consumed. Some made their own liquor, fermenting pine boughs and other dubious materials in their goal to get drunk. Higher-grade alcohol, meanwhile, was obtained through foraging or clandestine purchase. And when troops did succeed in getting their hands on whiskey, they often overindulged. Generals on both sides attempted to minimize the negative impact of alcohol abuse in their armies, but with limited success. Fines and various forms of corporal punishment simply did not provide sufficient deterrent to keep some soldiers from the bottle. At one point, Union General George B. McClellan (1826–1885) became so aggravated by the deleterious impact of whiskey on his troops that he opined that if he could somehow keep all liquor out of their hands ‘‘it would be worth 50,000 men to the armies of the United States’’ (Davis 1991, p. 154).
Rough Men and Rough Language Army encampments were also typified by extensive and creative use of language of the foulest kind. Many of the men who wore the blue and gray were rough characters,
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ALCOHOL ON THE FRONT While soldiers engaged in periods of battle, most of their time was spent drilling, marching, and waiting for encounters with the enemy. During these lulls, some soldiers sought to fill their time with alcohol. As described in Confederate soldier William Stevenson’s 1862 personal account Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services, the clandestine procurement and consumption of alcohol was a commonplace practice—as was turning a blind eye to it: Our rations at this time were neither very lavishly given nor very choice in quality, yet there was no actual suffering. For the first month whisky was served, and the men were satisfied to work for the promise of forty cents a day extra pay and three drams. In the fifth week the drams were stopped, and the extra pay never began... while the whisky ration was continued, there was little drunkenness. The men were satisfied with the limited amount given, and the general health of all was good. When the spirit ration was stopped, illicit trade in the ‘‘crathur’’ was carried by Jews and peddlers, who hung around the camp a short distance out in the woods. The search after these traders by the authorities was so vigilant, that at last there was no whisky vended nearer than the little town of Covington, eight miles distant. This, however, did not deter the men from making frequent trips to this place after it. Various expedients were resorted to, in order to bring it inside of the guard-lines. Some stopped the tubes on their guns, and filled the barrel with liquor. The colonel, while passing a tent one day, saw one of the men elevate his gun and take a long pull at the muzzle. He called out, ‘‘Pat, what have you got in your gun? Whisky?’’ He answered—‘‘Colonel, I was looking into the barrel of my gun to see whether she was clean’’ (pp. 45–46). CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
SOURCE: Stevenson, William G. Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services. New York : A. S. Barnes and Burr, 1862. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/.
and most enlisted men had little in the way of formal education. These factors, combined with the everyday frustrations and terrors of army life in a time of war, provided fertile soil for oaths of the most profane variety. For many soldiers, the rough language swirling around them was no different than what they experienced back in the shipyards, factories, and stables that had employed them prior to the war. And the oaths they
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hurled at one another or at God were the same ones that they had uttered in the taverns they frequented back home. But for soldiers who were dedicated Christians, educated professionals, or recruits fresh from isolated farms, the incessant foul language could be quite demoralizing. ‘‘Around me is the gibber of reckless men & I am compelled to listen day and night to their profanity, filthy talk, and vulgar songs,’’ grumbled one Union recruit. ‘‘I have some conception how Lot felt in Sodom when he had to listen to and be cursed by the filthy conversation of the wicked’’ (Glatthaar 1985, p. 96). A Confederate soldier from Mississippi painted a similarly bleak picture, asserting that ‘‘oaths, blasphemies, imprecations, obscenity, are hourly heard ringing in your ears until your mind is almost filled with them’’ (Wiley and Milhollen 1959, p. 190). Some officers became so upset by the steady streams of profanity that issued from all corners of camp that they threatened soldiers with fines for excessive swearing. These threats proved impossible to enforce, however, and within a matter of days—or sometimes hours— they were inevitably abandoned. In the end, too, profanity was the least of a soldier’s troubles, and many of the most pious Yankees and Rebels were willing to overlook a foul mouth if other, more noble, characteristics were also present in their fellow soldiers. ‘‘Every one of [my comrades] is as a brother to me,’’ wrote one Massachusetts soldier after a year of deadly battles, exhausting marches, and lousy food. ‘‘It is true many of them are very profane and the demon whiskey is not refused by many of them but with all their faults I love them because they are brave, generous, intelligent, and noble-hearted’’ (McPherson 1997, p. 88).
‘‘Horizontal Refreshments’’ Many Civil War soldiers also engaged in sexual activity— sometimes known by the euphemism ‘‘horizontal refreshments’’—with prostitutes. Some men were naturally inclined to pursue this option anyway to satisfy their sexual urges. Others had wives and sweethearts back home to whom they had promised fidelity, only to find that their self-discipline fell apart after weeks, months, or years of enforced abstinence. Early in the Civil War, camp followers were the main focus for soldiers looking to satisfy their urges for sex. Some of these camp followers were unabashed prostitutes, others served as cooks or laundresses on at least a part-time basis. Virtually all of them were sought for sexual satisfaction at one time or another, irrespective of their appearance or age. ‘‘Almost all the women are given to whoredom & are the ugliest, sallowfaced, shaggy headed, bare footed dirty wretches you ever saw,’’ complained one Alabama soldier (Sutherland 1989, p. 16). As the war progressed, however, and troop movements accelerated, many of the camp followers fell away. At that point, both Union and Confederate soldiers became
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more dependent on furloughs or clandestine encounters with women from nearby communities. According to one historian, ‘‘men encamped near large towns and cities naturally had the best opportunities to enjoy female companionship, whatever their choice in women. They could meet utterly respectable ladies at church socials, Sanitary Commission fairs, and other civilized occasions. If a man sought more than polite conversation, he headed for the fleshpots. Every town had them’’ (Sutherland 1989, p. 16). By the final months of the war, prostitution in numerous cities in both the North and South had greatly increased to accommodate the demand from soldiers on leave. Union soldiers, in general, enjoyed more generous furloughs, and they provided a steady flow of income into the red-light districts of places such as Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and New York. The nation’s capital, meanwhile, supported hundreds of bordellos. Down in the South, the capital city of Richmond also became a center of prostitution. Many soldiers who engaged in sexual relations with prostitutes and other women during the Civil War rationalized their behavior away as a necessary and harmless release from the pressures of war. But syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted diseases ravaged many units. In one study of sexual activity during the Civil War, historian Thomas Lowry (1994) determined that fully one out of three of the men who died in Union and Confederate veterans’ homes were killed by the latter stages of venereal disease. Some of these men were bachelors—but some were not. Thus, an unknown number of women and children must likewise have been ravaged by gonorrhea, syphilis, and a host of other sexually transmitted diseases long after the war was over. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Hays, Gilbert Adams. Under the Red Patch: Story of the Sixty-Third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–1864. Pittsburgh, PA: Sixty-Third Pennsylvania Volunteers Regimental Association, 1908. Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Shannon, Fred A. ‘‘The Life of the Common Soldier in the Union Army, 1861–1865.’’ In The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, ed. Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Wiley, Bell Irvin, and Hirst D. Milhollen. They Who Fought Here. New York: Macmillan, 1959. Kevin Hillstrom
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Diaries and Letters from Soldiers
Writing letters to loved ones and keeping personal journals was one of the primary ways in which Civil War soldiers passed the time in camp or at the end of a long day’s march. These activities relieved the tedium of a soldier’s life and served as the main vehicle through which Rebels and Yankees maintained their emotional ties to family and friends back home. Penning correspondence to loved ones and the exercise of diary keeping also had significant therapeutic benefits for many battle-scarred soldiers. The themes that the soldiers explored in these notes, letters, and journal entries were repeated again and again. Recollections of battlefield experiences and emotions were a major and often cathartic focus, but far more sentences were devoted to wistful expressions of love for wives, girlfriends, parents, siblings, and children back home. Accounts of daily life in camp also took up a lot of space in letters and dairies. One historian observed that ‘‘[t]hey used ink and pencil, even crayons. They wrote on foolscap and parchment, in the margins of newspapers and on the back of wallpaper. When a precious sheet of paper was filled, if there was more to say they gave the sheet a quarter turn and cross-wrote over what they had already written’’ (Davis 1991, p. 39).
Pining for Loved Ones Of all the topics that soldiers wrote about during the Civil War, perhaps none were written about with the same fervor as those of homesickness and love for ab-
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Diaries and Letters from Soldiers
sent family. Some soldiers maintained some measure of restraint and formality on these topics in their letters and journal entries, but many other war-weary Rebels and Yankees wrote with emotional abandon. ‘‘I am sick and tird [sic] of the war and I want to see you and the children the worst in the world,’’ wrote one private in the Ohio 1st in 1862. ‘‘I wood [sic] give my monthly wages and my hundred dollars bounty to be at home’’ (McPherson 1997, p. 256). Like many other men caught up in the conflict, Confederate surgeon Harvey Black showed a fondness for reliving past days of domestic bliss in his letters home. In a November 1863 letter to his wife Mollie, for example, he recalled the joys of their courtship: The happy day of our marriage arrived and since then, hours, days, and years of time, confidence & happiness passed rapidly away, and only to make us feel that happy as were the hours of youthful days, they compare not with those of later years and perhaps even these may not be equal to that which is in reserve for us. I don’t know how much pleasure it affords you to go over these days of the past, but to me they will ever be remembered as days of felicity. And how happy the thought that years increase the affection & esteem we have for each other to love & be loved. May it ever be so, and may I ever be a husband worthy of your warmest affections. (November 1, 1863)
Honor and Sacrifice Patriotism was another favorite topic in the correspondence and journal entries of soldiers fighting under the Union and Confederate banners. One of the most famous letters of the entire war was written by Union soldier Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah on July 14, 1861. In this letter, which is suffused with powerful expressions of love for his wife, Ballou nonetheless signals his willingness to sacrifice himself to the Union cause. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. . . . My courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing— perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt. (Ballou 1888, p. 1058)
Ballou did remain true to his word, and sacrificed himself to the Union cause a week after this letter was written to his dear wife Sarah. Many Confederate soldiers expressed equally heartfelt feelings about the importance of duty and honor. In one letter home, a Georgia native gently rebuked his wife for a previous letter in which she had told him that his daughters were pleading for their father’s return.
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First page of three-page letter written by a Michigan soldier, Ed Webb, to his sister, Hattie Webb Wyman, on March 12, 1864. Monroe County, Michigan, Historical Commission Civil War letter.
Archives
I came to the war because I felt it to be my duty. . . . I am not going to run away[;] if I never come home I had rather di[e] without seeing them than for pe[o]ple to tell them after I am dead that their father was a deserter. . . . It [is] every Southern man[’]s duty to fight against abolition misrule and preserve his Liberty untarnished which was won by our fore Fathers [sic]. (McPherson 1997, p. 138)
Soldiers in both armies also expressed profound anger at men back home who avoided military service. They equated such evasion with cowardice and absence of moral scruples, and reserved special scorn for wealthy countrymen who used various draft exemptions to avoid shouldering their fair share of the burden. I have come here and left everything that is dear to me on earth to fight and suffer all manner of hardships to protect property, not my own, whilst many of them who have property are still at home
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Diaries and Letters from Soldiers with their families—in fact they are the ones as a general rule that stay at home,’’ wrote one bitter Rebel from South Carolina. ‘‘Will we poor soldiers ever be recompensed for what we are doing? I fear not (Reid 1892, p. 13).
An Alabama soldier voiced similar sentiments, denouncing ‘‘the miserable gilded coward who remains in the rear to fatten like a hyena over the grave of his country’’ (Williams 1981, p. 146). Soldiers’ ink also turned venomous on the subject of civilian critics of the war (known as ‘‘Copperheads’’ in the North). ‘‘It is outrageous and abominable that the Army must be slandered and abused by the cowards that stay at home,’’ wrote a Massachusetts officer in 1864 (Brewster 1992, p. 298).
Tales of Hardship and Horror Another recurring topic in the letters, journals, and diaries that survived the war was everyday discomfort, hunger, and hardship. In one representative passage from a Confederate soldier’s diary, a long march to Chattanooga that was interrupted by a wonderful and unexpected bounty is described: ‘‘I remember I found some apples about the size of a quail’s egg, under an apple tree and I ate about as many as I could hold, and that night we were notified that we could draw some rations but I was too tired and sleepy to get up. I was about petered out and had done without rations so long I was not hungry’’ (Robertson 1988, p. 110). Sentiments such as these were legion, in letters and journals written by Yankee and Rebel alike. Such excerpts provide important insights into the everyday experiences of hungry, poorly equipped, weary, and—in many cases—disillusioned soldiers. But they pale next to the vivid descriptions of battle found in many letters and journal entries. Some soldiers, clinging to conventions of masculinity, were loathe to admit the fear they undoubtedly felt, but other were frank about their terror and anguish. Nonetheless, the historical record is generously sprinkled with letters and diary entries that make it clear that ‘‘seeing the elephant’’—experiencing combat firsthand—was a terrifying experience. After the epic Battle of Antietam, for example, a Union officer with a New York regiment acknowledged that ‘‘I don’t pretend to say I wasn’t afraid, and I must say that I did not see a face but that turned pale or hear a voice that did not tremble’’ (McPherson 1997, p. 37) in the moments leading up to the battle. A captain in a North Carolina regiment was similarly candid, noting that even after acquitting himself well in several battles, he still approached every battle ‘‘badly scared . . . I am not as brave as I thought I was. I never wanted out of a place as bad in my life’’ (McPherson 1997, p. 37). Some soldiers writing about actual battle scenes, meanwhile, were not inclined to spare their readers from the brutal realities of war. Writing in his journal, a Ten-
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nessee infantryman recalled one harrowing Union assault on his company’s position: A solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yankee guns [was] poured right onto our very faces, singeing our hair and clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and mouths, and the awful concussion causing the blood to gush our of our noses and ears, and above all, the roar of battle, made it a perfect pandemonium. Afterward I heard a soldier express himself by saying that he thought ‘Hell had broke loose in Georgia, sure enough’ (Watkins 1882 [1987], p. 157).
On the whole, however, soldiers were hesitant to recount the gritty details of war and hardship with their relatives and friends back home. Survivors of these orgies of bloodletting often could not help but comment on the hellish tableaus that prevailed after the rifles and cannons finally fell silent. One soldier at the Battle of Chancellorsville wrote that [O]ur line of battle extended over some eight miles and for that distance you see the dead bodies of the enemy lying in every direction, some with their heads shot off, some with their brains oozing out, some pierced through the head with musket balls, some with their noses shot away, some with their mouths smashed, some wounded in the neck, some with broken arms or legs, some shot through the breast and some cut in two with shells (Linderman 1987, p. 125).
Army surgeons offered similarly bleak perspectives in their journals and letters. ‘‘Oh! It is awful,’’ wrote one field surgeon. ‘‘It does not seem as though I could take a knife in my hand to-day, yet there are a hundred cases of amputation waiting for me. Poor fellows come and beg almost on their knees for the first chance to have an arm taken off. It is a scene of horror such as I never saw’’ (Bowen 1884, p. 304).
Brothers in Arms Soldiers also wrote at length about the officers who commanded them. Some passages sang the praises of captains who were brave, knowledgeable, and attentive to the needs of the men under their commands. At times, however, the lines written about officers dripped with anger and disillusionment. Special bitterness was reserved for those officers who did not share in the hardships experienced by common soldiers. One Confederate soldier, for example, griped that his regimental commanders had their black cooks, who were out foraging all the time, and they filled their masters’ bellies if there was fish or fowl to be had. The regimental wagons carried the officers’ clothes, and they were never half-naked, lousy, or dirty. They never had to sleep upon the bare ground nor carry forty
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Diaries and Letters from Soldiers
Northern soldiers at Potomac during respite. In letters to family and personal journals, soldiers often used their limited free time to record their thoughts about the war, their memories of home, and their hopes about the future. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
rounds of cartridges strapped around their galled hips; the officers were never unshod or felt the torture of stone-bruise’’ (Hunter 1905, p. 517).
A far different tone prevailed when Union and Confederate soldiers wrote about their fellow enlisted men, however. These descriptions of comrades-in-arms were usually littered with references to brotherhood, shared sacrifice, and mutual respect. After the epic Seven Days battles, for example, a private from the 83rd Pennsylvania—which suffered 75 percent casualties—wrote that ‘‘it seems strange how much the rest of our company has become united since the battles. They are almost like brothers in one family now. We used to have the ‘aristocratic tent’ and ‘tent of the upper ten,’ and so on, but there is nothing of that kind now. We have all lost dear friends and common sorrow makes us all equal’’ (McPherson 1997, p. 87).
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Letters and journals also provide ample evidence that fraternization between armies was not uncommon, at least in some theatres, especially in the latter stages of the Civil War. After a friendly meeting between the troops near Kenesaw Mountain in 1864, a member of Sherman’s army in a letter to his parents remarked: We made a bargain with them that we would not fire on them if they would not fire on us, and they were as good as their word. It seems too bad that we have to fight men that we like. Now these Southern soldiers seem just like our own boys . . . They talk about . . . their mothers and fathers and their sweethearts just as we do. . . .Both sides did a lot of talking but there was no shooting until I came off duty in the morning. (Wiley 1943 [1992], p. 356)
A final subject that was frequently discussed was the character of the people and land that came under
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occupation. Yankee troops were convinced of the superior industry and culture of the North, and when they traveled through the South they searched for evidence to support that notion. Their letters described, at length, the Southern climate, agriculture, housing, cities, and civic populations, both white and black (Mitchell 1988, p. 90). One of the recurring topics in their narratives of Southern life was evidence of the depravity of slavery. Not surprisingly, soldiers from rural areas of the North who had little experience with blacks also wrote at length about their impressions of the blacks they encountered. Many of these letters and diaries exhibited little sympathy for Southerners and the difficult conditions in which they existed during the last years of the war. Union soldiers saw the straits in which Southerners found themselves as a fitting punishment for their rebellion. But empathy for hungry Southern civilians could still be found in some letters and journals. ‘‘All I pity are the little children,’’ wrote one New York soldier stationed in Virginia in December 1864. ‘‘They look up so sad with so much astonishment wondering, I presume, why we are all armed, filling their little hearts with terror, & why they are all so destitute & why Papa is not at home attending to their wants in this bleak, cold winter weather. Poor children! They know not they are suffering the curse of treason’’ (Mitchell 1988, p. 117).
Mail Call Civil War soldiers also treasured letters they received from wives, children, parents, and friends. ‘‘For soldiers in the field,’’ observed one historian, ‘‘an unreliable postal service was the only link to home. When mail did get through, each letter was treated almost as a sacred relic. . . . If soldiers felt great joy on receiving a cherished letter, they also experienced deep depression when no word came’’ (Williams 2005, p. 239–40). Indeed, one Confederate soldier reported that ‘‘those who received letters went off with radiant countenances. If it was night, each built a fire for light and, sitting down on the ground, read his letter over and over. Those unfortunates who got none went off looking as if they had not a friend on earth’’ (Worsham 1912, p. 98). Mail call became more psychologically important as the war progressed as well. As memories of home and loved ones became hazier with time, tangible evidence that people back home still had the weary soldiers in their thoughts was crucial to shoring up morale. As one Union soldier bluntly stated in a letter to his sister, ‘‘I had rather have letters now than clothes’’ (Gordon 2002, p. 328). But just as messages of love sent spirits soaring, tales of woe—usually in the form of financial hardship—eroded the spirits of soldiers whose psyches were already frayed by war and its many discomforts and brutalities.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ballou, Adin. An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America. Providence, RI: Ariel Ballou and Latimer Ballou, 1888. Bowen, James Lorenzo. History of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, Mass., Volunteers in the Civil War of 1861–1865. Holyoke, MA: Clark W. Bryan & Company Publishers, 1884. Brewster, Charles Harvey. When This Cruel War Is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster, ed. David W. Blight. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Gordon, Lesley J. ‘‘ ‘Surely They Remember Me’: The 16th Connecticut in War, Captivity, and Public Memory.’’ In Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments, ed. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. Harvey Black to Mary (Mollie) Black, November 1 1863. ‘‘My Precious Loulie. . .’’: Love Letters of the Civil War. Virginia Tech University Digital Library and Archives. Available from http://spec.lib.vt. edu/. Hunter, Alexander. Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1905. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Reid, Jesse Walton. History of the Fourth Regiment of S.C. Volunteers from the Commencement of the War until Lee’s Surrender. Washington, DC: Jesse Walton Reid, 1892. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Watkins, Sam R. ‘‘Co. Aytch’’: Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment. Nashville, TN: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1882. Reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot, 1987. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
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Furloughs
Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Williams, James M. From That Terrible Field: Civil War Letters of James M. Williams, Twenty-First Alabama Infantry Volunteers, ed. John Kent Folmar. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1981. Worsham, John H. One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry: His Experience and What He Saw during the War, 1861–1865. New York: Neale Publishing, 1912. Kevin Hillstrom
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Furloughs
Furloughs were formal leaves from military service granted to enlisted men from the Union or Confederate armies. These furloughs, whether bestowed on Yankee or Rebel soldiers, could only be granted by commanding officers attached to the soldier’s company or regiment. Military officers also could apply for furloughs, but the rules that applied were often at least nominally different, and officer furloughs were more commonly called ‘‘leaves.’’
How the Furlough Programs Worked Furlough requests in both the Northern and Southern armies were torturous affairs. Requests were subject to approval from a long list of offices, and it could take months to receive a definitive answer. Moreover, this long wait often ended in disappointment, with the request refused. Perhaps inevitably, the seeming capriciousness of commanders in determining who would and would not receive furloughs led to conspiracy theories among the rank and file. ‘‘There always seemed to be grounds for finding partiality in cases where furloughs were granted, and these were seized upon and magnified by those who were disappointed,’’ wrote one scholar in describing the prevailing sentiments in Confederate units. ‘‘Married men complained that single comrades were preferred, and vice versa; poor men were convinced that wealthy men were favored, privates grumbled that officers received a disproportionate share of leaves’’ (Wiley 1992, p. 139). Soldiers who did receive furloughs typically received leave of several weeks, in part to accommodate the extensive travel time that was often required simply to get to and from home. Men on furlough were required to leave government-issued firearms and other equipment behind. They were also required to carry army documents that provided beginning and ending dates for the furlough, detailed description of the furloughed soldier’s physical appearance and unit affiliation, and a record of pay and subsistence allowances furnished. Furlough papers clearly warned soldiers that failure to return
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to military service by the date specified would result in their classification as a deserter.
Anger and Dismay As the Civil War progressed, both armies used promises of generous furloughs to encourage reenlistment. Entire Union regiments, for example, were offered ‘‘veteran’s furloughs’’ if they reenlisted. This inducement had its desired effect, for it gave veterans a means by which they could simultaneously remain committed to military duties and check on family and property back home. Some soldiers who took these veteran’s furloughs, however, found it difficult to depart again from home once they were back in the loving arms of family. Another problem was that the armies broke their furlough promises to some soldiers. As the war progressed and Union forces moved deeper into Southern territory, Federal commanders increasingly turned down furlough requests on the grounds that the soldiers were too far from home to make furloughs practical. In the Confederate Army, meanwhile, troop shortages and military setbacks in various theatres of operation made it increasingly difficult for soldiers to coax furlough approvals from commanders. This in turn created significant morale problems in many Rebel units. As Confederate General Daniel H. Hill (1821–1889) opined, ‘‘If our brave soldiers are not permitted to visit their homes, the next generation in the South will be composed of the descendants of skulkers and cowards’’ (quoted in Robertson 1984, p. 55). Military authorities in both the North and South had a ready assortment of responses to these complaints. When they denied furloughs that had been previously promised in return for reenlistment (or for procuring recruits or returning deserters to their units), they patiently explained that rising desertion rates and the evolving military situation made it impossible for them to make good on their promises. In the face of this disappointment, thousands of soldiers simply went home anyhow. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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Prisons and Prisoners of War: An Overview
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Prisons and Prisoners of War PRISONS AND PRISONERS OF WAR : AN OVERVIEW
Kevin Hillstrom LIVING AS A PRISONER OF WAR
Kevin Hillstrom AFRICAN AMERICAN PRISONERS OF WAR
Kevin Hillstrom PRISONER EXCHANGE AND PAROLE
Robbie C. Smith
PRISONS AND PRISONERS OF WAR: AN OVERVIEW The history of the American Civil War is rife with examples of hardship and pain, but perhaps nowhere were conditions harsher than in the prisoner-of-war camps that dotted the interiors of both the North and South during the final two years of the conflict. Some of these prisons managed to provide enough food and shelter to sustain the physical health of their populations for the war’s duration. Many others, however, became notorious for their squalid living conditions and meager rations. In the worst cases—such as at the Andersonville facility in Georgia and the Elmira camp in New York— Civil War prison camps became incubators of disease, centers of malnutrition or outright starvation, and warrens of treachery, thievery, and brutality.
Paroles and Exchanges In the early stages of the Civil War, feeding and sheltering captured enemy soldiers did not constitute a heavy burden for either the Federal or Confederate government. Large battles occurred infrequently compared to later years, which served to limit the number of prisoners. In addition, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s initial refusal to authorize prisoner exchanges—a stance that stemmed from his belief that such negotiations might give the Confederacy a veneer of legitimacy as a distinct nation and erode Washington’s efforts to frame the secessionists as a collection of treasonous agitators within an already established sovereign state—field commanders frequently arranged informal prisoner exchanges. Canny administrators on both sides of the conflict welcomed this approach, for they recognized that both the North and South were ill-equipped to handle large numbers of prisoners. In the summer of 1862 the North and South agreed to a formal parole arrangement for prisoners of war. Under this agreement, prisoners were traded on a onefor-one basis, while officers were traded in accordance with equations that took varying ranks into consideration. ‘‘Leftover’’ soldiers were paroled—that is, they were released with the understanding that they would
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not take up arms again until they were figured into the mathematics of some future prisoner exchange. Once paroled, soldiers went home or reported to parole camps operated and maintained by their own governments until they were formally ‘‘exchanged.’’ This system was mutually beneficial, though to function it required that each side had confidence the other would act in good faith. The parole system was not without its problems, however. The main complaint leveled by military commanders was that many soldiers on parole—which in many ways was a sort of administrative limbo—came to feel as if they were not really in the army anymore. Not surprisingly, then, the prevailing environment in parole camps was often undisciplined and characterized by inattention to military decorum. In addition, some paroled men simply wandered off to nearby towns that promised more recreational opportunities than the spartan accommodations of camp could provide. Paroled prisoners who returned home were even more difficult to round up, even though they were still technically members of the military and subject to its orders. It was extremely difficult for many of these men to uproot themselves from the comforts and routines of home and return to a military life that, in most cases, no longer seemed nearly as romantic or glorious as it had back in the heady weeks after Fort Sumter.
Expanding Prison Systems Despite its various imperfections, this state of affairs kept the prisoner-of-war populations low in both the North and South, and it ensured that most soldiers who were captured only had to spend a matter of days or weeks in enemy hands before they were exchanged or paroled. Events in 1863 and early 1864, though, shattered this arrangement beyond repair and ushered in grim new methodologies for dealing with prisoner populations that exploded in size in a matter of months. The first major blow to the parole system came in 1863, when the administration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis threatened to take all captured black soldiers from the Union Army and place them into slavery in the factories and fields of the South. The administration further declared that it was considering executing captured white officers from black regiments for fomenting ‘‘servile insurrection.’’ Finally, the government in Richmond announced that it would not include black Union troops in future prisoner exchanges. This stand was unacceptable to Lincoln, and it constituted the first major rupture in the parole system. A second blow to the system came when the South unilaterally—and falsely—claimed that some of its parolees had been exchanged and were thus eligible to return to military service. This brazen move, which stemmed from the Confederacy’s increasingly desperate need for men to replenish its dwindling military ranks, led the
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Prisons and Prisoners of War: An Overview
Andersonville Prison, Georgia. Perhaps the most notorious prisoner of war camp in the Confederacy, Andersonville became the final resting spot for thousands of Union soldiers who died there. Lack of food, clean water, and medical care created conditions that killed more than one hundred men per day. The Library of Congress.
Union to further curtail its participation in the exchange and parole programs. It was at this time that both the North and South began hurriedly converting military barracks, forts, and tobacco warehouses into prisonerof-war camps to house the growing number of captured troops. Finally, Ulysses S. Grant’s promotion to commander of all Union forces in March 1864 marked a complete end to the prisoner-exchange programs that had worked so well during the first two years of the war. Grant knew that by the spring of 1864 the South was suffering from increasingly acute shortages of manpower, and that his army enjoyed clear and growing numerical superiority over the enemy. Grant held firm to the Union decision not to exchange only white soldiers, abandoning their black comrades to slavery.
Filling Up the Prisons When the parole system fell apart, the number of prisoners of war in both armies accelerated rapidly. Captured soldiers typically spent their first hours of captivity knotted together in crowded holding pens or in places that could easily be converted into temporary corrals, such as
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gullies. After officers recorded their names, ranks, and unit affiliation, provost marshals sent captured prisoners off to various prison facilities. Some fortunate prisoners were delivered to the gates of their prisons by train or boat, but most captured soldiers had to endure long marches on foot to reach their destination. By the end of the war, virtually all prisoners—especially Union prisoners of the Confederate military, which was squeezing every last bit of logistical support out of its unraveling transportation network—had to travel by foot to prison. Captured officers generally received far better treatment than enlisted men. Union and Confederate prison authorities sometimes found space in their own quarters for captured officers, and the rations captured officers received was often a cut above the fare given rank-andfile prisoners. Other officers, however, found themselves in the general prisoner-of-war population, and shared facilities that were crowded, filthy, and disease-ridden. All told, approximately 195,000 Federal soldiers were subjected to imprisonment in wartime, while about 215,000 Confederate troops were captured and imprisoned over the course of the war. According to official reports, of these more than 400,000 prisoners, approximately 56,000
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died in captivity. The mortality rate in Union prisons was about 12 percent, while the rate in Confederate prisons reached almost 16 percent. These shockingly high mortality rates stemmed from prison conditions that were, more often than not, perilous and dehumanizing.
‘‘Hell on Earth’’ Malnutrition and hunger were typical of many of the Civil War prison camps. Food allocations were meager to begin with, and withholding rations emerged as a common means of reining in or otherwise modifying the behavior of prisoners. Tales of malnutrition or starvation in enemy prison camps also prompted some reductions in food rations. Shelters, blankets, stoves, and other resources offering protection from the elements were also in short supply at many prison installations. This was particularly problematic in the North, where many Rebel prisoners endured long, cold winters in threadbare tents and tattered clothing. Sanitary conditions were notoriously poor in many prison camps in both the North and South as well, with many captives forced to drink, bathe, and dispose of human waste in the same areas—sometimes using the same water source. Medical care at these facilities ranged from poor to barbaric. One of the worst of the Civil War camps was Andersonville in southern Georgia. Historian William C. Davis described a typical scene at the hospital there thusly: ‘‘Stewards cleaned wounds with dirty water poured on them, forming pools on the ground where insects bred in the moist filth. Inevitably, millions of flies swarmed over the helpless patients, relentlessly laying eggs in their open wounds and sores. Scores of men went mad from the pain of maggots eating their way through their inflamed flesh’’ (Davis 1991, p. 176). All of these forces—hunger, crowded and unsanitary conditions, exposure to the elements, vulnerability to disease and depression—combined to make the prison camps horrible places. Little wonder, then, that numerous accounts of prisoner of war experiences, whether penned by Confederate or Union soldiers, describe Civil War prison camp environments as literal ‘‘hells on earth.’’
The Worst of the Prison Camps Andersonville Prison, mentioned above, was the most notorious of all the Civil War prison camps. This sixteen-acre tract in southwestern Georgia, composed of open fields and swamps, housed approximately 41,000 Union prisoners during the war. Of that number, 12,000 to 15,000 perished inside Andersonville’s fences. In August 1864, 100 prisoners per day were dying in that nightmarish stockade. At the end of the war, Andersonville’s superintendent, Henry Wirz, became the only
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ANDERSONVILLE PRISON The Confederate prison of Andersonville, Georgia, became one of the most notorious during the Civil War. Prisoners faced untold hardships: lack of rations, disease (dysentery was widespread due contaminated water), brutal guards, and hostile fellow inmates. In his 1865 book Life-struggles in Rebel Prisons: A Record of the Sufferings, Escapes, Adventures and Starvation of the Union prisoners, Joseph Ferguson describes the architecture of the prison and life within its walls for the prisoners: The Andersonville prison was created for enlisted men, and only a few officers were taken to this pen, who were recaptured after escape, or who desired to pass for privates, believing they would have a better opportunity among so many to get away from the rebels. The pen was about two hundred yards long, and one hundred wide. Some thirty-five thousand human beings were huddled together in this small space. It was a mean-looking stockade, about seventeen feet high, the posts being sunk into the ground some four or five feet. The ground selected was on the side of a hill, part of it being a marsh... the position selected was such an [sic] one as fiends would pick out to accomplish dark crime of which the cruel keeper of Andersonville stands charged. In the enclosure there were no tents, huts, barracks or houses, to protect the inmates from the scorching rays of tropic sun of a Southern summer, or the cold and biting frost of a dreary winter. As prisoners came to the pen they were robbed of their clothing, blankets, shelter-tents, shoes, and even shirts. They were deprived of everything... and then put into the slaughter house to run around like lost sheep (pp. 75–76). CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
SOURCE: Ferguson, Joseph. Life-struggles in Rebel Prisons: A Record of the Sufferings, Escapes, Adventures and Starvation of the Union Prisoners. Philadelphia, PA: J. M. Ferguson, 1865. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/.
Confederate to be tried and executed by the Federal government for war crimes. Andersonville was by no means the only death trap maintained by Southern authorities, however. The mortality rate among prisoners at a Confederate stockade in Salisbury, North Carolina, in fact, was higher than that at Andersonville, according to historian Robert Eberly (Eberly 1999). Several of the Union camps, meanwhile, were nearly as deadly as the infamous Andersonville. Places such as Camp Randall (in Wisconsin) and Camp Douglas (in Illinois) claimed thousands of soldiers’ lives. But even these awful places paled next to Camp Elmira in upstate
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Prisons and Prisoners of War: An Overview
During the early stages of the Civil War, enemy soldiers captured on the battlefield were frequently paroled and allowed to return home on the condition that they would not take up arms for the remainder of the conflict. The Library of Confederate prisoners of war. Congress
New York. At Elmira, nearly 800 of the 8,400 prisoners housed there died of disease within three months of their arrival, in large part because the river that flowed through the grounds quickly became fouled. All told, the death rate at Elmira, where the prison population was subjected to freezing winters, reached 24 percent (Williams 2005, p. 239). Attempts to escape these horrible camps were launched by both Union and Confederate soldiers, but most of these desperate bids for freedom failed. Many would-be escapees were unable to get beyond the fences, and most of those who did make it out by using underground tunnels or other means were tracked down by bloodhounds and rifle-wielding guards. Over the course of the war, though, a few hundred clever and intrepid prisoners did succeed in their escape attempts. Most of these successful escapes from prison camp horrors were carried out by individuals or small groups of two to three, not by large groups of prisoners. When these fortunate individuals passed through enemy lines to safety, their accounts of inhuman conditions and brutal guards were seized on as propaganda tools by both sides. On the whole, though, few Civil War prisoners ever mounted escape attempts, as most were too worn down physically and mentally to conceive of or carry out viable plans.
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The Final Months In early 1865 Grant and the Federal authorities finally relented and resurrected the prisoner-exchange policies that had kept prisoner-of-war numbers down during the first half of the war. By this time, however, advancing Union troops were already seizing control of large swaths of the Southern countryside—including the stockades contained therein. By March, many Confederate units had abandoned any pretense of holding on to enemy prisoners. Instead, Rebel commanders simply paroled them and sent them on their way. Around that same time, desperate lawmakers in Richmond authorized the recruitment of 300,000 slaves and promised full emancipation of slaves after the war if the British and French governments would give the tottering Confederacy diplomatic recognition. But these measures did nothing to stem the tide of Union military victories washing over the South. By the time Confederate General Robert E. Lee finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in Virginia on April 9, 1865, military prisons across both the North and South were preparing to release their long-suffering inmates. Historians frequently cite the prison camps of the Civil War as one of the conflict’s darkest elements. But most scholars agree that the devastating death toll in
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these facilities was not rooted in human malevolence or even indifference to the plight of those unfortunate enough to wait out the war’s final months or years in captivity. In most cases, it was simply that each side felt compelled to channel the bulk of its scarce resources to its own fighting men, leaving very little for prisoners of war. ‘‘With very few exceptions, like perhaps Wirz at Andersonville, the men in charge of the camps did the best they could,’’ wrote historian Bruce Catton. ‘‘The big trouble was that in North and South alike, as far as the authorities were concerned, the prison camps came last. They got what was left over when all of the other needs had been met. They were last on the line for food supplies, for medical supplies, for doctors, for housing, for clothing, for guards, for all of the things that are needed to run a prison camp. . . . The prisoner of war got the dirty end of the stick not because anybody wanted to mistreat him, but simply because it worked out that way’’ (Catton 1981, p. 69). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Michael, and Larry M. Logue, eds. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Catton, Bruce. ‘‘Prison Camps of the Civil War.’’ American Heritage 10, no. 5 (1959): 4–13. Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, rev. ed. Ed. James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Eberly, Robert E., Jr. ‘‘Prison Town.’’ Civil War Times Illustrated 38 (March 1999): 30–33. Hesseltine, William Best. Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology. New York: F. Ungar, 1964. Horigan, Michael. Elmira: Death Camp of the North. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Mitchell, Reid. ‘‘Our Prison System: Supposing We Had Any: The Confederate and Union Prison Systems.’’ In On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, ed. Stig Fo ¨ rster and Jo ¨ rg Nagler. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997.
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Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
LIVING AS A PRISONER OF WAR More than 400,000 Civil War soldiers spent at least part of the conflict as prisoners of war. Tens of thousands more were paroled after capture and thus evaded prison; these soldiers—most of them captured during the opening months of the war—were the fortunate ones, for the men who were captured in the last two and a half years of the conflict endured many challenges to both body and soul. In fact, parole was fairly common up through the surrender of Vicksburg in 1863, in which 30,000 Confederates prisoners were paroled. The average soldier, from either the North or South, headed off to war with a host of new hopes and fears for his new military duties, but left home without the faintest conception of the nightmarish trials that would await him if captured and held captive by his enemies.
Days of Crushing Boredom One of the most difficult if mundane aspects of being a prisoner of war during the Civil War was the utter lack of military or recreational activities to help pass the time. The crowded prisons in both the North and South offered no diversions of any kind for prisoners, and countless men spent their days shuffling or sitting and thinking about the bitter and miserable turn that their lives had taken. As one Union soldier wrote of his stint in a Confederate prison in South Carolina, many of his fellow prisoners sat ‘‘moping for hours with a look of utter dejection, their elbow upon their knee, and their chin resting upon their hand, their eyes having a vacant, faraway look’’ (Cooper 1888, p. 267). Thoughts of delicious food and loved ones back home seeped into every waking moment, and with nothing to take their minds off such torturous subjects, many soldiers struggled with profound depression. Soldiers who could read and write sought some relief from the tedium through letter writing, but shortages of paper limited this option, and censorship by authorities was so heavy-handed that many letters were rendered senseless by blacked-out marks or scissor cuts. The uncertainties of wartime mail delivery further contributed to the anxiety of prisoners desperate for even a moment of relief from the dark environment that enveloped them. ‘‘Will no one send a little word to cheer us in our gloomy hours of activity?’’ wailed one Southern prisoner. ‘‘Oh, God! How dreadful are these bitter feelings of hope deferred. Thus we linger, thus we drag the slow, tedious hours of prison life’’ (Clark 1901, p. 677). Religious services also helped pass the time for some soldiers and gave many religiously inclined soldiers a
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With supplies limited by fighting, troops on the battlefront received priority over prisoners of war. Consequently, men held in enemy stockades suffered from scarce amounts of food, clothing, and medicine, with many of them dying from disease and starvation rather than battle-related injuries. Photograph by James E. Taylor. The Library of Congress. Florence Military Prison.
badly needed spiritual boost. An even greater number of imprisoned soldiers passed the time in conversation. These conversations—sometimes desultory, other times passionate—ranged over every conceivable subject, from the prewar lives that they had left behind to the character of fellow prisoners. But perhaps no topic preoccupied the soldiers as much as the question of when and under what circumstances their deliverance might come. Not surprisingly, then, newly arrived prisoners were barraged with requests for information about the progress of the war, and the prospects for a prisoner exchange.
Battling Hunger and Disease Civil War prisoners from both the Union and Confederate ranks often found their worst suspicions about the other side confirmed once they were in the clutches of the enemy. In reality, however, the mistreatment and hardships that prisoners of war endured stemmed less from sanctioned policies of brutality than from individual acts of cruelty and, most pertinently, coldly logical decisions on the parts of the Federal and Confederate
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governments to divert the bulk of their limited resources to the armies still operating out in the field. Food rations in virtually all stockades were insufficient to stave off at least mild malnutrition, and scurvy and other diet-related maladies became epidemic. In some prisons, however, food rations were so meager that outright starvation was a genuine possibility for some soldiers. Ghastly levels of emaciation prevailed in these places, and the intellectual, emotional, and physical health of countless men became eroded or shattered by what they endured in these hopeless locales. Starvation was a particular risk for prisoners who had neither the physical strength nor allies to keep their rations from predatory men with whom they were incarcerated, but in some prisons starvation threatened virtually the entire population. Hunger led captives to take desperate measures: Many captives supplemented their diet with anything in the form of nutrition they could get their hands on, cats and dogs included. Some were strays, but others were pets of the guards or officers. . . . To be caught eating someone’s pet could
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Living as a Prisoner of War result in severe punishment, so rats were more often the targets of hungry soldiers. Besides, they were much more abundant. (Williams 2005, p. 238)
The plight of Confederate prisoners of war was worsened by the fact that the Union commissary general of prisoners was Colonel William Hoffman (1807– 1884). A bureaucrat with little regard for the welfare of the prisoners in his charge, Hoffman ordered a succession of cold-hearted measures during the course of the war. These ranged from dramatic reductions in rations in retaliation for reports of similar reductions in Southern prisons (which had far fewer resources to begin with) to burning packages of blankets and clothing sent to inmates at Elmira by loved ones (Hoffman reportedly only allowed clothing and blankets that were gray to be used by the inmates at Elmira, one of the coldest locations in the entire Union prison system). Even Hoffman’s reduced rations were more generous than what Union soldiers received in most Confederate prisons, especially Andersonville. At war’s end, Hoffman proudly returned to the Federal Treasury nearly $2 million he had saved through reductions in the rations given to Confederate prisoners. In both Northern and Southern prisons, clean water was in short supply. Water used for drinking and washing was taken from streams and wells fouled by human waste. Given the circumstances, all stockades inevitably deteriorated into squalid pits. Maintaining a reasonable level of personal hygiene was impossible, and the stench of sweat and human waste hung over every prison. Clouds of fleas, mosquitoes, biting flies, and other insects tortured countless men during the summertime, and during the winter Southerners in particular struggled with the crushing cold. One Confederate prisoner, for example, recalled that the camp where he was imprisoned allotted only one stove per barracks, even though the barracks was crammed with 200 or more prisoners. Every morning, remembered the soldier, ‘‘the men crawled out of their bunks shivering and half frozen, when a scuffle, and frequently a fight, for a place by the fire occurred. God help the sick or the weak, as they were literally left out in the cold.’’(Robertson 1984, pp. 128–129)
Preyed on by Comrades Thievery, assaults, and intimidation among prisoners were unfortunate realities in the inmate populations of many Civil War prisons. These dark events played out on a routine basis in many stockades in both the North and South, but the most grimly spectacular example of this sort of in-fighting took place at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. Conditions there were so awful that normal rules of civilized behavior and military brotherhood fell by the wayside. Survivors recalled that the daily food allotment at Andersonville generally con-
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HARD LIVING William Harris, a Yankee soldier who was imprisoned during the Civil War details his captivity in his 1862 book Prison-life in the Tobacco Warehouse at Richmond. His sufferings focus on the day-to-day injustices and hardships. Here he describes the exorbitantly inflated prices for food, which soldiers had to pay to supplement their meager rations: The Confederate government furnishes the rations of bread and beef, with salt and brown soap. All other articles of food are provided by the prisoners, at the following prices:—Tea, $4 per pound; coffee $1 per pound; brown sugar, 20 cents; butter, 60 cents; potatoes, $2 per bushel; molasses, $1.25 per gallon. The cost of extra rations, which are confined to the foregoing articles, averages $2.50 per week for each officer. (p. 23) At other times, however, Harris’s account turns toward the emotionally crushing realities of captivity. Aside from the physical pangs of empty stomachs and exposure, boredom and depression wore on the prisoners, who dreamed of being reunited with their loved ones: The avidity with which each man gnawed his crust was ample evidence of his hunger. But a few moments elapsed before we received our allowance of boiled beef without salt; yet the bread by this time, in many cases, was all devoured. Breakfast being over ... [the prisoners] seated themselves on our only chair (the floor) and engaged in an exciting game of ‘‘penny poker’’; others pitched pennies, played euchre, draughts, etc. But the main portion would for a while gaze at the capital of Rebeldom, and then, taking the floor for a stool, sit like ‘‘Patience on a monument, smiling at grief.’’ In retired spots could be seen the more thoughtful, perusing with manifest delight a Bible or Testament, rendered doubly sacred by being the last token of the affection of a doting parent or loving sister ... it is here that we feel the loss of home comforts, our jovial associates, and all we once held dear. (pp. 58–59) CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
SOURCE: Harris, William C. Prison-life in the Tobacco Warehouse at Richmond. Philadelphia, PA: G. W. Childs, 1862. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/.
sisted of three tablespoons of beans, a teaspoon of salt, and half a pint of unsifted cornmeal. A Confederate doctor who worked at Andersonville, meanwhile, reported that ‘‘from the crowded conditions, filthy habits, bad diet, and dejected, depressed condition of the prisoners, their systems had become so disordered that the smallest abrasion of the skin, from the rubbing of a shoe, or from the effects of the sun, the prick of a
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African American Prisoners of War
splinter or the scratching of a mosquito bite, in some cases took on a rapid and frightful ulceration and gangrene’’ (Davis 1991, p. 176). The deterioration of conditions at Andersonville became so great that even the most partisan Southerners began to feel as if they were party to a great moral wrong. As one woman from the Andersonville area admitted, ‘‘My heart aches for these poor wretches, Yankees though they are, and I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting such things happen’’ (Williams 2005, p. 238).
Meeting the Enemy One of the less remarked-upon aspects of the Civil War prison camps was that the capture and incarceration of prisoners afforded soldiers with opportunities to meet and size up the enemy face-to-face. Reactions to captives and their circumstances ran the gamut of human emotions. Some Yankee and Rebel soldiers gloried in seeing the enemy humiliated and helpless. Many others recognized the similarities between themselves and the captured men before them, and their interactions were suffused with empathy for their plight. Surviving journals and letters from the war, for example, indicate that the tattered and shoeless appearance of Confederate captives in the last years of the war made a particularly deep impression on Union soldiers. Prisoners who became acquainted with guards, meanwhile, sometimes fell prey to the temptation to befriend the enemy, thus risking retribution from fellow prisoners. This temptation was particularly great for conscripts and other prisoners who had not entered the war with enthusiasm. But it also bedeviled veteran Confederate prisoners, especially during the last months of the war when Southern defeat looked inevitable. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Michael, and Larry M. Logue, eds. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Clark, Walter, ed. Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, in the Great War 1861–’65. Goldsboro, NC: Nash Brothers, 1901. Cooper, Alonzo. In and Out of Rebel Prisons. Oswego, NY, 1888. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Donald, David Herbert, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt. The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Eberly, Robert E., Jr. ‘‘Prison Town.’’ Civil War Times Illustrated 38 (March 1999): 30–33.
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Hesseltine, William Best. Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology. New York: F. Ungar, 1964. Horigan, Michael. Elmira: Death Camp of the North. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Mitchell, Reid. ‘‘Our Prison System: Supposing We Had Any: The Confederate and Union Prison Systems.’’ In On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, ed. Stig Fo¨rster and Jorg Nagler. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Robertson, James I., Jr., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Tenting Tonight: The Soldier’s Life. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
AFRICAN AMERICAN PRISONERS OF WAR When the Civil War erupted in the spring of 1861, thousands of African American men in the North asked to take up arms as part of the Union Army. They did so in part because of their hatred of the Confederacy and its allegiance to the ‘‘peculiar institution’’ of slavery, and in part because they believed that proving their mettle on the battlefield would advance their quest to gain American citizenship. It was not until July 1862, however, that the U.S. Congress passed legislation that permitted black men to serve as soldiers in the Union Army. This legislation specified that all-black units were to be led by white officers. The entrance of black soldiers into the conflict was a great boon to the Union war effort, but Southern reaction to this development triggered a series of events that greatly increased the number of prisoners of war held by both sides. Prior to the summer of 1862, North and South had cobbled together a prisoner exchange and parole system that, despite some flaws, kept prisoner numbers relatively low. But the Confederacy flatly refused to even consider exchanging captured black soldiers. Instead, the administration of Jefferson Davis threatened to enslave captured blacks and execute their white officers. President Abraham Lincoln responded by vowing to reciprocate in kind: For every white officer the South executed, the North would execute a Confederate prisoner; for every black soldier reenslaved, the North
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Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877). Confederate cavalrymen, led by Nathan Bedford Forrest, later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, killing unarmed black Union soldiers after the surrender of Fort Pillow in Tennessee, August 12, 1864. MPI/Hulton Archives/Getty Images.
would assign one of its prisoners hard labor. Federal authorities also suspended Union participation in the exchange system until the Confederacy agreed to exchange black soldiers. This deadlock produced a tremendous upsurge in the number of prisoners held by both sides.
New Heights of Fury Official Confederate policy called for captured black Union soldiers to be incarcerated and prepared for eventual enslavement in Southern fields or factories. Many Confederate officers in the field, though, encouraged the men under their command to kill all black soldiers who came in their sight, even if they were wounded or attempting to surrender. Some Rebel soldiers objected to these instructions on moral grounds, but others reveled in brutalizing their black foes. In a few cases, outright massacres of captured black soldiers took place. The most infamous of these events occurred at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864. On this day, Rebel soldiers under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) killed nearly 300 black Union troops— including dozens who had reportedly surrendered. For black Union soldiers who were thrown into Southern stockades, conditions were so bleak that some lamented not dying on the battlefield. Life for all prisoners of war was marked by pain, hunger, and feelings of
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hopelessness, but for black prisoners conditions were particularly harsh. ‘‘We were kept at hard labor and inhumanely treated,’’ recalled one black Unionist. ‘‘If we lagged or faltered or misunderstood an order we were whipped and abused. . . . For the slightest causes we were subjected to the lash [and] we were very poorly provided for with food’’ (Speer 1997, p. 113). Medical treatment for black prisoners was virtually nonexistent as well, and the shelter they received was frequently even more negligible than that provided to white prisoners. All told, blacks held in Confederate prison camps died at a rate of 35 percent, more than twice the average for white captives (Speer 1997, p. 113). Black prisoners also sometimes endured the indignity of mistreatment at the hands of white inmates. Hostility to black soldiers stemmed partly from bigotry, but it also was rooted in the knowledge that the prisoner exchange system had fallen apart as a direct result of the introduction of black soldiers into the conflict. Other white Yankee prisoners, however, firmly supported the Lincoln administration’s decision to refuse exchanges until Richmond agreed to include black prisoners in such trades. ‘‘Anyone, whatever may be his color, who wears the blue of Uncle Sam is entitled to protection,’’ wrote one captain imprisoned in a Georgia stockade (Mitchell 1988, p. 49).
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Prisoner Exchange and Parole BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cimprich, John, and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., eds. ‘‘Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence about an Old Controversy.’’ Civil War History 28, no. 4 (1982): 293–306. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: Free Press, 1990. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997. Kevin Hillstrom
PRISONER EXCHANGE AND PAROLE Conflict on the scale experienced during the Civil War found North and South alike ill-prepared. The magnitude of the war’s repercussions were exposed dramatically in the administration of captured combatants. Hurriedly improvised measures to accommodate an unforeseen number of prisoners resulted in appalling living conditions. Civil War prisons have become synonymous with deprivation, hardship, and a lack of the basic necessities to sustain life: food, clothing, hygiene, and shelter. Stephen Minot Weld, a Union officer captured during the Seven Days campaign, described the rations served in Richmond’s Libby Prison: ‘‘The only food furnished us was sour bread, meat, and salt, and at times a little vinegar. The meat was made into greasy soup, entirely unfit for a human being’s stomach. If we had not had some money, we should have starved’’ (Weld 1979 [1912], p. 126). The menu available to Confederate prisoners was little, if any, better. Confederate Captain John Dooley, held captive in the Federal prison at Johnson’s island in Ohio relates, ‘‘many go to the slop barrels and garbage piles to gather from the refuse a handful of revolting food’’ (Dooley 1945, p. 165). In some instances, in both Union and Confederate prisons, the captives were treated to slightly better fare. Ambrose Spencer lived near Andersonville, the Confederate prison in Georgia. He penned an account of conditions faced there by Union prisoners. Making mention of the victuals, Spencer observed, ‘‘the rations for one day generally consisted of two ounces of bacon, a sweet potato when is season, a piece of bread two and a half inches square, composed of corn and cowpeas ground together into meal and unsifted’’ (Spencer 1866, p. 75). Sergeant Bartlett Malone of the 6th North Carolina infantry noted, ‘‘our rations at Point Lookout was 5 crackers and a cup of coffee for Breakfast. And for dinner
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a small ration of meat 2 crackers three Potatoes and a cup of Soup’’ (Malone 1987 [1960], p. 93). South Carolinian Berry Benson confirms the frequency of meals at the Federal Point Lookout, Maryland site. He mentioned, ‘‘we were given only two meals a day, breakfast at eight, dinner at two’’ (Benson 1992, p. 93). Commenting on the late meal, Benson went on to say, ‘‘. . . we had dinner, but it seemed to me very scanty. As a whole, I don’t think Confederate prisoners suffered greatly for food, tho’ we had none too much truly’’ (p. 94). Food, while at a minimum was at the same time at a premium. In some instances prisoners were able to supplement their meager fare of rations by purchasing surplus food items or scavenging nearby resources. Dooley related, ‘‘Rats are found to be very good for food, and every night many are captured and slain. So pressing is the want of food that nearly all who can have gone into the rat business, wither selling these horrid animals or killing them and eating them’’ (1945, p. 163). Dooley recounted a favorite Johnson’s Island story that called into question even the supply and survival of rodents: ‘‘. . . one night it was so cold in . . . block 2 that a little mouse starting from its hole to run across the floor, was unable to complete its journey and expired frozen to death in the middle of the room’’ (p. 166). Although Dooley recounts this tale somewhat facetiously, it demonstrates prisoners’ efforts to alleviate extreme conditions through humor and exaggeration. During the early months of hostilities, both sides struggled to provide housing for captured combatants. Union prisoners captured in early engagements in Virginia were transported to the fledgling Confederacy’s capital at Richmond. Corporal William H. Merrell of the 27th New York remembered conditions in Richmond’s Tobacco Warehouse: There were no artificial conveniences for either eating or sleeping. At night the prisoners stretched themselves upon the bare floor, uncovered; and at meal time — if the irregular and melancholy farce of eating may be thus interpreted — they sat upon the floor, ranging against the wall, and (in primitive style) devoured whatever they could obtain. A more gloomy and revolting spectacle can hardly present itself to the imagination, than was afforded by these filthy quarter (1862, p. 25).
As the war progressed, facilities for holding captives were chosen for convenience with an appreciation for size and security, as in the case of Point Lookout, Fort Delaware, Belle Isle, and Tobacco Warehouse. Little if any thought was given however to providing prisoners with the basic necessities much less anything to ease an otherwise severe existence. In addition, existing prisons became overcrowded adding to the occupants’ discomfort. Merell commented, ‘‘. . . I was transferred from the general hospital to Prison No. 1 — a tobacco warehouse
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. . . its interior dimensions being seventy feet in length by twenty-six in width. It was in a most crowded state, as may be inferred from the fact that at no time were there less than one hundred and thirty, and often as many as one hundred and fifty occupants’’ (1862, p. 25). Private William Oake, of the 26th Iowa Infantry had a similar experience: ‘‘In the room in which we were there were about three hundred prisoners, and although the room was 40 x 100 feet I can assure my readers there was not much room for rent’’ (Oake 2006, p. 122). In some instances prisoners were barely, if at all, afforded shelter. Vermont private Charles Fairbanks remembered such conditions at one of the more infamous Confederate prisons near Richmond: ‘‘. . . We were taken to Belle Island, about one-half mile from the city. Here we were surrounded by earth works, within an enclosure of four acres, where were confined over four thousand prisoners without shelter, except a few ‘Cibley tents’, the majority of the prisoners being exposed to the weather day and night’’ (Fairbanks 2004, p. 71). According to Benson, a similar situation existed at Point Lookout: ‘‘The prison was a rectangular enclosure of about ten acres . . . Inside the fence were rows of tents with streets between . . . In the tent where I was placed, were 15 others, and it may be well believed that 16 men, even in a Sibley tent, were badly crowded’’ (Benson 1992, pp. 90–91). Even though additional housing was acquired and prisoners were separated according to rank, conditions improved little. Captives faced not only extreme overcrowding, but complications incident to that condition. Weld recounted, ‘‘My chief annoyance was from the lice. Every morning for over six weeks I looked over my clothes carefully, and as regularly found two or three of the disgusting old fellows besides any amount of nits and young ones. The building was full of them and whenever any one hammered on the floor above, down came lice. I have always had a great horror of them, and found them rather hard to bear’’ (1979 [1912], p. 128). Dooley noted, ‘‘Mice and roaches gamboled round our heads, performing feats of wondrous skill to astonish us who were now in this dismal world of theirs. No pillows and no blankets to cover up, and then the vermin!’’ (1945, p. 125). Under such conditions it is not surprising that hygiene was non-existent, although prisoners made a valiant effort in the attempt. Oake related, ‘‘We of course had an abundance of water but having no soap we did not as a general thing do a very good job in our laundry work, but still it would freshen up our old rags, and for a short time would feel quite comfortable until the heat of our bodies began to revive the greybacks that had for a short time been put out of commission by being immersed cold water’’ (Oake 2006, p. 122). Dooley noted, We have great trouble to get water for washing and cooking purposes. Two holes in the enclosure
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have been furnishing us with drinking, washing and cooking water. This water being clearer in the morning we try to furnish each room with a supply of drinking water for the day; but after some few thousands of buckets have been plunged in may be used only for washing and cooking purposes. At present one of the holes is out of order, and all come down to our small well, which refused to accommodate all as abundantly as it did a few. (1945, p. 145).
Merrell commented, ‘‘Let the reader picture a hundred haggard faces and emaciated forms — some with hair and beard of three months growth — so miserably clothed, in general, as scarcely to subserve the purposes of decency; and many limping about with pain from healed wounds . . .’’ (1862, p. 25). ‘‘It was utterly impossible to keep clean. The only clothing I had was what I had on when captured, which consisted of a woolen shirt, blouse and pants. Each day as long as I was able to sit up, I took off my shirt and pants and killed the lice between my thumb nails,’’ wrote Fairbanks (2004, p. 77). By the end of June 1862, there was a growing accumulation of captives that were becoming increasingly unmanageable. Consequently, the Union and Confederate governments agreed to a plan for prisoner exchange known as the Dix-Hill cartel. ‘‘Immediately following the fights around Richmond in 1862, General D. H. Hill, of the Confederate Army and General Jno. A. Dix, of the Federal Army, were chosen by their respective governments to arrange a cartel for the exchange of prisoners’’ (Ratchford 1971 [1908], p. 27). The effect of potential exchange is found in numerous memoirs, letters, and diaries. The thought of exchange gave captives hope not only of relief from suffering but also for their very survival. Private Fairbanks, who was not expected to survive his ordeal to see parole, remembered his experience: Ten days later . . . word was passed around that another squad was to be paroled, and only those who were sick, one hundred eighty six men, were to be selected from the four thousand. My heart almost stopped its action when the thought came, ‘what if I am left behind this time’ but I did not give up . . . as the number increased and my name was not called, I began to grow weak. When one hundred eighty had been called, one hundred eighty-one, one hundred eighty-two, and I knew there were only three more, I heard my name . . .’’ (Fairbanks 2004, p. 81).
Disagreements between the contending governments over United States Colored Troops, the alleged abuse of the cartel by Confederate bureau chief Robert Ould, and the recognition by Union General Ulysses S. Grant that returning prisoners strengthened the enemy, forced a halt to the exchange program. Regular exchanges dwindled in late 1863 and were discontinued
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in 1864, not to be resumed until the final months of the war. The impact is reflected in the writings of John Dooley: ‘‘New Year’s Day 1865. Gloom—blood—and repining everywhere . . . All things appear so very dark and sad I feel like writing no more.’’ Over the course of the next seven days his outlook changed considerably because of the hope of exchange: ‘‘News somewhat more cheering for us . . . Trans-Mississippi prisoners ordered to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice . . . One hundred and seventy prisoners of the trans-Mississippi department . . . left today for exchange. This is cheering indeed . . . it gives us some hope that they will not be the only ones who may be exchanged and once having set the ball in motion we may all be rolled to our homes. . .’’ (1945, p. 165). Conditions in terms of food, clothing, shelter, and hygiene barely sustained existence. Treatment at the hands of the enemy, however, varied widely. Treatment encompassed the kindest compassion and the most wanton cruelty. Benson remembered with appreciation the compassion of some Union soldiers: ‘‘The Sergt. Of the guard, a tall, fine-looking fellow . . . had been very kind to us, giving us his own rations when we could draw none. . . We might have suffered severely for food, if our guards had not been good fellows and divided with us’’ (Benson 1992, p. 90). Weld noted both extremes in treatment: In regard to my treatment in Richmond, I met with very kind treatment from the officer in charge, Lieutenant Trabue. The first officer who had charge of us, Captain William Read, was as conceited a puppy as ever lived. He was impudent to the officers, and was consequently removed. Trabue then had charge of us and was very kind and obliging. . . Most of the officers who had anything to do with us, treated us personally in a very kind manner. . . (Weld 1979 [1912], pp. 125–126).
Malone recalled more than one account of seemingly unjustified cruelty: ‘‘A Yankey shot one of our men the other day wounded him in the head shot him for peepen threw the cracks of the planken . . . aYankey Captain shot his Pistel among our men and wounded 5 of them; since one has died — he shot them for crowding arond the gate’’ (Malone 1987 [1960], p. 94). Civil War military prisons were synonymous with deprivation, suffering, and death. Some of the more notorious were Libby Prison, Point Lookout, Belle Island, Elmira, and Andersonville. Andersonville prison in Georgia is remembered, arguably, as the most egregious example of utter destitution among them. Ambrose Spencer was a staunch Unionist who lived near Andersonville. In his account of conditions at the prison, Spencer noted: meanwhile the crowds within the stockade had attained the highest limits as to numbers which was reached during its continuance, there being . . . thirty-six thousand four hundred and eighty . . .
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With this increase there was a corresponding augmentation of their sufferings. The rains . . .together with the constant tread of so many men, converted the interior at times into one vast bed of muddy slush nearly a foot deep — an aggregation of semi-liquid filth, through which the miserable prisoners unceasingly tramped in the unvarying round of pointless existence. Then for some days the hot sun would pour down upon this quagmire, feculent with putrefaction, and draw from its depths vapors saturated with fetid stench that it exhaled, and which corrupted the air they had to inhale. With their faces begrimed with smoke and dirt, their clothes in tatters and impregnated with vermin, shoeless and hatless, now up to their knees in mud, then breathing the pestilential atmosphere which a September sun had evoked, the wonder is that human nature did not succumb more rapidly and in greater numbers than the irresponsible death registers indicated’’ (1866, p. 109).
Spencer, like most of Northern America at that time, held the Confederate authorities of the prison, and especially its commandant Henry Wirz responsible. Wirz was convicted and hanged by the United States government as a result. In contrast to the perspective of Spencer as an outsider looking into the horror that was Andersonville, is the actual experience of Edward Boate who, as a prisoner, suffered its reality. Boate was a captive at Andersonville and a parolee who served his sick comrades by working in the Surgeon General’s Headquarters. Boate, therefore, offers a unique perspective on his enemy’s efforts on behalf of Andersonville’s imprisoned: ‘‘I know the efforts that were being daily made to sustain the prisoners. The country for twenty and fifty miles around was being laid under contribution for meat and meal for our men. The surgeon in charge daily employed messengers to scour the country for vegetables for our sick men; for straw for their tents; and for every necessary that could contribute to their comfort, but too often without success.’’ (Boate 2004, p. 22). On behalf of Wirz, Boate said, When I became a paroled prisoner, I had to alter my opinions of Captain Wirz. What I thought harsh in him was more assumed than real; while what was kind in the man was real, not assumed. He had the least amount of sectional feeling I met in the South. He would often say: ‘If the d—d fanatics on both sides were put into a barrel and thrown into the sea and if they could escape through the bung-hole, let them do so; but it if they sank to the bottom the country at large would be the better of it (Boate 2004, p. 35).
Boate went on to comment on the accusations of atrocities committed by Wirz: ‘‘Among Wirz’s ‘atrocities,’ was a principle he adopted and acted upon
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throughout, that whenever there was a chance of giving fresh air, an additional or better ration or an opportunity of purchasing a little vegetables, it was reserved for men who came from Belle Island, as they were the men who[se] incarceration had been the most protracted’’ (Boate 2004, p. 37). The harshness of prison life was a reality attested to almost without exception in surviving accounts of prison life. Prison existence was however, recalled with an admirable lack of animosity and in a detached, objective manner by those who suffered within its grasp. Edward Boate, as an example, processed his experience and considered his captors in a most compassionate and nonjudgmental fashion. Similarly, what grace the pages of a surprising number of letters, diaries and memoirs in spite of the baseless inhumanity of living conditions, is the endurance of the human will and the resilience of the human spirit.
Spencer, Ambrose. A Narrative of Andersonville: Drawn from the Evidence Elicited on the Trial of Henry Wirz the Jailer: With the Argument of Colonel N. P. Chipman, Judge Advocate. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1866. Weld, Stephen Minot. War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld 1861–1865. 1912. Reprint, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979. Robbie C. Smith
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Women on the Battlefield WOMEN ON THE BATTLEFIELD : AN OVERVIEW
Caryn E. Neumann WOMEN SOLDIERS
Caryn E. Neumann VISITING WIVES AND RELATIVES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benson, Berry. Berry Benson’s Civil War Book: Memoirs of a Confederate Scout and Sharpshooter. Edited by Susan Williams Benson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Boate, Edward Wellington. An Andersonville Prisoner’s Defense of Captain Henry Wirz: The New York Daily News Letters and Washington Testimony of Edward Wellington Boate. Compiled by James West Thompson. Jackson: Jackson Civil War Roundtable, 2004. Butler, Benjamin F. Butler’s Book. Boston: A. M. Thayer & Co., 1892. Dooley, John. John Dooley Confederate Soldier. Georgetown: The Georgetown University Press, 1945. Fairbanks, Charles. Notes of Army and Prison Life 1862–1865. Edited by Janet Hayward Burnham. Bethel: My Little Jessie Press, 2004. Grant, Ulysses Simpson. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Vol. 10. January 1–May 31, 1864. Edited by John Y. Simon. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. Malone, Bartlett Yancey. Whipt’ em Everytime, the Diary of Bartlett Yancey Malone: Co. H, 6th N. C. Regiment. 1960. Reprint, Edited by William Whatley Pierson, Jr. Wilmington: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1987. Merrell, W. H. Five Months in Rebeldom, or, Notes from the Diary of a Bull Run Prisoner, at Richmond. Rochester, NY: Adams and Dabney, 1862. Oake, William Royal. On the Skirmish Line Behind a Friendly Tree. Edited by Stacy Dale Allen. Helena: Farcountry Press, 2006. Ratchford, J. W. Some Reminiscences of Persons and Incidents of the Civil War. 1908. Reprint, Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1971.
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Caryn E. Neumann PROSTITUTES AND OTHER CAMP FOLLOWERS
Caryn E. Neumann
WOMEN ON THE BATTLEFIELD: AN OVERVIEW While their numbers were relatively small, the Civil War battlefield included women in addition to men. Thousands of Union and Confederate women aided their country’s war effort as nurses, laundresses, and cooks. Some of the more daring served as local scouts, spies attached to the military, and, in rare cases, as soldiers.
Spies and Scouts Advances in military technology meant that the Civil War battlefield could extend over a wide span of territory, particularly in such situations as the siege of Vicksburg. Spies crossed battlefields to provide critical information on troop movements; their job was just as dangerous as soldiering (Blanton 2002, p. 120). Women spies could more easily evade detection than men partly because they did not raise the same degree of suspicion. A Confederate spy, Mary Ann Pitman (alias Molly Hays, Charles Thompson, and Second Lieutenant Rawley) of Tennessee, often slipped through Union lines by pretending to be a loyal citizen who had information that she would impart only to the commanding officer. Once inside the lines, Pitman had little trouble persuading younger staff officers to show her the defenses and positions of troops and fortifications (pp. 89–90). Prostitutes also visited battlefields to ply their trade, but at the risk of being mistaken for spies. Shortly after the conclusion of the Battle of Nashville in 1864, two prostitutes took a carriage out to the battlefield. The women ventured so far out that they were captured by Confederate
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cavalrymen who suspected them to be spies. The women were briefly jailed in Franklin, Tennessee, before being escorted back to Nashville (Blanton 2002, pp. 124–125).
Combatants and Support Personnel Some women worked in male guise on the battlefield as combatants, teamsters (drivers of teams of horses used to pull cannon and other heavy equipment), or mule drivers, but many more appear to have served as musicians in regimental bands. Drummers did not need the upper body strength required in other battlefield occupations. Edmonia Gates spent six months as a Union teamster as well as a stint as a drummer boy in Wilson’s Zouaves, the One Hundred and Twenty-first New York Infantry Regiment. Rebecca Peterman served as a drummer in the Seventh Wisconsin Infantry before abandoning music to become a scout. An anonymous Union woman wounded at Gettysburg served as a drummer, as did Fanny Harris of Indiana, who reportedly ‘‘passed through a dozen battles.’’ Because many women looked like teenaged boys too young for regular enlistment, their only possible entry into the army was through the ranks of the musicians. At least a half-dozen women are known to have served through the war as drummers (Blanton 2002, pp. 50, 57, 71). In addition to serving in the ranks, women also served in various headquarters commands. A Union soldier, Ida Remington, spent part of her two-year enlistment detailed as an officer’s servant. Two girls from Pennsylvania, including one using the alias of Charles Norton of the One Hundred and Forty-First Pennsylvania Infantry, also served in regimental headquarters as personal aides to officers. Norton cooked, nursed, kept guard over the property of the officers, and did whatever other jobs were assigned to her. During the Battle of Fredericksburg, Sarah Edmonds served as an orderly to General Poe. Ella Hobart Gibson was elected chaplain of the First Wisconsin Regiment of Heavy Artillery in 1864 and served for nine months in that capacity (Blanton 2002, pp. 41, 157). Soldiers who were discovered to be women often persuaded officers to permit them to stay with their regiment as nurses or laundresses. If they could not be soldiers, they would be useful in other ways while still remaining with their loved ones. Thomas L. Livermore reported that a laundress attached to the Irish brigade advanced with the unit at the Battle of Antietam in 1862 and ‘‘swung her bonnet around and cheered on the men’’ (Wiley 1952, p. 339) At the Battle of Port Hudson in 1862, Mrs. Bradley, the ‘‘wife of a 2d sergeant in a company of Miles’ Legion was struck in the leg by a piece of shell . . . She suffered amputation, but died soon after’’ (Hewitt 1983, p. 80). Elizabeth Finnern stayed with her regiment after she was discovered to be a woman. She worked both as a battlefield nurse and a surgeon’s assistant in the regimental hospital. One veteran recalled some years later that Finnern ‘‘went through all Marches and battles with us’’ (Blanton 2002, p. 116–117). Another declared that she
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Mary Ann Ball ‘‘Mother’’ Bickerdyke. A volunteer nurse from Illinois, Mary Ann Ball ‘‘Mother’’ Bickerdyke organized the nursing of wounded Union soldiers on the battlefield, earning respect from soldiers and generals alike for her practical determination to help the injured. She continued to help soldiers after the war, becoming an attorney and assisting veterans with legal matters. ª Bettmann/Corbis.
‘‘was on every march and every battle field with the 81st Ohio’’ (p. 117). For practical reasons, Finnern stayed in male attire even after her sex was known to everyone in the regiment. She was also a pragmatist who ‘‘in times of danger . . . carried a musket just as did the soldiers’’ (p. 117). Finnern drew no army pay for her work as a nurse and surgeon’s assistant. Sarah Satronia enlisted in an Iowa regiment with her husband and remained undiscovered for about two months. Her commanding officer then allowed her to stay with the unit as a battlefield nurse. Mary Brown, the wife of Private Ivory Brown of the Thirty-First Maine Infantry, also stayed with the regiment when she was discovered to be a woman. She worked as a nurse and surgeon’s assistant (p. 117).
Battlefield Nursing In the mid-nineteenth century, professional nursing was largely a male occupation. Fewer than four thousand
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women served as paid nurses for the Union Army. Neither the number of paid Confederate nurses nor the women on both sides who nursed without compensation is recorded with any accuracy. Frances Jamieson, also known as Frank Abel, left her Union cavalry regiment after the death of her husband at First Bull Run and joined the Hospital Corps as a nurse. Jamieson assisted with amputations as well as other surgical theater nursing duties. The assistant surgeon of the Twelfth Indiana Cavalry was a woman. Clara Barton (1821–1912) is undoubtedly the most famous woman who ever walked on a battlefield. Determined to serve the soldiers in the field, Barton hoped to become as close to being a soldier as conditions permitted. Barton had filled a warehouse with a variety of goods that the army could use, including food and medicine. Moving throughout Virginia and Maryland, Barton and her supplies aided the wounded and dying at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, Charleston, and in the Wilderness campaign. When Barton appeared at Cedar Mountain in August 1862, convention dictated that she should wait until the came to the rear to be treated. Refusing to wait for authorization, something that she was unlikely to receive, Barton moved onto the battlefield after the fighting had subsided. Accompanied by two civilian helpers, she saw men in the throes of death. The soldiers, lying helpless on the field, were suffering from sunstroke, dehydration, and shock. Over the next two days, Barton cooked meals, washed wounds, applied dressings, assisted the surgeons in their gruesome tasks, distributed medicine, and offered kind words to the frightened soldiers. Her ministrations led to the nickname, ‘‘Angel of the Battlefield.’’ At Antietam, Barton used a pocket knife to extract a bullet from the jaw of a young soldier, the procedure carried out without chloroform for the boy and with some trepidation on Barton’s part. Shortly thereafter, as she was giving a wounded man a drink of water, a bullet passed through the sleeve of her dress and struck the soldier dead. Ranging along the battlefield, Barton continued to provide aid to the other wounded. At the 1863 Battle of Fort Wagner during the siege of Charleston, South Carolina, Barton waded ashore despite the danger of flying bullets and ministered to the men as they lay bleeding. To many soldiers, it seemed as if Barton’s courage had no limits (Oates 1994, pp. 112– 115, 136). Mary Ann Ball (‘‘Mother’’) Bickerdyke (1817– 1901) of Illinois nursed soldiers during the Civil War as part of a private effort to relieve the suffering of the troops. Next to Barton, she is the most famous battlefield nurse of the war. Bickerdyke gained some national renown at Fort Donelson in February 1862 by using a lantern to search the battlefield for wounded men at midnight before they froze to death. After helping evac-
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uate the wounded, Bickerdyke decided that the most pressing need for nursing assistance was at the front. She joined General Ulysses S. Grant’s army as it moved to take control of the Mississippi River. For seven months, Bickerdyke worked at Union field hospitals in Savannah, Tennessee; Iuka, Mississippi; and Corinth, Mississippi. When challenged by an army surgeon who asked under whose authority she fed the wounded men, Bickerdyke famously replied that she received her authority from the Lord God Almighty and did he have anyone ranking higher than that? (Baker 1952, p. 119). After the war, Bickerdyke became an attorney and helped Union veterans with legal issues.
Battlefield and Home Front With so much of Civil War fighting conducted close to homes, some women found themselves on the battlefield even though they had no intention of getting so close to the fighting. Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia wrote in her diary in 1864 that ‘‘While I write the hostile armies confront each other at the river in a menacing attitude but everything seems unnaturally still—the quiet so dull and dead broken only at intervals by the distant beating of the tattoo or the wail of a bugle. . . . We shall not undress tonight for there’s no knowing when we may be aroused to a renewal of strife’’ (Baer 1997, p. 292). Buck witnessed the killing of seven of Mosby’s Rangers, members of a Virginia infantry battalion that carried out small raids and what would now be called psychological warfare, by Union troops on September 23, 1864. Buck’s neighbor Sue Richardson reported that ‘‘Poor Henry Rhodes—hadn’t been long in service—was shot in our field, nearly in front of our door. We could see the crowd assembled around him . . . Mr. Carter and Mr. Overby of Fauquier were hung in the Mountain field on a large walnut tree.. . . It almost kills us to witness it’’ (Baer, 1997, p. 309). By the end of the Civil War, Southerners could no longer sharply differentiate between the battlefield and the home front. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baer, Elizabeth R., ed. Shadows on My Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Baker, Nina Brown. Cyclone in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952. Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Denney, Robert E. Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded. New York: Sterling, 1994. Hewitt, Lawrence L. Miles’ Legion: A History and Roster. Baton Rouge: Elliott’s Bookshop Press, 1983. Livermore, Mary. My Story of the War: A Woman’s Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience as a Nurse in the Union Army. Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1978.
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Oates, Stephen B. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1994. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. Caryn E. Neumann
WOMEN SOLDIERS When Johnny went marching off to war, quite a few Janes joined him. Women warriors had taken the field in previous conflicts, and the Civil War proved no exception. There was no public recruitment of women into the army, yet significant numbers of women decided to enlist anyway. Letters written home by only three women soldiers have surfaced; only two women soldiers published memoirs of their experiences; and no diaries of women soldiers have been found. Like the men with whom they served, the majority of women soldiers hailed from agrarian, working-class, or immigrant backgrounds, where no premium was placed on education for girls. Women probably had a lower literacy rate than men. Additionally, when they assumed male identities and joined the army, women soldiers usually severed contact with family and friends at home. Scholars have identified 250 women soldiers in the ranks of the Union and Confederate armies. There were, undoubtedly, many more distaff soldiers. The start of the Civil War aroused martial passions in women as well as men. Many women who wanted to join the army did not because war was a man’s business. Lucy Breckinridge of Virginia lamented that ‘‘I wish that women could fight. I would gladly shoulder my pistol and shoot some Yankees if it were allowable’’ (Robertson 1994, p. 26). According to DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook in They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (2002), Sarah Morgan of Louisiana declared, ‘‘O! If I was only a man! Then I could . . . slay them with a will.’’ Also, a Mrs. Black of Boston, mistakenly drafted by the Union, showed up as ordered and declared that she ‘‘wished no substitute’’ and was ready to ‘‘take position in line.’’ When the men of Richland, Ohio, failed to volunteer in sufficient numbers, seven young women tried to volunteer, and stated that, ‘‘as soon as they could be furnished with uniforms, they would leave their clothing to the young men, who lacked the manliness to defend the flag of their country when it was assailed.’’ Lastly, in September 1864, an Ohio woman wrote to President Abraham Lincoln that ‘‘I could get up a Regiment in one day of young Ladies of high rank’’ (p. 22). Most women aided the war effort by contributing supplies, nursing the wounded, or encouraging men to enlist. Women who sought more excitement became soldiers. It proved easy to enlist: All a woman needed to do was cut her hair short, don male clothing, pick an alias,
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Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841–1898) applied to Congress for a soldier’s pension, supported by many fellow soldiers and their strong recommendations. Edmonds refused medical treatment during wartime in order to keep her sex a secret and continue in the army. ª Bettmann/Corbis. Female soldier Sarah Emma Edmonds.
and find the nearest recruiter. In the mid-nineteenth century individuals did not carry personal identification, and most lacked a birth certificate. In theory, all recruits were subjected to a physical examination; in reality, the pressure to quickly fill regimental ranks militated against finding reasons to reject a volunteer. Physicians generally looked only for reasonable height, at least a partial set of teeth with which to tear open powder cartridges, and the presence of a trigger finger. In the case of Franklin Thompson of the Second Michigan Infantry, the examiner simply took Thompson’s hand and asked, ‘‘Well, what sort of a living has this hand earned’’ (Blanton and Cook 2002, p. 36). Thompson said that he had focused on getting an education, and was duly enlisted on May 25, 1861. Thompson had been born Sarah Emma Edmonds. Jennie Hodges of the Ninety-fifty Illinois Infantry, also known as Albert Cashier, showed only her hands and feet to the examiner. She served a full three-year enlistment, mustering out with her regiment on August 3, 1862. A large number of women soldiers joined the army with a husband, brother, sweetheart, or father, much as male soldiers joined up with a male relative. Mary Siezgle originally went to the front and served as a nurse, but
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decided to stay with her husband in a New York regiment. The only way for her to do so was to put on male clothing and do ‘‘her share of actual fighting’’ (Blanton and Cook 2002, p. 43) . During the Atlanta campaign, Major William Ludlow encountered a wounded Confederate who explained to her doctor that ‘‘she belonged to the Missouri Brigade . . . had a husband and one or two brothers in one of the regiments, and followed them to war’’ (p. 54). All of her relations were killed, and ‘‘having no home but the regiment,’’ she took a musket and served in the ranks. When John Finnern returned home and then decided to reenlist in the Eighty-first Ohio Infantry, his wife Elizabeth decided that he was not leaving her again. Both Finnerns signed up on September 23, 1861. Once in the army, it was not terribly difficult to attend to the necessities of life in private. Women soldiers undoubtedly answered the call of nature by heading to the woods or some other private place. This behavior did not arouse suspicion because so many men did the same thing. It is probable that many women stopped menstruating because of the intense athletic training, substantial weight loss, poor nutrition, and severe psychological stress associated with being a Civil War soldier. Soldiers on the march often went for months at a time without a change of clothing or a bath. Herman Weiss of the Sixth New York Heavy Artillery explained to his wife how a woman in his regiment had maintained her male persona for nearly three years: ‘‘It is no wonder at all that her tent mates did not know that she was a woman for you must know that we never undress to go to bed. On the contrary we dress up, we go to bed with boots, overcoat and all on and she could find chances enough when she would be in the tent alone to change her clothes’’ (Blanton and Cook 2002, p. 57). Female soldiers did not differ in any fundamental way from male soldiers, including their strength under fire. When Sarah Edmonds applied to Congress for a soldier’s pension, a number of her comrades testified on her behalf. First Lieutenant William Turner stated in an affidavit that Edmonds ‘‘bore a good reputation, behaved as a person of good moral character, and was always ready for duty’’ (Blanton and Cook 2002, p. 155). Edmonds blamed her wartime injuries on her failing health. She wrote, ‘‘Had I been what I represented myself to be, I should have gone to the hospital .. . . But being a woman I felt compelled to suffer in silence . . . in order to escape detection of my sex. I would rather have been shot dead, than to have been known to be a woman and sent away from the army’’ (p. 155). Frank Martin was shot in the shoulder at the Battle of Stones River, discovered to be a woman, and discharged. When she left the hospital, she enlisted in another regiment. Women accepted the risks of soldiering for the same mix of reasons that motivated men, including the desire to serve their country.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Robertson, James I., ed. A Confederate Girl’s Diary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960. Robertson, Mary D., ed. Lucy Breckinridge of Grove Hill: Journal of a Virginia Girl, 1862–1864. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Caryn E. Neumann
VISITING WIVES AND RELATIVES The Civil War separated wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, and parents and children for years as the fighting continued far longer than anyone had initially expected. The separation damaged intimacy between spouses and left wives feeling anxious and lonely. Parents and other relatives wondered if disease or a bullet would claim the soldier in the family before they could see him again. With camps set up within travel distance for many Americans, wives and relatives took the opportunity to visit soldiers. Women often expressed their loneliness in letters to soldiers and in their diaries, such as the following women included in Nina Silber’s Daughter of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (2005). Anne Cotton told her husband Josiah, a surgeon in an Ohio regiment, ‘‘You do not miss me half so much as I do you. You are all the time surrounded by so many and do not get time to feel lonesome while I am alone most of the time and have nothing to do but think of you and wish you back.’’ Elizabeth Caleff wrote to her fiance´ James Bowler in the First Minnesota that ‘‘You have something exciting all the time, but you never can imagine how lonely I feel when I think of you being away.’’ Mary Baker wrote in her diary in July 1861, ‘‘Am so lonely, miss Elliot every minute. Don’t know what I shall do so long without him’’ (pp. 37–38). Letter writing helped to maintain contact, but it could not substitute for personal contact. Jane Thompson wrote to her husband in September 1862, ‘‘Oh, how I wish I could sleep with you tonight. Would you like to sleep with me?’’ (Silber 2005, p. 44). Clara Wood wrote to her husband Amos in 1862 that ‘‘I have got your pictures in front of me. I write a few lines and then look at them and think and even say how I wish how much I wish he was here’’ (p. 42). Some women managed to ease their loneliness by visiting male relatives, but not every woman could pay a visit. Civil War armies usually suspended operations between November and April. In the long periods when troops were holed up in winter quarters, wives and relatives took the opportunity to visit. These visits eased the homesickness and boredom of the soldiers. The
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troops also found entertainment by visiting locals during these long winter camps. A young New Yorker in Virginia recorded in his diary that ‘‘At night after taps, run the Picets and went out in the country to see the girls’’ (Wiley 1952, p. 215). A Minnesota private wrote, ‘‘When not on post we sit in the house [of a Southern planter] by the fire conversing with the old gentleman’s daughters and enjoying ourselves hugely. It is a long time since I was in a private house . . .’’ (p. 216). Alvin Buck, a Confederate soldier, cheered his sister with a visit in September 1864. ‘‘Darling Brother! This visit of yours will give me strength to endure much of sorrow and disappointment the coming winter,’’ she wrote in her diary (Baer 1997, p. 138). Soldiers also called on relatives and friends in other regiments, with eating, drinking, and talk of home as the principal activity. Men could not always obtain furloughs to return home. George Shepherd, a Wisconsin farmer, explained to his wife Mary that ‘‘You know when I was your man I would come when I could and see you. But now I am Uncle Sam’s man and can’t come only just when he pleases’’ (Silber 2005, p. 30). When Fighting Joe Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac he restored morale by instituting a policy of liberally granting furloughs (Hunt 1992, p. 63). Frank Dickerson of Maine reported to his father in January 1863 that he had applied for a furlough, but his commanding officer refused to approve it until one of the furloughed officers returned to duty; he expected to return home for a short visit at that time (Hunt 1992, p. 63). The liberal furlough policy did not last long. It proved easier for wives to travel to visit husbands. The visits of wives often enlivened camp routine. Frank Dickerson of Maine reported that when General Stoneman and his wife visited his camp at Buford, Maryland, in September 1863, the men fixed up the camp with evergreens and cedars so that it looked like a garden. Dickerson wrote that, ‘‘We had an excellent cold dinner, gotten up by a celebrated caterer in Washington, which we sat down to about 5 o’clock. Several of the officers had their wives present. Mrs. Capt. Mason, Mrs. Dr. Porter, Mrs. Sweetman, and Mrs. Paden’’ (Hunt 1992, p. 76). The wives of Mason and Porter boarded at a house about a mile from camp. Dickerson told his father that, ‘‘On the whole the entertainment was one of the most pleasant I have ever witnessed and everything passed off with great e´clat. The band enlivened the scene with their fine music and the General appeared to be very much pleased and his wife also’’ (Hunt 1992, p. 76). Generally, visits to Union troops took place while troops remained encamped in their Northern quarters, before they departed for battlefields in the South. The poor communications of the day and the difficulties of traveling across battle zones could complicate travel to the South. The father of the Indiana officer Ovid Butler
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attempted to visit his son in Tennessee, without success. The senior Butler wrote, We left here on the train . . . but owing to obstructions on the track did not get to Louisville till 11 OClock the next day. There we were refused a pass from Gen Granger. We got that pass but too late to leave Louisville till the morning of Saturday the 21st. We arrived at Nashville the night of that day and found upon inquiry that the Signal Corps party had left for the front on the day we left home. This was a great disappointment to us as we had hoped and much desired to see you there. (Davis 2004, p. 54)
Travel also proved costly. When Emily Elliott of Ohio joined her major husband in Nashville, Tennesse, in January 1864, she had not seen him for sixteen months. She wrote in her diary, ‘‘I want to get Dentons clothes all in good order for maybe I will not stay long. Living here is very expensive’’ (Woodworth 2000, p. 169). Once Union regiments moved South, camp visits were less likely for enlisted men, unless medical circumstances compelled a woman to come and attend to a soldier’s needs. E. Anne Butler left her home in Indiana to visit a wounded relative recuperating at Franklin, Tennessee, in 1864. She expected to see the lieutenant’s wife as well and catch up on family news. In January 1865, she again traveled to Nashville to aid another wounded relative. ‘‘When through a letter from Mrs. Scovel we learned the condition of Capt. It was thought best that I should come to him as Nettie was too feeble either to take the trip or to render him any service in the way of nursing,’’ she wrote to her son (Davis 2004, p. 89). Officers’ wives often stayed with their spouses for extended periods, even in Southern camps, so long as the military situation allowed and the women could cope with the inconveniences. Southern women did not necessarily find it any easier than Northern women to visit relatives. Although the travel distance to Confederate camps certainly was shorter, the collapse of the Southern economy and the severe transportation problems of the South made visiting difficult. The fiance´e of Confederate general John Morgan ran a Union blockade of Nashville to marry him in November 1862 (Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1863). Other women visited camps close to home. Laura Beecher Comer brought cakes to friends stationed at a nearby camp in Georgia (Clinton 2000, p. 144). Leila Willis, heavily pregnant with her third child, could not even manage to see her husband in a nearby camp because of her condition (p. 125). Southern women, generally the better-off wives of officers, did travel some distances to visit. Mrs. Morgan joined her husband in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The August 9, 1863, Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Morgan joined her husband at a great ball, dressed in a green silk dress and bonnet that Morgan had brought back from one of his raids. On July 17, 1864, the New GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Brigadier General John A. Rawlins and his family. When soldiers expected to remain at camp for an extended period of time, many
women set out to visit their absent husbands, brothers, and sons, particularly during the quiet winter months. The Library of Congress
York Times reported that the summer season in St. Louis, Missouri, was marked by the arrival of numerous women from the South: ‘‘They are wives of officers in the rebel service and come hither, as they say, to settle business affairs and visit relatives.’’ The women were arrested for failing to comply with the military order requiring persons crossing into Union territory to report to the nearest provost-marshal. It is possible that some visiting wives brought back vital military information when they returned home.
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Many Southerners certainly suspected Northern visitors. The Richmond Dispatch, reprinted in the New York Times, reported in February 1863 that many Northern women had crossed Confederate lines to visit husbands. The women were suspected of being spies by the editor of the South Carolinian, who wrote, We had supposed that the object of the flag of truce permits was to persons returning to their domicile, and had no idea that Northern women whose husbands had been caught in our workshops
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Visiting Wives and Relatives when the war commenced were to be allowed to visit them. It may be all well, but they certainly should not be allowed to communicate again with the North until the war is over. (reprinted in New York Times, February 8, 1863)
The Charleston Courier editorialized that We have good reason for suspecting, if not believing, that many spies and doubtful characters . . . are among the subjects of the late flag of truce. We beg that a strict watch be kept over all who have recently arrived within our lines, and are not well known. We have been too often betrayed by the credulous courtesy accorded to flags of truce, and to female apparel. (reprinted in the New York Times, February 8, 1863)
Northerners also discovered suspected spies. Mrs. Cheatham of Nashville, the sister-in-law of Confederate General John Morgan, tried traveling under a flag of truce to visit her sister. While returning to her home in Alton, Illinois, she was captured with suspected smugglers and jailed (Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1863). Some Northern women, especially those in border states, were sent South because they were viewed as enemies of the Union. Such women aided Confederate officers and soldiers revisiting border states, boasted that they were enemies of the Union, and publicly wished ill to the Union. The New York Times reported on August 8, 1863, that: Only the open, avowed, incorrigible and dangerous enemies of the United States, and those detected in secret acts of correspondence with them, were ordered beyond the Union lines, and forbidden to return. No ‘‘children’’ have been ordered away—no women have been sent except those convicted of disloyal acts and refusing to cease their guilt, and those asking to be sent away because their husbands or protectors are already in the South, bearing arms against the Government.
As the Missouri women who asked to be sent South show, many women, especially Southerners, were accustomed to being cared for by others. Forced to fend for themselves without the assistance of men or slaves, some Southern women were lost and, if able, went to visit relatives for extended periods of time. The New York Times reported on November 2, 1862 that a former resident of Key West, Florida, returned to the island in November 1862 because while her husband served in the Confederacy, she could not support herself, and she returned to live with her father. Some women in war zones refused to leave their homes to visit relatives because of fears of what might happen in their absence. Mrs. John S. Phelps of Springfield, Missouri, the wife of a commander of Missouri troops loyal to the Union, declined to travel to see friends in New York City. In a letter reprinted in the January 24, 1862, New York Times, Phelps wrote,
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You very kindly invite me to visit New-York. Nothing would afford me more pleasure, were these not ‘‘war times;’’ but now I cannot leave Missouri. There may be a battle at Springfield, and my husband may be wounded; if he should escape, unhurt, others will not; and if I cannot engage in battle, because of my sex, I will have the honor of dressing the wounds of those who have left their homes and friends to fight for our glorious Union.
Other women remained at home to care for ailing relatives, maintain the farm, and take care of other business that could not be suspended, even briefly. Women occasionally became ensnared in a tug-ofwar between the desires of their soldier husbands and their parents’ anxieties about their safety. Leila Turpin Willis was the wife of Larkin Willis, a Richmond tobacco agent and an engineer for the Confederate army. Between July 1861 and January 1864 Leila Willis made at least eight trips—many of several months’ duration— between the home of her parents and the house that she shared with her husband and two small children. Leila’s mother, Rebecca Turpin, pressured her daughter to visit by citing her own poor health and the threat of nearby Union troops. In one letter she warned, ‘‘I am glad you are all well and safe . . . but you may be deprived of your husband and everything else soon .. . . Your father says if you can get home you had better come’’ (Clinton 2000, p. 125). Some visitors came to military camps for sightseeing. Early in the war, a Richmond girl took a tour of the Carolina encampment in her city. She wrote on May 22, 1861, ‘‘We had a delightful walk and when we got there the place was so pretty that we did not want to come home until very late. The tents were fixed in rows under trees, and the soldiers were gathering in groups preparatory to dress parade, we saw that before we came away’’ (Clinton 2000, p. 123). Later in the war, Demia Butler traveled from Indiana to Nashville, Tennessee, to see the place that her soldier brother had long been encamped. Butler wrote that she had taken several rides in different directions to see the place that she termed ‘‘a city of Soldiers’’ (Davis 2004, pp. 96–97). Once in a great while, the life of a Union or Confederate soldier would be brightened by the visit of wife, relative, or friend from home. Such visits, however, were rare. Soldiers mainly had to be content with letters and newspapers from home as well as whatever recreation they could provide for themselves. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baer, Elizabeth R., ed. Shadows on My Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Clinton, Catherine, ed. Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Davis, Barbara Butler, ed. Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004. ‘‘Flags of Truce.’’ New York Times. February 8, 1863, p. 2. ‘‘FROM MISSOURI.; Rebel Invasion of the State Condition of Affairs in Different Localities The Machinations of Rebel Women A Skull Gatherer The ‘Conservatives’ of Missouri Missouri’s Governor.’’New York Times, July 17, 1864. Available from http://proquest.umi.com/. Hunt, H. Draper, ed. Dearest Father: The Civil War Letters of Lt. Frank Dickerson, a Son of Belfast, Maine. Unity, ME: North Country Press, 1992. ‘‘Key West Correspondence.’’ New York Times. November 2, 1862, p. 1. ‘‘Mrs. John Hunt Morgan.’’ Dayton (OH) Journal, reprinted in Chicago Tribune. August 6, 1863, p. 3. ‘‘News From Washington.’’ New York Times. August 8, 1863, p. 1. Silber, Nina. Daughter of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. ‘‘The Wife of Hon. John Phelps Loyal.’’ New York Times. January 24, 1862, p. 3. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. Woodworth, Steven E. Cultures in Conflict: The American Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Caryn E. Neumann
PROSTITUTES AND OTHER CAMP FOLLOWERS Men were not the only ones moving from camp to camp during the Civil War. Camp followers, including the families of soldiers, cooks, launderers, and sutlers, were present throughout the war. Although some individuals recognized business opportunities in camp following, others simply had no other place to go. Women with husbands in the military sometimes lacked the resources or the emotional strength to live apart from their spouses. African Americans, newly escaped from plantations, had no place to go and no means of earning a living except by serving Union soldiers. Camp followers dressed wounds, cooked food, mended clothing, provided sexual services, and shared the fears of the soldiers. Although men at war were granted a certain amount of moral leeway, the same could not be said for the women they left behind at home. A woman’s behavior was often read by her neighbors and relatives as a barometer of her commitment and support for her husband’s wartime sacrifice. Eliza Otis aroused her family’s
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Often lacking income at home due to the death of a husband, women frequently accompanied traveling armies, providing domestic services such as washing laundry, preparing meals, and mending clothes. Because neither the Union or Confederate armies provided much support services while at camp, these women fulfilled a need while earning a living. Charles
Mary Tepe, vivandiere.
J. and Isaac G. Tyson/National Park Service/National Archives/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
suspicions by traveling frequently without a male escort (Silber 2005, p. 35). Rose Stone, the wife of a Minnesota soldier, was categorized as ‘‘loose’’ for allowing another man to take her to a party and for flirting at the party (Silber 2005, p. 37). Over the course of history, only a handful of women have recorded their experiences as prostitutes because of the shame associated with the activity. If a prostitute was literate, it is unlikely that she would have recorded her sexual activity for posterity to condemn her. Likewise, a soldier who visited a prostitute would not include such a detail in a letter back home that would likely be read by his parents, wife or sweetheart, sisters, and other loved ones. Much of the history of prostitution during the war is lost. It is certain, however, that prostitution was widespread. Many individuals believed that there was a connection between masculinity and sexual activity. A rite of passage from boy to man in nineteenth-century America was sometimes marked by a first visit to a prostitute, who initiated him into the sexual world. Men were thought to require frequent sexual activity, and in the Civil War era, masturbation was heavily condemned by religious and medical authorities. When wives were absent, many individuals expected that soldiers would visit prostitutes.
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In contrast, when husbands were absent, wives were expected to remain chaste, but many people suspected lone wives of making themselves sexually available to other men. Julia Underhill relocated to Massachusetts in part because the number of men approaching her in public with unwanted sexual advances made it increasingly difficult for her to maintain a respectable reputation (Silber 2005, p. 35). Northern society found it difficult to determine the extent to which unchaperoned women could be considered instigators, as opposed to victims, of inappropriate sexual behavior. The number of prostitutes during the war is likely relatively high. In times of economic downturn or personal economic emergency, poor women often have turned to prostitution to survive. Prostitution stemmed from desperate circumstances rather than some innate predisposition. In 1858, the physician William Wallace Sanger released a survey of 2,000 women who had been incarcerated at the venereal disease hospital at the Houses of Correction on Blackwell’s Island, New York. Nearly 47 percent were very young (median age of fifteen), foreignborn (mostly recent Irish or German immigrants), and unskilled, though 38 percent were native-born (Gilfoyle 1992, p. 117). Although most were themselves unskilled, more than half were the daughters of skilled workers. Male desertion, widowhood, single motherhood, and, especially, the death of a male wage-earner, made prostitution the only viable economic choice. Casual prostitution was a way to supplement low-wage employment. It is unlikely that the pattern of prostitution changed much with the coming of the war. The collapse of the Southern economy during the Civil War may have forced many women into prostitution as a means of survival for themselves and their families. The enlistment or death of a Union soldier also resulted in economic loss for Union women, and possibly forced widows or abandoned wives into prostitution. After 1800, prostitution branched out from houses of prostitution to hotels, cafes, dance halls, music halls, and the streets. Clandestine commercial activity could be a one-time affair or a long-term pattern. The absence of brothels made it difficult to monitor and regulate illicit sexual activity. Military authorities tacitly accepted prostitution during the Civil War, in part because they could do little to prevent it. Some officers themselves patronized prostitutes and were tolerant of the illicit sexual activity of the troops. Major General Joseph ‘‘Fighting Joe’’ Hooker (1814–1879) remained enormously popular with his men throughout the war, even though his personal habits frequently brought condemnation from his peers—Hooker’s fellow officers did not hold him in high regard. A hard-drinking bachelor, Hooker notoriously visited brothels. Charles Francis Adams Jr. famously commented that under Hooker, ‘‘the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place to which no self-
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respecting man asked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of bar-room and brothel’’ (Silber 2005, p. 80). Many men regarded visits to prostitutes as one of the benefits accorded to those risking life and limb. The Minnesota soldier, James Bowler, chastised his new bride, Elizabeth, for seeking to deny him ‘‘what few privileges’’ he was ‘‘able to secure’’ (Silber 2005, p. 84). Those privileges included keeping company with black women, who, in the eyes of many Union men, seemed to be the most readily available sexual partners in the South. When Lizzie Bowler replied that such activity was ‘‘not to be tolerated among respectable people,’’ James quickly retreated and stated that he had written ‘‘a jesting, frolicking letter’’ only to see how she would respond (p. 84). Racial boundaries in prostitution typically crossed only one way. Although white men had access to black women, black men generally did not have access to white women—the most reviled prostitutes were white women who sold sex to men of color. Prostitutes in other eras have observed that business increases during times of war and the threat of war. The Union soldier James Beatty seemed resigned to the idea that he might give in to ‘‘some kinds of temptations to evil’’ that ‘‘will be much stronger in me now than ever before,’’ and implied that visits to prostitutes were the inevitable result of war and would be little affected by women’s home-front counseling (Silber 2005, p. 83). Temptation seemed to plague soldiers at every turn. Not surprisingly, in cities throughout the North and West, and especially in areas where Union soldiers clustered, prostitution increased dramatically. Most of the prostitutes were probably young and single, if the demographics of prostitutes in the West hold true for campfollowing prostitutes in the South and North. For most women, fading beauty was a liability, and by the age of thirty, many had turned to other ways of making a living. Some prostitutes did escape this line of work by marrying former clients. Women also served the army in respectable occupations such as laundress, cook, and seamstress. Civil War authorities did not provide much support staff for soldiers, particularly in the first months of the war. Soldiers often were given uncooked food and were expected to prepare it themselves, but typically, they had not received any instruction in cooking because such work was women’s labor. Confronted with raw beans and raw meat, they were baffled. Some of the sickness that befell men in the early months of the war came from consuming undercooked or poorly prepared food. Similarly, men did not have any training in sewing or laundering. Camp followers were tolerated by the military because they provided critical services to the troops. Camp-following laundresses, seamstresses, and cooks also sometimes supplemented their earnings by selling
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Child Soldiers
sexual services to decamped soldiers. The number of women seeking ‘‘respectable’’ work exceeded the demand, forcing women to compete for jobs and driving down wages, and as a result, some laundresses and seamstresses turned to prostitution. The link is seen in the use of the words laundress and seamstress as euphemisms for prostitute in U.S. military records, where several ‘‘laundresses’’ or ‘‘seamstresses’’ listed as sharing living quarters generally may be assumed to represent prostitutes in a brothel. Camp followers also included people who had no link to prostitution. For example, when slaves escaped from plantations, the Union army faced the problem of housing and caring for them, and they numbered in the thousands. The army put men to work as drivers, cooks, blacksmiths, and construction workers. Black women, many of whom had fled with children, often were denounced as prostitutes and lazy vagrants. The denunciations likely had roots in the age-old stereotype of black women as sexually promiscuous Jezebels, an image that permitted the sexual abuse of slave women. It is not clear if any ‘‘contrabands,’’ as escaped slaves were called by the Union, worked as prostitutes; some newly freed black women found jobs as cooks and laundresses in and around Union camps. However, employment proved difficult to find. Many black families spent the remainder of the war living in wretched conditions. At Camp Nelson, Kentucky, in late 1864, white soldiers leveled the shantytown erected by black women and left 400 freedpeople homeless while the black men of the camp fought a battle against Confederates (White 1999, p. 167). Camp followers were a part of wars well before the modern era. They provided services that the military either could not or would not offer to the soldiers. Generally valued by the soldiers, they were sometimes viewed as a necessary evil by civilians and military authorities.
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Child Soldiers
The majority of Civil War soldiers who participated in the conflict were eighteen or older. But a sizable number of Yankee and Rebel troops were minors. This was especially true in the opening months of the war, when motivations such as family honor, duty to country, the prospect of adventure, and proving one’s manhood prompted thousands of boys to join older siblings and neighbors and descend on recruiting stations. The percentage of minors in the armed services of the Union and Confederates armies, however, dwindled in the latter stages of the war, when military drafts became the primary means of replenishing depleted regiments and underage soldiers already in the ranks reached their eighteenth birthdays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butler, Anne M. Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865–90. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Gilfoyle, Timothy. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. Silber, Nina. Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Caryn E. Neumann
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While the majority of soldiers enlisted in both the Union and Confederate armies were over the age of eighteen, many youngsters lied about their age to gain entry into the conflict. Young soldiers often served as field musicians, relaying orders to the troops by fife and drum. MPI/ Johnny Clem (1851–1937), child soldier.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Child Soldiers
A UNION DRUMMER BOY WRITES HOME Felix Voltz was a boy from Buffalo, New York, who had been apprenticed to a trade he did not like. In February 1865, he decided to enlist as a drummer boy with the 187th New York Volunteer Regiment. Felix’s father was upset by his son’s impulsive decision, which he described in a letter written to the boy’s uncle: [Felix] went and looked for some Recruting [sic] Offices[;] ... the last one of all he found at the Arcade Buildings and there the Bounty Brockers [broker] by the name of Weaver took him to the Provost Marchalls [sic] Office where he was sworn in U.S. Service for one Years [sic] in the 187th Reg[imen]t N.Y. Vol[unteer]s. ... Felix left the house Monday morning and we did not know what had become of him untill [sic] the letter carrier brought us a letter Wednesday Evening from Felix. Felix was at first happy to serve as a drummer boy, because doing so relieved him of picket duty and other more dangerous assignments. On March 3, 1865, he wrote to his family: Dear Parents Br[o]th[er]s & Sisters: I take the Pen in Hand this Evening to write you a few lines. ... The first thing I will let you know about Me being in the Drum Chor [Corps]. ... I had to go on Picket Duty the other day and when I came back I got sick for two or three days but I got over that and then I went to Tony the Orderly and ask him if they had A Drummer for our Company Says he No sir then he told me to wait A day or two. ... Please tell Mother not to wearry [sic] herself about Me for I am all right yet and I hope will be so for the next year and tell
Lying to Get into the Fray In both the North and South, the minimum age for enlistment was eighteen. Over the life of the war, about 80 percent of the soldiers who fought in the Civil War were between eighteen and twenty-nine. Older men dotted the ranks of both armies, but both sides also featured a fair number of boy soldiers who boldly misrepresented their age in order to join the war effort. It became a common practice, for example, for earnest teens to write the number ‘‘18’’ on a scrap of paper, which they then placed in one of their shoes. This little ceremony enabled them to ‘‘truthfully’’ respond that they were ‘‘over eighteen’’ when the recruiting officer asked them their age. Civil War historians believe that, all told, tens of thousands of boys under the age of eighteen served in both militaries during the conflict, while thousands of others were active participants in the guerrilla warfare that erupted in the border states and some sections of the South during the course of the war. Writing in A People’s History of the Civil War (2005), historian David Williams asserted that as many as 76,000 children under the age of eighteen served in Civil War regiments—and
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here [her] I am in no danger what so ever all I have to do is to take care of Me and my Drum and learn how to Drum as soon as possible I must not do no more guard or Picket Duty nor I must not take care of no Musket at all. ... So no more this time give my best Respects to all inquiring Friends. By May 1865, Felix was openly expressing homesickness. After telling his brothers about falling sick the day the army marched through Richmond after the fall of the Confederacy, Felix wrote the following: D[ea]r Br[o]th[ers] I wish you would Answer soon and send me some Post[age]. St[amps]. and some paper and Envelops I know no more news at Present. I will close my writing with sending my best Regards and love to you all in the Family tell Mother not weary herself about me because I am as healthy as ever I was and tell Father that I beg him to forgive me for being so Ugly and Headstrong tell him that I have found out what A home is and that there is nobody on this world thank Father & Mother and A Home and tell him if God safe my Health and lets me get Home Safe again that I will try and behafe [sic] and mind my Parents better than I have. REBECCA J. FREY
SOURCE: ‘‘The Letters of Felix Voltz, MS 93-021.’’ Special Collections Department of the University Libraries of Virginia Tech, Digital Library and Archives. Available from http://spec.lib.vt.edu/voltz/.
that this figure probably underestimates the number of soldiers who lied about their age in order to enlist. Historian Bell Irvin Wiley reported similar findings in his classic The Life of Johnny Reb (1943), which shows that fully 5 percent of Confederate infantry privates in a sampling of ninety-four regiments were under age eighteen at their time of enlistment, compared to the only 1.6 percent of Union soldiers who were under eighteen.
Musicians and Drummer Boys When it came to military band membership, neither the Confederate nor the Union army instituted any age limitations. Boys barely into their teens could routinely be found in music groups or serving as buglers or drummer boys. Some children were even younger; Private Edward Black, for example, joined the 21st Indiana as a musician at the tender age of nine. Another group of underage soldiers that nonetheless had a consequential impact on the war were cadet drillmasters who helped train raw recruits. The Confederate army made particularly extensive use of this resource, borrowing youthful instructors from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and other Southern military schools. These cadets were
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usually held in reserve, but there were several occasions on which they were assigned to frontline positions on the field of battle.
Aging Quickly Minors who managed to insinuate themselves into the military ranks of the Union and Confederate armies lost their innocence quickly. Daily exposure to the myriad vices practiced by older soldiers stripped them of whatever naivete´ they may have had upon enlistment, and the grueling regimen of Civil War soldiering hardened them. Though this hardening made them better soldiers, their plight filled many observers with deep sympathy and sorrow. The writer Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who served as a hospital nurse in Washington, recalled an encounter with a fifteen-year-old child soldier from Tennessee whose father was dead, and whose mother had been chased from her home by the ravages of war. Whitman watched the boy march out of the city with the rest of his regiment the next day. ‘‘My boy was stepping along with the rest,’’ Whitman said. ‘‘There were many boys no older. There did not appear to be a man over thirty years of age, and a large proportion were from 15 to 22 or 23. They all had the look of veterans, stain’d, impassive, and a certain unbent, lounging gait’’ (Whitman, p. 778). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Smith, Page. Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Whitman, Walt. Whitman: Poetry and Prose. Ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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During the course of the Civil War, approximately 200,000 African American men served under the Union banner. These troops included large numbers of free men from Northern cities, but also featured a significant contingent of slaves who were absorbed into the military directly off plantations along the Mississippi River and the Southern coast. African American soldiers, segregated by race and commanded by white officers, were
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initially confined to garrison duty or manual labor details, and for much of the war they received lesser pay than their white counterparts. As the months passed, however, a number of black units distinguished themselves in combat. Many military scholars believe, in fact, that it was the addition of African Americans to the Union side that allowed the North to increasingly dominate the war. In addition, the valiant performance of black Civil War soldiers marked one of the first significant steps that African Americans took in their long and arduous journey from enslavement to equality in American society.
Fighting for the Right to Fight When the Civil War erupted in the spring of 1861, thousands of free black men in the North volunteered for military service. They did so not only because they wanted to see their Southern brethren freed from the shackles of slavery, but also because they recognized that the war presented them with the opportunity to advance their efforts to gain greater legal rights. As abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) declared, ‘‘Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States’’ (Douglass 1999, p. 536). Opposition to enlisting African Americans was strong, however. President Abraham Lincoln had framed the federal government’s response to the secessionist threat as one of opposition to rebellion, not slavery. He and others were also greatly concerned that the Union would lose Kentucky and other border states if the government armed blacks. Racism also saturated the white ranks of the Union Army, although pockets of support for the idea of recruiting blacks did exist. Blocked from enlisting in the army, some blacks tried to support the war effort by signing up as cooks, carpenters, and nurses. In addition, thousands of black men enlisted in the Union Navy, which had no racial restrictions in its enlistment policies. By the end of the war, about 29,000 black men served in Union shipyards, on warships, and on other vessels. Meanwhile, black leaders and their allies in the abolitionist movement continued to lobby Washington for a change in policy that would permit African Americans— both free men and freed slaves—to join the war effort as soldiers. Some progressive-minded white officers expressed puzzlement and outrage that the Lincoln administration continued to relegate such a potentially powerful military resource to the sidelines. ‘‘Isn’t it extraordinary that the Government won’t make use of the instrument that would finish the war sooner than anything else, —viz the slaves?’’ wrote Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863), who would later command the all-
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black 54th Massachusetts Volunteers to glory in its famous assault on Fort Wagner outside Charleston. ‘‘What a lick it would be at them [the Confederates], to call on all the blacks in the country to come and enlist in our army! They would probably make a fine army after a little drill, and could certainly be kept under better discipline than our independent Yankees’’ (Duncan 1992, p. 123). By the summer of 1862, federal authorities had become more receptive to these arguments. A string of military setbacks, growing difficulties in filling holes in battle-scarred regiments, and growing confidence in the allegiance of the slaveholding border states convinced Lincoln that black enlistment was a politically achievable goal. In July Congress passed laws paving the way for the entrance of African Americans into the Union Army, albeit in segregated units under the command of white officers. Six months later, Lincoln’s formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in Confederate territory, further underscored the government’s evolving thinking on blacks and their importance in the conflict.
Doubt and Conviction Reaction to black enlistment among white Union companies and regiments was mixed. Some white troops harbored profound doubts about the military capabilities and bravery of blacks; others declared angrily that they were fighting to suppress a rebellion, not to free the slaves—much less to serve alongside them. One Indiana private offered a fairly representative perspective when he explained his decision to forego reenlistment: ‘‘[T]his war has turned out very Different from what I thought it would,’’ he wrote. ‘‘It is a War . . . to free the Nigars . . . and I do not propose to fight any more in such a cause’’ (Smith 2002, p. 6). African American men, on the other hand, rushed forward to prove doubters wrong. Many enlisted for practical reasons as well. The promise of a regular paycheck, combined with bounties and other monetary incentives, contributed to the decision of many poor blacks to enlist. Others, however, were primarily motivated by abolitionist sentiments. In addition, many fugitives from slavery regarded military service with the
Attack on Fort Sumter. The Confederate army took advantage of African American labor throughout the Civil War, as seen in this illustration, based on a photograph, of the 1861 attack of the Union-held Fort Sumter, marking the outbreak of the War between the States. Photograph by William Waud. The Library of Congress.
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Union Army as a means to secure the freedom of their family members. Finally, countless soldiers were motivated by racial pride and a consuming desire to prove that blacks were worthy of American citizenship. As J. G. E. Hystuns, a black noncommissioned officer with the 54th Massachusetts, asserted, ‘‘if there is one spark of manhood running in the blood of the Race that has resisted the . . . waves of oppression, the school of the soldier will fan it to a glowing flame’’ (Salvatore 1996, p. 115).
Training and Deployment When black enlistees entered the army, they were subjected to an intensive regimen of drill and firearms training (the latter was emphasized in part because so few African American recruits had any experience handling firearms). Some naive enlistees entered the army with the assurances of recruiters of free and equal treatment still ringing in their ears, but they were quickly stripped of such comforting illusions. In reality, most United States Colored Troops (USCT) camps were marked by harsh and demeaning modes of training and discipline. Anger and resentment quickly blossomed. In some cases, these reactions were unwarranted, as they were based on unrealistic expectations about aspects of military life that pertained to all soldiers, whether they were white or black. In many other instances, however, black soldiers were subjected to more exhausting and punitive treatment than were their white counterparts. In the worst cases, abusive treatment at the hands of white officers evoked memories of servitude on Southern plantations. In some camps, the demeaning treatment of black soldiers aroused the ire of white officers and enlisted men who believed that such rough handling was both unfair and counterproductive, as it undermined fighting spirit and cohesiveness. A number of camp chaplains were also strong defenders of the rights of black troops. The white officers who commanded black regiments during the Civil War varied enormously, both in quality and in motivation. Some volunteered out of ambition, their interest sparked by War Department policies that offered early promotions to officers who were willing to take command of black troops. The best of the white officers to command black units harbored abolitionist sentiments—or at the very least were capable of revising racist preconceptions about the limited military aptitude of black troops when confronted with evidence to the contrary. A few white officers actually embraced the opportunity to help blacks in advancing their cause. As Nathan W. Daniels, commander of 2nd Louisiana Native Guard, declared, ‘‘Thank God it hath been my fortune to be a participator in the grand idea of proclaiming freedom to this much abused & tortured race. Thank God my Regiment an African one’’ (Weaver 1998, p. 68).
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Daily Trials and Tribulations Military life during the Civil War was frightening, dangerous, and exhausting for virtually every soldier in the Union and Confederate armies. But for African American troops wearing the blue uniform of the Union, conditions were even more difficult to endure. Race enveloped virtually every aspect of black military life. During their service, many blacks received inferior assignments, poor training, and deficient care, not to mention insults from white soldiers. Discriminatory treatment seeped into virtually every realm of daily existence. Many African American enlistees were not surprised to find that the arms, equipment, and uniforms they received were often inferior to those distributed to white regiments. But they were openly dismayed when they came to recognize that prevailing beliefs that they were ill-suited to combat meant they were in danger of spending the entire war toiling at thankless chores and duties far from the front lines, often replacing white units for these jobs. At times, this demeaning exploitation of black soldiers who desperately wanted to contribute to the war effort in more meaningful ways prompted protests from sympathetic white officers and enlisted men. ‘‘They are put at the hardest as well as the meanest kinds of work,’’ wrote one disgusted white soldier from New York. ‘‘I have seen them policing (cleaning up filth and rubbish) white regiment camps. If a spirited white soldier were to do this except as punishment for some offense I think he would die first’’ (Palladino 1997, p. 44). The discriminatory treatment that most angered African American soldiers, however, was the inequality of pay. Whereas white enlisted men received $13 per month, black soldiers in the Union Army only received $10 per month. This situation infuriated black soldiers, especially after black units took on greater combat roles in the conflict. ‘‘It seems strange to me that we do not receive the same pay and rations as the white soldiers,’’ wrote one battle-hardened black soldier. ‘‘Do we not fill the same ranks? Do we not cover the same space of ground? Do we not take up the same length of ground in a grave-yard that others do? The [musket] ball does not miss the black man and strike the white, nor the white and strike the black. . . . [T]he black men have to go through the same hurling of musketry, and the same belching of cannonading as white soldiers do’’ (Redkey 2002 [1992], p. 48). Another African American soldier, Corporal James Henry Gooding of the 54th Massachusetts, wrote in a letter published in the New Bedford Mercury on November 21, 1863, that as men who have families to feed, and clothe, and keep warm, we must say, that the ten dollars by the greatest government in the world is an unjust distinction to men who have only a black skin to merit it. To put the matter on the ground that we are not soldiers would be simply absurd, in the
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Flag of the 84th Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry. Many historians believe the Union’s enlistment of African American troops gave the North a decisive advantage during the Civil War. Though initially denied admittance to the army, more than 200,000 African American soldiers eventually served under the Union flag, offering evidence they deserved to be accorded equal rights as full citizens of the United States. ª Smithsonian Institution/Corbis
face of the existing facts. A soldier’s pay is $13 per month, and Congress has nothing to do but to acknowledge that we are such—it needs no further legislation. To say even, we were not soldiers and pay us $20 would be injustice, for it would rob a whole race of their title to manhood.
This situation endured until June 1864, when the War Department grudgingly eliminated the disparity after years of protests from black soldiers, white officers, and sympathetic lawmakers and newspaper editors.
Brothers in Arms Within many black military units, shared experiences and hardships created strong feelings of kinship and community. This sense of brotherhood and heightened racial solidarity was honed not only in moments of harrowing combat or hours of marching, but also during days in camp. Black Union soldiers passed their free time in
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many of the same ways that white soldiers did. African American troops indulged in the same vices—gambling, drinking, and escapades with prostitutes—and engaged in the same long, meandering conversations about politics, prewar life, and various aspects of the soldier’s existence. The social environment in most black encampments, however, was unique in a number of notable respects. For example, virtually every black regiment included a handful of ‘‘storytellers’’ who regaled audiences with campfire tales, just as they had in slave communities. These tales served not only to entertain, but also to shape communal identity and give symbolic form to a range of events and experiences. Music also played an important recreational role in many black camps. But whereas white musicians and listeners used music primarily as a way to just pass the time, the activities of black singing groups and glee
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clubs, which were commonplace, were often freighted with deeper meaning and significance. African American musicians and singers took great pride in both their abilities and the cultural traditions upon which they drew. Significantly, music often increased camp unity and boosted camp morale, and helped blacks strengthen relations with white officers and soldiers. The literacy rate in black regiments was far lower than it was in white units, a direct result of Southern laws against educating slaves and limited opportunities for education even among black people in the North. As a result, reading, letter-writing, and journal-keeping were not as prevalent among USCT soldiers as they were with white troops. Nevertheless, some black regiments established debating and literary societies. These were promoted by noncommissioned officers, many of whom had received sound educations and been politically active prior to the war. In addition, educated black noncommissioned officers and enlisted men frequently volunteered their reading and writing services to illiterate comrades. In some black camps, formal instruction in reading and writing was established. These ‘‘schools’’ did not lack for students, as many soldiers badly wanted to be able to independently communicate with wives, sweethearts, parents, children, and other loved ones back home. Many white officers supported these ‘‘schools,’’ because they thought it would improve military performance, others supported the ‘‘schools’’ because they thought that such work would help prepare attendees for the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of citizenship. Teachers included chaplains, noncommissioned officers, wives of white officers, and volunteers from missionary societies and freedmen aid societies. Elementary textbooks used in Northern common schools were extensively used in camp schools, as were donated publications from charitable religious presses. For those soldiers who could read, preferred reading material ranged from the Bible to works of literature to newspapers. Of the latter, black newspapers such as the Weekly Anglo-African and the Christian Recorder were particularly popular, as they reported extensively on the hardships and triumphs of African American troops. A few regiments even launched their own newspapers, which served multiple functions: They provided entertainment to their black audience, reassured black troops that their sacrifice of toil and blood was in service to a great cause, and gave instruction on how to endure a military experience that often seemed bleak and emasculating.
On the Field of Battle More than 68,000 of the 200,000 black soldiers who served in the Union Army—one out of every three men—died during the Civil War. More than 2,750 of these deaths occurred on the battlefield, but a far greater
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number of African American troops were felled by a toxic combination of disease and terrible medical care. According to historian Joseph T. Glatthaar in Forged in Battle (1990), inadequate or incompetent medical care contributed to the deaths of more than 29,000 black soldiers from pneumonia, dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. All told, approximately one out of five black soldiers died from disease. By contrast, only one out of twelve white Union soldiers were felled by disease (Smith 2002, p. 41). Until mid-1863, black units rarely found themselves on the front lines. Instead, they usually toiled in rear areas that became incubators of disease. Other black units, such as the seven regiments of U.S. Colored Cavalry (USCC) that served during the Civil War, carried out assignments that involved manning remote outposts, scouting, and reconnaissance. From mid-1863 forward, however, black Union troops were increasingly thrown into battle—in large measure because they performed so well in early engagements. At Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, in June 1863, for example, three regiments of black troops—most of them with hardly any military training at all—served as the backbone of a successful Union effort to beat back an assault from a larger Confederate force. In the aftermath of the battle, journalist and government official Charles Dana (1819–1897) wrote that the ‘‘sentiment . . . [in] regard to the employment of Negro troops has been revolutionized by the bravery of the blacks in the recent Battle of Milliken’s Bend. Prominent officers, who used in private to sneer at the idea, are now heartily in favor of it’’ (Trudeau 1998, p. 59). Conversely, word of the performance of the black troops in the battle sent a shudder of apprehension through many Confederate camps and communities. ‘‘It is hard to believe that Southern soldiers—and Texans at that—have been whipped by a mongrel crew of white and black Yankees,’’ wrote one bewildered and shaken Confederate woman in her journal. ‘‘There must be some mistake’’ (Trudeau 1998, p. 59). The most famous battle involving significant numbers of black troops occurred in the summer of 1863, when the all-black 54th Massachusetts volunteers commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863) led an assault against Battery Wagner, a Confederate fortress guarding the entrance to Charleston Harbor. The assault ultimately failed, but the bravery and Herculean effort shown by the 54th Massachusetts—which lost nearly half its men in the battle—became one of the most famous episodes of the entire war. As Dana suggested, the bravery shown by black troops in battle led many white Yankees to abandon their doubts about the suitability of African Americans for military service. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson (1823– 1911), who led the all-black First South Carolina Volunteers, reported after one battle along the Florida-Georgia
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border that ‘‘nobody knows anything about these men who has not seen them in battle. I find that I myself knew nothing. There is a fiery energy about them beyond anything of which I have ever read’’ (Smith 2002, pp. 313– 314). And after the Battle of Nashville in December 1864, Union General James B. Steedman (1817–1883) declared that he ‘‘was unable to discover that color made any difference in the fighting of my troops. All, white and black, nobly did their duty as soldiers, and evinced cheerfulness and resolution such as I have never seen excelled in any campaign of the war in which I have borne a part’’ (Smith 2002, p. 63).
The Impact of Black Military Service The solid performance of black soldiers during the Civil War improved the lives of black Americans in the North in a host of areas. As word of their sacrifices on the front lines filtered back to Northern communities, antipathy toward black civilians lessened in some aspects (though bigotry remained commonplace, as the 1863 draft riots showed in stark detail). The nation’s first antidiscriminatory laws were passed before the war even ended, such as one that permitted blacks to testify as witnesses in federal court. The sacrifices borne by the Union’s black regiments also marked an important early step in the African American quest for acceptance and equality in American society. As President Lincoln observed, African Americans had ‘‘heroically vindicated their manhood on the battlefield, where, in assisting to save the life of the Republic, they have demonstrated in blood their right to the ballot’’ (Arnold 1866, p. 656).
Black Soldiers in the Confederacy In the Confederate South, meanwhile, the use of blacks as beasts of burden intensified. In support of the war effort, slaves were used to construct trenches and other fortifications, repair railroads, haul artillery and other military equipment, and harvest crops. This freed up white men to fight, but it further exacerbated manpower shortages later in the war, when the number of black runaways soared. By mid-1863, some pragmatic individuals in the South were cautiously raising the prospect of adding slaves to the Confederate Army—even if such a drastic step meant an end to slavery. ‘‘[Slavery should not be] a barrier to our independence,’’ declared an August 1863 editorial in the Jackson Mississippian. ‘‘If it is found in the way—if it proves an insurmountable object of the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it! Let it perish! . . . We must make up our minds to one solemn duty, the first duty of the patriot, and that is to save ourselves from the rapacious North, whatever the cost’’ (Hummel 1996, pp. 280–281). Even General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) expressed support for this idea near the end of the war.
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In March 1865, the demoralized Confederate Congress narrowly authorized the recruitment of 300,000 slaves to add to the depleted ranks of the Rebel army. At around this same time, President Jefferson Davis and other top officials sent the British and French governments frantic promises to fully emancipate Southern slaves in exchange for formal diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy. The Confederates even agreed to treat black prisoners of war like white prisoners in the context of prisoner exchanges (the South’s prior refusal to exchange black prisoners had slowed all prisoner exchanges to a trickle, which in turn created horrendously overcrowded prisoner of war camps in both the North and South during the last two years of the conflict). All of these measures were borne of palpable desperation, however, and they all came to naught. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, Isaac Newton. The History of Abraham Lincoln, and the Overthrow of Slavery. Chicago: Clarke & Co. Publishers, 1866. Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865. New York: Longmans, Green, 1956. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner and Taylor Yuval. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Press, 1999. Duncan, Russell, ed. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: Free Press, 1990. Glatthaar, Joseph T. ‘‘Black Glory: The AfricanAmerican Role in Union Victory.’’ In Why the Confederacy Lost, ed. Gabor S. Borritt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gooding, James Henry. Letter. New Bedford Mercury, November 21, 1863. Hansen, Joyce. Between Two Fires: Black Soldiers in the Civil War. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993. Hargrove, Hondon B. Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Palladino, Anita, ed. Diary of a Yankee Engineer: The Civil War Story of John H. Westervelt. New York: Fordham University Press, 1997. Redkey, Edwin S., ed. A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 2002. Salvatore, Nick. We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos Webber. New York: Times Books/Random House, 1996. Smith, John David, ed. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998. Weaver, C. P., ed. Thank God My Regiment an African One: The Civil War Diary of Colonel Nathan W. Daniels. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Wilson, Keith P. Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002. Kevin Hillstrom
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Most soldiers who fought in the Civil War, whether wearing the blue garb of the Union Army or the gray colors of the Confederates, were native-born Americans. These men, however, were joined by tens of thousands of foreign-born soldiers from virtually every part of the globe. In the case of the Federal military in particular, immigrant soldiers came to comprise a sizable portion of the overall force. By the end of the war in 1865, one out of four men who fought for the Union were foreignborn.
Federal recruiting poster designed for Irish immigrants. The
North took advantage of their larger foreign-born population, enlisting thousands of immigrants to fight the Confederates. Immigrants’ reasons for joining the fight ranged from a sense of obligation to their new country to a Federal decree that men must register for military service if they wished to acquire citizenship. Private Collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Foreign-Born Yankees The American Civil War erupted at a time when families were emigrating from Europe to U.S. shores in never before seen numbers. This exodus from Europe, spurred by political upheaval, the Irish potato famines, and America’s blossoming reputation as a meritocracy, funneled huge numbers of immigrants into the North. Most immigrants chose Northern cities and states because industrialization—and the associated promise of jobs—was proceeding at a far more rapid pace in those places than in the South, and because farm land was both more abundant and more affordable in the North than in the plantation-oriented South. By 1860 nearly one out of three men living in the North was foreign-born. This resource could not be ignored when it came time for the Federal government to muster an army to put down the insurrection in the South. President
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Abraham Lincoln handed out military commissions to immigrant generals, which proved an effective tool in increasing enlistments in immigrant neighborhoods. Of course, many foreign-born Americans did not need such inducements to volunteer; swayed by financial and patriotic considerations, immigrants flooded many Union recruiting offices in the opening months of the conflict. Another burst of immigrants joining the military occurred in 1863, when Congress passed conscription laws that required immigrants who had sworn their intention to become naturalized citizens to register for military service.
Armies of Multiple Nationalities As the war progressed, some Union camps became highly polyglot. As historian Bell Irvin Wiley reported in his
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General Robert Nugent (d. 1901) and staff of the Irish Brigade. Though sometimes subject to prejudice by native-born Union soldiers, immigrant soldiers, such as those from General Robert Nugent’s Irish Brigade, readily volunteered to defend their newly-adopted country. By Civil War’s end, foreign-born troops comprised nearly twenty-five percent of Federal troops, providing an important manpower advantage over the Confederacy. The Library of Congress.
seminal The Life of Billy Yank, Company H of the 8th Michigan included seven Canadians, five Englishmen, four Germans, two Irishmen, one Dutchman, one Scotsman, and one enigmatic individual who listed his nationality as ‘‘the ocean.’’ This assortment of nationalities was by no means unusual. One Union regiment had so many men of different nationalities in its ranks that the commanding officer had to give orders in seven languages. On more than one occasion, these language barriers hindered the performance of Union units in battle. Other Yankee regiments consisted almost entirely of foreign-born soldiers. The 79th New York infantry, for example, was made up primarily of Scottish immigrants— a fact that led them to become known simply as ‘‘the Highlanders.’’ Similarly, every soldier in the 9th Wisconsin infantry was from Germany, and both New York State and Ohio produced several regiments that were almost entirely composed of German immigrants. All told, it is believed that over 200,000 Germans marched under the Union banner. Another 150,000 Irish immigrants fought for the Union, and at least twenty regiments were composed almost entirely of men from Ireland. Throughout the
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war, numerous Union generals remarked on the unique aspects of handling Irish soldiers. They griped about their bluster and resistance to authority, but also spoke admiringly of their cheerful and resilient demeanor in the face of war’s myriad horrors and discomforts. In addition to the German and Irish contingents, other nationalities well represented in the Union military included Englishmen and Canadians (an estimated 60,000 soldiers combined). Immigrants from France, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, and even various Asian nations further fleshed out the Yankee ranks. The number of foreign-born soldiers in the Confederate ranks was much smaller. The Rebel army included one brigade of Irishmen, several German regiments, and even boasted a Louisiana brigade with a strong French presence that was commanded by a French count with the colorful name of Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac.
Motivations Foreign-born soldiers were sometimes treated with disdain by their native-born counterparts. The latter’s hostility was in many cases nothing more than bigotry,
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though in other instances animosity stemmed from impatience with language barriers and other perceived impediments to efficient military performance. Despite the sometimes cold reception they received from American-born comrades, however, few foreign-born soldiers seemed to question their decision to take up arms in defense of the Union and the republican principles it represented. A German soldier attached to the 8th Missouri, for example, declared that he ‘‘grasped the weapon of death for the purpose of doing my part in defending and upholding the integrity, laws and the preservation of my adopted country from a band of contemptible traitors who would if they can accomplish their hellish designs, destroy the best and noblest government on earth’’ (Wiley 1975, p. 79). An Irish immigrant attached to the 28th Massachusetts expressed similar sentiments about the stakes involved in the War between the States. ‘‘This is my country as much as the man who was born on the soil,’’ he declared. ‘‘This is the first test of a modern free government in the act of sustaining itself against internal enemys. . . . If it fail all tyrants will succeed[;] the old cry will be sent forth from the aristocrats of Europe that such is the common lot of all republics. . . . Irishmen and their descendents have . . . a stake in [this] nation’’ (Welsh 1986, pp. 65–66). These strongly held convictions were essential to the morale and brave performance of the great majority of the Civil War’s foreign-born troops. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Welsh, Peter. Irish Green and Union Blue: The Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh, ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl and Margaret Cosse´ Richard. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank, the Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Common Soldier of the Civil War. New York: Scribner, 1975. Kevin Hillstrom
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Native American Soldiers
An estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Native American men took part in the American Civil War in an official capacity, with the vast majority—probably three-quarters of the total—fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Native American soldiers were most prominent and important in the lightly populated Trans-Mississippi
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West, but Native Americans also participated in battles in the Eastern theaters of the war.
Indian Troops in the East East of the Mississippi River, Native American membership in the Confederate military consisted primarily of a few hundred soldiers scattered among white regiments hailing from Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. As Laurence Hauptman detailed in Between Two Fires (1995), the most prominent tribes to formally cast their lot with the Confederacy were the Catawba of South Carolina, who became particularly proficient at scouting and tracking down runaway slaves, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee, who guarded mountain passes and conducted raids against Union positions in the Smoky Mountain region. Many of these Native American soldiers eschewed the uniform worn by white Confederate soldiers. ‘‘Their faces were painted, and their long straight hair, tied in a queue, hung down behind,’’ wrote one Confederate soldier from Missouri. ‘‘Their dress was chiefly in the Indian costume—buckskin hunting-shirts, dyed of almost every color, leggings, and moccasins of the same material, with little bells, rattles, ear-rings, and similar paraphernalia. Many of them were bareheaded and about half carried only bows and arrows, tomahawks, and war-clubs’’ (Davis 1991, p. 22). Within the Union ranks, the most notable tribes to make their presence felt included members of Virginia’s Pamunkey tribe, who served as river pilots for George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in 1862 during the Peninsula campaign, and Lumbee warriors from North Carolina, who waged guerrilla campaigns in the swamp country of their native lands in the last months of the war. The pro-Union tribes most deserving of mention, however, are Michigan’s Ottawa and Ojibwa tribes. Warriors from these tribes became Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters, a group that distinguished itself at the bloody Battle of the Crater and several other engagements. What motivated these Native Americans to become involved in the Civil War, which was fought for purposes that had nothing to do with them? The answer, in essence, was that their tribal leaders hoped that participation in the war would help them negotiate more favorable treaties to protect their traditional homelands from white incursion (similar motivations prompted other far-flung tribes, such as the Pequots of Connecticut and the Seneca of western New York, to assist the Federals).
Fighting in Indian Territory In the Trans-Mississippi West, many Indian tribes avoided any involvement in the white man’s war. Union forces, though, did receive the support of Delaware Indian leaders who hoped to parlay that support into a reasonable
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A group Native American soldiers nursing injuries. Hoping their sacrifices would prove an advantage when negotiating treaties, Native American soldiers fought on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, with the majority of the troops joining the Confederate side. Native American soldiers endured poor treatment, however, and were often regarded as expendable. The Library of Congress
land treaty with officials in Washington. More importantly, the Cherokee became deeply involved in the Civil War. The war opened a deep schism among the Cherokee. The majority of the Cherokee nation, under the leadership of chief John Ross, tried to steer a neutral course. ‘‘I am—the Cherokees are—your friends and the
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friends of your people,’’ he wrote to Confederate officials. ‘‘But we do not wish to be brought into the feuds between yourselves and your Northern Brethren. Our wish is for peace. Peace at home and Peace among you’’ (Moore 1862, p. 394). Over time, however, some Cherokees from Ross’s group drifted into the Union camp. A sizable
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Native American Soldiers
A NATIVE AMERICAN AT APPOMATTOX: ELY SAMUEL PARKER (1828–1895) Ely (pronounced E-lee) Samuel Parker was a Seneca-Iroquois Indian who not only served in the Union Army during the Civil War but rose to the rank of brigadier general. Parker was born in 1828 in Indian Falls, New York, on what was then the Tonawanda reservation. His mother had been told by a tribal elder before Ely’s birth that her son would become a great warrior and peacemaker. Parker’s original tribal name was Hasanoanda, which means ‘‘The Reader.’’ A gifted child, he learned English rapidly and was sent to an academy in western New York; there he won prizes for his speaking skill. His tribal leaders thought so highly of him that they sent him to Washington at the age of eighteen to represent the Iroquois and Seneca in treaty negotiations with the United States. In 1852, Parker was made the sachem (chief) of the Seneca tribe and given the name Donehogawa, which means ‘‘Keeper of the Western Door.’’ After graduation from the academy, Parker wished to study law but was rejected by Harvard because he was an Indian. He prepared for the New York bar examination by working for three years in a law firm, but was not allowed to take the test on the grounds that he was not an American citizen (Native Americans were not given citizenship rights until 1924). Parker then became a civil engineer; after working on the Erie Canal, he was sent west to Galena, Illinois, where he met Ulysses S. Grant. When the Civil War broke out, Parker contacted the governor of New York and offered to raise a regiment of Iroquois volunteers to fight on the Union side. His proposal was rejected.
faction led by Stand Watie, however, joined the Confederate cause. Watie’s followers became the foundation of a sizable Native American force for the Confederacy; the South ultimately raised eleven regiments and seven battalions of Indian cavalry in the region. The clashes between these forces occurred primarily in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), which both Confederate and Union officials recognized as key to the Rebels’ western defenses. White military leaders pushed the Indians into bloody confrontations with one another again and again, with little regard for the spiraling death toll. As the war progressed, Indian Territory became a notoriously bloody and savage killing ground. Stories of scalpings and other savagery were seized on by white officials and settlers who were eager to push Indians elsewhere in the West off their traditional lands. Almost without exception, white military strategists with the Union and Confederacy treated the Native American warriors under their charge with a combination of contempt and disregard. Wages, food, clothing, and weapons that had been earmarked for the Indians were routinely diverted to white troops. Many Indians had to scavenge clothing from the field, by foraging, or make do with the rags provided from depleted commissaries. In addition, corruption and fraud remained hallmarks
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Grant did not forget Parker, however. When Grant was promoted to major general in 1863, he gave Parker an appointment in the Union Army as a captain of engineers. Parker served under Grant at the siege of Vicksburg in 1863 and returned east with him when Grant was made commander of all Union forces in March 1864. As Grant’s adjutant, Parker used his legal training to help draft the surrender document that Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox in April 1865. The document, now in the National Archives, is in Parker’s handwriting. After the war, Parker was promoted to the rank of brigadier general, his promotion being backdated to the date of Lee’s surrender. While Lee was signing the surrender papers, he apparently mistook Parker for a black man, and tried to apologize by saying, ‘‘I am glad to see one real American here.’’ Parker is said to have replied, ‘‘We are all Americans, sir’’ (Armstrong 1978, p.178). REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armstrong, William H. Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1978. Gilmore, Gerry J. ‘‘Seneca Chief Fought Greed, Injustice.’’ U.S. Department of Defense, Armed Forces Press Service, 2002. Available from http://www.pen tagon.gov/specials/nativeam02/injustice.html.
of government contracts for various services earmarked for the tribes as a whole. The violence in Indian Territory also roiled the internal politics and society of myriad tribes, making them even more vulnerable to the mighty tide of westward settlement rolling over their lands. The spilling over of the Civil War into Indian Territory, then, was a negative development for the Native Americans living in the region, and the conduct of both Union and Confederate leaders toward Native American soldiers marching under their banners remains one of the most shameful chapters in the entire conflict. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berg, Gordon. ‘‘Inured to Hardships, Fleet as Deer.’’ Civil War Times (June 2007). Civil War Society. ‘‘Native Americans in the Civil War.’’ Encyclopedia of the Civil War. New York: Wings Books, 1997. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Franks, Kenny A. Stand Watie and the Agony of the Cherokee Nation. Memphis, TN: Memphis State University Press, 1979.
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Hatch, Thom. The Blue, the Gray, and the Red: Indian Campaigns of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2003. Hauptman, Laurence M. Between Two Fires: American Indians in the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Civil War in the American West. New York: Random House, 1991. Moore, Frank, ed. Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862. Kevin Hillstrom
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Spies and saboteurs occupy an ambiguous place in the pantheons of Civil War history and legend. Those to whom their services were provided often perceived them as heroic figures who supplied vital information at considerable personal peril—and with little prospect that their sacrifices and efforts would ever be publicly acknowledged. For some military strategists, political leaders, and citizens in both the North and South, these spies working behind enemy lines were the ultimate patriots. The population in both the North and South viewed any spy in their midst as the worst sort of treasonous scoundrel. A few spies and saboteurs—usually women—were regarded a little more mildly, as misguided fools rather than immoral traitors. But most agents caught gathering intelligence, serving as couriers of classified information, or otherwise hindering the domestic war effort were dealt with harshly. Executions of convicted spies were commonplace.
Despite this edge, however—and despite their ability to line up a network of safe houses and courier lines in the North within months of the onset of war—the Confederates never really managed to gain a decisive advantage in the realm of espionage.
Confederate Spies The man charged with developing a Confederate spy network capable of infiltrating the North was Major William Norris (1820–1896), who also served the government in Richmond in a far more public role as head of the Confederate Signal Bureau. During the course of the war, Norris and his cohorts in Richmond benefited enormously from the efforts of Confederate agents such as E. Porter Alexander (1835–1910) and Thomas Nelson Conrad (1837–1905). Some of the most effective spies for the Confederacy, however, were women. Rose O’Neal Greenbow (1817–1864), who was a Washington
Cobbling Together Spy Networks When the fireworks at Fort Sumter erupted in the spring of 1861 and ushered in the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy scrambled to cobble together intelligence-gathering networks that could track enemy movements, report on enemy resources and strategies, and monitor the strengths and weaknesses of supply lines and assorted military operations maintained by the other side. In this realm, Union military strategists did not enjoy a significant advantage over their counterparts in the South. In 1861 the federal authorities in Washington did not have any sort of well-established intelligence apparatus in place to which they could turn; prior to the war there simply had never been a pressing need for such an entity (though a smattering of U.S. diplomats and other officials in Europe and elsewhere did provide some basic information-gathering functions). Moreover, as Donald Markle (1994) points out, the Union had an established government with various departments that could be infiltrated, whereas in the initial stages of the war there was essentially no centralized Confederate government to infiltrate (1994, p. xvii).
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Female spies, including Rose Greenbow, often took advantage of nineteenth-century stereotypes that regarded women as less able to participate in the intricacies of war. Using their social connections to learn important information about enemy movements, fortifications, and strategies, successful women spies proved to be excellent sources of detailed information during the Civil War. The Library of Congress Confederate spy Mrs. Rose Greenbow (1817–1864).
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Spies
‘‘BELLE’’ BOYD AND PAULINE CUSHMAN Some of the most notorious—and successful—spies on both sides of the Civil War were women. Perhaps the most colorful was Maria Isabella ‘‘Belle’’ Boyd (1844–1900), known as ‘‘the Cleopatra of the Secession.’’ Born in Martinsburg in what is now West Virginia, Boyd began her espionage work at the age of seventeen. When some drunken Union soldiers entered the family home on July 4, 1861, and insulted Belle’s mother, the teenager drew a pistol and shot one of them. As a result, a detachment of Union soldiers was posted around the house and the family’s activities were monitored. Belle took advantage of this close contact to charm one of the officers into revealing military secrets. It was a pattern she followed on other occasions, along with eavesdropping on Union officers through a knothole in the upper floor of the local hotel. Boyd was not universally admired in the Confederacy in spite of her repeated success in obtaining Union military secrets. She was a flamboyant dresser, preferring richly colored clothes and wearing a feather in her hair. She also traveled alone, often on horseback, and visited Southern officers in their camp tents—behavior that shocked other women. Arrested twice and imprisoned for espionage, Boyd was released both times. In 1864 she went to England, where she met and married an officer in the Union Navy, Samuel Wylde Hardinge. After his death, she remained in England and began a career as an actress. In 1869 she returned to the United States and remarried. She divorced her second husband in 1884 and married a third husband in 1885. A year later, Boyd began to give lecture tours across the United States about her adventures as a Confederate spy. She died in Wisconsin of typhoid fever in 1900. Boyd’s most celebrated counterpart on the Union side was Pauline Cushman (1833–1893), who had become an actress before
socialite with access to some of the capital’s most important political operators, was perhaps the most famous of these agents, but others such as Antonia Ford (1838– 1871) and Maria ‘‘Belle’’ Boyd (1843–1900) also delivered valuable information on Union troop movements, defensive priorities, and military strategies to grateful recipients down South. Women were particularly effective agents—for the Union as well as the Confederacy—precisely because nineteenth-century notions of female inferiority were so deeply ingrained in the thoughts and attitudes of Northern and Southern men. It was hard for many to imagine that women could possibly be engaged in espionage, and for those female spies that were caught, treatment was far more lenient: Not one of the women caught spying for either side was threatened with execution (Williams 2005, p. 139). As the war progressed, Southern spymasters also became adept at gleaning important military intelligence from Northern newspapers, some of which were stun-
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the Civil War. Cushman’s husband, a musician who had joined the Union Army, was killed in 1862. While on tour with a theatrical troupe in Louisville, Kentucky, Cushman began to fraternize with Confederate officers. She obtained battle plans and, concealing them in her shoes, attempted to carry them back to the Union lines. Cushman was caught by Braxton Bragg’s troops and sentenced to death by hanging, but was saved three days before her scheduled execution by a Union advance and Confederate retreat. According to some sources, Cushman then disguised herself as a Union cavalry major and became known as Miss Major Cushman. By the spring of 1865 she was already giving lectures around the country on her work as a Union spy. Cushman’s later years were unhappy, however. Her children both died in 1868. She moved to San Francisco and married a second husband in 1872, but was widowed again in less than a year. She married a third husband in 1879 and moved with him to Texas but separated from him in 1890. By 1892 she had moved back to San Francisco and was living in poverty. Cushman’s last days were spent working as a seamstress and cleaning lady. She became addicted to opium to relieve the pain of severe arthritis, and died of an overdose in December 1893. Cushman is buried in the national cemetery at the Presidio in San Francisco, where her gravestone identifies her as a Union spy. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christen, William J. Pauline Cushman, Spy of the Cumberland: An Accounting and Memorandum of Her Life. Roseville, MN: Edinborough Press, 2005. Scarborough, Ruth. Belle Boyd, Siren of the South. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983.
ningly careless about revealing Federal troop movements and other information about Yankee military operations (the South did not hemorrhage important military information in the same way, mostly because it had far fewer papers). In addition, Rebel military commanders and scouts in the field received a steady diet of intelligence on enemy movements, strength, and morale from members of the civilian population. This information, provided by farmers, field hands, housewives, hunters, storeowners, and other Southerners from every walk of life, became a veritable flood during the last two years of the war, when Union troops were making ever deeper incursions into the Confederate heartland. This intelligence ultimately was insufficient to stem the Yankee tide, but it did make Union military objectives considerably harder to achieve.
Union Spies Leading architects of Union intelligence-gathering efforts during the Civil War included Allan Pinkerton (1819–
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1884), founder of the legendary Pinkerton Detective Agency, and Provost Marshal Marsena R. Patrick (1811–1888). These and other administrators not only coordinated the activities of Union spies in the South, such as Philip Henson and Timothy Webster (1821– 1862) (the latter was perhaps the most famous of the male spies utilized by the North), they also worked to ferret out spies and saboteurs in their own midst. In the latter regard, Northern spymasters were much more effective than their Confederate counterparts. Their greater level of success was attributable in part to the fact that even before the war began, the Federal government had identified many Southern sympathizers in Washington, DC, and other population centers. In addition, the South’s ability to detect spies became progressively weaker as the war went on as Confederate difficulties with virtually every aspect of military operations intensified. Like the South, the North had its share of notable women spies, including Mary Gordon, Carrie King, and Pauline Cushman (1833–1893). Perhaps the most famous woman to gather meaningful military intelligence for the North was Elizabeth Van Lew (1818–1900). A wealthy socialite, Van Lew cultivated a reputation for bizarre behavior that helped disguise her involvement in the Underground Railroad and increased her ability to pass on important information involving Confederate strategies and troop movements. Van Lew’s chief ‘‘lieutenant’’ in these efforts was Mary Elizabeth Bowser (c. 1840–??), a former slave educated by Van Lew who managed to obtain employment as a dining room attendant to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808–1889). Another important source of military intelligence was a spy network nurtured into an effective weapon by Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885). Under the guiding hand of Grant and General Grenville M. Dodge (1831–1916), this networkevolved into an effective provider of military and political intelligence. By the latter stages of the war, ‘‘a large secret service force operated all over the Confederacy,’’ recalled Union Colonel George E. Spencer (1836–1893). ‘‘It was probably the most effective secret service in the federal army and General Grant came to rely on the information received from it’’ (Perkins 1929, p. 105). As Federal armies made deeper incursions into the South, the information provided by undercover spies was also supplemented by information from antisecessionist Southerners, as well as those looking to curry favor with the new authorities in the region. In the early years, these ordinary Southerners were furtive in providing assistance, but they became increasingly bold in the war’s final months, when the Confederacy’s death rattle had become audible to all. Finally, Yankee armies in the field received a great deal of valuable intelligence from fugitive slaves, many of whom carried valuable information about enemy positions and dispositions. Some of these ‘‘informers’’ were so eager to help defeat
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Major Pauline Cushman (1833–1893), spy and actress. An unsuccessful actress, Pauline Cushman was caught as she attempted to smuggle information about Confederate plans. Sentenced to death, she escaped from enemy hands during the confusion of a Union military attack and later toured the United States telling her story. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
the slaveholding South that they delayed their journey northward in order to guide Union forces to vulnerable supply depots and other potential military targets. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bakeless, John. Spies of the Confederacy. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970. Davis, William C., and the editors of Time-Life Books. Spies, Scouts, and Raiders: Irregular Operations. New York: Time-Life Books, 1985. Feis, William B. Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2004.
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Foraging and Looting
Fishel, Edwin C. ‘‘The Mythology of Civil War Intelligence.’’ Civil War History 10, no. 4 (1964): 344–367. Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Gaddy, David W. ‘‘Gray Cloaks and Daggers.’’ Civil War Times Illustrated July 14, no. 4 (1975): 20–27. Leonard, Elizabeth D. All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Markle, Donald E. Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Women in the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Perkins, Jacob Randolph. Trails, Rails and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929. Varon, Elizabeth R. Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy. Oxford University Press, USA, 2005. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Kevin Hillstrom
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Foraging and Looting
The practice of foraging by military personnel increased exponentially during the course of the American Civil War. At the outset of the conflict, Rebel and Yankee soldiers alike mostly viewed the civilian populations in North and South—and the property they owned—as firmly outside the sphere of military action. As the war progressed, however, these restrictions on contact with civilians—some self-imposed on moral grounds, others in adherence to explicit military rules prohibiting foraging and looting—became frayed and in many cases were discarded altogether. There are very important differences between foraging and looting. Foraging was sanctioned by the laws and customs of war, although it was approached with some squeamishness at the beginning of the war. Looting involved taking non-food items for non-military uses, and was sanctioned neither by the laws and customs of war nor by officers on either side. This gradual turn to foraging and looting was especially true of Union soldiers operating in the Confederate states, where most of the war was fought. This is not to say that Union soldiers were the only culpable party; Confederates were no less likely to forage and loot, given the opportunity. In the
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South, however, the Union army faced shifting attitudes about war strategy and increased frustration about perceived civilian culpability in guerrilla activity that prompted an outright embrace of looting and foraging.
Foraging in the Countryside Food was the first area in which soldiers engaged in large-scale theft from civilians. In its earliest stages, the practice of ‘‘living off the land’’ as a way of supplementing meager and unvaried commissary rations was done lightly and with an almost quaint concern for propriety and ethics. For example, soldiers in both armies freely picked apples, pears, cherries, and other fruit from trees they passed while on the march, but they were less sanguine about consuming field crops because they knew that production of the latter was directly due to the exertions of farmers and farmhands. The same ethical issues confronted soldiers who came across cellars and smokehouses containing private food stores. Because many soldiers came from rural circumstances themselves, they knew the long, hot hours that went into raising field crops and filling storage cellars and smokehouses, and the thought of absconding with the fruits of those labors troubled many a conscience. Over time, however, the attitudes of many soldiers toward supplementing their diet with food found on the march changed markedly. Food rations from the military commissaries of both armies were notoriously meager, of limited variety, and wretched in taste, and soldiers who had been choking down hardtack and salt pork for weeks at a time understandably were tempted by the livestock, fruit, and vegetables that they came across in enemy territory. Once individual members of a company or regiment crossed an ethical line by taking food from civilians for their own consumption, the behavior almost inevitably spread to other members of the company or regiment, like a fast-spreading virus. Another one of the key elements in the institutionalization of foraging within military units was gaining approval—or at least tacit acceptance—of the practice from officers. Many enlisted men accomplished this by implicating officers as beneficiaries of their predation. Officers who received and kept a portion of the bounty from foraging expeditions were in no position to rein in the practice. As accomplices, their main concern was to maintain appearances. As a result, some officers who were ‘‘on the take’’ engaged in elaborate charades in which they publicly exhorted troops in their charge to kept their hands off private property, then waited in their tents for soldiers to bring them their share of the spoils.
Lee in the North The two major occasions on which Confederate forces had the opportunity to forage at length came in 1862 and 1863, when General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) led invasions into Maryland and Pennsylvania. During
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both these campaigns, some Southern voices urged Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to be an apocalyptic force laying bare Northern hearths and fields. The Richmond Dispatch, for instance, expressed a fervent wish that Rebel ‘‘troops will turn the whole country into a desert’’ (Royster 1991, p. 37). Some Confederate forces refrained from foraging, and Lee himself took pains to use Confederate currency to procure salt and other important supplies. But proud Rebel declarations that all private property in the North was treated with the utmost respect were demonstrably false. Many prosperous farmers across Pennsylvania—as well as some who were not so prosperous—were raided by Rebel parties in 1862 and 1863, and Lee was forced to issue a formal injunction against foraging after it became clear to him and his lieutenants that plundering of civilian property was threatening to get out of hand. Despite his order, seizure and destruction of Northern food and property continued. As scholar Edwin B. Coddington wrote in The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command, ‘‘writing confidentially in their letters or diaries and later in memoirs, Southerners mentioned not only thefts of horses but of other kinds of property as well. . . . One soldier noted in his diary that nearly half the men in his regiment were out foraging’’ (Coddington 1997, p. 177).
Yankees in the South Early Union campaigns into Confederate territory likewise were marked by unauthorized foraging, but these transgressions were initially carried out by only a minority of soldiers. Many Federal regiments and companies actively enforced rules against foraging with systems of fines and other punishments, and a number of them actually assigned soldiers to guard Rebel property from foragers. Some Union officers actively worked to stamp out foraging as late as the summer of 1864. And of course many Yankee soldiers refused to engage in foraging at any time during the war despite their comrades’ actions, usually because they found the practice to be both morally indefensible and personally degrading. Formal rules and moral qualms about foraging began to erode in some parts of the Union Army as early as mid1862, however. The lifting of restrictions on foraging gladdened the hearts of many Yankee soldiers. In July 1862, for example, a Union soldier in the Army of Virginia expressed delight when the army’s new commander, General John Pope (1822–1892), issued orders permitting foraging and ending guarding of Rebel property. Guarding of the property of the rebels has been the greatest Curse to us in this army that could have been thought of for the men had got so mad about it that a good many of them did not care whether they did anything or not. . . . The soldiers begin to think that we are going to have war in earnest and that we are to be supported by the
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Government and that no false notions of mercy are to save the scoundrels that have caused this war. (Mitchell 1988, p. 139)
Indeed, rank-and-file Yankees realized early on that destruction of food and other provisions far behind enemy lines had the potential to be deeply injurious to supply-starved Rebel armies in the field. Union foraging, though, quickly took on a darker hue, deteriorating into outright looting, vandalism, and destruction of Confederate property. In some cases, military considerations merely served as a pretext for engaging in vicious or heartless behavior. Factors driving this turn by Union troops toward wanton theft of jewelry and other valuables and indiscriminate arson against homes and fields included mounting frustration and disillusionment with the war, heightened anger and concern about guerrilla activity by Southern civilians, and rationalizations that soldiers deserved some spoils of war, given the hardships and dangers that they were enduring. In numerous cases, Union troops attacked Confederate property with implacable fury. One Union soldier with the Army of the Potomac recalled the pillaging of a stately plantation in December 1862: ‘‘What the troops could not use they demolished; the men smashed mirrors, fine china and alabaster vases; mutilated books, paintings and embroidered draperies; and chopped up antique furniture for firewood’’ (Thomas 1990, p. 194). Such ceremonies of demolition—sometimes conducted in a strangely festive, carnival-like atmosphere— were not carried out exclusively or even primarily by hardened criminals in uniform. Some of the vandals were God-fearing men from good homes who took pains to explain their behavior in letters to loved ones and personal diaries. ‘‘If any of your readers should think that there was too much Vandalism in any of these acts,’’ wrote one Union soldier in an August 1863 letter home, [L]et them think of the necessity which requires our army to be down here, of the danger to Life and Limb, each one is subject to, besides doing as our brave fellows did, march and fight under a hot sun upon seven or eight hard crackers for two weeks, and do as some of our men actually did, rifle the haversacks of the Dead for food, and give from half a dollar to a dollar for a single cracker! (Mitchell 1988, p. 140)
Defending Home and Hearth Even the Yankee regiments that most flagrantly marauded the countryside generally followed a set of guidelines governing their behavior. Reported incidents of rape, for instance, were relatively rare. Myriad accounts from both Yankee soldiers and Southern civilians indicate that because abandonment was taken as evidence of treasonous sympathies, abandoned homes and property were treated much more harshly than the homes and property of homeowners who stood fast. Indeed, many Southern
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Foraging and Looting
By war’s end, Union taboos toward foraging and looting loosened, as many soldiers justified their destruction of the countryside as punishment for the South’s determination to preserve slavery and their decision to secede from the United States of America. The Library of Congress. After the foraging.
homeowners—and especially women whose fathers and husbands were off at war—convinced would-be looters to spare their homes, usually by appealing to their sense of fair play and chivalry. Southern civilians were usually cognizant of the impending arrival of enemy troops. Some had days to weigh whether to flee or stay and hope for the best. No matter what the decision proved to be, many affluent planters and other homeowners tried to hide their valuables—money, livestock, jewelry, valued heirlooms—from the approaching Yankees. On sizable plantations, elaborate preparations were taken. As one scholar explains: What supplies were movable were carried off and hidden. When the master did not feel he could trust his slaves, or felt they might be frightened into revealing hiding places, he had to do this work himself, and probably at night. The women decided what to do with jewelry and household valuables and sometimes put on an extra dress and clothed their children with a superfluity of garments—in case the house was burned or garments carried off they would have a change of clothing. The master or the overseer had the stock driven off and horses and mules hidden, and then stood ready to depart himself on short notice. . . . When
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there was no white man on the plantation, the woman would try to carry out these measures herself. (Kennett 1995, p. 298)
Sometimes these desperate measures worked. On other occasions, suspicious soldiers relied on intimidation or violence to find out where valuables had been placed or livestock had been taken. Few Southerners subjected to outright terrorism at the hands of enemy soldiers were capable of holding out for long. Moreover, many slaves happily informed Union troops about where their masters’ valuables and livestock could be found. In addition, their accounts of deprivation and heartbreak at the hands of slave owners elicited greater levels of destruction from some Yankee units, who cast their acts of arson and other demolition as righteous blows against an ungodly and disloyal people.
Sherman’s Hard War One of the most notorious Union military commanders to officially sanction foraging and destruction of enemy private property was General Philip Sheridan (1831– 1888). As chief of cavalry of the Army of the Potomac in the summer and fall of 1864, Sheridan oversaw the annihilation of large swaths of crops in Virginia’s
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Shenandoah Valley, the so-called ‘‘breadbasket of the Confederacy.’’ Sheridan’s men destroyed crops, burned houses and barns, and drove off or captured livestock with ruthless efficiency. ‘‘The people [of the Shenandoah Valley] must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war,’’ Sheridan famously declared (Hutton 1999, p. 204). General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891) is another infamously aggresive general who battled through Georgia and the Carolinas in late 1864 and early 1865. During the course of this ‘‘March to the Sea,’’ which began in earnest with the burning of Atlanta, Sherman made a reputation for himself as the embodiment of the most ruthless and brutal side of war. Earlier in the war, Sherman had indicated a profound distaste for visiting war’s horrors on civilians. ‘‘War at best is barbarism, but to involve all—children, women, old and helpless—is more than can be justified,’’ he stated. ‘‘Our men will become absolutely lawless unless they can be checked’’ (Nevin 1986, p. 117). By the time he arrived on the doorstep of Atlanta in September 1864 with 60,000 troops behind him, his views had changed. ‘‘War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it’’ he wrote in a letter to Atlanta’s city leaders: Those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated by pride. We don’t want your negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and, if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it. (Simpson 1999, p. 708)
In the same letter, Sherman also made pointed reference to Confederate incidents of foraging and looting in the border states that remained loyal to the Union: I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of
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soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. (Simpson 1999, p. 708)
Looting and Destruction during the March to the Sea After leaving Atlanta’s factories and public buildings in smoking ruins, Sherman fed and supplied his army by taking whatever he needed from Georgia’s farms and towns on his way to the coastal city of Savannah. He also directed his troops to destroy whatever they could not use themselves. ‘‘Evidently it is a material element in this campaign to produce among the people of Georgia a thorough conviction of the personal misery which attends war, and of the utter helplessness and inability of their ‘rulers,’ State or Confederate, to protect them,’’ wrote Major Henry Hitchcock, a member of Sherman’s staff. ‘‘And I am bound to say that I believe more and more that only by this means can the war be ended’’ (Nevin 1986, p. 163). Sherman’s own instructions regarding foraging made it clear that Union soldiers had a lot of latitude in terms of what they could take for themselves. The army did establish a basic framework for foraging: Parties were to be organized by brigade commanders and they were to keep on hand a ten-days’ supply of meat, vegetables, and other food for soldiers and a three-day ration of forage for horses and mules. But whereas some units followed these guidelines fairly faithfully, others departed from it in sometimes dramatic fashion. For example, Sherman instructed foraging parties to leave some basic foodstuffs and other necessities for civilian families, but these instructions were skirted or ignored in some cases. When Sherman’s army took control of Savannah in December 1864, the city was largely spared from violence and destruction. But when the Union army passed over the Savannah River and into South Carolina—the first state that had seceded from the Union—looting, vandalism, and arson reached new heights. This level of violence and destruction was due in no small measure to soldiers’ desire to punish South Carolinians for their rebellious ways. Each night, the skies surrounding the army were alight with homes and fields burning into cinders. Chimneys were often the only thing left standing in the morning, and these charred remains came to be known as ‘‘Sherman’s sentinels.’’ The residents of the state capital of Columbia suffered particularly harsh treatment at the hands of the Yankees. ‘‘That is the way we carry on the war now,’’ wrote one Wisconsin soldier in Sherman’s army. ‘‘Raze, burn, and destroy everything we come to’’ (Bropst 1960, p. 103).
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Sherman’s troops loot a Georgia plantation. James E. Taylor’s 1888 print depicts the widespread looting enjoyed by victorious soldiers during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s ‘‘March to the Sea.’’ While soldiers tended to be more respectful of private property during the early stages of the conflict, by war’s end military strategy changed to include consuming or destroying all of the opposition’s resources. ª The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY
Bandits, Bummers and other Camp Followers Much of the worst violence and predation visited upon Georgians and South Carolinians during Sherman’s March to the Sea was actually not carried out by Union troops. Many of the most deplorable and vicious excesses were committed by bandits—civilian criminals and army deserters who trailed behind the marching army and fed on the remains of plantations and communities they passed. These lawless pillagers seldom displayed any restraint based on moral considerations, and some of these bands committed brazen atrocities. In many cases the bandits operated with impunity, as Union officers could do very little to counter them. Bummers, on the other hand, had not left the army but engaged individually in freelance foraging before returning to the ranks. Later, the term came to encompass all of Sherman’s soldiers. Any bummer who committed an atrocity and was found out was liable to the severest of punishment by his officers. To the great shame of Southerners, some Confederate cavalry units shadowing Sherman’s movements also became notorious for preying on helpless civilians. ‘‘Impressment’’ of civilian food, clothing, and other provisions became standard operating procedure with
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units such as the First Alabama Cavalry, one of the many regiments commanded by General Joseph Wheeler (1836–1906). Earlier in the war this unit had distinguished itself, but by the time Sherman exited Georgia, many Georgians considered Wheeler’s cavalry to be even worse than the Yankees.
Scarred Land and Defeated People Increased incidence of foraging, looting, and destruction in the war’s latter stages left many landowners and communities utterly bereft and emotionally devastated. Fields that had once teemed with cotton and other lucrative crops and stately plantations that had once been festooned with lace and finery now lay in ruins. These sights were utterly demoralizing to battered and disillusioned Confederate troops. As one Rebel soldier wrote after traveling through a war-ravaged section of Tennessee, ‘‘it almost steels a man’s heart against mercy to see the fair habitations of this once proud and prosperous State smouldering in desolation’’ (Mitchell 1988, p. 175). The stunned and heartsick citizens victimized by foraging soldiers also struggled to come to terms with
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the new reality of their lives. One Southerner wrote that after her household had been terrorized by a mob of foragers and bummers, ‘‘we could hardly believe it was our home. One week before it was one of the most beautiful places in the state. Now it was a vast wreck. Gin-houses, packing screws, granary—all lay in ashes. Not a fence was to be seen for miles . . . the army had turned their stock into the fields and destroyed what they had not carried off. Burning cotton and grain filled the air with smoke, and even the sun seemed to hide its face’’ (Davis 1988 [1980], p. 86). Another Southern women offered a similarly mournful account of a grim visit from Union cavalry. ‘‘They fed their horses at M’s barn, ripping off the planks that the corn might roll out,’’ she recalled. The door was opened by the overseer, but that was too slow a way for thieves and robbers. While they were filling the wagons, four officers went over every part of the house, even the drawers and trunks. These men wore the trappings of officers! While I write, I have six wagons in view at my brother’s barn, taking off his corn, and the choice spirits accompanying them are catching the sheep and carrying them off. This robbery now goes on every day. (Davis 2007, p. 204)
Whatever the moral implications of this predation on civilian resources, however, the practice of foraging and looting undoubtedly accelerated the South’s reluctant course toward surrender. This fact alone convinced many Union commanders and privates alike that ‘‘hard war’’ played an important and ultimately beneficial role in bringing the destructive war to a close.
Kennett, Lee B. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. Meyers, Augustus. Ten Years in the Ranks, U.S. Army. New York: Stirling Press, 1914. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1979. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Nevin, David, and the editors of Time-Life Books. Sherman’s March: Atlanta to the Sea. New York: Time-Life, 1986. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Royster, Charles. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans. New York: Knopf, 1991. Simpson, Brooks D. Sherman’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Starr, Stephen Z. Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War in the West, 1861–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Thomas, Dianne Stine, and the editors of Time-Life Books. Brother against Brother: Time-Life Books History of the Civil War. New York: Time-Life, 1990. Walters, John Bennett. Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973. Kevin Hillstrom
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brobst, John F. Well, Mary: Civil War Letters of a Wisconsin Volunteer, ed. Margaret Brobst Roth. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960. Casler, John O. Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, 2nd rev. ed. Girard, KS: Appeal Publishing Company, 1906. Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Davis, Burke. Sherman’s March. New York: Random House, 1980. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1988. Davis, William C. and James I. Robertson. Virginia at War, 1862. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Hutton, Paul Andrew. Phil Sheridan and his Army. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
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Relations between Civil War soldiers and civilians—both on the home front and during incursions into enemy territory—became progressively more strained as the long and bloody war dragged on. In the former case, many soldiers in both the Northern and Southern armies became angry with people back home who second-guessed strategic decisions or, in the view of some troops, did not fully appreciate the sacrifices they were making. These feelings intensified as the celebratory aspect of the war’s early months faded and the comforting ties to hearth and home came to feel more tenuous.
Soldiers and Civilians Back Home The psychological well-being of most Civil War soldiers was grounded in two beliefs that sustained them even during the grimmest moments of the conflict. The first of these beliefs was in the fundamental justness of the cause for which they were fighting. The second was the
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conviction that their sacrifices were respected and valued by the family, friends, and communities that they had left behind. Visible gestures of appreciation and respect for Yankee and Rebel soldiers were in abundance in the early stages of the Civil War. Many regiments of patriotic volunteers were sent off to war with the cheers of fellow citizens ringing in their ears. Indeed, spirited public celebrations of their bravery and impending victory were commonplace in both the South and the North. Countless memoirs, letters, and newspaper accounts from the period attest to the carnival-like atmosphere that marked the departure of excited troops. And as the troops moved through the countryside, spontaneous celebrations of their progress erupted in myriad appreciative communities. As the months passed, though, and the conflict became a grim deadlock, the novelty of the Federal and Confederate uniforms faded away in both regions. Instead, civilians quite naturally became preoccupied with daily routines and—in the South especially—the mounting challenges of providing food and other basic necessities for children and the elderly. More significantly, soldiers became increasingly cognizant of grumbling on the home front from disillusioned civilians who recognized that the optimistic assurances of imminent victory that they had heard at the war’s outset had been in error. By the war’s midpoint, some Yankee and Rebel troops experienced a growing sense, reflected palpably in their memoirs and correspondence, of alienation from civilians. These men, many of whom had endured horrific battles, unsatisfying rations, and exhausting months of exposure to the elements, became convinced that people back home had no conception of what they were enduring. Further, some of them came to feel that the civilians for whom they were putting their lives on the line were a singularly ungrateful and cowardly lot. ‘‘I hate and despise [the] puny cravens at home, whose fears make them tremble at shadows,’’ fumed one Union officer with the 5th New Jersey in mid-1862. ‘‘These poltroons deserve the scorn of all true patriots’’ (Acton 1965, pp. 37–38). Special contempt also was reserved for critics of the war itself (such as the ‘‘Copperheads’’ in the North and ‘‘Tories’’ in the South) and for civilians who criticized the way in which the war was being prosecuted. As one disillusioned Confederate soldier wrote in a letter home, I saw a gentleman who left DeSoto Parish about two weeks since. He says the old men at home are all generals now—gather in groups in the little towns over there and talk about the war and discuss the abilities of our Generals—Know more than any of them—Except General Lee only—They admit him to be a great man, but all the others do wrong all the time. Our soldiers have all come to the conclusion that they have no friends out of the army except the ladies. (Mitchell 1988, p. 67)
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During the last two years of the war, the alienation that some Rebel and Yankee soldiers felt from their countrymen and countrywomen back home was so profound that they felt, ironically enough, greater kinship with enemy soldiers—who, after all, had endured many of the same hardships and tribulations that they had.
Soldiers and Civilians in Enemy Territory Interactions between Civil War soldiers and civilians of the opposition changed dramatically during the course of the conflict. During the first two years of the war, military commanders and enlisted men alike saw the civilian population as ‘‘off-limits,’’ and foraging among the civilian population was officially prohibited in both armies. These prohibitions proved increasingly difficult to enforce as the war progressed, however. In 1862 and 1863, when General Robert E. Lee led invasions into Maryland and Pennsylvania, Lee’s troops were astounded by the wealth they encountered as they moved through the countryside—wealth in the form of vast fields of thriving wheat, long expanses of rich pastureland, and impressive buildings of stone and brick. A fair amount of foraging and ‘‘living off the land’’ occurred during these incursions, in part because Lee had no supply lines connecting his army to Southern supply centers. Moreover, all blacks captured by the invading Rebels were shipped south for enslavement. Yankee troops, for their part, were unimpressed by Northerners’ largely passive response to invasion. They chafed at reports that some civilians were assuring Rebel troops that they were Copperheads, as well as at accounts that most Northerners displayed greater measures of curiosity or fear than defiance when confronted by enemy soldiers. Indeed, Lee’s progress through Pennsylvania was met with very little civilian resistance. By contrast, Yankee troops moving through the South during this same time had learned to be wary of guerrillas lurking among the civilian populace. The regional contrast in civilian response to invasion was both stark and dismaying to Union soldiers. ‘‘They [Confederate forces] ride through Penna. Without molestation—while we cannot go a hundred yards outside of the picket line without being fired at,’’ complained one Union soldier (Mitchell 1988, p. 152).
Northern Soldiers in the South The vast majority of the conflict took place in the South. Northern communities, for the most part, did not have to worry about enemy soldiers showing up on their doorstep—although occasional eruptions of violence such as the July 1864 burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, at the hands of Confederate troops under the command of General John McCausland ranked as dramatic exceptions to this rule.
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Franklin County Court House. In the early years of the Civil War, both Northern and Southern soldiers generally refrained from abusing the private property of opposing citizens. By 1864, however, soldiers had become hardened by vicious fighting and set out to consume anything of value that could be used to help the enemy side. The Library of Congress
In many parts of the South, meanwhile, enemy troops—or the threat thereof—became a pervasive presence. This state of affairs would not have been so frightening and unnerving for Southern civilians if the rules of military-civilian interaction were as they had been in 1861. By 1864, however, these rules had changed. The horrors of war had hardened Union soldiers and stripped away some of the inhibitions that had previously constrained their willingness to engage in looting and foraging. More importantly, Union commanders such as General Philip Sheridan (1831–1888) and General William T. Sherman
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(1820–1891) embraced military policies explicitly designed to punish Southern civilians for the transgressions of the Confederacy as a whole. Rather than tolerating Looting, Union armies actively encouraged it as a way to bring the secessionists to their knees and bring the war to an end. The response of Northern soldiers to this so-called ‘‘hard war’’ against Confederate women, children, and elderly varied considerably. ‘‘This thing of foraging is hard for a bashful young man,’’ admitted one Union soldier. ‘‘The old women storm, the young women cry, beg, entreat that you will not take their subsistence, but it must
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our strength is exhausted; we have no resources; we have no more men. The contest was unequal. You have conquered us, and it is best to submit and make wise use of the future’’ (Nichols 1865, p. 172). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saying goodbye. Though a serious event, during the early stages of the Civil War, townspeople often celebrated as they sent their soldiers to fight. As the war progressed, however, citizens became more concerned with providing for themselves in the absence of so many fathers and husbands, and less excited about seeing their departure. ª North Wind Picture Archives
be done and you have to turn a deaf ear to every plea’’ (Mitchell 1988, p. 175). A Northern officer was even more succinct, writing that ‘‘we take everything from the people without remorse’’ (Kennett 1995, p. 236). This formal sanctioning of foraging was ruthless, but it was also effective, especially as Union military victories over valiant but overmatched Confederate forces became more frequent and decisive. By early 1865 large swaths of the South had been burned or looted by Union armies, and civilian support for continuing the war had plummeted. As one resident of Columbia, South Carolina, stated to a Union officer after Northern troops captured the city in February 1865, ‘‘Sir, every life that is now lost in this war is murder; murder, sir. We have fought you bravely, but
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Acton, Edward. ‘‘ ‘Dear Molly’: Letters of Captain Edward A. Acton to His Wife, 1862.’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 89 (1965). Ash, Stephen. When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1860–1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kennett, Lee B. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Nichols, George Ward. The Story of the Great March: From the Diary of a Staff Officer. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1865. Kevin Hillstrom
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Civilian resistance to enemy soldiers operating in their midst was an important factor in the South during the second half of the Civil War. In contrast to the North, which experienced only brief invasions by Southern forces in 1863 and 1864—many regions in the South grappled with the presence of enemy soldiers in the vicinity on a regular basis for the duration of the war. Clashes between Union troops and Southern civilians intensified during this period, and in many instances, civilian resistance took violent form. Those who took up arms to smite the Yankee invaders believed in the rightness of their cause, but in the end their activities brought more suffering to the South. Historians believe that their guerrilla actions further hardened the harsh Union attitude toward Southern civilians and private property during the latter stages of the war.
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Ruins in Richmond, Virginia. With much of the fighting occurring in the South, the civilian population often came in direct contact with Union troops. Some of them, eager to see the soldiers leave quickly, cooperated with the men in blue, though others engaged in guerrilla warfare, earning the ire of Northern soldiers. ª Corbis
Defending the Heartland The majority of Southern civilians adopted passive or cooperative attitudes when forced to interact with Northern units. Many Southern families and communities, their ranks greatly thinned by the Confederate Army’s desperate appetite for healthy young white men, simply wanted to do whatever was necessary to get the enemy soldiers moving on. Acts of defiance were not likely to accomplish this goal. Furthermore, most understood that resistance or shows of hostility would likely serve only to provoke greater destruction.‘‘Most women understood that when the enemy appeared, any hostile or provocative gesture on their part could cost them heavily—thus a woman who rushed out and cut her own well rope as thirsty Northern soldiers came through her gate could well have her house burned by the furious bluecoats’’ (Kennett 1995, p. 298). In some areas of the South, in fact, acts of sabotage or violence against Federal troops in the region was
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strongly opposed by the majority of community members. They reasoned that partisan acts of resistance would keep the invaders in the area longer as they sought to apprehend the culprits. And the longer that an enemy army stayed in an area, the more resources it would consume. Writing in Marching through Georgia (1995), historian Lee B. Kennett recounts at least one instance in which Southerners were so angered by a local man’s decision to burn a bridge in the path of Union troops— thus delaying their departure from the region—that community members set fire to his home and fields. Nonetheless, many Southerners embraced guerrilla activity when Federal troops entered their lands. Guerillas operated either as members of spontaneously formed groups, or as part of already-existing home guard or militia units (Linderman 1987, p. 196). The first notable instances in which guerilla activity occurred came during the 1862 Peninsula campaign in Virginia, and ambushes, sniper attacks, acts of sabotage, and other forms of
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‘‘irregular warfare’’ became more frequent from that point forward. Most of these rifle-toting defenders of the Southland lacked formal military training, and the squirrel rifles and other modest firearms at their disposal limited their ability to inflict significant casualties on the enemy. But their familiarity with the local terrain, their implacable hatred for the invading Yankees, and their ability to melt into the general population combined to make them a force to be reckoned with in some districts. Union concerns about Southern irregulars further intensified when it became clear that Confederate authorities were sanctioning—and in some cases providing material support to—some guerrilla activity. The most notable instance of official government assistance to irregulars came in the region of Virginia that came to be known as ‘‘Mosby’s Confederacy,’’ in homage to the charismatic John Singleton Mosby and his guerrilla followers.
Rooting Out the Guerrillas Confederate partisans viewed their actions as noble and valorous acts of defiance against an oppressive foe. Ordinary soldiers in the Northern ranks, however, harbored a much different view of these resisters. Seizing on the dominant methodologies of the partisans—bushwhackings, sniper attacks, nighttime arson attacks, and the like— Yankee troops overwhelmingly described the guerrillas as cowardly and amoral. They also saw these partisan activities as a violation of basic tenets of war. It did not take long for Union commanders and soldiers alike to see all local civilians as potential enemies. This evolving view of civilians made it much easier for Union soldiers to rationalize their looting and destruction of Southern households and personal property. The increasingly ruthless behavior of the federal army in turn prompted new acts of bushwhacking and sabotage from outraged partisans. A spiraling cycle of violence thus came into being, and it became more powerful with each act of partisan sabotage or Union attack on Southern property. Inevitably, Southerners who were innocent of any acts of hostility against Union soldiers sometimes suffered at the hands of angry and suspicious Yankees.
An Unstoppable Tide Confederate guerrilla activity against Union troops was most sustained during Union General William T. Sherman’s notorious ‘‘March to the Sea’’ in 1864 and early 1865. During this march, as Sherman’s army cut a wide and destructive path through the heart of the Confederacy, bands of Confederate partisans bedeviled the enemy force in their midst through sniper attacks, attacks on bridges and trestles, sabotage of railroad tracks and telegraph wires, and raids on supply depots and other outposts. These actions never threatened to derail Sherman’s march, but they did constitute an annoying nuisance. ‘‘Our armies traverse the land,’’ Sherman fumed, ‘‘and the waves of disaffection, sedition and crime close in behind as our track disappears’’ (Kennett 1995, p. 98).
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Determined to reverse this state of affairs and punish the South for its stubborn resistance, Sherman embraced the idea of neutralizing guerrilla activity in captured territory through the deportation of agitators and irreconcilables. This policy of displacement of sympathizers of Confederate guerrillas actually originated while Sherman commanded Memphis in the fall of 1862, in retaliation for sniping at Union steamboats. From mid-1864 forward, Union forces moving through Confederate lands expelled thousands of people from their homes. Most were deported to locales in the North, where it was thought that their poisonous attitudes would be so diluted as to render them harmless. By some accounts an estimated 20,000 Southerners were unloaded at the harbor in Cairo, Illinois, without any provision for their shelter or other needs. Other Union commanders adopted similarly harsh measures to address the guerrilla issue. Union General Ulysses S. Grant, for example, became so fed up with Mosby’s predations that he ordered the arrest of all men under fifty living in Loudon County—the heart of Mosby’s Confederacy. Rank-and-file Union soldiers were largely supportive of these measures. Rebel troops, though, expressed profound disgust at the Union Army’s increased use of ‘‘hard war’’ tactics to smash partisan activity and destroy the will of Southern civilians. ‘‘I try to restrain my bitterness,’’ wrote one member of Stonewall Jackson’s famed Stonewall Brigade. ‘‘[But] it is an insult to civilization and to God to pretend that the Laws of War justify such warfare’’ (Douglas 1940, pp. 315–316). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Douglas, Henry Kyd. I Rode with Stonewall. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Grimsley, Mark. Hard Hand of War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kennett, Lee B. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Royster, Charles. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans. New York: Knopf, 1991. Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865. New York: Vintage, 2006. Kevin Hillstrom
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Family and Community n
Family and Community Overview
The Civil War put unique strains and pressures on American families and communities, and yet what the war changed was hardly more noticeable than what it left the same. Sometimes the war brought subtle changes in the way Americans thought about family and community relationships. At other times the stresses of war served only to show how resilient and durable were the ties that bound American society together in a densely woven network of families and communities. It was in part the presence of strong family ties that has enabled scholars to know as much as they do about the Civil War. When the soldiers—by war’s end some three million of them—went off to fight, most of them suffered severe homesickness. They sought to assuage that malady by writing long and frequent letters, and they exhorted family members back home to write equally frequent letters in return. Many of these letters have been preserved, especially those from the soldiers to those who had remained at home. Taken together, all of these letters have told historians much about life in the nineteenth century. Family life during the Civil War era was influenced by the prevailing cultural domestic ideal, celebrating the home as a refuge from the cares of the world. Women’s literature of the time encouraged wives to make their homes pleasant and comfortable places for their husbands and children. Talk of the war raging in the country hardly surfaced at all in such publications as its concerns played no part in the shaping of the ideal home. The nineteenth-century domestic ideal made women the chief agents of civilizing mankind, lifting aspirations and encouraging attentiveness to spiritual concerns. The war, however, also placed new stresses on domestic life. Even in the North, women found themselves in some cases pressed into tasks they had not
previously performed, including farm labor. An anonymous 1862 songwriter celebrated the willingness of Northern women to undertake such work in order to free their men for military service: ‘‘Then take your gun and go,’’ says the patriotic wife in the song, ‘‘Yes, take your gun and go, For Ruth can drive the oxen, John, And I can use the hoe.’’ Wives and daughters took on the extra labor as a form of service to their country and as a necessity of life with their normal breadwinners gone. It was a temporary expedient, gladly relinquished when the war ended. Yet home life was not all misery during the war, especially in the North. Workingmen on the home front fared tolerably well. Although wartime inflation totaled as much as 100 percent, incomes for many workers (although notably not soldiers) kept pace or even gained ground in the midst of a wartime economic boom. Some women, at least, read parts of the extensive literature on how to make their home ideal, and many no doubt strove to implement some of the suggestions. Children could enjoy a small but growing selection of books and periodicals in the relatively new genre of children’s literature, some of which strove to explain the war to young minds in simple terms. Many children, like their parents, enjoyed the comfort and encouragement of religion, as the Sunday school movement was in full swing during the mid-nineteenth century and did not slow down during the war. Many adults attended the services of local churches or synagogues. The pressures on Southern domestic life were far greater than those in the North, because the South was the scene of most of the war’s fighting. Like their Northern counterparts, Southern women had to undertake unfamiliar tasks in the absence of husbands. For some Southern women—a minority—the war brought enemy soldiers directly into their neighborhoods with attendant loss of livestock and food supplies. Even beyond the reach of the armies, the families of Confederate soldiers suffered severely in the absence of breadwinners, and
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because the Confederate government was woefully in arrears with its soldiers’ pay, the families simply had to get by as best they could. Because the Confederacy chose to finance its war largely by printing more money, massive inflation swept the South, creating economic hardship and prompting even the government to resort to demanding payment in kind rather than in cash when it levied taxes. Hunger in several of the South’s cities, including Richmond, led to bread riots. By the end of the war, letters from wives throughout the South to their soldier husbands in the field often urged the men to come home even if returning meant desertion. Of course the war meant something entirely different for slave men, women, and children throughout the South. Though the conflict ultimately brought their freedom, it could also bring hardship for former slaves who fled their plantations to follow the Union armies to freedom. The army lacked the means and in some cases the desire to care for the freedpeople, and the former slaves often suffered much from hunger and exposure. Arriving in the so-called contraband camps set up by the federal Freedmen’s Bureau might have brought some relief, but conditions for black families could still be difficult there. Nevertheless, they were free. For many former slaves the first priority upon obtaining their freedom was to search for family members previously separated by sale. For slave families that remained on the plantation throughout the war and were located outside the zone of the armies’ operations—as many were—the conflict brought little change to the unrelenting routine of labor for men, women, and children. In short, as the essays that follow illustrate in many ways, the Civil War brought novel circumstances and new stresses for some families but left many others in the enjoyment of more or less the same style of life they had known before the guns opened fire at Fort Sumter in April 1861. Steven E. Woodworth
n
The Domestic Ideal THE DOMESTIC IDEAL : AN OVERVIEW
Micki Waldrop NORTHERN DOMESTIC LIFE
Micki Waldrop SOUTHERN DOMESTIC LIFE
Jennifer Ann Newman
THE DOMESTIC IDEAL: AN OVERVIEW The mid-nineteenth-century domestic ideal as espoused in the popular women’s press saw the home as a sacred refuge from military and political upheavals. A well-kept home was also the source of the nation’s strength. For, as an editorial in the New York Evangelist noted, ‘‘the
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Wealthier women in the North and South often used additional help in running their households. Affluent Northern families could generally afford to hire servants to assist with domestic labors, while Southern slaveholding families typically relied on house slaves to perform tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and serving meals. ª Corbis Family dinner in camp.
more they [housewives] can build up at the domestic hearth a reverence for family and social amenities, the more solid will be the foundation upon which the Republic is built’’ (‘‘The Home,’’ June 27, 1861, p. 7). A ‘‘cheerless home’’ is ‘‘no home at all in the true sense of the word,’’ the Evangelist admonished, ‘‘whilst a Home that is imbued with the sentiment of domesticity will be quitted with regret, and returned to with rejoicing’’ (p. 7). ‘‘[I]n the midst of the troubles that environ us,’’ the article concludes, ‘‘cultivate the Home, adorn it neatly within, adorn it tastefully without . . . then draw the family around the substantial board, treat every member kindly, accept your lot in life with a reverential spirit, and thank God for a happy Home’’ (p. 7). The American domestic ideal was patterned after the British one—in both countries, the culture of domesticity arose from Utilitarian and Evangelical philosophies that idealized the home. Historians cite the industrial revolution as a root cause of this new focus: The more work
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The Domestic Ideal: An Overview
and home became separate spheres, the more home life was idealized. Also significant was the growth of a well-off middle class that could afford to make the home a comfortable retreat. The nineteenth century also saw a new focus on the separateness of male and female realms. Women were seen as dominating the private sphere of home and the parts of society that touched on the domestic sphere, whereas men were thought to properly dominate the public sphere of work and politics. The public sphere could be bruising, and in the nineteenth century women were fashioned into domestic angels, whose duty it was to soothe, regenerate, and morally improve their husbands— and by extension the nation. Women dominated the private sphere by maintaining discipline, enforcing frugality, and upholding cleanliness. Throughout the war, publications such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and various newspapers and magazines—Flag of Our Union, Ohio Cultivator, Southern Cultivator, and Ballou’s Dollar Magazine, to name but a few—ran articles about the proper management of the domestic sphere. Godey’s, in particular, had an enormous circulation and was enjoyed by women all over America. Many articles in the women’s press concentrated on newlyweds. For example, a two-part article that ran in the December 1860 and January 1861 issues of Godey’s offered advice first to new husbands, then to new wives. It declared that a well-bred and well-trained woman was a prudent creature who would use ‘‘cleverness . . . [to] economize, and endeavor to abridge her expenses; sitting down with such cheerfulness to her scanty meal . . . concealing their poverty from the world and endeavoring to gild it over with genteel and respectable appearance’’ (‘‘A Whisper to a Newly-Married Pair. A Whisper to the Husband on Expenditure,’’ p. 503). It was imperative for a new wife to be a good housekeeper; otherwise, problems in the home might develop. ‘‘A Young Wife’s Sorrow,’’ a humorous article by T. S. Arthur published in July 1861 in the American Phrenological Journal, focused on one newlywed with poor housekeeping skills. This woman, named Martha, had been experiencing difficulties in her marriage of several months. When Martha’s mother came to visit, hoping to grasp the source of her daughter’s marital troubles, she realized immediately that ‘‘the basis of the difficulty lay in the total unfitness of Martha for the position she had assumed—that of housekeeper. . . . [I]n consequence [of her failings] her young husband, in whose ideal of home perfect order had been included, found everything so different from his anticipation, that his grateful acquiescence was impossible’’ (p. 6). With her mother’s help, Martha came to realize ‘‘that in holding herself above domestic duties and manipulations, she was governed more by pride and indolence, than a just regard for wifely or womanly dignity.’’ She now understood that ‘‘to hold fast to her husband’s love, she must do something more for him than offer loving words;
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for, life being real and earnest, demands earnest work from all’’ (p. 6). In the end, Martha becomes the picture of the domestic ideal, and made her house into a Home. The lack of preparation for domestic duty exhibited by some newly married women was not solely their own fault. It was also the fault, Arthur declared, of mothers who ‘‘bring up their daughters to listless, lounging, ladyhood, attending themselves to all the cares and drudgery of domestic affairs, and when their daughters marry, though they may be versed in music, light literature, ornamental artistic idle-work, they know literally nothing of those realities of the home’’ (p. 6). Daughters should instead be given the opportunity to play house and occasionally take charge in their childhood homes, Arthur asserted, so that they may learn the necessary skills before they become wives. Many other cautionary tales of wives who disappointed and embarrassed themselves in front of family and friends were recounted in newspapers and magazines that targeted a female readership. Whether it was a wife’s inability to organize and govern her home, her negligence in managing her servants, or her squandering of money and resources, such failings were always painted in a harsh light: No woman should act as such women did. Economy was the cornerstone of the nineteenth century domestic ideal. As the May 7, 1864, edition of the Friends’ Intelligencer averred, ‘‘as a rule, the financial success of any family depends more upon the economy of the wife than upon the earnings or business income of the husband’’ (p. 141). Columns advised readers on such matters as how to make cheap coffee, stew prunes, cure scurvy, and even make a ‘‘Cheap and Excellent Ink’’ by mixing bi-chromate of potash with logwood extract (Southern Cultivator, May 1861, p. 167). An article entitled ‘‘Yankee Economics—Pork and Beans,’’ published in the August 1, 1861, edition of the Ohio Cultivator, made it clear how much thought was required for true economy. A Mr. Blood of Waltham, Massachusetts, the article informed readers, ‘‘will call at the houses of all those who will send word to him, on Saturday afternoons, and take their beans, bake them nicely, and return them early on Sunday morning, for the small sum of six cents’’ (p. 251). Why was it that the wives of Waltham did not cook their own beans, the Cultivator asked rhetorically? Economy was the answer: [T]o cook beans well, as well as they are always cooked for Sunday dinners in New England, requires many hours of steady heat; and in families where only a small cooking stove is used, this would be expensive; too much wood and too much time in attending to them would be consumed. . . . [I]t would be poor economy for them to be troubled about the beans, when sixpence will bring them nicely baked up on the table, smoking hot, browned to a t. (p. 251)
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The June 1864 edition of Dollar Monthly Magazine tried to convince the reader that soup can provide a healthful and pleasantly filling meal, as well as an economical one: ‘‘[A] Frenchman can make a soup out of materials which some of our housewives would scorn, and commit to the offal barrel, and in fact is sufficient to show us that we have much to learn if we would live well and economically at the same time’’ (‘‘Soup as an Article of Food,’’ p. 500). Some female authors attempted to counter popular conceptions of domesticity. In the March 2, 1861, edition of the Flag of Our Union, for example, Sarah Soewell commented that men who wrote housekeeping guides ‘‘seem to think that one word covers the whole ground and that is—work’’ (p. 4). Soewell, however, was not rebelling against the life of the housewife; she merely sought to rationalize it: Anyone could ‘‘do the hard, rough work, but not every one [sic] can plan it rightly; and this planning, management, or whatever you please to call it, is the grand secret of perfect housekeeping’’ (p. 4). Besides making a home, a wife was also supposed to cultivate her mental faculties. As J. Atwood wrote in ‘‘Advice to Young Women,’’ published in the February 26, 1863, edition of the Christian Advocate and Journal, a young wife should not merely look after her household’s economy, manage the servants, and work industriously in the home—she should also further her education. After all, women ‘‘hold the destinies of the world in a measure in their hands; for the training and fireside education we all receive is principally from mothers. . . . [If a woman’s] mind and heart are not properly trained, how can she train her child!’’ (p. 67). In order to accomplish their betterment, women were to exercise ‘‘the mind and heart . . . by reading, meditation, and prayer,’’ so that their minds become ‘‘stored with valuable ideas and useful information’’ (p. 67). Furthermore, this improvement of the mental faculties would also make a wife a better helpmeet for her husband, for ‘‘a sensible young man desires for a wife a lady of some intelligence; one whom he can converse on various subjects’’ (p. 67). In order not to jeopardize the work she performed throughout the day to make the home a tranquil and orderly retreat, the housewife was charged with keeping her temper, even if her husband did not show her the same kindness. The good wife and homemaker was always to be amiable and pleasing to her husband, despite any flaws she might perceive in him. J. Atwood, in the Christian Advocate and Journal article mentioned above, counseled women to ‘‘attend, also, to your spirit and manner in your daily intercourse with those around you, and with whom you mingle in life[;] . . . be pleasant and cheerful, kind and sweet-tempered . . . never suffer yourself to be angry’’ (February 26, 1863, p. 67). An article in the April 1861 edition of Godey’s called on young wives to ‘‘strain every nerve, use constant prayer
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for strength and power to become really a helpmeet, really a companion, really a helper-on, really a guardian angel in human guise to husband and children’’ (‘‘Domestic Management,’’ April 1861, p. 313). Especially in the beginning of a marriage, after the blinders of courtship have been removed, counseled the author of ‘‘Ladies on the Point of Marriage’’ in the May 1862 edition of Godey’s, a wife should recall that your tact, your best good humor, must be exerted. . . . [T]he admiring man on whom you have bestowed your hand will be too much gratified in observing this conduct not to meet it more than halfway, own perhaps his hasty remark, kiss off a soft, indignant tear, and mutual forgiveness of each early petty offence may prevent the growth of many a future grievance. (p. 456)
Women were encouraged to look at their own behavior if they were unhappily married. According to the March 1864 edition of Godey’s, the fault could be the woman’s own: When I see a woman, with that beautiful countenance which has won the heart of her husband, darkened by a frown, constantly fretting and making all about her uncomfortable . . . I am tempted to exclaim ‘Hush, dear woman, these useless, sinful repinings! Examine yourself, perchance the blame lies at your own door after all. . . . [T]here is a talisman possessing a magic charm that will scatter all these evils . . . it is cheerfulness. (‘‘Don’t Fret,’’ p. 252).
This, then, was the burden the domestic ideal placed on women. Not only were they charged with creating a sacred and orderly refuge from the outside world, they were also held responsible should any disharmony intrude. In the real world, of course, women did the best they could to run their households, feeling alternately inspired and oppressed by the images of ideal womanhood their society held up for them to emulate. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arthur, T. S. ‘‘A Young Wife’s Sorrow.’’ American Phrenological Journal 34, no. 1 (1861): 6–8. Atwood, J. ‘‘Advice to Young Women.’’ Christian Advocate and Journal 38, no. 9 (1863): 43. Blunt, Alison. ‘‘Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886–1925.’’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, n.s., 24, no. 4 (1999): 421–440. ‘‘Cheap and Excellent Ink.’’ Southern Cultivator 19, no. 5 (1861): 69. ‘‘Domestic Management.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book 62 (April 1861): 313. ‘‘Don’t Fret.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book 68 (March 1864): 252.
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Northern Domestic Life
Gage, Frances D. ‘‘Home Department: Ways of a Good Housekeeper.’’ Ohio Cultivator 17, no. 2 (1861): 60. Gage, Frances D. ‘‘Yankee Economics—Pork and Beans.’’ Ohio Cultivator 17, no. 8 (1861): 251. ‘‘The Home.’’ New York Evangelist 32, no. 26 (1861): 7. ‘‘Ladies on the Point of Marriage.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book 64 (May 1862): 456. Nobel, Thomas, et al. Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. ‘‘Small Leaks in the Household Ship.’’ Friends’ Intelligencer 21, no. 9 (1864): 141. ‘‘Soup as an Article of Food.’’ Dollar Monthly Magazine 9, no. 6 (1864): 500. Sowell, Mrs. Sarah S. ‘‘Good Housekeeping.’’ Flag of Our Union 16, no. 9 (1861): 4. ‘‘A Whisper to a Newly-Married Pair. A Whisper to the Husband on Expenditure.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book 61 (December 1860): 503. ‘‘A Whisper to a Newly-Married Pair. A Whisper to the Wife.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book 62 (January 1861): 27. Zlotnick, Susan. ‘‘Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England.’’ Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 16, nos. 2–3 (1996): 51–68. Micki Waldrop
NORTHERN DOMESTIC LIFE The upheaval of the Civil War was not confined to politics, the military sphere, and the economy; the home front—domestic life—was just as affected as the other aspects of national life. In the North, this meant that some women stepped into the shoes of male relatives who were away fighting, while others found alternative methods to support the war effort.
Women in Agriculture Women on Northern farms were forced by circumstances to go beyond their traditional domestic duties— providing their families with a comfortable home, provisioning and preserving food for the winter, caring for animals and attending small kitchen gardens—and became full-scale farmers. With many able-bodied men away at war, farmers’ wives and daughters plowed fields and planted and harvested crops. Luckily, they were not alone in their efforts, as they were able to turn to other women in the area for support. For example, the Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen for October 16, 1862, relates that ‘‘Mrs. H. Beard and Mrs. C. Beard of Waterville, Lamoille county, Vt., whose husbands have both gone to the war, having harvested the corn raised on their farms, made a ‘husking bee,’ and invited some eight or
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ten of the women of the neighborhood, and husked out some thirty of forty bushels of ears’’ (n.p.). Many did not like the idea of female farmers, however, even during the Civil War; they saw these women as an affront to defined gender roles. One Mr. J. Talcott, for example, lamented the entrance of women into farm work as detrimental to their mental, physical, and social health. His opinion prompted various rebuttals from female farmers, such as a letter from Della Roberts published in the July 1863 issue of the New England Farmer, claiming that in three years of farming she had ‘‘never known it to have the slightest effect upon the minds of any whose friendship was worth having’’ (Roberts 1863, p. 229). According to Roberts’s references to Talcott’s letter, he was not completely adverse to women working outdoors; in fact, he advised country women to garden and ride on horseback in their free time. Taking a team of horses out to plow the fields, however, was too degrading and out of character for a woman—the crux of Talcott’s argument. In response to Talcott, Roberts remarks that according to detractors ‘‘women may do anything they please in the world that amounts to nothing’’ (p. 229). Men had monopolized almost all of the work that would enable women to earn a good living—but farming was one occupation that was not completely closed to them. However, when women started farming, people like Talcott ‘‘raised the frightful bear-in-the-corner of masculine women, vulgarity, ignorance, and all of the other bug-a-boos that are commonly used to frighten children’’ (p. 229). Roberts implies that she and her kind are not likely to be farmers for life, and insists that the lessons learned from farming will allow them to be ‘‘just as loveable, just as good, and watchful, and kind’’ as any other woman. Indeed, as the farmwoman ‘‘grows stronger and more healthy (as she cannot avoid doing), she will be more patient and far more competent to fulfill the office of wife and mother with credit to herself, and bring honor to her husband and children’’ (p. 229). While the Civil War does not enter into Roberts’s argument, the war’s effect on gender roles and expectations is implicit. Despite the Talcotts of the world, society at large during the war tacitly acknowledged the need for some women to step into traditionally masculine roles in order to survive. However, the gender status quo had to be maintained if only in thought; hence Roberts’s assertion that farming would make women better wives and mothers. Not all men were opposed to women working on farms. In the July 19, 1862, Saturday Evening Post article ‘‘Women Farmers,’’ for example, an anonymous author marveled at the industry of the Roberts family women: Four daughters, one niece, and the mother, Paulina Roberts, all labored on the farm. It is not definitely known whether this family is the same as Della Roberts’s family. In any case, the Roberts women
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‘‘ploughed 75 acres, dragged 100 acres 3 times, sowed, broadcast 100, and rolled 100’’ (p. 8). The article notes that ‘‘housework is considered by them the hardest and most difficult to perform [;] . . . they all prefer out-door farm-work’’ (p. 8). The example set by the Roberts women, the author asserts, will cause some women to become ‘‘practical farmers; and ploughing, dragging, sowing, rolling, planting, hoeing and harvesting will become the pleasant, healthful and remunerative occupation of women as well as men’’ (p. 8). Mechanization of agriculture helped many of the women farmers to perform their tasks, as Della Roberts points out in her letter to the New England Farmer: ‘‘Machinery has very much facilitated farming of late— so we are able to do a great deal of work without injury to ourselves’’ (Roberts 1863, p. 229). Machines like the reaper and the thresher not only made harvesting less labor-intensive, they allowed women to do twice as much in a day as their fathers had been able to do.
Urban Women: New Jobs and the War Effort Upheaval of the status quo was not confined to the countryside; the cities too saw women stepping into the public workplace during the Civil War—left on their own to feed a family on soldiers’ wages, many women had to find new ways to make ends meet. For women, work outside the home was mostly limited to teaching, sewing, office work, or work as a domestic. Women who worked out of necessity were not well paid for their toil. For example, one sewing woman described in an ‘‘appeal’’ from an anonymous female clerk published in the April 22, 1864, issue of the Boston Liberator ‘‘toiled from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. [but] earned but nine and a half cents’’ (n.p.). The wages of the other seamstresses were also grievously inadequate: ‘‘[T]welve and a half cents was found to be more than the average, and eighteen cents a princely sum’’ (n.p.). Women who worked in offices were similarly underpaid. Nonetheless, the little bit of money such women managed to amass helped them survive. In addition, many women felt that their work was an expression of patriotism and contributed to the war effort. At the beginning of the war, middle- and upper-class women—those who did not need to work—were expected to remain in the home. Northern women sewed, wrapped bandages, and helped raise money for the war effort. ‘‘Young creatures whose fingers have been too dainty all their lives long to do a useful thing,’’ asserted an anonymous letter writer in the January 1863 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, ‘‘heartily . . . [entered] into the making of coarse shirts and drawers, and knitting coarse yarn for stockings . . . patiently and industriously working away, week after week, at common clothes and the making of comfortable garments for the sick and the wounded’’ (‘‘Letter from a Lady of New England,’’ p. 93). As the war raged on, however, middleand upper-class women began to leave their homes to work directly or indirectly for the war effort.
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Another letter published in Godey’s in December 1862, argues that while society is ‘‘much averse to masculine women and to those who unsex themselves by assuming the privileges of men and pushing forward into man’s work,’’ there are nonetheless ‘‘occupations and professions in which women would be fully competent and which they can fulfil [sic] with propriety and efficiency’’ (‘‘Letter from a Lady of Pennsylvania,’’ p. 605). Women could be employed by the postal service, for example. This type of work alone would allow ‘‘thousands of mourning widows, bereaved mothers, daughters, and sister’s left destitute of their natural protectors, by this wasting war . . . to sustain themselves and those dependant on them, [and] be useful to the community in which they reside’’ (p. 605). Many women who were adamant about working directly for the war effort chose to become nurses. Some did so in response to Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 communique´ ‘‘To the Loyal Women of America,’’ which asked women to help the war effort by signing up to do volunteer work for the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC)— a department within the War Department. Although female nurses initially served on a volunteer basis with the USSC, the commission did begin to pay them salaries later in the war. Female nurses were largely welcomed into field hospitals, as before their arrival convalescing soldiers often had to help nurse those whose wounds were worse than their own. In his memoir Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon (1863), Thomas Ellis commented that the arrival of women nurses ‘‘did much to alleviate the sufferings of the brave fellows. . . . [When] their parched lips received the cup of tea, gruel or lemonade, or as in many cases, a stimulating drink, they were truly grateful and expressed their thanks to the lady nurses in a very flattering manner’’ (p. 71). All manner of women volunteered in wartime hospitals and after the war had ended they led the movement to open nursing schools for women. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘An Appeal.’’ The Liberator (Boston), April 22, 1864. Ellis, Thomas T. Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon; or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life. New York: J. Bradburn, 1863. ‘‘Letter from a Lady of New England.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book, January 1863, p. 93. ‘‘Letter from a Lady of Pennsylvania.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book, December 1862, p. 605. Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, October 16, 1862. Roberts, Della A. ‘‘Woman Farming.’’ New England Farmer, July 1863, p. 229. United States Sanitary Commission. To the Loyal Women of America. Washington, DC: Author, 1861. ‘‘Women Farmers.’’ Saturday Evening Post, July 19, 1862, p. 8. Micki Waldrop
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Southern Domestic Life
SOUTHERN DOMESTIC LIFE The magnitude of the destruction and devastation wrought by the Civil War infiltrated every aspect of American society and left few untouched by its horrors. The outbreak of war dramatically altered domestic relations in such a way that home life itself played a role in the outcome of the conflict. It was probably one of the many factors that contributed to Confederate desertion, which was in turn one of the many reasons for the Confederate defeat. In the Confederacy, the home front was often touched directly by the realities of the battlefield; Southerners experienced the war in a way that most Northerners could not. As white Southern men left their families to fight, the structure of the family itself, which was central to the social order of the antebellum South, was altered for the duration of the war. Women and children were left to perform tasks previously done by men. The absence of the male coercive power that enforced the institution of slavery meant that the institution was under strain. Southern families also faced external pressures as a result of the war. Survival became a daily challenge for some families in the later stages of the war. The Northern blockade, which President Abraham Lincoln called for on April 19, 1861, forced families to come up with innovative substitutes for luxury goods, military supplies, and some of the familiar necessities of life. For example, elite white women who were used to purchasing fabric for their dresses, were now forced to rely on innovative substitutes, such as homespun cloth, which became a popular fashion statement of one’s patriotism and devotion to the Confederacy. As the Confederate government implemented harsh policies deemed necessary to winning the war, many people worn down by hardship became bitter. They complained that their government favored the wealthy. While women helped sustain the war effort, the horrors and deprivations of the war disillusioned many of them. All of these internal problems ultimately contributed to the defeat of the Confederacy.
Historians’ Views on Domestic Life in the South While historians traditionally focused on major battles and leaders of the Civil War, in recent decades some have turned their attention to events on the home front as part of an attempt to explain at least part of the reason for the Confederacy’s defeat. This emphasis on domestic life began in the 1970s with the work of such social historians as Drew Gilpin Faust, George Rable, Laura Edwards, and David Williams. Some scholars eventually argued that for the Confederacy, the war was lost on the home front long before the South’s military defeat on the battlefield. Although this view is certainly not shared by all historians of the Civil War, an examination of
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With much of the white male population fighting the North, slave-owning women were forced to take charge of daily plantation operations, a task some cruelly fulfilled. Snark/Art Resource, NY Southern woman whipping a field slave.
Southern domestic life is essential to understanding the American Civil War.
Gender Norms The patriarchal society of the antebellum South depended on a carefully defined system of gender norms in which everyone had their place. The Southern social construct of manhood was based on the enslavement of blacks as well as on the simultaneous protection and subordination of women. White men controlled not only their families but also society as a whole. White women in turn defined themselves in relation to men— as wives, mothers, daughters, and, most importantly, as dependents. Although barred from leadership positions, most elite Southern white women were content with their social position and valued the security that the paternalistic hierarchy of the antebellum world provided; they were not closet feminists who opposed slavery or the paternalistic social structure. Feminism by and large
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was a Northern concept that had not taken hold in the South. Initially, white men and women alike ardently supported the Confederacy because they believed that the North threatened the security of their respective social positions. Men enlisted to protect their position as freemen, whereas women encouraged men to fight to protect their own privileged positions in society. The irony of this situation is that the decision to go to war ended up causing Southern gender ideals to be weakened during the duration of the war as women were temporarily forced to take on new leadership roles in the absence of men.
The Outbreak of War The Civil War officially began with the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops the following day. Excitement and enthusiasm for the Confederacy spread like wildfire throughout the South. White men throughout the South flocked to join the Confederate army, eager to defend their homes, their families, and their honor against the North, abolitionists, and the threat of Lincoln’s presidency. While many white women were no less enthusiastic than the men, some also predicted bloodshed and heartache. Months before the outbreak of war, Elizabeth Rhodes of Eufaula, Alabama, for example, expressed deep anxieties in her diary entry for December 31, 1860: There are dark clouds overspreading our National Horizon and we cannot yet know whether the fringes of prosperity will dispel them and the bright rays of peace and happiness once more beam upon us . . . [or] grow darker and denser until proved out in wars and bloodshed on our once prosperous and happy nation. Time alone can unfold these things. We can only wait and pray God to overrule all things for His glory and the good of mankind. (Unpublished diary)
Nevertheless, white women actively rallied to support the volunteers. They immediately formed sewing circles to provide their soldiers with uniforms and flags. Local communities turned out en masse to watch the ladies present their soldiers with a banner or flag. Parties were thrown for the soldiers in the days before they left their towns, and when it finally came time for them to depart, they were sent off amid cheering crowds and prayerful, teary goodbyes. Once the initial exhilaration of the war passed and reports of battles began reaching home, however, the realities of daily life during the war set in.
to provide daily management of farms or plantations, women were forced to take up the task—a significant change to gender norms. As one Southern woman aptly observed, ‘‘everything is entirely reversed’’ (Whites 1995, p. 131). Women indeed were forced to take on many of the roles and responsibilities previously relegated to men. Many letters from husbands to wives contained detailed advice on when to plant certain crops and how to manage slaves. Yet these letters did not substitute for men’s former active daily management of the farm or plantation. Many women also were thrust into the labor market and worked for pay for the first time in their lives. Those white women who worked outside their homes did so to support their families and their work did not lead to a radical social change in their postwar social positions. Women assumed public roles as they organized volunteer relief associations to provide for the poor. They turned to other female friends and kinship networks for support while becoming more self-reliant and autonomous individuals. Yet as everything else in their lives changed, white women clung desperately to the social order they knew from the prewar world. Indeed, the Civil War both profoundly changed women’s lives and, ironically, further entrenched the ideals of the preexisting Southern social order. Thus for white Southern women, the war altered society in a variety of ways as the conflict progressed, but did not result in a radical overthrow of the traditional values that produced Southern society and women’s roles within it. Southern women clung to their traditional beliefs long after the end of the war.
Religion One of the traditional sets of belief that many Southern women steadfastly held to was their religion, which provided support and constancy in the troubled and uncertain world around them. Many Southerners went to war firmly believing that God was on their side. Southern religious leaders drew upon Biblical principles and metaphors, claiming that the South was God’s chosen nation. Women sent their loved ones off with God’s blessings and prayed daily for their protection. Religion and daily life cannot be separated. Indeed, religion and the belief in a life after death provided a sense of comfort and reassurance in a society surrounded by death. Women in particular turned to the hope of again meeting departed loved ones in Heaven in order to cope with the increasing number of deaths surrounding them as the war progressed.
Women and War Traditional Southern gender norms dictated female subordination to men within the family. Women traditionally worked in the home and were not involved in managing farms or plantations. Because the majority of men were absent during the war and thus no longer able
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Children While women had traditionally been expected to care for children, the absence of husbands meant that they now carried the entire burden of managing their families. Women longed for the support of their husbands as they
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faced the daily challenges of raising children. Such difficulties as illnesses common to childhood became topics of constant discussion in letters from wives to their husbands. Children themselves experienced the tribulations of life during wartime no less than adults. They faced daily hardships and the absence of their fathers, brothers, and other male relatives. The Civil War politicized children by making them more aware of the events that were taking place around them. Young boys sometimes formed home guard units and carried wooden guns while practicing drilling maneuvers copied from older male relatives. The Civil War also displaced hundreds of children and left thousands more orphaned. Southern children who came of age during the political and social upheaval that marked wartime and postwar reconstruction were profoundly shaped by their experiences. After the war they felt a need to legitimize the South’s role in the conflict, an urge that influenced their political and racial attitudes. Indeed, as James Marten aptly pointed out in his book The Children’s Civil War (1998), many of the worst Southern racial policies of the 1890s were enacted by white men who had been children during the Civil War.
Slavery Slavery was another aspect of Southern domestic life that the Civil War forever altered. Slavery as an institution had begun to weaken long before its abolition. The master-slave relationship, which depended heavily on force and the threat of punishment, changed as masters left to fight and were no longer physically present. Many slaves did not respect their mistresses in the same way that they respected their masters. They also knew that a Northern victory meant their freedom, and therefore did all they could to undermine the chances of a Confederate victory. Furthermore, the fear of slave insurrections forced desperately needed men to stay home to help protect against revolts. In their diaries as well as in letters to their husbands, white women daily recorded their fears of slave insurrections. Women were left with the day-to-day management of slaves, which cast them in a role that defied traditional concepts of the weak, subordinate woman. Many women petitioned the Confederate government to provide assistance to them. The government responded with the Twenty Negro Law, which stated that any slave owner with more than twenty slaves was exempted from military service. While this measure alleviated some of the problems elite planter women faced, it also led many poorer women to feel discriminated against.
Disillusionment and Desertion As families struggled to survive and attempted to maintain established gender norms, external pressures caused by the war itself and the policies of the Confederate
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government added to their hardships. The Union blockade, which Lincoln called for in 1861, made it difficult for Southerners to get imported goods. For many, problems caused by rampant inflation and the lack of food, medicine, clothes, and shoes were only compounded by the policies of the government, which the poor perceived as favoring the elites. These policies led to a belief that Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, cared little for the common person. Indeed, many Confederate policies, such as creating a stronger central government, conscription, government intervention in the economy, and direct taxation, led to general disillusionment with the government. By the end of 1864, the helplessness that many Southerners felt in the face of poverty, speculation, and governmental mistreatment led to general despondency throughout the Confederacy, which in turn led to widespread desertion from the army. Over two-thirds of the army had deserted by the end of 1864. Many women who had initially encouraged men to fight now became disheartened with the war and begged their husbands to return home. Yet desertion cannot be viewed simply as the result of disillusionment or as a cowardly act of treason, because many men believed that their first duty was to protect their families. Many soldiers away from home worried about being unable to provide this protection. This concern was especially strong in Unionoccupied areas of the South. Once Union armies occupied an area, many of the Confederate soldiers who had been conscripted into the Confederate army from that area felt the need to return to protect their homes and families, which led to desertion from the Confederate army. In various ways, then, the pull of domestic bonds and the strains caused by temporary reversals in gender norms can be said to have played a role in the South’s defeat. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ash, Stephen V. When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Attie, Jeanie. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the Civil War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Clinton, Catherine, ed. Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Edwards, Laura F. Scarlet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War
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South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Genovese, Eugene D. Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Inscoe, John C., and Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. Marten, James. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. McCaslin, Richard B. Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. Noe, Kenneth W., and Shannon H. Wilson, eds. The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Rhodes, Elizabeth. Diary. 5 vols. Vols. 1–3 at the Auburn University Library. Vols. 1–5 at the Carnegie Library in Eufaula, Alabama. Original handwritten diaries in the possession of the Shorter Mansion and Museum, Eufaula, Alabama. Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Whites, LeeAnn. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta Georgia, 1860–1890. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Williams, David. Rich Man’s War: Class, Cast, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Jennifer Ann Newman
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Clothing
Clothing fashion essentially came to a standstill during the Civil War. Many civilians, especially those in the South or the wives of Union soldiers, could no longer afford the latest styles. Material for clothing, such as cotton, could no longer be as easily obtained as before the war. In an era filled with enormous death and misery, it became socially unacceptable in many circles to dress elaborately as if the war did not exist. Clothing had importance as a necessity, but not as a fashion statement. The styles of the 1850s continued to some degree during the 1860s. The prosperity that the Industrial Revolution brought to the United States enabled Amer-
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icans in the 1850s to travel relatively easily to Europe and it became fashionable to take such a trip. Americans who went on the ‘‘Grand Tour’’ returned with stylish new wardrobes from France (in the case of women) or England (in the case of men). At the same time, the 1846 invention of the sewing machine permitted the emergence of a fashion industry in New York City, as dressmakers could now work more easily and quickly. Many New York dressmaking firms imported French and English originals to copy and sell. Magazines such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and Harper’s Bazaar explained the latest European styles to American women. American men wore tailcoats or frock coats only for formal or evening wear. Waistcoats were made of colorful embroidered or brocade fabric. Creased trousers appeared in the 1860s. During the day, men wore trousers that were only a shade paler than their coats; these were often made of checked or plaid fabric. For evening wear, they tended to choose lighter-colored trousers, but dark, matching trousers and jackets were beginning to become popular. The most common colors for daytime clothing were soft browns, olive, amber, and vanilla. Like their European counterparts, American women in the 1850s relied on tightly laced bone corsets to shape their figures. The most fashionable strove to have a fifteen-inch waist. In contrast, their full, bell-shaped skirts were quite wide, measuring as much as ten yards around. Underneath a skirt, women wore long, lacetrimmed white muslin drawers, a crinoline or petticoat of calico (quilted and reinforced with whalebone), and several starched muslin petticoats with flounces. In winter, there might be an additional petticoat. These multiple petticoats began to be replaced by the cage crinoline in the mid-1850s. By 1860, the crinoline and bellshaped skirt were already in decline, although still common enough. By the beginning of the Civil War, the customary bonnet had been generally replaced by a small hat worn forward, a style introduced by Empress Eugenie of France. The petticoats that many women wore provided secret places for gold coins, jewelry, and paper. Hoop petticoats also provided hiding places, as a Confederate sympathizer in Missouri noted: ‘‘Mrs. Houston took dozens of pairs of good warm socks to our loved ones, and we could slip in a little money and medicine wrapped up. She wore hoop skirts, and I tell you they were fine ladders to hang things on’’ (Brackman 2000, p. 72). Sara Pryor, the wife of a Confederate officer, reported that she met a woman in a wagon who lifted the edge of her hooped petticoat to reveal ‘‘a roll of army cloth, several pairs of cavalry boots, a roll of crimson flannel, packages of gilt braid and sewing silk, cans of preserved meats, a bag of coffee!’’ (p. 77). Men of the Victorian era were far too chivalrous to carefully search women, as smugglers well knew.
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Clothing
Civil war fashion.
For many reasons related to money and materials, clothing became less trendy and ornate as the war continued.
The Library of Congress
Smugglers found a market in the South because needles, pins, thread, and cloth became very scarce as a result of the effective Union naval blockade. The collapse of the Southern economy had the additional result of reducing interest in the latest fashions. Confederate diarist Mary Chesnut noticed that new clothes were no longer a priority for Southern women. ‘‘We were all in a sadly moulting condition,’’ she wrote in mid-1863. ‘‘We had come to the end of our good clothes in three years and now our only resource was to turn them upside down or inside out—mending, darning, patching’’ (DeCredico 1996, p. 88). Many Southern women disassembled their own wardrobes to make shirts, trousers, and underwear for their soldiers. Confederate troops were worse off than white civilian women. Chesnut watched 10,000 Confederate soldiers march through Richmond in 1863. ‘‘We had seen nothing like this before,’’ she reported. ‘‘Hitherto, it was
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only regiments marching spic and span in their fresh clothes, just from home, on their way to the army. Such rags and tags—nothing alike—most garments and arms taken from the enemy—such shoes!’’ (DeCredico 1996, p. 88). A new machine for sewing leather had made possible the mass production of boots, a great advantage for an army, but only the Union had the resources to carry out such production. Most of the fabric mills were also in the North. There were disadvantages to mass production, however: Uniforms were often ill fitting. Many Union soldiers spent their free time tailoring their jackets, shirts, and trousers. African Americans in the South who had escaped from slavery or been newly freed often had little but rags on their backs. In response, various African American charitable networks collected and sent clothing. The Relief Association of Elmira, New York, a black women’s organization, sent a barrel with 114 pieces of clothing to the Union Relief Association of the Union Bethel
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African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. The women of Baltimore sent 575 pieces of clothing to the church. The First Female Contraband Aid Society of Alexandria, Virginia, was a sewing circle established to ‘‘furnish aid and comfort’’ to the freed people. On February 6, 1862, African American women in New York City held a Grand Calico Dress Ball and asked for donations of clothing ‘‘for the relief of those who in the joy of their new born Freedom, are now appealing to the world for assistance and recognition’’ (Forbes 1988, p. 191). Clothing not only protected freedpeople from the elements, it also served as a symbol of their worth as human beings. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brackman, Barbara. Civil War Women: Their Quilts, Their Roles, Activities for Re-Enactors. Lafayette, CA: C & T Publishing, 2000. DeCredico, Mary A. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. Madison, WI: Madison House, 1996. Forbes, Ella. African American Women during the Civil War. New York: Garland, 1998. Tierney, Tom. Historic Costume: From the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003. Caryn E. Neumann
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Food FOOD : AN OVERVIEW
Caryn E. Neumann DIET
Caryn E. Neumann FOOD SHORTAGES
Caryn E. Neumann
FOOD: AN OVERVIEW Food during the Civil War tended to be plain and simple. Cooking styles in both the North and South did not vary dramatically from the colonial era. Differences in climate, terrain, and produce from state to state led to differences in cuisine, however. The New Englander, the Louisiana Cajun, and the Virginia tidewater aristocrat all dined on distinct cuisines. The foods of this era are difficult to replicate, partly because some of the varieties of fruits and vegetables are no longer sold and partly because many dishes were considered too common to record. Only foods prepared for special occasions typically appeared in cookbooks prior to the twentieth century. There are some broad similarities in Civil War foods. American cuisine is based on English, African, and Native American cuisines. English cookbooks appeared in America with the first colonists. The recipes, rich with
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herbs, included dishes that would become American staples, such as fruitcake, pound cake, and butter sauces. Africans, who as slaves cooked for the wealthier Southern households, cooked okra in pots along with tomatoes. Sesame seeds and bean pilaus are other traditional African foods. The popularity of peanuts and sweet potatoes in the Southern diet may also reflect African influence, although these foods are native to the New World. Most Native American contributions to American cuisine came in the form of produce, such as squash, tomatoes, and, most famously, corn. The kitchens and preservation styles of Americans in the Civil War era differed little from those of Europeans in centuries past. Cooking continued to be centered around open hearths and brick ovens. An adjustable spit was used for roasting, while a series of cranes and pulleys made it possible to move pots closer or farther from the flame. Pots were typically made of iron or tin. Only the wealthiest households could afford copper pots and pans. Most homes had at least four saucepans of various sizes, several skillets, a waffle iron, bread pans, a toasting iron, and a teakettle. Cooks used iron skillets called spiders, which were fitted with long legs that could be set among the coals. Dutch ovens were also common. These pots had legs and deep-rimmed lids so that coals could be piled both above and beneath for even heating. A chafing dish—a table-high tripod with a receptacle for coals—would be used for delicate dishes, such as boiled custard, or for the finishing of fricassees and sauces. American kitchens also generally held tin cake pans, pie pans, an oilcan, a candle box, a funnel, an egg boiler, scoops, dippers, a colander, breadboxes, and cake boxes. Woodenware in the home would typically include a breadboard, spice boxes, and a saltbox. Earthenware jars with lids kept pickles, butter, and salt. Baskets of various sizes held fruit, vegetables, and eggs. The use of kitchen equipment required considerable skill as heat could not be regulated with the flick of a knob or push of a button as it can be today. Advice on frying food appeared in the March 1864 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most popular magazine for women in the nineteenth century, with a circulation of 150,000 during the 1860s. Cooks were told to use a pan that was about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thin bottom, twelve inches long and nine inches wide. The editors warned women to be very particular about what they used for frying. Clean, fresh, salt-free oil, butter, lard, or drippings were most advisable. Additionally, cooks in large kitchens could use clarified mutton or beef suet, preferably from the kidney area. (Southern cooks used sunflower seed oil when animal fats became scarce.) The fire under the pan needed to be clear and sharp, while the light in the kitchen had to be good enough to judge the color of cooked food. To determine when the frying pan had reached the proper heat, a
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Food: An Overview
Hunger in New Orleans. ‘‘The Starving People of New Orleans Fed by the United States Military Authorities,’’ illustration from Harper’s Weekly, 1862. The Library of Congress.
cook was advised to throw a little bit of bread into the pan. If it fried crisp, the fat was ready. If it burned the bread, the fat was too hot. Knowing when fat was at proper heat was the key to frying. The magazine warned that although frying was one of the most common culinary operations, it was one that was rarely performed perfectly well. Large brick ovens were easier to use than fry pans. These ovens were either freestanding or housed in a separate outbuilding, especially in hot Southern regions where additional heat in the home was not appreciated. Brick ovens were heated by coals; the coals were then swept out, and bread was placed directly on the oven floor. A dome of clay bricks above held the heat and the bread cooled gradually, forming a crisp, chewy crust. Pastries and other baked goods, as well as baked meats—often encased in pastry—also benefited from the radiant heat of the brick floor. Iceboxes were sold commercially during the Civil War, but they were a luxury. For most Americans, the 1860s remained an era before refrigeration. Preservation methods included drying and smoking. Extra fruits and vegetables were bottled in Mason jars, a device perfected in 1859. Home canning did not become widespread until the development of the pressure cooker in 1874. As a result, Godey’s Lady’s Book offered numerous food storage tips. In August 1864, the magazine advised readers that vegetables kept best on a stone floor and apples could be preserved for a long period by packing them in large barrels with dry sand.
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Coarse nets suspended in a storeroom worked well to preserve finer fruits, such as lemons. Women were advised to purchase and prepare large quantities of lemons and oranges when they were cheap. The peels were saved for sweetmeats (organ meat) and grating, as they were commonly used in various dishes. Onions, shallots, and garlic were also hung up for winter use, in ropes from the ceiling, as were dried parsley, basil, savory, and, knotted together, marjoram, thyme, and tarragon. Most of the recipes in Godey’s Lady’s Book were contributed by middle-class readers and were meant for family meals. Unlike cookbooks, these recipes were not intended for banquets or fine dining. The recipes indicate that the average American ate mostly meat and baked goods. The largest number of meat recipes in the magazine during the war were for beef, followed by those for pork, veal, wildfowl, chicken, turkey, lamb, and wild game. Chicken was only served in the summer, perhaps because that was the most appropriate time for thinning a flock. Because the United States was primarily rural, most of the consumed meat came from animals killed on the farm or brought in from the hunt. Accordingly, a cook would not want to waste any part of the animal. Tongue, brains, feet, and sweetmeats were regularly eaten. Seafood was also popular. Overall, Americans ate a wider range of meats than is common in the twenty-first century. These meats may have been well seasoned. Cayenne pepper was popular, and archeological examinations of sunken ships from the
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Civil War era have revealed that sailors used Worcestershire sauce in considerable quantities. The word ‘‘gravy’’ in Civil War recipes usually meant stock, not a sauce. Civil War Americans ate comparatively few vegetables and fruits. In rural areas, people grew their own vegetables but the variety was not particularly great. Potatoes were most popular, followed by cabbages, onions, and turnips. Potatoes appear to have been served with every meal. The ease with which root vegetables could be preserved over the winter undoubtedly contributed to their popularity. Fresh vegetables were usually not available in the winter. Salads were not eaten, except for chicken salad and lobster salad. Southerners ate a number of different corn products, including hominy, a crude ash bread called pone, and ears of corn roasted in ashes. Everyone ate succotash—a mixture of corn and lima beans—as well as corn fritters, corn mush, boiled and baked corn puddings, and corn chowder. The typical American ate little fruit, except for apples and pears. Oranges and lemons were usually special treats, as they were expensive imports. Coconuts and pineapple, brought in from Cuba, could be found in markets. Watermelon, berries, and grapes were sometimes grown locally. Both apples and pears were pressed into cider and perry, healthier beverages than water. (Cholera, a major nineteenth-century killer, was spread through water consumption, as were a number of other nasty parasitic diseases.) Although the North had dairies and bottled milk had been sold in New York City since the 1850s, milk consumption nationally was less than half a pint a day. Canned condensed milk, perfected by Gail Borden, was only available to the troops, as the U.S. government commandeered Borden’s entire factory output. The alcoholic beverage most favored by Americans at mid-century was beer, followed by whiskey and wine. Coffee was just becoming popular at the start of the war. When it became rare, drinkers drank mock coffees, brewed from a wide range of substances: parched and ground acorns, beans, chicory, corn, cottonseed, dandelion roots, groundnuts, okra seed, peanuts, parched rice, rye, sweet potato, and wheat. Eating chocolate was largely unknown and baking chocolate did not become available until later in the century. Hot chocolate, however, was consumed. In the South, when chocolate became unavailable, cooks invented a substitute made from roasted peanuts blended with boiled milk and sugar. Common teas included black alder, blackberry, currant, holly, huckleberry, raspberry, and sassafras. Confederate soldiers made mock tea from corn bran, ginger, or various herbs. Breads were a staple of the American diet. When Europeans arrived in the New World, they discovered maize, also called Indian corn. (The Old English word
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for grain is corn.) This popular Indian food was so closely linked with the Native Americans that it became known as injun. By the nineteenth century, the bread known as rye ’n injun filled the stomachs of many Northerners. By the time of the Civil War, most Northern households used fine white flour. Corn and rice, not wheat, were the major grain crops of the Confederate states. Cornbread, not wheat or rye bread, was found in the majority of Southern homes. Leaven made for a lighter bread product. Hardtack, the infamously unpalatable staple food of the Civil War soldier, stayed in the ‘‘eat-it-or-starve’’ category because it lacked leavening. Accordingly, leaven was actively pursued. Commercial yeast did not reach the market until 1868. Civil War cooks used potash, a potassium carbonate leeched out of burned wood ash. Partially refined, it was known as pearlash and had been exported by the ton since the late eighteenth century. Saleratus, a leavening agent, became available to cooks in the first half of the nineteenth century. Combined with cream of tartar (an acid) to make it work, it evolved into baking powder in 1856. Yeast became commercially available around 1868, although other versions were commonly made at home before that time. Godey’s often included recipes for yeast. In 1863 the magazine included directions for making peach-leaf yeast, potato yeast, and hop-beer yeast. Civil War desserts were typically puddings. Common Northern fare included corn, plum, and pumpkin puddings, whereas Southerners enjoyed sweet potato and rice puddings. Custards, creams, and fruit desserts also enjoyed popularity. Molasses custard and huckleberry pie were common in the South. Tarts, made of apples, lemons, or cranberries, were often baked in a crock with only a pastry lid. The term cake was used interchangeably for breads and cookies. Northerners baked Boston cream cakes and Vermont currant cake. Both regions enjoyed rhubarb fool and strawberry souffle´. The Civil War did not have a large effect on the food habits of Northerners. It did, however, drastically affect the nature of the foods available to Southerners. Following the war, food habits returned to normal in the South by the start of the 1870s. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evans, Meryle, et al. The Southern Heritage Breads Cookbook. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1983. Fowler, Damon Lee. Classical Southern Cooking: A Celebration of the Cuisine of the Old South. New York: Crown, 1995. Grover, Kathryn, ed. Dining in America, 1850–1900. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Johnson, Sharon Peregrine, and Byron A. Johnson. The Authentic Guide to Drinks of the Civil War Era, 1853–1873. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas, 1992. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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McIntosh, Elaine N. American Food Habits in Historical Perspective. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. Spaulding, Lily May, and John Spaulding, eds. Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Caryn E. Neumann
DIET During the Civil War, the average American had a diet centered on meat and bread in both the North and South. There was, however, an increasing interest in changing general eating patterns. Vegetarianism was promoted, and many foods were used for medicinal purposes. The safety of food preparation was re-evaluated, and women were encouraged to become more educated in cooking and to approach cooking scientifically. The feeding of children was studied, as well, and new ideas on scheduling and rationing a child’s food were implemented. The nineteenth century witnessed a health reform movement that placed food at the heart of its philosophy. Vegetarians, encouraged by the theories of Sylvester Graham, argued that the killing and eating of animals contaminated and brutalized the human soul, making meat-eaters murderous and bloodthirsty. In 1860, as the United States stood on the brink of war, the prominent health reformer Russell Trall criticized the presidential contenders for failing to address a vitally important topic: vegetarianism—or, as he put it, the issue of ‘‘beef versus bread, hog v. hominy, or mutton v. squash’’ (Whorton 1982, p. 62). Like other vegetarians of the time, Trall held that true emancipation meant the liberation of all Americans from an appetite for flesh. Other reformers saw different dangers in the nations kitchens. A certain Dr. Hill, for example, quoted in Godey’s Lady’s Book in August 1865, warned of the cost of inadequate food preparation practices: ‘‘Bad cookery kills multitudes, and makes miserable dyspeptics and suicides innumerable. It would be an inestimable boon to humanity to make cookery an indispensable branch of public school learning.’’ A proper diet of properly prepared food was essential for good physical and mental health. Food preparation had long been regarded as women’s work and as not requiring education or analysis, while cookbooks were simply collections of recipes. The publication in 1846 of Catherine Beecher’s Treatise on Domestic Economy, however, did much to change American attitudes toward diet. Beecher encouraged women to learn all they could about contemporary science and to use that knowledge to decide how to best feed their families. Other publications, such as advice
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Catherine Beecher (1800–1878), renovator of food preparation. Catherine Beecher wrote the book Treatise on
Domestic Economy, which encouraged women of the Civil War era to use science in order to mitigate the dangers of poor food preparation. The Granger Collection, New York.
books, home medical manuals, and women’s magazines, emphasized that women needed scientific education to be good wives and mothers. All of these ideas remained in vogue during the Civil War. As mentioned above, meat and baked goods predominated in the average American diet of the 1860s. A New England breakfast often consisted of cornmeal mush with cream, perhaps with some maple syrup as a sweetener. The same table might include corn dodgers (cornmeal griddle cakes), tea, and doughnuts made from locally ground wheat. Dinner, the largest meal of the day and served at noon, typically consisted of boiled potatoes and ham, fresh pork, or corned beef. Pie would always be served with apple in the winter, rhubarb in the spring, and berry in the summer and fall. Mincemeat pie, perhaps made with venison and boiled cider, appears to have been more common in the fall and winter. A Saturday dinner would consist of boiled salted codfish. A Sunday dinner might be baked beans, brown bread, and Indian pudding. In the evening, supper was served. This was typically a light meal of johnnycake and milk, bread and milk with maple syrup, or flapjacks sprinkled with brown sugar, followed by custard.
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Meals were equally as plain in the South. Although meat was scarce in the South during the war, beef and pork were heavily favored. In 1861, for example, one South Carolina inn served hog and hominy (pork and boiled corn) for breakfast, dinner, and supper. The Southern upper classes did usually consume a greater variety of foods, however. A woman in Georgia lamented during the summer of 1865 that on her plantation We have no kind of meat in our house but ham and bacon, and have to eat hominy instead of rice at dinner. . . . Cornfield peas have been our staple diet for the last ten days. Mother has cooked them in every variety of style she ever heard, but they are cornfield peas still. All this would have been horribly mortifying a year or two ago, but everyone knows how it is now, and I am glad to have even cornfield peas to share with the soldiers. (Spaulding 1999, p. 6)
Medicinal foods also formed part of the diet. Until the advent of antibiotics in the mid-twentieth century, there was little that physicians could do for people sick with wasting diseases, chronic illnesses, or any other type of serious illness. Family members, chiefly women, were expected to care for the ill as well as possible, usually by treating them with patent medicines or home remedies. Vanilla, for example, was used as an aid for stomach distress, as a stimulant, and as a calmative for hysteria. For invalids, jelly was recommended, according to the May 1862 Godey’s Lady’s Book. Isinglass jelly contained one ounce of isinglass (gelatin) shavings, forty Jamaica peppers, and a bit of brown crust of bread that was boiled and then strained. Bread jelly required that the crum of a penny roll be cut into thin slices, toasted to pale brown, boiled gently in a quart of water, strained on a bit of lemon peel, sweetened with sugar and, perhaps, strengthened with wine. Strengthening jelly contained an ounce of pearl barley, an ounce of sago, an ounce of rice, and an ounce of eringo root reduced in two quarts of soft water to one quart. It was to be taken by teacupful in milk, morning, noon, and night. The feeding of children was of particular interest. The ‘‘Health Department’’ of Godey’s Lady’s Book warned that half of all children died before reaching the age of eighteen because of inattention to their diet. The magazine advised that children past age six be limited to three meals a day, augmented by snacks of apple or cold, dry, coarse bread. Children were to be taught to eat slowly, though they could eat as much as they wanted, and hard food was to be cut up into pieces no larger than a pea. To provide the lime needed for the development of good teeth, the magazine suggested that children should eat whole-grain brown bread instead of white bread. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Editor’s Table.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, 71, August 1865.
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Kamminga, Harmke, and Andrew Cunningham, eds. The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995. Spaulding, Lily May, and John Spaulding, eds. Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the Pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Whorton, James C. Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Caryn E. Neumann
FOOD SHORTAGES Food shortages became a fact of life in the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Confederacy suffered from a constant and critical lack of provisions, a situation stemming from a number of factors ranging from its economy to enemy actions. The Union blockade of the seas, successful Union invasions, the occupation of key agricultural areas, and the fighting of battles on prime farmland resulted in a sharp reduction in Southern food production. Army rations, already sparse at the beginning of the war, were cut back as the conflict progressed. As historians have noted, the South’s ultimate defeat came in part because of the ever-present hunger suffered by soldiers and civilians. The North, in contrast, did not experience a food shortage to any degree. The South suffered from a severe shortage of food crops. Prior to the Civil War, the main crops of the South were tobacco and cotton. Neither crop filled stomachs. In 1863, Joseph Brown, the governor of Georgia, issued a proclamation calling on Georgians to plant food crops instead of tobacco and cotton. He also urged that farmers ‘‘prevent the destruction of food’’ by turning stored foodstuffs into alcoholic beverages (New York Times, October 25, 1863). Before the war, many Southern farmers produced corn and other grains for home consumption. When these men went off to war, their households lost an irreplaceable source of family support. Without slave ownership or the funds to replace the labor of absent husbands, ordinary Southern white women experienced great deprivation. Many were forced to rely on the charity of town councils and similar groups. As the war continued and more Southerners required food aid, the pool of food resources continued to shrink and prices rose. Additionally, Confederate currency rapidly lost its purchasing power. In 1864, a bushel of potatoes that cost $2.25 in the North cost $25 in Richmond (Moore 1996, p. 242). Confederate diarist Mary Chesnut reported spending $800 for two pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, and sixty pounds of sugar in June 1864 (DeCredico 1996, p. 163). Rising levels of desertion from the Confederate army were frequently blamed on the fact that many
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Distributing rations in the South. Both soldiers and civilians suffered from a persistent lack of necessities caused by both the economy and the enemy. The Union blockade, their occupation of Confederate farmland, and the battles on fertile soil all contributed to the crisis. Schomburg Center/Art Resource, NY
men could no longer bear the thought of the destitution their wives and children were facing. In response, the Confederacy and state governments took steps to support the dependents of soldiers. Charleston, for example, established a free market to supply provisions to the needy families of soldiers and sailors. These governmental bodies were not always successful, however. By January 1864, the Charleston market had exhausted its funds and could no longer provide help to several thousand dependent women and children. Even when food was available, it often failed to reach its destination because of problems with the Confederate railroads. By the mid-point of the war, most Southern rails were deteriorating rapidly and routine maintenance had become almost impossible because of a shortage of iron. In the spring of 1863, the Confederacy was rocked by food riots. The Richmond Bread Riot involved a group of women, estimated at anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand, who marched to Capitol Square in search of food and answers as to why their families were starving. The mob looted the business district until President Jefferson Davis calmed the situation by threatening to have a militia infantry unit fire on them. The next day, the Richmond city council established a free city market for the meritorious poor. For those in reduced circumstances as a result of inflation and shortages, the council created a city depot where low-cost provisions could be sold. Bread riots also broke out in Atlanta and in High Point, North Carolina.
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While much of the damage to fields resulted inadvertently from fighting, punishing civilians became the goal of Union troops marching with General William T. Sherman. As part of Sherman’s policy of hard war, his men were ordered to destroy civilians’ food supply, leaving just enough food for the people to eat. Even those Southerners with money found it difficult to obtain food. Eliza Mason Smith, a member of a prominent planter family from the low country outside of Charleston, South Carolina, fled to Augusta, Georgia, in 1864. She reported that prices in the market were high beyond belief, that many foods could not be bought at any price, and that no goods were secure because of widespread theft, including daily street robberies (Whites 1995, p. 99). Catherine Rowland of Augusta reported a similar situation in the winter of 1865. In her diary she observed, ‘‘I was startled and amazed to find out how greatly the price of everything had advanced, it is awful, and how the poor can live I cannot imagine’’ (p. 99). The Charleston Mercury reported on February 10, 1865, that Captain Julian Mitchell, under the authority of the South Carolina governor, aimed to save food from the hands of the enemy for the use of South Carolinians. ‘‘The garden of the State is now the battle ground of two armies,’’ the newspaper explained, ‘‘and not a plough will, in all probability, be struck in this whole region of country again until the end of the war’’ (New York Times, February 11, 1865). According to the May 6, 1865, issue of the New York Herald, despite the
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FOOD SHORTAGES IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1886), the daughter of a governor of South Carolina and wife of a senator, James Chesnut Jr., kept a diary from February 1861 until August 1865 in which she recorded her impressions of the Civil War and of life on the Southern home front. The Chesnuts were living in Charleston, South Carolina, when the Civil War began in 1861. James Chesnut became a brigadier general in the Confederate Army after he resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate. In her diary, Mary chronicled the growing hardships experienced on the Southern home front, especially after 1863. The following excerpts from early 1865 describe the effects of food shortages on even well-to-do Southerners in the last year of the war. February 16th, 1865. . . . The day I left home I had packed a box of flour, sugar rice, and coffee, but my husband would not let me bring it. He said I was coming to a land of plenty-unexplored North Carolina, where the foot of the Yankee marauder was unknown, and in Columbia they would need food. Now I have written for that box and many other things to be sent me . . . or I shall starve. February 18th. . . . As we came up on the train from Charlotte a soldier took out of his pocket a filthy rag. If it had lain in the gutter for months it could not have looked worse. He unwrapped the thing carefully and took out two biscuits of the species known as ‘‘hard tack.’’ Then he gallantly handed me one and with an ingratiating smile asked me ‘‘to take some.’’ Then he explained, saying, ‘‘Please take these two; swap with me; give me something softer that I can eat; I am very weak still.’’ Immediately, for his benefit, my basket of luncheon was emptied, but as for his biscuit, I would not choose any. February 26th. —Mrs. Munroe offered me religious books, which I declined, being already provided with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Psalms of David, the denunciations of Hosea, and, above all, the patient wail of Job. Job is my comforter now. I should be so thankful
efforts of Mitchell and others, starvation did come to the South. Food shortages forced Southerners to make substitutions for products that had been easily accessible before the war. Typical substitutions included artichoke leaves for hops in the manufacture of yeast, peach tree leaves for vanilla, and sorghum for sugar. Salt pork and bacon grease were common seasonings in Southern cookery prior to the Civil War. With meat scarce and poverty rampant during the war, it became usual to supplement the meager diet of field peas, greens, sweet potatoes, and grits with cheap salt pork fat. The North, in sharp contrast, had enough food to be able to export the surplus to Europe. With the end of the war came food for the Confederacy. When Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he
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to know life never would be any worse with me. My husband is well. . . . I am bodily comfortable, if somewhat dingily lodged, and I daily part with my raiment for food. We find no one who will exchange eatables for Confederate money; so we are devouring our clothes. February 29th. Ellen [Mary’s maid] and I are shut up here. It is rain, rain, everlasting rain. As our money is worthless, are we not to starve? Heavens! how grateful I was to-day when Mrs. McLean sent me a piece of chicken. I think the emptiness of my larder has leaked out. To-day Mrs. Munroe sent me hot cakes and eggs for my breakfast. March 5th. . . . The rain, it raineth every day. The weather typifies our tearful despair, on a large scale. It is also Lent now—a quite convenient custom, for we, in truth, have nothing to eat. So we fast and pray, and go dragging to church like drowned rats to be preached at. . . . Ellen said I had a little piece of bread and a little molasses in store for my dinner to-day. March 6th. To-day came a godsend. Even a small piece of bread and the molasses had become things of the past. My larder was empty, when a tall mulatto woman brought a tray covered by a huge white serviette. Ellen ushered her in with a flourish, saying, ‘‘Mrs. McDaniel’s maid.’’ The maid set down the tray upon my bare table, and uncovered it with conscious pride. There were fowls ready for roasting, sausages, butter, bread, eggs, and preserves. I was dumb with delight. After silent thanks to heaven my powers of speech returned, and I exhausted myself in messages of gratitude to Mrs. McDaniel. REBECCA J. FREY
SOURCE: Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller. A Diary from Dixie. New York: D. Appleton, 1905, pp. 348–357.
reported that his men had been without food for two days and asked Ulysses S. Grant to feed them. Lee’s soldiers reportedly sent up a rousing cheer when wagons of food appeared. The May 6, 1865, New York Herald reported that only the fact that U.S. commissaries were furnishing them with food was preserving the people of Virginia from starvation. ‘‘At present,’’ the newspaper warned, ‘‘the farmers generally are without the implements or seeds necessary to do their planting, and unless these can be speedily procured there will be no crops forthcoming in the State in the summer and fall.’’ The war’s outcome depended as much on stomachs as it did on bullets. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Amnesty Offered to the Southern People.’’ New York Herald, May 6, 1865, p. 1, col. 1. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Education: An Overview
‘‘Black Flag Raised South, by Starving Women.’’ New York Times. February 11, 1865, p. 4, col. 3, quoting the Charleston Mercury, February 10, 1865. Davis, William C. A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and Gray. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. DeCredico, Mary A. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. Madison, WI: Madison House, 1996. Dickson, Paul. Chow: A Cook’s Tour of Military Food. New York: New American Library, 1978. Moore, Jerrold Northrop. Confederate Commissary General: Lucius Bellinger Northrop and the Subsistence Bureau of the Southern Army. Shippensburg, PA: White Mane, 1996. ‘‘Report on Defeat of Shelby in Missouri (War).’’ New York Times. October 25, 1863, p. 6, col. 5. Whites, LeeAnn. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Caryn E. Neumann
n
Education EDUCATION : AN OVERVIEW
George A. Milite WOMEN AND EDUCATION
Talitha L. LeFlouria FREE BLACKS AND EDUCATION
Scott Hancock THE MORRILL ACT
Kwasi Densu EDUCATION IN THE CONFEDERACY
Carol Brennan COMMON SCHOOLS
Pamela L. Kester ROLE OF WEST POINT
Carol Brennan
EDUCATION: AN OVERVIEW The Civil War had a serious impact on the progress of education, particularly in the Confederate states. Before the war, most children were educated either privately, in private schools or at home, or in public schools. The more rural areas had no public schools, or just rudimentary ones; in larger cities, public schools were generally available. Colleges and universities were generally reserved for people going into specific professions, such as the law and the ministry, but interest in what would be called in the early twenty-first century a liberal
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arts curriculum gradually grew throughout the nineteenth century. When war came, both state and federal government priorities toward education were put on hold. Schools received little attention. A number of colleges and universities, especially in the South, were virtually emptied out during the war years because so many students had volunteered for or been conscripted into the armed forces. Many of them closed, only to reopen after the war.
Not a Uniform System Elementary and secondary education, in both the Union and the Confederacy, was not universal and had never been. This was an era during which many people received their training as apprentices, even in such professions as law or medicine. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, factories shot up, particularly in the North, and many people learned the skills that could afford them factory jobs. In rural areas throughout the nation, education was not a priority except among the wealthy. Schools only stayed open a few months out of every year, in most places, to allow children to be home to help on the farm. The South’s economy was primarily agrarian, and most people worked on farms and plantations (Catton 1971, p. 179). Contrary to the Gone With The Wind portrait of an aristocratic and elite Southern society, in truth few were wealthy enough to own plantations. Of those who owned slaves, the vast majority owned fewer than 20 and worked with them on the land (Salzberger and Turck 2004, p. 10). Education, even at its most rudimentary levels, was a luxury for most people. Slaves, meanwhile, received no formal education, outside of, perhaps, being taught passages from the Bible at their masters’ pleasure. In fact, it was illegal in every Southern state to teach a slave to read, although some people broke the law and did so anyway. In his classic work Up From Slavery (1901), Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) paints a typical picture of how a slave child, even a very young one, might pass his time on the plantation: ‘‘During the period that I spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service, still I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mill, to which I used to take the corn, about once a week, to be ground.’’ Like other slaves, he had no formal schooling. ‘‘I remember,’’ he writes, ‘‘on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my mistresses to carry her books.’’ He imagined that being able to attend school was ‘‘about the same as getting into paradise’’ (Washington 1901, pp. 4–5). Washington makes a telling point about the formal education of even well-to-do white Southerners—one which in part explains why the Confederacy was at such a disadvantage from almost the beginning. ‘‘The slave
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Misses Cooke’s school room, Freedman’s Bureau, Richmond, Virginia, 1866. Deprived of the right to pursue an education while in bondage, many former slaves, young and old, took advantage of their new freedoms by attending school. Northern aid societies, in conjunction with the Freedmen’s Bureau, sent teachers throughout the South to staff schools serving the African American population, much to the disapproval of local whites. Sketch by Jas. E. Taylor. The Library of Congress.
system,’’ he writes, ‘‘in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry.’’ Thus, while they did receive ‘‘book learning,’’ they lacked practical experience. Except for formal book education, he notes, ‘‘when freedom came, the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew as the master’’ (Washington 1901, p. 9).
Formal Education for Children In both the North and the South, schoolchildren were given instruction in reading and writing, as well as general mathematics and science. Books such as the seventeenth-century New England Primer and later texts such as the New York Reader and Noah Webster’s Blue-Back Speller were typical of the period throughout the Union and the Confederacy (Knight 1922, p. 269). One of the most popular series of textbooks was the McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader books, written by educator William Holmes McGuffey (1800–1873), who was born in Pennsylvania, educated in Ohio, and taught at the University of Virginia from 1845 to 1873. These books, which combine lessons in grammar, spelling, and pronunciation with moral education, were reprinted and used well into the twentieth century. The books are apolitical and make no reference to the Confederacy or
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slavery. Typical of the lessons in McGuffey’s fifth Eclectic Reader (1857) are stories such as ‘‘The Poor Widow,’’ a story about how a family receives a benefactor who turns out to be George Washington and fables such as the well-known poem ‘‘The Spider and the Fly’’ (pp. 40– 46, 60–61). McGuffey offers instructions to students to assist them in their reading: ‘‘Pronounce correctly. Do not say put-tt-est (pro. prit-ti-est) for prit-ti-est; creature nor critter (pro. creat-yure) for crea-ture; ful-lish for fool-ish . . .’’ (p. 60). A number of Southern educators, aware that their emerging nation would do well to have a moral heritage of its own, created textbooks in the McGuffey style. While continuing to emphasize traditional lessons, these books also provided positive references, which some might call propaganda, to the Confederacy and the Southern way of life. In Raleigh, North Carolina, Levi Branson (1832– 1903) of the publishing firm Branson, Farrar & Co. produced textbooks that strove to do precisely that. One textbook, titled First Book in Composition, Applying the Principles of Grammar to the Art of Composing, Especially Designed for the Use of Southern Schools (1863), uses a number of generic examples to provide examples of grammar and usage. A number of his sentences, however, are clearly geared toward the ongoing war and the
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Confederacy’s strength as a nation. For example, he finishes his preface to the book with, ‘‘In the hope that it may be useful to the young of our great rising Confederacy, the work is respectfully offered to the public’’ (Branson 1863, p. 3). In an exercise asking students to choose the correct pronoun, sentences such as these appear: ‘‘Jefferson Davis defended [his] country bravely, and deserves great applause for [his] patriotism’’ (Branson 1863, p. 14). Other exercises mention the Confederacy and its products, in particular its cotton crop. To show that the Confederacy did not abandon its ties to the colonial forces who fought the American Revolution and, in fact, strongly identified with the noble bravery of the colonists, sentences such as this also appear: ‘‘Washington, in [his] youth, and throughout [his]whole life, adhered strictly to the truth, and thus set an example, which [we] ought to follow’’ (Branson 1863, p. 14). In another Branson, Farrar book for young readers, titled The Dixie Reader, designed to follow an introductory book called The Dixie Primer, author Marinda B. Moore provides reading samples not unlike the generic offerings of McGuffey. But she also includes examples that play up the moral strength, and perhaps superiority, of the South, as the following passage about an elderly slave illustrates: 1. Here comes old aunt Ann. She is quite old. See how she leans on her stick. 2. When she was young she did good work, but now she can not work much. But she is not like a poor white woman. 3. Aunt Ann knows that her young Miss, as she calls her, will take care of her as long as she lives. 4. Ma-ny poor white folks would be glad to live in her house and eat what Miss Kate sends out for her din-ner. (Moore 1863, p. 22)
Even with the drawbacks and setbacks the South faced before and during the war, formal education was not neglected; in fact, in many ways education in the South was quite progressive. In North Carolina, for example, the public school system improved dramatically during the twelve-year tenure, from 1853 to 1865, of Calvin H. Wiley (1819–1887), the state’s first Superintendant of Public Instruction. In his first seven years in office the number of public schools rose from 2,500 to more than 3,000, the number of students from 95,000 to nearly 119,000, and the number of teachers from 800 to nearly 2,800 (Johnson 1937, p. 280). At the beginning of the Civil War, North Carolina was considered to have the third best state public school system in the United States, after Massachusetts and Connecticut (Jarrett 1964, p. 276).
Education for Freedmen It should be remembered that often, even among the staunchest opponents of slavery, racial inequality was nonetheless a reality. Free black men and women in the North were often denied the educational opportunities
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available to white Northerners. In particular, higher education was essentially closed to them; between the founding of the United States and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, only twenty-nine black students graduated from white colleges (Lucas 1994, p. 158). Although many white Northerners and Southerners believed in segregated schools, many did believe that black students should have access to higher education. In the 1850s and 1860s, white religious groups founded colleges for black students, including Cheney State College (founded by the Quakers) and Lincoln University (founded by the Presbyterians), both in Pennsylvania; and Wilberforce (founded by the Methodists) in Ohio (Lucas 1994, pp. 158–159). Younger free black children were able to attend segregated schools as they existed. It was rare for a black student to wind up in a grammar school whose primary population was white.
Higher Education Higher education, both before and during the Civil War, was, in general, the purview of the wealthy. Neither the factory worker in the North nor the farmer in the South or Midwest saw higher education as a necessity. The role of colleges and universities in American life would undergo significant changes throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. For the average person living through the Civil War, college education held little practical value. Among those who did attend college, higher education in the North benefited from the economic boom that accompanied the Civil War. A number of colleges and universities that would achieve national renown were founded in the North during the Civil War years: Cornell, Lehigh, Swarthmore, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, and Vassar, which was chartered in 1861 but opened in 1865. In the territories, several colleges opened, including the University of Colorado and the University of Washington (Trager 1994, pp. 486, 483, 496, 500). The South saw virtually no such activity during the Civil War years. Most of the Southern colleges were faced with limited enrollments, especially after the Confederacy issued conscription notices to those of college age and many of their professors, and closed for the duration of the war (Lucas 1994, p. 141). A typical scenario: When the 1863 session began at the University of Georgia, there were forty students in attendance. A few weeks after the term began, the state of Georgia called those students into service, so the school was left with no alternative but to close (Reed 1949, p. 692). Some, such as the University of Virginia, managed to remain open, albeit with a significantly abridged program of study. Interestingly, some of the earliest efforts at creating advanced schools for women took place in the South.
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Women and Education
Beginning in the early nineteenth century and continuing during the war years, such schools provided women with a liberal arts education focusing on such topics as English, French, and Latin (Farnham 1994, pp. 72–73). Higher education for women was looked upon by many as a frivolity, and during the war, most women had to remain at home because so many men had gone off to battle. But the spark clearly did not die, in part perhaps because women were put in the position of having to run their homesteads singlehandedly. Over the next few decades after the war, women’s colleges opened in several states. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant Act into law. Under this law, each state was allotted the equivalent of 30,000 acres of land per Congressional representative for the purpose of creating a land-grant college that would focus on providing higher education for farmers and those engaged in mechanical trades. In part, the Morrill Act was enacted to provide farmers with an opportunity to learn the latest techniques for their profession so that they could increase crop yield and become more efficient farmers (Catton 1971, pp. 173–174). Kansas State University, chartered in February 1863 in Manhattan, Kansas, was the first land-grant school to open under the Morrill Act. The Confederate States had no such program, although after the war they were included in the Morrill program. When the war ended, Southern colleges re-opened and resumed their courses of study. Colleges and universities in both the South and the North, however, suffered from the tragic losses of life on both sides, with combined losses of more than 600,000 young men (Trager 1994 p. 498). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Branson, Levi. First Book in Composition, Applying the Principles of Grammar to the Art of Composing, Especially Designed for the Use of Southern Schools. Raleigh, NC: Branson, Farrar & Co., 1863. Catton, Bruce. The Civil War. New York: American Heritage Press, 1971. Farnham, Christie Anne. The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Jarrett, Calvin D. ‘‘Calvin H. Wiley: Southern Education Leader.’’ Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 41, No. 5 (Mar., 1964), pp. 276–288. Johnson, Guion Griffis. Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1937. Knight, Edgar W. Public Education in the South. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1922. Lucas, Christopher J. American Higher Education: A History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994.
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McGuffey, William H. McGuffey’s New Fifth Eclectic Reader: Selected and Original Exercises for Schools. Cincinnati: Winthrop B. Smith & Co., 1857. Moore, Marinda B. The First Dixie Reader; Designed to Follow the Dixie Primer. Raleigh, NC: Branson, Farrar & Co., 1863. Reed, Thomas Walter. History of the University of Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1949. Salzberger, Ronald P. and Mary Turck. Reparations for Slavery: A Reader. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Stewart, Kensey Johns. A Geography for Beginners. Richmond, VA: J. W. Randolph, 1864. Stout, Harry S. Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. New York: Viking, 2006. Texas Public Schools: One Hundred Fifty Years 1854–2004. Austin, TX: Texas Education Agency, 2004. Trager, James. The People’s Chronology. New York: Henry Holt, 1994. Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901. George A. Milite
WOMEN AND EDUCATION Prior to the Civil War, most white American women, Northern and Southern, labored in the domestic sphere. The enlistment of male soldiers into the Union army, in particular, however, left a large cavity in the maledominated teaching profession in the North. Hence, the rise of northern female educators during the Civil War era was in direct response to the increased need for teachers in American schools. The feminization of the education field was also significantly impacted by the massive number of freedmen seeking to learn to read and write. During the antebellum period (1830–1860), movements to expand the American educational system through the creation of common (public) schools and to advance the status of women’s education took shape. Nineteenth-century women were traditionally excluded from secondary and post-secondary education, largely substantiated by the belief in female intellectual inferiority. The basis of female progress was largely measured by a woman’s capabilities as a wife and mother, not by the extent of her classical knowledge. In 1862, one columnist for the Boston Investigator remarked in the article ‘‘Female Education’’ that ‘‘. . . a well furnished mind, a well governed temper, love of domestic pleasures, and an inclination and capacity to pursue domestic employments, are the first requisite in a woman and the foundation of her respectability and enjoyment.’’ During the Civil War, secondary education was largely private. The development of a mainstream public education system did not evolve until the decade
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Women and Education
Teachers educate newly-freed blacks in the South. With the departure of men to fight in the Civil War, many women filled their positions in schools, taking on the responsibility of educating students. After the war ended, many women journeyed to the South in hopes of offering literacy to the former slaves. ª Corbis.
following the war. One of the principal arguments that stemmed from the common school movement emphasized the training of female teachers. Scant numbers of middle class and elite girls from the North and South attended female seminaries as a substitute for secondary and higher education. Female seminaries prepared female teachers, while at the same time allowing young women to study male-dominated subjects such as mathematics, science, and Latin. Although the extent of women’s education was sometimes limited, the Civil War era was marked by a large influx of women into the teaching profession. Few southern women possessed the educational training to fill teaching positions vacated by southern men, while northern women found greater success in the profession. In many cases, female educators were the preferred transmitters of knowledge and American values, but earned wages that were usually less than half of a male teacher’s pay. Unequal compensation was a pressing concern for women throughout the United States. Even in the West, female teachers drew public attention to the wage discrimination. In 1864, Mrs. John Smith wrote,
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‘‘The great toil of brain and body in educating our children comes almost entirely upon women, who cannot obtain, as their reward, enough to live upon; while ‘modest,’ ‘wise,’ ‘considerate,’ man delegates a little more than a baker’s dozen of his sex to superintend us in our labor, and pays himself by the lion’s share’’ (Smith 1864, p. 3). Female educational and professional advancement sometimes stood outside of racial boundaries. The commitment to educating former slaves was often biracial, drawing black and white women together for a common cause. The Sea Island ‘‘experiment’’ was demonstrative of this universal struggle, but also exposed underlying racial tensions and mixed motives. In September 1862, Laura Towne and Ellen Murray, two white, educated northerners, opened Penn School in the Port Royal District of the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast. Penn School was South Carolina’s first school for African Americans, and was largely funded with Quaker support. Both Towne and Murray committed their lives to edifying former slaves, but were arguably participating in an educational trend that was largely paternalistic. When Charlotte Forten, an educated black Philadelphian belonging to a prestigious free black family, arrived on the Sea Islands, she was met with mixed reception. Her refinement and musical capabilities caused great astonishment and admiration among her peers and students. Yet Forten, a product of her time, privately expressed her mistrust of whites, stating in her diary The Journal of Charlotte Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era that ‘‘. . . it is hard to go through life meeting contempt with contempt, hatred with hatred, fearing, with too good reason to love and trust hardly anyone whose skin is white,—however lovable, attractive, and congenial in seeming’’ (p. 10). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Female Education.’’ Boston Investigator (Boston, MA), May 14, 1862, issue 2, col. B. Forten, Charlotte. The Journal of Charlotte Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era, 3rd ed. Ed. Ray A. Billington. London: Collier Books, 1969. Katz, William Loren, ed. Two Black Teachers during the Civil War: Mary S. Peake; the Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe [by] Lewis C. Lockwood. Life on the Sea Islands [by] Charlotte Forten. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Selleck, Linda. Gentle Invaders: Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1995. Smith, John, Mrs. ‘‘Mrs. John Smith Gives an Opinion upon the Salaries of School Teachers, Male and Female.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin. Issue 68. San Francisco: CA, June 24, 1864.
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Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Talitha L. LeFlouria
FREE BLACKS AND EDUCATION The story of freed people’s efforts to gain an education begins in slavery. Education is a loaded term—there are many kinds of education, and in one sense, Africans did not come to the Americas uneducated. But most were not literate, and few possessed the kinds of formal European education that many of their masters and other whites had received. For this essay, the term education signifies the somewhat narrow meaning of literacy and the formal instruction received in a typically organized American school system.
From Slavery to Freedom Knowledge is power. Slaves recognized that their lack of knowledge limited their power over their own lives and protected their master’s control over them. Slave owners and white elites recognized this, too, and therefore often made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write. In Bullwhip Days, the former slave Sarah Wilson recalled that ‘‘our white folks didn’t believe in niggers larnin’ anything. Dey thought hit would make de niggers harder to keep slaves, an to make dem wuk’’ (Mellon
1988, p. 197). Nonetheless, at times slaves found the means to become literate. Marshall Mack, born a slave in 1854 in Oklahoma, remembered how his uncle acquired literacy while taking his owner’s children to school every day: ‘‘On sech trips, the chillun learned my uncle to read and write. Dey slipped and done this, for it was a law among slave-holders that a slave not be caught wid a book’’ (‘‘Marshall Mack’’ 1941). Mack’s uncle recognized an opportunity and took full advantage. For him and other slaves, educating themselves was a form of resistance. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass made this clear. When his owner declared that ‘‘Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world,’’ Douglass became all the more determined to learn: ‘‘What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. . . . [The] argument he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn’’ (Douglass 1845, p. 37). Literacy and education opened up a new world for Douglass, and sharpened his desire to be free. After escaping slavery, Douglass’s desire to learn continued to burn, and helped propel him into the leadership of the abolitionist movement before the Civil War. Douglass was a staunch advocate for the education of freed people both during and after the war. Many free black Southerners also pursued an education when they were able, though they had to do so carefully and usually clandestinely: In the eyes of white
Not all Southerners readily accepted freed slaves as citizens possessing equal civil rights. Many attempts made by African Americans after the war to vote, find employment, and earn an education were prevented by white Southerners, fearful of losing their privileged status. A freedman’s school riot.
ª North Wind Picture Archives.
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Southerners, educated free blacks threatened to destabilize slavery and increase the chances of insurrection. Denmark Vesey (1767–1822), a literate free black man in Charleston, had done exactly that in 1822—his planned slave revolt came close to fruition before the plot was discovered and quashed. But some blacks did manage to obtain a formal education. Mary Peake, a young free black woman from Virginia, was sent by her parents to Washington, DC, for schooling during the 1830s. Congress eventually decided that Virginia’s law prohibiting formal education for African Americans should apply to free blacks, but Mary Peake put to good use the ten years of education she had acquired. Lewis Lockwood, a Northern missionary who wrote Peake’s biography, recounted that for years before the Civil War ‘‘she was engaged in instructing children and adults, through her shrewdness and the divine protection eluding the vigilance of conservators of the slave law, or, if temporarily interfered with, again commencing and prosecuting her labors of love with cautious fearlessness’’ (Lockwood 1969, p. 14).
Black Education in the North Because slavery died in the Northern states long before it did in the South, free black Northerners had a greater ability to educate themselves through literary societies and schools. Their efforts at times received support from a few white Northerners, but generally they struggled with insufficient resources. As a result, many free black Northerners pushed for racially integrated schooling. William C. Nell, one of the leaders of Boston’s black community, argued for years that African Americans’ long history of contributing to the military, economic, and political security of their country meant that ‘‘the descendants of such citizens [are] entitled to the same educational facilities that are so freely guarantied to all other children’’ throughout the North (Wesley and Uzelac 2002, p. 465). Some African Americans, however, believed that integration was a chimera, and pushed for black control of black schools. In cities such as Boston and Cleveland, the majority of black parents and leadership pushed hard for integration, whereas in other cities black communities believed self-determination was best achieved by maintaining control over a separate school system. The historian Nikki Taylor notes that in Cincinnati, for instance, the black school board managed to be ‘‘a powerful advocate for educational access and equality’’ from the 1850s into the 1870s. For them, ‘‘integration was, at times, at odds with the larger objectives of equality and self-determination’’ so long as they could control the schools (Taylor 2006, p. 297). That was often the key—in many locations, African Americans were too few in number, or opposition was too strong for them to secure anything close to equal resources for their students and teachers. In such cases, the tendency was to seek integration.
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This debate within black communities persisted long after the Civil War. Nevertheless, like their enslaved brothers and sisters, free black Northerners established a pattern of formal schooling that helped provide a foundation for future efforts at black education. They placed a high value on education, which they believed could help them achieve equality and full citizenship rights. The National Era, a Washington, DC–based black newspaper, noted in 1854 that ‘‘Slavery denies self-ownership, education, wages, all political rights to its subjects’’ (November 9, 1854). Fighting against this injustice was a call to arms. The North Carolina–born David Walker, a fiery black shop owner in Boston, had made this explicit years before when he published the incendiary tract ‘‘Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World’’ in 1829. He believed simple literacy was not enough: African Americans had to ‘‘seek after the substance of learning.’’ They had to be desperate and determined to learn. ‘‘I would,’’ he declared, ‘‘crawl on my hands and knees through mud and mire, to the feet of a learned man, where I would sit and humbly supplicate him to instill into me, that which neither devils nor tyrants could remove, only with my life—for coloured people to acquire learning in this country, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation’’ (Walker 1830, p. 34).
Education during the Civil War Within months of the outbreak of war in 1861, word spread among slaves that if they could get behind Union lines, the Union Army would not return them to slavery. Enslaved women, men, and children by the thousands walked, ran, rode, and even swam toward Union lines and freedom. They poured into military encampments, small towns, rural outposts, and cities such as Washington, DC. The Christian Recorder, a Philadelphia-based black newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, reported that by summer 1865, almost 10,000 African Americans had escaped slavery from Virginia. They built two schoolhouses and employed twenty teachers for their children, and according to one white observer, were ‘‘giving more earnest and general attention to education than the white people of this city’’ (Christian Recorder, July 22, 1865). These African Americans made it clear right away that they wanted to improve their education. A reporter for the Atlantic Monthly who spent summer 1861 among the contrabands at Fort Monroe in Virginia wrote that there was a very general desire among the contrabands to know how to read. A few had learned; and these, in every instance where we inquired as to their teacher, had been taught on the sly in their childhood by their white playmates. . . . I remember of a summer’s afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before her, trying to make progress. (‘‘The Contrabands at Fortress Monroe,’’ p. 639)
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Mary Peake was one of their teachers. Her class at first had only about a half dozen students, but once word got out, within days there were more than fifty. Other schools were set up in response to the demand, and Mary Peake also began teaching adults at night (Lockwood 1969, pp. 14–16). Harriet Jacobs, who, before escaping slavery in 1842, had spent seven years in a crawlspace hiding from a sexually abusive master (she chronicled her story in the gripping narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself), told similar stories of working with freed people during and after the Civil War (Yacavone 2004, p. 199). Donald Yacovone’s superb reader of Civil War documents contains a letter Jacobs wrote in March 1864, when she was in Alexandria, Virginia, working with her daughter and two white teachers from Massachusetts. In fall 1863, they had needed room for a school, so ‘‘one of the freedmen, whose cabin consisted of two rooms, gave it up to us for our school. We soon found that the clamor of little voices begging for admittance far exceeded the narrow limits of this establishment’’ (Yacavone 2004, p. 199). The freedpeople in this community raised $150 and built a schoolhouse to answer the growing demand. In January 1864, seventy-five students were attending; by March there were 225 and an evening school for adults. Jacobs told her Northern supporters that ‘‘you would be astonished at the progress many of them have made in this short time. Many who less than three months ago scarcely knew the A. B. C. are now reading and spelling in words of two or three syllables. When I look at these bright little boys, I often wonder whether there is not some Frederick Douglass among them, destined to do honor to his race in the future’’ (Yacavone 2004, pp. 199–200). African Americans’ resolute determination to be educated inspired many white Northerners and religious organizations to send teachers south. One of the teachers assisting Harriet Jacobs was from the Education Commission of Boston, which eventually merged with similar organizations to form the American Freedmen’s Aid Union, the largest volunteer organization from the North. In Christian Reconstruction, the historian Joe M. Richardson noted that as soon as word of contrabands reached leaders in the American Missionary Association, they began organizing efforts to send teachers south. They found that ‘‘few teachers have had more responsive students than those who went away among the contrabands.’’ The teacher H. S. Beale was impressed that ‘‘plowmen hurry from the field at night to get their hour of study.’’ That responsiveness knew no age limits; one man who was said to be 108 years old and had only been free for a few weeks, came to learn to read (Richardson 1986, pp. 13–14). After 1863, once African Americans were permitted to enlist in the Union Army, black soldiers, many of whom had been contrabands, also were emphatic in
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pursuing opportunities to learn. One of the American Missionary Association’s chaplains noted in 1864 that ‘‘a majority of the men seemed to regard their books an indispensable portion of their equipment, and the cartridge-box and spelling book are attached to the same belt’’ (Richardson 1986, p. 25). Education, like being able to fight against the Confederacy, emboldened black men. James Alexander, a free black man helping to set up an Arkansas A.M.E. Church in 1864, described education as weapon received from the schools that the black troops of the Fifty-sixth and Sixtieth U.S. Infantry regiments had established for themselves. The ‘‘quiet, well-behaved set of men,’’ had made rapid progress, ‘‘daily acquiring a better and more efficient use of that most deadly weapon, with which they have chastised the rebels, while here, on more than one occasion’’ (The Christian Recorder, December 31, 1864). Members of these regiments often took up formal and informal leadership roles in their communities in the North and South when they returned home from service, building on and contributing to the foundation of education that hundreds of free African Americans had established. There were many white-led organizations that made immeasurable contributions to the efforts to provide sound education to African Americans, especially during and after the Civil War. The Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency established in March 1865, was given the monumental task of assisting freedpeople in virtually every area of transitioning from slavery to freedom— including acquiring land, obtaining medical care, resolving legal disputes, providing basic necessities, protecting civil rights, and accessing education. The Bureau was grossly underfunded and understaffed. Churches and missionary agencies helped, sending thousands of men and women into the South. Their efforts have been well documented. Free and enslaved black women and men had always been at the center of the black educational mission. Sometimes with their own money and their own hands, sometimes with the help of white missionary organizations, and sometimes with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, they built and populated schools all over the South, just as free blacks had done in the North before the war. The Civil War and emancipation provided unprecedented and dramatic new access to education, and hundreds of thousands of free African Americans took advantage of the opportunity. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Arkansas Letter.’’ Christian Recorder, December 31, 1864. Belt-Beyan, Phyllis M. The Emergence of African American Literary Traditions: Family and Community Efforts in the Nineteenth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
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Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen’s Education, 1862–1875. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Christian Recorder. Philadelphia, 1861–1898. ‘‘The Contrabands at Fortress Monroe.’’ Atlantic Monthly 8 (November 1861): 626–641. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. Lockwood, Lewis. ‘‘Mary S. Peake, the Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe 1863.’’ Two Black Teachers during the Civil War. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969. ‘‘Marshall Mack.’’ Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. Oklahoma Narratives, Vol. 13, pp. 212-214. Washington, DC: 1941. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/. Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember: An Oral History. New York: Avon Books, 1988. National Era. Washington, DC, 1847–1860. Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Taylor, Nikki. ‘‘African Americans’ Strive for Educational Self-Determination in Cincinnati Before 1873.’’ The Black Urban Community: From Dusk till Dawn, ed. Gayle T. Tate and Lewis A. Randolph. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Walker, David. Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Boston: Author, 1830. Wesley, Dorothy Porter and Constance Porter Uzelac, eds. William Cooper Nell: Selected Writings 1832-1874. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2002. Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Yacovone, Donald, ed. Freedom’s Journey: African American Voices of the Civil War. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2004. Scott Hancock
THE MORRILL ACT The Morrill Act of 1862, introduced by Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill, was a federal mandate to provide funding for the development of ‘‘public’’ institutions of higher education in states loyal to the Union. The Morrill Act was originally titled ‘‘An Act Donating Public Lands to the Several States and Territories Which May Provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.’’
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Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill (1810– 1898). As Western territories filled with farmers taking advantage
of the Homestead Act of 1862, Vermont congressman Justin Morrill proposed the opening in those areas of public universities devoted to agriculture and mechanics. After the Civil War, the Second Morrill Act allowed Southern states to take advantage of the program, with separate universities established for both white and African American students. ª Corbis
Following the secession of the South and the onset of the Civil War in 1861, the Union’s economic and political focus began to turn heavily toward western expansion. New territory in the West, many felt, would compensate for the temporary loss of Southern agricultural lands and raw materials. The federal Homestead Act of 1862 granted persons at least twenty years of age title to farm 160 acres for five years before purchasing the land for a nominal price from the federal government. The intent of the act was to encourage the development of a large ‘‘yeoman farmer’’ class that would replace the practice of slave labor on Southern plantations with small, independently owned, family farms (Foner 1989, p. 9). The passage of the Homestead Act paralleled the passage of the Pacific Railway Act of 1862,
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which provided federal support for the development of the transcontinental railroad system. This railway system connected the industrial centers of the Northeast to the pacific coast. Both the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Act guaranteed the free flow of manufactured goods and raw materials across Western states and territories, strengthening America’s emerging industrial economy (Foner 1989, pp. 200–203). ‘‘Every acre of the fertile soil is a mine which only waits for the contact of labor to yield its treasures,’’ Congressman Samuel Hooper of Massachusetts remarked, ‘‘and every acre is opened to that fruitful contact by the Homestead Act’’ (Hooper 1862, p. 36). The Morrill Act of 1862 was passed to give ‘‘intellectual’’ support to westward expansion. The agricultural, technological, and commercial challenges associated with linking Western territories to Northern industries needed to be studied thoroughly. This study was of particular importance to ensuring the stability of emerging, yeoman farming communities. The Morrill Act granted 30,000 acres of federally controlled land to each congressman representing states in support of the Union. The acreage was to be sold to generate revenue that would be used to build public institutions of higher education dedicated to instruction in agricultural and mechanical fields. Iowa State University, the University of Illinois, Cornell University, Purdue University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers, and the University of Missouri are a few examples of educational institutions that had their origins in the Morrill Act. An important aspect of the act was its intent to provide formal education to those traditionally excluded form America’s liberal arts–based institutions. Subsequently, ‘‘land grant institutions,’’ as they are commonly called, have served as intellectual centers for the states that they serve, particularly in the area of agriculture. At the end of the Civil War, the former rebel states of the South came under the purview of the Morrill Act. As a result, the University of Georgia, the University of Florida, Clemson University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Tennessee, among others, were all designated as land grant institutions. Many of the Southern land grant institutions had actually been founded much earlier, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but their new status meant they would henceforth be supported economically by the federal government. The University of Georgia, for example, had been in existence since 1785, while the University of Tennessee was founded in 1794, but did not receive land-grant status until 1879. Along with the need to expand access to education, another challenge associated with the end of the Civil War was the problem of dealing with the history of slave labor and white racism in the Southern states. Following the infamous Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, the
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former Confederacy gained de facto control over the South. The gains made by African Americans in the areas of politics, economics, and education were challenged when Hayes-Tilden effectively ended the period in American history known as Reconstruction. Segregation laws, popularly known as Jim Crow laws, were passed at the state level to prevent African Americans from voting and becoming economically independent. In addition, the post-Reconstruction era witnessed the emergence of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, by force and under the cover of night, terrorized African Americans who sought to participate in state politics, build schools, own land, or escape from the labor conditions associated with sharecropping. These developments led to the passage of a second Morrill Act in 1890. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foner Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Hooper, Samuel. Banking Association and Uniform Currency Bill: With Extracts from Reports of Secretary of the Treasury. Washington, DC, 1862. Schwartz, John A. ‘‘Land-Grant Act: History and Institutions.’’ Available from http:// www.higher-ed.org/. Kwasi Densu
EDUCATION IN THE CONFEDERACY During the American Civil War, several textbooks were produced for schoolchildren in the Confederate states with content designed to build a sense of national identity. Some of them used strong, anti-Northern language, with one oft-cited example appearing in the title Elementary Arithmetic, for North Carolinian children: ‘‘If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 Yankees, how many soldiers can whip 49 Yankees?’’ (Wiley 1978, p. 123). Aside from such propaganda, more common to these schoolbooks were lessons in sacrifice and duty to one’s country, along with the contention that slavery was both a moral and economically justified system.
Fewer School Districts By contrast to the Northern states in the Union, the Confederate states were predominantly rural, with an economy based on agriculture, not manufacturing or commerce. Hence there were fewer urban centers and correspondingly fewer organized school districts. Most Southern whites—for it was illegal in the Southern states to teach a slave to read or write—were educated at home, if they were wealthy, or in local one-room schoolhouses for households. The school year was usually arranged around the planting and harvest seasons, which was also a commonplace schedule in rural communities
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of the Northern states. The term usually began in December after the last harvest, and ended in March, just before the spring planting required the help of all available household members. With the outbreak of the Civil War, maintaining the secessionist cause took on paramount importance, and all resources were marshaled for the war effort. In the first half of the nineteenth century, most schoolteachers were male, following a belief that male teachers were better able to provide the necessary discipline. It was only after the war that more women took up the profession, as a result of the conviction that females were better suited to providing moral guidance for young minds. When the war began, conscription went into effect in the Confederate states, and many male teachers were called to serve, though there were some exemptions allowed. Furthermore, the number of pupils able to attend school on a regular basis also dwindled, as economic hardships became a fact of life. Children were needed to help on their families’ farms, and in some cases households were forced to relocate to cities like Richmond, where youngsters helped support their families by working in munitions factories.
Moral Lessons For the students who did remain in class in the South during the war years, their textbooks attempted to create a sense of national identity and culture, along with providing moral lessons in citizenship, family honor, and Christian duty. The illustrations reflected a nation at war, with cannons, soldiers, and Confederate flags used freely in illustrations. A Richmond publishing house, George L. Bidgood, issued a large number of these books, including The Confederate First Reader: Containing Selections in Prose and Poetry, as Reading Exercises for the Younger Children in the Schools and Families of the Confederate States, by Richard McAllister Smith. Designed for slightly advanced readers, its reading selections borrowed heavily from the Bible and such similar classics as the ancient Greek tale of the tortoise and the hare. As Smith writes in his preface, ‘‘The pieces have been selected with a view to interest and instruct the pupils, and at the same time to elevate their ideas, form correct tastes, and instil proper sentiments’’ (Smith 1864, p. 3). Stronger language could be found in the Confederate Speller and Reader, written by a minister named John Neely and registered as copyrighted material in Augusta, Georgia, in 1864. Its tone was clear: ‘‘Troops who enter a State with hos-tile purpose, are in-va-ders. Let all who are able, take up arms to drive them back’’ (Rubin 2005, p. 31). These primers also addressed issues relating to the loss of family members. In a passage titled ‘‘The Dead Baby’’ from Marinda Branson Moore’s The First Dixie Reader, the cause of death is explained: GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
. . . croup. It was well two days a-go, and could play as you do; but now see its pale white face. 3. Take its lit-tle white hand in yours and feel how cold it is. You ask what made the ba-by die. I will tell you. 4. God saw it would be best to take it to heav-en now. Per-haps he looked away in the future, and saw that the child would not be good if it grew to be a man (Moore 1863, p. 56).
Proslavery Propaganda Moore also addressed slavery and its moral implications in her ‘‘Dixie’’ series of books, issued by her Raleigh, North Carolina, publisher, Branson & Farrar. In her First Dixie Reader, one passage reads: 1. Here comes old aunt Ann. She is quite old. See how she leans on her stick. 2. When she was young she did good work, but now she can not work much. But she is not like a poor white woman. 3. Aunt Ann knows that her young Miss, as she calls her, will take care of her as long as she lives. 4. Ma-ny poor white folks would be glad to live in her house and eat what Miss Kate sends out for her din-ner (Moore 1863, p. 22).
These pro-Dixie books were quickly abandoned after the war, replaced by texts either issued in the North or vetted by Reconstruction officials as fostering a more healing mood for the nation. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Moore, Marinda Branson. The First Dixie Reader: Designed to Follow the Dixie Primer. Raleigh, NC: Branson & Farrar, 1863. Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Smith, R. M. The Confederate First Reader: Containing Selections in Prose and Poetry, as Reading Exercises for the Younger Children in the Schools and Families of the Confederate States. Richmond, VA: G. L. Bidgood, 1864. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. Carol Brennan
COMMON SCHOOLS In 1671 Virginia’s colonial governor, Sir William Berkeley (1606–1677), famously wrote to his British overseers with regard to his North American dominion: ‘‘I thank God there are no free schools or printing . . . for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them’’ (Percy Anecdotes 1847, p. 181). Unfortunately for Berkeley and his
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British superiors, the Puritan belief in education as a means of preserving both religious faith and moral culture inspired much of the revolutionary activities that ultimately led to the formation of the United States of America. It was another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson (1743– 1826), who systematized the education of young Americans through his Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (1779). Jefferson envisioned a district system in which all children would benefit from primary education in a local school. In addition to reading and mathematics, schools should teach history to provide pupils with the moral and civic understanding required of an informed electorate. As Jefferson wrote to James Madison (1751–1836) in 1787, ‘‘Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty’’ (Bergh 1903, p. 392). The common school movement that took root in the first decades of the 1800s revolutionized American education. Prior to this change, most children learned what few academic skills they possessed at home; farming or an apprenticeship in a trade were of greater importance. Common schools, in contrast, were open to all children. Their focus was the ‘‘three R’s’’—reading, writing, and arithmetic—skills that addressed the more sophisticated needs of an increasingly industrialized economy with a rising urban merchant class and a manufacture-based economy. In an article titled ‘‘What Schools Should Do,’’ a writer for the Milwaukee Sentinel emphasized the link between vocation and education, noting of farmers that ‘‘the fruitfulness of the soil does not depend so much upon its richness, as it does upon the intelligence of those who cultivate it.’’ ‘‘The mechanic should cultivate his mind, that his head may help his hands,’’ the writer added, while for the merchant, a sufficient education would ensure that ‘‘his employment . . . would never descend to a system of higgling’’ (‘‘What Schools Should Do,’’ October 9, 1838). While responding to changing workforce demands, common schools were also promoted as a way to fight the moral decay associated with urbanization. American workers and their families were now migrating from farms to cities and were coming into contact with immigrants from many other countries. Echoing Jefferson, common schools were viewed as a means of instilling the Protestant work ethic and civic values in future citizens, thereby strengthening the economy and political framework of the still-young nation. Such exemplary Americans as Eli Whitney (1765–1825), the inventor of the cotton gin and the concept of interchangeable parts in machinery, were often cited by advocates of public education. As Horace Greeley (1811–1872)
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Connecticut schoolmaster and state legislator Noah Webster (1758–1843). Noah Webster, Connecticut
schoolmaster and state legislator, was an advocator of Jefferson’s common schools program. He believed education to be the most imperative institution in a democracy. He wrote three books, American Spelling Book (1786), Elementary Spelling Book (1829), and American Dictionary of the English Language that became staples in American classrooms. Portrait by James Sharples, Sr., photograph. National Archives and Records Administration.
noted in his The American Conflict, the enterprising young Whitney devoted ‘‘his summers to the labors of the farm, attending the common school of his district through its winter session,’’ where he was ‘‘noted for devotion to, and eminent skill in, arithmetic. At fourteen, he was looked upon by his neighbors as a very remarkable, energetic, and intelligent youth’’ (Greeley 1866, p. 59). Jefferson’s system of common schools was taken up by several noted reformers. The Connecticut schoolmaster and state legislator Noah Webster (1758–1843), whose ‘‘blue-back’’ American Spelling Book (1786), Elementary Spelling Book (1829), and American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) became fixtures in most American classrooms during the nineteenth century, viewed education as the most crucial undertaking of a democratic government. A major advocate for common schools, the Boston attorney and legislator Horace Mann (1796–1859) became secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837 and also founded the
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influential Common School Journal. Viewing the common-school system as a way to attain economic equality and instill respect for work and its fruits (or the private property of others), Mann argued that an education is the God-given right of every human being, regardless of wealth, race, or gender. Other reformers included James G. Carter (1795–1849), who helped establish normal schools to train competent teachers, and the attorney Calvin H. Wiley (1819–1887), who became North Carolina’s superintendent of common schools in 1852. By the 1830s the common-school movement had deep roots in New England, and Massachusetts was a leader in advancing general education. As a Vermontbased journalist noted with some chagrin in assessing the advances of his Southern neighbor, ‘‘it must be some consolation to know that the neighboring states are making such improvements in their common-school systems . . . that Vermont cannot very long remain blind to the light that is shining around her’’ (Vermont Chronicle, March 23, 1827, p. 198). Further to the south and west, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the establishment of common schools was also actively pursued. ‘‘Whatever excuse the first settlers may have had amidst the multiplied difficulties with which they had to contend, we have no such excuses now,’’ observed the editor of the Ohio Observer in advocating a common-school program modeled after that of Massachusetts (Ohio Observer, November 2, 1833, p. 7). Although common schools were welcomed by most Americans, some families chose to opt out. As Charles Wheeler Denison noted in The Tanner-Boy and How He Became Lieutenant-General, a contemporary biography of Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), the mother of the future U.S. president ‘‘was not content to leave him, as many mothers leave their children, to the routine instruction of the common-school of the neighborhood. . . . Her lessons of duty as a mother were learned from the Holy Book’’ and the ‘‘book of nature’’ (Denison 1864, p. 12). While strongly held religious beliefs or fear of inadequate moral guidance inspired resistance to public education for some parents, others took issue with the regional authority of school boards and the system of broad public taxation that funded such boards. Still others recoiled from sending their children to common schools due to fears of the consequences of coming into contact with members of other races or the poorer classes. Despite such objections, most state legislatures in the North and West had a system of publicly funded common schools in place by 1860.
Common Schools in the South In contrast with the North and West, by 1860 few Southern states had taken such large strides toward establishing public education. Their efforts were hampered in some areas by the plantation system, which divided some parts of the South into large estates rather
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than the regional clusters of easily taxable homesteads present in the North. While common schools existed in a few Southern cities, the sons and daughters of many affluent Southern families attended private academies, were educated by tutors and governesses, or were educated in the Northern states or in Europe. Although the institution of slavery was perhaps the largest barrier to the establishment of a common-school system, the relative unimportance of education among the Southern populace must also be noted. Although the South Carolina legislature established a public school district system in 1821, ten years later the state could boast only 8,390 students from a population of 594,400 residents. In contrast, Massachusetts could then claim 149,222 students in a state population of 737,699 (‘‘Common School Education,’’ July 28, 1842, p. 51). By the time war broke out in 1862, 11,881 district school libraries had been established in Northern states, but only 186 existed in the South (Sumner 1870–1883, p. 42). During the Civil War, Southern schools fared far worse than their Northern counterparts, as the Confederacy requisitioned all available monies for the war effort. ‘‘A large number of male teachers were among the first to volunteer in the army of the Confederacy,’’ school superintendent Wiley noted in an 1862 report to Raleigh, North Carolina’s Weekly Raleigh Register. Supplying textbooks was also difficult, and some children were given outdated editions of Webster’s classic ‘‘blueback’’ speller, all positive references to Northern states dutifully redacted. Some pro-Confederate textbooks were published locally with homemade paper and pasteboard. Wiley did not consider paper shortages and the like to be setbacks. ‘‘The continued and absorbing contemplation of a long war tends to depress the mind of the country,’’ the superintendent maintained, adding that ‘‘the diversion of thought to . . . our industrial interests . . . ‘‘ because of such shortages ‘‘gives new spring and elasticity to our hearts, enabling us the better to . . . appreciate the immense forces at work for our final independence, and thus to engage with more intelligent, determined and persevering efforts in the struggle before us’’ (Wiley 1862, p. 2). Unlike some Confederate states, the indefatigable efforts of North Carolina’s school superintendent helped it keep its schools open throughout the war. As Wiley noted in a report to the state’s governor in January of 1866, ‘‘the common schools lived and discharged their useful mission through all the gloom and trials of the conflict, and when the last gun was fired, the doors were still open and they numbered their pupils by the scores of thousands’’ (Abercrombie 1910, vol. 13, p. 5809). The desegregation efforts following the war fueled the common-school programs of the South, and by the end of the nineteenth century almost all children in the United States could obtain a primary education.
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Role of West Point BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abercrombie, John W., ed. Library of Southern Literature, vol. 13. Atlanta, GA: Martin & Hoyt, 1910. Bergh, Albert Ellery, ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6. Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903. Carlton, Frank Tracy. Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States, 1820-1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1965. ‘‘Common School Education: Two Slave States,’’ Emancipator and Free American (New York, NY), July 28, 1842, p. 51. Cremin, Lawrence A. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. New York: Teachers College Press, 1957. Denison, Charles Wheeler. The Tanner-Boy and How He Became Lieutenant-General. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1864. Gould, Benjamin Apthorp. Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion, vol. 2: Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. New York: Arno Press, 1979 [c. 1869]. Greeley, Horace. The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-1864: Its Causes, Incidents, and Results, vol. 1. Hartford, CT: O. D. Chase & Co., 1866. Kaestle, Carl F. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983. Mondale, Sarah, and Sarah Patton, eds. School: The Story of American Public Education. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Nasaw, David. Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Ohio Observer (Hudson, OH), November 2, 1833, p. 7. The Percy Anecdotes: American Anecdotes, rev. ed., vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847. Sumner, Charles. The Works of Charles Sumner, vol. 5. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1870–1883. Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls, VT), March 23, 1827, p. 198. ‘‘What Schools Should Do,’’ Milwaukee Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI), October 9, 1838. Wiley, C. H. ‘‘Editorial.’’ Weekly Raleigh Register (Raleigh, NC), November 26, 1862, p. 2. Pamela L. Kester
ROLE OF WEST POINT Graduates of the federal military academy at West Point, New York, played a crucial role in the American Civil War as commanding officers of both Union and Con-
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federate forces. Even Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America (CSA), was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. When the war began in April 1861, the U.S. Army’s list of active-duty officers showed 1,080 men, of whom 824 were West Point graduates (Office of the Chief of Military History 1989, p. 189). The academy had been established by the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, in part to build a sense of national identity among its military officers that would, it was hoped, prevent the sort of regional factionalism that led to the outbreak of civil war. Among those 824 West Point alumni recorded in 1861, 184 left the U.S. Army to serve in the Confederate Army (Office of the Chief of Military History 1989, p. 189). As an elite training ground for military personnel, West Point developed strong bonds among cadets over the course of an arduous four-year stint, and that camaraderie in many cases resulted in lifelong friendships. The war compelled officers to command regiments whose weapons were aimed against forces commanded by fellow West Pointers. Taking up arms against men with whom they had trained and served was a gross violation of the military code of honor, and for these officers it proved one of the more heartbreaking aspects of the American Civil War.
Trained Army Engineers Founded in 1802 on a scenic perch overlooking the Hudson River some fifty miles distant from New York City, West Point was modeled after France’s famous military academies. Its counterpart was the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, which had been founded in 1845. Relatively early in its history, however, West Point became the target of critics, who claimed the school was an elitist institution open only to the sons of the wealthy or prominent. To gain admission, a potential cadet had to be appointed by a member of Congress, making entrance entirely dependent on family connections. In the era before the Civil War, West Point offered such military training as drilling and artillery practice, but its curriculum was mainly a practical, engineeringfocused course of studies that graduated men who went on to staff the Army Corps of Engineers. Because in this era institutions of higher learning focused on the arts or sciences, and the field of engineering had not yet fully developed as a profession, West Point was a rare training ground in this new field. Cadets were educated at taxpayer expense, and often resigned their military commissions after a few years to take lucrative jobs with the railroads or in other new sectors of the Industrial Revolution. This development led some to declare that West Point was a waste of taxpayer money and should be eliminated altogether. In response, Congress mandated that after 1838 graduates would be required to serve four years of active duty in the Army. Most entered as
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a second lieutenant, the entry level for commissioned officers. Despite its critics’ claims of elitism, West Point was a difficult, isolated place where cadets spent fifteen hours per day either on military drills or in classes. Freshmen cadets, or plebes (after plebeian, Latin for ‘‘commoner’’), began their first year living in tents in a summer encampment on the Plain, the academy’s immense forty-acre parade ground. They learned the rudiments of marching, drills, and army rules of deportment and conduct, and took part in incessant artillery training. When September arrived, they entered the classroom and moved into one of two stone barracks buildings that were icy and drafty for a good part of the year. Each of the buildings housed 250 cadets and were lit only by whale-oil lamps, which gave off a rank fishy odor. Cadets were furnished with their own iron bed, mattress, chair, table, mirror, and mattress.
A Regimented Routine Life at West Point was regulated by drum signals that woke cadets every morning, and announced the onset of the next scheduled activity. At a drumbeat, cadets marched into a mess hall for their three daily meals, and stood at attention until the command to take their assigned seats was issued. Twenty minutes was allotted for each meal, and talking was forbidden. Fare consisted chiefly of boiled meat and vegetables, though some professors and their wives took pity on cadets, who were often homesick during their first year, and invited them to their homes on weekends for such treats as Virginia ham and fresh-baked pie. Cadets were granted a single two-month-long furlough midway through their fouryear course, but could receive permission to leave in the event of a death in the family. Leaving campus on the weekend required formal permission. Classes at West Point were rigorous, and focused on math and science. Cadets were also expected to develop a fluency in French, required for reading Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous tracts on warfare and strategy. Cadets were tremendously isolated, and because of the school’s location on a bluff above the Hudson River, they were cut off almost entirely from the rest of the world during colder months. Illicit skating or rowboat parties, however, sometimes made the trek up the Hudson to a tavern they had been expressly forbidden to visit. This tavern was operated by the Havens family, and served buckwheat pancakes and a specialty drink, the hot rum flip. Occasional raids of the tavern by West Point teachers resulted in students receiving demerits; these were also handed out for the most insignificant infractions, such as a minor flaw in a uniform. The accumulation of two hundred demerits in a single year resulted in automatic dismissal.
First Battle Led by Two Alumni The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
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WEST POINT’S FIGHTING BISHOP Leonidas Polk (1806–1864) graduated from West Point in the Class of 1827, one year ahead of his roommate, Jefferson Davis, and two years ahead of Robert E. Lee. A third cousin of President James K. Polk, Leonidas Polk was baptized during his senior year by the Episcopal chaplain of West Point and decided to enter the ministry. After graduating from the military academy, he resigned his commission as a second lieutenant of cavalry and entered the Virginia Theological Seminary. In 1831, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church. He was appointed as missionary bishop of the Southeast in 1838, and became the first Episcopal bishop of Louisiana in 1841. Over the next nineteen years, he established new churches throughout Louisiana. In 1860, Polk laid the cornerstone of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He intended the school to be an American version of Oxford and Cambridge—in his words, ‘‘a home for all the arts and sciences and of literary culture in the Southern states’’ (Parks 1962, p. 135). Polk had already been thinking of secession when he was planning the foundation of his university, as is reflected in his correspondence with other bishops as early as 1856. When the Civil War began in 1861, Polk withdrew his diocese from the Episcopal Church of the United States and accepted a commission from his old friend Jefferson Davis as a major general in the Confederate Army. He saw no conflict between his calling to the Christian ministry and his role as a battlefield commander. Polk was not, however, a talented military leader. He helped to drive the border state of Kentucky toward the Union side by sending troops into the state in September 1861. He was transferred to a command in Mississippi after a series of disagreements with Braxton Bragg, but later returned to assist Joseph E. Johnston during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Polk was killed by a Union artillery shell at the battle of Pine Mountain in Georgia in June 1864. In spite of Polk’s poor record as a tactician, he was popular with his troops; it is said that hundreds of Confederate soldiers wept openly when they heard of his death. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Parks, Joseph Howard. General Leonidas Polk, C.S.A., the Fighting Bishop. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962. Robins, Glenn. The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006.
The secessionist troops were led by a New Orleans native, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who was an 1838 graduate of West Point. Beauregard had even been appointed as West Point’s superintendent, but served just a week in that office before resigning when his home state of Louisiana joined South Carolina in seceding from the union. When Beauregard issued the order to fire on the
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West Point. Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point commanded troops for both the Confederate and Union armies. Many officers found taking the battlefield against a fellow West Point graduate a difficult task. The Library of Congress.
fort, he was attacking a garrison commanded by U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson, Class of 1825, who had returned to the school as an artillery instructor in the 1830s; Beauregard had been one of his students. Like Beauregard and Anderson, many of the leading officers on the Union and Confederate sides were already veterans of combat thanks to their service in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848. In that conflict, their supervising officer was General Winfield Scott, famously known as ‘‘Old Fuss and Feathers’’ for his insistence that his men rigorously adhere to the Army’s rules of dress and deportment. Scott was general-in-chief of the U.S. Army from 1841 to 1861, and was a rarity among high-ranking Army officers of the era for not having attended West Point. He was a strong supporter of the school, however, and regularly turned up at the semiannual oral examinations informally referred to by cadets as ‘‘the Agony.’’ During the Mexican War, several West Point–trained officers served as key members of his staff and aided in what was considered Scott’s greatest military achievement, the 1847–1848 conquest of Mexico. Those men included Robert E. Lee, Ulysses Grant, and Thomas ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson. When the Civil War began, Scott was seventy-four years old, and thus too aged to serve in battle. Scott
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recommended Lee (Class of 1829 and superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855) to command the Union Army. Lee, however, was a native of Virginia and declined President Abraham Lincoln’s official appointment to the post, instead heading south to become military advisor to Jefferson Davis, who made him commander of the Confederate Army in 1862. Davis was one class ahead of Lee but had a less illustrious career at the academy, becoming the first cadet ever subjected to court-martial for being caught drinking at the Havens tavern. In his defense, the future Confederate president claimed that malt liquor, hard cider, and porter were not ‘‘spirituous liquors.’’ The bitter divisions of the Civil War were most starkly evident in the graduating class of 1861, several of whose members left early to join the Army of the Confederacy. Their departure was viewed as an egregious violation of the oath of loyalty to the United States and its Constitution that they had sworn as plebes. Congress quickly added a second oath in August 1861, requiring incoming cadets to pledge to ‘‘maintain and defend the sovereignty of the United States,’’ and to swear that this responsibility would be ‘‘paramount to any and all allegiance, sovereignty, or fealty’’ they might owe ‘‘to any state, county, or country whatsoever’’ (Callan 1863, p. 483).
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Ties That Bind The number of West Point graduates whose names entered into military history for their service during the war is a long one, beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, where ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson (Class of 1846) led a Confederate brigade and earned his enduring nickname. Union Army Major General Ambrose Burnside (Class of 1847) commanded the Army of the Potomac after 1862, and the fortunes of the war hinged on decisions made by him and his Confederate nemesis, General Lee. Confederate Brigadier General Thomas Lafayette Rosser, one of the Southerners who left before graduation in 1861, captured several troops from a cavalry division led by his former classmate, Union Army Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer (Class of 1861), during the Battle of Trevilian Station in 1864, but the two renewed their friendship while working for the Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1870s. Custer—infamous for graduating last among the thirty-four members of his class—was also involved in one of the more unusual episodes of the war: In 1862 he served as best man at the wedding of his classmate, Confederate Army Captain John Lea. Lea, furthermore, had been wounded in the May 1862 battle for Williamsburg, in which Custer had served under Union General George McClellan (Class of 1846). The Union victory was immensely aided when General William T. Sherman (Class of 1840) captured Atlanta in September 1864. Seven months later, General Lee surrendered to Union Army Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant (Class of 1843, and the first West Point graduate to be elected President of the United States) at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. In his Civil War Memoirs, Grant recounts an anecdote that also appeared in The Spirit of Old West Point, a 1907 book by Morris Schaff, an historian and 1862 West Point graduate. The story involves Schaff’s journey from Alabama to Atlanta across a war-ravaged South not long after the war’s end. ‘‘Late one night . . . the ramshackle train stopped at a lonely station. Charles Ball [Class of June, 1861], still in Confederate gray, entered. As soon as he recognized me, he quickened his step and met me with such unaffected cordiality that the car seemed to glow with new lamps. In view of what had gone before I would not have been hurt had he merely bowed and passed on, for I realized how much there had been to embitter. Yet he sat, and we talked over old times half the night. I could not help wondering, as he parted from me, whether I could have shown so much magnanimity had the South conquered the North, and had I come home in rags, to find the old farm desolate’’ (Grant 2004, p. 524). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambrose, Stephen E. Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. Reprint, 1999. Callan, John F. The Military Laws of the United States. Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1863.
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Carhart, Tom. West Point Warriors: Profiles of Duty, Honor, and Country in Battle. New York: Warner Books, 2002. Crackel, Theodore J. West Point: A Bicentennial History Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. Grant, Ulysses S. The Civil War Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. Brian M. Thomsen. New York: Tor/ Forge, 2004. Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army. Chapter 9: ‘‘1861.’’ In American Military History (Army Historical Series). Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1989. Patterson, Gerard A. Rebels from West Point: The 306 U.S. Military Academy Graduates Who Fought for the Confederacy. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. Carol Brennan
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Family Separation and Reunion
The effects of the Civil War on American family life were not as disruptive as those of some later conflicts, in spite of the strains caused by geographical separation and postwar reunion. The American family at all social levels was already different from its European counterparts by the early 1830s, a fact often remarked on by visitors from abroad. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was a French political theorist and historian who visited the United States in 1832, publishing his impressions in 1835 under the title De la de´mocratie en Ame´rique, translated into English as Democracy in America. De Tocqueville saw the American family, along with religion and a democratic form of political participation, as one of three social forces that helped to hold the young nation together. He laid particular emphasis on the role of American women within the family: For my part, I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere [in the world] does she enjoy a higher station . . . if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women. (de Tocqueville 1969 [1835], p. 603)
Moreover, de Tocqueville regarded women as the primary sources of the influence of religion on the American family. He noted that American men were often driven primarily by economic considerations: . . . religion is often powerless to restrain men in the midst of innumerable temptations which fortune offers. It cannot moderate their eagerness to
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Family Separation and Reunion enrich themselves . . . but it reigns supreme in the souls of the women, and it is women who shape mores. Certainly of all countries in the world, America is the one in which the marriage tie is most respected and where the highest and truest conception of conjugal happiness has been conceived. (de Tocqueville 1969 [1835], p. 291)
In addition to the strength of their family life, however, pre–Civil War Americans were also noted for making a virtue of individualism and self-sufficiency. J. Hector St. John de Cre`vecoeur (1735–1813) was a French army lieutenant from an aristocratic family who settled in upstate New York after the French defeat in 1759 and took out citizenship in what was then the colony of New York. He married an American woman in 1770, purchased a sizable farm, and took up writing about the new type of citizen that was emerging in North America. In Letters from an American Farmer (1782), Cre`vecoeur observed that Americans were more active and self-reliant than Europeans, and less impressed by social rank or ancient customs. He described the change that occurred when a European immigrant became an American: ‘‘From nothing to start into being; from a servant to the rank of a master; from being the slave to some despotic prince, to become a free man, invested with lands, to which every municipal blessing is annexed! What a change indeed! It is in consequence of that change that he becomes an American’’ (Cre`vecoeur 1981 [1782], p. 83). These two features of nineteenth-century American society, a high valuation of the family (often strengthened by religious convictions) on the one hand and an emphasis on personal independence on the other, not only predated the Civil War but have persisted into the present century (Bellah et al. 1985, pp. 87–89). One important difference between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first, however, is the changes in technology that have made it easier for separated family members to keep in touch.
Coping with Separation People who were separated from their families at the time of the Civil War did not have the benefit of rapid, reliable, and affordable transportation to visit their loved ones; they also lacked the modern telecommunication devices that are taken for granted in the twenty-first century. To begin with transportation, although the railroads played an important part in military strategy and troop transport during the Civil War (Gable 1997, pp. 1–4), they were not as readily available to the civilian population. In January 1862, Congress authorized President Lincoln to take over civilian railroad lines for military use. People who wanted to visit or care for relatives in either army frequently had to travel in horse-drawn carriages or wagons. The scarcity of efficient transportation
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also often complicated family reunions after the war was over. Maria Jackson, a former slave, told of her family’s move to Georgia after her father returned from the war: My daddy was named Jim Neely, and he comed all the way to Alabamy to marry my mammy. . . . Mammy and daddy got back togedder atter the war and it was a long time ’fore us come to Georgy. My granddaddy sent fer us then, yes that he did. He sent a one horse waggin plum to Alabamy to brung us back. . . . I don’t ’member how long it tuk ’em to git back in that waggin but I does member dat . . . it sho’ a long hard trip ’cause it warn ’t lak times is now, and folks lived a long ways apart, and somepin’ t’eat was hard to git, and dey was hungry plenty times. (Jackson 1938, pp. 268–269)
In the absence of face-to-face visits, people kept in touch through the mail. Recent advances in photography allowed Civil War soldiers and their families to enclose small photographs known as cartes de visite in their letters; but the earliest telephone would not be invented until 1871, and the telegraph system was, like the railroads, taken over for military use in May 1861. Telegrams were sent to inform Civil War families of a soldier’s injury or death, but these were only brief official communications, not personal messages. The letters exchanged between separated family members during the Civil War were handwritten. The first commercially successful typewriter was invented in 1867 but not produced in quantity until 1873. Thus the letters so eagerly awaited by soldiers and their relatives during the war took much longer to write than a modern letter composed on a word processor or sent as an e-mail message. In addition, the slowness of the postal system and interruptions in mail delivery resulting from the war meant that people worried about their loved ones often had to wait months for news. Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923), a children’s author and educator born a few years before the Civil War, wrote a novel that included an account of the way in which one woman first heard of her fiance´’s mortal injury: [Jane] was engaged to marry young Tom Carter . . . Then the war broke out. Tom enlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had loved him with a quiet, friendly sort of affection, and had given her country a mild emotion of the same sort. But . . . the anxiety of the time set new currents of feeling in motion . . . Men and women grew fast in those days of the nation’s trouble and danger . . . Then after a year’s anxiety, a year when one never looked in the newspaper without dread and sickness of suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was wounded; and . . . she packed her trunk and started for the South. She was in time to hold Tom’s hand through
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MARY TODD LINCOLN AND SPIRITUALISM Mary Todd Lincoln (1818–1882) was one of the most controversial First Ladies in American history. Born into a slaveholding family in Kentucky, she left for Illinois at the age of twenty to escape a domineering stepmother. Although she was courted by Stephen A. Douglas, Mary Todd was more attracted to Abraham Lincoln, Douglas’s fellow lawyer, and married him in November 1842. They had four sons, only one of whom outlived both parents. By the time Lincoln was elected to the presidency, their second son, Eddie, had already died at the age of four. Their third son, Willie, died of typhoid fever in the White House in April 1862. Mary Todd Lincoln had already been under considerable stress as First Lady because of her Southern background. Two of her stepbrothers and her brother-in-law were killed fighting for the Confederacy, and she was accused of being a Confederate spy. After Willie’s death, she began to look for comfort in the teachings of spiritualism, a movement that had begun in upstate New York in the 1840s. Spiritualists believed that a person could make direct contact with God, angels, or the spirits of the dead through clairvoyants or mediums. The movement’s first leaders were the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, who reported in 1848 that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered peddler who communicated with them by rapping on tables. Spiritualism was appealing to many women because it offered them opportunities for leadership as mediums or as lecturers. Following the Fox sisters, such women as Cora L. V. Scott and Achsa W. Sprague lectured widely throughout the United States and held se´ances. Se´ances are meetings in which the participants sit around a table in a darkened or semi-darkened room while the medium goes into a trance and receives communications from the dead. Some twenty-first century spiritualists refer to these trance messages as channeling. Spiritualism surged in popularity during and after the Civil War because there were so many bereaved families longing for some kind of contact with or message from soldiers who had died in the war.
Mary Todd Lincoln apparently began to visit the Lauries, spiritualists living in the Georgetown section of Washington, in the spring of 1862 after Willie’s death. She hoped to be able to communicate with her two dead sons. She later wrote to her half-sister that she had been visited by Alexander, her half-brother killed at Baton Rouge in 1862, as well as her boys. ‘‘Willie lives. He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of the bed with the same sweet adorable smile he always has had. He does not always come alone. Little Eddie is sometimes with him, and twice he has come with our brother, Alex.’’ It is thought that there were at least eight spiritualist se´ances held in the White House itself between 1863 and Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865. Lincoln is said to have attended one of these meetings in April 1863. After Mary Todd Lincoln left the White House, she frequently visited spiritualists under an assumed name in order to test their abilities. On one trip to Boston, she attended a se´ance in which Lincoln appeared before her. She then visited the studio of William Mumler, a ‘‘spirit photographer,’’ who produced a photograph in which the figure of Lincoln can be seen behind that of his widow, his hands on her shoulders. The picture is said to have given Mrs. Lincoln great comfort in her later years. Unfortunately for Mumler, he was sued for fraud in 1869, the prosecution charging that the ‘‘spirit photographs’’ were made by using double exposures and other tricks of the photographic trade.
hours of pain . . . to put her arms about him so that he could have a home to die in, and that was all;— all, but it served. (Wiggin 1903, p. 67)
in order to care for the first two of their four children. Grant resigned his military commission in 1854 in order to rejoin his growing family. During the Civil War, Julia visited her husband as often as possible, often moving their children to new schools in order to keep the family together. In October 1861, Grant wrote to his sister from Cairo, Illinois, that he expected Julia to arrive within the week. In 1862, he wrote to his sister from Tennessee that he was looking forward to a week-long visit from his wife. During the last year of the war, Grant wrote to his father that he and Julia had been offered a house in Philadelphia and that they planned to move there permanently (Grant 1912, letters of October 25, 1861; October 16, 1862; and September 5, 1864). There was the same kind of family loyalty on the Confederate side. Robert E. Lee visited his wife Mary
Military Families There was one group of American families that had become accustomed to postponed weddings and periodic family separations before the Civil War, and that was the families of career military officers. Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia had to wait four years to marry after they met in 1844. Julia and ‘‘Ulys’’ became secretly engaged in 1845; her father, a wealthy Missouri slave owner, had his reservations about the match because Grant’s family was relatively poor. After graduating from West Point, Grant served in the Mexican War until 1848, when he could finally marry Julia. She accompanied him to various garrisons in the West until 1852, when she returned to Illinois to live with Grant’s parents
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972, pp. 488–490. ‘‘Do You Believe? The Mumler Mystery.’’ American Museum of Photography. Available at http://www.photographymuseum.com/mumler.html. Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971, pp. 99–106.
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African American Union soldiers return home to Little Rock at war’s end. African American troops in the Union came from both the free North and the enslaved South. These men had to fight for the right to fight, then fight for equal treatment in the segregated army. ª North Wind Picture Archives
Anna, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was confined to a wheelchair by 1861, as often as he could during the conflict. On Christmas Day of the same year, he sent his daughter a letter expressing how much he missed his family in Virginia: My Dear Daughter: Having distributed such poor Christmas gifts as I had to those around me, I have been looking for something for you. Trifles even are hard to get these war-times, and you must not therefore expect more. I have sent you what I thought most useful in your separation from me, and hope it will be of some service . . . To compensate for such ‘trash’[money], I send you some sweet violets, that I gathered for you this morning while covered with dense white frost, whose crystals glittered in the bright sun like diamonds, and formed a brooch of rare beauty and sweetness, which could not be fabricated by the expenditure of a world of money . . . Among the calamities of war, the hardest to bear perhaps, is the separation of families and friends. (Lee 1861)
Slave Families The ambiguous legal status of slave marriages prior to the Civil War meant that some former slaves who had joined the Union Army or fled to the North during the war either took new wives or returned to their homes to find that their wives had remarried. Those who had been married in a formal religious ceremony—which some
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slave owners encouraged—generally had less complicated reunions. One former slave recalled her wedding: When I growed up I married Exter Durham. He belonged to Marse Snipes Durham who had de plantation ’cross de county line in Orange County. We had a big weddin’. We was married on de front po’ch of de big house. . . . Dat was some weddin’. I had on a white dress, white shoes an’ long while gloves dat come to my elbow, an’ Mis’ Betsy done made me a weddin’ veil out of a white net window curtain. When she played de weddin’ ma’ch on de piano, me an’ Exter ma’ched down de walk an’ up on de po’ch to de altar Mis’ Betsy done fixed. Dat de pretties’ altar I ever seed. . . . Uncle Edmond Kirby married us. He was de nigger preacher dat preached at de plantation church. . . . [Before emancipation Exter saw his wife only on weekends.] I was glad when de war stopped kaze den me an’ Exter could be together all de time ’stead of Saturday an’ Sunday. (Durham 1941, pp. 287–289)
Another former slave was less fortunate. Years later, his daughter recalled that when her father ‘‘. . . came back from the war—in the old time way of jumping the broom handle—my mother had married again, so he didn’t disturb her, and the little children she had then’’ (Holmes 1945, p. 175).
Popular Music Popular music was one way of coping with the pain and frustration of family separation. Many of the camp songs
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of the Civil War, both Northern and Southern, expressed a longing for an end to the conflict and anticipation of reunion with families. ‘‘Goober Peas,’’ a Southern song attributed to A. Pindar, reflects not only the dietary hardships of the Confederate soldier (‘‘goober peas’’ is an old term for boiled peanuts, considered an emergency ration), but also his homesickness: Sitting by the roadside on a summer’s day, Chatting with my mess-mates, passing time away, Lying in the shadows underneath the trees— Goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas. Chorus: Peas, peas, peas, peas, Eating goober peas. Goodness, how delicious, Eating goober peas. . . . Just before the battle, the General hears a row He says, ‘The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now.’ He looks down the roadway, and what d’ya think he sees? The Georgia Militia cracking goober peas. Chorus. I think my song has lasted just about enough. The subject is interesting, but the rhymes are mighty rough. I wish the war was over, so free from rags and fleas— We’d kiss our wives and sweethearts, say good-bye to goober peas. Chorus. (Pindar 1866)
On the Union side, soldiers sang ‘‘Just before the Battle, Mother,’’ written by George F. Root: Just before the battle, Mother, I am thinking most of you. While upon the field we’re watching, with the enemy in view. Comrades brave are ’round me lying, filled with thoughts of home and God; For well they know that on the morrow, some will sleep beneath the sod. Chorus: Farewell, Mother, you may never press me to your breast again; But, oh, you’ll not forget me, Mother, if I’m numbered with the slain. Oh, I long to see you, Mother, and the loving ones at home, But I’ll never leave our banner till in honor I can come. Tell the traitors all around you that their cruel words we know, In every battle kill our soldiers by the help they give the foe. Chorus. Hark! I hear the bugles sounding, ’tis the signal for the fight, Now, may God protect us, Mother, as He ever does the right. Hear ‘‘The Battle Cry of Freedom,’’ how it swells upon the air, Oh, yes, we’ll rally ’round the standard, or we’ll nobly perish there. Chorus. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Closure For thousands of American families in 1865, the only reunion they could expect with their loved ones was on the other side of the grave. Some mourners turned to spiritualism, hoping to receive ghostly messages from their dead (Carter 1971, pp. 85–108). Others read popular novels about the afterlife, mostly forgotten by contemporary readers, but best sellers in the years following the war. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911), a clergyman’s daughter, wrote a novel about heaven called The Gates Ajar, which opens with the news of the narrator’s brother’s death in combat: They tell me that it should not have been such a shock. ‘Your brother has been in the army so long that you should have been prepared for anything.’ . . . I suppose it is all true; but that never makes it any easier. The house feels like a prison. I walk up and down and wonder that I ever called it home. . . . It seems to me as if the world were spinning around in the light and wind and laughter, and God just stretched out His hand one morning and put it out. (Phelps 1868, pp. 5–6)
The fact that The Gates Ajar went through fifty-five printings between 1868 and 1884 indicates that a good many bereaved Americans found comfort in Phelps’s picture of the afterlife. Confederate soldiers returning home from war often had difficult reunions with their families. A recent historian has described the mood of the defeated Southerners as ‘‘relief and dejection and smoldering rage’’ (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 682). In many cases the men had to cope with the destruction of their homesteads and other property as well as the disruption of their family life. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1886), the wife of a former senator from South Carolina, recorded in her diary a conversation she had with a fellow displaced Southerner in March 1865: . . . as Captain Ogden is a refugee, has had no means of communicating with his home since New Orleans fell, and was sure to know how refugees contrive to live, I beguiled the time acquiring information from him. ‘When people are without a cent, how do they live?’ I asked. ‘I am about to enter the noble band of homeless, houseless refugees, and Confederate pay does not buy one’s shoe-strings. To which he replied, ‘Sponge, sponge. Why did you not let Colonel Childs pay your bills?’ ‘I have no bills,’ said I. ‘We have never made bills anywhere, not even at home, where they would trust us, and nobody would trust me in Lincolnton.’ ‘Why did you not borrow his money? General Chesnut [Mary’s husband] could pay him at his leisure?’ ‘I am by no means sure General Chesnut will ever again have any money,’ said I. (Chesnut 1905, pp. 367–368)
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A Civil War soldier returns home to his family. The American family was not as affected by the strain of the Civil War as it would be by later wars. French political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville, claimed that the American family, religion, and democracy helped hold the young nation together. The Library of Congress.
Some former Confederates found a measure of comfort in the nostalgic ideology of the Lost Cause; others returned as best they could to their former occupations or moved to the West to seek new fortunes there. For Union veterans, family reunions were sweetened by the additional satisfaction of military victory. Patrick Gilmore (1829–1892), an Irish American bandmaster serving in the Union Army, wrote one of the best-known Union songs in 1863, two years before the end of the war, in anticipation of a Northern victory. ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’’ is Gilmore’s reversal of an Irish antiwar song, ‘‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye,’’ in which a soldier’s wife laments her returning husband’s injuries: ‘‘Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg, Ye’ll have to be put with a bowl out to beg, Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye.’’ Gilmore rewrote the message of the song to comfort his sister Annie, who was engaged to a captain in the Union light artillery named John O’Rourke: When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll give him a hearty welcome then,
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Hurrah! Hurrah! The men will cheer and the boys will shout, The ladies they will all turn out, And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home. . . . Get ready for the Jubilee, Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll give the hero three times three, Hurrah! Hurrah! The laurel wreath is ready now To place upon his loyal brow, And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home. Let love and friendship on that day, Hurrah, hurrah! Their choicest pleasures then display, Hurrah, hurrah! And let each one perform some part, To fill with joy the warrior’s heart, And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home. (Gilmore 1863)
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Parenting and Childrearing: An Overview
In addition to individual reunions with their loved ones, Union soldiers were also welcomed home by the nation as a whole in the first mass victory parade in the country’s history. Known as the Grand Review of the Armies, it took place on two successive days, May 23 and 24, 1865, in Washington. On the first day, 80,000 infantrymen from General Meade’s Army of the Potomac marched down Pennsylvania Avenue twelve abreast, along with pieces of artillery and a seven-mile-long line of cavalrymen. On the second day, 65,000 men from General Sherman’s Army of Georgia passed in review, the infantrymen followed by the medical corps and civilians— black families who had escaped from slavery. Within a week both armies were officially disbanded. The Grand Review was so moving to the participants, however, that it was repeated by 40,000 surviving veterans 50 years later—in 1915, when Europe was in the midst of a new war that the United States would enter within two years (New York Times, August 16, 1915). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985. Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller. A Diary from Dixie, edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avery. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1905. de Cre`vecoeur, J. Hector St. John. Letters from an American Farmer. New York: Penguin Books, 1981 [1782]. Durham, Tempe Herndon. Interview in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves: Typewritten Records, vol. 14, pp. 284–290. Washington, DC: Federal Writers’ Project, 1941. Gable, Christopher R. Railroad Generalship: Foundations of Civil War Strategy. Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1997. Gilmore, Patrick. ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home.’’ Boston: Henry Tolman, 1863 [sheet music]. A MIDI file is available at http:// kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/johnny.htm. Grant, Ulysses S. Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, 1857–78, edited by Jesse Grant Cramer. New York: Putnam, 1912. Holmes [no first name given]. The Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Accounts of Negro Ex-Slaves. Interview in Fisk University Social GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Science Institute, vol. 18, pp. 175–180. Nashville, TN: Fisk University, 1945. Jackson, Maria. Interview recorded December 13, 1938. In The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, edited by George P. Rawick, Suppl. Series 2, vol. 1, pp. 267–274. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972–1979. Lee, Robert E. Letter to his daughter, December 25, 1861. Available online at http://www.stratford hall.org/decdoc/letter.html. Phelps, Elizabeth S. The Gates Ajar. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1868. Pindar, A. ‘‘Goober Peas.’’ New Orleans: A. E. Blackmar, 1866 [sheet music]. A MIDI file is available at http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/ gooberp.htm. Root, George F. ‘‘Just before the Battle, Mother.’’ Text in the public domain. A MIDI file is available at http://civilwarpoetry.org/union/songs/ justbefore.html. ‘‘To Repeat Grand Review: 40,000 Veterans of Civil War Will March on Fiftieth Anniversary.’’ New York Times, August 16, 1915, p. 10. de Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer. New York: Doubleday, 1969 [1835]. Wiggin, Kate Douglas. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1903. Rebecca J. Frey
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Parenting and Childrearing PARENTING AND CHILDREARING : AN OVERVIEW
Debra Newman Ham MOTHERHOOD
Jenny Lagergren FATHERHOOD
Adam J. Pratt CHILDREN AND CHILDREARING
Megan Birk EXTENDED FAMILY
Debra Newman Ham
PARENTING AND CHILDREARING: AN OVERVIEW In addition to their horror over the tragic cessation of young lives, Civil War parents had to face increased difficulty in every type of childrearing role. Many young people had to take on adult roles years before they were ready. Parents watched as hundreds of thousands of teenage sons went off to war with Union or Confederate
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troops. Far more deadly than guns and mortar were the diseases that fell eleven of every twelve who died in the military camps. In the southern war theaters, Confederate parents tried to protect their children from Union soldiers and armaments, as well as from the ravages of a devastated economy, while more than five thousand members of the enslaved population dubbed ‘‘contraband of war’’ sought means to escape with their children to the Union lines. The wives and children of men who joined the United States Colored Troops, especially from the border states, sometimes had to face the wrath of their owners against themselves and their offspring. In both the border and southern states, some whites attempted to kidnap, sell, or illegally apprentice African American children so that they could retain them as unpaid laborers. Families themselves fought for custody of orphans or struggled through separation and custody battles, and almost all parents wanted their children to be educated.
Diaries and Reminiscences A ten-year-old girl, Carrie Berry, whose diary is at the Atlanta History Center, vividly captured the horrors and complexities of the war experience for childrearing. The child’s diary clearly shows that her mother was attempting to train her in household tasks and send her to school and church, in spite of the violence near their home. It was impossible for her mother or father to return her home to normalcy amidst the warfare surrounding them. Young Carrie explained that on Monday, August 1, 1864, she had to care for her younger sister ‘‘but before night we had to run to the cellar’’ for cover during an assault. She later reported, ‘‘We did not feel safe in our cellar because the shells fell so thick and fast.’’ She stated that they could ‘‘hear the canons and muskets very plane [sic], but the shells we dread. One has busted under the dining room which frightened us very much. One passed through the smoke-house and a piece hit the top of the house and fell through but we were at Auntie Markham’s, so none of us were hurt. We stay very close in the cellar when they are shelling.’’ Wednesday, August 3, was Carrie’s birthday. She wrote, ‘‘I was ten years old, But I did not have a cake times were too hard so I celebrated with ironing. I hope by my next birthday we will have peace in our land so that I can have a nice dinner’’ (Carrie Berry Diary, August 1, 1864– January 4, 1865). In her 2000 article ‘‘‘Of Necessity and Public Benefit’, Southern Families and their Appeals for Protection,’’ Amy E. Murrell looks at letters from a South Carolina woman named Margaret A. Easterling. Trying to run the family plantation, care for her children, slaves, and her aged mother in ‘‘a neighborhood which [N]egroes number twenty to one,‘‘ Easterling asked Confederate officials to keep her oldest and strongest son, Willie, who was seventeen in the military, but send home her ‘‘feeble’’ son,
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Josiah. She wrote, ‘‘I know our cause is worthy of every and any sacrifice . . . but I am not mistress of my fears.’’ Another schoolgirl diary once more points to a loss of youth and growing bitterness because of the violence and changes around her. Kept by sixteen-year-old Alice Williamson in 1864 in Gallatin, Tennessee, and held by the Atlanta History Center, the thirty-six page diary describes the violent occupation of the area by Union forces led by General Eleazar A. Paine and details her disgust of Union sympathizers, African American soldiers, and ambitious contrabands who also wanted to be educated. It is obvious that Williamson’s parents were trying to keep her in school, but by the time that her journal closes, the school has shut down and she speculates that her teacher is going to teach the contrabands. Williamson accuses General Paine of a number of atrocities. She stated that on March 11, Paine went up the country a few miles to a Mr. Dalton’s whose son came home from the Southern Army the day before and had the same day taken the Amnesty Oath. Riding up to the door he enquired of Mr. Dalton if his son was at home but before he answered his son came to the door. Old Nick then told him to get his horse and go with him. After insulting the father he carried his son a half mile away and shot him six times. Bidden to rise and go home, the young man has never been heard of since. (Alice Williamson Diary)
This account is most likely untrue because the general would almost certainly have had an enlisted man shoot him, if he had wanted him shot. On June 5, Williamson reported that ‘‘the Tennesseans set fire to the contraband school.’’ By June 10, she is relating that The country is overrun with Yanks: they are camped in the woods in front of us and have already paid us several visits killed sheep, goats and chickens Our new yankees are very neighborly. They come over to see us every few minutes in the day. Some came today and demanded their dinner at two o’clock but did not get it. They went off cursing us for being d__n rebels.
On September 16, she lamented, ‘‘Todays paper brings sad news, Atlanta has certainly been taken: Sherman has ordered every man, woman and child from that place. . . .’’ (Alice Williamson Diary).
An African American Perspective Susie King Taylor was a teen, a wife, a mother, a laundress and a nurse during the Civil War. She published a memoir in 1902 entitled Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U. S. Colored Troops. Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers. In the book, she relates how her mother, a market woman, and her grandmother helped provide her with a clandestine education, since it was illegal for slaves to learn to read. Susie wrote that by 1861, she had heard
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a great deal about freedom, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), and the Yankee soldiers. After the Civil War began, the slaves believed that Lincoln and the Yankees were soon coming to set them free. As Union soldiers moved into the South, slaves flocked to their camps and Susie was among them. President Lincoln, however, remained as reluctant to allow black men to enlist as soldiers as he was to declare the slaves free. Blacks were allowed only a limited role in the war effort for the first three years. Nevertheless, slaves from miles around left their owners and sought refuge behind Union lines wherever the troops moved, and free black men independently or under Union soldiers’ direction began to train for combat and practice military drills. Because Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and the surrounding area were recaptured by the Union early in the war, blacks began to converge upon that area to join with and work for the Union troops. At the arrival of the Yankees in the South, Susie, just fourteen years old, left with her uncle and his family for the South Carolina Sea Islands in order to find the Union army. Susie wrote that she was overjoyed to see the Yankees. She, like thousands of other slaves, believed that her liberation was at hand. She was willing to help in the struggle for freedom in any way that she could. The Union officers were surprised to find that Susie could read and write and pressed her into service as a teacher of slave children and some adults. She also tutored some of the soldiers who were eager to learn how to read and write. In the camp, she met and married Sergeant Edward King of the first South Carolina Volunteers. They had one son. Lincoln announced that the proclamation would take effect on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed that all slaves in the Confederate states would be ‘‘forever free.’’ Although scholars argue the effectiveness of the proclamation, Susie, her family, and the other recruits and contrabands who were with them felt that they were free from that moment and were willing to fight and die to keep their liberty. The government promised that U.S. Colored Troops would get equal pay, but it did not fulfill that promise. Susie’s husband and the other troops and their officers were extremely disappointed, and many black men refused to take any pay that was less than that of white soldiers. Eventually, the government reversed its position and agreed, again, to give the soldiers full pay with all of the back pay due, but by that time many members of the Colored Troops, Susie sadly reported, had died without receiving one dime for their service. Traveling with her husband and the Colored Troops, Susie worked alternately as a teacher and nurse, never receiving any pay for her services. She traveled with them as far south as Florida and camped with them in Georgia. She nursed sick and wounded men according to their needs and worked alongside Clara Barton
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(1821–1912) in the Sea Islands for several months. Susie, still a teenager, marveled over how quickly she got over the sight of bloodied, maimed, and mangled bodies. She recounted that whenever she would see wounded soldiers her only thoughts were about how to alleviate their suffering. After the war, Susie and her husband, Edward, returned to Savannah, where she opened a school. Edward died in 1866, leaving Susie as a widow at only eighteen years old. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alice Williamson Diary. Special Collections, Duke University. Available from http://scriptorium. lib.duke.edu/williamson/. Berlin, Ira, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era. New York: New Press, 1997. Carrie Berry Diary, August 1, 1864–January 4, 1865. Special Collections, Duke University, Durham, NC. Available from http://www.americancivilwar.com/ women/carrie_berry.html. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment. [1870.] New York: Collier Books, [1962.] Murrell, Amy E., ‘‘Of Necessity and Public Benefit: Southern Families and their Appeals for Protection.’’ In Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, ed. Catherine Clinton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War. Boston: Little, Brown, [1969.] Taylor, Susie King. Reminiscences of my Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers. [Boston: S K. Taylor, 1902.], ed. Patricia W. Romero. New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, 1988. Debra Newman Ham
MOTHERHOOD At the start of the Civil War in 1861, the conventional roles of women shifted to include new practical responsibilities and social positions. Before the war, husbands often established household rules and provided families with security, while few women worked outside of the home. As the primary caretakers of children and spouses, women already had full-time work inside their households. With the onset of the war, however, it became necessary for many mothers to become leaders of the household and pursue jobs outside their homes. In addition to the changes in practical responsibilities, the war forced women to examine their identities as mothers.
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ARMY NURSES AS MOTHERS Many soldiers and women were initially recoiled from the new interactions between the sexes in Civil War hospitals, but duty necessitated that they make the best of it. In order to do so, women, who had never taken care of anyone other than family members, and soldiers, who had never been taken care of by anyone but their mothers, fused these roles together to form public families. Soldiers could therefore be taken care of by their ‘‘mothers’’ and nurses could take care of their ‘‘children.’’ Several nurses, most notably Mary Ann Bickerdyke (1817– 1901), were known to all as ‘‘Mother.’’ Mother Ransom of Indiana and Grandmother Newcomb of Illinois are other prominent examples. Mother Bickerdyke dispensed motherly care for the soldiers, leading the mother of a wounded soldier to remark, ‘‘It is no wonder you are called ‘mother’’’ (Holland 1895, p. 525). Nurses not officially known as ‘‘mother’’ were often given that title, though, and they saw their patients as their children in many cases. According to the editor of the diary and letters of Hannah Ropes, Civil War nurses often saw themselves as responsible surrogate mothers for the soldiers in their care (Brumgardt 1980, p. 15). As for Ropes herself, she once said that ‘‘the poor privates are my children for the time being’’ (p. 77). Emily Elizabeth Parsons also often referred to her soldiers as children, stating her role in the hospitals as that of ‘‘see[ing] after the many wants of my children, so my men seem to me’’ (Parsons 1880, p. 22). Parsons referred to her job of making forty-four beds every day as analogous to the endless work of a well-known nursery rhyme character, as she remarked that she had ‘‘more children than
Divided Families and Changes in Family Relationships As the country was divided through war, families’ relationships shifted as well. Some families grew closer; the emphasis on emotional attachments within families and moral development in children during the nineteenth century, including during the Civil War years, was stronger than the earlier, stricter perspectives on children’s statuses, although one historian has noted that this shift in emphasis could be seen as early as the American Revolution (Marten 1998, p. 22). Children were relied on less for earning and contributing to household incomes, and were instead regarded as central family members to be nurtured. Mothers were increasingly interested in the growth and personal development of their children. Pressures generated by the war influenced and expanded the responsibilities of mothers. As many households lost male family members temporarily or permanently to the war, mothers were faced with new challenges in raising their children alone. Without the support of husbands, or a mother’s concurrent daily concerns as a wife, women had to reexamine their domestic duties. Therefore, they often took on work typically performed by males, such as phys-
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the old woman in the shoe’’ (p. 52). Ada W. Bacot, a Confederate nurse, often referred to her patients as ‘‘poor children’’ and comparing her devotion to the Southern cause to the love of a ‘‘fond mother’’ (Berlin 1994, p. 51). Bacot claimed to be a child of Southern ideals herself, demonstrating the blurring of family lines between public and private, real and idealistic. Fannie Beers, another Confederate nurse, also discussed her conceptions of family in the Civil War hospitals. She referred to all her patients as her ‘‘boys,’’ regardless of their age. Beers even pointed out that some were upset that she took the liberty of referring to men who were husbands and fathers as ‘‘her boys,’’ but to Beers, ‘‘these are my boys—still—always my boys’’ (Beers 1888, p. 311). JOHN FRENCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beers, Fannie A. Memories: A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure during Four Years of War. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1888. Berlin, Jean V, ed. A Confederate Nurse: The Diary of Ada W. Bacot, 1860– 1863. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Brumgardt, John R, ed. Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980. Holland, Mary A. Gardner, compiler. Our Army Nurses. Boston: B. Wilkins & Co., Publishers, 1895. Parsons, Emily Elizabeth. Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons, ed. Theophilus Parsons. Boston: Little, Brown, 1880.
ical tasks around the home. Mothers also became accountable for disciplining children, which had traditionally been the fathers’ task (Sutherland 1989, p. 63). The uncertainties of the war, including its duration and practical consequences, forced mothers to make such rapid changes in daily living. Explorations of self-identity and purpose added strains to the already difficult circumstances of experiencing a period of national upheaval. Family relationships were stressed and tested in a variety of ways during the years of the Civil War. One historian maintains that women not only often felt frustrated by or unequal to their new responsibilities but also began to question men’s supposedly superior competence and wisdom (Faust 1996, p. 134). As the contours of personal identities shifted, wives could no longer count on their menfolk to buffer them from harm or to serve as the foundation of the family. Naturally, major life events could not be put on hold simply on account of a spouse’s prolonged absence. Mothers often had to experience or endure such significant events as the birth or death of a child without the feelings of safekeeping conferred by a united family or any male support.
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Additional Roles and Responsibilities Mothers often acted as links or channels of communication between an absent father and the children. They tried to shorten the distances between soldiers and their homes by reporting the mundane events or changes in their children. Documenting such pieces of news as language development or new lessons learned at school helped mothers hold their families together, even across distances. In a letter written to her husband shortly after he enlisted with the Union Army in 1863, Martha Glover, a slave in Missouri, said that ‘‘The children talk about you all the time. I wish you could get a furlough & come to see us once more. We want to see you worse than we ever did before . . .’’ (Berlin et al. 1987, p. 12). Mothers like Ms. Glover who were legally slaves faced tremendous burdens—including the unpredictability of personal safety—in addition to worrying about their children’s well-being and future. Glover’s letter clearly expresses the uncertainties many mothers were forced to endure: ‘‘. . . I do not know what will become of me & my poor little children’’ (Berlin et al. 1987, p. 12). Concurrently, concerns about spouses held by other slave owners or recruited to fight for emancipation added to many daily difficulties and apprehensions about the future as slave families were separated by events beyond their control. Mothers also frequently had the responsibility of explaining the life-changing events of the early 1860s to the children. Children in the South and the North were exposed to many realities of war directly through family members leaving for battle and society’s preoccupation with the war. While families living in the South confronted dangers that few Northern families faced because so much of the war was fought in Southern territory, both sides endured the difficulties of divided families, which often included the loss of fathers, spouses, or sons (Marten 1998, p. 21). Regardless of where the families lived—in Northern or Southern states—mothers were forced to realize that the subject of war was often at the forefront of children’s minds. Even young children experienced the rhetoric of war in multiple forms—games, books, toys, theater performances, and newspapers were among the many forms of entertainment and mass media influenced by the topic. Women had to help their young ones to understand a dangerous and changing world, while communicating a sense of safety and protection that the majority of mothers in any period of time work to convey. With the younger generation’s futures as the motivation for many soldiers to fight for the Union or Confederate armies, or the encouragement for many slaves to fight for emancipation, mothers had the complex task of explaining why fathers had to be away from home while comforting their children and reassuring them of their importance and safety. Likewise, wives often reassured their husbands that they would help the young family members remem-
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ber their fathers and the causes for which they fought (Marten 1998, pp. 11–13). Another responsibility mothers confronted was working outside the home. With many males away at war during the early 1860s, the United States experienced an increase in the number of female workers. Mothers who had devoted their energies to raising a family and maintaining a home abruptly assumed financial challenges without the husband’s income. While there was no massive or permanent displacement of men in most occupations, the tradition that woman’s only legitimate place was in the home had been weakened by the end of the war (Sutherland 1989, p. 62). The rise in the number of female workers occurred together with the increased burdens mothers were taking on inside the home. Although some mothers could delegate certain household chores to older and responsible children, the war changed the composition of family life, both inside and outside the home—financially, practically, and personally. Many women, including mothers and daughters, particularly in the South, found jobs that supported the war effort by working in government jobs, such as positions in the Treasury Department or in factories (Marten 1998, p. 172). Such employment often helped them to establish a new sense of self-worth as well as connections to the military causes of their regions. However, finding employment overall was a difficult task. Most mothers were not accustomed to looking for work or spending a majority of the day outside the home. The availability of jobs varied, with greater potential for paid employment in larger cities. Also, the cost of living was increasing, which added economic stresses to the already intense realities of guiding a family through a period of war.
Motherhood in the North and South Mothers in the North experienced a different range of lifestyle adjustments from those in the South. With the exception of southern Pennsylvania and some of the border states, most Northern households were located at a safe geographical distance from the battlefields. Therefore, families could feel a type of abandonment and confusion about the future without the ability to see conflicts firsthand. In addition, because Northern mothers were not able to help with the immediate impacts of war, they often felt uneasy and lonely remaining in the North, far from sons or husbands (Silber 2005, p. 91). Domestic life was turned inside out. Overall, a mother’s world, whether trying to maintain a home in the North or the South, became much more difficult. Living in the South generated distinct challenges and reputations for mothers as well. Being located closer to areas of fighting created constant worry of invasion by Northern troops. The sense of safety within the home became a daily concern. In addition to the practical challenges of living near war sites Southern women had distinguished reputations for being strong nationalists,
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willing to put aside their domestic traditions to support sons and husbands. They felt the fighting was for a greater purpose than their domestic world and were often admired for such devotion to their cause (Silber 2005, p. 91). On the other hand, the war also forced them to examine the racial divisions that had persisted, which they had accepted. Up until the war, privileged and wealthy white mothers in the South had relied on the work of slaves to maintain family estates and to help in raising their children. Women also questioned their moral duties as mothers. A common concern was how to retain an influence on sons while they were away from the home environment with its strong maternal presence. One way for mothers to prolong their influence and maintain a sense of responsibility for grown sons was to write letters that communicated the values they had worked to instill during their sons’ childhoods. In many cases these letters included reminders of religious beliefs and principles (Silber 2005, p. 96). It comforted mothers to some extent to continue such instruction of values through long-distance communication with their children. The connections through letters, however, were small substitutions for the strong presence mothers had had in their sons’ lives before the separations. Up until the war, many mothers had devoted their energies and identities to raising children and maintaining a household. When the composition of the households shifted, along with the social structure of the country, mothers reevaluated their multiple responsibilities to their families, homes, and personal identities.
ised to serve his regiment faithfully and guide them on their quest to victory. Twichell had written every week to his father since his days as a seminary student; thus the two men had a strong emotional bond that transcended distance. The father had also served as a chaplain, and one of Joseph’s primary reasons for his enlistment was the encouragement offered by his father. Two years later, Twichell received a disturbing telegram telling him to rush home because his father had died. Not only had the younger man’s hero and source of inspiration been snatched away from him, but so too had his primary correspondent—someone with whom he could share his innermost feelings. When Twichell recovered from the unexpected loss, he sat down to write to his mother but found the task more hurtful than helpful. ‘‘I shall never write—‘Dear Father’ again—never . . . . How many times, when I was . . . disturbed, has the mere writing of them called me to peace and a better mind’’ (Messent and Courtney 2006, pp. 229). The grief he felt cascaded over him; Twichell had to reassure himself that he had lived up to his father’s expectations. ‘‘I only wish he had known how much I loved him. I hoped to show it someday, but now, Oh God! Blankness gathers about the future.’’ Without his father’s direction, the uncertainty of the future weighed upon Twichell and he longed for the reassurance and stability his father had once provided: ‘‘Oh! For another touch of his hand!—and hour of his company—the sound of his voice! Would that I could hear him call me ‘Joe’ again. Nobody ever did, or ever can speak it as he did’’ (Messent and Courtney 2006, pp. 230–231).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berlin, I., F. C. Cary, S. F. Miller, and L. S. Rowland. ‘‘Families and Freedom: Black Families in the American Civil War.’’ History Today 37, no. 1 (1987): 8–15. Faust, D. G. Mothers of Invention, Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Marten, J. M. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Silber, N. Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Sutherland, Daniel D. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989. Jenny Lagergren
FATHERHOOD In 1861 Joseph Hopkins Twichell enlisted in the Army of the Potomac as a chaplain. Feeling a call from God to participate in the nation’s great struggle, Twichell prom-
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American Ideals of Fatherhood The genuine grief articulated by Twichell upon learning of his father’s death demonstrates the important position that fathers maintained in everyday life during the Civil War. Tradition dictated that fathers act as their families’ leaders, decision makers, and primary breadwinners. Prior to the Civil War, small family-owned shops and farms dominated the rhythm and pace of life. Fathers often managed their family members as they would employees. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, however, growing sentimentality surrounding family life also demanded that fathers take on a more nurturing and loving role within the family. The growing cultural influence of the middle class was primarily responsible for this challenge to the traditional role of fatherhood. The middle-class ideal perpetuated throughout antebellum America glorified the nuclear family consisting of father, mother, and children. The ideal family, according to the historian Amy Murrell Taylor in The Divided Family in Civil War America, ‘‘was meant to be an emotional sanctuary, a small and child-centered refuge from public life that replaced
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Fathers who sent their children to war as well as fathers who left their children behind suffered from the long separation. Antebellum attitudes encouraged fathers to take an actively affectionate role in the raising of children, resulting in feelings of loneliness when the loving family unit was shattered by war. The Library of Congress The soldier’s dream of home.
traditional patriarchal authority with affection and love’’(Taylor 2005, pp. 1–12). By the middle of the nineteenth century, American fathers presided over their families in a stern but loving manner. They played important roles in the development in their children and spent much of their lives instructing their offspring. For example, fathers taught their sons the importance of ambition and manly independence, yet both of those qualities were necessarily bound by the father’s authority. This confrontation between an established authority figure and an upstart youth defined many father-son relationships and likewise prevented a family from realizing the ideal. Fathers similarly raised their daughters to continue the traditions of domesticity but also encouraged limited forays into greater independence (Rose 1992, pp. 162–177). The antebellum notions of the father as authority figure were complicated by the war because fathers were often called away from home to serve in the military for men from all realms of society. Other domestic responsibilities also made the ideal difficult to realize. Poor
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farmers were forced to put sons and daughters to work in order to both plant and harvest crops. Northern factory workers watched as their youngest children went to work in textile and other factories. African American slaves in the South never had the opportunity to create ideal families. Forced into bondage, black slaves found family life tenuous at best. Without the ability to protect their families, black fathers remained at a loss until they earned their freedom.
Effects of Civil War With the onset of the Civil War in 1861, Abraham Lincoln’s declaration that ‘‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’’ rang true not only for the political existence of the American nation but also for households across the country. Hundreds of thousands of men enlisted to serve in both the Union and Confederate armies, which created a great crisis in the nature of family life. No longer able to realize their vision of the ideal family, fathers and sons across the nation still sought to retain emotional bonds with their family despite their inability to remain a cohesive unit. Many young men
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who went off to fight kept in close contact with their fathers and reassured them not only of their decisions to enlist but also that they had been raised well. In April 1862, just before partaking in his first action of the war, a young soldier from Louisiana, Jared Sanders, wrote home to his father about the hardships he had encountered so far in the field. ‘‘Our march was very trying to our men, for the day before we had marched until midnight, & were tired down before we started. Our men stood the march better that I expected.’’ Lest his father think that he had raised an unmanly son, the green recruit affirmed that he was ‘‘determined to fight now & forever & to ‘‘rough it’’ like a man. I stood the walk like a man of 25 miles in 24 hours’’ (Sanders 2001, pp. 65– 66). Other sons focused on more mundane matters to prove their manhood and also to show their fathers that their prewar lessons had not been lost on them. Will McKee of Georgia sent his father seventy-five dollars to use as his father saw fit. Despite that sum of money, McKee could sense his father’s displeasure for not sending larger sums during such difficult times: ‘‘I expect you think hard of me for not sending my money home where it would be taken cear of.’’ Not wanting his father to worry that some of his money might be spent on vices rather than on food for his family, McKee guaranteed his father that ‘‘I try and be saven for the futer’’ (McKee 2000, p. 56.). Though having been thrown into a lifeand-death struggle, McKee sought to show his father that he had learned lessons of thriftiness from his parent’s example. But McKee’s letter also demonstrated how the war, rather than a father’s tutelage, had shaped a generation of men. So far from home, many soldiers became the effective heads of their families and their fathers relied on them not just for monetary support but for advice as well. Oliver Wilcox Norton of Pennsylvania wrote home to his father when he learned that his brother sought to enlist. ‘‘I expect that when the call is made and recruiting commences in your vicinity, he will want to enlist, but don’t let him. . . . One representative from the family will do.’’ Norton remained convinced that his younger brother would not last long in the army. ‘‘Let him see a ditch half full of dead and wounded men piled on each other; let him see men fall all round him and hear them beg for water; let him see one-quarter of the awful sights of the battlefield, and he would be content to keep away’’ (Norton 1903, p. 99). The experiences that young men had witnessed during the Civil War legitimized their elevated stature in their family. By asking for his son’s advice in family matters, a father also recognized his son’s passage from boyhood into manhood. Though warfare was brutal and terrible, it served as a more effective rite of passage than a father’s teachings. Thus a generation of young men took on a greater measure of authority because of their experience during
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wartime. On the other hand, many families, usually wealthy ones, had the luxury of maintaining prewar family standards. The politically powerful Clay family of Kentucky remained loyal to the Union during the war, but none of Brutus J. Clay’s sons enlisted. Instead, all three of his sons obeyed the authority of their father and stayed out of the fighting. One son, Cash, enrolled at Yale and was appalled at his treatment by what he considered abolitionist students and professors. ‘‘A man who has the least respect for his own feelings and honor cannot attend the societies. They declare all Southern men barbarians. They say ignorance and vice reign supreme in all the slave states and that we are not half as good as cannibals.’’ For young Cash, his loyalty to his father’s wishes and to the Union cost him abuse and social humiliation (Berry 1997, pp. 362–373). For the slaves, however, the Civil War provided an opportunity for freedom and for separated families to reunite. One slave, Ms. Holmes, recalled that her father, Frank, had left her with his owner’s family while he went to fight for the Confederate Army as a replacement for the youngest son of the planter’s family. Only three months after joining the Confederate Army, Frank deserted and made his way to the Union lines. There he became a Union soldier and began fighting for his freedom. While he was gone, his wife married another man and effectively abandoned Ms. Holmes, who had now come under the care of her owners. While living with her white surrogate family, Ms. Holmes learned rudimentary reading and writing but she also came into a family situation for the first time and she commented that ‘‘they took care of me just like I was their own people.’’ This improvement in her life lasted only briefly; when her father returned from war, he took his daughter and tried to make a new life (American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology). Fatherhood in the Civil War became intimately connected to the happenings on the battlefield. As fathers and sons gave their lives in the conflict, families were torn apart and had to recreate the ideal family as best they could. Though not all families were harmed by the war, most sent at least one son into combat. The loss of family cohesion created a rupture in family life that antebellum Americans had worked hard to avoid. Though the family remained the integral unit of social organization after the war, the ideal family seemed to have less credibility than before. With so many fathers and sons lost to death or injury, families were forced to organize themselves in new ways directly following the war’s outcome. While fathers still held authority, the generation of soldiers who survived the conflict had experienced more hardship and was granted their own form of authority. African American fathers also had the opportunity to earn their freedom and to provide a more stable and secure home life for their families.
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Children and Childrearing BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology. Available from http://xroads.virginia.edu/. Berry, Mary Clay, ed. Voices from a Century Before: The Odyssey of a Nineteenth-Century Kentucky Family. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997. McKee, Hugh, ed., The McKee Letters, 1859–1880: Correspondence of a Georgia Farm Family during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Milledgeville, GA: Boyd Publishing Company, 2000. Messent, Peter, and Steve Courtney, eds. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. Norton, Oliver Wilcox. Army Letters, 1861–1865. Chicago: O.L Deming, 1903. Rose, Anne C. Victorian America and the Civil War. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Sanders, Mary Elizabeth ed., Letters of a Southern Family, 1816–1941. Lafayette, LA: Center for Louisiana Studies, 2001. Taylor, Amy Murrell. The Divided Family in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Adam J. Pratt
CHILDREN AND CHILDREARING The Civil War disrupted the lives of children regardless of their proximity to the fighting. Household routines, schooling, and family dynamics changed for children in the United States while parents coped with the realities of a country divided. News about the war came from adults, newspapers, and local discussion. Children wrote about their feelings and experiences, corresponded with family members in military service, and received information tailored to them in newspapers and schoolbooks.
Northern Children Children living in the North did not suffer many of the war-related problems endured by children in the South. Food continued to flow to family tables, schools stayed open, and routines were maintained. But even with few disruptions, children could not ignore the war. With many men gone to war, children did more to help on farms and in their homes. Some, such as those in areas of Pennsylvania and in border states, witnessed short periods of violence. Newspapers featuring children’s columns attempted to explain the conflict in language children understood. Children participated in the war effort, supplementing their daily routines with aid to soldiers. Public acknowledgments of their efforts came with graphic descriptions of how their gifts were used. In the Lowell Daily Citizen and News James E. Yateman, president of GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
the Western Sanitary Committee, thanked a young St. Louis girl for saving her money to send snacks to soldiers. He explained that the men who received her snacks had lost limbs in the battle of Pittsbugh Landing, and that they cried tears of joy to know that little children remembered them and sacrificed on their behalf. Jane Bradbury, who sent envelopes to Union soldiers stationed in Tennessee, received a thank-you letter from a Wisconsin man who told her the donation would allow other men to write to loved ones (Bohrnstedt 2003, p. 227). Adults did not refrain from providing children with descriptions of battle injuries, making the realities of war stand out as a stark reality to the undisturbed calm of most Northern homes. Although the war was a central feature of their lives, children still faced the same hazards typical to children in peacetime. Often they were separated from their parents by sickness, accidents, and death unrelated to the war. Both President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) and General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) lost children during the war. Parents who suffered this plight were encouraged to celebrate the innocence of children at such a dark time in the nation’s history. Despite the troubled times, children in the North did not suffer the same level of educational disruption that took place in the South. William Morse of Woodbury, Vermont, managed to attend school the entire winter of 1864 despite the death of his mother and the absence of his soldier father (Silber 1996, p. 165). Northern children made sacrifices through donations and hard work; their counterparts in the South struggled with daily necessities.
Southern Children Notwithstanding their enthusiasm for the Confederate cause, many white children living in the South were subject to drastic changes in their daily routines in addition to the stresses of missing male family members. Bombardments of Vicksburg and Atlanta brought the kind of deprivation experienced by soldiers directly into the lives of children for extended periods of time. As cities such as Richmond ran low on supplies and food, children were sent out to collect scraps of useable materials. Some took on added responsibilities because their families had fled encroaching battles. Some families, such as the Bosses of Virginia, moved into the homes of relatives when the head of their household died in the war. Such extended kin networks helped parents and children struggling without a breadwinner (Cashin 2002, p. 115). Many Southern colleges and country schools shut down; those that stayed open changed their curricula to reflect the spirit of the Confederacy (Werner 1998, p. 53). The Confederate cause required all able-bodied people to help, and children were no exception. A reminder
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African American women and children reading the Bible at the Freedman’s Village school, Arlington Heights, Virginia, 1864. The village was established by the Federal Government across the
Potomac River from Washington, DC, to address the needs of the growing number of slaves who escaped from the South during the Civil War. The Art Archive/National Archives, Washington, DC/The Picture Desk, Inc.
in the Savannah, Georgia, Daily News and Herald encouraged children to use every open space to plant corn. Northern observers remarked on the adamant loyalty expressed by Southern women and children who would rather suffer than surrender. But for many, by the end of the war their suffering had gradually eclipsed the enthusiasm of earlier years. Many children had to work in the fields because of the lack of laborers, tools, food, and animals. Some children professing Confederate loyalty lived in Union states. In Maryland, their typical war games pointed to split affections, as children on both sides of the fight emulated their favorite generals and soldiers. For some children, this play connected them to family and the larger cause.
Slave Children Besides facing their usual amount of work and deprivation, slave children had to work harder to compensate the loss of labor and lack of supplies as the war lengthened. They received information about the progress of the war by listening to adults, both white and black, and many eagerly anticipated freedom. Slave families who fled to Union lines could expect little help. The ‘‘contrabands,’’ as escaped slaves became known, received the fewest supplies and and the least medical care from the army, and those encamped with the troops suffered outbreaks of disease, starvation, and exposure.
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Northern newspapers printed touching stories of slave children aiding the Union cause. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin published a short song for children about a small slave girl riding to freedom on a federal cannon. Other stories of daring escapes from slavery reached Northern readers. Slave children who survived were used to teach important lessons about the themes of the war. Plymouth, Massachusetts, celebrated the baptism of a small girl born into slavery who had been rescued by a Northern nurse. Reverend Beecher reminded his congregation that the youngest victims of Southern power needed the continued efforts of all Northerners. The Union soldier William Bradbury, who visited a school for freed slaves during his service, told his children that black children varied in color and that ‘‘the whitest were not always the smartest’’ (Bohrnstedt 2003, p. 290). Many slave children were separated from their families as a result of the war. Some masters liquidated their assets during the war, resulting in the sale and dispersal of their slaves, or otherwise sent their slaves away from the fighting. During Confederate forays into the North, freed people were captured, moved south, and sold into slavery. African American women and children were the most likely victims of this wartime profiteering because most of their men had left home to aid the army. As the Union army pushed farther south, an increasing number of slaves escaped to the freedom of the battle lines.
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Former slaves who joined the Union army often brought their families along to ensure their freedom and care, but camp following often led to dangerous outbreaks of smallpox, and the lack of supplies for these civilians brought illness and death. Some children benefited from their time in military camps, though, because it afforded them the beginnings of an education. The Liberator printed the accounts of camp teachers impressed by the enthusiasm of freed slave children despite their frequent illnesses (Silber 1996, p. 94). Other slave families needed to be rebuilt at the end of the war. Adults separated from their children tried to locate them, and to keep older children under their control. The Freedman’s Bureau handled numerous cases of parents fighting to control the labor of their own children under constant pressure from white landowners seeking laborers (Berlin and Rowland 1997, ch. 7).
Corresponding with Children Parents separated from their children because of the war offered advice and continued parenting via letters. Fathers serving the army in particular used letters to stay connected with the children they had left behind at home; without these expressions of affection and guidance between fathers and their children, some worried they would be forgotten. Fathers often requested information about the education and behavior of their children, who responded with news of momentous occasions such as the loss of a tooth, a sibling’s first words, or the arrival of a new farm animal. Eight-year-old James Cabot of Boston asked his father to send a cannonball or a secession dollar. The fascination with memorabilia worried some fathers, who understood the true brutality of fighting (Cashin 2002, p. 237). Many fathers used their correspondence to inform their children of the dangers of the war. Grant Taylor of Texas reminded his children that he might not return home, and looked to the afterlife for a reunion: ‘‘O dear children be good and meet me in Heaven where we will never part anymore’’ (Blomquist and Taylor 2000, p. 194). William Bradbury, a Union soldier, wrote poems for his children so they could recite the simple rhymes that included his fondest memories of home life. The frustration of separation was evident in family correspondence. Major General Lafayette McLaws expressed annoyance that his two young sons failed to write him even though they were old enough to do so (Oeffinger 2002, p. 166). Isaac Brooks from Rhode Island gently chastised his children for not writing to him, and reminded them to obey their mother. In attempting to explain his absence, he wrote, ‘‘I think it is for the best and it is the duty of us all, to do what we can for our country and to preserve its integrity even to the sacrifice of our lives’’ (Silber 1996, p. 60). Fathers also worried about what happened in their absence. McLaws asked his wife and children to send news of his sons’ fishing
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and hunting expeditions, and sent specific instructions to ensure safe handling of firearms: ‘‘keep it fired off in the house . . . he must be careful in loading so as to keep the muzzle away from his body’’ (Oeffinger 2002, p. 174). Mothers shared news of daily activities in letters, too. Malinda Taylor wrote to her Confederate soldier husband frequently, telling him the difficult truth about the effect his absence had on their children. Their children missed him badly and often told people he was ‘‘outside’’; the youngest child stopped asking for him a few months after his departure (Blomquist and Taylor 2000, p. 6). Some women told their husbands that their young children did not recognize their fathers from photographs. Jane Bradbury’s worried mother described the girl’s nightmares in letters to her father. Jane’s father, William Bradbury, constantly reminded his wife Mary to keep close watch of the children’s penmanship, education, and compositions. In some of his letters he chastised his children and wife for their lack of care with their writing (Bohrnstedt 2003, p. 34). Pregnant women and those with newborns had a particularly difficult time because they were forced to depend on older children, neighbors, or extended family to care for their families during their confinements. The Bradbury family faced this situation, and William encouraged his daughter Jane to help her mother with two infants. Basic aspects of parenting such as the naming of a new baby might require frequent letters to resolve a disagreement. Many fathers never met their infant children, and others waited many months before meeting new additions to their families. Children continued to play, learn, grow, and explore despite the stresses of war. Mothers accepted new tasks, and young people took on new responsibilities around the home. Newspapers, letters, and regular discussions kept children connected to the war effort even when the fighting happened hundreds of miles away. Fathers who feared they might never return home did not limit their parenting to reminding children to be good and respect their mothers; often they tried to explain the reasons for their absences and the potential dangers of their situation. Children away from the front lines played war games, and those closer to danger experienced the war in a much more realistic way. White Southern and slave children experienced deprivation and loss on a scale not known in the North, but no child lived through the war without changes to their daily routines. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘A Child’s Offering.’’ Lowell Daily Citizen and News, May 13, 1862. Berlin, Ira, and Leslie Rowland, eds. Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era. New York: New Press, 1997.
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Blomquist, Ann K., and Robert A. Taylor, eds. This Cruel War: The Civil War Letters of Grant and Malinda Taylor, 1862–1865. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000. Bohrnstedt, Jennifer Cain, ed. While Father is Away: The Civil War Letters of William H. Bradbury. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Cashin, Joan E., ed. The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Clinton, Catherine, ed. Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000. ‘‘Let Every Man, Woman, and Child.’’ Daily News and Herald, February 26, 1863. Marten, James. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ‘‘Northern and Southern Lyrics.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin, November 11, 1862. Oeffinger, John C., ed. A Soldier’s General: The Civil War Letters of Major General Lafayette McLaws. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Silber, Nina, and Mary Beth Sievens, eds. Yankee Correspondence: Civil War Letters between New England Soldiers and the Home Front. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. Werner, Emmy E. Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Megan Birk
EXTENDED FAMILIES Thousands of homes were adversely affected by the Civil War as men left for extended periods or were wounded or killed. Mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles had to pull together to meet the needs of their children and their communities. A letter to Abraham Lincoln from Kentucky Union sympathizer, William Davenport, dated January 11, 1864, tells of Brigadier General James Shackelford’s family grief and turmoil. Soon after Shackelford had gone home for his wife’s funeral and returned with a heavy heart to his post, he related discouraging news about the members of the family he had just left. Davenport sent Lincoln Shackelford’s petition to return home permanently to his extended family. Davenport wrote: ‘‘On reaching home . . . he [Shackelford] found his mother—a widowed lady 74 years old—confined to bed and in a helpless condition—his Mother-in-law very old and Blind—his Sister a widow far gone with consumption—and his four infant children in a very dependent condition. These persons constitute[d] his family. . . .’’ Davenport explained that these family members required Shackelford’s ‘‘personal attention and care
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and therefore he asks to be relieved of his Command and tenders his Resignation’’ (Davenport 1864). Davenport assured Lincoln that Shackelford remained loyal to the Union cause and to the president. The American Civil War—the proverbial ‘‘house divided’’—often led to great havoc and suffering within extended families. Sidney George Fisher warned in his diary in February 1861 that ‘‘one of the evils of civil dissentions is that they produce discord between families & friends & great care should be taken to avoid disputes which may cause ill feelings to arise’’ (Fisher 2007, p. 379). Nothing was simple during this war. There were some people who lived in the North who sympathized with or fought for the Confederacy and some who lived in the South who remained with the Union. African Americans fought on the Union side and went to war with the Confederates. Black workers were instrumental on both sides of the divide.
Impact of Military Service Documents and diaries from the period provide example after example of family discord. The most obvious cause of division was that one or more members of the same family split their allegiance, some joining the Union and others the Confederacy. An article by Judith Lee Hunt, ‘‘‘High with Courage and Hope’: The Middleton Family’s Civil War,’’ chronicles the difficulties of a family that had relatives in the North and South with divided loyalties. One sister lived in the North and her husband sought to assure her loyalty to the Union, while a brother in Charleston, South Carolina, tried to keep her allegiance with the South. The sister was in South Carolina when Fort Sumter was bombarded but left immediately, saying that it would most probably be ‘‘her last visit to friends and family in the South’’ for a while. One brother was killed in the war, while another member of the family, a South Carolina naval officer named Edward Middleton, decided to remain with the Union although the majority of his extended family supported the Confederacy and felt that he was shaming them by his behavior. Middleton did request to be assigned to naval patrols in the Pacific Ocean so that he would not have to participate in Civil War combat. Yet when the Confederate government attempted to seize ‘‘land, tenements . . . goods and chattel’’ held by Union sympathizers, Middleton’s Confederate brothers had to fight to keep their property (Hunt 2000, p. 107). A diarist reports another case in which some members of the same family fought in blue and others in gray. As the Confederate soldiers made their way through Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, toward Gettysburg, a young man who was from Pennsylvania but had joined the Rebel cause came through town and visited a relative. The observer, Rachel Cormany, records what happened on June 24, 1863:
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Home from the war. Civil War service placed great strains on family relations in several ways. In some families, women and children were forced to assume duties regularly taken up by men, while other families were splintered as brothers and cousins often joined the fight on opposing sides. The Library of Congress
I was sitting on Jared’s poarch [sic] when a young man (rebel) came & shook hands with Mr. Jared—a relative, his brother is in this army too. He was raised here—His mother is burried here— Mr. Jared told him he ought to go & kneel on his Mothers grave & ask for pardo[n] for having fought in such a bad cause. against such a good Government. tears almost came, he said he could not well help getting in, but he would not fight in P[ennsylvani]a. he told his officers so, he was placed under arrest awhile but was released again. Now he said he is compelled to carry a gun & that is as far as they will get toward making him fight. He was in Jacksons Brig[ade] (Diary of Rachel Cormany, June 24, 1863).
African American Families In 1861, the Union General Benjamin F. Butler refused to return several slaves who had sought refuge at Fort Monroe in Virginia, declaring them to be ‘‘contraband of war’’ (Butler 1861, p. 72). Subsequently, Union leaders vacillated between allowing so-called contrabands to travel and camp with Union troops as support workers and at other times returning them to their owners. No
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matter what the official policy, the Union troops could not keep thousands of African American extended families from running away to their camps. After the Emancipation Proclamation officially declared the end of slavery in the Confederacy and called for the enlistment of United States Colored Troops, black extended families often followed the soldiers. Parents and their children, grandparents, aunts, and uncles lived in contraband camps near the Union troops and received some support. In the Border States, contraband families were not as well received by the Union troops and had to provide for their needs as best as they could. Some families were hired by the Union Army or paid by individual soldiers. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), a member of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), recorded his impressions of contraband families in Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862: We have on two of our boats nine contraband women, from the Lee estate . . . excellent workers . . . The Negro quarters are decent and comfortable little houses, and a wide road between them and
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Extended Families the bank which slopes to the river. [Black children] are rushing about, and tipping into the washtubs. In one cabin two small babies were being taken care of by an old woman who said she was their grandmother . . . . Babies had the measles, which wouldn’t ‘come out’ on one of them. So she had laid him tenderly in the open clay oven, and, with hot sage-tea and an unusually large brick put to his . . . feet, was proceeding to develop the disease. (Olmsted 1863, p. 124)
A document from the Library of Congress provides Asa Fiske’s reminiscences about African American family life during the war. Fiske, who was assigned in 1863 to serve as assistant superintendent of contrabands for the Department of West Tennessee, directed the care of several thousand former slaves. This involved procuring food, clothing, bedding and medical supplies for them. He was also concerned about their moral and spiritual lives and on one occasion performed one marriage ceremony for 119 contraband families simultaneously. Fiske later wrote to his granddaughter, ‘‘This great Wedding day produced most remarkable results on the good order and morality of the entire camp’’ and he remarked that the ‘‘sacredness of the Marital compact was . . . rigidly observed’’ (Fiske 1914). As more and more African Americans were freeing themselves by simply walking away from the plantations where they lived, whites in the South and Border States often tried to apprentice black children legally so that they would not lose their service. The families of freedmen and women, however, usually felt that apprenticeship was simply another word for slavery. A note from Lt. James DeGrey, an agent from the Freedmen’s Bureau, dated January 29, 1867, appears in Families and Freedom. Commenting on a woman’s attempt to have a child released from an apprenticeship, DeGrey wrote, ‘‘My belief is, the old lady wants the boy because he is now able to do Some work. The binding out of children Seems to the freedmen like putting them back into Slavery. In every case where I have bound out children thus far, some grandmother or fortieth cousin has come to have them released’’ (Berlin and Rowland 1997, p. 242) In addition to trying to make African Americans remain on the plantations, Confederate armies often compelled African American families to travel with them. Rachel Cormany’s diary relates information about blacks who had come with the Confederates as they traveled to Gettysburg. She reported that the rebels . . . were hunting up the contrabands & driving them off by droves. O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds—I saw no men among the contrabands—all women & children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along—I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle. Some laughed & seemed not
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to care—but nearly all hung their heads. One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children—but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough ‘March along’— at which she would quicken her pace again. It is a query what they want with those little babies— whole families were taken. Of course when the mother was taken she would take her children. I suppose the men left thinking the women & children would not be disturbed. (Diary of Rachel Cormany, June 18, 1863)
On June 17, 1863, Cormany wrote that among the last to leave were some with soldiers with African Americans ‘‘on their horses behind them. How glad we are they are gone—None of our Soldiers came.’’ The next day Cormany admitted that the townspeople ‘‘have to be afraid to go out of our houses. A large wagon train & 500 or 600 Cavalry have just passed & it is now about 3 1/2 o’clock. hope all are through now. Many of the saddles were empty, & any amount of negroes are along’’ (Diary of Rachel Cormany, June 28, 1863).
Letters from Home Some extended families simply relied on extensive correspondence during the war. One Confederate soldier, Thomas Smiley of Augusta County, Virginia, heard from his mother, father, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins during his enlistment. Ellen Martin, one of Smiley’s aunts, warned her nephew to ‘‘prepare to meet thy God.’’ She also mentions that she was doing community work on behalf of the soldiers. On April 28, 1861, she wrote her beloved nephew about the state of his soul: Permit me to enquire whether you have made this preparation or not. Meet God you must, whether prepared or unprepared And how soon you know not, Death may summons to his presence But God has often met you, Both by his providence and by his Spirit, I cannot believe you have lived to be almost nineteen without often feeling the gentle wooings of Gods Spirit. (Ellen Martin to Thomas Smiley, April 28, 1861)
Thomas received similar admonitions from his uncle, James J. Martin, on June 4, 1861, while his cousin, Letitia Berry, wrote about the family and community events shortly afterward: Your fathers folks were well this morning father saw Cousin Billie in Newport. Capt Curries Company started yesterday I was in Middlebrook when they passed they all looked very lively went to Staunton in wagons, there was about twenty wagons I think. They were very well fixed, the best of any of the companies from about here, had their tents, knapsacks canteens and almost every thing necessary for a soldier, the ladies have been sewing for them in Brownsburg for two week about sixty there every days and five sewing machines. We have been sewing for you all this week in middlebrook made 61 pants, your tents
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Courtship and Marriage started today (Letitia Berry to Thomas Smiley, June 6, 1861).
Another cousin, Maggie Berry, wrote in July 1861, to ‘‘Dear Cousin Thomas,’’ and chided, ‘‘You have no doubt come to the conclusion that I have forgotten you as I have not written to you sooner but not so my good Cousin. Your letter was written the 27th of June came to NewPort & has lain there until yesterday. I was glad to receive one more letter from my good but absent Cousin’’ (Maggie Berry to Thomas Smiley, July 12, 1861). This family exchanged many additional letters in which the family’s love and concern for this young soldier is evident. The great volume of Civil War extended family official records, personal letters, diaries and reports clearly indicate that preserving the family was of paramount importance to Americans, white and black, North and South. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berlin, Ira, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African American Kinship in the Civil War Era. New York: The New Press, 1997. Butler, Benjamin F. The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, ed. Frank Moore. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861. Cormany, Rachel. Franklin Diary: Diary of Rachel Cormany (1863). Virginia Center for Digital History, the Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 1998. Available from http://etext.lib. virginia.edu/. Davenport, William, to Abraham Lincoln, January 11, 1864. Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Fisher, Sidney George. A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher, ed. Jonathan W. White. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Fiske, Asa, to ‘‘Little Villuines,’’ May 1914. Hand, Fiske, and Aldridge Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Ham, Debra Newman, ed. African American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1993. Hunt, Judith Lee, ‘‘‘High with Courage and Hope‘: The Middleton Family’s Civil War,’’ in Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, ed. Catherine Clinton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Letters of the Smiley Family, 1861–1865. Valley of the Shadow, http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Olmsted, Frederick Law. Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863. Debra Newman Ham
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Courtship and Marriage
In general, courtship and marriage in the United States in the nineteenth century were conducted along welldeveloped lines. Among the monied classes especially there existed prescribed methods for men to meet eligible women, become engaged to them, and marry them. To have a socially sanctioned marriage meant following these norms, which were reinforced and disseminated by the popular press. The media instructed readers on proper behavior and the best method for catching a prospective spouse, and also on how to conduct oneself once married. Many publications written for male and female audiences weighed in on the question of courtship and marriage rituals. The October 1864 edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book discussed some of the methods that young nineteenthcentury girls used to divine the identity of their future spouse. In a dispatch titled ‘‘From a Correspondent,’’ an anonymous author asserts that ‘‘All Hallow E’en . . . [is] supposed particularly efficacious for the practice of charms of all kinds relating to love and marriage’’ (p. 358). One of the more interesting methods of discovering the identity of one’s future husband involved the sowing of hempseed in one’s garden or a nearby field. ‘‘I have heard many of my mother’s juvenile friends trying the experiment,’’ the author claims, ‘‘and have performed my own part, years ago, in such a ceremony, as the clock tolled the midnight hour, pale with fear and trembling. . . . [N]o spectre [sic] came mowing after me, and the only result was an extraordinary crop of thistles in our garden’’ (p. 358). Such activities were largely pursued by young girls, as older ones ready for marriage were too busy refining their manners and trying to find a husband.
Courtship and Character The American Phrenological Journal, a publication devoted to the notion that a person’s character traits can be determined by an analysis of the shape of the head, seemed especially interested in courtship procedures. John Henry Hopkins (1792–1868), who was the Episcopal Bishop of Vermont for many years and became the eighth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States in 1865, contributed an article titled ‘‘Choosing a Wife’’ to the September 1863 issue of the journal. The bishop instructed men on the methods of
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finding the right spouse. Courtship should begin when a young man finds a woman of his acquaintance interesting. The bishop suggests that the suitor ‘‘should commence at once the work of judgment, before his feelings are too far engaged’’ (Hopkins 1863, p. 73). He should prudently consider whether the woman has the qualities and attributes that would make him happy. Additionally, the prospective bridegroom should question whether ‘‘she be blessed with true religious principals,’’ those being sweetness, good sense, discretion, and modesty, and being free from ‘‘envy, vanity, censoriousness, and affectation’’ (p. 73). Bishop Hopkins also suggests that the best way to judge a woman is to observe her at home. Is she disobedient, unfeeling, and imperious to her siblings, and unwilling to help with the domestic work in her own home? Is she ‘‘lazy and indolent, fond of reading novels, and full of affected sentimentality, while she is without relish for useful information’’? Does she ‘‘look down with proud
disdain upon honest labor’’? If the answer to any of these questions is affirmative, then she is most likely not the right choice for marriage (p. 73). The bishop does admit, however, that people can change. If a man offers criticism to his intended and she ‘‘receive[s] it in good part, and display docility and energy enough to conquer her evil habits, and attain a higher and a better character, he may safely calculate on the happiest result’’ (p. 73).
Engagement and Marriage Hopkins claimed that an early marriage, despite the misgivings of some doctors and economists, is ‘‘the true and normal condition of our race,’’ and added that the shorter the engagement the better (p. 73). Hopkins’s preference for brief engagements was shared by other commentators as well. In ‘‘Engagements,’’ published in March 1863 by The Knickerbocker Monthly, an anonymous male author complains that it is as hard for a man to announce his marriage as it is for his friends to hear about it. Upon the inevitable proclamation, ‘‘the only
Marriage at camp, 7th New Jersey Volunteer Army, Potomac, Virginia. During the Civil War, women were encouraged to display self-sacrificing patriotism by prodding their suitors and husbands to enlist in the hostilities, thereby openly demonstrating their masculine qualities. The Library of Congress.
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obvious and unexceptionable question is to ask whether it is to be soon, and to hear whether there is to be an engagement, or an immediate marriage’’ (p. 202). If no lengthy engagement is expected, then the man is looked on as a hero for ‘‘any thing like an engagement is a diminution of the glory of matrimony’’ (p. 202). Marital bliss depends ‘‘but merely on that power of adaptation which enables any two human beings who are forced to live together to get on pretty well, and fall in with each other’s ways’’; therefore, ‘‘there is no object in forming an engagement’’ (p. 202). Experts agree, the author asserts, that ‘‘however marriages are commenced, they all end in about the same average of happiness—great trials arise from worldly incontinences being avoided, as many married people will get on as well if they meet for the first time at the altar, as if they have spent a couple years in eager flirtation’’ (p. 202). A lengthy engagement would be appropriate only for those couples whose preference was for the man to establish himself financially and socially before getting married. Some aspects of nineteenth-century courtship and engagement came under attack. In her June 1865 article ‘‘Courtship As It Should Be,’’ printed in the American Phrenological Journal, Mrs. George Washington Wyllys objected to the practice of secret engagements. ‘‘If you have won the heart of a strong, steadfast man, you should rather glory in your prize. . . . [W]e have no patience with the sickly sentimentalism of modern days that consider courtship as something to be prosecuted in a stealthy, underhand sort of way, and an engagement of marriage as a secret that should be wrapped in impenetrable mystery’’ (Wyllys 1865, p. 178). In ‘‘A Bad Way to Get Married,’’ written for the October 1862 issue of the New York Monthly Magazine, an anonymous author criticized ‘‘the method of seeking a husband or a wife by advertisement.’’ He suggested that ‘‘no girl of wellregulated mind, and with a proper feeling of delicacy and self-respect, would think of responding to the public overtures of a man whom she had never met, and of whom she knew positively nothing; and, therefore, the women who usually answer such advertisements may be considered as likely to make undesirable wives’’ (p. 351). Once married, a woman was expected to maintain order in her family and household. Gone was the need for flirting, dancing, and singing; instead, a young wife should become economical and industrious. She was to endeavor to be ‘‘pleasant and cheerful, kind and sweettempered; not morose and reserved on the one hand, or giggling and trifling on the other,’’ suggested J. Atwood in ‘‘Advice to Young Women,’’ written for the Christian Advocate and Journal (February 26, 1863, p. 67). Men, for their part, were expected to be the sole breadwinners for their families.
Effects of the Civil War The Civil War caused some changes in the role of women and in the formation of relationships. Women showed
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their patriotism by acting like recruitment officers for the military. They encouraged their husbands, sons, and beaus to enlist, and shunned suitors who were unwilling to join the war effort. Later in the war, when the suffering was at its worst, especially in the South, women were expected to send loved ones who deserted back to the front. According to Southern Field and Fireside, it was women who made ‘‘the Confederate soldier a gentleman of honor, courage, virtue and truth, instead of a cutthroat and a vagabond’’ (April 11, 1863; quoted in Faust 1990, p. 1204). In the Confederacy, women who willingly encouraged men to join the military were seen as performing a self-sacrificial act, in support of a higher cause. Alice Fahs suggests that women in the North were also encouraged by popular media outlets to renounce and chastise any man who refused to enlist in the military (Fahs 1999, p. 1468). Women’s attempts to persuade beaus or husbands to enlist allowed them to share in the patriotic fervor of the war and changed the dynamics of courtship, engagement, and marriage. The nineteenth-century United States produced many prolific letter writers, and the war had little effect on their productivity. Susan Albertine suggests that many women used letter writing to test the strength of their romantic bonds with absent soldiers. Hence love letters became a larger part of the courtship, engagement, and marriage process than they would have been without a war (Albertine 1992, pp. 143–147). Besides writing love letters to brave soldiers, women—and men as well—collected keepsakes of their beloveds or betrotheds. One of the most popular keepsakes in the nineteenth century was hair, especially when made into jewelry. Throughout the war, Godey’s Lady’s Book, for example, offered to convert hair sent by readers into such items of jewelry as bracelets or fob chains. Hair jewelry was used not only as a token of affection but also to commemorate wartime triumphs (Navarro 2001, pp. 1–2). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘A Bad Way to Get Married.’’ New York Monthly Magazine, October 1862. Albertine, Susan. ‘‘Heart’s Expression: The Middle-Class Language of Love in Late Nineteenth-Century Correspondence.’’ American Literary History 4, no. 1 (1992): 141–164. Atwood, J. ‘‘Advice to Young Women.’’ Christian Advocate and Journal, February 26, 1863. ‘‘Engagements.’’ Knickerbocker Monthly, March 1863. Fahs, Alice. ‘‘The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861–1900.’’ Journal of American History 85, no. 4 (1999): 1461–1494. Faust, Drew Gilpin. ‘‘Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War.’’ Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990): 1200–1228.
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‘‘From a Correspondent.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book, October 1864, p. 358. Hopkins, John Henry. ‘‘Choosing a Wife.’’ American Phrenology Journal 38, no. 3 (1863): 73. Navarro, Irene G. ‘‘Hairwork of the NineteenthCentury—Hair Jewelry: Nineteenth-Century United States and Europe.’’ Magazine Antiques 159, no. 3 (2001): 484–493. Wyllys, Mrs. George Washington. ‘‘Our Social Relations.’’ American Phrenology Journal 41, no. 6 (1865): 178. Micki Waldrop
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Men on the Home Front
During the American Civil War popular conceptions of manhood and honor dictated that men volunteer to serve their country. Not all men, however, could or would serve in the military during the conflict. Some men joined the army for short periods of time, but avoided long-term enlistment. Many civilian men in the Union and the Confederacy performed important tasks, such as running the government, providing home defense, and operating essential wartime industries. Other civilian men objected to the war and refused to fight or simply believed that protecting their homes and providing for their families were more important. Businessmen who stayed home during the war risked having their neighbors brand them as profiteers, but some occupations were considered too important for men to leave vacant. Many businessmen and merchants supported the war effort through community leadership and financial donations. Prominent businessmen donated to relief funds that benefited soldiers’ families and donated money to provide bounties to encourage men to enlist. The United States Sanitary Commission, a northern civilian organization formed to benefit the physical and moral well-being of soldiers, was organized and staffed by civilian men, although women did most of the fund raising. The officers of the Commission included Unitarian minister Henry W. Bellows, New York lawyer George Templeton Strong, and well-known architect Frederick Law Olmstead (1822–1903). Shortly after the war, northern writer Frank B. Goodrich, quoted by James Marten in his 2003 book Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front, defended those who profited from staying home by alluding to ‘‘the records of money given, not money earned; a labor of love, not of labor for hire and salary; of self-assessment, of tribute rendered always willingly, often unasked’’ (p. 135). It cannot be denied, however, that some northern men avoided military service because there was more money to be made on the home front through speculation or illicit trade with the South.
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In the Confederacy industry and agriculture were doubly essential, considering the reality of fighting the war and establishing a new nation at the same time. Joseph Reid Anderson, proprietor of the important Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, resigned his commission as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army in 1862. In his letter of resignation, dated July 14, 1862, and reproduced on the Web site Civil War Richmond Anderson cited several pressing issues at his factory and stated that, ‘‘Since these changes have occurred I cannot doubt as to where I can render most service to the Country.’’ Anderson spent the rest of the war working for the Confederate Ordnance Department in Richmond, where he could oversee his business. The government also considered plantations essential to the wartime economy and therefore exempted from the draft men who owned at least twenty slaves. This exemption was later expanded to also cover men who owned between fourteen and nineteen slaves, but working-class southerners, who still would not qualify, resented this distinction. Henry Steele Commager relays in his 2000 edited work The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents how John Beauchamp, a clerk for the war department in Richmond, remarked that ‘‘the avarice and cupidity of the men at home could only be excelled by the ravenous wolves, and most of our sufferings are fully deserved’’ (p. 501). Men who stayed home often considered their responsibility to their families more important than joining the army, but these men were not necessarily opposed to the war effort. Men on the home front formed militias and drilled regularly in order to defend their homes from the enemy. There were several occasions in the North and South where civilians’ preparedness was tested. In July 1863, Confederate cavalry led by General John Hunt Morgan raided through Indiana and Ohio and were met by militia who skirmished with the Confederates. In southern Indiana the rebels were opposed by the state military organization, the Indiana Legion, which was composed of men of military age who protected their rural border communities while continuing to labor on farms and in workshops. During the crisis, however, all available men were needed, and Indiana’s governor, Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (1823–1877), declared ‘‘that all able-bodied white male citizens will form themselves into companies, and arm themselves with such arms as they can procure,’’ as Flora E. Simmons recorded in her 1863 book A Complete Account of the John Morgan Raid through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, in July, 1863 (p. 16). White men in the Confederacy also answered the call to fight the enemy when needed. On June 9, 1864, about 2,500 hastily formed militia, composed of those too young or old for military service, held off approximately 4,500 Union cavalry outside Petersburg, Virginia. Residents later dubbed the engagement, which caused the Union army to begin a lengthy and costly siege of the city, the
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‘‘Battle of Old Men and Boys.’’ Black male civilians were willing to volunteer to protect their homes, but in 1862, when Cincinnati, Ohio, was endangered by Confederate troops, city authorities only allowed black citizens to dig trenches and build earthworks. Both the Union and Confederate drafts often forced military-age men to serve unless they could provide a substitute. The Confederacy began to conscript men in 1862, and the Union followed suit the following year. The draft did not necessarily mean that civilian men were forced to leave their communities. Wealthy men could afford to hire a substitute, and in the North, draftees could pay a $300 commutation fee to avoid conscription. This infuriated workers who could not pay the fee. As noted by editor Michael Perman in his 1998 book Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays, a New Jersey official wrote to Secretary of State William Seward on July 18, 1863, reporting that ‘‘the minds of the poor, even of Republicans, are terribly inflamed by the $300 clause in the enrolling act’’ (p. 192). Some civilian men resisted the draft, refusing to serve. This was especially common in the Confederacy during the last two years of the war. Jones County, Mississippi, became a center for local resistance to conscription and a refuge for deserters to such an extent that it became known as ‘‘The Free State of Jones.’’ A strong sense of duty to family and community caused men in both the North and the South to avoid military service or to leave before their term had ended. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Joseph R. to General S. Cooper. Richmond, VA. July 14, 1862. Civil War Richmond. Available from http://www.mdgorman.com/. Bynum, Victoria E. The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Cashin, Joan E., ed. The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2000. Marten, James. Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front. Santa Barbara, CA: ABI-CLIO, 2003. Perman, Michael, ed. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Simmons, Flora E. A Complete Account of the John Morgan Raid through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, in July, 1863. [Louisville, Ky.]: F.E. Simmons, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup. com/. Stephen Rockenbach
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War Widows and Orphans
In President Abraham Lincoln’s oft-quoted second inaugural address in1865, he stated: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; 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 a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
The most obvious widows and orphans during the war were those who lost husbands and fathers in battle. Yet there were also women who were widowed before the war whose sons went off to fight and left them in hard straits with themselves and other siblings to support. Many widows, black and white, wrote letters seeking jobs, pensions, other types of financial aid, or the exemption of their sons from military duty so that they could come home to support their families. Soldiers themselves appealed to the government for aid for widowed parents or for release from service to care for them. African American women who had been enslaved and therefore could not legally marry during their period of enslavement had the additional problem of proving that the soldier from whom they expected support or because of whose military service they requested a pension was indeed their husband. Women often had to fight to be given a chance to work because the custom of the day expected that some male in the extended family would become the primary supporter of widows and their children.
Letters to Lincoln The Abraham Lincoln papers in the Library of Congress provide a rich trove of information about Northern widows and orphans during the Civil War. Some letters like this one dated, requested honor for fallen heroes rather than material support. Isaac Newton Arnold (1815–1884), Illinois Congressman and Lincoln friend and biographer, wrote to Lincoln: . . . earnestly requesting that a commission of Brigr. General might be forwarded to the widow of my friend, & law student Col. James A. Mulligan. . . . [T]he Board of Trade voted his widow $1000. & citizens have subscribed much more. His last words ‘Lay me down & save the flag,’ expressed his unselfish devotion to the country. If you will cause such a commission to be sent, I shall deem it one of the most grateful acts of my life to present it to his widow. (August 4, 1864)
In another letter thanking Lincoln for benefits received, Anna E. Jones, widow of John Richter Jones, wrote
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Draft riots in New York. While many men went to war willingly, others in both the North and the South protested, sometimes violently, over being forced to join the military. Riots broke out in the North among lower income immigrants as they feared they might eventually lose their employment to African Americans for whose freedom they were being conscripted to fight. The Library of Congress.
from Eaglesmeare, Pennsylvania, that it was ‘‘with heartfelt gratitude that I venture to address you in order to thank you for your kindness to the widow and orphan in nominating my son Horatio M. Jones as a Cadet at West Point. May you be rewarded for your kindness by his emulating his late father, Col J. Richter Jones, in his love and devotion to his country’’ (September 24, 1863). Many letters to Lincoln requested passes for widows to travel between the Union and the Confederate states. Samuel P. Lee, an officer in the Union Navy, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, wrote to Lincoln from the flagship, U.S.S. Minnesota ‘‘off Newport News,’’ Virginia, requesting safe conduct for: . . . the widow of the late Secretary [of State Abel P.] Upshur, who, with her grand-child (a mere boy), and her sister, desires to return to her home in Washington City. Formerly I was on terms of friendship with this then influential, now helpless, family, and I ask your Excellency, as an act of humanity, to approve and return to me the enclosed, which authorizes Major General Butler to issue the necessary passports, on the usual con-
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ditions, to these ladies and this child. (February 27, 1864)
Lincoln also issued a pass on one occasion to permit his wife’s stepsister to travel across Union-held territory. ‘‘It is my wish that Mrs. Emily T. Helm, (widow of the late Gen. B. H. Helm, who fell in the Confederate service,) now returning to Kentucky, may have protection of person and property, except as to slaves, of which I say nothing’’ (December 14, 1863). Sadly, Mary Todd Lincoln’s relationships to several Confederate soldiers through her extended family led to considerable criticism of the First Lady. A very different kind of petition was addressed to Lincoln from Mary Mann, the widow of the educational reformer Horace Mann (1796–1859), then living in Concord, Massachusetts. She sent a ‘‘Petition of the children of the United States; (under 18 years) that the President will free all slave children.’’ Mann wrote, ‘‘These children understand the social relations, father, mother, brother and sister; and the thought of separation is distressing, and when they are instructed to know that little slave children are constantly liable to be sold
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away—fathers and mothers also, their sensibilities are wrought up to the highest indignation’’ (April 1864). Interestingly, Lincoln drafted an answer to Mann, stating: Madam, The petition of persons under eighteen, praying that I would free all slave children, and the heading of which petition it appears you wrote, was handed me a few days since by Senator Sumner. Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it. Yours truly, A. Lincoln. (April 5, 1864)
J. Andrews Harris of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wrote to Lincoln on behalf of women working to supply the Union Army as well as to support their families: I venture to appeal to you directly, without the intervention of red tape, on behalf of about thirty thousand suffering people in the city of Philadelphia, who can, by a word from you . . . be relieved of at least one half of their misery. They are women who sew, (on army work), and their children. These women are now forced, instead of getting their work and their pay direct from the arsenal, to be at the mercy of contractors who give them sometimes not one half of the government rates . . . If an order were given . . . that they be allowed to get their work & their pay directly from the arsenal, instead of its being given to contractors in the first place, the difficulty they labour under would be done away. These women are, very many of them, the wives or widows of American Soldiers; & all they need is the show of fair play at the hands of the government for which their husbands are fighting or have died . . . The hand which by a stroke of the pen gave freedom to an oppressed race can . . . secure, at the least, fair dealing with those who are dear to men who left them at home, unprotected, to be able to back up your Emancipation proclamation at the risk of their lives. The prayers of a poor wife, a helpless widow, & destitute children, will surely call down a blessing from Heaven upon you if you will but interpose in their behalf. (January 23, 1865)
Some of the Lincoln letters request exemptions from military service. A telegram from John Williams of Springfield, Illinois, to Lincoln requested that ‘‘Chas A Trumbo Co K one hundred fourteenth (114) Ills only stay of his widowed mother wishes to put an acceptable substitute in his place Can you grant permission [?]’’ (January 4, 1865). Another letter not only requested that Lincoln relieve her son from service but also explained why the writer could not return his signing bonus. Ann Bowden from Washington, DC, wrote, Our Most worthey presedent please Excuase Me for takeing this Liberty But I Cannot Express my Grate gratitude for your kindness in granting Me
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the order for My Son john H Bowden’s of Chicago discharge what Goverment Bounty he has receved I have that Unbroken to refuned But the 1 hundred Dollers County Bounty I have Not Got It as I had to Use it Last winter to Maintain My Sick Boy and a dependant Sister I have Bin a widow Eleven years My Oldest Son a Loosing his health on Cheat Mountain Makes it Vary Bad for Us our kind president If you Can releave Me So that I Can take My Boy home with me I feel that God will reward you and I No he will Bless all your Undertakings please Answare[.]. (June 12, 1864)
Another widow asked Lincoln’s help with another kind of arrangement. Mary Buckley of Washington, DC, wrote to explain that she was: . . . the widow of Dennis Buckley who was employed for several years as a laborer in the Arsenal in this city, and whose excellent character is vouched for by officers of the Army, in letters which I have in my possession I am poor and the mother of six children, the oldest of whom is not more than 12.years of age. I ask for employment for my brother Michael Donovan, who has been out of work for two months and who kindly helps to support me. He is well known, as an industrious, honest man, who has been employed at the Arsenal, and in various Departments of the Government and has who is very poor. (October 10, 1861)
Lincoln directed that some military officers find work for Donovan. Lucretia S. Hickman of Washington, DC, asked Lincoln for employment for herself: Sir—Being the orphan daughter of an officer of The U. S—and reft of all means of support—by your Liberation proclamation—which I must say—I never, the-less, most cordially approve—as the World of enlightened men—must now—and in all coming time—Yet the inconvenience to me is—that every Nephew—and male relative I have is now in the front—battling for the Unity and very National existence of their country—And I—and their widowed mother utterly destitute of resources. Yet I am able and willing to write & maintain us honorably. Will you not—guided by your native instincts of high justice and benevolence give me an order on some of your able functionaries [to help find suitable employment] (May 23, 1864)?
A letter from Lincoln to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton requests the commutation of a soldier’s punishment. Lincoln wrote, A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the Army, that for some offence has been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most, with very little pay—I do not like this punishment of withholding pay—it falls so very hard
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War Widows and Orphans upon poor families—After he has been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful appeal of the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to enlist for a new term, on the same conditions as others—She now comes, and says she can not get it acted upon. Please do it. (March 1, 1864)
African American War Widows One of the obvious sources for information about Civil War widows is the Veterans Administration records in the National Archives. White women could usually prove their marital status by providing marriage certificates issued by the church or the state. Even family Bibles were sometimes accepted as proof of marital unions. Formerly enslaved women, on the other hand, did not usually possess such documents. African American war widows had to make their claims in a more roundabout fashion. At first the United States recognized only legal marriages and ignored slave marriages. Yet Congress was aware that slave couples had lived together and raised families; thus the members began to write guidelines to allow former slave wives to receive pensions for their husbands’ service in the United States Colored Troops. In 1864 Congress amended the pension bill by allowing, . . . that the widows and children of colored soldiers . . . shall be entitled to receive the pensions now provided by law, without other proof of marriage than that the parties had habitually recognized each other as man and wife, and lived together as such for a definite period, not less than two years, to be shown by the affidavits of credible witnesses (U. S. War Department 1861, p. 66).
This act was amended on June 6, 1866; the new act required no ‘‘other evidence of marriage than proof, satisfactory to the Commissioner of Pensions, that the parties have habitually recognized each other as man and wife, and lived together as such’’ (Harmon 1867, p. 276). Legislation passed on June 15, 1873, however, stated that the widow was required to supply evidence that she and her husband ‘‘were joined in marriage by some ceremony deemed by them obligatory’’ (p. 267). One example of a pension file is that of Lucy Brown. While enslaved to one of the wealthiest slave owners in Mississippi, Lucy Brown married a fellow slave, Thomas Brown, and bore him several children. According to Henry Young, who had resided on the same plantation as the Browns, ‘‘Thomas and Lucy lived together as husband and wife continually after they were married up to the time that he enlisted’’ (Frankel 1999, p. 100–101). During the war, while Lucy’s husband served in the Union Army, Lucy lived in a federal camp established for former slaves. Reunited in Vicksburg, Lucy and Thomas were legally married with a Union Army chaplain officiating. According to Lucy Brown, ‘‘We were married again by the chaplain of the regiment and he gave me a certificate’’ (Frankel 1999, p. 101).
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After her husband died during the war, Lucy, accompanied by her only surviving child, Clara, found work as a field hand and a domestic servant after the war. During and after the Civil War thousands of formerly enslaved family members went in search of one another. Reunions, however, sometimes indicated that African Americans had taken more than one spouse. This unintentional bigamy occurred because enslaved people had often had no say in marriages arranged by their owners. A typical instance is reflected in a letter from Willie Ann Grey of Salvisa, Kentucky, on April 7, 1866, to her ‘‘Dear Husband’’: I received your letter the 5 of this month and was very glad to hear from you. You wish me to come to Virginia. I had much rather you would come after me but if you cannot make it conveniently you will have to make some arrangement for me and my family. I have 3 little fatherless girls. My husband went off under Burbridge’s command and was killed at Richmond Virginia. If you can pay my passage I will come the first of May . . . For if you love me you will love my children and you will have to promise me that you will provide for them as well as if they were your own . . . (Sterling 1984, pp. 315–316).
It seems that the couple had had one child together, Maria; Grey knew that he wanted that child but wanted more assurance that her husband truly wanted her and the whole family. Another example is a letter from a nineteen-year-old African American soldier, Richard Henry Tebout on September 26, 1865, in which he requests a thirty-day furlough to see his mother in New York. He said, ‘‘I want to go home to stay for my mothr is sick.’’ He explains that he has not seen his fifty-three-year-old mother for two years. ‘‘My mother lost all her children this fall whill I was in the serveice U. S. . . . My father is dead. My mother farther is deaed my mother is a widow and so here left alone for ever’’ (Berlin 1997, pp. 206– 208). Tebout, who was in the hospital suffering from wounds he had received at Petersburg when he penned this letter, was subsequently mustered out.
War Orphans The war left many children orphaned and left some who were already orphaned in worse condition that they had been in before the conflict affected the area where they lived. Extended family members often took in orphans, but there were still many children who ended up in group homes. The military, the Freedmen’s Bureau, concerned groups of soldiers, and a variety of church and civic organizations banded together to try to help these destitute children. For example, Mrs. Wade H. Burden of Springfield, Missouri, wrote to Lincoln to ask for help: I appeal to you in behalf of the destitute Orphans of this town and vicinity many of them children of
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War Widows and Orphans Soldiers deprived of their Fathers by this ‘Cruel War’ others refugees who have fled to us for protection leaving all their worldly goods behind them many of them are living in tents and others are without shelter living as best they can The ladies of Springfield have organized a society for the purpose of providing for these homeless little ones they propose to purchase a farm with as good buildings as can be had but in order to do this we must have money and there is very little of that in the Treasury not more than $700. We wish to get a shelter for these children before winter and are compelled to solicit subscriptions from abroad Our Citizens will do all they can but they have been heavily taxed during the war and are unable to raise the whole amount—We need at least $4000. Our farm will cost us $5000. Will you not assist us? (August 15, 1864)
D. G. Klein, a minister of the German Reformed Church, also petitioned Lincoln to request an exemption from the draft because he had, . . . been engaged in the work of founding an Orphans’ Home, for the sheltering, clothing, feeding and educating of poor orphan children, especially such as have become orphans through the present, wicked rebellion against our government and its constitutional administrators. Being subject to the draft, he finds himself greatly embarrassed, on account of the uncertainty of being able to go on with the work, and therefore, he would respectfully, but earnestly, pray his Excellency, the President, and the Honorable Secretary of War, to grant him the favor of a special exemption from the impending draft, and from any future draft, should it be come necessary to make any. (October 10, 1864)
In 1864, the First Annual Report of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, DC, stated that the organization originally attempted to raise funds for sixty-two children and two aged women. ‘‘The want of house room has hitherto prevented our admitting many of the aged. Of the children received twelve were infants. But few of the entire number were in a healthful condition when admitted. Several . . . were in a nearly dying state from consumption, scurvy, and chronic diarrhea’’ (p. 8). The administrators explained that they were trying to leave unhealthy children in the hospital but the surgeons had induced them ‘‘to receive some whom we could hardly hope to save . . .’’ (p. 8). Those who did survive—thirty-seven—were regularly schooled. The Rev. Horace James, superintendent of the North Carolina Department of Negro Affairs, prepared the Annual Report of the Superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864. In it he mentions both widows and orphans. For example, in his description of the state of affairs for blacks in the town of New Berne, North Carolina, he reported that 10,872 blacks resided in the
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vicinity of the town and of this number, 2,798 lived in a freedmen’s village near the town. . . . . ‘‘Thirteen hundred and fifty-one members of colored soldiers families are now fed in New Berne, 660 being adults, and 691 children. In addition to the wives and children of soldiers, I am now supplying food to 2,149 persons in New Berne who are very poor, or aged, infirm, widows or orphans, or for other reasons dependent on the charity of the government. This class of persons is therefore twenty-three per cent.’’ (pp. 6–7).
African American Orphans and the New York Draft Riots Probably the most discussed event concerning Civil War orphans did not relate to the war-torn South but to the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York City. White laborers who were angry about being drafted into the Union Army rioted for several days in mid-July 1863. They perceived the Union’s role in the war as fighting for the abolition of slavery—the Emancipation Proclamation was in force as of January 1, 1863—and equal rights for African Americans. Thus they vented their anger against any person of color they could find. Harper’s Weekly, a popular magazine of the period, described the incident this way: The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob about four o’clock [on July 13, 1863]. This Institution is situated on Fifth Avenue, and the building, with the grounds and gardens adjoining, extended from Forty-third to Forty-fourth Street. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of the rioters . . . entered the premises, and in the most excited and violent manner they ransacked and plundered the building from cellar to garret. The building was located in the most pleasant and healthy portion of the city. It was purely a charitable institution . . . . The building was a large four-story one, with two wings of three stories each . . . . After the entire building had been ransacked, and every article deemed worth carrying away had been taken—and this included even the little garments for the orphans, which were contributed by the benevolent ladies of this city—the premises were fired on the first floor. (August 1, 1863)
David Barnes’s report of the event provides more information: While Sergeant Petty was in charge of the station on the evening of Monday, July 13, Superintendent Davis, of the Colored Orphan Asylum, led into the station two hundred and sixteen of the children, none over twelve years of age, who had escaped from their home by the rear as the dastardly and infamous mob forced an entrance in front and fired the building. The little ones would undoubtedly been assailed had they not been hurriedly guided away. (Barnes 1863, p. 70)
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The number of people involved in the attack on the asylum and the composition of the crowd is described in ‘‘An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots,’’ written by a scholar, John Torrey, who was living with several of his daughters at Columbia College when the attack took place. He discussed the rioters saying that the ‘‘whole road way & sidewalks filled with rough fellows (&some equally rough women) who were tearing up rails, cutting down telegraph poles, & setting fire to buildings.’’ Torrey described the attack on the Orphan Asylum this way: Towards evening the mob, furious as demons, went yelling over to the Colored-Orphan Asylum in 5th Avenue . . . & rolling a barrel of kerosene in it, the whole structure was soon in a blaze, & smoking ruin . . . Before this fire was extinguished, or rather burned out, for the wicked wretches who caused it would not permit the engines to be used, the northern sky was brilliantly illuminated, probably by the burning of the Aged Colored-woman’s Home in 65th St. (Dupree & Fishel 1960, p. 476).
The crowds yelled their support of the Democrats and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, and threatened to destroy the homes of any known Republicans and abolitionists. Some whites also plotted against African American orphans in the South. They did not want to destroy them; however, rather they wanted to apprentice them legally so that they could retain their labor for many years. In a statement dated November 11, 1867, written for Adam Woods and signed with his ‘‘X,’’ Woods tells of his efforts to get custody of his brother’s children, three boys. He says that they were in the possession of their former owner, Franklin Ditto, in Mead County, Kentucky. The children’s father died while serving in the Union Army and their mother had predeceased him. Woods explains that after he received word of his brother’s death, ‘‘he immediately made arrangements’’ to come from Kansas, where he had settled, to see about the children. ‘‘He called to see Mr. Ditto and asked Mr. Ditto for the children and was answered that he could not get them unless he had a legal right to them. He says Mr. Ditto knows him well and knows that he is the brother of Pleasant.’’ Woods names his brothers and sisters living in the area who could vouch for his identity. Stating that he and his wife are both industrious but childless, ‘‘and that he is well able to raise and educate’’ his brother’s children, he ‘‘wanted to get possession of them and take them home to Kansas’’ (Berlin 1997, pp. 206–208). There were many such cases that came before Freedmen’s Bureau officials throughout the South. Communities in both North and South banded together to try to meet the needs of widows and orphans by providing a variety of such support networks as
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homes for children, help for widows applying for pensions, or employment for those who needed paid work. African Americans in the South were diligent in their efforts to remove children of color from the clutches of former masters. Churches and religious groups were also tireless in their efforts to help those who were in need. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, David. The Draft Riots in New York, July 1863: The Metropolitan Police: Their Service During Riot Week. New York: Baker & Godwin, Printers and Publishers, 1863. Berlin, Ira, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African American Families in the Civil War Era. New York: The New Press, 1997. ‘‘Colored Orphan Asylum.’’ Harper’s Weekly, August 1, 1863. Davis, Rodney O., Matthew Norman, Joel Ward, et al., eds. Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/. Dupree, A. Hunter, and Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. ‘‘An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots.’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1960): 472–479. Frankel, Noralee. Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Frankel, Noralee. ‘‘From Slave Women to Free Women: The National Archives and Black Women’s History in the Civil War Era.’’ Prologue 29, no. 2 (1997). Available from http://www.archives.gov/. Harmon, Henry C. A Manual of the Pension Laws of the United States of America. Washington, DC: W. H. and O. H. Morrison, 1867. James, Horace. North Carolina Department of Negro Affairs, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864. Boston: W. F. Brown & Co. Printers, 1865. Sterling, Dorothy. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. U. S. War Department. Annual Reports of the War Department. Section 14. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1861. Debra Newman Ham
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When President Abraham Lincoln called up 75,000 Union volunteers after the surrender of Fort Sumter (April 13, 1861), civilians in Philadelphia were there to meet the trains and provide ‘‘coffee and sandwiches from
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their own homes to the men in the streets’’ (Library Company of Philadelphia 2006). As more and more troop trains arrived, local barrel makers William Cooper and Henry Pearce donated the use of a two-story brick building, designated thereafter as the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. Local merchant Barzilai S. Brown started a second facility, the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. Operational by late May 1861, the Refreshment Saloons provided reading materials, bathing facilities, changes of clothing, letter writing materials, and other comforts, as well as meals. Indeed, by the time the saloons closed in December 1865, they had served more than one million meals (Library Company of Philadelphia 2006). The immediate response of Philadelphians is one early example of the great outpouring of volunteer support for Civil War soldiers and their families. Civilian support was immediate, universal, and heartfelt. As men from the North and South mobilized to fight, their service was mirrored by the family members they left behind, primarily women. In the North, Union soldiers were supported by more than 10,000 volunteer aid societies that provided blankets, food, supplies, and medical aid (Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities). On April 20, 1861, the Soldier’s Aid Society of Northern Ohio formed in Cleveland, supplying blankets and clothing to Union volunteers from the Ohio area. Rebecca Rouse served as its first president (Ohio Historical Society). On April 25, 1861, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Dr. Dorothea Dix, and others established the New York Women’s Central Association of Relief (WCAR) to train nurses for work in army hospitals and to raise funds for medical supplies (Giesberg 2006, p. 32). Often the unpredictability of troop movements prevented effective delivery of supplies. As a result, two commissions—the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) and the United States Christian Commission (USCC)—were formed to expedite efficient delivery of goods and services. Many of the individual soldiers’ aid societies in the North immediately allied themselves with one of these commissions. In its first report, the USSC acknowledged that The present is essentially a people’s war. The hearts and minds, the bodies and souls, of the whole people and of both sexes throughout the loyal States are in it. The rush of volunteers to arms is equaled by the enthusiasm and zeal of the women of the nation, and the clerical and medical professions view with each other in their ardor to contribute in some manner to the success of our noble and sacred cause. (Bellows, Harris, Harsen, et al. 1861)
The USSC is credited with cutting the disease rate of the Union army by half and raising almost $25 million in support for the Northern war effort (United States Sanitary Commission 2005). Katherine Wormeley, who
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was active in the work of the USSC, called it ‘‘the great artery which bears the people’s love to the people’s army’’ (United States Sanitary Commission 2005). USSC volunteers ‘‘tirelessly canvassed neighborhoods for donations, worked as nurses, organized diet kitchens in the camps, ran hospital ships, knitted socks and gloves, sewed blankets and uniforms, baked food, and organized Sanitary Fairs that raised millions of dollars worth of goods and funds for the Federal Army’’ (United States Sanitary Commission 2005). What motivated these outpourings of support? The novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) wrote in her Civil War journal, ‘‘As I can’t fight, I will content myself by working for those who can’’ (Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities). Alcott herself worked for a month during the winter of 1862 to 1863 at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, DC. Although she contracted typhoid pneumonia and was forced to give up her nursing work, she used her experiences at the hospital to write ‘‘Hospital Sketches,’’ serialized in the Boston Commonwealth and published in book form in August 1863. In ‘‘Hospital Sketches’’ she wrote, ‘‘All that is best and bravest in the hearts of men and women, comes out in scenes like these; and, though a hospital is a rough school, its lessons are both stern and salutary; and the humblest of pupils there, in proportion of his faithfulness, learns a deeper faith in God and in himself’’ (Alcott 1863, p. 84). In the South, the reality of war hit closer to home. Because most of the war was fought on Southern soil, civilians were more intimately involved in battlefield realities, particularly nursing and hospital care. The Ladies Aid Society of Montgomery, Alabama, was the first group organized to meet the medical needs of Confederate soldiers. The Young Ladies Hospital Association of Columbia, South Carolina, formed after the first Battle of Bull Run, instituted the Columbia Wayside Hospital in one room of the state capitol building. An observer at the time noted that the young women were ‘‘unused to labor, but willing minds made up for their lack of skill, and it was wonderful how soon they learned to cut out and make up homespun shirts, knit socks, roll bandages, and etc., and before long many a box of substantial comforts was sent to the boys in the army from the girls at home’’ (Marten 2003, pp. 310– 311). Confederate nurse Kate Cumming wrote this moving account of her work: This morning, when passing the front door, a man asked me if I had anything to eat, which I could give to some men at the depot awaiting transportation on the cars. He said that they had eaten nothing for some days. Some of the ladies assisting me, we took them hot coffee, bread and meat. The poor fellows ate eagerly, and seemed so thankful. One of the men, who was taking care of them, asked me where I was from. When I
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Many volunteers found patriotic uses for their skills, such as the young women who used their sewing talents to create a flag for the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Hulton Archives/Getty Images. Students of Academy of Fine Arts.
replied Mobile, he said that Mobile was the best place in the Confederacy. (Cumming 1866)
Southern women also planned and attended bazaars, fairs, concerts, raffles, and dances to raise money for army supplies, and even sponsored specific Confederate gunboats through fund-raising drives (Frank 2004). Occasionally, volunteers had to be cajoled into making personal sacrifices. In her Civil War journal for October 13, 1871, the Southerner Mary Boykin Chesnut
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wrote of dear friends who refused to allow their seamstresses to work on garments for the soldiers until their own winter clothes had been finished. Boykin wrote, I told them true patriotesses would be willing to wear the same clothes until our siege was raised. They did not seem to care. They have seen no ragged, dirty, sick and miserable soldiers lying in the hospital, no lack of woman’s nursing, no lack of woman’s tears, but an awful lack of a proper
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A Harper’s Weekly composite depicting volunteers filling cartridges. Men and women on the home front often supported the soldiers by making supplies that would be used in battle. The Library of Congress
change in clean clothes. They know nothing of the horrors of war. One has to see to believe. They take it easy, and are not yet willing to make per-
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sonal sacrifices. The time is coming when they will not be given a choice in the matter. (Chesnut 1973, p. 1693)
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At the conclusion of the war, Frank B. Goodrich compiled The Tribute Book: A Record of the Munificence, Self-Sacrifice and Patriotism of the American People during the War for the Union (1865). In it he noted ‘‘the records of money given, not money earned; of a labor of love, not of labor for hire and salary; of self-assessment, of tribute rendered always willingly, always unasked’’ (Marten 2003, p. 3). Volunteer support during the Civil War, in all its forms, is a testament to the willingness of Americans, from both the North and South, to support their soldiers. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcott, Louisa May. Hospital Sketches. Boston: J. Redpath, 1863. Bellows, Henry W., Elisha Harris, J. Harsen, and W. H. Van Buren. ‘‘U.S. Sanitary Commission Report No. 1: An Address to the Secretary of War.’’ May 18, 1861. Disability History Museum Web site. Available from http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/. Chesnut, Mary Boykin. ‘‘A Diary from Dixie.’’ In American Literature: The Makers and the Making, Book C, ed. Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, and Robert Penn Warren. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Cumming, Kate. ‘‘A Nurse’s Diary.’’ In A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, From the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War: With Sketches of Life and Character, and Brief Notices of Current Events during That Period. Louisville, KY: John P. Morgan, 1866. Available from http:// www.pbs.org/. Donald, William J. ‘‘Alabama Confederate Hospitals.’’ Alabama Review 15 (October 1962): 271–281; 16 (January 1963): 64–78. Frank, Lisa Tendrich. ‘‘Women during the Civil War.’’ New Georgia Encyclopedia. Athens: Georgia Humanities Council and University of Georgia Press, 2004. Available from http://www. georgiaencyclopedia.org/. Giesberg, Judith Ann. Civil War Sisterhood: The United States Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006. Library Company of Philadelphia. ‘‘Civil War Volunteer Saloon and Hospitals Ephemera Collection 1861–1868.’’ McAllister Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2006. Available from http://lcpdams.librarycompany.org:20018/. Marten, James Alan. Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. ‘‘Fitchburg Forms Ladies Soldier’s Aid Society:
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September 16, 1861.’’ Mass Moments Web site. Available from http://www.massmoments.org/. Ohio Historical Society. ‘‘Soldiers’ Aid Society.’’ Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History. Available from http://www.ohio historycentral.org/. United States Sanitary Commission. ‘‘The U.S.S.C.’’ 2005. Available from http://www.forttejon.org/. Diane Hulett
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The American Civil War, during which large sections of the nation became literal battlegrounds for the armies of the North and South, resulted in a massive displacement of citizenry that remains a singular event in U.S. history. The states whose populations endured the greatest upheaval were those in the secessionist South, followed by border states whose citizens were divided in their sympathies, such as Missouri and Tennessee. The refugees largely fell into three groups: white Southerners who fled their homes as Union troops advanced; white Southern refugees driven from their homes by secessionists; and slaves. Of the third category, some were captured as contraband by victorious Union troops, while other blacks in bondage seized the opportunity presented by the chaos of war and their suddenly absentee owners, and escaped to the North and freedom—where many then joined the Union Army and the fight to vanquish the Confederacy. There were also a number of Native Americans uprooted by the war, some of whom chose to fight for the Union or Confederate cause.
White Southerners Few reliable figures exist that provide a concrete total for the number of Americans displaced by war between 1861 and 1865. Some of the wealthiest Southern families were able to book passage on vessels bound for Europe, Honduras, and Brazil, but many other members of the Confederate elite remained at home, where the situation was perilous. The wife of Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee was part of the first wave of internal refugees in May 1861, when she fled her home in Arlington, Virginia, to which she was never able to return. Another woman, Virginia Clay-Clopton, despite being married to a prominent politician and being close to the family of Confederate States of America (CSA) president Jefferson Davis, was forced to spend most of the war years in transit. She stayed in hotels or with members of her extended family, and paid Confederate soldiers to serve as escorts for her and her sister on
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As Union troops marched across the deep South, newly-freed slaves were left to fend for themselves. Some headed for the North and enlisted in the Union army, while others remained in the South hiring themselves out to their previous owners. The Library of Congress Former slaves move north.
routes that were dangerous for unaccompanied women, or indeed for any noncombatant. Born in North Carolina, Clay-Clopton settled in Huntsville, Alabama, after her 1843 marriage to Clement Claiborne Clay, and lived part of the year in Washington after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate in the 1850s. She was in her mid-thirties when war broke out, and spent four years staying with various friends and family members in the South, often accompanied only by her sister; the two passed the time sewing and knitting garments for their husbands, because warm clothing was at a premium due to wartime shortages. Clay-Clopton initially headed to Richmond, the Confederate capital, like many residents of Southern states who had been forced to flee their homes at the war’s onset. In 1860 Richmond’s population was 40,000, but it swelled to 100,000 during the war (Gallagher 2001, p. 95). Overcrowded conditions bred disease, and epidemics of smallpox and scarlet fever periodically swept though the city, forcing those who had the means, such as Clay-Clopton, to flee once again.
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In her 1905 memoir, A Belle of the Fifties, ClayClopton recalled making her way to Georgia by train with her sister. The two ‘‘rode from Stevenson to Chattanooga on the freight train, the baggage-cars on the passenger-train being unable to receive a single trunk. Arriving at Chattanooga, we would have been forced to go to the small-pox hotel or remain in the streets but for the gallantry of an acquaintance of ours, an army officer of Washington memory, who gave up his room to us’’ (p. 192). Clay-Clopton later returned to Richmond, but conditions there were now abysmal: Patients in the hospitals suffered, even for necessary medicines. Sugar was sold at fifty Confederate dollars a pound. Vegetables and small fruits were exceedingly scarce. My visits to the hospital wards were by no means so constant as those of many of my friends, yet I remember one poor little Arkansas boy in whom I became interested, and went frequently to see, wending my way to his cot through endless wards, where an army of sick men lay, minus an arm, or leg, or with bandaged
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Refugees heads that told of fearful encounters. The dripdrip of the water upon their wounds to prevent the development of a greater evil is one of the most horrible remembrances I carry of those days. (p. 201)
Pro-Union Refugees Life during wartime presented even greater perils for Union sympathizers caught behind enemy lines. A young woman named Cora Mitchel was the daughter of a wealthy Connecticut cotton merchant who had, with other Northern entrepreneurs, helped to make the city of Apalachicola, Florida, the third busiest port on the Gulf of Mexico, after New Orleans and Mobile. The Apalachicola River had two tributaries, the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers, each of which went deep into Georgia almost to the border of South Carolina. In the years before the war, New England traders with ties to Europe made Apalachicola into an important way station for cotton shipments between the plantations and lucrative foreign markets. At the outbreak of war, Mitchel and her brother first went to Columbus, Georgia, where her married sister was living, and attended school there. Her brother was soon conscripted by force into the Confederate Army— despite the fact that he was underage—and became ill from one of the fevers that regularly swept through Army camps on both sides due to poor sanitary conditions. When he returned home on leave, Mitchel’s father fled north with him. The fact that her brother was a deserter became well known in Apalachicola, and Mitchel’s mother, Sophia, began to fear for her safety as well as that of her younger children. Sophia Mitchel then decided to travel to Columbus to retrieve Cora, in preparation for the family’s final flight north. The 300-mile trip up the Chattahoochee River the Mitchels planned to make was a perilous one, as part of the waterway had been blockaded by Confederate forces. On the journey back to Apalachicola, Mitchel and her mother had to pick up CSA passports, recently required for travel to Gulf Coast ports in order to prevent further Confederate army desertions. ‘‘Immediately on our arrival at Fort Gaines mother went to the arsenal for the passport,’’ Mitchel wrote. ‘‘She was met by a very agreeable young adjutant, who said he had not the power to give us one, but he was expecting the major back at any moment and he would give it.’’ Over the next two days, Sophia Mitchel repeated the four-mile round-trip walk, with no success. On the fourth day, Cora asked her mother if she might try instead; when she returned, she had the travel documents in hand. ‘‘My youth probably appealed to the young man, and he could not help feeling that I ought not to be detained,’’ she wrote in her memoir. ‘‘We did not know it then, but found out afterwards that he had orders to
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detain us till the major came, as we were not to be allowed to go on’’ (1916, pp. 18–19). Because of the blockade, part of Mitchel’s journey had to be made through the bayou, which had been widened and deepened by the force of the strong current, but as the stream carried off the banks the trees would fall in, making it much more dangerous, and the utmost care and skill were necessary to bring us through in safety. Mother and I lay in the bottom of the boat with strict orders not to move, while the little boat was tossed about by the swift current. If we had hit one of the projecting trees, we would have sunk immediately. (1916, pp. 20–21)
At night, after getting back on the river itself, they went ashore to rest. Mitchel remembered feeling ‘‘excited by the novelty and beauty of the scene’’: The moon was full, and though just before Christmas, the weather was mild. The air was heavy with the scents of the forest behind us, from which could be heard, from time to time, the calls of owls, panthers and wildcats. We saw none, but there was always the expectation that one would appear. We roasted peanuts in the coals and toasted bacon and corn pones. These were our only food during the entire journey. The river water, muddy though it was, satisfied our thirst. Supplies of all kinds had long been very scarce, and we had learned to be very thankful for little, and that of the simplest. (1916, p. 22)
At Apalachicola, Mitchel and her mother gathered the remaining children and managed to get aboard a ship bound for Key West, at the tip of Florida—no easy feat. There, ‘‘another problem presented itself,’’ Mitchel wrote. ‘‘The town was full of refugees. The one hotel was crowded to its fullest capacity, and no boat from New Orleans [was] in sight’’ because of a yellow fever outbreak in Key West (1916, p. 36). Finally, one appeared, and Mitchel’s mother was able to convince the captain to let her family of six have the only available stateroom, which had no natural light and flooded every morning when the decks were washed. ‘‘We were only one group among many forlorn refugees. We were shabby and neglected. Part of the time we were seasick, and always [we were] uncomfortable in our cramped quarters,’’ she wrote, but they arrived safely in New York and then headed to Rhode Island, where they reunited with her father and brother (1916, p. 41).
A Lutheran Pastor in Tennessee Border states such as Kentucky and Tennessee, where loyalties were divided, also produced a torrent of refugees. It was in the towns and villages of these states that the divisiveness of the war was felt most immediately, as oncecordial neighbors turned bitter toward one another. Hermann Bokum, a German immigrant who had settled in the Cumberland Mountains region as a pastor, provided one
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account of the war in his 1863 book, The Testimony of a Refugee from East Tennessee. He described how local men eager to aid Confederate forces joined regiments that were beginning to form at the war’s onset. Union loyalists in the area, however, set fire to some of the bridges that these regiments would need to pass over to reach Virginia; in reprisal, state officials sympathetic to the Confederate cause meted out harsh punishments to ordinary civilians. ‘‘A man named Haun had been taken to prison, because he had taken part in the burning of the bridges,’’ Bokum recounted. ‘‘The names of the persons who tried him have never been made public. . . . Others beside him were hung, still others were shot down or otherwise murdered’’ (p. 8). Bokum had traveled to Washington to plead the case of Union sympathizers in Tennessee, but when he returned home he was troubled by rumors his friends reported back to him—that he, too, might be hanged without a trial. In June 1861 Tennessee became the last of the border states to secede from the Union, and a conscription law then went into effect. Bokum failed to report to the mustering site, after which he received word that a party of five were heading to his home to arrest him: I had made up my mind to go to prison. I could not bear the thought of leaving the atmosphere where my wife and my children were breathing, but my wife prevailed on me to go to our friends in the North. Her last words were: ‘‘Fear not for me, I trust in God’’; I begged her to kiss our children, and I turned into the mountains. Never I trust, shall I cease to be thankful for the gracious manner in which I was shielded from harm in that perilous journey. Six months later my wife and my children arrived in Cincinnati, having crossed the Cumberland Mountains in the rear of the two contending armies, and having made more than 300 miles in an open buggy.’’ (1863, p. 10)
They eventually relocated to Philadelphia, where Bokum became chaplain at Turner’s Lane Hospital.
An Ozark Ballad’s Tale There were also significant numbers of men who joined the Union Army after fleeing home states that had seceded. One of them was Daniel Martin, an Arkansas man whose story survives in a well-known Ozark Mountains folk song, ‘‘The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern,’’ which cultural historians believe Martin likely wrote himself and passed on to his descendants. A farmer who was probably in his early twenties when the war broke out, Martin left the Confederate state to join the pro-Union Missouri Infantry volunteers at Rolla, Missouri. The ballad, which recounts Martin’s two years of service, begins with the stanza, ‘‘My name is Daniel Martin, I was born in Arkansas / I fled from those bad rebels who fear not God nor law / I left my aged parents. I left my loving wife / I was forced to go to Rolla to try and save my life.’’ The song goes on to recount the events of the
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Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, as well as those of the March 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge, which finally gave the Union side firm control of Missouri. The lyrics conclude with the observation, ‘‘And if ever I get through this war you may call me roasted done / I’ll never go to fight again for money, love or fun.’’
The Plight of Slaves Untold numbers of blacks were caught up in the Civil War, and while many were too fearful of reprisals to strike out on their own once chaos descended on the South, others fled north to freedom. Many sought shelter and protection at Union Army camps, and the federal government found itself struggling to care for thousands of displaced persons who had neither homes nor income to provide for their families. When Union forces captured the strategic North Carolina city of New Bern in March 1862, General Ambrose Burnside appointed a superintendent of the poor to oversee relief efforts. Fifteen months later, government officials sent to investigate conditions in the area filed a report stating that ‘‘7,500 colored persons and 1,800 white persons received relief’’ through the efforts of the superintendent, but that the average proportion dealt out in each of the staple articles of food—as flour, beef, bacon, bread, &c.—was about as one for each colored person relieved to sixteen for each white person to whom such relief was granted. At the time this occurred work was offered to both blacks and whites; to the whites at the rate of $12 a month, and to the blacks at the rate of $8 a month. (Owen, McKaye, and Howe 1863, n.p.)
A horrific incident at Camp Nelson, a Union Army camp in Kentucky, captured the plight of former slaves in newly mustered black regiments after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and separate army units for black soldiers were created. The wives and children of these former slaves, having no place else to go, came with them to Camp Nelson and other sites, despite vehement local opposition. Camp Nelson’s commanding officer, Brigadier General Speed S. Fry, referred to the problem as ‘‘the [Expletive] Woman Question,’’ and feared that food rations would run out, diseases would kill soldiers before they even got to battle, and the presence of families nearby would lead to a quick breakdown of military discipline (Wilson 2002, p. 187). After several attempts to get rid of them, on November 23, 1864, Fry succeeded in expelling 400 women and children. They had nowhere to go, almost no possessions, and were driven out into cold weather. The African American soldier Joseph Miller recounted the details of that day: ‘‘[M]orning was bitter cold. It was freezing hard. I was certain it would kill my sick child to take him out in the cold. I told the man in charge that it would be the death of my boy. I told him my wife and children had no place to go and I told him that I was a soldier of the United States. He told me
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that it did not make any difference’’ (quoted in Wilson 2002, p. 187). Miller’s family was ejected, and when he finally found them they were ‘‘shivering with cold and famished with hunger. They had not received a morsel of food during the whole day’’ (p. 187), and his child was indeed among the scores of casualties that resulted from Fry’s decision. The Camp Nelson incident was widely reported in the Northern papers and stirred outrage. To make amends for the atrocity, federal officials established formal refugee housing at the camp, called the Home for Colored Refugees. Nearly a hundred duplex cottages housed families, and there was also a school, mess hall, and hospital. The site was taken over after the war ended in 1865 by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a federal agency usually referred to in shortened form as the Freedmen’s Bureau. A sympathetic West Point graduate, civil rights supporter, and Union general named Oliver O. Howard (1830–1909) was installed as director of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Howard’s field agents, however, were notoriously corrupt in their duties, which included monitoring the newly defeated Southern areas for incidents of abuse that appeared to be continuations of bondage, and overseeing the creation of a free labor market. Once freed from slavery, many of the South’s blacks became refugees, and many were desperate for any kind of work, even if it entailed returning to plantations. The Preliminary Report of the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission included the account of one young Confederate sympathizer, Frederick A. Eustis, who had returned home to take over the family’s South Carolina plantation. He was met by former slaves eager to work for wages: I never knew during forty years of plantation life so little sickness. Formerly every man had a fever of some kind, and now the veriest old cripple, who did nothing under secesh [Confederate] rule, will row a boat three nights in succession to Edisto, or will pick up the corn about the corn-house. There are twenty people whom I know were considered worn out and too old to work under the slave system, who are now working cotton, as well as their two acres of provisions; and their crops look very well. (Owen, McKaye, and Howe 1863, n.p.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern.’’ Available from http:// musicanet.org/. Bokum, Hermann. The Testimony of a Refugee from East Tennessee. Philadelphia, 1863. Clay-Clopton, Virginia. A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853–66. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1905.
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Gallagher, Gary W. The American Civil War: The War in the East 1861–May 1863. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Refugee Life in the Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. Reprint, 2001. Mitchel, Cora. Reminiscences of the Civil War. Providence, RI: Snow & Farnham, 1916. Owen, Robert Dale, James McKaye, and Samuel. G. Howe. Preliminary Report of the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission to the Secretary of War. New York: 1863. Wilson, Keith P. Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002. Carol Brennan
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Fraternization is a term defined as ‘‘to become like brothers’’ and undermines the goals and objectives of war. Providing covert aid or even extending cordiality to the enemy is usually prohibited in most military codes of conduct and is subject to harsh punitive measures. During the American Civil War, an unusually high degree of fraternization occurred but often went unpunished.
Shared Values Incidents of fraternization were rarely reported during the war years, but many came to light afterward in the personal recollections of soldiers on both sides. Historians note that in addition to speaking the same language, Union and Confederate participants in the war shared even stronger bonds, including a Judeo-Christian religious upbringing and an essentially identical value system—with the exception of slavery—that made perception of the other as a deadly enemy more difficult to justify. Furthermore, soldiers on both sides had signed up to fight with the belief that the war would be over within a few short months—but as those months dragged into years, soldiers and officers alike came to realize they were, as most soldiers in history before them, pawns in a much larger political and ideological struggle. As one officer noted in 1864, ‘‘If the settlement of this thing were left to our armies there would be peace and good fellowship established in two hours’’ (Rolph 2002, p. 3). Incidents of fraternization were reported at nearly every major engagement between Union and Confederate forces. During the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, Confederate soldiers gave water to fallen Union soldiers. A year and a month later, during what became known as the Second Battle of Manassas or the Battle of Bull Run, a Union eyewitness to its aftermath watched as Confederate soldiers walked around the body-strewn battlefield and bayoneted the Union casualties. As these
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‘‘Rebs’’ approached a fallen member of the Second Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, one Union soldier saw that ‘‘his enemy hesitated . . . and finally raised him carefully up, and gave him water from his canteen. He was afterwards removed to the hospitals of Richmond, where he received careful treatment, and at last was exchanged and allowed to return home’’ (Rolph 2002, p. 29). Such poignant acts occurred on both sides. In East Tennessee a Union soldier was stationed on picket duty, or holding ground already taken, during a particularly cold stretch of weather. A poorly dressed Confederate soldier approached him and told him there were neither overcoats nor blankets to be had on his side. The following night, the man returned, and the Union soldier had six blankets to give him. At this, the Confederate ‘‘fell down on his knees . . . and I never heard anybody pray such a prayer as the Southern soldier prayed for me, kneeling there in the snow in his ragged old uniform. I took off my hat and stood still till he was through, and then he faded away in the darkness’’ (Rolph 2002, p. 49). The Freemasons, also known as the Masonic Order, played a role in the relatively high degree of fraternization during the war. Captured or wounded soldiers might identify themselves as members of the organization and provide one of the secret words, grips, handshakes, or other signs of membership, such as placing the thumb on the tip of the nose and waving the fingers of that hand. Although Union soldiers occasionally set fire to homes and crops as Confederate territory was taken, soldiers who entered one mansion in Maury County, Tennessee, saw the portrait of its owner wearing a Masonic ring. The Union commanding officer, himself a Mason, ordered his men to let the house stand.
Belle Boyd Civilians also fraternized with the enemy, with locals providing medical care to soldiers from the other side, but accusations of espionage inevitably arose. One of the most notorious cases of fraternization was that of Belle Boyd, the teenage daughter of a hotel-keeper in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When her town was seized by Union troops who went on a Fourth of July drinking binge and then went from house to house to seize Confederate memorabilia and install Union flags above each, Boyd and her mother resisted, and after insults were exchanged, Boyd shot and killed one of the Union men. A board of inquiry cleared her of criminal charges, but sentries were posted at the family-run inn to keep watch over her. An attractive young woman, Boyd became friendly with her guards, and managed to glean useful information on troop movements and plans. She would then send her slave, Eliza, to Confederate camps to deliver the messages. Eventually, after several more arrests and escapes, Boyd convinced her Union guard to marry her and switch sides, but soon divorced him when she learned he was penniless. Enormously famous in her
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Belle Boyd was a teenager when the Union army took over her town of Martinsburg, West Virginia. After killing a Union officer, Belle became friendly with the guards placed outside her home and shared the Union battle plans they had relayed with the Confederate Army. Belle Boyd (1843–1900), Confederate spy.
ª Bettman/Corbis
day, Boyd was even awarded the Southern Cross of Honor, the highest civilian honor of the Confederate States of America, and after the war worked as an actress on the London and New York stages. There were also instances of fraternization between Northerners who supported the Confederate side. These were derisively called Copperheads, after the copper Liberty-head coins they sported as badges, and were usually Democratic Party members who advocated an end to the war via an immediate peace settlement. They issued venomous propaganda against the North’s abolitionists, whom they blamed for starting the war, and even against Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), who was sometimes caricatured in Copperhead pamphlets as an African. Their counterpart in the Confederacy was a more loosely knit group called the Red Strings, or Heroes of America, who also hoped for a cessation of hostilities and the return of the Southern states to the Union. Many of them were Quakers and identified their houses by means of a red string hung from a window. The Southern Claims Commission, a congressional body established to validate and reimburse Southerners for property damage inflicted by Union troops during
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the war, operated between 1871 until 1880. In some cases, however, the Commission heard claims from those who stated they had willingly provided food, medical care, shelter, or other prohibited acts of fraternization during the war because they supported the Union side. Many of the claims reimbursed involved the taking of horses, but in the case of a black couple, Thomas and Nancy Jefferson of Waynesboro, Virginia, who filed claim No. 15385, they requested reimbursement for one hog, three barrels of flour, and seven weeks of nursing care provided by Nancy to one adjutant assistant general named Fry from Sherman’s army. The documents relating to their claim quote the Jeffersons as asserting,
Rolph, Daniel N. My Brother’s Keeper: Union and Confederate Soldiers’ Acts of Mercy during the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. ‘‘Two Communities in the American Civil War.’’ The Valley of the Shadow. Available from http:// valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/.
Our Loyalty is indisputable, as we are colored persons, and only suffered our House to be used as a Hospital, and furnished sustainance and the attendance upon the sick soldier, because he was wouned at our door, and the Confederates would have striped and murdered him . . . had he not been cared for by us. It would only be an act of Justice to pay us. (‘‘Two Communities in the American Civil War’’)
As evidenced by the number of surviving letters and diaries, the daily life of Civil War soldiers and civilians are well documented. The written word was still the primary means of communication, as the telephone had yet to be invented, and literacy rates had been rising steadily throughout the century. Although the North had the highest literacy rates in the world at that time, in the South literacy rates were much lower because only free white children and children of the wealthy families were permitted to attend school (Werner 1998, p. 3). While telegraph services were largely reserved for military use, the U.S. Postal Service was expanding and improving in reliability, albeit slowly. Memoirs and other accounts of wartime events on and off the battlefield began appearing in published form during the war itself. After completing military drills or during breaks from battle, soldiers wrote and read letters from loved ones. These letters were a source of emotional support, as were the objects that many received along with them: blankets, boots, books, foodstuffs, and so on. Enlisted men’s wives, children, and parents asked for advice, prayed for loved ones’ safety, and reported news of families and friends. Diaries and letters trace the war from its very beginning stages. Upon hearing news of the Confederacy’s secession from the Union, an anonymous young Southern woman wrote in her diary that New Orleans ‘‘was very lively and noisy this evening with rockets and lights in honor of secession. Mrs. F., in common with the neighbors, illuminated. We walked out to see the houses of others gleaming amid the dark shrubbery like a fairy scene’’ (Straubing 1985, p. 183). Fourteen-year-old Thomas Upson of Indiana recalled in his journal the shock the beginning of hostilities caused: ‘‘Grandma wanted to know what was the trouble. Father told her and she began to cry, ‘Oh, my poor children in the South! God knows how they will suffer.’ . . . She and Mother were crying. I lit out for the barn. I do hate to see women cry’’ (Werner 1998, p. 7). The onset of war was hardly less shocking for adults, especially women who depended on their husbands to be providers and helpers in the home. Only a month after giving birth to
Newspapers on both sides of the conflict rarely reported incidents of fraternization, but in the postwar era reunions of former enemies were a staple of every major battle anniversary. Regiments that had once fought one another organized meetings to hand over captured flags, and newly created veterans’ organizations tended to and decorated graves of fallen soldiers from the other side of the battle. In a famous photograph from 1913, taken at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, two elderly men are shown with their hands clasped in friendship: They reconnected at the reunion as each was telling their story to comrades about the infamous Pickett’s Charge. A. C. Smith, a member of the Fifty-sixth Virginia Infantry, was wounded in the charge, and a Union soldier gave him water, then took him to the field hospital. As Smith was recounting his tale, at the same wall was Albert Hamilton of the Seventy-second Pennsylvania Infantry, who was saying ‘‘it was right here that a Johnny [Reb, a nickname for Confederate soldiers] fell into my arms. I lifted him up and gave him a swig of water, then got him on my shoulders and carried him off’’ (Rolph 2002, pp. 115– 116). At this point, the two men overheard each other’s recollections and jubilantly embraced. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lowell Daily Citizen and News (Lowell, MA), September 8, 1864. Power, J. Tracy. Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
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Female family members write and embroider. With mail delivery operating slowly, but regularly, troops looked forward to news they received from home. Many of the letters expressed not only affection for the distant soldier, but also details of hardship family members endured in the absence of fathers, sons, and husbands. Hulton Archives/Getty Images.
their child, Rachel Bowman of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, wrote in her September 21, 1862, journal entry about her husband Samuel joining Sulenbergers Cavalry company: It went hard to see him go . . . for he is more than life to me. When he told me that he had enlisted, I felt an indescribable heaviness in my heart. . . . We prayed earnestly over it. I became calm & felt more resigned, at times still I am overcome, tears relieve me very much, my heart always seems lighter after weeping freely[.] In daytime I get along very well but the nights seem very long. (Cormany 1982, p. 253)
For soldiers and their loved ones, night only exacerbated the loneliness they felt. While emotions ran high and were mixed, most people, both Northerners and
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Southerners, believed in the righteousness of their cause and that the conflict would last for only a short time. Commentary on political and military matters filled the pages of many letters. One example of this is the January 1, 1863, letter that Henry A. Ritner wrote to his son Jacob, a captain in the First Iowa Infantry. Referring to President Lincoln’s initial assertion that the war was not being fought to free the slaves but to preserve the Union, the elder Ritner commented: My opinion of the war is that it is an abolition war got up for the purpose of abolishing slavery and that God is its author. . . . and the object is to abolish slavery and punish the nation for its sins, especially that of slavery and to install the black man in to his natural and inalienable rights, and the sooner the government [and] army recognize this aspect and act upon it the sooner we will have
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Diaries and Letters from Home peace. . . . But if we as a nation refuse to acknowledge the rights of the black man then it may cost us our national existence. (Larimer 2000, p. 87)
Women Take on New Roles With many men called away to war, women and children had to take on additional responsibilities. These new duties included a wide variety of household chores, as well as work outside the home. An October 14, 1864, letter from a young girl named Lodema Anderson, written to her father, L. Merrit Anderson, refers to some of this strenuous household work, and to the pain of separation: Ma has been diging [sic] potatoes to dry . . . and she is pretty tired to night [sic] to pay for it. . . . [M]a is pounding salt to salt her butter squate [sic] down on the flore [sic] and aunt Dorit is siting [sic] by the stove knitting and pa I want to [have you] here[,] you had better believe that[,] but I have one of your photographs and I half [sic] to kiss it[;] it does me a good deal of good but still it is[,] and you nor near it[,] hey pa . . . but it has to do. (Seidman 2001, p. 121)
Emeline Ritner of Iowa wrote to her husband Jacob about the heat and drought they were experiencing in July of 1863, and about how it was affecting her health: We are still all well. I am not very stout but think I will get along if I don’t ‘‘work’’ too hard. Every little thing I do or walk up town I feel tired nearly to death. . . . I am getting ‘‘grey.’’ It is time. If you don’t come back pretty soon, you won’t know me. I will be an old woman. (Larimer 2000, pp. 193–195)
Many women who were in dire straits wrote letters to government officials, asking for aid. In January of
1864, Hattie L. Carr of North Evans, New York, pleaded in a letter to Abraham Lincoln: Honored Sir . . . I come with a request trusting that out of the goodness of your heart you will grant it. It is but a breath to you. While to me [it is] as life and death. I beg you for the discharge of my Husband. . . . He has faithfully served our common cause for eighteen long months, while I have struggled with sickness and poverty at times[.] I can do that no longer, for I am sick—dying, for the sight of that dear face[.] I can labor no more and I could starve [for] I am alone and friendless. (Seidman 2001, p. 125)
Though a son under the age of eighteen might be discharged if he had entered the service without his parents’ consent, the laws did not allow the discharge of adult men. In addition to taking on their husbands’ responsibilities in homes and businesses, many women, Union and Confederate alike, joined bonnet brigades—organizations that supported the war effort with money and medical and other supplies. ‘‘During these sad days there was no time or place for private griefs,’’ Sarah Hill, the wife of an Army Corps of Engineers officer, wrote in her journal. ‘‘Loyal women in St. Louis had their hearts and hands full ministering to the many needs which were constantly arising. Every loyal household became a soldiers’ aid society’’ (Hill 1980, p. 48). Hill recalled the many bed ticks, comforters, socks, and sleeping caps the women had sewn and knit. She also recounted that at Christmas time, there were no festive gatherings or merry making. We as a family devoted all our efforts and what means we could spare, toward the cheer of our
Union soldiers reading letters from loved ones. Letters and other packages from home were important for emotional support and morale among soldiers. They read and wrote letters after military drill and between battles. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
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Diaries and Letters from Home boys in E. M.’s Company D. The younger girls made ‘‘Betties,’’ or housewives, for each man in the company. They were small cases that could be rolled up and carried in the pocket, containing thread, needles, pins and buttons. (p. 56)
Others generated funds by staging benefit theatrical and musical shows, as described by Hill in her diary: ‘‘Many entertainments were planned and given by the loyal women of St. Louis for the benefit of the Soldiers’ Aid Society during the winter of ’61 and ’62’’ (p. 59). Women in the free states took part in efforts to help newly emancipated slaves. In a letter to her husband Jacob, Emeline Ritner described one such effort at a Methodist church: ‘‘After the sermon, a collection was taken up [that] amounted to 117.00 for the ‘‘Freedmen’s Relief Association.’’ It is for the purpose of clothing the Negroes that are freed by the war. Those that are away down where they can’t get work to do’’ (Larimer 2000, p. 255). Women could also be found in local hospitals behind the lines, where they helped treat wounded and sick soldiers. Nurses often wrote letters for soldiers who were illiterate or too wounded to write. Louisa May Alcott, who would go on to write the classic novel Little Women, worked as a nurse and recalled in Hospital Sketches (1863) writing for a shy man named John (p. 59).
Women Witness to Wartime Suffering Maria Isabella Johnson described the situation in Vicksburg, Mississippi, shortly before its capture by Union forces on July 4, 1863: ‘‘Most of the caves that the frightened citizens of Vicksburg were scooping in the surrounding hills were just large enough to admit a small mattress, on which the family, be it large or small, huddled up together, in a way that was injurious alike to comfort and health’’ (Head 2003, p. 26). A little more than a year later, Rachel Cormany described the destruction of Chambersberg, Pennsylvania, by Confederate soldiers who had demanded $100,000 in gold: [W]hen they were informed of the impossibility, they deliberately went from house to house & fired it. The whole heart of the town is burned. They gave no time for people to get any thing out. . . . [E]ach had to escape for life & took only what they could first grab. . . . Some saved considerable. . . . others only the clothes on their backs— & even some of those were taken off as they escaped from their burning dwellings. (Cormany 1982, p. 446)
By the end of their long ordeal, many men and women had left written records—letters and diaries— which provide later generations with glimpses into this difficult period in United States history. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcott, Louisa May. Hospital Sketches. Boston: James Redpath, 1863.
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Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, ed. C. Vann Woodward. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. Clare, Josephine. Narrative of the Adventures and Experiences of Mrs. Josephine Clare: A Resident of the South at the Breaking Out of the Rebellion, Her Final Escape from Natichitoches, La., and Safe Arrival at Home, in Mariette, Pa. Lancaster, PA: Pearson & Geist, 1865. Cormany, Rachel Bowman. The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War, ed. James C. Mohr. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. Custer, Elizabeth Bacon. The Civil War Memories of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Reconstructed from Her Diaries and Notes, ed. Arlene Reynolds. Austin: University of Texas, 1994. Eastman, Mary H. Jenny Wade of Gettysburg. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1864. Head, Tom, ed. Voices from the Civil War: Women and Families. San Diego, CA: Blackbirch Press, 2003. Hill, Sarah Jane Full. Mrs. Hill’s Journal: Civil War Reminiscences, ed. Mark M. Krug. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1980. Jackson, Henry W. R. The Southern Women of the Second American Revolution: Their Trials, and Yankee Barbarity Illustrated. Atlanta, GA: Intelligencer Steam-power Press, 1863. Larimer, Charles F., ed. Love and Valor: The Intimate Civil War Letters between Captain Jacob and Emeline Ritner. Western Spring, IL: Sigourney Press, 2000. Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: Norton, 1994. Moore, Frank. Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice. Chicago: R. C. Treat, 1866. Reprint, Alexander, NC: Blue Gray Books, 1997. Peter, Frances Dallam. A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky, ed. John David Smith and William Cooper Jr. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. Powers, Elvira J. Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron and Visitor. Boston: Edward L. Mitchel, 1866. Seidman, Rachel Filene. The Civil War: A History in Documents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Straubing, Harold Elk, ed. ‘‘Diary of a Pro-Union Woman of the Confederacy.’’ In Civil War Eyewitness Reports, ed. Harold Elk Straubing. North Haven, CT: Archon Books, 1985. Werner, Emmy E. Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Jeanne M. Lesinski
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Immigration
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Immigration
Through the years of colonization and then nationhood, the United States has benefited from periodic influxes of newcomers that coincided with fluctuations in the country’s business cycles. In the countries of origin, such factors as increased population; the inability of farmers to feed this population; the inability of industry to provide jobs; religious intolerance, prejudice and other social factors; and political upheavals prompted people to leave their homelands. Poverty, however, was the strongest incentive for immigration. There were no laws regulating immigration to the United States until 1875; thus immigrants had unrestricted access to the country if they could pay the cost of passage. Two periods of concentrated immigration took place around the time of the Civil War: From 1845 to 1854 more than three million foreigners arrived, and from 1865 to 1875 almost 3.5 million more came to America. While not all of them remained, an overwhelming majority became permanent citizens (Dinnerstein and Reimers 1977, pp. 12–13). Most immigrants—about 86.6 percent— settled in the free states. This figure indicates that there were eight immigrants in the free states for every one who settled in a slave-holding state. This imbalance was the case partly because the slave states did not need unskilled white laborers (Kennedy 1864, p. xxx). Although it would be more precise to speak of the various immigrant peoples according to their ethnicity, nativists (people who favor established inhabitants over new immigrants) often identified newcomers by the language they spoke. Thus while German-speaking people might come from Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, the Rhineland, Austria, or Switzerland, they were all called Germans. According to the census of 1860, the average age for both men and women was twenty years when they arrived on American shores (Kennedy 1864, p. xx). Scottish, Irish, German, and Chinese immigrants made up the majority of those arriving prior to and immediately after the Civil War. During the war years, the number of arrivals from any ethnic group slowed to a fraction of those from previous years as few people wanted to immigrate to a country at war. Nevertheless, 121,282 foreign passengers arrived in 1859; 153,640 in 1860; 91,919 in 1861; and 91,987 in 1862 (Kennedy 1864, p. xxv).
British Immigrants English and Scottish settlers had been coming to North America since its earliest days of colonization, dispersing themselves throughout the territory, yet the 1860 census indicated that the largest populations of Britons settled in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Massachusetts. The Scots settled in New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois (Kennedy 1864, p. xxix). Many wanted to flee the rapidly industrializing society of Great Britain, to own land, to farm independ-
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ently, and to escape the onerous burden of British taxation. Immigrants from the British Isles were able to take up work in the skilled trades as well as in farming and laboring.
German Immigrants After the English, the Germans made up the largest immigrant group to arrive on American shores. Over the period from 1820 to 1870, 6 million German foreigners came to the United States due to the high cost of living and political unrest in their native country. Germany was not a united country until 1870; meanwhile, the population had grown so swiftly that starvation threatened in some areas. Many of these immigrants were of the peasant, artisan, or the middle class (Coppa and Curran 1976, p. 44). In the decade immediately prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, nearly 1 million Germans arrived, and after the war’s end another 1.5 million made the journey. They represented both Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations and settled primarily in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, where they took up farming in rural areas or skilled and unskilled labor in the cities. The immigrants tried to retain the use of their language; they set up German-language schools and published newspapers. Nevertheless, the German immigrants generally assimilated as readily as their British counterparts.
Irish Immigrants Another immigrant group that significantly changed the complexion of the country was the Irish, who had long suffered under English rule after the formation of the United Kingdom. When they found themselves unable to make a living because of new land laws and a blight that destroyed their main food crop—potatoes—they left in droves during the years of famine (1845–1847). Between 1845 and 1855 more than one million Irish immigrants arrived at the seaports of the Northeast. By 1860 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania had Irish populations that numbered more than 100,000; the Irish eventually made up 20 percent of the population of New York City. They were largely unskilled workers; in addition, most were members of the Roman Catholic Church. These two factors aroused the prejudice of the nativists, who were overwhelmingly Protestant. During the war many Irishmen fought for the North as part of the Irish Brigade as well as many other units, and even a writer for the Charleston Courier, TriWeekly argued, albeit preferentially: ‘‘The Irish were the best troops in the Yankee armies’’ (May 23, 1863). Yet these efforts gained the Irish only limited acceptance. In 1865 the song ‘‘No Irish Need Apply’’ could still be heard, though by this time the ebullient Irish had themselves recast it as a humorous song. Although prejudice against the Irish population was reduced during the Civil War, it was by no means eradicated.
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Immigration
‘‘Chinese railroad workers in Sacramento, California. In the 1860s thousands of workers left their villages in China and immigrated to the western United States. Many worked on railroad crews, while others took jobs as miners, merchants, field hands, or household help.’’
Chinese Immigrants Asians too, particularly the Chinese, were coming to the United States, beginning in 1848 when gold was discovered in California. By 1851, 25,000 Chinese, mostly from the southern coastal province of Kwangtung, had come to California. Between 1851 and the outbreak of the Civil War, another 41,000 arrived, with still another 64,000 emigrating during the 1860s. Some California newspapers, such as the Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), routinely noted new arrivals in the shipping news: ‘‘The Jacob Bell, which came into port on Saturday, brought from Hongkong 320 Chinese immigrants’’ (February 12, 1861). Unlike other immigrants, the Chinese did not intend to settle permanently in the United States, so they came without their families. This group of men worked in the gold fields, labored on farms, opened stores, and served as mechanics. Taking jobs that others thought too menial, they also did laundry and worked as household servants, proving themselves good workers. In 1863,
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when the federal government began the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, the Chinese proved to be hardworking and conscientious laborers. As a result they were hired by the thousands (Coppa and Curran 1976, p. 194). The Civil War and the economic depression it caused had an overall dampening effect on immigration; yet as soon as the economy improved, America again became the destination for thousands of immigrants. Finally the U.S. government thought it necessary to regulate immigration. In 1875 Congress passed a law commonly known as the Asian Exclusion Act, which prohibited the importation of Chinese workers against their will and for illegal purposes. Yet even stricter controls did not daunt potential newcomers, who continued to view America as an opportunity to better themselves or as an escape from unfavorable conditions in their homelands. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charleston Courier (Charleston, SC), May 23, 1863, column E, n.p.
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Crime
Coppa, Frank J., and Thomas J. Curran. The Immigrant Experience in America. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco, CA), February 12, 1861, issue 107, col. B. Dinnerstein, Leonard, and David M. Reimers. Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration and Assimilation. New York: New York University Press, 1977. Erickson, Charlotte. Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America. Coral Gables: University of Florida Press, 1972. ‘‘Immigration.’’ Law Library of Congress. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/. Kennedy, Joseph C. G. Population of the United States in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1864. Jeanne M. Lesinski
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Crime
The Civil War wrought much atrocity, dishonesty, and depravity upon the civilian population. As an editorial in the November 21, 1865, Little Rock Daily Gazette pointed out, before the war news of the discovery of an assaulted dead body would have horrified the community. Yet, the editorial continued, by war’s end scenes of blood and violence had become so commonplace that they hardly attracted any notice at all—and, in fact, following the war such instances had increased in prevalence. The six months following the end of the war saw an almost exponential increase in crime, and, according to the Gazette, the streets became filled with a great number of ‘‘disreputable women,’’ gamblers, and thieves. By late November 1865, however, this postwar crime wave had abated. Reflecting on the horror of the six months following the end of the war, the SemiWeekly Telegraph observed: ‘‘That the public have noticed so large an increase in this fatal species . . . may be sensibly attributed to the lapse of a great war, and the revelation and recoil of the passions which it absorbed’’ (November 30, 1865). Throughout the war, criminals perpetrated crimes of all sorts. For example, the Nashville Dispatch’s crime log for a single day included the following items: ‘‘Robbery of an actress’’; ‘‘Highway robbery’’; ‘‘A whole family poisoned with arsenic’’; ‘‘A bloody street fight’’; ‘‘Horrible tragedy: a man kills his wife, and is shot by his neighbors’’; ‘‘Another desperate and bloody street fight’’ (New Haven Daily Palladium, October, 18, 1865). The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin noted that between December 1, 1863, and February 17, 1864,
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Reward poster for the assassins of President Lincoln. After the cessation of fighting between the North and South, the brutality of the battlefield found its way into civilian life, with recorded crime exploding during the first six months after the war. Public officials throughout the nation limited by law the consumption of alcohol, established a curfew for youths, and even installed street lights in order to curb crime. The Library of Congress
‘‘at least, an average of one person daily has lost his life by assassination, or in brawls, or by the hands of the Vigilante Committees’’ (February 17, 1864). The Bulletin called for reform of criminal law—specifically, the jury system. Another factor contributing to rampant criminality, the Bulletin declared, was the laxness of justices who freed the accused once they had confessed their crimes and paid a $5 fine.
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Many crimes were committed by children. ‘‘Children are every year born in vice, nursed in wretchedness, and cradled in infamy,’’ declared the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. ‘‘Change their conditions and we changed their destination in life’’ (January 8, 1864). Proactively seeking to prevent children’s development into criminals, the chief of police of San Francisco issued an ordinance permitting arrest of all youths found loitering or violating curfews (Daily Evening Bulletin, January 8, 1864). In April 1864, the Lowell Daily Citizen and News noted in its analysis of arrest statistics that most crimes committed the previous year were related to alcohol consumption: ‘‘ ‘We should not have done it, if we had not been drinking,’ is the almost universal plea of criminals’’ (April 15, 1864). The Lowell city marshal attributed nine-tenths of arrests in the city to rum drinking. If alcohol contributed to crime, so too did poorly lit streets. In an attempt to decrease opportunities to commit crime in Washington, DC, the mayor and city council approved an act to increase lighting on the city’s streets (Daily National Intelligencer, April 15, 1864). The April 5, 1862, Wisconsin State Register reported one rather ingenious crime that posed a quandary for authorities. Nathan Levi, a Northerner, was found to have printed large quantities of counterfeit Confederate treasury notes. When officers arrived to arrest the man, he asserted he was only trying to cripple the rebel treasury by flooding the South with spurious currency. Considering Confederate tender was not legal money and not authorized by law, the secretary of war declared Levi’s case to be ‘‘one of the toughest cases he met with during the war.’’ In the end, Levi was freed without charge (Newark Advocate, September 19, 1862). The ‘‘Great Crime of the Age,’’ of course, was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. As the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel rightly remarked, ‘‘Mr. Lincoln was absolutely indispensable to the nation’s future life and true greatness . . . [and] his victories . . . gave assurances of peace, of national honor, of national integrity, and national prosperity as their fruits’’ (April 17, 1865). ‘‘Sum up all the crimes in the calendar,’’ the Daily Cleveland Herald declared, ‘‘and they fail to express that of the man who stabs his country’’ (April 20, 1865). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Carnival of Crime.’’ Semi-Weekly Telegraph (Salt Lake City, UT), November 30, 1865. ‘‘Crime in California.’’ San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, February 17, 1864. Crime and Lawlessness. Little Rock Daily Gazette, November 21, 1865. ‘‘The Great Crime.’’ Daily Cleveland Herald, April 20, 1864. ‘‘The Great Crime of the Age.’’ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, April 17, 1865. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
‘‘Intemperance and Crime.’’ Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, April 15, 1864. ‘‘School of Crime.’’ San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, January 8, 1864. ‘‘A Shrewd Yankee Trick—Is It a Crime?’’ Wisconsin State Register, April 5, 1862. Untitled. New Haven Daily Palladium (New Haven, CT), October 18, 1865. Untitled. Newark Advocate (Newark, OH), September 19, 1862. Aileen E. McTiernan
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Class Tensions
During the mid-nineteenth century, distinctions of wealth and status divided American society. The Civil War exacerbated those divisions, as working-class citizens and yeoman farmers pondered the war’s consequences. In both the Union and Confederacy, members of the upper classes urged their less privileged neighbors to support the war effort. However, workers, laborers, farmers, and craftsmen often believed that the war affected them more than it did the upper classes, which included merchants, businessmen, and plantation owners. Historians have questioned whether or not the conflict was a ‘‘rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.’’ Even though citizens of all classes fought, volunteered, and supported the war, men and women at the lower end of the social spectrum often believed they had more to lose. Northerners were quick to point out the inequality inherent in the slaveholding South; however, some Southerners also noticed that some citizens of the Confederacy fared better than others. One wartime Northern author summed up the class conflict in the slave states by concluding that the ‘‘political economy of the Slave States of the South . . . is attended with social consequences of the most important kind’’ (Cairnes 1862, p. 49). This was true at least for the plantation South, where the best land was owned by planters and the work was done primarily by slaves instead of wage earners. The plantation system, this writer observed, resulted in ‘‘a numerous horde of people, who, too poor to keep slaves and too proud to work, prefer a vagrant and precarious life . . . to engaging in occupations which would association them with the slaves whom they despise’’ (Cairnes 1862, p. 49). Even Confederate officials believed that some men were getting wealthy while others were fighting and dying. John Beauchamp Jones, a clerk in the Confederacy’s War Department, complained that some clerks ‘‘procure exemptions, discharges, and contracts for the speculators for heavy bribes and invest the money in real estate . . . so that their own prosperity will be secure’’ (Jones 1866, p. 332).
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Class Tensions
An illustrated sheet music cover, which protests the inequities of the draft or proscription system enacted under the Enrollment Act of 1863. The act allowed drafted men to purchase an exemption or to furnish a surrogate or ‘‘substitute’’ in lieu of their own service. The unfairness of the measure to the economically disadvantaged is dramatized in the illustration to this piece, showing the bust portrait of one man, ‘‘I’m drafted,’’ in contrast to that of an obviously more well-to-do young man, ‘‘I aint.’’ The Library of Congress ‘‘Wanted: A Substitute.’’
Confederate Military Draft The Confederacy turned to conscription to meet its military needs in 1862, which intensified class tensions. The poor and working class were unable to avoid service whereas wealthy citizens could bribe officials or send substitutes. Planters who owned more than twenty slaves and men who held positions essential to the war effort, including government officials, were exempt from the draft. Some influential men paid as much as $500 to obtain appointments as postmasters, clerks, coroners, or other government positions that exempted them from military service (Williams 2005, p. 77). Confederate sol-
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diers who served in spite of hardships at home resented fighting for the interests of others. The twenty-slave law, as it was known, made slaves even more valuable in the Confederacy, as some citizens attempted to increase their slaveholdings to gain exemption from military service. Some young men who could not afford to purchase an exemption or a substitute refused to serve. The son of Mrs. E. C. Kent, for example, was arrested and imprisoned by the Confederate Army for avoiding the draft. Mrs. Kent tried desperately to convince the Confederate government to free her son, and wrote President Jefferson Davis on her son’s behalf. Davis replied that he
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could only free her son if the young man agreed to serve in the army. The boy would not agree to go, so Mrs. Kent visited him in prison. She observed that her son was in a room with several Rebel officers and a wellknown lawyer, but noted that ‘‘men of this class were generally not retained very long’’ (Kent 1865, p. 22). During the war desertion and draft resistance in the Confederacy demonstrated that some common people believed that the wealthy and influential were not doing their part in the war, while the poor and less fortunate were expected to bear the brunt of the fighting. Others were simply tired of the war or considered the South’s defeat inevitable.
Poverty and the War The Confederacy’s unsuccessful attempt to establish itself as a new nation came at a cost, and many citizens believed most of the burden fell on the common folk. Josepine Clare, a Unionist whose husband fled the Confederacy and joined the Union Army, described the condition of common soldiers in Mississippi. Upon seeing train cars loaded with soldiers, she remarked that ‘‘their clothing was all tattered and torn, and their general appearance was shabby in the extreme’’ (Clare 1865, p. 13). Clare lamented the war and suffering ‘‘brought on these poor illiterate people by a diabolical class of men who wanted to crush the poor man and sink him beneath the level of the negro’’ (Clare 1865, p. 13). The suffering of war was not limited to the lower classes of society, but those civilians who had little to begin with faced dire situations as the war continued. The Union blockade of Confederate ports combined with Southern planters’ continued focus on cotton production (instead of planting much-needed corn and wheat) caused a food shortage in the Confederacy. In 1863 women living in cities throughout the South were unable to afford food because merchants were charging outrageous prices for scarce commodities. Faced with watching their children starve, women took to the streets, often breaking into shops and taking what food they needed. The most famous bread riot occurred in the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, in April 1863. When city authorities were unable to disperse the women, Jefferson Davis appeared and offered his own money to the crowd, but also threatened to order the militia to fire on those women who did not return home. The war intensified the class divisions in the Confederacy and ultimately led many common citizens to criticize the Confederate government and call for an end to the war. Even the presence of the dreaded Yankees seemed better than starvation.
Union Military Draft As the war went on longer than most Northern citizens had hoped it would, a growing need for troops caused
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the Union Government to call for conscription. The only men who were exempt from the draft in the North were those who were too ill, too old, or who could claim that service would be an undue hardship. As in the Confederacy, wealthy men could avoid being drafted by hiring a substitute, but the Enrollment Act included an additional provision allowing conscripts to pay a commutation fee of $300 to avoid serving. This loophole angered some working-class men, not just because only the rich could afford the fee, but also because it put a limit on the amount paid to substitutes. Martin Ryerson of Newton, New Jersey, wrote to William H. Seward, then Secretary of State, complaining that ‘‘a rich man, who without this might have had to pay $1,000 or $2,000, or more, for a substitute, can now get off for $300, and the poor, and those of middling circumstances, say they ought to have been left to make their own bargains’’ (Perman 1998, p. 192). Ryerson believed that the exemption clause was well meant but had the unintended consequence of increasing class tensions and was therefore ‘‘an unfortunate mistake.’’
New York Draft Riots Class tensions surrounding conscription resulted in violence during the New York draft riots of July 1863. Workers in the city, mostly Irish laborers, reacted angrily to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 and the Enrollment Act of March 1863. These white workers resented the idea of being forced to fight to free slaves. Many feared former slaves would move to the North to compete with white workers for jobs. The rioters attacked draft officials, African Americans, and any men who looked wealthy enough to pay the commutation fee. Ellen Leonard was visiting relatives in the city and witnessed the first night of the riot. On the following morning, Leonard wrote, she saw ‘‘rough-looking men’’ and ‘‘hordes of ragged children’’ roaming the streets and concluded that ‘‘the ‘dangerous classes’ were evidently wide awake’’ (Leonard 1867?, p. 5). A member of a family wealthy enough to visit New York on a shopping trip, Leonard did not understand the class tensions that caused the destruction and violence. This lack of understanding is also evident in a report on the New York Police Department’s role in suppressing the violence. This account suggested that although ‘‘the riot which commenced on the first day of the draft, was ostensibly in opposition to it . . . [it] early took the character of an outbreak for the purpose of pillage, and also of outrage upon the colored population’’ (Barnes 1863, p. 5). Such perceptions of the riot were colored by common stereotypes of the poor and working class, especially immigrants, who were viewed as being less intelligent, less moral, and prone to violence. The rioters, however, were not merely committing random acts of violence and looting: They were lashing out at the people they perceived to be benefiting most from the war—African
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Americans and the wealthy. Union troops eventually had to be called in, after which peace was restored. The draft lottery in New York City, however, was suspended.
Class Divisions in the Union The North had distinct social divisions that fostered different opinions of the war’s purpose and meaning. Even patriotic workingmen were concerned about volunteering for the army and leaving their families to fend for themselves. As a result, state and local governments offered bounties to men who were willing to enlist. Within some communities, citizens took up collections to help the family members of soldiers, particularly widows and orphans. There were, however, always individuals who took advantage of these arrangements, which caused some citizens to criticize volunteers who sought bounties rather than enlisting from pure patriotism. In addition, there was a type of fraud known as bounty jumping, which consisted of enlisting, collecting the bounty, and then deserting the army—often to travel to another city and enlist again for another bounty payment. Frank Wilkeson, the son of a journalist, ran away from home before he was sixteen and enlisted in the Union Army by lying about his age. Wilkeson was scandalized by the number of bounty jumpers he encountered. From his privileged point of view the recruits who accepted bounties were ‘‘blackguards, thieves and ruffians.’’ Wilkeson remarked that ‘‘if there was a man in all that shameless crew who had enlisted from patriotic motives, I did not see him’’ (quoted in Commager 2000, p. 96). Wilkeson eventually earned an officer’s commission, which allowed him to rise above the ranks of the enlisted men, whom he believed mostly ‘‘belonged to the criminal classes’’ (Commager 2000, p. 96).
Class and Politics The Democratic and Republican parties both exploited class tensions in an attempt to get the support of the working class. The Republicans appealed to the ideals of free labor, which valued the work of independent men who could rise up and progress by their own efforts. Free labor stood in opposition to slave labor, which privileged the wealthy slave owner. During the war Republicans and their spokesmen in the media continued to assert that a war to end slavery benefited common laborers. The Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, for example, ran an article that summarized the war as a conflict between Northern free labor and Southern slave labor, and asserted that ‘‘no classes are so vitally interested in the great conflict now waging . . . as the working classes’’ (April 29, 1863). Some farmers and laborers in the Union agreed with this sentiment, believing that ending slavery would provide opportunities for all workingmen. By contrast, the Democratic Party used fear and racism to urge white workers to oppose emancipation
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and the Republican Party. Many white laborers, particularly in areas bordering slave states, were afraid of losing their jobs to emancipated slaves who could be expected to move northward after the war. In Indiana, the New Albany Daily Ledger fueled tensions by condemning the proposed Emancipation Proclamation and encouraging Unionists not ‘‘to spill their blood or squander their hard earnings for the purpose of giving freedom to four millions of Negroes, who would soon overrun them by hundreds of thousands’’ (October 27, 1862). Republican newspapers attempted to counter such assertions, although their efforts were not always very enlightened. The Cincinnati Gazette, for example, claimed that after the war former slaves would return to their former homes, because ‘‘with freedom in the South the natural drift of the blacks is towards the tropics’’ (September 25, 1862). While emancipation’s future impact was a contentious issue, many in the working class had more immediate reason to be concerned about the war’s economic repercussions. Everyday items increased in price, including staples such as milk and butter, which by 1864 had increased in cost by almost 600 percent (Williams 2005, p. 115). Most lower-class families, regardless of their political leanings, were eager for the war to end so that they could resume daily lives less marked by deprivation and suffering. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, David M. The Draft Riots in New York, July, 1863: The Metropolitan Police: Their Services during Riot Week, Their Honorable Record. New York: Baker & Godwin, 1863. Cairnes, John Elliott. The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest, 2nd ed. New York: Carleton, 1862. Clare, Josepine. Narrative of the Adventures and Experiences of Mrs. Josepine Clare, a Resident of the South at the Breaking Out of the Rebellion. Lancaster, PA: Pearson & Geist, 1865. Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2000. Jones, John Beauchamp. A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, vol. 1. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1866. Kent, E. C. ‘‘Four Years in Secessia’’: A Narrative of a Residence at the South Previous to and during the Southern Rebellion, up to November 1863, 2nd ed. Buffalo, NY: Franklin Printing House, 1865. Leonard, Ellen. Three Days Reign of Terror, or the July Riots in 1863, in New York. New York, 1867. Marten, James. Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Perman, Michael, ed. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Shanks, John P. C. (John Peter Clever). Vindication of Major General John C. Fremont, Against the Attacks of the Slave Power and Its Allies. Washington, DC: Scammell, 1862. Williams, David. A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom. New York: New Press, 2005. Stephen Rockenbach
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Housing
Housing during the Civil War era varied depending on one’s social and economic status, whether one was free or enslaved, and whether one lived in the North or the South, in the city or in the country.
Urban Housing Beginning in the 1840s and 1850s the North became increasingly urbanized and modern as people sought
jobs in factories. Those who could not afford their own houses lived in apartments, boardinghouses, or tenements. The better one’s income, the better the housing one could afford. The lower class in the North was comprised mostly of very poor immigrants, the largest group of which was the Irish Catholics, who lived in crowded slums ridden with crime and disease. Andrew Miller, a boardinghouse keeper in Charleston, South Carolina, lived in his boardinghouse along with ‘‘several other White lodgers occupying different rooms,’’ (p. 90) relays Bernard L. Herman in his article ‘‘Slave and Servant Housing in Charleston, 1770–1820.’’ The bottom front room was occupied by a nearby grocer, while Miller lived in the bottom back room. Behind the boardinghouse approximately fifty feet away was the kitchen (a separate building), and the upstairs room above the kitchen was occupied by a slave. Townhouses were a step up from the boardinghouse. Typical townhouses, Herman notes, contained ‘‘a ground-floor commercial area and upper-story living spaces’’ (p. 90). The front entrance led directly from the street into the front shop area, while a back or side entrance led into the ground-floor back room and stairs
Susan Downey House, Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County, West Virginia. Susan Downey’s house in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, provides a useful example of the housing available to urban dwellers at the time of the Civil War. The Library of Congress
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leading to the upper level. On the upper level, living quarters included a front parlor and a smaller back dining room. The kitchen was often a separate building behind the townhouse. The plots of urban townhouses usually also contained a washhouse, privy, stable, carriage house, and other buildings such as a garden shed or warehouse. Urban homeowners lived in single-family dwellings rather than townhouses. Residences ranged from mansions to multistory houses to cottages or cabins, depending on one’s income. Typical middle-class homes had public rooms for receiving guests. These included a hall, parlor, dining room, and possibly a library in wealthier homes. The parlor was used to receive visitors and also as a gathering place for the family to read, write, play games, talk with one another, or do needlework. Bedrooms were considered private rooms and were located
upstairs in multistory dwellings, so as to be inaccessible to guests. Wealthier families had nurseries for the children, often on the third floor. Work rooms included the kitchen, pantry, laundry, scullery and cellar. Foodstuffs were stored in the pantry or cellar and prepared in the kitchen. Vegetables and dishes were washed in the scullery. In less well-to-do homes, the kitchen also served as the scullery and the laundry. Cooking was usually done on wood-burning stoves, which were standard in Northern middle-class homes, but in rural and lower-class homes, food was prepared on an open fireplace hearth. Heating was usually provided by one or more fireplaces. Wealthier families had wallpaper and carpeting.
Country Homes North and South Rural homes in the North were frame or log farm houses, one or two stories, and were heated by fireplaces
Marye’s House, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Housing and property throughout the South was damaged both by fighting and by Union troops as they sought to destroy anything that could be of aid to the Confederacy. The Library of Congress
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or woodstoves. Like urban homes, the number of rooms and type of furnishings varied with the income of the owners, but farmhouses were surrounded by much more land than urban homes. Floride Clemson, a Southern aristocratic woman, kept a diary during the Civil War and also wrote letters to her mother, who had married and moved to the North. These letters were edited by Charles M. McGee Jr. and Ernest M. Lander Jr. in the 1989 collection A Rebel Came Home: The Diary and Letters of Floride Clemson, 1863–1866. Describing one of the houses she saw in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Floride wrote, ‘‘The scenery about here is magnificent. . . . They have a beautiful view of the mountains, and some intervening rolling ground. There are trees at the back of the house, a lovely garden at one side, nice grounds on the other, and terraces and the view in front’’ (p. 123). Southern rural homes ranged from similar small farms to large plantations. Plantation homes were larger than typical farmhouses. A small plantation might have seventeen rooms and sit on a few hundred acres. One of the largest plantations was Nottoway Plantation, built in 1858 in southeastern Louisiana. Sitting on 6,200 acres, the sugar-cane plantation was once worked by 155 slaves. The 53,000-square-foot house had sixty-four rooms, seven staircases, and five galleries.
Housing for Slaves Urban slave holders had few slaves, usually domestic workers, so often no special housing existed for the slaves. Because slave owners wanted their slaves to be close at hand whenever they required something of them, their sleeping quarters were close to where they worked, in rooms above the kitchen, storehouse, shops, and carriage houses, or in attic spaces. According to John Michael Vlach in his article ‘‘Evidence of Slave Housing in Washington,’’ by 1850 Southern cities also had ‘‘large shanty towns occupied principally by blacks, both slave and free’’ (p. 67). On large plantations in the South, Willis D. Weatherford relates in the 1910 book Negro Life in the South, Present Conditions and Needs, housing for slaves consisted of ‘‘long rows of log cabins—mostly one-roomed’’ that stretched away form the plantation house (p. 62). Albert Castel in 2000 compiled Tom Taylor’s Civil War, drawing on Taylor’s letters and diaries. In writing to his wife about his travels down the Mississippi River on the steamer Silver Moon, Taylor described the ‘‘fine large plantations with capacious one story residences surrounded by village of [slave] cabins all neatly white-
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washed and generally located in groves that dotted the shores’’ (pp. 59–60). Little care was taken to ensure the comforts of slaves. Weatherford quotes Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) describing his cabin as having a door that contained large cracks and hung on ‘‘uncertain hinges’’ (p. 63). Washington also describes his cabin as having a dirt floor with a large, deep hole in the center of the dirt floor that was covered with boards and used to store sweet potatoes for the winter. W. D. Weatherford, in his travels in 1908, found that housing conditions for the ‘‘negro farmer have not changed since slavery’’ very much. He writes, ‘‘I have traveled throughout the country in almost every section of the South, and the negro farm houses consist usually of one, two, or three rooms, poorly furnished, poorly kept, with no pictures, and with the barest necessities for living’’ (pp. 63–64). Housing for civilians during the Civil War ranged from luxurious to austere; lower-class civilians and slaves occupied even more basic domiciles. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Jessica. Wounds of Returning: Race, Memory, and Property on the Postslavery Plantation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Castel, Albert, compiler. Tom Taylor’s Civil War. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Fitts, Robert K. ‘‘The Landscapes of Northern Bondage.’’ Historical Archaeology 30, no. 2 (1996): 54–73. Herman, Bernard L. ‘‘Slave and Servant Housing in Charleston, 1770–1820.’’ Historical Archaeology 33, no. 3 (1999): 88–101. McGee, Charles M. Jr., and Ernest M. Lander, Jr., eds. A Rebel Came Home: The Diary and Letters of Floride Clemson, 1863–1866. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. Nottoway Plantation House. Available from http:// www.nps.gov/. Vlach, John Michael. ‘‘Evidence of Slave Housing in Washington.’’ Washington History (Fall/Winter 1993–94): 64–74. Volo, Dorothy Denneen, and James M. Volo. Daily Life in Civil War America. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Weatherford, Willis D. Negro Life in the South, Present Conditions and Needs. New York: Young Men’s Christian Association Press, 1910. Sandra Johnston
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Religion n
Religion Overview
America’s predominant religion in the Civil War era was Protestant Christianity, specifically Protestant Christianity of the Reformed (Calvinist) or Free Church (Anabaptist) traditions. The same is true of America in the early twenty-first century but to a lesser extent. The great waves of immigration that were to come during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries increased the proportions of Americans who were Jewish, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Eastern Orthodox. The late twentieth century brought the appearance in America of religions that stand outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, and secular humanism. In the early twenty-first century the non-Judeo-Christian religions still claimed only minorities of adherents in America—and except for secular humanism, tiny minorities—but at the time of the Civil War, all the American adherents of these nonJudeo-Christian faiths could probably have been gathered comfortably in a single room, if not a broom closet. Alongside America’s large Protestant majority in the Civil War era was a small but thriving Jewish minority and a much larger and more rapidly growing minority of Roman Catholics. Adherents of the Catholic faith had come to America since colonial times, when seventeenth-century Maryland had harbored a significant minority of Catholic settlers. During the decades immediately preceding the Civil War, America’s Catholic population had burgeoned thanks to massive Irish and German immigration. Aside from the factors that had drawn Europeans to America for more than two centuries by that time, the Irish were driven by famine and poverty in their native land and the Germans by political upheavals in theirs. The influx of so many foreign-born persons of a religious persuasion hitherto marginal in America prompted some Americans in the 1850s to question whether the country’s free institutions would continue to thrive if a large segment of the populace came to hold a different religious and philosophical allegiance. Such con-
cerns were briefly reflected in the mid-decade popularity of the American Party (labeled the ‘‘Know-Nothing Party’’ by its critics). It soon faded from the national scene as a result of the growing intensity of the slavery debate. America’s large Protestant majority was in some ways unusually unified in the mid-nineteenth century, thanks in large part to a series of religious revivals spanning the previous half century known collectively as the Second Great Awakening. The original Great Awakening had occurred in the early to mid-eighteenth century. The second got under way shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century. In what were then the western portions of settled America—the regions between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, the Second Great Awakening was marked by fervent camp meetings and indefatigable circuit riders. Cane Ridge was the largest example of the frontier camp meetings. Held in 1801 on a ridge in Kentucky that had been named by Daniel Boone a generation before, the Cane Ridge meeting drew perhaps as many as 10,000 worshippers, seekers, or just plain curious visitors. Its size and exuberant emotionalism assured its fame, but also made it atypical of the many camp meetings that followed throughout the country—smaller and less sensational gatherings but no less fervent. The most famous of the itinerant preachers known as circuit riders was Peter Cartwright (1785–1872). First active in Kentucky, Cartwright subsequently moved to Illinois. Forthright, fearless, and sometimes flamboyant, Cartwright preached to Andrew Jackson and once ran for U.S. Congress against an ambitious young man named Abraham Lincoln. He and many others like him, less colorful if no less courageous, helped spread fervent Bible-based Christianity throughout regions in which the first generation of pioneer settlers had sometimes left at least the practical elements of their religion behind when they moved westward. In the East the revivals took a somewhat more familiar form, though even there religious leaders were
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quick to innovate in their methods if not in their doctrine. Chief of the innovators was Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875), the most prominent preacher of the Second Great Awakening. He encouraged those interested in conversion to Christianity to sit in a special pew known as the ‘‘Anxious Bench,’’ situated near the front of his auditoria, and he urged all who had not done so to take action immediately in seeking the forgiveness of their sins through Jesus Christ. Finney’s protracted meetings featured preaching in the same town every evening for as much as six weeks. By the time his Rochester, New York, meeting came to end, local saloonkeepers were complaining that Finney was putting them out of business by converting all their erstwhile patrons. The vibrant Christianity of the revivals tended to blur denominational lines among most Protestants and create a sense of unity among earnest believers. The Methodists were the largest denomination in America, followed by the Baptists, with the Presbyterians a distant third. The Cane Ridge camp meeting saw the cooperation of all three denominations; in this respect it was not unusual. During the Civil War it was not at all unusual for soldiers to avail themselves of relatively rare opportunities for worship in established churches by attending a Methodist, a Baptist, and a Presbyterian service at different times during a single Sunday. Some of the clergy might occasionally quibble about the relative merits of infant baptism as opposed to the biblical version of that ordinance, but the men and women in the pews seemed to take little interest in such disputes. Yet at the same time that the era of the Civil War saw an unusual degree of unity among Christians of the various Protestant denominations in America, it also witnessed a sharp and deep divide—a veritable chasm—between North and South. Many Southerners had long professed that there was no conflict between their Christianity and their ownership of slaves and support for the system of slavery, and they had had little use for Christians who claimed the contrary. Methodism had not grown in the South as it had in the North because of that denomination’s strong stand against slavery. Not until the American Methodist leader Francis Asbury’s decision to direct his preachers to keep quiet about slavery, at least in the South, did Methodism begin to grow rapidly in that region as it had already been doing in the North. But Northern Christians did not remain silent. The abolitionist movement, born in the 1830s, became almost a religious crusade, with more than 85 percent of its membership within the ranks of evangelical Christians and one of its most vocal leaders none other than Charles Finney. Southerners expressed outrage that anyone could question their Christianity or condemn the institution of slavery. For a time, denominational leaders in the North, in contrast to the more independent Finney, tried to suppress the antislavery zeal of their
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members. When Methodist bishops tried to squelch members’ agitation for a stronger denominational position against slavery in 1843, the disgruntled antislavery zealots within the denomination consulted their Bibles, found justification there neither for slavery nor for bishops and broke away to form a small new denomination called the Wesleyan Methodists, uncompromisingly opposed to slavery—and without bishops. Enough antislavery Methodists remained in the larger denomination to precipitate a showdown at the Methodist general conference the following year. Proslavery Methodists from the South were determined to make no concession to any sort of suggestion that the South’s ‘‘peculiar institution’’ was sinful. The result was a complete split of the denomination into separate Northern and Southern wings. The following year the Baptists broke along the same lines, and the Presbyterians subsequently became similarly polarized. The Episcopalians followed suit in March 1861, after several states had already seceded to form the Confederacy. The complete sectional division of all the largest denominations in a country where religion was as important as it was in the United States was a major harbinger of the coming clash between North and South, freedom and slavery. Though divided between North and South, Americans continued to show much interest in their religion and to take much solace from it. The late 1850s saw another wave of revival in the North, known as the Businessmen’s Revival, because of a strong response in many cities. When the war broke out, Americans on both sides were quick to invoke God’s aid and to hope, and sometimes assume, that He would be on their side. Both sides took active steps to promote the moral and spiritual welfare of the young men who went off to fight. In the Confederate armies this spiritual nurture took the form of a few chaplains and a number of preachers who traveled through the army’s camps as ‘‘army missionaries.’’ In the Union armies there was a larger number of chaplains (including some Roman Catholic priests and several Jewish rabbis) and the well-organized ministrations of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), whose delegates circulated through the armies, preaching and handing out Christian literature. Both sides experienced vigorous religious revivals within their armies during the war. Thus even in the nation’s deepest division, its religious faith continued to be a common bond between the warring factions, even if they were not always quite aware of the fact. Steven E. Woodworth
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Protestant Christianity
Religion in the United States from the colonial period through the Civil War was dominated by Protestant forms of Christianity. The Protestant churches as a group were not only religious institutions but also a
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major influence on the general culture of the United States. Such shared values as a belief in the importance of hard work, the notion that virtue should be rewarded, and the concept of religion as the cornerstone of civilized society, were taught in homes and public schools as well as in the churches. As the church historian George Marsden has noted, the most popular textbooks in American grade schools after 1826, McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, were thoroughly Protestant in content. They included lessons with such titles as ‘‘No Excellence without Labor,’’ ‘‘Respect for the Sabbath Rewarded,’’ ‘‘The Bible, the Best of Classics,’’ and ‘‘The Righteous Never Forsaken’’ (Marsden 1991, pp. 10–11). It is important to remember, however, that Great Britain, a colonial power with a Protestant state church, was not the only European nation that established settlements in North America. The thirteen British colonies along the Eastern seaboard had been preceded by the Roman Catholic missions of New Spain in the American Southwest and New France in what is now Canada. Given the rivalry between France and Great Britain for possession of the northern portion of the continent, as well as the bloody history of religious wars in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the settlers of New England and the Middle Atlantic colonies were often defensive about their Protestantism. Fear of the ‘‘Popish menace’’ associated with the French and Spanish monarchies led to widespread anti-Catholic feeling that persisted among American Protestants well past the end of the Civil War in 1865 (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 53). Thus in the period between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Protestantism was closely linked with patriotism as well as with civic virtue in the minds of many Americans. It is also important to recall that some of the original colonies as well as the mother country had established churches. Because the early settlers of New England and the colonies further south were accustomed to having a state church as part of the general pattern of European government, the question in their minds was not whether to have an established church but rather which church to establish. By degrees Congregationalism became the established church of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, while the Anglican (Episcopal) Church was established in Virginia and received some degree of public support in the Carolinas, New Jersey, Georgia, and New York. Of the original thirteen colonies, only Rhode Island and Maryland were founded without a state church, and in Maryland the religious freedom originally guaranteed in the colony’s 1649 Act of Toleration did not last. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the colonial state churches were moving toward disestablishment. By 1775, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland, and Virginia were the only colonies that still had official state churches at all, and even
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they generally practiced an informal toleration of other bodies. The Revolution brought an end to the establishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia. Congregationalism lasted a bit longer in New England, however; it was not until 1818 that Connecticut finally adopted a state constitution that disestablished the Congregational Church. Connecticut’s example was followed by New Hampshire in 1819 and Massachusetts in 1833. The existence of state churches in the thirteen original colonies, however, is part of the background for understanding the Second Great Awakening of the nineteenth century. People who had found the older churches lacking in spiritual vitality after the Revolution were open to religious revivalism as well as the various moral crusades (particularly abolitionism and the temperance movement) of the 1820s and 1830s.
Changing Denominational Mix The decades preceding the Civil War were marked by several other changes in the denominational landscape of American Protestantism. One was the explosive growth of the churches that were able to adapt most readily to the challenges of the frontier—the Baptists, Methodists, and Disciples of Christ (Marsden 1991, p. 12). By 1844, when the Methodist churches divided between North and South over the issue of slavery, they represented the largest religious body in the United States (Ahlstrom 1973 p. 437). The denominations that had dominated American Protestantism in the late eighteenth century—the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists— also grew in numbers, but much more slowly (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 454). An important reason for the slower growth of the more traditional churches was their insistence on an educated ministry. The oldest colleges in the United States, including Harvard (1636) and Yale (1701), had been founded specifically to train clergy. Thomas Clap (1703–1767), the fifth rector and first president of Yale, revised the college’s constitution in line with his conviction that ‘‘the Principal Design of the Institution of this College was to educate Persons for the Work of the Ministry’’ (Bainton 1985, p. 12). Emphasis on education as a prerequisite for ordination, however, led to a growing division between churches that accepted this principle and those that regarded personal conversion and charismatic preaching as the primary qualifications for ministry. Even during the first Great Awakening, Clap and his likeminded colleagues opposed the open-air preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerant revivalists. The educational requirements for ordination in the Congregational, Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches were raised further by the establishment of theological seminaries alongside medical and law schools as graduate institutions at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By 1812 Princeton had separated its seminary from its
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Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863. The Lutheran Theological Seminary saw fierce fighting on its grounds during the Battle of Gettysburg. Both Union and Confederate soldiers used seminary buildings during the fight, transforming the multi-storied dormitory pictured here into a observation tower and hospital. The Library of Congress
undergraduate college, followed by Harvard in 1815 and Yale in 1822 (Bainton 1985, pp. 79–81). The General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted to establish the General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1817, although the first buildings were not constructed until 1827. The Lutherans, separated from the mainstream of American Protestantism by their liturgical forms of worship as well as language differences, founded a theological seminary at Gettysburg in 1826 (Nelson 1980, pp. 128–129). The school’s campus later became
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the site of fierce fighting on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863. The relative informality of Methodist and Baptist worship, as well as their deemphasizing of formal education as preparation for ministry, helped these churches to thrive on the western frontier. Peter Cartwright (1785–1872), a Methodist circuit rider and one of the outstanding preachers of the Second Great Awakening, even regarded higher education as a hindrance to the spread of the Gospel. Converted at a camp meeting in
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1801, Cartwright said, ‘‘I have seen so many educated preachers who forcibly reminded me of lettuce growing under the shade of a peach-tree, or like a gosling that had got the straddles by wading in the dew, that I turn away sick and faint’’ (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 438). Another change in the denominational composition of American Protestantism prior to the Civil War was the emergence of separate black churches. In 1816, Richard Allen (1760–1831), a former slave, became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a denomination organized in Philadelphia that had about 25,000 members by 1860. In 1821 another black Methodist body, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion (AME Zion) was formed in New York City. As the Union armies moved deeper into the South toward the end of the Civil War, both AME churches opened missions among the freedpeople. They grew exponentially over the next few decades, the AME counting 452,725 members by 1896 and the AME Zion 349,788 (Ahlstrom 1973, pp. 708–709). The first black Baptist denomination, the Colored Primitive Baptists, was organized in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War.
Sectarianism The nineteenth century witnessed a growth in the number and variety of denominations and smaller groups (sects) within American Protestantism as well as an overall increase in the number of church members. European visitors to the United States from the 1830s onward remarked on the sheer number of different religious bodies in the country. Even in the 1930s, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then a graduate student in New York City, recorded in his diary, ‘‘It has been granted to the Americans less than any other nation on earth to realize the visible unity of the Church of God’’ (Bonhoeffer 1965, p. 94). The distinction between a denomination and a sect is not always easy to draw, but in general a denomination can be defined as a socially and theologically stable body of Christians with a conventional church structure, whereas a sect is a group that develops on the periphery of a religion or denomination and eventually secedes from it, developing its own set of doctrines and religious practices as it separates from the parent body (Stark and Bainbridge 1979, pp. 121–122). Moreover, while denominations typically attract people from a range of social backgrounds, occupations, and educational levels, sects are more likely to appeal to those who feel disadvantaged or marginalized (Ahlstrom 1973, pp. 473–474). In the period between the 1820s and the outbreak of the Civil War, the Second Great Awakening and other revival movements helped to prepare the ground for new sects that emerged from mainstream Protestantism but differed from it in a number of ways. The emphasis of nineteenth-century revivalists on ‘‘heart religion’’ rather
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than theological precision and on immediate spiritual experience rather than a sense of the historical continuity of the Church favored the growth of movements led by charismatic individuals who were not ordained by or identified with the traditional churches. Many of these persons developed their own idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible or, as in the case of Joseph Smith (1805–1844), claimed to be recipients of a new set of inspired writings. William Miller (1782–1849) was a Vermont farmer who had left the Baptist Church as a young adult but returned to it after a conversion experience in 1816. He began an intense study of the Bible and came to the conclusion that the Second Coming of Christ would occur in 1843. He did not begin to preach or lecture publicly about his calculations, however, until 1831. By 1840 Miller’s ideas had gained national attention, and local meetings were organized all over the United States to summon people to repentance and preparation for the Lord’s return. Although Miller initially predicted the Second Coming to occur at some point between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844, he was persuaded by some of his followers to revise his calculations and set the final date as October 22, 1844. When that day— known as the Great Disappointment—came and went, most of Miller’s followers abandoned the movement. Some, however, followed a new leader, Ellen H. White (1827–1915). White had earlier left the Methodist Church to join Miller’s movement in 1842. After the Great Disappointment of 1844, White began to have visions and claimed to have a spirit of prophecy. In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, White and her followers formally established the Seventh-day Adventist Church, known in the twenty-first century for its distinctive views on diet and health as well as for its general cultural conservatism. The other major sect to emerge from American Protestantism in the 1840s was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, claimed to have been guided by the angel Moroni to a set of golden plates buried in a hillside near Palmyra, New York, in 1827. Smith spent the next three years translating the plates and published the result as the Book of Mormon in 1830. His new revelation, whose language echoes that of the King James Bible, began to attract followers within weeks of its publication. By the early 1840s the first Mormon colonies had begun their westward migration, chased from one Midwestern town after another by citizens offended by Smith’s threats of violence against opponents, his claims to be a ‘‘Second Mohammed’’ (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 506), and by the Mormon practice of plural marriage. After Smith was lynched by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in June 1844, Brigham Young (1801–1877) led the Mormons further west to
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what was then Utah territory, becoming its first governor as well as the second leader of the Latter-day Saints.
Missionary Activity The period from 1815 to 1914 has sometimes been described as the ‘‘great century’’ of Christian missions (Latourette 1970, p. 225). In the United States, missions to the Indians began in the colonial period and continued as settlers moved westward in the years preceding the Civil War. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), an important figure in the first Great Awakening and an eminent theologian, served as a missionary to the Housatonic Indians in western Massachusetts (then a frontier area) from 1750 until 1757, when he left Stockbridge reluctantly to assume the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). By 1798 Connecticut had its own Missionary Society, which described its purpose as ‘‘Christianiz[ing] the heathen in North America’’ (Bainton 1985, p. 132). In addition to converting the Native Americans to Christianity, nineteenth-century Protestant clergy also saw missions in the West as a way of slowing the growth of Roman Catholicism in the newly opened territories. Lyman Beecher (1775–1863), another leader of the Second Great Awakening and the founder of Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, preached a sermon in early 1834 on the importance of keeping the West safe for Protestantism (Beecher 1835, pp. 10–12). Tragically, Beecher’s sermon led to the burning of a Roman Catholic convent in Boston in August 1834 (Boston Evening Transcript, August 12, 1834). Protestant missionaries were also sent to Native Americans in the southeastern states by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Congregationalist body chartered in 1812 as an outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening. Many of these missionaries, in particular Jeremiah Evarts (1781–1831), the secretary of the ABCFM, were opponents of President Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian removal and lobbied Congress to protect the Indians from forced deportation to the West. Evarts was also instrumental in opening missionary work to unmarried women. Under his leadership, the ABCFM sent Ellen Stetson (1783–1848) as the first single woman missionary to the Indians in 1821 and Betsey Stockton (1798?–1865), an African American born in slavery, as a missionary to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) in 1822 (Maxfield 1998, pp. 172–175). Evarts’s acceptance of women as missionaries inspired Mary Lyon (1797–1849) to open Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837 to give women their first opportunity for higher education equal to that offered by the men’s colleges. Lyon hoped that many of the school’s graduates would enter the mission field. Writing to her fellow New Englanders in 1843 to support missions at home and abroad, Lyon singled out the work of the ABCFM:
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I took a survey of Modern Missions. What a sublime spectacle! I glanced over the history of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions—the glory of our country—the corner stone of all our voluntary benevolent associations. I love to go back in its history more than thirty years. . . Though I was but a child [in 1812], I love even now the very thought that I can remember even the beginnings of this great and glorious enterprise (Lyon 1843, p. 15 ).
Although Lyon’s seminary was not chartered as a college until 1888, it paved the way for the women’s colleges founded during or shortly after the Civil War, including Vassar (1861), Smith (1875), and Wellesley (1875).
Women’s Ministries In addition to the opening of the mission field, the nineteenth century witnessed other new developments in the ministries of women outside as well as inside the Protestant churches. It was ironic, given the opposition of many American Protestants to Roman Catholicism, that one of the pioneers of women’s ministries in the early nineteenth century was Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), an Episcopalian who became a Roman Catholic in 1805. Seton founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph in 1809, the first women’s religious order that began in the United States. She was also the first native-born American to be declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, being canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1975. Women in the Lutheran and Episcopal churches in the 1850s had a new opportunity for service as deaconesses. The office of deaconess had existed in the early Christian churches, as is evident in the New Testament, but had largely disappeared in the European churches by the end of the thirteenth century. In the nineteenth century, however, some clergy in the Church of England and the Lutheran churches of Germany decided to revive the ancient office. As the early deaconesses had cared for the sick and helped to prepare women converts for Christian baptism, the nineteenth-century founders of deaconess movements trained women for service as teachers (particularly in girls’ schools and foreign missions), lay ministers, and nurses. The first Episcopal deaconesses in the United States were consecrated in the Diocese of Maryland in 1855 (Rich 1907, n.p.). William Passavant (1821–1894), a devout Lutheran layman, founded an Institution of Protestant Deaconesses in Philadelphia modeled on the pattern of the deaconess motherhouse established by Theodor Fliedner in Kaiserswerth, Germany, in 1836. The first American Lutheran deaconesses began their work in Passavant’s institution in 1849 (Weiser 1962, pp. 54–55). Although the ordination of women to the ministry was unthinkable in most American Protestant churches at the time of the Civil War, Antoinette Louise Brown
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(1825–1891), an ardent abolitionist and a leader of the women’s suffrage movement, was ordained by the Congregational Church of South Butler, New York, in 1853. She was thus the first clergywoman in a mainstream Protestant denomination in the United States.
Alternatives to Orthodox Protestantism The Civil War affected the American churches by the sheer number of its casualties as well as by the splits that divided most mainstream Protestant bodies during the abolitionist controversies of the 1840s and 1850s. It is often forgotten that the Civil War cost more American lives (363,000 Union, 200,000 Confederate) than any other conflict in the nation’s history, including World War II (408,000). Moreover, this loss occurred when the total population of the country was only 31.5 million, including slaves (Census of 1860). There were many families in both South and North that had to cope with profound grief as well as with the economic dislocations and hardships associated with war. People who had been raised as Protestant Christians responded in various ways to the human devastation resulting from the war. Some, such as the writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce, were so traumatized by their combat experiences as to give up belief in any meaning to life at all, let alone a religious significance. Bierce wrote toward the end of his life that he had basically given up the traditional Christian belief in an afterlife: In this matter of immortality, people’s beliefs appear to go along with their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal; and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much about the matter, one way or another (Bierce 1912, p. 35).
John Wesley Powell, the son of a Methodist minister who became a famous explorer and geologist, dismissed the Christianity in which he had been reared as ‘‘ghostlore’’ (Carter 1971, p. 5). Other survivors of the war were attracted to spiritualist movements on the fringes of Christianity. These groups offered answers to questions raised by the war about life after death. Although American spiritualism had its beginnings in the 1840s, with the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York, and their mysterious abilities of ‘‘channeling’’ the spirits of the departed, the movement grew rapidly in the years after 1865, as thousands of bereaved families asked for ‘‘messages’’ from loved ones killed in battle. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln gave the movement additional publicity by consulting spiritualists in the White House after the death of her son Willie in 1863 and even more frequently after her husband’s assassination in 1865 (Ahlstrom 1973, p. 489). Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), the founder of a utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana, was
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converted to spiritualism in 1856 while serving the Pierce administration as a diplomat in Italy. After publishing a book about his experiences of the occult in 1860, Owen received an official invitation to the White House in 1862 to give a lecture on his new beliefs. Owen’s presentation prompted a classic comment from President Lincoln: ‘‘Well, for those who like that sort of thing, I should think it is just about the sort of thing they would like’’ (Fornell 1964, p. 118). Although the national organization of spiritualists formed in 1863 counted only 50,000 members by 1893, spiritualism proved to be a long-lasting reservoir from which later investigators of the occult—from people fascinated by astrology and paranormal phenomena to the New Age enthusiasts of the late twentieth century—would freely draw. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. Bainton, Roland H. Yale and the Ministry. New York and San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. Beecher, Lyman. ‘‘A Plea for the West.’’ Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835. Bierce, Ambrose. A Cynic Looks at Life. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1912. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures, and Notes, 1928–1936, ed. Edwin H. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. ’’Burning of the Charlestown Convent.’’ Boston Evening Transcript, August 12, 1834, n.p. Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. Fornell, Earl Wesley. Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of the Expansion of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970. Lyon, Mary. A Missionary Offering, or, Christian Sympathy, Personal Responsibility, and the Present Crisis in Foreign Missions. Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1843. Marsden, George M. Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991. Maxfield, Charles A. ‘‘The Legacy of Jeremiah Evarts.’’ International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22 (1998): 172–175. Nelson, E. Clifford, ed. The Lutherans in North America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. Rich, Lawson Carter. ‘‘The Deaconesses of the Church in Modern Times.’’ The Churchman, May 4, 1907. Stark, Rodney, and William S. Bainbridge. ‘‘Of Churches, Sects, and Cults: Preliminary Concepts
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for a Theory of Religious Movements.’’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18 (1979): 117–131. Weiser, Frederick S. Love’s Response: A Story of Lutheran Deaconesses in America. Philadelphia: Board of Publication, United Lutheran Church in America, 1962. Rebecca J. Frey
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Revivals
From 1720 to the end of the Civil War, the United States was roiled by religious revivals or, as they were called, ‘‘awakenings.’’ Historians generally ascribe the first such revival, the Great Awakening, to the period 1720 to 1790, although some modern scholars have attempted to narrow it to 1739 to 1745, during the itinerant preaching of George Whitefield (1714–1770) in British North America. Whitefield’s preaching contained four elements that resurfaced in subsequent American revivals. First, his preaching did not offer an explication of biblical text; instead, it was an emotional call for a new birth for Christians. Second, his evangelical fervor was directed against the sins of avarice and consumption, which he saw as triumphant in America; people seemed more interested in the fruits of this world than in those of the next (though Whitefield himself was not above using secular methods such as printed circulars and advance men to increase attendance at his meetings). Third, although he apparently visited every part of the British American colonies,
he was particularly successful in the cities, including Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly for subsequent revivals, Whitefield’s call to Christ and salvation occurred outside the confines of established churches and doctrine and without the permission of the local ministries. His revivals featured open-air preaching that reached thousands; he was said to have addressed 23,000 people on Boston Common. Open-air meetings, to which all were invited, regardless of denomination, meant that individuals could make their own decisions about spiritual matters, and this represented an indirect assault on the spiritual authority of the established religions in the colonies.
The Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening occurred from 1800 to 1835 (though it persisted in many forms until the eve of the Civil War). Its most famous camp meeting—so called because participants would camp outdoors at the selected site, opening the event to vast numbers of seekers and creating a community, however ephemeral, organized on Christian principles—was in August 1801 in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. A crowd estimated at 10,000 came to hear local ministers, at least twentytwo, in nearly nonstop preaching over several days. The crowd was so overcome with religious fervor that men and women threw themselves on the ground in fits of religious ecstasy, and were beset by convulsions where they stood and barked like dogs. An eyewitness
Revival meeting. Many Americans attended religious revival meetings, listening to traveling ministers in outdoor settings who spread evangelical Christianity. ª North Wind Picture Archives
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reported on this improbable outpouring of the Holy Spirit: Men and women rolled over and over like a wheel or stretched in a prostrate manner . . . Still more demeaning and mortifying were the jerks . . . it appeared that the transfixed were being goaded by ‘‘a red hot iron.’’ . . . The last possible grade of mortification seemed to be couched in the barks . . . both men and women would be forced to personate that animal. (M’Nemar 2007, p. 80)
The meeting at Cane Ridge differed in degree from subsequent meetings of the period. ‘‘While revivals were almost always emotional affairs with crying, shouting and sometimes falling, excesses such as barking or treeing the devil . . . were limited. With the possible exceptions of the early meetings, they never became regular features of the Second Great Awakening’’ (Hankins 2004, p. 11). The Second Great Awakening spread north and east and had soon encompassed most of the Northern states, reaching its greatest intensity in western New York and Ohio. Indeed, an area of western New York became known as the ‘‘burned-over district’’ because it was repeatedly racked by successive waves of revivalism and the camp meetings (and the camp fires that went with them) that were essential to spreading the Gospel. One of the Protestant evangelists who had preached in the burned-over district was Charles G. Finney (1792– 1875). Finney had been a teacher and a law student until he had an epiphany in 1821, then became a minister ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1824. Immensely popular, Finney is recognized as the leader of the Second Great Awakening. His sermons and organization were quite radical; he permitted women to pray in mixed groups with men, and prayed for people by name— unconventional ideas for his time. He employed the ‘‘anxious bench,’’ where a sinner struggling with acceptance of faith might come and sit in the front of the assembly to be prayed for by everyone present, a practice that prefigures modern evangelism’s invitation to the newly saved to come to the front of the church to acknowledge their new birth. Finney accepted a faculty post at Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835 and eventually became the school’s president. He molded Oberlin into a training ground for young evangelists and ‘‘left men and women eager to demonstrate their virtue through social action’’ (Walters 1976, p. 38). Although he was staunchly antislavery, Finney, like many other otherwise outspoken evangelists, was hesitant to take a firm public stand for abolition, and he avoided advocating political action. He feared that to do so would divide the church and distract its ministers from their ordained mission, which was the saving of souls. Evangelicals believed that America was God’s chosen land selected to evangelize the world, an idea that had persisted since the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; political disunion would threaten
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America’s divine mission. They were also tormented by a fundamental conundrum—could the proponents of Christian love advocate force of arms to destroy the evil that was slavery? The Second Great Awakening prefigured modern evangelistic moments in some significant ways. It continued the expansion of lay influence in organized religion, as many revivals took place outside established churches. Finney himself, although ordained in the Presbyterian Church, admitted that he had no knowledge of the Westminster Confession, the faith’s central tenet. For Finney and his many followers, the emotionalism of revivalism demonstrated convincingly that the Holy Spirit could touch anyone. Finney eschewed the sensationalism that had marked the Cane Ridge Revival, but his camp meetings were open to all, regardless of formal religious affiliation. This reinforced the idea of interdenominational brotherhood present in earlier awakenings, an idea that spread quickly throughout Protestant America. In the Second Great Awakening, moral choices and ethical questions replaced dogma as the central concern of a committed Christian, and suggested individual action as a means to triumph over sin: The revivals’ doctrinal innovations related to free will and the agency of man in conversion. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination held that man, by nature sinful, could do nothing to assure his own salvation. But revivals could only work if man was not inherently depraved; and revivalists preached that man could, by an act of will, achieve harmony with God and thus salvation. Moreover, and perhaps more important, the use of revivals to promote conversions implied that men had the power to save others. These tenets had two important implications for the development of the antislavery movement: they declared slavery to be an unacceptable social institution, and they acknowledged that men had the capacity to eliminate evil in the world. (Hammond 1974, p. 183).
In theological terms, the concepts of Arminian doctrine began to replace those of Calvinism. Arminian doctrine stressed ‘‘free will, free grace, and unlimited hope for the conversion of all men’’ (Smith 1980, pp. 88–89). It held that humanity, by God’s grace, could either accept or reject salvation and strive for a life of perfection. God’s will, to the evangelical revivalists, is to save all who will partake of salvation, that is, by coming to Christ. To the evangelicals, human will is eternally corrupt, but by God’s will, humanity is given the freedom to choose to turn to God for salvation. Humanity, however, must live in God’s way. Christ’s sacrifice, therefore, atones for all, as opposed to Calvinism’s somewhat strained belief in Christ’s limited atonement only for the elect or those predestined to receive grace. As a consequence of such beliefs converging in the revivals, the once culturally and dogmatically dominant
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Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans (whose sway held through the Revolutionary period) were displaced by Methodists and Baptists, which grew to become the two largest denominations in the United States (Smith 1980, p. 20). There were two undercurrents to American revivalism that manifested themselves in different ways— perfectionism and millennialism. Perfectionism, which grew out of the teachings of John Wesley (1703– 1791), held that humankind could achieve perfect love of God; to be sanctified was to love God and one’s neighbor perfectly. Once sanctified, a Christian would no longer feel any inward inclination toward sin. Evangelists put great emphasis on human effort in sanctification—although it was a gift from God, a committed Christian could use that grace to grow in holiness and achieve perfection through adherence to moral law. Public testimony became important because it was a sign of the Holy Spirit acting through an individual’s emotions that gave witness to sanctification. Many evangelists believed that sanctification could be squandered, and it was a Christian’s duty to continue to strive for perfection even after sanctification occurred. The main denominational expression of the perfectionist or holiness movement during this era was the Free Methodist Church, founded in the burned-over district of western New York in 1860. It was staunchly and vocally opposed to slavery, and many of its members were active in the Underground Railroad, smuggling escaped slaves to freedom in Canada. Both Charles Finney and Phoebe Palmer (1807– 1874), the best known female evangelist of the period, integrated the need for Christian perfection into their preaching. Most importantly, the idea of Christian perfection meant that a striving mankind could advance the advent of the kingdom of heaven through right living—perfectionism could lead to the ‘‘early inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth’’ (Smith 1980, p. 105). This idea intertwined with the concept of millennialism—the belief in a golden age, Christ’s thousand-year reign on earth. Many antebellum revivalists believed that the Second Great Awakening and the burgeoning social reform movements were signs that the millennium was fast approaching. One evangelist, William Miller (1815–1874), even calculated the exact date for Christ’s return as October 22, 1844. Although Miller and his followers were disappointed and ridiculed when Christ did not appear on the appointed day, the idea of the millennium was not completely discredited in evangelical thought; in fact, it ‘‘seemed increasingly expected to be ushered in by political movements . . .’’ (Smith 1980, p. 15). Thus revivalism came to be linked to perfection and humanitarian reform through ethical principles that applied to the entire sphere of human activity—daily life, commerce, and the eradication of social evil.
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The Awakening of 1858 The last of the antebellum awakenings occurred in 1857 to 1858 and is known variously as the Awakening of 1858, the Revival of 1857 to 1858, or, most colorfully, the Businessmen’s Revival. Although it shared many of the characteristics of the two earlier awakenings, it was fundamentally different. In September 1857 the New York City missionary Jeremiah Lanphier organized a noontime prayer meeting at the Old Dutch Church on Fulton Street in lower Manhattan. His first meeting was sparsely attended, but by the following spring, 10,000 people—predominantly young professionals—were attending the prayer meetings. The awakening spread rapidly to cities in the North, West, and as far south as Baltimore. The Cleveland Herald, reporting on events in New York, noted that ‘‘A very general religious interest now prevails in many churches,’’ and that the churches were so crowded that they had to open at nine in the morning to accommodate the masses of mostly young people who sought spiritual release (Cleveland Herald, December 12, 1857). In January the same newspaper reported that as the awakening continued to grow, ‘‘Meetings are held nightly, penitents throng the altar, and a general awakening has taken place’’ (Cleveland Herald, January 16, 1858). The revival was characterized by fluidly organized meetings without a prepared plan or liturgy. Anyone present might pray, testify, or sing as long as they stayed within the agreed-upon five-minute time limit and avoided controversial topics such as water baptism and slavery. The New York Herald reproduced a notice from a noontime revival meeting in its February 21, 1858, edition that read: ‘‘Prayers and Exhortations Not to exceed five minutes In order to give all an opportunity Not more than two consecutive prayers or exhortations. No controverted points discussed’’ (New York Herald 1858). Like earlier revivals, the Businessmen’s Revival was interdenominational and placed ethical concerns and a united front against Satan above the doctrine of any one denomination. Unlike earlier revivals, these were essentially prayer meetings without a presiding minister and were urban in character. Earlier revivals had spread from west to east; the Businessmen’s Revival first engulfed the cities of the North and then spread west and into the rural North. Meetings focused almost exclusively on individual salvation and avoided any discussion of controversial social issues; news of the revival and the revival fires themselves were fanned by repeated articles in large metropolitan dailies in New York City, perhaps with an eye to increasing circulation (Long 1998). The antecedents of the Revival of 1857 to 1858 are unclear. The Old Dutch Church was near Wall Street, and a stock-market collapse in October 1857 (the Panic of 1857) may have been seen by the servants of mammon as
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an omen and warning that they should attend more assiduously to their souls than to their pocketbooks. The Panic of 1857 may also have meant that un- or underemployed stockbrokers, clerks, and other office workers now had time to spare during the day. Historian Sandra Sizer discounts such economic causes for the revival by observing that the United States had suffered panics before without engendering corresponding revivals. She believes that a concatenation of events precipitated the awakening—the long, increasingly bitter struggle around the slavery issue was more in the public consciousness following the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision in 1857 and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first serialized in 1851, which by 1857 had sold two million copies. In addition, the earlier Second Great Awakening had led more Americans to agree that slavery was a national sin. Indeed, some might have seen the Panic of 1857 as God’s punishment for the sins of both slavery and avarice. The sin of slavery touched whites in the North and South alike—white Northerners for their complicity and white Southerners for the damage slavery inflicted on social and political institutions. Sizer writes, ‘‘Portraits of the slave system in the South increasingly emphasized not only its political tyranny but also its perversion of the family, and therefore of the minds and hearts of whites as well as blacks’’ (Sizer 1979, p. 88). The revival may have been seen by some as a way to purify themselves and, by extension, the country, by acts of public contrition and conversion. This view was not necessarily shared by newspapers of the time:
could not, in fact, have been what it was after 1830 if there had not been an evangelical Protestant tradition behind it and if there had not been evangelical Protestants in it from beginning to end’’ (p. 37). As historian Vernon Burton and other scholars have observed, ‘‘religion played a large role in pro- and antislavery movements’’ (2007, p. 42). Some proslavery theologians advanced justifications of slavery based upon both the Old Testament, where slavery is mentioned, and the New, where it is not, interpreting this silence as assent. This equivocation widened the split between the militant abolitionists and religion. It may be that it was the very failure of revivalism to define the state as a moral agent for transformation or to advocate vigorous political action to end slavery that led men and women to join antislavery organizations that advocated political means to achieve their ends. Religious beliefs informed political attitudes, then as they do now, and may have prepared the larger population to support those means at the polls. As Burton observes: Most Americans remained content to imagine that fervent prayer and steady labor would be sufficient until God brought forth his government on earth. For those few who were not content to wait for the Lord, their moral choices made all the difference in driving the nation toward Civil War . . . . It was not the slavery of sin that looked to destroy the nation and confound the millennium, but the sin of slavery. (2007, p. 49) BIBLIOGRAPHY
It may not be impertinent to request these expounders of the word to leave the black man to the politicians, and to shower their hardest apostolic knocks against the devil and all his works, as developed in the daily life of the white man in Wall street and elsewhere . . . . no class needs saving grace more the Wall Street editors and the Wall street financiers . . . . (New York Herald, February 19, 1858)
Sizer notes, in discussing the antebellum revivals: Despite the intention of the Northerners, who had thought that slavery could be contained, the wrong people—people of an aristocratic and parasitical temperament—had seized the reins of government and intended to spread their pernicious system throughout the land. The situation could only be rectified, from an evangelical perspective, by an inward purification which would lead to a reformation of morals and appropriate political action. (Sizer 1979, p. 91)
There seems little doubt that the antebellum revivals had an impact on the antislavery movement; what is not as clear is the character and extent of that impact. The historian Ronald Walters points out the ‘‘long gap between religious awakenings and reform’’ (Walters 1976, p. 39), but he also observes that ‘‘Antislavery
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Burton, Orville V. The Age of Lincoln. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. Cleveland Herald, December 12, 1857. Cleveland Herald, January 16, 1858. Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Hammond, John L. ‘‘Revival Religion and Antislavery Politics.’’ American Sociological Review 39, no. 2 (1974): 175–186. Long, Kathryn T. The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. M’Nemar, Richard. ‘‘The Kentucky Revival.’’ In Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, ed. Michael McClymond. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. New York Herald, February 19, 1858. New York Herald, February 21, 1858. Sizer, Sandra. ‘‘Politics and Apolitical Religion: The Great Urban Revivals of the Late Nineteenth Century.’’ Church History 48, no. 1 (March 1979): 81–98. Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
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Walters, Ronald. The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. James Onderdonk
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The Sunday School Movement
The tradition of Sunday schools, while familiar in the early twenty-first century as places where the children of churchgoing families are taught the tenets of their faith, was not part of the popular lexicon prior to the late 1700s. Once organized, however, Sunday schools quickly grew in popularity and influence, spreading literacy and moral values while also providing evangelical Christianity with young converts. The strength of the Sunday school movement inspired some of the greatest minds of the age—among them the economist Adam Smith (1723–1790), the philosopher Thomas Malthus (1766–1836), and the Methodist theologian John Wesley (1703–1791)—to note its virtues in promoting pop-
ular education generally. As Smith noted, ‘‘No plan has promised to effect a change of manners, with equal ease and simplicity’’ as did the morals-based literacy training provided in the eighteenth-century Sunday school (Trumbull 1888, p. 118). Although the first actual Sunday school was established by Hannah Ball in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1769, the systematization of faith-based education for children is credited to one of one of Ball’s countrymen. As publisher and editor of the Gloucester Journal, Robert Raikes (1736–1811) viewed with concern the many poor children living in England’s slums who found their way into crime. ‘‘The world marches forth on the feet of small children,’’ the editor was known to proclaim in the pages of his newspaper. As the parents of these children were forced by necessity into factory jobs, Raikes realized that the task of instilling positive moral values in these children must be taken up by others. Working with a local pastor, Raikes established a Sunday school for the poor and orphaned in July 1780. Promoted in his newspaper, Raikes’s school soon had hundreds of students. At first only boys attended, but within a year, girls were also invited. As word of his work spread, Sunday schools soon appeared in other communities throughout England. By 1800, 200,000 children were enrolled in English Sunday schools, and the number had risen to 1,250,000 by 1830. By 1850, approximately two million British children attended weekly religious classes (Laqueur 1976, p. 44). Because facilities were not available in most English parish churches, the first Sunday school classes were held either in the homes of paid teachers or in rented rooms. Some were free while others charged a modest tuition, although promising but needy students often gained a financial sponsor from the upper classes. The instruction included reading, rudimentary mathematics, and catechesis; it usually lasted four or five hours each week. For many children, Sunday school was the only education they would ever receive.
The Movement Comes to America
Francis Asbury (1745–1816). Primarily a late eighteenthcentury development, the first Sunday schools sought to promote moral and religious education in children from the poorer classes, as well as some basic instruction in reading, math, and writing. Methodist bishop Francis Asbury extended these religious classes to reach slave children throughout the South, decades prior to the Civil War. The Library of Congress.
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Like other aspects of British culture, the Sunday school movement quickly jumped the Atlantic. While the Sunday instruction of children was probably ongoing in the New England colonies by 1670, the first school modeled on Raikes’s system was begun by William Elliott in Accomac County, Virginia, in the mid-1780s. The philanthropic Elliott hosted the children of poor white families in his home for Bible study, and also established a second school for slaves. The instruction of slaves became a unique outgrowth of the Sunday school movement in the United States as Elliott’s efforts inspired others in the antebellum South, such as the Methodist bishop Francis Asbury (1745–1816), to establish schools for black slaves. White adults also benefited from the Sunday school system by either learning basic
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The Sunday School Movement
skills from their children or attending the schools themselves. Many supporters of Sunday schools came from the reform-minded upper classes. Many hoped to instill discipline, a work ethic, and literacy in the working-class families that now crowded into the cities as a result of industrialization. Teachers, both men and women, also dedicated themselves to this task. James M. Garnett, a Sunday-school teacher in Virginia, reportedly encouraged his young students to ‘‘become more dutiful and affectionate children; more kind and loving brothers and sisters; more friendly and benevolent to your companions . . . and more devoted to the constant discharge of all your duties in relation to both this word and the next’’ (Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer, July 12, 1821). As Raikes had also reported, the crime rate among young people who attended a Sunday school dropped significantly, improving the safety of the community at large. Remarking on the effects of the first session of a Sunday school established in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1817, one correspondent reported in the Daily National Intelligencer that ‘‘this experiment,’’ in which ‘‘the improvement of the scholars was generally great, and in some instances astonishing,’’ demonstrates ‘‘conclusively that these schools may be rendered as useful in our small towns, as in our large cities’’ (November 26, 1817). Part of the success of the Sunday school movement was its voluntary nature. Young participants, some of whom worked long hours in factories and lived in squalor, cherished their half-day of focused study. The Rev. J. Fisk may have been only slightly overdramatizing the situation in his speech before the Vermont Sunday School Union in the winter of 1827 when he recalled one boy, ‘‘whose parents were too poor to provide him with shoes, who was found by his teacher on one snowy Sabbath in autumn, sewing old rags upon his feet, ’because,’ said he, with tears in his eyes, ’I cannot stay away from the Sabbath School’’’ (Vermont Watchman and State Gazette, December 4, 1827). Referring to the pervasive state of ‘‘unbelief and error’’ that the Rev. Lyman Beecher (1775–1863), a leader of the Second Great Awakening, had famously confronted over a halfcentury before in his ‘‘Waste Places of New England’’ sermon, Henry Clay Trumbull contended in 1888 that ‘‘America has been practically saved to Christianity and the religion of the Bible by the Sunday-school’’ (Trumbull 1888, p. 122).
Educating the Urban Poor Fuelled by the country’s growing nationalistic fervor, the Sunday school movement of the early 1800s established its deepest roots in America’s most established towns and cities. In Boston; Baltimore; Hartford, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and New York City independent schools were soon replaced by
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schools organized and monitored by societies and unions. One of the first, the First Day School Society, was established in Philadelphia in 1791 for the purpose of providing for the education of impoverished girls. In 1824 the American Sunday School Union (ASSU) was formed. The first National Sunday School Convention convened in Philadelphia in 1832, with 15 states represented among its 220 delegates (Brown 1901, p. 71). The efforts of organizing bodies such as the ASSU were reinforced by the many books and periodicals that soon appeared to guide both students and teachers: The Baptist Teacher, Sunday School Journal, Sunday School World, Sunday School Helper, Earnest Worker, and the Philadelphia-based and nationally circulating Sunday School Times. Bible societies, which sprang up during the late 1800s to facilitate international Christian outreach, often set as their first task obtaining copies of the Holy Bible for every Sunday school student who desired one and showed dedication to its study. To create a uniform common curriculum for American Sunday schools, the National Sunday School Convention adopted the International Uniform Lesson in 1872. This curriculum did not find favor with all schools, however, and soon there were other similar lesson systems available, such as the International Graded Series (also known as the Closely Graded Lessons), and the Group Graded Lessons (also known as the Departmental Graded Lessons), which provided teachers with age-appropriate curricula. Although the Sunday school movement rode the positive spirit of social reform characteristic of the Industrial Revolution, the movement also had its detractors. Raikes was hailed for his achievement, but those in classconscious England who were concerned by the nation’s upwardly mobile middle class also expressed concern as to whether a literate and intellectually stimulated lower class would be satisfied with their so-called proper station in life. Some U.S. churches also regarded the secular origins of Sunday schools with the same suspicion as Bible societies, tract societies, temperance societies, the Masonic order, and other similar groups. For Christian reformers such as Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), this secularism posed a different kind of threat: it opposed his effort to encourage all Christians, whatever their denomination, to unite under one single creed based in the New Testament. In January of 1827 Campbell warned in the pages of his periodical The Christian Baptist: ‘‘If children are taught to read in a Sunday school, their pockets must be filled with religious tracts, the object of which is either directly or indirectly to bring them under the domination of some creed or sect.’’
Sunday Schools and the Civil War In the United States, the Sunday school movement travelled along with the tides of migration to points west
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and south, and within four years of its founding the ASSU had shepherded the spread of Sunday schools across twenty-eight states. In addition to producing Christian literature attractive to younger children, the organization also sent missionaries into the Mississippi Valley, one of which, Stephen Paxson, traveled by horseback throughout the region, organizing more than 1,300 Sunday schools. The distribution of Sunday schools between the North and the South, however, was uneven in the years leading up to the Civil War. As the Massachusetts statesman, Charles Sumner (1811–1874), reported while arguing for the admission of Kansas to the Union as a free state in June of 1860: ‘‘In the Free States the Sunday-school libraries are 1,713, and contain 474,241 volumes; in the Slave States they are 275, and contain 68,080 volumes’’ (Sumner 1872, p. 42). After America became fractured by the Civil War, the effects of the Sunday school movement reached the battle lines. Among the many male Sunday school teachers to enlist in the service of their country was an Ohio Baptist, Thomas Shaw, who fought for the Union Army. Called ‘‘one of the most pious and devoted [of] Christians’’ by the memoirist Rev. James B. Rogers, Shaw, ‘‘as a poor young man, an orphan,’’ . . . ‘‘was greatly loved for his simple, fervent piety. He was a devoted and faithful Sunday School teacher’’ and ‘‘his influence in the regiment was most blessed. He had more spiritual power over the men than almost any chaplain; held prayer-meetings and exhorted his fellow soldiers to come to Jesus and follow him.’’ Noting Shaw’s death on the battlefield, Rogers added that ‘‘among both officers and men there is the savor of the true Christian salt. The fact may encourage those who . . . have mourned over the ungodliness that too much prevails in the patriot army’’ (Rogers 1863, p. 242). In his Army Life in a Black Regiment, Thomas Wentworth Higginson also attested to the dedication on the part of many soldiers to provide education among the Negro troops, noting in one entry: ‘‘This afternoon our good quartermaster establishes a Sunday-school for our little colony of [black] ’contrabands,’ now numbering seventy’’ (Higginson 1870, p. 119). Although the Sunday school movement had reached its zenith by the 1840s, its after-effects reverberated throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Noting the power of organized morals-based education to instill ‘‘the democratic sentiment’’ of compassion in even the youngest future citizens, the Pennsylvania congressman William D. Kelley (1814–1890), a Quaker, stated in a speech before the House of Representatives in 1863, ‘‘Once in seven days comes the Sabbath; and from hillside and valley, from the lanes and alleys, as well as from the broad streets of the city, the children gather in the church and Sunday School: there they learn that Christianity enforces while it refines . . . ; thus the religious
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sentiment adds its great power to the political’’ (Kelley 1863, p. 24). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Arlo Ayres, A History of Religious Education in Recent Times. New York, NY: Abingdon Press, 1901. Campbell, Alexander. Christian Baptist, January 1827. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), November 26, 1817. Garnett, James M. ‘‘Address to a Sunday School in Essex County, Virginia, on Distributing Bibles to the Scholars.’’ Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer, Issue 28, July 12, 1821. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment. Boston, MA: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870. Kelley, William Darrah. The Conscription. Also Speeches of the Hon. W. D. Kelley of Pennsylvania, in the House of Representatives. Philadelphia, PA: privately printed, 1863. Laqueur, Thomas Walter. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976. Rice, Edwin Wilbur. The Sunday School Movement 1780–1917, and the American Sunday-School Union. New York, NY: Arno Press, 1971. Rogers, Rev. James B. War Pictures: Experiences and Observations of a Chaplain in the U.S. Army, in the War of the Southern Rebellion. Chicago: Church & Goodman, 1863. Sumner, Charles. Works of Charles Sumner, vol. 5. Boston, MA: Lee & Shepard, 1872. Trumbull, Henry Clay. The Sunday-School: Its Origins, Mission, Methods, and Auxiliaries. Philadelphia, John D. Wattles, 1888. Vermont Watchman and State Gazette (Montpelier, VT), issue 1102, December 4, 1827. Pamela L. Kester
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During the Civil War, the nation’s religious community was not immune from involvement in the political conflict between North and South. Clergymen associated their side’s cause with divine providence and guidance. Proslavery and antislavery ministers alike infused their sermons with political sentiment. According to The Liberator, [t]he religion of a country should be its most active and vigorous helper in the renunciation of evil-doing and the commencement of practical reform. As far as the vice of slaveholding is concerned, our readers are aware that the churches of our popular religion have been its main bulwark;
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Religion and Reform not only doing nothing to overthrow it, but holding active complicity with it, and placing active obstruction in the way of those who would overthrow it. (‘‘Present Relation of the Presbyterian Church to Slavery,’’ November 1, 1861, p. 174)
necessity for the separation of parents and children, and of husbands and wives; and a very little care upon our part would rid the system, upon which we are about to plant our national life, of these unchristian features. (Stanton 1864, p. 181)
Reverend Samuel Johnson of Lynn, Massachusetts, acknowledged such complacency on the church’s part during an 1863 sermon:
In the North, there were some churches that supported the more drastic measure of abolition. For instance, the Synod at Allegheny, Pennsylvania, selected a committee of six to travel to Washington ‘‘for the purpose of pressing upon the attention of the President and his Cabinet, as well as upon other officers of the Government, the duty and necessity of taking immediate steps to put away our national sins, that we may be restored to the favor of God’’ (‘‘Present Relation of the Presbyterian Church to Slavery,’’ The Liberator, November 1, 1861, p. 174). After the Civil War began, Southern religious organizations were restructured to reflect geographical and political alliances. For example,
[The] Christ of American civilization is the slave. Only through his emancipation can she [the country] be restored. The Church has proved apostate, shrinking from the duty of the hour. . . . Hatred of the negro in the North is more cruel than slavery in the South. It alone stands between us and the suppression of the rebellion to-day. We must be bruised more and more severely by the mill-stone of God’s retributive justice, until this vice is eradicated. (‘‘A Sermon for the Present Hour,’’ The Liberator, May 1, 1863, p. 70)
Sermons that advocated slavery and secession provided support for the assertion that the church has been slavery’s ‘‘main bulwark’’: ‘‘How eloquent and earnest men become—and the ministers of religion too—when pleading for ‘slavery’ in the name of ‘liberty,’ and braving all the miseries of war for its sake’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 158). For example, during a sermon the Reverend James H. Thornwell ‘‘urged the whole doctrine of secession on the ground of constitutional right, the alleged encroachment upon slavery being given as the justifying cause’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 156). Reverend Thornwell believed that the South had received the greatest of endorsements, but that for the sake of ‘‘the institution,’’ it might have to ‘‘meet the horrors of war and carnage’’: ‘‘Even though our cause be just, and our course approved of Heaven,’’ he declared, ‘‘our path to victory may be through a baptism of blood. Liberty has its martyrs and confessors, as well as religion’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 157). Rather than advocating the abolition of slavery, Southern religious organizations urged followers to lobby for the transformation of the institution to make it more humane and ‘‘Christian.’’ For example, a ‘‘Pastoral Letter from the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to the Clergy and Laity of the Church of the Confederate States of America’’ expressed the belief that the Church had a duty to lobby lawmakers of the Confederacy to change the ‘‘system of labor’’ so as to preserve familial relationships. The Pastoral Letter stated in part: It is likewise the duty of the Church to press upon the masters of the country their obligation, as Christian men, so to arrange this institution (slavery) as not to necessitate the violation of those sacred relations which God has created, and which man cannot, consistently with Christian duty, annul. The systems of labor which prevail in Europe, and which are, in many respects, more severe than ours, are so arranged as to prevent all
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The leading ministers, and other influential men in the respective Churches of all denominations, at the earliest moment, brought all the religious bodies of the South to break their connection with those of the North—that is, with those religious organizations which hitherto were co-extensive with the Union—[and] changed their formularies of Church Polity, their Prayer-Books, and Directories for worship, so as to give in their adhesion to the Government set up by the rebels, and thus recognize it as a lawfully established Civil Power (Stanton 1864, p. 177)
In addition, ‘‘the words ‘United States of America’ were blotted out, and the words ‘Confederate States of America’ took their places, in the Liturgies, Prayers, and Standards of Faith, of every Church in the rebel dominions’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 177). Southern churches also issued addresses and resolutions directed at members of their own organizations and the Christian world at large. These addresses outlined organizational changes and expressed the organizations’ allegiance to the Confederate cause. For example, in one address, the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America ‘‘renounced the jurisdiction of [the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Unites States of America,] and dissolved the ties which bound them ecclesiastically with their brethren of the North’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 179). A pastoral letter from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of America stated that it had been ‘‘[f]orced by the Providence of God to separate . . . from the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States . . . at a moment when civil strife had dipped its foot in blood, and cruel war was desolating our homes and firesides’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 180). The Church believed ‘‘with a wonderful unanimity, that the providence of God had guided our footsteps, and for His own inscrutable purposes had forced us into a
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separate organization’’ (Stanton 1864, p. 181). It also expressed solidarity with its secular neighbors: ‘‘In our case, we go forward with the leading minds of our new Republic cheering us on by their communion with us, and with no prejudications to overcome, save those which arise from a lack of acquaintance with our doctrine and worship’’ (p. 181). The pastoral letter also informed followers that the prayer book was unaltered, except ‘‘where a change of our Civil Government and the formation of a new nation have made alteration essentially requisite’’ (p. 181). Religious organizations also involved themselves more formally in social and political movements, such as the temperance movement.
in endeavoring to reform men, we must adopt the doctrine of total depravity, and so begin at the origin of all evil, the human heart, instead of being satisfied with mere outward reform. The contrary course had been the great mistake of many churches, and one against which he [Blagden] had frequently warned his people. He spoke of the temperance and anti-slavery reforms as examples, saying that those who take it upon themselves to make any act a sin, which is not of necessity a crime, were wise beyond what is written. This practice tends to make men too censorious, and to do more harm than good. (‘‘Sermon of Dr. Blagden,’’ September 30, 1861)
The church as a body has done more to promote [the temperance movement] than all other organizations. While men out of the church have done nobly, the members of the church so far as we have known, and we have been careful observers for forty years, have been the main pillars of the movement. All our Congregational churches, (and we presume that the same is true of Methodist and Baptist churches,) are temperance organizations. . . . Neither temperance nor any other moral movement ever has or ever can succeed in this world without the aid of the church and its ministers. (‘‘Forcing the Law,’’ February 6, 1864, p. 4)
Many churches established temperance societies, which hosted lectures on temperance and engaged in other activities to encourage temperance in society. For example, the Father Mathew Temperance Society was established in Massachusetts, while the Sons of Temperance Society was quite active in New York. The American Temperance Union met at churches, including ones in New York. Religious organizations, such as the United States Christian Commission (USCC), also distributed temperance pamphlets. By January of 1863, the USCC had distributed 300,000 temperance documents (North American and United States Gazette, January 30, 1863). The proponents of temperance did more than meet among themselves and talk about the evils of alcohol. Their battle extended from churches and lecture halls to the halls of justice and lawmaking. In 1861 a meeting was scheduled in San Francisco’s Mission Baptist Church regarding establishing a temperance party. Notice was published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, and an invitation was extended to ‘‘[a]ll persons, irrespective of sect in religion or party in politics, who are in favor of promoting to public office moral men, and such men as totally abstain from the manufacture, sale and use of all intoxicating liquors as a beverage’’ (‘‘Movement toward a Temperance Party,’’ May 6, 1861). Members of the temperance movement were often successful in their missions, resulting in temperance laws throughout the country. Both Massachusetts and Vermont, for example, had temperance laws. ‘‘Where the liquor law has been thoroughly successful,’’ declared Judge Marston, district attorney for Vermont’s Cape District, ‘‘it has resulted in increase in order, in strengthening the law in the estimation of its friends and the friends of quiet, and making delinquents feel there was really a power in it’’ (‘‘Massachusetts Temperance Law,’’ Vermont Chronicle, February 25, 1865, p. 4). The Vermont Chronicle likewise extolled the virtues of Vermont’s temperance law:
However, not all clergymen felt that churches should engage in social reform. In an article focusing on the Reverend Dr. Blagden, the Boston Daily Advertiser declared that
[W]hile our excellent Temperance Law may not entirely prevent the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage, by wicked men, for the love of gain, yet we believe such sales are greatly circumscribed by
The Temperance Movement Temperance advocates encouraged their fellow Americans to reduce the amount of alcohol they consumed. Many favored the absolute prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol, because they believed that alcohol caused people to behave in immoral ways. Social reformer Margaret Chappellsmith stated an understanding of temperance that was embraced by most within the movement: What is duty? It is a natural obligation to so rule our lives and actions, that we may contribute to the production of the greatest amount of happiness of the greatest number of human beings. This requires us to have a regard for what is good for ourselves, as well as for others; it includes regard for truth, justice, kindness, love, and that temperance in all our habits that experience proves to be necessary to mental and bodily health. (‘‘Can Atheism Abrogate Duty?’’ Boston Investigator, May 15, 1861)
Churches and religious organizations were quite active in the temperance movement. In fact, according to the Vermont Chronicle:
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Religion and Slavery its salutary terror over evil doers; and we have the fullest confidence in this legal agent, in the hands of a virtuous people, as fully equal when properly enforced, to the great work of reform. (‘‘Local and State Matters: Addison County Temperance Society,’’ March 18, 1865, p. 8).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Can Atheism Abrogate Duty?’’ Boston Investigator, May 15, 1861. ‘‘Forcing the Law.’’ Vermont Chronicle, February 6, 1864, p. 4. ‘‘Local and State Matters: Addison County Temperance Society.’’ Vermont Chronicle, March 18, 1865, p. 8. ‘‘Massachusetts Temperance Law.’’ Vermont Chronicle, February 25, 1865, p. 4. ‘‘Movement toward a Temperance Party.’’ San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, May 6, 1861. North American and United States Gazette, Friday, January 30, 1863. ‘‘Present Relation of the Presbyterian Church to Slavery.’’ The Liberator, November 1, 1861, p. 174. ‘‘A Sermon for the Present Hour.’’ The Liberator, May 1, 1863, p. 70. ‘‘Sermon of Dr. Blagden.’’ Boston Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1861. Stanton, Robert Livingston. The Church and the Rebellion: A Consideration of the Rebellion against the Government of the United States; and the Agency of the Church, North and South, in Relation Thereto. New York: Derby & Miller, 1864. Jodi M. Savage
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Religion and Slavery
From the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, Western nations used religious doctrine to justify the enslavement of Africans. Although the bodies of the slaves were suffering, their souls were saved through conversion to Christianity. At the time of the Civil War, religion was still used to rationalize slavery, but it was also used by abolitionists to oppose the institution, and by the slaves themselves to resist bondage.
Christianizing Slaves Converting slaves to Christianity involved educating slaves to some degree, but the abolitionist movement made Southern slaveholders question the wisdom of instructing slaves. On the one hand, the fear that abolitionist literature would incite slave rebellions had a chilling effect on any effort to educate slaves: The distribution of abolitionist literature in the South aroused a distrust of all missionaries coming into the region to promote religion. On the other hand, abolitionist arguments against slavery challenged proslavery apologists to
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push slave evangelization: If slavery was to be defended as a positive good, the slaves had to be converted to Christianity and master-slave relations had to be conducted along biblical lines. Schisms over the question of slavery resulted in the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1844 and the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. The divisions, which relieved some of the anxiety among slaveholders that churches were sympathetic to abolitionism, also created greater urgency among Southern churches to convert the slaves. The division also fostered the development of a proslavery analysis of the Bible, particularly in the Old Southwest. Preachers in Mississippi and Alabama began in the 1850s to perfect a proslavery religious argument. Samuel Baldwin of Mississippi argued that Adam’s fall negated all human rights. God occasionally chose to return a few of these rights, but He withheld some as a curse on certain men and their descendants. Baldwin insisted that God cursed Ham and his offspring to eternal servitude, and that slavery was, as a consequence, an important feature of God’s plan (Bailey 1985, pp. 79– 80). Other slavery apologists cited the numerous biblical passages, particularly in the Old Testament, that discuss slavery and give little support to the belief that God was an abolitionist. Whereas abolitionists contended that the New Testament contains Christ’s repudiation of slavery, supporters of slavery argued that the relationship of master and slave was sanctioned by God. Emancipation, therefore, was contrary to God’s will. Proslavery religious activists also argued that Christianity benefited slaves as well as masters. They contended that Christianity would regularize and pacify relations between slaves and masters. To achieve this end, plantation missionaries attempted to convince masters that they had duties toward their slaves. Masters and, particularly, mistresses, were urged to take an active part in catechizing slaves by reading sermons to them, including them in family prayers, and teaching them in Sabbath schools. Religion had to influence the owner’s physical as well as spiritual treatment of his slaves. This ideal picture of a Christianized master-slave relationship contributed to the Southern myth of the benevolent planter-patriarch presiding benignly over his happy flock of slaves. But slaves provided numerous accounts that depict devoutly religious masters as being the most difficult of owners. In testimony in 1863 before the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, the former slave Mrs. Joseph Smith explained why she thought Christian slaveholders made the worst masters: Well, it is something like this—the Christians will oppress you more. For instance, the biggest dinner must be got on Sunday. Now, everybody that has got common sense knows that Sunday is a day of rest. And if you do the least thing in the world that they don’t like, they will mark it down against you, and Monday you have got to take a
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Religion and Slavery whipping. Now the card-player and horse-racer won’t be there to trouble you. They will eat their breakfast in the morning and feed their dogs, and then be off, and you won’t see them again till night. I would rather be with a card-player or sportsman, by half, than a Christian. (Raboteau 2004, p. 166)
Isaac Throgmorton, testifying before the same commission, recalled, I believe the people that were not religious treated their slaves better than those who were religious. A religious man will believe whatever the overseer says, and he has control of the hands in the field . . . . If he says, ‘‘John has acted impudent,’’ the master will come round and say, ‘‘Chastise him for it,’’ and the overseer will give him two or three hundred lashes . . . . Then, in the next place, they don’t feed nor clothe their slaves as well as irreligious man. (Raboteau 2004, p. 166)
Slaveholders who practiced the Christian principles of thrift and careful management spent less money on slaves and disciplined them more quickly. A Northern white journalist, Charles Nordhoff, made the same discovery when he reported his conversations with South Carolina slaves in 1863. Nordhoff wrote, I find the testimony universal, that the masters were ‘‘mean.’’ Now there was one Fripps, a planter on one of the islands, of whom the blacks habitually speak as ‘‘good Mr. Fripps.’’ ‘‘Come now, Sam,’’ said the questioner, ‘‘there was good Mr. Fripps, he could not have been mean.’’ ‘‘Yes, sah, he bad to his people same as any of ‘em.’’ ‘‘Why do you call him ‘good Mr. Fripps,’ then?’’ ‘‘Oh!’’ said Sam, ‘‘dat no tell he good to we; call him good ‘cause he good Metodis’ man—he sing and pray loud on Sundays.’’ (Raboteau 2004, pp. 167–168)
It is not clear how many African Americans were Christian during the time of the Civil War. Undoubtedly, many slaves learned the tenets of Christianity, accepted them, and attended church, without actually appearing on the official rolls of any church. By 1860 the black membership of the Baptist Church is estimated to have been 600,000, but church membership figures are not known for their accuracy. By the start of the war, Christianity pervaded the slave community. The vast majority of slaves were American-born, and the cultural and linguistic barriers that had impeded the evangelization of earlier generations of slaves was no longer a problem. The doctrines, symbols, and vision of life preached by Christianity were familiar to most blacks.
Slave Worship Slave preachers were common in the South, despite periodic attempts by whites to suppress them. Although many slaves were encouraged to attend white churches,
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they often felt inhibited by the presence of whites. Sarah Fitzpatrick, once a slave in Alabama, recalled, Niggers commence ta wanna go to church by de’selves, even ef dey had to meet in de white church. So white folks have deir service in de mornin’ an’ Niggers have deirs in de evenin’, a’ter dey clean up, wash de dishes, an’ look a’ter ever’thing. . . . Ya’ see Niggers lack ta shout a whole lot an’ wid de white folks al’ round em, dey couldn’t shout jes’ lack dey want to. (Raboteau 2004, p. 226)
Another former slave, Robert Anderson, recalled, ‘‘We would gather out in the open on summer nights, gather around a big bonfire, to keep the mosquitoes away, and listen to our preachers preach sometimes half the night’’ (Raboteau 2004, p. 221). Religious interpretations by slaves, which sometimes were limited by the prohibition on slave literacy, focused not merely on the attainment of spiritual freedom but also on the attainment of physical freedom. Traditional African religions had a distinctly nonmessianic cast, emphasized community and fidelity to tradition as a means of fulfillment, and promoted the long view on immediate issues of social justice. To Africans, time was cyclical. Accordingly, slave clergy preached an eventual reversal of fortune, conveying the message that in time, the bottom rail would be on top. Imbued with African sensibility, slave preachers constructed a universe that was morally self-correcting, one in which justice would be restored and imbalances of power reversed over the vast stretch of time. Traditional attempts to catechize slaves had been unsuccessful, for the most part because whites tried to persuade blacks to accept alien ritual, worship, and theology. When evangelical whites invited blacks to participate in worship through singing, praying, and preaching in ways similar to African traditions, more blacks were prompted to become Christians. Slave preachers also promoted an African style of worship. Robert Anderson remembered of his slave community, ‘‘There would be singing and testifying and shouting’’ (Raboteau 2004, p. 221). Mose Hursey, a freed man, remembered, On Sundays they had meetin’, sometimes at our house, sometime at ‘nother house. . . . They’d preach and pray and sing—shout too. I heard them git up with a powerful force of the spirit, clappin’ they hands and walkin’ round the place. They’d shout, ‘‘I got the glory. I got that old time ‘ligion in my heart.’’ I seen some powerful ‘figurations of the spirit in them days. (Raboteau 2004, p. 221)
Whites often observed slave religious meetings. Mary Boykin Chesnut reported on one gathering in her diary in the 1860s: ‘‘The Negroes sobbed and shouted and swayed backward and forward, some with aprons to their eyes, most of them clapping their hands and responding in shrill tones, ‘Yes, God!’ ‘Jesus!’
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Abolitionism
‘Savior!’ ‘Bless de Lord, amen,’ etc. It was a little too exciting for me. I would very much have liked to shout too’’ (Raboteau 2004, p. 221). Some whites found the black style of worship to be humorous, but just as many apparently found them as affecting as Chesnut did. Spirituals were an integral part of slave worship. Drawing from the Bible, Protestant hymns, sermons, and African styles of singing, slaves fashioned a religious music of their own. Spirituals were communal songs that were performed with hand-clapping, foot-stamping, head-shaking excitement. They were sung as prayer meetings for full effect. Harris Barrett, writing after slavery had ended, recalled, Those who have never heard these songs in their native setting can have no conception of the influence they exert upon the people. I have sat in a gathering where everything was as quiet and placid as a lake on a summer day, where the preacher strove in vain to awaken an interest; I have heard a brother or sister start one of these spirituals, slowly and monotonously; I have seen the congregation irresistible drawn to take up the refrain; I have seen the entire body gradually worked up from one degree of emotion to another until, like a turbulent, angry sea, men and women, to the accompaniment of the singing, and with shouting, moaning, and clapping of hands, surged and swayed to and fro. I have seen men and women at these times look and express themselves as if they were conversing with their Lord and Master, with their hands in His. . . . (Raboteau 2004, p. 244)
Not all slaves cared about religion. Some complained that they were too tired from a week of work to participate in services. The former slave Margaret Nickerson recalled, ‘‘On Sunday after working’ hard all de week dey would lay down to sleep and be so tired; soon ez yo’ sleep, de overseer would come an’ wake you up ‘an make you go to church’’ (Raboteau 2004, p. 225). Other African Americans spent Sundays in the same activities as nonreligious whites: hunting, fishing, marble shooting, storytelling, and resting. Sunday also served as market day for those slaves who were allotted individual plots to produce vegetables or poultry for their own use. The clash between religion and slavery continued after the conclusion of the Civil War. Freedmen’s aid societies were private charitable associations active during the Civil War and the immediate postwar years that provided both short-term welfare and educational opportunities for ex-slaves. By 1867 the societies were under attack for welfare paternalism that promoted negative views of the freedmen. When the American Missionary Association tried to induce the American Freedmen’s and Union Commission to combine evangelicalism with teaching duties, the freedmen’s commission collapsed in 1869, a casualty of religious controversy.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bailey, David T. Shadow on the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery, 1783–1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Davis, David Brion. In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1976. Mathews, Donald G. ‘‘Religion and Slavery—The Case of the American South.’’ In Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, ed. Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1980. Owens, Leslie Howard. This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The ‘‘Invisible Institution’’ in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Caryn E. Neumann
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Abolitionism
The objectives of the abolition movement of the nineteenth century in the United States were the ending of enslavement on the basis of race and the securing of social justice. Before the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776, however, there had been a small but potent antislavery crusade to end the Atlantic slave trade as well as to eliminate the institution of slavery itself. This campaign was part of a larger struggle in the Atlantic world. As a result of these efforts, the system of human bondage that had existed throughout the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spanish empires in the Western Hemisphere since the 1740s had slowly disappeared by the late 1780s. Most of these efforts, however, remained relatively isolated and muted until well into the early 1790s. It was not until the early antebellum years that the call for the immediate end to slavery gained broader support and overshadowed many of the various other social reform movements in the United States. The prominence of the antislavery campaign led at least in part to the coming of the Civil War.
Early Abolitionism As soon as slavery had been imported into the American colonies, Africans and African Americans tried to free themselves from bondage through such activities as court actions, self-purchases, and running away. For instance, Venture Smith (1729–1805), an enslaved African from Anamaboe, Guinea, successfully purchased his
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THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT The outset abolitionism in America during the Civil War, whether led by either African Americans or white Americans, consisted of two movements distinguished by geography and chronology. The first movement began in the South. It was led mostly by enslaved persons of color but involved some free black Americans and a few sympathetic Caucasians. Active in the eighteenth century, before the American Revolution, these antislavery advocates and their organizations merely sought to free persons in bondage but did not seek to destroy the entire system. In essence, however, this first phase of the antislavery movement and the activities that followed contributed to the elimination of slavery in the North during and soon after the American Revolution. The second wave of the antislavery movement of the American Civil War, which occurred during the antebellum period, was based primarily in the North. In these states, Caucasian involvement and control was enormous because Caucasians led most of the larger antislavery organizations above the Mason-Dixon Line; however, many black Americans used their personal narratives and life experiences to influence the entire movement. For example, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) escaped from enslavement in Maryland and became a powerful orator, abolitionist, and political activist throughout the rest of his adult life. His third autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, written in 1881 and revised in 1892, spoke volumes when it described the harshness, brutality, and horror acts associated with the inhumanity of slavery. ERIC R. JACKSON
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books, 1962 [1892]. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Longman, 2001.
freedom from his Connecticut owner in 1765. More rarely—an action that had a greater psychological, emotional, and physical impact—some enslaved persons began to resort to overt rebellion to gain their freedom. One of the first recorded cases occurred in 1676, when some eighty Africans joined the white rebel Nathaniel Bacon’s failed campaign to overthrow the ruling class of gentry in colonial Virginia (Aptheker 1993, p. 37). Several decades later, in 1712, another incident occurred when thirty enslaved Africans, along with several Native Americans and a group of white indentured servants, participated in a sporadic rebellion in New York City that led to the burning of several buildings and the death of at least nine innocent people (Aptheker 1963, p. 173). Finally, in 1739, approximately one hundred fugitives in rural South Carolina armed themselves with
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guns, knives, and sticks, and started a revolt to obtain their freedom. These African rebels began to march south toward the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, but were quickly headed off before they could attract a larger following (Wood 2000, p. 96). Despite the lack of success of most slave insurrections, some white Americans began to argue that slavery should be done away with immediately. One of the first groups of antislavery whites that emerged was the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. Labeled as religious dissenters and thus persecuted during their early years in Great Britain, a small group of Quakers first arrived in New Jersey during the 1670s. In 1681 William Penn (1644–1718), himself a member of the Society, established the colony of Pennsylvania for them. Many Quakers settled in other American colonies and became slaveholders; however, others believed that the Christian faith required them to teach that God loves all human beings, that people should not go to war with one another, and that slaves who had received Christian baptism should be free according to civil law (Nash 1988, p. 17). A few Quakers even believed that God would punish all people who held slaves in any capacity. Such a stance led to members of the Society of Friends in Germantown, Pennsylvania, adopting a resolution in early 1688 that declared slavery evil, and immoral, and contrary to their Christian faith. Several years later, in 1693, a Philadelphia Quaker named George Keith (1638–1716) echoed similar sentiments in a publication titled ‘‘An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying and Keeping of Negroes’’ (Aptheker 1993, p. 74). During the 1730s, Benjamin Lay, who had lived in Barbados for several years and owned a number of enslaved Africans, moved to Pennsylvania and quickly joined the local antislavery movement. Here he was befriended by Anthony Be´ne´zet (1713–1784), a French immigrant who had become a Quaker in 1727, and Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), already well known as a journalist and inventor. It was Be´ne´zet, along with John Woolman (1720–1772), an itinerant preacher, who dominated the Quaker antislavery movement from the 1740s through the 1760s. Woolman traveled primarily throughout New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and into the New England colonies in order to spread his antislavery message, while Be´ne´zet became a proliferate antislavery writer who fiercely denounced slavery in many of his publications, such as A Short Account of that Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes (1762) and A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies (1767). Most importantly, most of Be´ne´zet’s essays and articles rested on the notion that African Americans were not an inferior race (Aptheker 1993, p. 79). A schoolmaster for many years, Be´ne´zet held night classes for black slaves in the Philadelphia area from 1750 onward and started a school for black children in 1770.
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Abolitionism
Abolitionism during the Revolutionary Era It took a major religious, economic, and ideological upheaval during the late eighteenth century to transform the assault on human bondage from an African American- and Quaker-led struggle to a widely held assumption that all people deserve to be free. Among the various important developments that led to this change was the spread of such powerful social and intellectual movements as evangelicalism, revivalism, rationalism, and political revolution. In contrast to the more traditional forms of religious doctrine that had dominated earlier decades throughout the American colonies, the widespread religious movement known as the Great Awakening, which took place during the early and mid-eighteenth century, began to weaken some forms of church organization, de-emphasize some traditional religious rituals, and stress the belief that all who had faith in God, despite differences of race, class, and gender, could gain salvation and everlasting life through a personal and intimate relationship with the Creator. This religious trend enabled George Whitefield (1714–1770), Samuel Davis, Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764), Isaac Backus (1724– 1806), and other evangelical leaders to establish a movement that was ‘‘nothing short of guerilla warfare’’
Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868), early antebellum abolitionist. A leading member of the early antebellum
abolitionist movement, Thaddeus Stevens advocated eliminating slavery in the United States on the grounds that human bondage was against Christian teachings. The Library of Congress.
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(Hatch 1989, p. 34). In other words, these ‘‘new’’ religious leaders were using a more earthy language, everyday reasoning, and a commonsense approach to appeal to regular people in ways in which the previously established church-leaders could not counter. Simultaneously, rationalist tendencies in philosophy, which emerged from the European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, began to dominate political thought in the American colonies. Influenced by such individuals as the physicist Isaac Newton (1643–1727) and the political philosophers Francis Bacon (1561–1626), David Hume (1711– 1766), and John Locke (1632–1704), some American colonists began to argue that there must be natural laws to assist human beings in ordering a society. It was the American Revolution, however, that fused these various intellectual movements into a broader socioeconomic and political campaign that transformed abolitionism from a struggle led primarily by Quakers and African Americans to a more broadly based movement. The American Revolution helped to spread the notion that natural rights, equality, and liberty apply to all people (Frey 1991, p. 45).
Rise of Immediate Abolitionism The aggressive proslavery arguments that began to circulate in the South during the late 1790s helped in part to create an atmosphere in which a more integrated, vocal, comprehensive, and militant Northern assault on slavery could take shape during the late 1820s and early 1830s. Another important factor was the activities and ultimate objectives of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Formed in 1816 by a group of prominent white Virginians, most members of the ACS wanted to resettle free blacks in what is now Liberia without challenging the idea of individual property rights or disturbing the Southern way of life. The ACS believed that slavery was unsustainable over the long term but did not consider the integration of free blacks into American society a viable option. As the previous generation of isolated and passive antislavery individuals and organizations faded away, however, a new cadre of African American and white abolitionists appeared and began to argue for the immediate emancipation of all enslaved persons of color from a Christian, nationwide, and self-reflective standpoint. Gradually such abolitionist figures as James G. Birney (1792–1857), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), Lewis Hayden (1811–1889), George Julian (1817–1898), Elijah Lovejoy (1802–1837), Charles Sumner (1811– 1874), and Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) spread their militant antislavery message to all of who would listen. By the mid-1830s, internal divisions began to appear in the movement, however, as disagreements developed over tactics, political action, the role of the church, race, and especially the participation of women.
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Abolitionism
Abolitionism and Gender The role of gender in the abolition movement was both powerful and complex. More specifically, immediate abolitionism during the 1830s led to the origins of the early women’s rights movement that began with the Seneca Falls, New York, meeting in 1848. Once the two movements were linked, women participated in almost every aspect of the abolition crusade from political action to the formation of local organizations to working with fugitive slaves. Women were not only welcomed as participants by male abolitionists, but they were also encouraged to challenge wider societal norms regarding the role of women. For example, while Elizabeth Chandler (1807–1834), a white woman from Delaware, wrote a monthly column for Benjamin Lundy’s antislavery newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and helped to organize women’s antislavery groups in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879), an African American widow from Boston, traveled to several East Coast cities to encourage all women who would listen to her to strive for both gender and racial equality. Despite the various activities and powerful speeches of many women such as Chandler and Stewart, most female abolitionists occupied separate and subordinate positions in the antislavery movement compared to their male counterparts.
Race and Abolitionism When the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was established in 1833, its leaders announced five main goals: 1) an immediate end to slavery; 2) to constitute the AASS as an interracial organization; 3) to strive for racial equality for all African Americans; 4) to reject any plan to end slavery based on colonization; and 5) to reject violence as a tactic to be used to end slavery. What black and white abolitionists, both men and women, meant when they agreed to these objectives were not necessarily the same, however. For instance, a precursor to the rise of the immediate abolition movement was the effort of some individuals to send black Americans as colonists to West Africa, Haiti, and other locations outside the United States mainland. During the early 1800s, when white supremacy and racial intolerance became were intense throughout the United States, some African American abolitionists, such as Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) and Martin Delany (1812–1885), found the prospect of migrating to another country very appealing. They maintained that African Americans should consider emigrating to Latin America or the Caribbean Islands (Painter 1988, p. 155). As a result of these discussions, most black abolitionists had to make an individual decision on the merits of any colonization plan or idea. In the area of interracial cooperation, despite their great efforts, most white abolitionists never overcame their racial and cultural biases. White abolitionists could
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easily oppose the system of human bondage, but to embrace the entire African American community as an equal partner was a different matter. Many white abolitionists tended to associate only with those black American abolitionists whom they deemed respectable and intelligent, such as Samuel Cornish (1790–1859), Frederick Douglass, James Forten (1766–1842), Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882), and Robert Purvis (1810–1898). Even white women abolitionists maintained this same elitist perspective when it came to their African American counterparts Thus, many black female abolitionists eventually had to establish separate antislavery facilities and organizations.
Violence and Abolitionism As abolitionists became more aggressive and vocal during the middle of the antebellum period, the reference to violence in many antislavery speeches as well as in the some of the deeds that were carried out by various individuals gradually surfaced. More specifically, many abolitionists who had pledged nonviolence had not only begun to take part in some violent activities but also started to openly express admiration for those who used force to oppose slavery, such as Denmark Vesey (1767– 1822), David Walker (1785–1830), Nat Turner (1800– 1831), Augustus W. Hanson, and Henry Highland Garnet. Influenced by the Underground Railroad and other forms of resistance to the fugitive slave laws, many of the activities and the rhetoric around these actions brought many African American and white abolitionists closer together. Such an alliance reached its high point with the failed attempt by John Brown (1800–1859) to end slavery with an assault on a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Yet, despite this internal dilemma and many heated debates, for the most part abolitionists remained on the side of peaceful persuasion (Harrold 2001, p. 73). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publishers, 1963. Aptheker, Herbert. Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989. Aptheker, Herbert. Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1993. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1990. Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race and Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil. Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents. Boston: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2005.
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Frey, Sylvia R. Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Longman, 2001. Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Nash, Gary B. Race and Revolution. Madison, WI: Madison House, 1990. Painter, Nell Irvin. ‘‘Martin R. Delany: Elitism and Black Nationalism.’’ In Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon Litwack and August Meier. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Ripley, C. Peter, et al., eds. Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina — From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. Wood, Peter H. ‘‘Africans in Eighteenth-Century North America.’’ In Upon These Shores: Themes in the African American Experience—1600 to the Present, ed. William R. Scott and William G. Shade. New York: Routledge, 2000. Eric R. Jackson
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The role of the church in the Civil War and the events leading up to it was primarily one of moral guidance. In the North, the abolitionist cause was the driving force behind the message from religious institutions and theologians. In the South, however, clergy were confronted with trying to defend slavery. While many members of the Southern clergy (some of whom were men of national distinction) privately had questions about slavery, many others did not—and in fact saw slavery as sanctioned by the Bible. For the most part, Southern ministers embraced (and often championed) the Southern cause.
Splits in the Church The split between Northern and Southern religious leaders began well before the start of the Civil War. Slavery had been an important economic institution in the South from early colonial days, less so in the more industrialized North. Still, by the beginning of the nineteenth century a large number of Southerners in fact opposed slavery (Hudson 1987, p. 190). Faced with growing criticism by a largely Northern-based abolition
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movement, however, people in the Southern states felt compelled to defend themselves and to show solid justifications for keeping slaves. Economists and business leaders did this by pointing out that the agricultural South needed the labor provided by slaves. The economic argument, however, failed to address the exploitative nature of slavery. What justification, after all, did white landowners have to enslave Africans except that slavery was a source of cheap labor? The moral component of the argument fell into the hands of the clergy— and a surprisingly large number of Southern ministers offered a rational moral justification for slavery. The Presbyterian Church divided itself into two factions—the ‘‘Old School’’ (which did not condemn slavery) in the South and the ‘‘New School’’ (staunchly antislavery) in the North. By 1838, the split between the two factions had grown so strong that there were in effect two Presbyterian churches in the United States. The Methodist Church, which had been founded in part on antislavery principles, followed suit in 1844 with the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Boles 1994, pp. 78–79). Such other denominations as the Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics were affected by the slavery issue, although they did not have any formal separations until after the secession began (Hudson 1987, p. 193). This outcome was in part the result of different forms of church government; all three of these churches were organized into dioceses (or synods, in the case of the Lutherans) that were largely defined by territory; thus extreme abolitionist and proslavery views did not meet at the national level in these bodies. In the case of the Episcopalians, several Southern dioceses seceded to form the Episcopal Church, C.S.A. in 1861.
Preserving a Way of Life The Southern clergy who accommodated slavery did so for two main reasons. The first was their loyalty to the South and to the Southern way of life. Frustrated with decades of what they saw as attacks on their morality by the abolitionist movement, many Southerners dug in their heels and became increasingly suspicious of the North. By the beginning of the Civil War, many Southerners saw themselves as morally superior to Northerners; after all, they had never tried to force their way of life onto the North. One anonymous contributor to the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger, a magazine devoted to literature and the fine arts, wrote a piece for the June 1860 issue in which the claim was made that Northerners were themselves of an inferior stock, ‘‘wild, savage, bold, fond of freedom’’ (p. 404) and who, despite being deeply religious, ‘‘yet nearly approach infidelity [unbelief].’’ Southerners, in contrast, were quiet, gentle, thoughtful, and given on occasion to ‘‘flights of genius’’ (p. 406).
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‘‘God bless you, massa!’’ Many Southern slaveholders rationalized their perceived right to own slaves by claiming that African Americans were unable to care for themselves independently. As shown in this illustration, some anti-abolitionists believed slaves actually appreciated their master’s efforts and showed contentment with their bondage. The Library of Congress
Members of the Southern clergy, who had their own feelings of devotion toward their home states, approved the notion that a well-intentioned South was being morally condemned by a self-righteous and arrogant North. In the years leading up to the Civil War and through the war years, Southern ministers brought this concept into their pulpits, often using extreme language, such as referring to Northerners as ‘‘atheists’’ and ‘‘infidels’’ (Farmer 1999, p. 11). One of the most prominent Southern Presbyterian preachers of the time, James Henley Thornwell (1812–1862), pointedly referred to the conflict at hand as being ‘‘not
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merely [between] abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins [the radical party in the French Revolution, responsible for the Reign of Terror of 1793–1794] on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other’’ (Farmer 1999, p. 11). Southerners believed that their way of life was the natural, moral order, while the Northern way of life— faster-paced, more industrialized, more cosmopolitan— was an unnatural and in fact immoral way to exist (Farmer 1999, pp. 10–11).
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Many Southerners compared their cause to that of the American Revolution of nearly a century earlier, and religious leaders eagerly helped popularize that notion. Moses Drury Hoge (1918–1899), once the personal minister to Jefferson Davis, noted that those who praised the colonial soldiers of the American Revolution and those who praised the Confederate soldiers did ‘‘homage to virtue.’’(Wilson 1980, p. 40). In his famous thanksgiving sermon in New Orleans in November 1860, the Presbyterian minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818–1902) stated bluntly, ‘‘I throw off the yoke of this union as readily as did our ancestors the yoke of King George III, and for causes immeasurably stronger than those pleaded in their celebrated declaration’’ (Palmer 1860, p. 14).
A Duty to Protect Slaves A second and, to the clergy who espoused it, more compelling argument in favor of slavery is that they believed slaves benefited from the system that controlled their lives. This belief arose primarily from the widespread conviction that slaves could not take care of themselves if left to their own devices. Some felt that slaves would be too frightened and confused to be able to make a living for themselves. Others felt that slaves were too irresponsible to try to live on their own. Maintaining slavery, many Southerners believed, was doing the slaves a favor. Interestingly, many white preachers made it a point of preaching to slave congregations; some turned their ministries exclusively to slaves. Curiously, despite their status as personal property rather than as individuals, slaves were welcomed and even encouraged to attend church services. In fact, the churches in many communities were biracial; although the slaves and their white masters did not mix with each other socially within the church, both worshipped there together (Boles 1994, p. 46). Moreover, many prominent Southern ministers made special efforts to provide religious instruction to slaves, whether in church or on their own plantations. Such preachers as Charles Colcock Jones (1804–1863) of Liberty County, Georgia, traveled from plantation house to plantation house to preach to the slave populations there. He would travel from early morning to late evening, and he was well received by the slaves. John Adger (1810–1899), who preached in a Presbyterian church in Charleston, South Carolina, served as a missionary in what are now Turkey and Armenia for a dozen years; he returned to the United States in 1846 and wished to return to his missionary work. His wife, however, had inherited several slaves. The American Board of Foreign Missions (specifically its Northern members) refused to send him on a new mission unless he gave up the slaves. Adger chose instead to forego his missionary work overseas and to focus closer to home,
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where he could be of benefit to the slaves and their owners (White 1911, pp. 299–300). John Lafayette Girardeau (1825–1898), the Presbyterian preacher at a small church off the coast of South Carolina, held services for both white and black parishioners and then separate services for slaves. He had been John Adger’s successor in the Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston for several years. The slaves in particular enjoyed Girardeau’s sermons, and he noted their enthusiasm: [They] pour in and throng the seats vacated by their masters—yes, crowding the building up to the pulpit. I have seen them rock to and fro under the influence of their feelings, like a wood in a storm. What singing! What hearty handshakings after the service. I have had my finger joints stripped of the skin in consequence of them (White 1911, p. 301).
Girardeau served as a Confederate chaplain during the war; after the war ended, his former slave congregants, now free men and women, implored him to ‘‘come back to preach to them as of old’’ (White 1911, p. 304). The enthusiasm with which slaves embraced Christianity was in part a result of their desire to find a faith that they could embrace in a new land—and that would embrace them. Because they were welcomed into the churches, they felt a sense of belonging that they felt in almost no other sphere of their existence. Moreover, in addition to their sincerity of faith, the slaves valued religion because it gave them an opportunity to communicate with their fellow slaves in a more relaxed and natural way. Those who attended churches where the slaves of several families were active had a chance as well to meet others in their unique predicament; they could have relatively normal conversations without feeling constrained by the yoke they usually wore (Boles 1994, p. 55). When the Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston opened in 1850 to serve the slave and free black community, James Henley Thornwell delivered the dedication sermon to a crowd of both white and black congregants—a sermon that underscores how the average Southern preacher saw how slavery and religious values could coexist: The slave has rights, all the rights which belong essentially to humanity, and without which his nature could not be human or his conduct susceptible of praise or blame. In the enjoyment of these rights, religion demands he should be protected. The right which the master has is a right not to the man, but to his labor (White 1911, p. 298).
Extolling ‘‘our faith that the negro is one blood with us,’’ Thornwell goes on to admit that slavery itself may not be a perfect system: ‘‘Slavery is a part of the curse which sin has introduced into the world and stands in the same general relation to Christianity as poverty, sickness, disease and death. That it is inconsistent
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with a perfect state—that it is not absolutely a good, a blessing—the most strenuous defender of slavery ought not to permit himself to deny’’ (White 1911, p. 298). In other words, Thornwell explains, slavery is simply part of the human condition that highlights human imperfections and that should make individuals work harder to tackle those imperfections.
Palmer’s Thanksgiving Sermon: A Call to Unity To many Southern ministers, slavery conferred upon slaveholders a sense of responsibility for the souls of their slaves. The master-slave relationship was frequently compared to a parent-child relationship. One of the clearest documents highlighting this and other important aspects of the complex relationship between slavery and religion is the sermon delivered by Benjamin Morgan Palmer. The sermon, entitled ‘‘The South: Her Peril, and Her Duty’’ was delivered as part of a thanksgiving service on November 29, 1860 at the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, Louisiana, where Palmer was a minister. So popular was the sermon that afterwards two separate groups from his congregation wrote to him imploring him to publish it for widespread distribution. This he did, convinced that the response he got was ‘‘sufficient proof that I have spoken to the heart of this community’’ (Palmer 1860, p. 2). The sermon, which reads in part almost like the Declaration of Independence, notes that a nation ‘‘often has a character as well defined and intense as that of the individual’’ (Palmer 1860, p. 6). ‘‘The particular trust assigned to such a people becomes the pledge of the divine protection, and their fidelity to it determines the fate by which it is finally overtaken.’’ he continues. Palmer then poses the question, ‘‘If the South is such a people, what, at this juncture, is their providential trust?’’ His answer: ‘‘[I]t is to conserve and perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing’’ (Palmer 1860, p. 6). Palmer continues with the practical dimension of his argument: Need I pause to show how this system of servitude underlies and supports our material interests? Need I pause to show how this system of servitude underlies and supports our material interests; that our wealth consists in our lands and in the serfs who till them; that from the nature of our products they can only be cultivated by labor which must be controlled in order to be certain; that any other than a tropical race must faint and wither beneath a tropical sun? (Palmer 1860, p. 8).
Then he moves on with an appeal to emotional and spiritual elements: Need I pause to show how this system is interwoven with our entire social fabric; that these slaves form parts of our households, even as our children; and that, too, through a relationship recognized and sanctioned in the Scriptures of
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God even as the other? Must I pause to show how it has fashioned our modes of life, and determined all our habits of thought and feeling, and moulded the very type of our civilization? How then can the hand of violence be laid upon it without involving our existence? (Palmer 1860, p. 8).
Palmer also argues that the slaves are better off with slavery, in part because of their own nature: ‘‘We know better than others that every attribute of their character fits them for dependence and servitude. By nature the most affectionate and loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless: and no calamity can befal [sic] them greater than the loss of that protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system’’ (Palmer 1860, pp. 8–9). Palmer then swings back to a more practical argument: that the North—and the world beyond—needs to maintain the status quo in the South just as much as the South needs it: ‘‘[The] world has grown more and more dependent on [slavery] for sustenance and wealth . . . the enriching commerce . . . has been largely established upon the products of our soil: and the blooms upon southern fields gathered by black hands, have fed the spindles and looms of Manchester and Birmingham not less than of Lawrence and Lowell’’ (Palmer 1860, pp. 9–10). The rest of Palmer’s sermon is an exhortation to stand firm against the reformers and the North—even if that means secession. The sermon, in fact, has been widely credited with giving the moral and popular push to Louisiana’s decision to secede from the Union.
Message to Slaves and Slave Owners Through the days leading up to the secession and during the war itself, Palmer and other preachers delivered the same message. Curiously, while most of them do note that the Bible sanctions slavery, they fail to give definitive proof in the way of specific passages. Rather, they note that the master-slave relationship has existed since the beginning of humanity—and, that as long as masters understand their obligation to slaves (including the provision of spiritual sustenance), the system is overall an acceptable one. More important, from the point of view of the congregants, both black and white, is the message sent from Southern pulpits that protection was the watchword. Slaveholders were told that they must protect the system of slavery, and doing so would protect their financial interests. Slaves were told that their masters would protect them, giving them a safe home and access to their own church communities. This message was accepted gladly both by whites and a significant number of slaves. Although the support of the clergy did nothing to alter the outcome of the war, it did provide Southerners with a sense of having done the right thing. For decades afterward, veterans and civilian survivors of the
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Hymns
war, even those who agreed that slavery was an indefensible system, commemorated the Confederacy’s spirited fight for self-determination. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boles, John B. The Irony of Southern Religion. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1994. ‘‘The Difference in Race between Northern and Southern People.’’ Southern Literary Messenger 30, no. 6 (June 1860): 401–409. Farmer, James O., Jr. The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999. Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan, eds. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Hudson, Winthrop S. Religion in America. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Johnson, Thomas Cary. The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1911. Palmer, Benjamin Morgan. ‘‘The South: Her Peril and Her Duty.’’ Sermon delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 29, 1860. New Orleans, LA: n.p., 1860. Stout, Harry S. Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. New York: Viking, 2006. Stringfellow, Thornton. Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery. Richmond, VA: J. W. Randolph, 1856. White, Henry Alexander. Southern Presbyterian Leaders. New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1911. Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. George A. Milite
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Hymns, in their purest form, are communications from believers to God. They can express praise, supplication, adoration, and a host of other positive emotions and attitudes. In human terms, they can serve as teaching tools, encourage flagging spirits, and bring comfort to the dying. As a musical form, they were an integral part of nineteenth-century culture, found not only in the churches, but also on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Given that prominence, it is little wonder that hymns figured prominently in Civil War daily life. During the early days of the conflict, both sides sought especially to emphasize that God was on their side. Theologians and preachers attempted to lay biblical foundations for their respective causes, and the songwriters and musicians did their part. Even poets joined the mad rush for validation. In July 1861 a Boston
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‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’’ Written in 1862, Julia Ward Howe’s ‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’’ became a unifying song for the North, suggesting parallels between the suffering of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice of Union soldiers. Written by Julia Ward Howe, variations by Louis Weber.
newspaper published Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.’s ‘‘Army Hymn’’ (sung to the tune of ‘‘Old Hundred’’), which concludes with the fierce passage: ‘‘God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord / In thy dread name we draw the sword, / We lift the starry flag on high / That fills with light our stormy sky’’ (New Hampshire Statesman, July 6, 1861). On both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, politicians, newspapermen, and other interested parties sought a national hymn that would claim God’s favor, enunciate their goals, and like Holmes’s work, properly threaten the enemy. With the offer of a $1,000 prize, many entries were submitted, but none took the prize. The ‘‘Star Spangled Banner’’ was dismissed as being too difficult to sing (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 3, 1865). Yet, on the Union side, one hymn above all captured the spirit of the age: Julia Ward Howe’s ‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’’ In it, she transformed a soldiers’ simple marching tune, ‘‘John Brown’s Body,’’ into Christological justification of the Union cause by proclaiming the Union army to be an instrument of God and comparing the soldiers’ sacrifices to
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‘‘HOLD THE FORT, FOR I AM COMING’’ ‘‘Hold the Fort’’ is a hymn written shortly after the Civil War (1870) by Philip Paul Bliss (1838–1876), based on the events of a battle that took place near Atlanta, Georgia, on October 5, 1864. Bliss wrote the lyrics as well as the tunes for this and many other hymns, sometimes using the pen name ‘‘Pro Phundo Basso.’’ Bliss’s Gospel songs were very popular with Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) and his lay missionaries in Chicago. The composer sometimes performed as a vocal soloist at Moody’s revivals, with his wife as his accompanist. Husband and wife were killed in a train wreck in Ohio in 1876; Bliss was only 38. The battle that inspired ‘‘Hold the Fort’’ took place on October 5, 1864, at at Allatoona Pass, a key Union supply depot at a railroad cut on the Western & Atlantic Railroad about forty miles northwest of Atlanta, Georgia. Confederate general John Bell Hood (1831–1879) saw an opportunity to cut Union General William T. Sherman’s supply line by seizing the pass. A small group of Union defenders at Altoona were forced backward to a fort at the top of a hill overlooking the pass. They refused a Confederate order to surrender, even though prolonging the battle seemed hopeless. One of the Union officers then saw a signal flag from Sherman’s headquarters on Kennesaw Mountain fifteen miles (24 kilometers) away. The flag conveyed the message: ‘‘Hold the fort; I am coming. W. T. Sherman.’’ Bliss may have been thinking of the reference to Jesus as the ‘‘captain of our salvation’’ in Hebrews 2:10 when he compared Sherman’s signal to Jesus’s message of encouragement. Ho, my comrades, see the signal, Waving in the sky! Reinforcements now appearing, Victory is nigh.
SOURCE: ‘‘Hold the Fort.’’ Public Domain Music. Available from http://www.pdmusic.org/bliss/ppb70htf.mid.
Christ’s with the line ‘‘as He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.’’ If it was not the national anthem, it certainly became the anthem for abolitionism. Within weeks of the song’s publication, William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator declared, ‘‘The negro boys around Annapolis have caught the ‘Army Hymn’ and Old John Brown’s ‘Glory, Hallelujah,’ from the New England soldiers. As for the latter, an Annapolis resident says, ‘the negroes are clear carried away with it’’’ (The Liberator, January 10, 1862). Though the Confederates tried, they never found a hymn to match the power of Howe’s. At about the same time that the ‘‘Battle Hymn’’ took hold in the North, a Savannah newspaper published the lyrics to a rather tepid hymn sung to the tune of Britain’s ‘‘God Save the King,’’ which it described as being ‘‘Suitable for the Times’’ in the Confederacy. It went: ‘‘God of the brave and free, / Father of all, to Thee / Our voice we raise. / For all Thy blessings shown, / For deeds of mercy done, / Thy guardian care we own; / Accept our praise’’ (Daily Morning News, February
22, 1862). It was reverent, praiseful, and theologically correct; but it did not capture the imagination of many Confederates. Later in 1862 that same newspaper proclaimed ‘‘The Oath of Freedom’’ as the Confederate national hymn, not at all recognizing the irony. Perhaps its opening line, ‘‘Liberty is always won where there exists the unconquerable will to be free’’ made some Southerners uncomfortable (Daily Morning News, October 21, 1862). Aside from broad characterizations of their respective causes, hymn writers wrote about anything that struck them as noteworthy, and not always successfully. One hymnist, perhaps envious of Howe’s success, penned ‘‘The Battle Hymn of the West,’’ a truly ponderous hymn, triple the length of the original ‘‘Battle Hymn’’ but with none of its grace (The Dakotian, June 3, 1862). Then there was the ‘‘Battle Hymn for Midsummer 1862,’’ which was as unimaginative as its name (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 23, 1862). Civil War–era hymns also spoke to civilian life, the mundane, and the tragic. In Vermont in 1863, a newspaper
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Refrain ‘Hold the fort, for I am coming,’ Jesus signals still; Wave the answer back to heaven, ‘By thy grace we will.’ See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on, Mighty men around us falling, Courage almost gone! (Refrain repeated) See the glorious banner waving, Hear the trumpet blow! In our Leader’s name we’ll triumph, Over every foe. (Refrain repeated) Fierce and long the battle rages, But our help is near, Onward comes our great Commander, Cheer, my comrades, cheer. ‘Hold the fort, for I am coming,’ Jesus signals still; Wave the answer back to heaven, ‘By thy grace we will.’ REBECCA J. FREY
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published ‘‘A Hymn on the Death of a Child,’’ and in San Francisco, ‘‘The Hymn of the Harvesters’’ and ‘‘Hymn to the Flowers’’ invoked God’s blessing in a pastoral setting (Vermont Chronicle, March 3, 1863; Daily Evening Bulletin, October 15, 1862; Daily Evening Bulletin, November 20, 1863). Some hymns were written for the National Day of Fasting, others commemorated the national feast of Thanksgiving, and at least one letter to an editor complained that there were not enough hymns on temperance and intemperance (Daily Cleveland Herald, April 29, 1863, November 26, 1862; The Congregationalist, April 21, 1865). The conclusion of the war inspired a flurry of new hymns. According to one newspaper, Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865 put the nation in a grateful mood, claiming ‘‘the people in many places gave vent to the joy and gratitude by the singing of psalms, hymns, chants, & c’’ (Union and Dakotaian, September 16, 1865). But the joy did not last long, for John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865) took Lincoln’s life less than a week later, prompting an outpouring of grief that often manifested itself in hymns. One hymn called Lincoln ‘‘The people’s friend—the friend of God’’; another, returning to Julia Ward Howe’s sacrificial theme, lamented, ‘‘His voice in clarion notes rang out / The bondsmen’s Jubilee; / His name is on Freedom’s tongue, / Watchword of liberty. / Thy might, O God, was in his heart; / Thy wisdom made him wise; / He lived a man—he rule a prince— / He died a sacrifice’’ (The Congregationalist, April 28, 1865). Ultimately, hymns of the Civil War era represented people’s belief in and desire to influence God, whom they believed was active in everyday affairs. When good things happened, such as a victory on the battlefield, the harvest of a bountiful crop, or even the blooming of a pretty flower, people felt it worthy of mentioning to God in song. Conversely, when things went terribly wrong, as in the death of a child, a defeat of arms, or the loss of a beloved president, people sought comfort in solemn song. Hymns, in everyday life during the Civil War, thus were like their conception of God— omnipresent. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Congregationalist, Boston, April 21, 1865. The Congregationalist, Boston, April 28, 1865. The Daily Cleveland Herald, Cleveland, OH, November 26, 1862. The Daily Cleveland Herald, Cleveland, OH, April 29, 1863. Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, October 15, 1862. Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, November 20, 1863. Daily Morning News, Savannah, GA, February 22, 1862. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
The Dakotian, Yankton, SD, June 3, 1862. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, New York, August 23, 1862. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, New York, June 3, 1865. The Liberator, Boston, January 10, 1862. New Hampshire Statesman, Concord, NH, July 6, 1861. Union and Dakotaian, Yankton, SD, September 16, 1865. Vermont Chronicle, Bellows Falls, VT, March 3, 1863. David H. Slay
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During the Civil War, major religious revivals were taking place across the country as well as within both the Union and Confederate Armies (Olsen 1998). In addition, many churches believed that building good Christian character among the soldiers would make them better soldiers. In contrast to ‘‘unbelieving and careless comrades,’’ a Christian soldier would be ‘‘disciplined, brave, persevering, and in all ways manly, for religious courage elevated men above the fear of mere physical death’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 46). To meet the spiritual need of soldiers, win new converts, and keep Christian young men from being led astray by the drinking and gambling prevalent in the army camps, churches and Bible societies sent the armies Bibles, tracts, and preachers (Woodworth 2001, p. 161). Many evangelical denominations also sent prayer books and hymnals, and the religious military press began publishing numerous newspapers designed particularly with the needs of soldiers in mind. Missionaries whose chief role was to distribute religious literature were called colporteurs. Colporteurs were often well received by the soldiers because the soldiers had a lot of free time on their hands between war campaigns and they were often desperate for any kind of reading material that would relieve the boredom of camp life (Woodworth 2001, p. 163). The American Tract Society, one of the earliest providers of evangelical literature, was organized in 1825 in New York City by members of several Protestant denominations. Its goal was ‘‘to diffuse the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of sinners’’ through the distribution of inexpensive religious tracts and the use of colporteurs (Gaustad 1982, p. 332). Tracts were a cost-effective means of distributing the Gospel. A tenpage tract could be printed in 1825 for one cent, and this same tract could be passed on and read by many families. Tracts could be read a little at a time at one’s leisure, and they contained ‘‘instruction important and weighty enough for the sage, and yet simple enough to be accommodated to the taste and intelligence of a child,’’ thus making it easy for readers to remember the content (Gaustad 1982, p. 333).
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The Rev. Dr. A. E. Dickinson, superintendent for several years of the Virginia Baptist colportage board, wrote that ‘‘in a few hours a colporteur may place a tract in the hands of hundreds of our most promising young men, may urge upon them the claims of the Gospel, and in many ways do them good. How many leisure hours may be rescued from scenes of vice and turned to good account by having a colporteur in every regiment?’’ (Jones 1888, p. 24)
Northern Efforts In the North, most of the need for tracts was supplied by the U.S. Christian Commission, an interdenominational evangelical organization formed by the Young Men’s Christian Association in November 1861 in cooperation with the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society, with the goal of meeting the spiritual needs of soldiers. One effort of the Christian Commission was to provide quality reading materials for the troops. The organization raised more than $500 million and distributed thirty million religious tracts (Olsen 1998) and nearly one million Bibles among the troops to try to curb the swearing, gambling, drinking, and other immoral behavior among the soldiers (Volo and Volo 1998, p. 169). The Christian Commission received donations from the British and Foreign Bible Society in London, who in March 1863 sent to the Christian Commission 14,000 volumes valued at $1,677.79, and offered more if requested (Moss 1868, p. 696). In addition, according to the Annals of the U.S. Christian Commission, many other societies also cooperated with the Christian Commission to provide reading materials. These included the American Sunday-School Union, the Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Board of Publication, the Presbyterian Publication Committee, the American Baptist Publication Society, the Protestant Episcopal Book Society, the American Reform Tract and Book Society, and many others (Moss 1868, p. 700). Many of the denominational organizations forwarded cash donations collected by their constituent churches, sometimes as much as $1,000 or more, ‘‘with the request that its value in publications be sent to the Christian Commission’’ (Moss 1868, p. 700). Many of these organizations also sent their own contributions to the troops in addition to their contributions to the Christian Commission, as did the American Tract Society, which according to its website, distributed over 39 million pages of tracts to the soldiers in the war camps.
Southern Efforts In the South much of the soldiers’ religious literature was supplied by the Evangelical Tract Society of the Confederacy, which was supported by various Southern denominations. During the war, the tract society issued
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more than a hundred different tracts with a total print run estimated at some 50 million pages (Woodworth 2001, p. 165). Southern churches not only sent chaplains to minister to soldiers, but also sent religious tracts and newspapers, Bibles, hymnals, and prayer books to the troops. The tracts were seen as the most effective way to save the army from the ‘‘demoralizing influences of camp life’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 48). The Southern Baptists’ Sunday School and Colportage Board had been distributing tracts before the war, so they were ready to send representatives of their denomination to the troops with plenty of reading materials. The demand for tracts and other devotional materials increased so greatly during the war that new agencies were created during this time to produce religious literature for the troops (Shattuck 1987, p. 49). The largest and most prolific of these was the interdenominational Evangelical Tract Society of Petersburg, Virginia. In addition, five religious newspapers designed for circulation among the Confederate troops were founded in 1863 alone. Robert Franklin Bunting, a chaplain of Terry’s Texas Rangers, the Eighth Texas Cavalry, wrote regular letters to several newspapers to keep them informed of how the troops were doing both physically and spiritually. In a letter to the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, published May 1, 1863, Bunting wrote that the constant migration of the troops had left the troops ‘‘almost entirely deficient in religious reading’’ (Cutrer 2006, p. 151). Fulfilling the demand for tracts and other religious reading materials was a more difficult task in the South, however, than it was in the North. At the beginning of the war, most of the religious publishing houses were located in the North. The Rev. J. William Jones, a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee, wrote that . . . our people generally did their Bible and tract work in connection with societies whose headquarters were in Northern cities, and our facilities for publishing were very scant. The great societies at the North generally declared Bibles and Testaments ‘contrabands of war,’ and we had at once to face the problem of securing supplies through the blockade, or manufacturing them with our poor facilities. (Jones 1888, p. 148)
To solve the problem of the blockade, the Rev. Dr. M. D. Hoge of Virginia visited England during the war to obtain religious reading matter for the Confederate soldiers. The British and Foreign Bible Society gave to the Confederate Bible Society 10,000 Bibles, 50,000 New Testaments, and 250,000 portions of the Scriptures. In addition, the American Bible Society donated 20,000 Testaments to the Baptist Sunday-school Board (Jones 1888, p. 150). Hoge was able to elicit from Christians in Great Britain donations of ‘‘many very valuable books and tracts,’’ some of which were republished for use in the Confederate armies (Jones 1888,
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p. 150). Some of the Bibles and other supplies secured by Dr. Hoge did not make it through the Union blockade of the ports, however (Jones 1888, p. 151).
Content of the Tracts Many of the tracts dealt with the subject of salvation and sought to win soldiers to active commitment to Christianity. Such titles as ‘‘Prepare to Meet Thy God’’ and ‘‘Where Are You Going?’’ are examples of the many tracts aimed at assuring soldiers of salvation in case they died in the conflict. ‘‘For the Soldiers: Are You Ready?’’ reminds soldiers that death is certain although they cannot know when it will happen. The tract urges soldiers to be certain of the state of their soul, telling them that . . . this is a most momentous event. It will sunder all your relations to the present world: it will break every tie of mortality—strip off every disguise— expose every error and deception—bring out to light your whole character, even to every secret thing—present you before a just and holy Judge, and introduce you to an unchangeable condition of joy or sorrow. This event is DEATH; and the question is, ‘Are you ready to die?’ (‘‘Are You Ready?’’, 1861–1865).
Such other tracts as ‘‘A Word of Comfort for the Sick Soldiers’’ and ‘‘The Wounded Soldier’’ aimed at comforting wounded soldiers as they lay in the hospital recovering. ‘‘In the Hospital,’’ written by the Rev. G. B. Taylor of Staunton, Virginia, tells its readers, . . . your cheerful suffering, your heroic endurance are seen to be no less valuable qualities than the courage that would charge a battery. . . . Do not, then, I beseech you, yield to a feeling of discontent, because you are laid aside from active duty. Yours is now the more difficult, and the no less useful part. Every right thinking person regards the sick or wounded soldier, who patiently and cheerfully suffers his appointed time, as no less heroic than when marching or fighting; and doubtless, the historian of this war will refer to our hospitals as being not less glorious to our people than our bloody and victorious battle fields.
Other tracts dealt with moral issues, particularly the drinking and gambling that were prevalent among the troops. ‘‘Liquor and Lincoln’’ urged soldiers to abstain from drinking whiskey. Written by a physician, it stated ‘‘That the Total Abstinence regiments, can endure more labor, more cold, more heat, more exposure, and more privations than those who have their regular grog rations’’ (‘‘Liquor and Lincoln,’’ 1861– 1865). Other titles dealing with moral issues included ‘‘Advice to Soldiers’’ (Royal 1861–1865) and ‘‘The Evils of Gaming: A Letter to a Friend in the Army’’ (Jeter 1861–1865).
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Soldiers’ Reception of Religious Reading Materials Much evidence suggests that soldiers were more than eager to receive such reading materials. One colporteur, the Rev. W. J.W. Crowder, reported that within the space of several weeks he had distributed 200,000 pages of tracts and had over 2,800 conversations about religion with soldiers in the camps and hospitals (Woodworth 2001, p. 164). Another colporteur working in an army hospital in Atlanta reported distributing 20,000 pages of tracts in a single day and speaking to more than 3,000 sick men during his entire time there (p. 165). The Confederate army chaplain, Rev. J. William Jones, wrote, I had a pair of large ‘saddle-bags’ which I used to pack with tracts and religious newspapers, and with Bibles and Testaments when I had them, and besides this I would strap packages behind my saddle and on the pommel. Thus equipped I would sally forth, and as I drew near the camp some one would raise the cry, ‘Yonder comes the Bible and tract man,’ and such crowds would rush out to meet me, that frequently I would sit on my horse and distribute my supply before I could even get into the camp. (Jones 1888, p. 155)
He describes how the men formed ‘‘reading clubs,’’ gathering around a ‘‘good reader’’ who would read aloud portions of Scriptures for several hours. He observed, ‘‘I have never seen more diligent Bible-readers than we had in the Army of Northern Virginia’’ (Jones 1888, p. 155). A letter published in a Southern Baptist paper on March 17, 1864, further illustrates the eagerness of the soldiers to receive the tracts. The article reports that . . . a chaplain arrived in Staunton, [Virginia,] with several large packages of Testaments and tracts, which he was anxious to get to Winchester, but had despaired of doing so as he had to walk, when a party of several soldiers volunteered to lug them the whole distance—ninety-two miles—so anxious were they that their comrades should have the precious messengers of salvation. (Jones 1888, p. 153)
Dr. W. W. Bennett, the Superintendent of the Soldiers’ Tract Association, reported that ‘‘the number of religious tracts and books distributed by the colporters, chaplains, and missionaries in the army, we can never know. But as all the churches were engaged in the work of printing and circulating, it is not an overestimate to say that hundreds of millions of pages were sent out by the different societies’’ (Jones 1888, p. 156). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Are You Ready? [Tract No. 26, For the Soldiers].’’ Raleigh, NC: n.p., 1861–1865. University of North
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Carolina at Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South. Available online at http://docsouth. unc.edu/. Berends, Kurt. O. ‘‘’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man’’’: The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy.’’ In Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Cutrer, Thomas W., ed. Our Trust is in the God of Battles: The Civil War Letters of Robert Franklin Bunting, Chaplain, Terry’s Texas Rangers, C.S.A. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Gaustad, Edwin, ed. A Documentary History of Religion in America to the Civil War. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982. Jeter, Rev. Jeremiah Bell. ‘‘The Evils of Gaming. A Letter to a Friend in the Army.’’ Raleigh, NC: n.p., 1861–1865. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Jones, Rev. J. William. Christ in the Camp or Religion in Lee’s Army. Richmond, VA: B.F. Johnson & Co., 1888. ‘‘Liquor and Lincoln.’’ Petersburg, VA [?], n.p.: 1861–1865. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Moss, Rev. Lemuel. Annals of the United States Christian Commission. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1868. Olsen, Ted. ‘‘Memorializing the Civil War.’’ Christianity Today, Christian History and Biography, May 22, 1998. Available online at http://www.christianitytoday. com/. Royal, William. ‘‘Advice to Soldiers’’ [Tract No. 44]. Raleigh, NC: n.p., 1861–1865. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Taylor, George Boardman. ‘‘In the Hospital.’’ N.p, 1861–1865. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Documenting the American South. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Volo, Dorothy Denneen, and James M. Volo. Daily Life in Civil War America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Sandra Johnston
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The Young Men’s Christian Association, known today as the YMCA, is familiar to most for its family fitness centers and recreational programs for youth. In the Civil War era, however, the organization was active throughout the nation, tending to the spiritual and social needs of the communities they served.
Origins of the YMCA In 1844 unhealthy social conditions in England at the end of the Industrial Revolution led George Williams (1821–1905) to begin a Bible study and prayer group for the men who roamed the streets searching for jobs. The idea caught on, and other groups formed throughout Great Britain and other parts of the world. In 1851 the first YMCA in North America was established in Montreal, Canada, on November 25, followed by the first YMCA in the United States in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 29. Anthony Bowen (c. 1805–1872), a freed slave, founded the first YMCA for African Americans two years later in Washington, DC. By 1854 total membership worldwide had grown to 30,369 members, with 397 YMCAs in seven nations. During the Civil War membership in the United States dwindled as men went off to war, until at the end of the war there were only fifty-nine chapters. However, the popularity of the YMCA and the organization’s war efforts among the troops helped to revive membership when the war was over, and four years later there were more than 600 chapters. Women were not admitted as members until the beginning of the 1850s, but they served the YMCS before then by teaching classes, raising funds, and functioning like a church’s Ladies Auxiliary. Although begun by evangelical Christians, the concept of the YMCA was unusual and appealing because it fostered an openness that crossed the boundaries between different churches and social classes, and it focused on social need in the communities it served. The focus of the YMCA in the early years ‘‘was on saving souls, with saloon and street corner preaching,’’ but by 1866 the New York YMCA adopted the fourfold purpose of improving the ‘‘spiritual, mental, social, and physical condition of men’’ (‘‘History of the YMCA Movement’’).
Areas of Service One area of focus for the YMCA was recreation for youth. In the 1860s the YMCA got involved with camping when the Vermont Y’s boy’s missionary took a group of boys to Lake Champlain for a summer encampment. In 1860 the Brooklyn YMCA planned a building that would cost $50,000 and would be large enough for meeting rooms, a library, reading room, baths, a
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bowling alley, and a gymnasium (Boston Investigator, February 29, 1860). Another recreational activity sponsored by the YMCA was reading clubs. Male clubs were attended by businessmen and professionals who founded many social projects. Middle- and upper-class women enjoyed their own versions of these clubs, which provided intellectual stimulation beyond domestic and church activities. The clubs typically met twice per month to discuss literature, history, and art (Volo and Volo 1998, p. 219). In addition to literary societies and reading clubs, YMCAs also offered lectures to the public. By charging admission, usually 50 cents per person, the chapter could raise money to benefit the poor in their communities. A notice in the Weekly Raleigh Register on January 11, 1860, indicated that the proceeds from a lecture sponsored by the Raleigh YMCA would ‘‘be given to the poor, and want, and suffering to some extent be relieved by the tickets sold, while a rich moral and intellectual treat will be enjoyed.’’ The lecture by Duncan K. McRae, Esquire, was a repeat performance, and McRae had agreed to repeat his lecture only if half the proceeds went to the poor. The YMCA responded by raising the ticket price to 50 cents and giving the entire proceeds to the poor. These lectures were generally well received by the public. An editorial in the Daily Evening Bulletin of San Francisco, California, on January 13, 1860, extolled the virtues of public lectures and praised the YMCA as ‘‘calling upon ‘superior men and men of high consideration to address the public in their name.’’’ The topics presented varied greatly, but were all educational in nature. The Philadelphia YMCA sponsored Dr. Henry M. Scudder to deliver a course of five lectures on India at the Musical Fund Hall, according to an advertisement in the North American and United States Gazette (January 21, 1860). The New York Herald reported on January 29, 1860, that a local chapter of the YMCA would sponsor Mrs. Ellen Key Blunt to give sacred poetry readings. A similar meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, featured the Reverend Dr. Deems, who lectured on ‘‘The Poetry and Ethics of Trade’’ (Weekly Raleigh Register, February 8, 1860). In addition to educational topics, the YMCAs also addressed social problems. The Boston Investigator reported on February 8, 1860, that a Reverend Dr. Miller gave a talk on ‘‘Bigotry in the Town Hall, Birmingham.’’ Charitable service was another focus of the YMCA. An advertisement in the Daily National Intelligencer on January 4, 1860, revealed that the Washington, DC, chapter was holding a Grand Concert to benefit the Western Mission Sunday School of the YMCA, and children of the school would participate in the concert. In late March 1863 the YMCA distributed bread, meat, rice, and other foodstuffs to the needy in response to a food shortage that developed in urban areas of the South (Volo and Volo 1998, p. 58).
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The YMCA also held public prayer meetings. In 1857, in response to a ‘‘severe economic reversal’’ in the nation, the New York YMCA sponsored noonday prayer meetings at the Fulton Street Dutch Reformed Church, which ‘‘began drawing overflow crowds’’ (Moorhead 1978, p. 20). The Scioto Gazette (March 20, 1860), of Chillicothe, Ohio, advertised daily prayer meetings from 8:30 to 9:00 A.M. every day at the local YMCA, and the New York Herald (December 16, 1860) advertised meetings of prayer for the Union being held in Boston. The Daily Cleveland Herald reported on December 10, 1860, that members of the Cleveland YMCA went to the county jail to provide ‘‘religious exercise in company with the prisoners.’’ They took a vote to determine if they should do it again, and ‘‘the prisoners were unanimous in favor of it.’’ Shortly before the Civil War broke out, the YMCA of Alexandria, Virginia, sent letters to various Northern chapters ‘‘imploring them to set apart the last Friday in January (1860) as a day of special prayer to Almighty God for the preservation of the Union of the States, and for the restoration of kindness and good feeling among the citizens thereof ’’ (New York Herald, February 5, 1860). Though the Connecticut members refused to participate, the Detroit Free Press reported that the meeting held in that city ‘‘under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association, was quite numerously attended by citizens of all classes, a large number of clergymen, and many ladies’’ (quoted in the New York Herald, February 5, 1860). The one-hour meetings included reading of Scriptures, singing, and ‘‘brief, voluntary prayers by those who felt prompted to lead in these devotions.’’ The editor of the New York Herald noted that in spite of the negative response of the Connecticut chapter, similar meetings were being held all over the country, and that ‘‘the influence of such meetings cannot but be good upon the whole country at the present time’’ (February 5, 1860).
Founding of the U.S. Christian Commission When the Civil War broke out, many charitable organizations formed to provide assistance in response to the needs of the war. The United States Christian Commission was founded by delegates from YMCAs in the Northern states in 1861 to form ‘‘a single national agency to minister to the spiritual needs of the Union soldiers’’ and to win ‘‘the soldiers’ souls to Christ’’ (Shattuck 1987, pp. 26, 24). George H. Stuart (1816– 1890), a Presbyterian lay leader, was elected its first president in November 1861. The organization grew tremendously; by the war’s end it had become a ‘‘vast interdenominational fellowship’’ of nearly 5,000 unpaid workers who visited the armies and led revival meetings, distributed tracts, and gave spiritual counsel. Volunteers also wrote letters, helped to tend the sick and wounded, operated lending libraries to provide
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quality reading materials, and ran soup kitchens to provide additional nourishment beyond what the soldiers received from the government. According to James Moorhead, more than $6 million in cash, goods, and services were received and disbursed among the soldiers (1978, p. 66). Rufus Kinsley, a soldier in the Union Army, wrote about a visit from ‘‘two old ladies from Michigan’’ who were sent by the Michigan Christian Commission. The women visited the hospitals and camps, distributing ‘‘thousands of garments, and thousands of dollars worth of table fixings to the sick and suffering’’ (Rankin 2004, p. 149). Although some felt that the Christian Commission should leave ‘‘temporal matters’’ such as nursing the wounded to the Sanitary Commission, Stuart replied that ‘‘there is a good deal of religion in a warm shirt and a good beefsteak’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 29).
Other Northern War Efforts In addition to the work of the U.S. Christian Commission, the YMCA assisted the war effort in other ways. In May 1861 the New York Association formed the Army Committee. New York and Chicago YMCA chapters helped to recruit troops for the army, and were so successful that membership of local chapters dwindled as men went to join the troops. Some military units, especially in the South, started their own YMCA chapters, as did the federal prisoner-of-war camp at Johnson’s Island in Sandusky, Ohio, for the purpose of looking after the prison hospital and holding weekly lectures. Beyond caring for wounded soldiers, their goal was to give the men hope. The Reverend R. W. Cridlin wrote about a Confederate captive who had arrived at Johnson’s Island following the Gettysburg campaign and found ‘‘rampant profanity, gambling, slacking and other unchristian habits.’’ The new prisoner initiated prayer meetings and Bible classes which soon grew in frequency and number (Lutz 2001). Though there were tensions between the Northern and Southern chapters of the YMCA, the Northern YMCA–U.S. Christian Commission workers at Johnson’s Island were commended by forty-eight Confederate officers at the prison, who stated in a October 31, 1863, letter to the Confederate government in Richmond that the YMCA–U.S. Christian Commission workers ‘‘make no difference or discrimination between Confederate or Federal . . . . We trust, that the authorities at Richmond and elsewhere will treat any said delegates . . . with kindness justly due them and grant them speedy return to their Christian work’’ (Lutz 2001).
Southern Efforts When nearly 3,000 soldiers were wounded in the Battle of Manassas in July 1861, the Charleston YMCA chapter asked the Richmond chapter to oversee the collection and distribution of supplies for the sick and wounded.
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The Richmond chapter responded by turning its building into a ‘‘supply depot’’ (Lutz 2001). In mid-August of the same year, three Richmond homes were converted into hospitals that were attended by physicians who were YMCA members. In addition, Southern chapters founded a lodge to provide food, shelter, and other supplies to transient soldiers. By the end of the year nearly 4,700 soldiers had passed through the facility. The Charlottesville, Virginia, YMCA also made wooden legs to distribute free to disabled soldiers (Lutz 2001). In winter 1863 to 1864, one Mississippi Brigade YMCA fasted once a week in order to send the saved rations to the poor in Richmond. In addition to the relief efforts of Southern chapters, some army units formed their own chapters of the YMCA. James Street, a minister serving in the Ninth Texas Regiment, reported in a letter to his wife that ‘‘a Young Men’s Christian Association, composed of fifty men of all denominations had been formed in his brigade’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 101). He wrote that he had heard that the chaplains were attempting to form a YMCA in every brigade of the Army of Tennessee. He felt that this might lead to revival among the Southern troops, which in turn might ‘‘assure the triumph of the South’’ because ‘‘only God could give victory to one side or the other’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 101). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘History of the YMCA Movement.’’ YMCA Web site. Available from http://www.ymca.net/. Lutz, Stephen D. ‘‘Coffee, Bibles, and Wooden Legs: The YMCA Goes to War.’’ Civil War Times Illustrated 40, no. 1 (2001): 32–37. Moorhead, James H. American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978. Rankin, David C. Diary of a Christian Soldier: Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr. A Shield and a Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Volo, Dorothy Denneen, and James M. Volo. Daily Life in Civil War America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Sandra Johnston
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Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, civilians had paid little attention to the spiritual needs of soldiers. By the end of 1861, however, with the mobilization of large volunteer forces, the opportunity for an organization devoted to soldiers’ spiritual needs arose. The United
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States Christian Commission (USCC) was organized at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) meeting held in New York from November 14 to November 15, 1861, with the passage of a resolution by thirty-six delegates. This document recognized one of the YMCA’s duties as promoting ‘‘the spiritual and temporal welfare of soldiers and sailors, and created a Christian Commission of twelve members, who were to serve gratuitously appoint necessary agents, and report their accomplishments to the Young Men’s Christian Association and to the public’’ (Cannon 1951, pp. 63–64). The new USCC was hierarchically structured. George Hay Stuart (1816–1890), a Philadelphia merchant and Presbyterian lay leader, was named the chairman of the organization. In August 1862, John A. Cole was appointed general field agent—the man in charge of all the paid field agents in each army corps. These individuals supervised volunteer delegates—those ministers who performed the grassroots work of the organization, serving in both hospitals and in battlefield regiments. According to the historian M. Hamlin Cannon, those delegates sent to the battlefield served a two-week tour of duty while those stationed in camps or at hospitals served for six weeks (1951, pp. 64, 66). At the height of the USCC’s influence, about 5,000 volunteer delegates worked for the organization (Woodworth 2001, p. 167).
Goals and Activities The main goal of the USCC was ‘‘to bring men to Christ,’’ an objective achieved through two main activities (Cannon 1951, p. 70). First, USCC delegates strove to help regimental chaplains in all aspects of their jobs: providing pastoral care for their men, distributing tracts, and assisting with worship services. The USCC proved especially helpful in constructing chapels for men in camp. William R. Eastman, a chaplain for the Seventysecond New York Regiment, recalled that during the winter of 1863–1864, ‘‘the Christian Commission lent a large canvas to cover any log chapel that might be built and there were several brigade chapels that winter near Brandy Station, each seating more than a hundred men’’ (Eastman 2003, pp. 120–121). The USCC also maintained their own prayer spaces, such as the chapel at City Point, Virginia, the main supply depot for the Union armies operating in Virginia from 1864 to 1865. Described by Thomas Scott Johnson, a USCC delegate stationed at City Point, two services were held there daily, ‘‘the one a prayer meeting held at two o’clock and the other a regular evening service with preaching at 7 o’clock’’ (Kaliebe 1966, p. 45). Second, the USCC delegates provided for the physical needs of the soldiers themselves. This undertaking included providing soldiers with stationery and stamped envelopes. Moses Smith, Chaplain of the Eighth Connecticut Volunteers, Army of the James, explained in The Congregationalist that ‘‘the Commission Tent allowed GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
me to draw daily a quire of paper and package of envelopes for our men’’ (January 20, 1865). In addition, the USCC delegates tended the wounded, serving as nurses. At Gettysburg, Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond (1828–1900) praised the assistance of the USCC in a letter sent to George Hay Stuart dated July 20, 1863, and reprinted in the Bangor (ME) Daily Whig & Courier. Hammond noted that without the aid of USCC delegates at the battle ‘‘the suffering would have been much greater’’ (July 31, 1863). Commended by such prominent civilians as Surgeon General Hammond for their dedication and hard work, USCC delegates were beloved by many of those soldiers who had been in their care. An article printed in the Vermont Chronicle in 1864 related the message quite clearly, explaining that ‘‘The delegate who passes through the hospitals with his shining badge upon his breast continually hears the testimony of these men, saying, ‘You saved my life!’ ‘Many of us would have been in our graves but for you’—and similar things’’ (August 6, 1864). The Union military establishment also helped the USCC in any possible manner. Its assistance most was explicitly seen in Grant’s order pertaining to USCC delegates, dated December 12, 1863, and reprinted in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin the following year. Promulgated in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this order gave delegates permission ‘‘to pass to all parts within the lines, without hindrance or molestation’’ and charged the Commissary Department to sell goods to USCC delegates. It also allowed delegates to use military telegraph lines. Perhaps most useful to the USCC, however, was that Grant charged the Quartermaster’s Department with providing delegates with ‘‘free transportation upon all government steamers and military railroads to and from such points within the military divisions as their duties may require them to visit’’ (May 5, 1864).
The Home Front’s Support The work of the USCC among the soldiers in the field and in hospitals would not have been successful or even attempted without money raised by the organization on the home front. Collections for the organization were taken throughout the Northern states. At the anniversary meeting of the USCC held in Philadelphia in 1863, the Bangor (ME) Daily Whig & Courier stated, ‘‘a very large collection was taken up at the close, and rings, brooches, and other jewelry were found in it’’ (February 13, 1863). The city of Boston was another major contributor. George H. Stuart noted in the North American and United States Gazette that the citizens of Boston had given twenty-six thousand dollars and had not yet completed their fundraising activities (July 13, 1863). Later in the conflict, Stuart made a specific appeal for more donations to the cause. In one notable example, Stuart published a ‘‘Thanksgiving Appeal for the Nation’s Defenders’’ in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel.
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DWIGHT L. MOODY Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899) was a member of the U.S. Christian Commission who became a well-known nineteenthcentury evangelist and the founder of a Bible training school now known worldwide as Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Moody’s institute, which opened in 1886, was intended to train laypeople to do evangelism; it was not a seminary for clergy. Born in Northfield, Massachusetts, Moody went to Boston to work for an uncle in the shoe business while he was still a teenager. He had always been a devout church member, but after a conversion experience in 1854 he became interested in the Sunday School movement. Moody continued to be a Sunday School worker after he moved to Chicago in 1856. He was doing so well in the shoe business that his new employer sent him out as a commercial traveler, but after the Civil War began, Moody decided to give up secular employment for full-time evangelistic work. As a member of the wartime U.S. Christian Commission Moody visited prisoner of war camps for Confederate soldiers in the Chicago area, handing out pocket-sized Bibles and holding revival meetings. After the war he traveled to England to study British methods of evangelism and to hear Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892), a famous English preacher. Moody himself began to preach in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England, drawing crowds as large as twenty thousand. He drew similarly large crowds after returning to the United States; President Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) attended one of Moody’s worship services in 1876. Moody was also invited to preach at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He died in 1899 after a series of heart attacks. Moody’s preaching was noteworthy for the period because there was nothing sensationalist or flamboyant about his sermons. He was not attracted to controversy with other clergy, and he strove to be ‘‘homey’’ and sincere rather than entertaining or provocative. An example of Moody’s warm and positive approach to faith is a sermon that he preached in 1873 called ‘‘The Qualifications for Soul-Winning.’’ Here is an excerpt from that sermon: I have observed that God never uses a man that is always looking on the dark side of things: what we do for Him let us do cheerfully, not because it is our duty—not that we should sweep away the word but because it is our
Here, he made a plea to the newspaper’s readers for aid ‘‘in behalf of our country’s defenders, for Thanksgiving day collections.’’ He further elaborated: ‘‘Contributions of clothing, and comforts, as well as money, are needed’’ (November 9, 1863). In another request for money printed in the North American and United States Gazette, Stuart attempted to appeal to the Union population’s religious base. He stated on behalf of the USCC delegates, ‘‘It remains for the Christian philanthropic people of the land to keep [the delegates] supplied with the means of carrying on and increasing their labors of love’’ (May 26, 1864).
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privilege. What would my wife or children say if I spoke of loving them because it was my duty to do so? . . . A London minister, a friend of mine, lately pointed out a family of seven, all of whom he was just receiving into the Church. Their story was this: going to church, he had to pass by a window, looking up at which one day, he saw a baby looking out; he smiled—the baby smiled again. Next time he passes he looks up again, smiles, and the baby smiles back. A third time going by, he looks up, and seeing the baby, throws it a kiss—which the baby returns to him. Time after time he has to pass the window, and now cannot refrain from looking up each time: and each time there are more faces to receive his smiling greeting; till by-and-by he sees the whole family grouped at the window—father, mother, and all. The father conjectures the happy, smiling stranger must be a minister, and so, next Sunday morning, after they have received at the window the usual greeting, two of the children, ready dressed, are sent out to follow him: they enter his church, hear him preach, and carry back to their parents the report that they never heard such preaching; and what preaching could equal that of one who had so smiled on them? Soon the rest come to the church too, and are brought in—all by a smile. Let us not go about, hanging our heads like a bulrush; if Christ gives joy, let us live it! The whole world is in all matters for the very best thing—you always want to get the best possible thing for your money; let us show, then, that our religion is the very best thing: men with long, gloomy faces are never wise in the winning of souls. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marsden, George M. Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, pp. 20–22. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991. Moody, Dwight L. ‘‘The Qualifications for Soul-Winning,’’ December 7, 1873. Available from http://www.biblebelievers.com/moody_sermons/m1.html.
Relations between the USCC and the USSC During the course of the war, tensions arose between the USCC and another philanthropic organization, the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). According to historian Gardiner Shattuck, this tension occurred due to the inherent differences between ‘‘two rival theological wings of American Protestantism—evangelical [the USCC] and liberal [the USSC].’’ Moreover, ‘‘the practical work that they both performed was similar’’ (Shattuck 1987, p. 29). Some chaplains in the field, such as Hallock Armstrong of the Fiftieth Regiment, Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers of the Ninth Corps of the
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Men of U.S. Christian Commision at field headquarters. Recognizing a need to minister to the Union troops, the Young Men’s Christian Association created the United States Christian Commission whose primary aim was to provide spiritual support for the soldiers. Funded primarily by Northerners, the organization also assisted in hospitals and gathered extra supplies to distribute in the army camps. Alexander Gardner/George Eastman House/Getty Images.
Army of the Potomac, appeared to think that the USCC @was more beneficial than the USSC. Armstrong related an incident in a letter to his wife Mary, in which he saw the delegates at the USCC headquarters in Virginia ‘‘distributing a large number of beautiful medals, on which was inscribed the pledge ‘Rum and tobacco I’ll not use, Nor take God’s name in vain,’ yet when approaching the USSC headquarters, he ‘‘found them issuing large quantities of tobacco free to the boys’’ (March 23, 1865; quoted in Raup 1961, p. 13). Yet other chaplains felt both organizations were performing valuable work. The Reverend Andrew Jackson Hartsock, chaplain of the One Hundred and Tenth and the One Hundred and Thirty-third Pennsylvania Regiments, noted in a diary entry dated February 3, 1863, that ‘‘the agents of these organizations [the USCC and the USSC] are gentleman and Christians, and are doing a noble work’’ (Duram 1979, p. 59). The United States Christian Commission provided for the spiritual and physical well-being of Union soldiers throughout the American Civil War. The USCC delegates, although serving only for a limited period of time and without pay, augmented the strength of the official paid military chaplains assigned to both
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regiments in the field and hospitals. Supported by donations from the home front, USCC delegates successfully spread evangelical Christianity while at the same time providing for the physical needs of soldiers. Soldiers, chaplains, and even General Grant acknowledged the USCC’s important role, yet over the course of the conflict tensions sometimes flared between the USCC and the other large philanthropic body that aided the troops, the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cannon, M. Hamlin. ‘‘The United States Christian Commission.’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review 38, no. 1 (June 1951): 61–80. Duram, James C., and Eleanor A. Duram, eds. Soldier of the Cross: The Civil War Diary and Correspondence of Rev. Andrew Jackson Hartsock. Manhattan, KS: Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing for the American Military Institute, 1979. Eastman, William R. ‘‘A Yankee Chaplain Remembers.’’ In Faith in the Fight: Civil War Chaplains, John W. Brinsfield, William C. Davis, Benedict Maryniak, and James I. Robertson Jr., eds. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003.
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Fredrickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993 [1965]. Kaliebe, Jon Edward. ‘‘The Letters of Thomas Scott Johnson: His Work among the Negro as Christian Commission Delegate and Chaplain, 1864–1866.’’ Master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1966. Moorhead, James H. American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Raup, Hallock F., ed. Letters from a Pennsylvania Chaplain at the Siege of Petersburg, 1865. London: The Eden Press, 1961. Shattuck, Jr., Gardiner H. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Smith, Moses. ‘‘The U.S. Christian Commission.’’ The Congregationalist, January 20, 1865. ‘‘Special Notices U.S. Christian Commission.’’ North American and United States Gazette, July 13, 1863. Stuart, George H. Letter to the editor, North American and United States Gazette, May 26, 1864. ‘‘U.S. Christian Commission.’’ Bangor (ME) Daily Whig & Courier, February 13, 1863. ‘‘U.S. Christian Commission.’’ Bangor (ME) Daily Whig & Courier, July 31, 1863. ‘‘The U.S. Christian Commission.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, May 5, 1864. ‘‘U.S. Christian Commission Thanksgiving Appeal for the Nation’s Defenders.’’ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, November 9, 1863. ‘‘U.S. Christian Commission: The Present Campaign in Virginia,—Marches and Battles,’’ Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls), August 6, 1864. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Benjamin L. Miller
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Anti-Catholic sentiment was pronounced in the midnineteenth-century United States. Powerful nativist impulses found political voice in the Know Nothing (American) Party, which had reached its zenith during the 1850s, but prejudices against Catholics remained on the eve of the Civil War in 1861. The fact that American Catholics increased their numbers from approximately 1 percent of the total population during the Revolutionary period to become one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States by 1860 (Wagner, Gallagher, and Finkelman 2002, p. 82) seems to have exacerbated the hostility that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants felt towards immigrant Catholics. These complex religious and ethnic conflicts produced particularly
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inflammatory tensions in the cities in the Northeast and Midwest, where most of the poor German and Irish Catholic immigrants lived. Many Americans were particularly suspicious of these immigrant Catholics because of their purported loyalty to the Pope. Fearing the inroads of papal influence on domestic politics, nativist Protestants sought to deny immigrant Catholics the vote. During the 1860 election, Catholics generally voted in favor of the Democratic Party because they disagreed with the Republican Party’s support of temperance and emancipation (McPherson 2003, p. 176). Although the Catholic Church opposed the institution of slavery on moral grounds, working-class American Catholics feared that if the Republican Party freed the slaves, then the competition for low-paying industrial jobs would increase, potentially leaving them unemployed. After the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, the Catholic Church took no official position on the war so as not to cause a schism among its followers. Some Catholics were initially leery about the conflict and, later, about emancipation, but many, both civilian and clergy, rallied to their respective causes in the North and South. They were motivated by a mixture of patriotism, a desire to silence nativist attitudes, and, like many Protestant volunteers, a need to obtain a steady income through military enlistment.
Catholicism in Camp, on the March, and under Fire Catholic soldiers and clergy who served in the Northern and Southern armies continued to practice their religion despite the fact that they constituted a minority of both Union and Confederate forces. Catholic soldiers turned to God and Catholic theology to sustain them in combat, to prepare them for death, and to see them through the trials of their daily lives in camp and on the march. Because of the predominant anti-Catholic sentiment, the number of Catholic chaplains on both the Union and Confederate sides was small in proportion to their population when compared to the number of Protestant chaplains. Catholic priests were assigned only to regiments whose ranks were composed entirely of Catholics because Protestant officers commonly refused priests’ services for their Catholic soldiers (Shattuck 1987, p. 55). Army regiments fortunate enough to have a Catholic chaplain, such as the Irish Brigade of the Union Army of the Potomac and the Fourteenth Louisiana Infantry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, had their spiritual needs fulfilled on a regular basis. Chaplains believed in the causes for which they fought, emphasized the exemplary nature of the Catholic soldier, and honored the opportunity to save soldiers’ souls through conversion, absolution, or the administration of last rites. Reverend Sheeran of the Fourteenth Louisiana summarized his devotion to God, the
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Sunday morning mass. Time permitting, Catholic priests conducted worship services for soldiers, giving the troops a sense of normalcy during the war and admonishing them to avoid temptations while away from their families. The Library of Congress.
Confederate cause, and his men by saying, ‘‘The interest I feel in the Cause for which our brave men are sacrificing the comforts of society and periling their lives as well as the salvation of their souls prompted me to do all in my power to keep them in the friendship of their God’’ (Sheeran 1960, p. 5). These priests believed that a man’s commitment to God and the Catholic faith translated into heroic service on the battlefield. Father Corby of the Irish Brigade likened the commitment that men make to soldiering to the promise made in marriage, because both covenants bound men until death. Because of this commitment, the Irish priest held that ‘‘there is no braver soldier in this world . . . than a consistent Catholic’’ because these men realize that their power ‘‘comes from the ‘God of battles,’ not from man’’ (Corby 1992 [1893], pp. 6, 296). In order to ensure that their men were ready to meet God at any moment, Catholic chaplains labored tirelessly in camp, on the battlefield, and as members of burial details. Catholic priests heard many confessions and administered absolution to soldiers individually or
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en masse, as was the case of Father Corby and the Irish Brigade before battle at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Observers noted that absolution brought peace of mind to both Catholic and, at Gettysburg, non-Catholic soldiers because it enabled them, in the words Major St. Clair Mulholland, to ‘‘receive every benefit of divine grace that could be imparted through the instrumentality of the Church ministry’’ before God called them home (Corby 1992 [1893], p. 184). Religious practices also brought comfort, order, and some of the familiarity of home to the unfamiliar world of the army. If the armies were not actively campaigning on Sundays, both Union and Confederate soldiers constructed rustic altars in their camps where a congregation could gather to celebrate Mass. In their sermons, chaplains exhorted men against the temptations of liquor, gambling, immorality, and blasphemy, all readily accessible in the army. Chaplains also helped soldiers manage their money by forwarding soldiers’ pay to their families in order to keep it from being squandered (Blied 1945, p. 115).
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The religious life of the army also provided men with leisure activities during the holidays. Saint Patrick’s Day in the Irish Brigade never passed without mass and festivities such as a steeplechase. Catholic regiments also observed the Easter and Christmas holidays. Reverend Sheeran recalled that in 1862, at his request, the men of the Fourteenth Louisiana donated the money they had raised to purchase him a Christmas present—a sum of $1,206—to Saint Joseph’s Asylum in Richmond. On Easter Sunday the following year, Sheeran was moved by the sight of ‘‘a large number of the Catholics’’ gathered in the morning ‘‘knee-deep in the snow, cheerfully awaiting the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass’’ (Sheeran 1960, p. 39).
Priests and Nuns Tending to the Wounded The presence of Catholic priests and nuns in military hospitals or on burial details bridged the sectional divide between Union and Confederate soldiers. Following the fighting at Fair Oaks (Seven Pines), Virginia on June 1, 1862, Captain David Power Conyngham of the Irish Brigade praised the work of chaplains as they tended to fallen soldiers, and noted that the clergy ‘‘know no distinction between rebel or Federal’’ because their mission was ‘‘to console the mind and heal the body, and in this they know no distinction’’ (Conyngham 1994 [1866], p. 161). Following the battle of Malvern Hill in early July 1862, Conyngham noted that Catholic chaplains remained on the field until all the wounded, dead, and dying were treated and ‘‘cheerfully allowed themselves to fall into the enemy’s hands sooner than neglect the spiritual or temporal welfare of our brave sufferers’’ (p. 226). Reverend Sheeran reported that on September 15, 1862, he encountered Union soldiers burying their comrades who had fallen in the recent siege of Harpers Ferry. The Yankee soldiers, who turned out to be Catholic, ‘‘rejoiced’’ to learn that Sheeran was a priest and forgot ‘‘for the moment that they were in the hands of the enemy.’’ Following the fighting at Chancellorsville, Virginia on May 4, 1863, Sheeran visited a Union field hospital. After administering the sacraments to a number of wounded Catholic soldiers, the men informed Sheeran that Federal surgeons ‘‘had paid no attention to them.’’ Upon hearing this, Sheeran found the Union doctors and ‘‘requested them as a matter of humanity not to neglect the men’’ (Sheeran 1960, p. 44). A year later, following an engagement at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, Sheeran took it upon himself to care for the Union wounded, Catholics who happened to belong to the Union Irish Brigade (p. 88). Catholic nuns played a significant role in caring for wounded Civil War soldiers. By the mid-nineteenth century there were approximately 1,500 nuns in the United
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States whose mission was to carry out the works of Christian charity by teaching, caring for orphans, nursing the sick, and providing spiritual assistance to the dying (Maher 1989, pp. 2, 14). The nuns’ antebellum mission was rare, and they were the only source of trained nurses at the outset of the Civil War (p. 27). Many orders of nuns worked in military hospitals, or turned their convents into medical wards. The specific orders that ministered to the wounded and dying included the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Saint Joseph, and the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Many soldiers and civilians, however, made no distinction among the orders, and commonly referred to all nuns as ‘‘Sisters of Charity’’ (Barton 1897, p. 3). Doctors specifically requested Catholic sisters to assist the wounded and dying because of their medical expertise (Maher 1989, p. 69). The Sisters of Charity of Emmittsburg, Maryland, had great demands placed on their service: These nuns traveled to Richmond in June 1861 to serve at the city’s Confederate Military Hospital. On May 24, 1863, five Sisters of Charity fulfilled a request to minister to wounded soldiers in Atlanta, Georgia (Barton 1897, pp. 86, 90). Although sometimes they were negatively received, the sisters worked in the hospitals tirelessly and without pay, bringing food to the hungry, writing letters home on the behalf of dying soldiers, and bringing spiritual and physical comfort to those in pain. After benefiting from treatment at the Atlanta hospital, one wounded soldier confessed to the Catholic nurse that when he learned that the nurses were nuns his ‘‘heart was filled with hatred,’’ but that he later recognized ‘‘the unintentional blackness’’ of his heart and saw the sisters ‘‘in their true light’’ (p. 91). Although the Catholic sisters devoted a large amount of their time to nursing wounded soldiers, they did not forsake their commitment to aiding orphans during the Civil War. On November 9, 1864, the Washington, DC, Daily National Intelligencer ran an ad for a fair benefiting orphan girls, soliciting donations to ‘‘relieve the necessities of the numerous orphan girls of St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum . . . where they will partake of the maternal and judicious care of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph.’’ The paper praised the nuns’ noble devotion to caring for the suffering regardless of creed, and commended their ‘‘devoted attention and zealous labors in nursing the sick, wounded, and dying soldiers in our military hospitals during the present war.’’
Catholicism as Sustaining Motivation Catholicism not only sustained Civil War soldiers on a day-to-day basis, it also gave them and civilians at home a reason to continue supporting the war. As both the Union and the Confederacy suffered heavy losses during the latter part of 1862 and early 1863, patriotic rhetoric
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As immigration propelled Catholicism to become one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States at the start of the Civil War, many native-born Protestants feared the United States would become unduly influenced by the Pope and actively sought to curb the rising political power of Catholic immigrants. The Library of Congress. The Propagation Society.
became steeped with religious metaphors, particularly that of the martyr and Christian warrior (Fellman, Gordon, and Sutherland 2003, p. 179). The requiem mass for the repose of the souls of the Irish Brigade held on January 16, 1863, at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and the sermon titled ‘‘Patriotism, a Christian Virtue’’ preached by the Reverend Joseph Fransioli at the same location on July 26, 1863, reveal the role that religion played in consoling the bereaved and sustaining civilians’ and soldiers’ motivation. Many Union soldiers attached religious significance to the preservation of the United States (Woodworth 2001, p. 111). The requiem mass, accordingly, honored the country’s fallen and praised ‘‘Men who had pledged to this land their troth, and died to defend her, ere break there oath’’ (Conyngham 1994 [1866], p. 358). The Reverend Fransioli’s sermon echoed the requiem mass’s reverence for the dead, and exhorted men and women to support the Union cause by contending that patriotism ‘‘is not only a social virtue, commanding respect, but a Christian virtue to be rewarded by the blessings of God here and hereafter.’’ The priest concluded by advising the congregation to love God
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above all, then country and family, and stated that ‘‘the Christian patriot brings before the altar of his country, his property and his life cheerfully ready for the sacrifice when it is demanded.’’ Ultimately, soldiers’ and civilians’ Catholic faith inspired them to see the Civil War through to its end and helped them to cope with human loss. Catholic soldiers’ participation in the conflict, however, did little to quell anti-Catholic sentiment, which continued in the postwar years. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘A Friend to the Orphan: The Fair for the Benefit of the Orphan Girls.’’ Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, DC, November 9, 1864. Barton, George. Angels of the Battlefield: A History of the Labors of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil War. Philadelphia: Catholic Art Publishing Company, 1897. Blied, Benjamin J. Catholics and the Civil War. Milwaukee, WI: Author, 1945. Conyngham, David Power. The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns [1866], ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl. New York: Fordham University Press, 1994.
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Corby, William. Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years with the Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac [1893], ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. Fellman, Michael, Lesley J. Gordon, and Daniel E. Sutherland. This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. New York: Longman, 2003. Fransioli, Joseph. ‘‘Patriotism, A Christian Virtue.’’ New York: Loyal Publication Society, 1863. Gould, Virginia. ‘‘‘Oh I Pass Everywhere’: Catholic Nuns in the Gulf South.’’ In Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Maher, Mary Denis. To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. McPherson, James M. The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Ochs, Stephen J. A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre´ Callioux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr, A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Sheeran, James B. Confederate Chaplain: A War Journal of Rev. James B. Sheeran, c.ss.r. 14th Louisiana, C.S.A., ed. Joseph T. Durkin, S. J., preface, Bruce Catton. Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Company, 1960. Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman, eds. The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
Famous Unitarians include John and Abigail Adams, Benjamin Rush, John Quincy Adams, Lydia Child, Bronson and Abigail Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Julia Ward Howe, Horace Mann, Harriet Martineau, and Mary White Ovington. Unitarians have been prominently involved in a variety of reform movements, including those seeking educational reform, prison reform, the overhaul of orphanages, temperance, poor relief, abolition, and peace. The institutional organization of Unitarianism began as three separate movements, in Poland, Transylvania, and England. In America, Unitarianism took root in the 1740s as a reaction to the emotional revivalism of the Great Awakening. Some liberal Puritans embraced the rationalist approach to Christianity that Unitarianism offered. Whereas more evangelical Christianity appealed to all classes of Congregationalists, the calmer, more benevolent God of liberal Unitarianism appealed particularly to New England elites, with Boston being the hub. Unitarians tended to be wealthier than members of other denominations, and to have higher social status and more education. This gave them significant social influence.
Angela M. Zombek
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Unitarians in antebellum America led battles to reform society. In particular, Unitarians fought against slavery; indeed, Unitarian ministers were at the forefront of much of the most radical abolitionist activity. One leader in particular, Theodore Parker, influenced abolitionist leaders of other denominations, including the famous William Lloyd Garrison. Unitarians believe in the unity of God and reject the Christian belief in a Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. Believers stress the importance of rational thinking and of a person’s direct relationship with God. Throughout American history, Unitarians have had great influence.
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Dorothea Dix (1802–1887). Known for her work helping the mentally ill, Unitarian activist Dorothea Dix served as superintendent of United States Army Nurses during the Civil War and emphasized the need to care for all wounded soldiers during the conflict, no matter the color of the uniform. ª Corbis.
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Around 1815, a young minister, William Ellery Channing, began sending articles and letters to liberal religious publications. In 1819, Channing delivered a sermon, ‘‘Unitarian Christianity,’’ that soon became the Unitarian manifesto. In it, Channing declared: Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. . . . With these views of the Bible, we feel it our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek in the nature of the subject, and the aim of the writer, his true meaning; and, in general to make use of what is known, for explaining what is difficult, and for discovering new truths. (Channing 1875, pp. 367–368)
Channing’s sermon gave liberal Christians a coherent theology, centered around belief in the unity of Christ, humankind’s inferiority to God, and humanity’s moral responsibility. Unitarians believed that conversion should be calm and deliberative, and they stressed the importance of character improvement, a rational and gradual process through which individuals came to understand accepted moral truths. Unitarians believed that a moral society was as important as eternal salvation. Interest in Unitarianism spread from Boston to other urban areas of New England, and as a result, many Congregationalist churches became Unitarian. In 1825, the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was established, not as a group of churches, but as a group of individuals. Many Unitarians were wary of this organization, however, fearing it might threaten religious liberty by exerting control over their churches. The AUA received minimal financial support from Unitarians and its primary activity proved to be the publication of religious tracts. As New England society grew more industrialized, the mostly middle- and upper-class Unitarians realized they needed to minister to the poor and address the societal problems that poverty created. In 1834, nine churches formed the Benevolent Fraternity of Christian Churches. These Unitarian ministers commonly offered pastoral care to the poor, with the goal of adding them to their congregations. The ministers led campaigns for free public education, temperance, and penal reform, and created efficient social reform organizations. Unitarians coordinated with other denominations, as well as secular organizations. Male Unitarians gathered information on various social problems, allowing charities to determine the most effective method of distributing funds and dispensing charity. Women raised funds by collecting subscriptions, sewing clothing, and visiting families. Though Unitarians worked to improve the economic lot of the poor and to alleviate various social problems, their primary goal was to bring about moral improvement through a demonstration of Christian
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benevolence. In their view, the act of charity not only helped recipients, it also helped givers through cultivating acts of conscience. In 1830, Harvard Divinity School appointed Unitarian Henry Ware Jr. to a newly created professorship of ‘‘pulpit eloquence and pastoral care’’ (Rose 1981, pp. 31–32). He was to revitalize the classical curriculum of Greek and Latin, biblical criticism, and didactic theology with exercises in extemporaneous preaching. Ware introduced informal discussions of current topics to promote philanthropy and social responsibility among the young men. Students collected information on the reformation of criminals, the success of missions, the conditions of sailors, and, importantly, slavery. Ministers were thus trained not only to promote religion but also to engage in disciplined social reform. Ware belonged to a number of reform societies and served as a model and an inspiration for a generation of young ministerial students. Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister with the greatest influence on the abolition movement, was born in 1810 in Lexington, Massachusetts. An impressive scholar, he mastered twenty languages while studying at Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1836. Parker left the Congregationalist Church to become a Unitarian in the early 1840s. By the 1850s Parker was an immensely popular minister, preaching to two thousand in the Boston Music Hall and thousands more on his lecture tours. Other influential reformers attended and were influenced by Parker’s fiery sermons and radical ideas. His followers were sometimes called Parkites or Parkerites and included William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Louisa May Alcott. Parker’s radical abolitionist views led to resistance from more mainstream Unitarians; other Unitarian ministers criticized him and refused to exchange pulpits with him. Undeterred, Parker continued to argue for the ending of slavery, and to champion temperance and educational reform. His sermons included statistics and analysis of social classes, along with Biblical commentary. He advocated the integration of Boston schools and churches and served as a minister to fugitive slaves. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Parker strenuously criticized Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster for voting for it. Parker hid one of the fugitives in his congregation, Ellen Craft, in his house until he could arrange for her to get to Canada. In 1854, a fugitive slave from Virginia, Anthony Burns, was captured in Boston. Parker led protests to prevent Burns from being forcibly returned to slavery. After one of these protests turned violent and resulted in the death of a jailer, a grand jury indicted Parker for obstructing a federal marshal. The charges, however, were subsequently dismissed.
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Judaism BIBLIOGRAPHY
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was born in 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. When he was a young boy, his father abandoned the family, forcing him to work small jobs to help his mother support the family. This left him with a lifelong sympathy for the poor and a passionate urge to fight social injustice. Garrison was apprenticed as a printer, then worked for a newspaper as both a writer and an editor. He became strongly opposed to slavery by his mid-twenties, and briefly joined the American Colonization Society, which was engaged in transporting freed blacks to a newly established ‘‘homeland’’ in Liberia. In 1828 Garrison met the Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who asked him to edit his Baltimore newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Under Lundy’s influence, he became convinced that the issue of slavery could only be resolved through the immediate emancipation of all slaves. In 1830, after spending forty-nine days in jail for libeling a slave trader, Garrison moved to Boston and started his own publication, The Liberator. It was in this newspaper that he issued his famous declaration: ‘‘I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retrench a single inch— and I will be heard’’ (Garrison 1831, p. 1). For thirty-four years The Liberator served as the principal organ of radical abolitionism. Garrison believed that slavery was a sin, slaveholders were sinners, and Northerners shared in the guilt by not ending slavery. Through what they often called ‘‘moral suasion,’’ he sought to convince both Southerners and Northerners of the righteousness of the abolitionist cause. After the Thirteenth Amendment passed in 1865, ending slavery, Garrison ceased publication of The Liberator. He spent the remainder of his life campaigning for other causes, including women’s suffrage and temperance. MINOA UFFELMAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Garrison, William Lloyd. The Liberator. January 1, 1831, p. 1. Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Stewart, James Brewer. William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1992. Thomas, John L. The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.
Parker also raised money for John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, hoping that the slave insurrection would inspire others throughout the South. Parker’s participation became known when Virginian authorities seized correspondence following Brown’s arrest. The aborted insurrection convinced many Southerners that Northerners, even ministers, were willing to use any means to end slavery, regardless of how much blood was spilt. This further confirmed to them that only by withdrawing from the Union could they preserve a way of life based on slavery.
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Channing, William Ellery. The Works of William E. Channing. New and rearranged ed. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1875. Rose, Anne C. Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Stange, Douglas C. Patterns of Antislavery among American Unitarians, 1831–1860. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1977. Wilbur, Earl Morse. A History of Unitarianism: In Transylvania, England, and America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952. Minoa Uffelman
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Jews migrated to America from various parts of Europe in large numbers during the 1850s and 1860s, fleeing religious persecution, denial of the right to travel, and many other restrictions in their native lands. With them they brought their culture and their religion, Judaism. The America they arrived in was then divided over the issue of states’ rights and the morality of slavery. Although many Jews in the antebellum South participated in the development of the institution of slavery— some owned slaves and others were slave traders as well—Jews as a whole were as divided on the issue as were other Americans. Judaism, largely speaking, played no role in the molding of public sentiment regarding slavery. This is not to say, however, that Jewish leaders were silent. One of the most highly publicized rabbinical pronouncements on slavery was an argument for its merits made at the very peak of the secession crisis by Dr. Morris J. Raphall of New York City, one of the most celebrated orators in the American rabbinate of his time: I would therefore ask the Reverend gentlemen from Brooklyn and his compeers, how dare you. . . Denounce slaveholding as a sin? When you Remember that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, The men with whom the Almighty conversed, With whose names he emphatically connects His own only name . . . they all these men were Slaveholders, does it not strike you that you Are guilty of something very little short of Blasphemy? And if you answer me, ‘‘oh, in Their time slaveholding was lawful, but now it Has become a sin,’’ I in turn ask you, ‘‘when And by which authority you draw the line? Tell us the precise time when slaveholding Ceased to be permitted, and became sinful?’’ (Korn 1951, p. 17)
What Raphall did was to place Judaism squarely in opposition to the philosophy of abolitionism. He denied that any statement or law in the Bible could be
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opened his art collection to the public and swelled the coffers of the Sanitary Commission with the proceeds from admission fees. Three Jewish firms in San Francisco contributed one thousand dollars each to the Commission’s California campaign. Nathan Grossmeyer of Washington, DC, contributed ideas as well as money for relief purposes; he was the first to suggest the establishment of a national veterans’ hospital and home. In a letter to President Abraham Lincoln on November 16, 1864, Grossmeyer called the president’s attention to the provisions for disabled veterans made by various European governments and urged that the United States do no less. President Lincoln was assassinated before he could carry out the suggestion; however, Grossmeyer then wrote Andrew Johnson about the idea and suggested that the home be designated a memorial to Lincoln. Congress adopted the proposal in 1866 (Korn 1951, p. 99). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rabbi David Einhorn (1809–1879), abolitionist. While noting the existence of slavery in the Old Testament, Rabbi David Einhorn nonetheless pronounced slavery a moral wrong, forcing him to flee his Maryland congregation in fear of his personal safety. Dover Publications, Inc.
Diner, Hasia R. ‘‘Jewish People in America.’’ A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration 1820–1880, vol. 5, Striving for the Sacred, ed. Hasia R. Diner. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Korn, Bertram Wallace. American Jewry and the Civil War. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951. St. John, Robert. Jews, Justice, and Judaism: A Narrative of the Role Played by the Bible People in Shaping American History. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969. Deliah K. Brown
interpreted to prohibit slavery, and insisted that, to the contrary, biblical tradition and law guaranteed the right to own slaves. Raphall accused Henry Ward Beecher and other abolitionists of attempting to pervert the meaning of biblical texts and challenged them to produce factual evidence to back up their contention that biblical law mandated the abolishment of slavery (Korn 1951, p. 17). Never had an American rabbi created such a stir. His sermon was reprinted in newspapers, pamphlets, and books. It was both praised and denounced. Rabbi David Einhorn of Har Sinai Temple, Baltimore, suggested that Jews should be concerned with the spirit and not the literal wording of the Bible, which in his interpretation, acknowledged the existence of slavery in pre-biblical times, but made it clear that it was an evil to be abolished (St. John 1969, p. 153). During the war, Jews fought valiantly for both the Confederacy and the Union despite the fact that many Americans were as anti-Semitic as they were racist. In addition, many Jews participated in a range of relief efforts as private citizens. For example, August Belmont
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The Continental Congress officially laid the foundations for the future U.S. Chaplaincy Corps on July 29, 1775, when it authorized Washington to procure a chaplain for each regiment serving in the Continental army. Between the Revolution and Civil War, just like the regular army, the chaplaincy generally languished in peacetime and was rapidly expanded in wartime, when each U.S. brigade was authorized to secure the service of at least one chaplain. In 1838, the U.S. Army set up a new system that provided funding for chaplain positions at West Point and the army’s various Western forts and bases. On the eve of the Civil War this system had expanded to thirty post chaplain positions for the nineteen regiments, or 16,000 troops, of the U.S. regular army. But Lincoln’s July 22, 1861, call for 500,000 additional volunteers meant that the army’s prewar chaplaincy could not possibly address the enormous spiritual needs of the rapidly expanding Union Army (Hourihan 2004).
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In May 1861, the federal government dramatically expanded the size of the U.S. Chaplaincy Corps. President Abraham Lincoln ordered the colonels of all regular and volunteer regiments to appoint regimental chaplains to help maintain ‘‘the social happiness and moral improvement of the troops’’ and issue regular reports on the ‘‘moral and religious condition’’ of their units. President Lincoln took a personal interest in the project, convinced that an expanded chaplaincy would not only address Union soldiers’ religious needs, but also raise Northern morale by helping volunteers adjust to army life and become better integrated into their units (Shattuck 1987, pp. 52–63).
Not Clearly Defined Theoretically, the selection process for chaplains mirrored that for other regimental officers, with field officers and company commanders voting to confirm or reject the colonel’s nominee, but numerous ‘‘unofficial’’ chaplains served without commissions. The regulations also specified that chaplains were to be ‘‘regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination,’’ a provision that was later amended by Congress in July 1862 to include spiritual representatives from other prominent religious denominations, such as Jewish rabbis (Wagner 2002, p. 440). During the conflict, more than 3,000 official and unofficial chaplains eventually served in the Union armies, but there were never more than 1,000 chaplains in active service in the army’s regiments, hospitals and military posts (Hourihan 2004). The official rank, uniform, and daily duties of the chaplain were not clearly defined in Lincoln’s initial orders. Although they received a cavalry captain’s salary and horse from the government, and thus frequently dressed as officers, the government did not officially define them as captains or provide them with uniforms, officers’ rations, or forage for their animals (Woodworth 2001, pp. 145–146). Some chaplains’ practice of riding behind Union battle lines bearing the weapons and insignia of a cavalry captain provoked enough resentment in the ranks for Congress to issue additional regulations clarifying the chaplains’ dress and rank. The government specified that they were to wear a plain black frock coat and cap without any insignia, and that they held the ‘‘rank of chaplain, without command’’ (Hourihan 2004). Although most Union Army chaplains were dedicated ministers of the Gospel who worked tirelessly to meet their troops’ spiritual and physical needs, and bravely accompanied them into battle, too many of the early nominees turned out to be personally or professionally unqualified for their wartime ministries. This was mainly due to the unprecedented demand for chaplains in all the new Northern regiments; the demand had rapidly exhausted the pool of qualified applicants. Few accomplished Northern ministers felt ‘‘called’’ to abandon their successful, well-established ministries in the
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North for the spartan and highly dangerous life of an underpaid chaplain. Veteran pastors probably also knew from experience how difficult it would be to carve out new ministries among hardened men living outside the normal constraints of society. The other major problem was the high attrition rate in the chaplaincy during the war. Men of the cloth proved highly susceptible to disease, and many returned home after becoming seriously ill or realizing their physical constitution was not up to the task of heavy marching and sleeping outdoors in inclement weather.
Practically Unfit for Their Work In any event, the successful confirmation of numerous unqualified candidates tarnished the reputation of the entire chaplaincy. According to some soldiers, during the first eighteen months of the war more than half of the chaplains were neither spiritually nor professionally qualified for their posts. After listening to a sermon by a chaplain from the Thirty-third Massachusetts on Sunday, August 16, 1863, John T. McMahon wrote, ‘‘I have come to the conclusion that our Chaplains are a class of men who could not get employment at home and by underhanded work have got to be Chaplains. At any rate I never heard a good sermon from a Chaplain yet’’ (McMahon 1863, p. 60). A lieutenant colonel in the Fifth Massachusetts believed that ‘‘at least seventyfive per cent of the chaplains commissioned during the first year of the war were practically unfit for their work’’; Milton Bailey of the Forty-third Indiana noted that ‘‘over half the preachers that our Government employs at such high prices turn out to be the most deprave siners in the world our firs Chaplain maid no scruples to take things out of houses wher people had left them and was always in the company with abandoned women’’ (Woodworth 2001, pp. 149–150). In the first year of the war the charismatic, hardworking chaplain was apparently more the exception than the general rule in the Union Army. In 1863, Sergeant George Chapin told his brother—who coincidentally also happened to be a preacher—that the Twenty-seventh Indiana Infantry Regiment’s ‘‘chaplain has gone home on furlough tho’ we do not miss him for he has been very little account to our regiment . . . . Thomas A Witted has not preached over a dozen times to the 27th regiment & never held social religious meetings & what is far worse than this he has not walked circumspectly before his men. His example is exceedingly inconsistent resembling more that of a renegade than a Teacher of Christ’’ (Chapin, February 17, 1863). Some religious soldiers were extremely disappointed when they discovered that their spiritual shepherds were more interested in pursuing the pleasures of this world than ensuring the safe arrival of their flock in the next. In the fall of 1863, First Lieutenant John Blackwell informed his wife of the ‘‘sad state’’ of religious affairs
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in his brigade: ‘‘I wrote you that one of our chaplains has been sent home for drunkenness & now I have had the painful duty of reporting another, the 116th chaplain, for lending his pants to a lewd woman about camp to conceal her sex’’ (Blackwell, October 24, 1863). Notwithstanding this behavior, the reputation of the Civil War chaplaincy was largely redeemed by the dedicated chaplains who did perform their duties extraordinarily well, and by the much larger crop of inspired and competent official and unofficial chaplains who began filling the existing regimental vacancies in late 1862. By then the worst of their kind had mostly returned home for health reasons or easier jobs, or because their wartime ministries had foundered due to their professional or spiritual shortcomings. Meanwhile, most of the chaplains still serving in the ranks had gradually earned the respect of their units and commanders through their steadfast dedication, courage under fire, and sacrificial service for their commands, thus ensuring the future success of their wartime ministries. Having come to recognize the
Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915), first black chaplain in the Civil War. Chaplains in the Union army not only tended to
the spiritual health of their wartime congregation, but also assisted doctors in battlefield hospitals, taught illiterate soldiers to read, and helped notify the kin of deceased soldiers. Across enemy lines, however, the Confederate army did not actively seek chaplains, and the few who did serve generally fought alongside the soldiers in battle. ª North Wind Picture Archive.
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valuable services rendered by a good chaplain, colonels and company officers also were exercising greater caution and care when replacing previously unsuitable candidates.
‘‘I Don’t Know How I Could Live Here Without Him’’ Another major reason for the improved performance of the Union chaplains was that the physical requirements, dress, and duties of the chaplaincy were now more clearly defined—in books such as Reverend W. Y. Brown’s The Army Chaplain: His Office, Duties, and Responsibilities and Means of Aiding Him (1863), a first-rate guidebook written by a highly successful Northern hospital chaplain. Brown emphasized that successful chaplains needed to do more than just preach weekly sermons, conduct prayer meetings, and administer last rites. In addition to performing their regular spiritual duties, chaplains also cared for the wounded, both on and off the battlefield; distributed stationary and helped soldiers write letters home to their families; wrote to the families of dead soldiers to inform them of their loved one’s heroic sacrifice; secured and maintained regimental libraries containing books on both spiritual and secular topics; served as regimental postmasters and messengers; and in their free time, taught illiterate soldiers and contrabands how to read and write. Their service in the regiment reflected Christ’s principle of servant leadership. On long marches they offered to haul the soldiers’ heavier equipment on their horses or offered their mounts to sick soldiers, and when the regiment had to perform a hard manual-labor or foraging assignment, they energetically pitched in with the rest of the men. From late 1862 on, the soldiers’ correspondence generally documented a growing appreciation for their chaplains’ ministries. In October 1863, Elisha Hunt Rhodes kept urging his fellow officers to nominate a new chaplain after their first spiritual shepherd proved to be a miserable failure: ‘‘Some of the officers were opposed and were afraid that we might get another man like Jameson,’’ but were later persuaded, and ‘‘after much talk, I nominated Mr. Beugless . . . . He has already made himself very popular, and I trust God will bless his labors. . . . Many of the soldiers are good Christian men, but need some one to guide them. I feel greatly rejoiced over the prospect for the future’’ (Rhodes 1985, pp. 125–126). Private David King also rejoiced at the arrival of his new chaplain: ‘‘Our Pastor has come at last and he is a fine man and a good preacher’’ (King, April 16, 1864). In late December 1863, Andrew J. McGarrah of the Sixty-third Indiana expressed his appreciation for the religious books and tracts his unit’s ‘‘fine little’’ chaplain was distributing: ‘‘he furnishes us with good Books tracts and papers and is going to establish a Bible class’’ (McGarrah, December 16, 1863). Vermont soldier Charles A. Manson also boasted that his unit ‘‘had
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JEWISH CHAPLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR The Civil War was the first American conflict in which the military chaplaincy was opened to Jewish rabbis as well as to Christian clergy. There were about 6,500 Jews in the Union Army in 1861, as well as 2,000 in the Confederate Army, but there was no provision for their religious needs at the beginning of the war. Although Congress recognized the need for regimental chaplains to serve the rapidly expanding Union Army, the act that was passed in August 1861 stipulated that they must be ‘‘regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination and were to be selected and appointed as the President may direct’’ (Bates 1864, p. 280). Arnold Fischel, a Philadelphia rabbi, lobbied various congressmen for the next eleven months to have the wording of the law changed. In addition to Fischel, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites petitioned President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) to open the military chaplaincy to Jewish rabbis as well as to Christian clergy. Lincoln then made a recommendation to Congress in favor of the change. On July 17, 1862, the wording of the act providing for regimental chaplains was altered to read as follows: That no person shall be appointed a chaplain in the United States Army who is not a regularly ordained minister of some religious denomination, and who does not present testimonials of his good standing as such minister, with a recommendation of his appointment as an Army chaplain from some authorized ecclesiastical body, or not less than five accredited ministers belonging to said religious denomination (U.S. War Department 1862, p. 521). After the law was changed Rabbi Fischel served as a civilian chaplain during the Civil War, ministering to Jewish personnel in the Army of the Potomac.
one of the best chaplains,’’ because recently, ‘‘he had had given every soldier in the regiment a Soldiers prayer Book’’ (Manson, October 18, 1862). Most soldiers apparently believed that the unofficial chaplains serving short-term missions in the army with the U.S. Christian Commission came the closest to exemplifying Brown’s ideal of a military chaplain, but by late 1862, the energetic preaching and teaching of conscientious, hardworking official chaplains was also finally beginning to bear fruit. In a late September 1862 diary entry, Berea M. Willsey recorded that ‘‘Nothing has been talked of this forenoon but the sermon we had yesterday. I hope good results will follow’’ (Willsey 1995, p. 49). First Lieutenant Dwight Fraser told his sisters, ‘‘Our Chaplain is a very fine man and is the highest sense a Christian gentleman. . . . . It is quite a treat for us to get together once in a while and have preaching and singing and prayer. It seems a good deal like a Camp Meeting to me, and I think these
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The first rabbi to be officially commissioned as a chaplain in the Union Army was Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Frankel came from a musical family and was known as ‘‘the sweet singer of Israel’’ for his beautiful voice. He was commissioned by President Lincoln on September 18, 1862, and served until July 1, 1865. Rabbi Frankel ministered to wounded soldiers in military hospitals in the Philadelphia area, singing and praying with them. He valued his years as a chaplain so highly that he had his commission framed and displayed in his home. The first Jewish chaplain who saw combat in the Civil War was Rabbi Ferdinand Leopold Samer, who emigrated to the United States from Germany. Rabbi Samer was elected by the largely German-speaking soldiers of the 54th New York Volunteer Regiment, the so-called Schwarze Ja¨ger, to be their chaplain. He was commissioned on April 10, 1863. Following a severe wound received at the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), Rabbi Samer was discharged for medical disabilities in October 1864. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bates, Edward. ‘‘Opinion of Attorney General Bates on Paying a Colored Chaplain.’’ The Political History of the United States of America during The Great Rebellion, ed. Edward McPherson. Washington, DC: Philp and Solomons, 1864. Patrick, Bethanne Kelly. ‘‘Jacob Frankel.’’ Military.com. Available from http:// www.military.com/. Slomovitz, Albert Isaac. The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History. New York: New York University Press, 1999. U.S. War Department. Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1861. Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1862.
exercises are calculated to do much good among the men’’ (Fraser, June 25–26, 1864). W. S. Bower told his sister that his chaplain’s prayer meetings were very ‘‘profitable to us. . . . There was 18 present last time [and] our number is increasing. Some are beginning to enquire the way our chaplain is loved by all. I don’t know how I could live here without him’’ (Bower, April 17, 1863). Many Union chaplains’ exemplary service after 1862 apparently helped atone for the earlier sins and failures of their peers. Three Union chaplains even received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic wartime service—either fighting at the front or caring for wounded soldiers while under fire.
The Sword over the Gown On the Confederate side, Jefferson Davis initially opposed the creation of a Southern military chaplaincy because he thought the South needed soldiers, not
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ministers, and because, like most Southerners reared with the Spirituality of the Church doctrine espoused by the Presbyterian minister James Henley Thornwell (1812– 1862), he believed such religious concerns were best left to individual churches, not the state. Although the Richmond government later reluctantly organized a chaplaincy to placate the spiritual concerns of prominent Southern Christians and churches, Southern chaplains were paid significantly less than their Northern counterparts, were issued even fewer instructions regarding their duties, and received virtually no support from their government. As a result, there was always a severe shortage of Confederate chaplains serving in the army, and less than half of the Confederate units ever received one. Lacking detailed orders concerning their military status, many of those who did serve became ‘‘fighting chaplains,’’ and were thus far more likely to be wounded or killed in combat than their Northern counterparts (Shattuck 1987, pp. 47, 63–68). In the first years of the war most Southern churchmen seemed more interested in embracing the role of an Old Testament warrior—such as Joshua or King David—than in ministering to the spiritual needs of Southern soldiers. When Jefferson Davis asked his former West Point roommate, the Episcopal bishop Leonidas Polk (1806–1864), to accept a commission as major general in the Confederate States Army, Polk immediately suspended his religious duties so he could buckle his ‘‘sword over the gown’’ and serve the South as a warrior-priest. Over the next year, many other Southern clergymen apparently felt inspired to follow his lead. In Richmond, Sallie Putnam noted that Virginia clergymen such as William N. Pendleton (1809–1883) and Dabney Harrison were shedding their clerical vestments and girding on ‘‘the armor of the soldier . . . not with a wish to lead in a rebellion . . . but from a stern sense of divine direction and the whisperings of patriotism to which conscience and an innate feeling of duty prompted and would not be stilled’’ (Putnam [1867] 1961, p. 49). Ministers from other denominations across the South seemed to share Polk’s sentiment that fighting the war should take precedence over their local ministries or any spiritual outreach to the troops. Catherine Hopley, an English subject living in Virginia during the war, was shocked when the local Baptist minister she invited to dinner suddenly exclaimed: ‘‘I cannot rest here, I believe I must enlist too. I feel that my country calls me, and that I might be as useful on the battlefield as in my church. Has not Bishop Polk set me an example? And there is S. who has volunteered, and M. intends to do the same’’ (Hopley [1861] 1971, pp. 329–330). Perhaps Hopley’s dinner guest and colleagues were among the dozens of Baptist ministers across Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia who organized local companies and marched off to war, leaving their congregations to fend for themselves. The Methodist camp was
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also decimated by fever for war. Bishop George Foster Pierce noted that so many Methodist ministers had enlisted in the Confederate army that the work of the December 1861 Atlanta Conference was impaired (Smith 1888, p. 447). Increasingly concerned with the excessive ‘‘war spirit among our preachers,’’ Bishop Pierce announced that in the future, Methodist preachers should only go to war as chaplains, not soldiers (Owen 1998, pp. 103–105). The Virginian Presbyterian, Robert Lewis Dabney, also believed that ministers like himself should not compromise their moral power ‘‘to act as peace-makers and mediators,’’ and urged Virginia’s Christians to ‘‘arise and conquer in this war by the power of prayer.’’ After taking a leave of absence from his seminary to serve as a chaplain in Beauregard’s army, however, Dabney’s earlier convictions and noncombatant status did not prevent him from serving as a battlefield courier in the First Battle of Manassas (July 1861), or from later serving as ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson’s chief of staff (Johnson 1903, pp. 221–272).
The Eternal Message of Grace and Love to Perishing Sinners Shortly before his death in 1863, General Stonewall Jackson urgently requested that the Southern churches send additional clergymen to his army to care for the spiritual needs of his men. In response to Jackson’s request, despite a critical shortage of local clergy, the 1863 Annual Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia temporarily stripped some hard-pressed clergymen of their parishes so they could serve short-term mission trips with the Rebel army. In what appeared to be the beginning of a gradual shift in policy, the Episcopal Council also asked that its ministers stop preaching sermons ‘‘on the times and the war and the objects of our country’s hopes’’ and instead focus on ‘‘the glad tidings of salvation, [or] just the eternal message of grace and love to perishing sinners’’ (Episcopal Church, Diocese of Virginia 1863, p. 39). In other words, the churches should shift the emphasis of their preaching away from a Yankee-appropriated Confederate jeremiad and back to the more urgent and traditional spiritual business of individual salvation. This return to the gospel of individual salvation later reaped handsome rewards, as major revivals began to blaze through the Army of Northern Virginia. Having failed to redeem the home front, the Southern churches continued to dispatch spiritual emissaries or eleventhhour ‘‘chaplains’’ to help feed the burgeoning revivals at the front. At home, popular interest in the army revivals soared as many hoped the spiritual enthusiasm in the army would somehow spill over to their communities and help spiritually renew the home front as well. Military events in 1864 and the spring of 1865, however, soon dispelled such illusions. Instead of unlocking the spiritual door to victory, the Southern revivals
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had apparently just sanctified soldiers for their imminent deaths at places such as Spotsylvania Courthouse and Petersburg. The final defeat of the Confederacy provoked a profound spiritual crisis as the Southern churches and their emissaries to the troops tried to ascertain what had gone wrong with the Confederate experiment. Still convinced of the righteousness of their lost cause, they could only conclude that like the examples of Job and Christ, the life and death of the Confederacy was intended to accomplish some higher, presently unknown, purpose. Southern Christians took comfort in a literal, commonsense exegesis of the scriptures that assured them that God had never intended His Church’s final victory to come in this world. When the Confederate chaplains returned from the war, they helped their churches pursue revival at home with the same spirit it had been pursued in the army. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennet, William W. A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies during the Late Civil War. [1876]. Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1989. Blackwell, John A. Civil War Letters. Indiana State Historical Society, Indianapolis. Bower, W. S. In Robert Steele Papers. State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Madison, Wisconsin. Brown, William Young. The Army Chaplain: His Office, Duties, and Responsibilities, and the Means of Aiding Him. Philadelphia: Martien, 1863. Chapin, George T. Civil War Papers. Indiana State Historical Society, Indianapolis. Fraser, Dwight. Civil War Letters. Indiana State Historical Society, Indianapolis. Episcopal Church, Diocese of Virginia. ‘‘Journal of the Sixty-eighth Annual Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia. Held in St. Paul’s Church, Richmond on the 20th, 21st and 22nd May, 1863.’’ Richmond, VA: B. R. Wren, 1863. Available from http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Hopley, Catherine C. Life in the South; From the Commencement of the War by a Blockaded British Subject Being a Social History of Those Who Took Part in the Battles, From a Personal Acquaintance with Them in Their Homes from the Spring of 1860 to August 1862, vol. 1. [1861]. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1971. Hourihan, William J. ‘‘A Brief History of the United States Chaplain Corps: Pro Deo Et Patria.’’ 2004. Available from http://www.usachcs.army.mil/. Johnson, Thomas C. The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1903.
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King, David, Jr. King Family Papers. Illinois State Historical Library. Springfield, Illinois. Manson, Charles A. Papers. Robert W. Woodruff Library. Emory University. Atlanta, Georgia. McGarrah, Andrew J. Civil War Letters. Indiana State Historical Society. Indianapolis. McMahon, John T. John T. McMahon’s Diary of the 136th New York 1861-1864. Edited by John Michael Priest. Shippenberg, PA: White Mane, 1993. Norton, Herman A. Struggling for Recognition: The United States Army Chaplaincy, 1791–1865. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army, 1977. Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Putman, Sallie A. In Richmond during the Confederacy: By a Lady of Richmond. [1867], ed. Sally Brock. New York: G.V. Carlton, 1961. Rhodes, Elisha Hunt. All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes. Edited by Robert Hunt Rhodes. New York: Orion Books, 1985. Rolfs, David W. ‘‘No Peace For the Wicked: How Northern Christians Justified Their Participation in the American Civil War.’’ Ph.D. diss. Florida State University, 2002. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr. A Shield and a Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Smith, George G. The Life and Times of George Foster Pierce, D.D., LL.D. Bishop of the Methodist Church, South with His Sketch of Lovick Pierce, D.D., His Father. Sparta, GA: Hancock Publishing Company, 1888. Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman., eds. The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Willsey, Berea M. The Civil War Diary of Berea M. Willsey, ed. Jessica H. Demay. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. David W. Rolfs
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Army Missionaries
Army missionaries ministered to both the Confederate and Union Armies. These persons were defined by the historian Steven Woodworth as ‘‘ministers who had no official role in the military establishment and did not necessarily intend to remain permanently with the army’’ (2001, p. 160). As opposed to chaplains, these
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individuals were not attached to a specific regiment or brigade and thus could move from place to place as needed. Father Paul E. Gillen’s missionary work in the Army of the Potomac as a Roman Catholic priest serves as a perfect example. He moved ‘‘from regiment to regiment, and wherever he found a few dozen Catholics, there he ‘pitched his tent,’ staid a day or two, heard all their confessions, celebrated holy Mass, and communicated those ready to receive’’ (Corby 1992, p. 309).
Missionaries’ Roles As Gillen’s experience illustrates quite clearly, missionaries functioned much like chaplains, providing care in hospitals and distributing Bibles and other religious literature as well as preaching to troops in camp. Their temporary positions allowed churches on the home front to continue to hold services. The missionaries’ role also prevented the waste of their talents during times of the year when preaching services were usually not held. In both the North and South, the main role of the missionaries was the distribution of tracts, Bibles, and other forms of religious literature. The specific missionaries who participated in this work were known as colporteurs. A prominent Methodist missionary, William W. Bennett, served on the Confederate side. Bennett noted in his 1876 A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies During the Late Civil War Between the States of the Federal Union, that the missionaries as a group sought ‘‘to turn the thoughts of the soldiers not to a sect, but to Christ, to bring them into the great spiritual temple, and to show them the wonders of salvation’’ (p. 71). These individuals were quite inclusive and represented several denominations that had large memberships in the Southern states—the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and the Methodists—each of which sent their own contingent of colporteurs. As Bennett further explained in his text, in the South the Baptists were the first to organize, setting themselves up under the General Association of the Baptist churches in Virginia in May 1861. Subsequently, the Presbyterians organized as the Presbyterian Board of Publication, directed by the Reverend Dr. Leyburn. Next, the Virginia Episcopal Mission Committee formed under the direction of the Reverend Messrs. Gatewood and Kepler of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Virginia Episcopal Mission was formed after the Episcopal dioceses in the South formed the Episcopal Church in the C.S.A. Finally, the Methodist Episcopal Church formed their colporteur group in March of 1862 (Bennett 1876, pp. 72, 74–76). In addition to these missions provided to members of specific Christian denominations within the Confederacy, the Evangelical Tract Society, organized in July 1861, included within its ranks an interdenominational group of Christians. According to Bennett, this body
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issued over a hundred different tracts (pp. 72, 74–76). Noting the importance of this devotional literature to the soldiers at war, the historian Beth Schweiger asserts that the tracts and Bibles themselves served as ‘‘the great evangelists of the war’’ (2000, p. 101).
The United States Christian Commission Many missionaries served within the Union armies, under the auspices of the United States Christian Commission (USCC), a national group formed in November 1861 upon the urging of the New York Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). No comparable institution existed within the Confederacy. According to Woodworth, the USCC at the height of its power contained about five thousand delegates from various denominations across the North, ‘‘with field superintendents in each army corps’’ (2001, p. 167). Historian Gardiner Shattuck relates that the USCC had two main goals during the war, one spiritual and the other more physical. First and foremost, the missionaries were to help regimental chaplains in all aspects of their jobs: in providing pastoral care for their men, distributing tracts, and also helping with worship services. Second,
Rep. John Hyatt Smith (1824–1886) of New York. Smith served with the U.S. Christian Commission in Virginia in 1862. Many individuals contributed to the war effort in the North and South by working as independent missionaries among the troops, conducting religious services, offering spiritual advice, and distributing reading material. The Library of Congress
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they were to provide for the physical needs of the soldiers themselves (1987, p. 27). An example of meeting the latter goal took place at Petersburg in 1864. The USCC gave Chaplain Henry Clay Trumbull of the Army of the Potomac a basket of fresh peaches, which he distributed ‘‘among the men on duty in the advanced trenches, one peach to each man’’ (Trumbull 1898, p. 116). In another example, at Fortress Monroe in Virginia in August 1864, a Christian Commission delegate, Thomas Scott Johnson, explained in one of his letters that the USCC provided supplies for both the hospitals in the area as well as ‘‘the hospital transports that load at this point.’’ He subsequently concluded, ‘‘We are thus reaching as far as may be all the cases of suffering among our brave boys’’ (Kaliebe 1966, p. 28). Not all Union missionaries, however, were affiliated with the United States Christian Commission. Some worked for independent tract societies or missionary associations. In a letter written to his brother Ned, Chaplain Joseph Hopkins Twichell of the Seventy-First New York Infantry Regiment noted the impressive work of the missionary John Vassar of the New York Tract Society during a period of revival within the Army of the Potomac. Twichell described Vassar as ‘‘the most wonderful Christian I ever saw . . . He, by fervent prayers and exhortations, stirred us mightily’’ (Messant and Courtney 2006, p. 274). According to a Massachusetts newspaper, the Lowell Daily Citizen and News (October 7, 1861), another missionary, the Reverend L. C. Lockwood, affiliated with the American Missionary Association, was commissioned and sent to Fortress Monroe to teach the contraband laborers. Missionaries admirably ministered in both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, augmenting and aiding the work of chaplains in fostering religious devotion within the armies. Their most important duty, however, was as colporteurs distributing religious tracts and Bibles to those troops enduring the
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profaneness of army life. This literature aided greatly in promoting revivals within both the Union and Confederate armies, yielding men reborn into the Christian faith by the trials and tribulations of war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennett, William W. A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies During the Late Civil War between the States of the Federal Union. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1876. Corby, William. Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years with the Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac, ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. Kaliebe, Jon Edward. ‘‘The Letters of Thomas Scott Johnson: His Work among the Negro as Christian Commission Delegate and Chaplain, 1864–1866.’’ Master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1966. Messent, Peter, and Steve Courtney, eds. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. ‘‘Missionaries among the ‘Contraband,’’’ Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, October 7, 1861. Schweiger, Beth Barton. The Gospel Working Up: Progress and the Pulpit in Nineteenth-Century Virginia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Shattuck, Jr., Gardiner H. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Trumbull, Henry Clay. War Memories of an Army Chaplain. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Benjamin L. Miller
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Popular Culture n
Popular Culture Overview
The forms of popular culture Americans experienced and participated in during the Civil War era varied according to the part of the country in which they lived and their personal preferences. Residents of the rural interior had different opportunities for diversion than did denizens of the relatively cosmopolitan cities, and Americans’ ideas about desirable use of leisure time differed as widely in the mid-nineteenth century as they do in the twenty-first, even if many of the specific activities and attractions are much different. One of the forms of entertainment available in many cities and towns was the theater. British theater was also popular in America. The British actress Laura Keene (1826– 1873) came to America in 1852 and became an immediate favorite. In New York in 1855 she opened Laura Keene’s Theater, which she managed until 1863. Thereafter she continued to star in her own traveling theater troupe, performing a variety of plays including the British playwright Tom Taylor’s popular 1858 farcical comedy ‘‘Our American Cousin,’’ which Keene and her company presented at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, for an audience that included President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. That performance was disastrously cut short midway through Scene 2 of Act III when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865). Traveling thespians were not unusual during this era, and performances even by the most renowned actors of the day were not entirely limited to East coast cities, even if they were more frequent and abundant there. America’s most famous acting family, the Booths, appeared in many cities, towns, and smaller venues during the decades preceding the Civil War. Junius Brutus Booth Sr. (1796– 1852) and his son Edwin Booth (1833–1893) famously toured gold rush California, performing Shakespeare for the Forty-niners. In 1864 the Booths performed Julius Caesar in New York City, the only performance in which Junius Brutus Sr. and Edwin appeared on stage with the youngest member of the family, John Wilkes Booth, who
was by then famous in his own right. Reputed to be the most handsome man in America, the youngest Booth son was already known for his energetic performances and onstage acrobatics. Less well known was his bitter racism and deep sympathy for the Confederate cause. More readily accessible to most Americans than the theater was popular literature. The romantic novel was the favorite light reading material of many. The British novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was a favorite of Americans of both the North and South before the war, and his books continued to be popular long after Appomattox. Scott had his American imitators, most notably William Gilmore Simms (1806–1870), a South Carolinian who tried to cultivate a distinctly Southern literature. At the opposite extreme of sectional literature was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s enormously popular 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Based on interviews with escaped slaves, Stowe’s book was aimed at illustrating the evils of the system of slavery. Naturally, it was anathema south of the Mason-Dixon line. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was not yet well known at the time of the Civil War, though her first book, Flower Fables, had appeared in 1854, and her 1864 novel, Moods, was received well by critics. She gained far more recognition for her 1863 nonfiction work, Hospital Sketches, which drew on her experience as a volunteer nurse in Union hospitals. Much greater fame awaited her 1868 book, Little Women. The Civil War was also the era of Transcendentalist authors such as Herman Melville (1819–1891) and the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), though their works had somewhat less appeal to popular audiences. A significant segment of the American population looked somewhat askance at the reading of novels, and at most or all of the theater. For some devout Christians, novel reading and theater going represented worldly distractions that might draw them away from God. Other Americans, whether strongly religious or not, saw such pursuits as unprofitable and intellectually stultifying distractions for idle minds. For them, serious books and educational lectures were preferable.
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Performing Arts: An Overview
Appropriately, therefore, a popular and educational feature of American culture during the antebellum period was the lyceum. The teacher and traveling lecturer Josiah Holbrook (1778–1854) founded the first American lyceum in 1826 in Millbury, Massachusetts. Holbrook believed learning should be a life-long passion, and he hoped to spread the concept of the lyceum as a regular venue for educational lectures in each locality. By the 1850s his dream had largely become a reality, with lyceums established throughout the country, sponsoring lectures on topics ranging from literature to science to current events and issues. Large eastern lyceums paid impressive fees to major figures of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and top orators such as Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) regularly worked the lyceum circuit. More remote lyceums might have had to turn to local talent, as when the Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum in January 1838 heard up-and-coming twenty-eight-year-old Springfield lawyer and politician Abraham Lincoln speak on ‘‘The Preservation of Our Political Institutions.’’ After the Civil War, lyceums gradually came to present more drama and entertainment and less lecture. More active, if less intellectual, entertainment was to be found in physical activities. Children might play active games such as crack the whip or leapfrog, but adults usually did not. Some might play card games, though others eschewed such pastimes as sinful because of their close association with gambling. The closest means in which adults usually came to active physical play was by making some communal work activity into something like a game. This might be a corn-husking, a barn-raising, or a chopping bee. Those who did not have religious scruples against it might also engage in dancing. Also, the Civil War brought an exception to the usual rule that adults did not play physical games. The soldiers, many of whom were very young men barely out of their teens, often referred to themselves as ‘‘the boys.’’ It made sense then that when boredom weighed heavily on them in camp, they took up some of the games they recently had played in the schoolyard. A favorite was known as ‘‘drive ball’’ or ‘‘town ball,’’ and involved a player with a stick trying to hit some sort of ball thrown by one of the other players. It may be that the war, by bringing together thousands of young men with much unavoidable and generally tedious leisure time in the army camps, helped them to develop, regularize, and spread this game, which later came to be called ‘‘baseball.’’ However, contrary to legend, it was not invented by the Civil War general Abner Doubleday (1819–1893). Reading, playing, dancing, attending lyceum, theater, or religious worship, Americans of the Civil War era had many options for amusing themselves and occupying their free time, but of course work was the activity that took up
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the majority of the time of most adults, and to a far greater extent than is true in the twenty-first century. Steven E. Woodworth
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Performing Arts PERFORMING ARTS : AN OVERVIEW
Kerry L. Pimblott MINSTREL SHOWS
Eric R. Jackson THEATER
John L. Reilly
PERFORMING ARTS: AN OVERVIEW The social upheaval of the Civil War disrupted and transformed the world of performing arts and the nature of the theatergoing public. As the nation mobilized for war, theaters throughout the country were forced to close their doors under the dual strains of mass enlistment and reallocation of vital resources. Those that continued to operate sought to attract new audiences by altering their schedules in accordance with a broader transformation of cultural tastes. Accordingly, the age group, gender, and class distinctions that had characterized the theater during the early nineteenth century were challenged, allowing women—as both performers and spectators—to redefine the boundaries of the public sphere and transform the theatergoing experience for all Americans. The minstrel show, however, remained the nation’s most popular theatrical pursuit, bringing into relief the limits of wartime inclusion and the ongoing significance of white supremacy in the era of emancipation.
Initial Effects of the War During the initial stages of the war, theaters across the country struggled to maintain regular operations. In New York, the Herald lamented the decline in theater attendance, complaining that there were frequently ‘‘more people upon the stage than in the audience’’ (August 5, 1861, p. 3). By the following year little had changed, with the Herald reporting that most of the leading theaters were still closed, ‘‘not only in New York, but in all the other large cities,’’ and that ‘‘great uncertainty prevails as to the arrangements of many of them for the coming season’’ (August 18, 1862, p. 2). In an effort to rationalize matters, New Orleans’s Daily Picayune contended that it could ‘‘hardly be expected that the theatres should be very liberally patronized’’ during wartime when the ‘‘theatre of war, with its stirring incidents of terrible reality, absorbs more of the popular interest than the theatre of mimic and amusing representations’’ (September 14, 1862, p. 1).
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Dwindling audiences and the widespread closure of local theaters left many actors seeking employment. Some of the more prestigious actors looked outside the United States for a renewed supply of challenging and innovative roles. For example, after performing before small audiences at New York’s Winter Garden, the celebrated actor Edwin Booth (1833–1893), the older brother of John Wilkes Booth, accepted an offer from the Haymarket Theatre in London to play Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice during the summer of 1861. The vast majority of dramatic artists, however, looked for work domestically in segments of the performing arts formerly beneath their notice. As Horace Greeley’s Daily Tribune reported, the general shutdown of theaters resulted in actors from across the country relocating to New York to gain employment in the city’s minstrel shows (August 19, 1861). Opera singers such as David Miranda, Brookhouse Bowler, and Aynsley Cook donned blackface and appeared with local minstrel troupes. Similarly, the celebrated singers Agnes Sutherland, George Crozier, and Johanna Ficher all took jobs in the city’s concert saloon scene.
Cultivating New Audiences Theaters that survived the challenges of wartime sought to attract new audiences by altering their schedules in accordance with the broader transformation of cultural tastes then taking place. One of the most popular strategies among theater managers was to cultivate new markets by appealing to women and children. During the early nineteenth century, theaters were widely considered unseemly and unsafe for females to attend without a male escort. The economic depression of the mid-1850s and declining profits during the Civil War, however, encouraged theater managers to challenge Victorian mores that limited female appearances in the public sphere. During the war it became much more acceptable for women to attend theaters unescorted, a fact that theater managers capitalized on by establishing matinee (afternoon) performances geared specifically to women. For example, P. T. Barnum announced in December 1862 that his theater would feature a matinee performance for the first time. According to coverage in the Boston Herald, Barnum had taken ‘‘every precaution’’ to ensure ‘‘that ladies or children can visit the establishment unattended without fear of annoyance’’ (December 17, 1862, p. 4). As the war continued unabated, the trend toward matinees increased. In the spring of 1865, the New York Clipper reported that matinees ‘‘are on the increase’’ and that ‘‘ladies are the chief patrons of these day entertainments’’ (April 8, 1865, p. 414). The increased attendance of women also affected theater managers’ decisions about the types of productions they would feature on their stages as well as the scheduling of afternoon performances. As the historian Richard Butsch has demonstrated, sensational melodramas were particularly popular with female theatergoers during the
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1860s. Moreover, these plays often replaced the traditional manly hero with an assertive female protagonist. For example, Dio Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn featured two strong female leads. According to Butsch, however, the feminization of the theater had adverse affects on the male theatergoing population, many of whom found sentimental melodrama tedious and went in search of other forms of entertainment (Butsch 1994, p. 391). This dynamic was enhanced during the war by an emphasis on masculine virility and heroism associated with the soldier. In the theater, a variety of efforts were made to appeal to male audiences. Increasing numbers of middle-class males attended working-class concert saloons to watch women perform in burlesque shows. The elite counterpart of the burlesque show came in the form of the musical extravaganza, which emerged as a genre during wartime. These performances included a combination of comical acts and ballet dancers in revealing costumes. An early and popular example was the Laura Keene Theatre’s Seven Sisters, which ran for 253 performances in 1860–1861 and saved the theater from closure. The actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–1868) also capitalized on the relaxation of sexual norms during wartime in Mazeppa, causing a sensation by riding a horse on stage in flesh-colored tights that gave the illusion of nudity. Mazeppa ran for eight months on Broadway and then went on tour in 1863, earning Menken more than $100,000.
Rise of Popular Entertainment The efforts of elite theaters to maintain wartime attendance and profits were significant, but were ultimately eclipsed by the tremendous success of more popular forms of entertainment. Magical acts, burlesques, concert saloons, beer gardens, and, most notably, minstrel shows prospered by catering to a predominantly urban working-class male audience. While other theaters were quickly going out of business, New York’s Bryant Minstrels were performing to large audiences at Mechanics’ Hall throughout the war. Among the many other groups active in New York were Hooley and Campbell’s Minstrels, Lloyd’s Minstrels, and Sharpley’s Minstrels. This pattern was not confined to New York City. The Boston Herald reported in 1861 that the city’s Opera House had reopened with the Morris Brothers, Pell and Trowbridge Minstrels performing before ‘‘a crammed audience’’ (August 6, 1861, p. 2). The replacement of more traditional forms of theater with minstrel shows and these new shows’ predominantly working-class audiences raised concern amongst segments of the elite. Despite giving Hooley and Campbell’s Minstrels a positive review for their performances at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, the North American and United States Gazette lamented that such success could not be shared more broadly across the city’s theater scene:
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Actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–1868). As attendance dwindled at theaters during the Civil War, promoters looked for new avenues of entertainment. Adah Isaacs Menken, pictured here, filled theaters with her suggestive performance in Mazeppa, where she donned a flesh-colored body suit and rode bareback on a horse across the stage. The Library of Congress
We greatly regret that all our theatres are not open at this time, and that our citizens will not recognize the need of making the city attractive at a time when so many people usually travel for recreation or health. New York has always found it to her interest to do so. If we are answered that the state of the times does not admit of much traveling, we must urge that many thousands of fugitives from the south are constantly seeking protection at the north, and will be likely to remain here at least through the summer. As the war progresses southward, the number of these fugitives will of course increase extensively, and it would not be strange if southern
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people of fortune generally were to seek refuge with us. (July 8, 1861, p. 802)
The Gazette reporter subtly invoked both a commercial and a moral interest in balancing minstrel shows with more elite leisure activities that ‘‘people of fortune’’ could enjoy, and that in turn would render Philadelphia a more ‘‘attractive’’ city.
Minstrel Shows In spite of elite disapproval, minstrel shows—with their combination of comic skits, dance routines, and musical acts performed by white people in blackface—remained
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extraordinarily popular. Central to the narrative structure of minstrelsy was the mockery of African Americans through a series of disparaging stereotypes. Minstrel skits depicted a world in which slaves were happy, docile beings who loved their masters and dreaded leaving their plantation homes. Left to their own devices, these skits implied, African Americans lacked the motivation and intelligence to participate in society as coequals with whites. Therefore, the minstrel shows suggested, African Americans were better kept in slavery with white slaveholders functioning as their benevolent caretakers. Taken collectively, the stereotypes propagated by the minstrel show functioned as a powerful political defense of slavery. During the Civil War, proslavery arguments remained a staple of the minstrel show both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line. According to the historian Richard C. Toll, many Northern minstrel performers were fierce nationalists whose main objective was to restore the Union despite the important sectional differences that existed over slavery. Therefore, Northern minstrel troupes mobilized the myth of the docile slave to demonstrate that the abolition of slavery was unnecessary to the preservation of the Union. White minstrels in blackface depicted slaves as confused by the war and resentful of the disruption it brought to their idyllic plantation home. The real villains of the minstrel shows were the abolitionists and profiteers who exacerbated the conflict for their own political and material benefit. According to the minstrel shows, abolitionists manipulated slaves to gain political power and prestige. In addition, the minstrel shows attacked Northern corporate elites who, they believed, were benefiting financially from the prolonged war. In a skit poignantly titled ‘‘I Wish I had a Fat Contract,’’ one performer charged that the war would not end until the ‘‘Army contractors’ pockets are full.’’ Similarly, in ‘‘Shoddy Contracts’’ a parallel was drawn between cynical war profiteers and the gallant soldiers who died for the Union as a result of inadequate supplies: Shoddy contracts all de go, and money fur de same; And if you’re a politician, you’re sure to git de game. No matter what the job is either shoddy or a ram For all you’ve got to do is, charge the bill to Uncle Sam (Converse 1863, pp. 15–16, 45–46).
Designated as enemies of the Union, abolitionists and profiteers fell victim to some of the minstrel shows’ harshest criticisms, bringing into relief the racialized working-class politics of both performers and audience. Racist characterizations of blacks continued unabated in minstrel shows even after African American troops began fighting for the Union. The most popular minstrel skit involving African American troops was called ‘‘Black Brigade’’ (or ‘‘Greeley’s Brigade’’) and characterized black soldiers as cowardly and incompetent. Likewise, in ‘‘Raw
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Recruits,’’ the minstrels lampooned black soldiers as children incapable of performing the most basic duties of military life. This characterization of African Americans as ignorant and childlike extended into all areas of life. As early as 1863, the skit ‘‘High, Low, Jack’’ warned, ‘‘Let him vote and he’s what you call a mighty sassy chile.’’ Sentiments like these demonstrated the widespread belief that African Americans were racially inferior and incapable of participating as coequals with whites either in the military or in a postwar interracial democracy. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Affairs about Home.’’ Boston Herald, December 17, 1862, p. 4. ‘‘Affairs about Home: Opening of the Morris Brothers, Pell and Trowbridge Opera House.’’ Boston Herald, August 6, 1861, p. 2. Butsch, Richard. ‘‘Bowery B’hoys and Matinee Ladies: The Re-Gendering of Nineteenth-Century American Theater Audiences.’’ American Quarterly 46, no. 3 (1994): 374–405. ‘‘City Summary.’’ New York Clipper, April 8, 1865, p. 414. Converse, Frank. Frank Converse’s Old Cremona Songster. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1863. Cornelius, Steven H. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. ‘‘Hooley & Campbell’s Minstrels Remain at the Walnut Street Theatre One Week Longer.’’ North American and United States Gazette, July 8, 1861, p. 802. Lawrence, Vera Brodsky. Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. Vol. 3, Repercussions, 1857–1862. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ‘‘Musical and Dramatic Chat.’’ New Orleans Daily Picayune, September 14, 1862, p. 1. ‘‘Musical and Theatrical Matters.’’ New York Herald, August 5, 1861, p. 3. ‘‘Musical and Theatrical Matters.’’ New York Herald, August 18, 1862, p. 2. Saxton, Alexander. ‘‘Blackface Minstrelsy and Jacksonian Ideology.’’ American Quarterly 27, no.1 (1975): 3–28. ‘‘ ‘Suspense,’ at the Winter Garden.’’ New York Herald, July 2, 1861, p. 4. Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Wilmeth, Don B., and C. W. E. Bigsby, eds. The Cambridge History of American Theatre. Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1870. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kerry L. Pimblott
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Minstrel Shows
MINSTREL SHOWS One of the most popular forms of musical entertainment in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century, minstrel shows reflected the era’s prevailing racism and an ethos of white supremacy that permeated much of American society. The history of blackface itself can be traced to the 1820s, when the white entertainer Thomas ‘‘T. D.’’ Rice rubbed burnt cork on his face and performed a song titled ‘‘Jump Jim Crow’’ at a
local theater. Rice’s act became a nationwide success almost immediately and thus led numerous theaters, both in the North and South, to create similar stage performances with white casts for various audiences to enjoy. However, at the same time, many African Americans formed their own minstrelsy groups that at least to some degree enabled a small cadre of black American entertainers to perfect their craft—such as William Henry Lane and Bert A. Williams, who developed a new musical genre and dance routine. According to scholar John Strausbaugh
Sheet music cover depicting Jim Crow, the happy slave. Highly popular throughout the United States, minstrel shows reinforced attitudes of white supremacy, as African Americans were portrayed by white actors in blackface as slothful, ignorant, and loose in their sexual mores. The Library of Congress
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(2006), minstrelsy, for all its humiliations, enabled many African Americans to acquire positions as performers and composers that they never had during the earlier decades of the antebellum period. Before and during the Civil War, however, minstrel shows were mostly performed by whites. Mostly of Irish descent, these performers blackened their faces with burnt cork, cooled ashes, or dirt and presented a grotesque and highly stereotypical portrayal of African American slave culture and life in the American South. Popular stock characters included an ignorant, stumbling, but happygo-lucky African American buffoon named ‘‘Sambo,’’ as well as Rice’s invention, Jim Crow, who expressed enormous fondness for the system of slavery (and whose name was later appropriated to refer to the South’s system of racial segregation). One typical minstrel show presented a group of about fifteen or sixteen men seated in a semicircle, facing the audience, telling jokes about each other, accompanied by music, while another person danced and played the banjo in front of them. While these types of shows were most popular in the South, many white Northerners who had very little familiarity with African American life also enjoyed minstrel shows. Northern-based minstrelsy in part was popular because it reinforced notions of white supremacy, and ridiculed African American and white abolitionists who promoted racial equality during the early to mid-antebellum period. During the Civil War era, minstrel shows continued to be popular and frequently portrayed African American soldiers as incompetent, lazy, and cowardly. After the war, white minstrel shows, partly in response to increasing competition from African American–led minstrel groups, expanded their repertoire to include what became known as ‘‘freak’’ shows, which were popularized by P. T. Barnum and various entertainment companies. The nature of many minstrel shows also changed as a result of the inclusion of overtly sexual material, as well as the addition of white female performers. At the same time, minstrel shows began to gain much popularity in Britain and throughout Europe. Indeed, large minstrel groups now were seen in both small towns and big cities abroad, as well as throughout the United States. The popularity of the music used in minstrel shows also started to take off during these years, with various show tune hits selling 100,000 copies in less than a year. For example, songs such as ‘‘Camptown Races,’’ ‘‘My Old Kentucky,’’ and ‘‘O Susanna’’ were all popularized in minstrel shows and became hit songs during the decades that followed the end of the Civil War, when they were appropriated by such respectable musicians as Al Jolson and Irving Berlin. Indeed, songs that originated in minstrel shows perpetuated stereotypes about blacks and supported an ideology of white superiority well into the twentieth century.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blair, John G. ‘‘Blackface Minstrels in Cross-Cultural Perspective.’’ American Studies International 28, no. 2 (1990): 52–65. Carlyon, David. Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You’ve Never Heard Of. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Chude-Sokei, Louis. The Last ‘‘Darky’’: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Cockrell, Dale. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Fee, Frank E., Jr. ‘‘Blackface in Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and the Gender in Frederick Douglass’ Hometown Newspapers, 1847.’’ American Journalism 20 (Summer 2003): 73–92. Gilmore, Paul. ‘‘William Wells Brown, Blackface Minstrelsy, and Abolitionism.’’ American Literature 69, no. 4 (1997): 743–780. Goldman, Herbert G. Jolson: The Legend Comes to Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Meer, Sarah. Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s. Athens: University of Georgia, 2005. Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult, and Imitation in American Popular Culture. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Eric R. Jackson
THEATER The state of American theater in the decades prior to the Civil War was, according to David S. Reynolds’s 1995 biography Walt Whitman’s America, a democratic and participatory experience for playgoers. Outbursts from the audience were commonplace. The leading tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth (1796–1852), the father of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865), welcomed those outbursts and was, as one Washington paper wrote, ‘‘a distinguished favorite in America’’ (Daily National Intelligencer, July 26, 1821). The exuberance of Booth’s performance was described by a Boston newspaper thus: ‘‘He lost himself in the part he was performing, to such a degree that it became for the time being a sort of insanity, which was sometimes dangerous to his antagonists in the play’’ (Boston Daily Atlas, December 3, 1852). According to Reynolds, ‘‘[Booth]
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Junius Brutus Booth (1796–1852). A daguerreotype of Junius Brutus Booth, the patriarch of an acting family popular in the years prior to the Civil War. His son John Wilkes Booth earned a different type of notoriety after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. The Library of Congress
could become so carried away as Othello trying to suffocate Desdemona with a pillow that he had to be pulled away by other actors for fear he would actually kill her. As the sword-wielding Richard he sometimes inflicted real wounds’’ (1995, p. 160). Although born in England, Booth represented an American style of acting that ‘‘had to compete with ranting revivalists, ebullient blackface shows, and the popular frontier screamer’’ (Reynolds 1995, p. 159). In November 1847 the Astor Place Opera House in New York opened, primarily for upper-class theater patrons. A popular British actor who often performed there, William Charles Macready (1793–1873), had made his first stage appearance in June 1810 in Birmingham, England, and after finding success there as a Shakespearean tragedian, moved to the United States in 1843 (New York Herald, July 22, 1863). His rival, the American actor Edwin Forrest (1806–1872), was known for his ‘‘muscular, turbulent style’’ and his appreciation for the local roughnecks that were partial to his flamboyant acting. The New York Herald recounted the rivalry between Macready and Forrest, saying, ‘‘On account of some misunderstanding with another play actor [Macready] aroused the anti-English feeling of a portion of the people of this city’’ (‘‘Additional Particulars,’’ May 12, 1849). After Forr-
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est hissed at Macready’s performance of Hamlet in March 1846, Macready publicly stated, ‘‘I feel I cannot stomach the United States as a nation’’ (Reynolds 1995, p. 164). In May 1849 Macready was ‘‘ignominiously driven from the Astor Place Theatre . . . by a mob after vainly endeavoring to perform the part of Macbeth’’ (North American and United States Gazette, May 12, 1849). Days later, when Macready attempted to continue his performance, a mob of ‘‘no less than 25,000 persons’’ tried to force their way into the opera house. Earlier that day, according to the New York Herald, ‘‘rumors were abundant that a riotous organization’’ had purchased firearms. In addition to rumors of firearms, it was reported that throughout the city, flyers were posted proclaiming, ‘‘Americans! Arouse! The great crisis has come!! Decide now whether English aristocrats!!! And foreign rule! Shall triumph in this, America’s metropolis’’ (‘‘Additional Particulars,’’ May 12, 1849). The local militia was called out and eventually was ordered to fire upon the crowd, killing twenty-two and wounding more than fifty (Reynolds 1995, p. 165). Beyond common melodrama and the works of Shakespeare, theater during and around the Civil War also consisted of dramatic performances of popular literature. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was adapted and performed on stages in both Boston and New York. Frederick Douglass’ Paper reported that ‘‘the practice of dramatizing a popular novel, as soon as it takes a run, has become very common. In many instances, and particularly with regard to the highly dramatic graphic novels of Dickens, these new plays have been very successful, giving pleasure and satisfaction to the public, and putting money into the pockets of the chuckling manager’’ (October 8, 1852). Although the play ‘‘sold by thousands,’’ it was seen as an artistic failure, with one critic calling it a ‘‘crude and aggravated affair.’’ BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Additional Particulars of the Terrible Riot at the Astor Place Opera House.’’ New York Herald, New York, May 12, 1849. Boston Daily Atlas, Boston, December 3, 1852. Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, DC, July 26, 1821. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Rochester, NY, October 8, 1852. ‘‘Obituary for Macready.’’ New York Herald, New York, July 22, 1863. North American and United States Gazette, Philadel phia, May 12, 1849. Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. John L. Reilly
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Music: An Overview
n
Music MUSIC : AN OVERVIEW
Kerry L. Pimblott WAR MUSIC
Stephen Rockenbach SLAVE , ABOLITIONIST , AND CIVIL RIGHTS SONGS
Jeanne M. Lesinski ARMY BANDS
Carol J. Gibson
MUSIC: AN OVERVIEW The social upheaval of the Civil War disrupted musical traditions and gave rise to forms that were more readily applicable to wartime realities. In the military Confederate and Union armies employed field and band musicians entrusted with the task of promoting soldier morale, regimenting camp life, and delivering commands on the battlefield. On the home front popular music and civic bands served many of the same functions, with patriotic tunes serving to solidify support for the war and aiding in the recruitment of troops. African American music traditions were also transformed as the power of the southern planter elite eroded. Spirituals, as well as folk and abolitionist songs served as expressions of racial pride and newly acquired freedoms. Moreover, contacts between Northern white soldiers and former slaves facilitated the dissemination of African American music traditions to a broader audience in the postwar era. In 1864 Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) emphasized the centrality of music to successful military operations, stating: ‘‘I don’t believe we can have an army without music.’’ Indeed, musicians were involved in all aspects of soldierly life from the camp to the battlefield and performed a variety of musical and non-musical duties. Military music fell into two main categories: field music and band music. Field musicians included fifers, drummers, and buglers who were responsible for memorizing and transmitting orders essential to the dayto-day functioning of the regiment. Often only twelve or thirteen years old, many field musicians were too young to enlist as troops and were thus classified as noncombatants. Fourteen-year-old Charles W. Bardeen, for example, joined the 1st Massachusetts Infantry drum corps after learning he was too young to enlist as an army regular. Bardeen, like many other field musicians, lacked formal musical training and was relatively unprepared for the realities of war. Celebrated in popular songs like Will S. Hays’s 1863 ‘‘The Drummer Boy of Shiloh,’’ young field musicians were forced to grow up quickly if they were to survive the perils of conflict and camp life.
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Both on the battlefield and in army camps, music was used as a communications device, relaying a variety of instructions to soldiers. The sound of fife, drum, and bugle related tactical commands to soldiers, such as marching speed and orders to charge or retreat. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Cover of ‘‘Grand March.’’
The primary responsibility of field musicians was to deliver the regulatory calls that served to structure daily life in the army. From ‘‘Drummers Call’’ in the morning to ‘‘Taps’’ at the end of the day, field musicians provided army camps with a rigid and familiar routine. Describing a typical morning with 17th Maine Regiment, Edwin B. Houghton recalled in Francis A. Lord’s and Arthur Wise’s 1966 edited work Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War ‘‘the clear notes of the bugle’’ piercing his ears as ‘‘the first beams of the rising sun [began] to tinge the eastern skies.’’ The sound of the bugle was quickly followed by the ‘‘noisy rataplan’’ of the drum corps thundering about the camp. ‘‘At the last tap of the drum,’’ Houghton wrote, ‘‘every man is supposed to be ‘‘up and dressed’’ the companies formed, the roll called by the first sergeants, and woe to the absentees!’’ (pp. 82–84). Throughout the day, field musicians performed a variety of familiar ensembles to alert
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soldiers to events and important camp duties, and their tunes established the rhythm of military life. On the battlefield, field musicians were charged with the essential duty of relaying important tactical signals, such as instructions to march slower or faster, load and fire, rally to the flag, charge, halt, or retreat. These calls were memorized and performed primarily by the drum corps and buglers, who could relay them from a significant distance. In addition to their musical responsibilities, field musicians also performed a miscellany of non-musical duties. George T. Ulmer of the 8th Maine Infantry described his experiences in Lord’s and Wise’s Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War working as an anesthetist in a camp hospital at the age of sixteen as an ‘‘ordeal I never wish to go through again’’ (1966 p. iii). Working as stretcher-bearers and hospital assistants was a common duty of field musicians throughout the Civil War. In addition to an extensive array of field musicians, many regiments also featured a military band. During the initial stages of the war civilian bands from across the country offered their services to individual regiments by enlisting as a group. The renowned American Brass Band from Providence, for example, enlisted with the 1st Regiment Rhode Island Militia in April 1861, whereupon it performed for dress parades and served with the medical corps. Maintaining a military band, however, was costly and as the war continued unabated, the federal government opted to cut music expenditure significantly. On July 29, 1862, the war department passed General Order 91 restricting bands to the brigade level and limiting their size to no more than sixteen musicians. In contrast, the Confederate army continued to permit sixteen-member ensembles to operate within regiments as well as brigades. Despite these cutbacks, it is estimated that more than 400 bands were represented in the ranks of the Union army and 125 in the Confederate army during the course of the war. Military bands were largely brass-and-percussion ensembles. Although considerable variation existed, bands usually consisted of two E-flat cornets, two B-flat cornets two alto horns, two tenor horns, one baritone horn, one bass horn, and a percussion section of one snare drum, a bass drum, and cymbals. Woodwind instruments were relatively rare, though some piccolos and clarinets were represented. Band repertoires were equally diverse, consisting of marches, patriotic melodies, popular songs, traditional dances, and hymns. Though considerable crossover existed in the repertoires of Confederate and Union forces, both sides developed their own patriotic songs with which to rally the troops and overawe the enemy. Northern favorites included ‘‘Yankee Doodle’’ and ‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’’ while Southerners preferred ‘‘Dixie’’ and ‘‘La Marseillaise.’’ In some cases, opposing military bands dueled as a prelude to battle. Colonel George A. Bruce of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteers recalled in Lord’s and Wise’s Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War his band playing the ‘‘Star-Spangled Banner’’ only to be countered by a
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Confederate band playing ‘‘Bonnie Blue Flag’’ and ‘‘My Maryland.’’ The musical duel climaxed when Confederate forces fired on Northern troops after hearing the introductory bars of ‘‘Old John Brown’’ (p. 396). On the battlefield military bands were used to inspire and motivate soldiers. According to Francis H. Buffum of the 14th Regiment of the New Hampshire Volunteers, in Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War, the presence of a band during military operations ‘‘tends to promote morale, strengthening the discipline and elevating the sentiment’’ of the soldiers (pp. 130–132). The use of patriotic songs was an obvious strategy for raising troop’s morale, but certainly not the only one. In her study of sixty popular Civil War songs, historian Lenora Cuccia contends in the 2004 edited work Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era that lyrical representations of women as wives and mothers also served as powerful inspiration for soldiers going into battle. Popular songs such as ‘‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’’ invoked a sense of patriotism infused with dominant understandings of manliness. Back at camp, military bands entertained soldiers and provided music for special occasions. It was at these special camp performances that accomplished bands often experimented with newer and more challenging operatic or classical pieces. In April 1862, a solider with the 24th Massachusetts Regiment wrote a letter home in which he testified to the importance of these special camp performances to soldiers morale. ‘‘I don’t know what we should have done without our band,’’ he wrote, as Bell I. Wiley recounted in The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. ‘‘Every night about sun down [Patrick] Gilmore gives us a splendid concert, playing selections from the operas and some very pretty marches, quicksteps, waltzes and the like, most of which are composed by himself or by Zohler, a member of his band’’ (p. 158). In this way military bands brought excitement to the often dull and monotonous days of camp life and offered soldiers an important reprieve from the horrors of war. Military bands were also tremendously popular on the home front. In cities and towns across the country the performances of military or civic bands served many of the same functions as they did for soldiers: fostering patriotism and offering vital relief from the tragedies of war. Bands in cities across the nation led parades and performed concerts. In New York’s Central Park, celebrated bandmaster Henry Dodsworth held military band concerts that regularly attracted audiences of more than 20,000 people. In Washington, DC, military bands serenaded the president with patriotic favorites from the lawn of the executive mansion. Moreover, contemporary composers set about immortalizing significant battles and war heroes in the popular sheet music of the era. Songs such as P. Rivinac’s ‘‘General Bragg’s Grand March’’ (1861) emphasized the heroism of military leaders while others, such as Walter Kittredge’s ‘‘Tenting on the Old Camp Ground’’ (1864) focused on the daily lives of soldiers.
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Music: An Overview
Inspired by feelings of patriotism, musicians penned military marches for both Union and Confederate troops. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Cover of ‘‘Beauregard’s March.’’
As European Americans on both sides of the MasonDixon Line utilized music to express nationalist fervor and provide solace for wartime horrors, African Americans in the southern states continued to engage in their own distinctive music traditions. In the context of enslavement, music had functioned as an important vehicle for African American community building and the preservation of folk culture. Musical festivities provided people of African descent with a rare opportunity to join together and participate in an activity devoid of white supervision. Through the singing of spirituals and work songs, African Americans asserted their humanity and collective desire for freedom. In the social upheaval of the Civil War Northern whites came into direct contact with African American music traditions, often for the first time. While African American music and dance styles had long been the subject of parody by minstrel show performers, it was not until the Civil War and the concomitant movement of Northern soldiers and teachers into Southern states that a large percentage of Northern whites experienced music produced and performed by people of African descent. Through the per-
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formance of spirituals, abolitionist songs, and folk songs, African Americans challenged the authenticity of the minstrel show and the dehumanizing racial stereotypes it perpetuated. Wartime accounts of African American music and dance revealed the ongoing influence of West African cultural traditions. In her diary, Charlotte Forten, an African American schoolteacher from Salem, Massachusetts working in the Sea Islands, described how local children would ‘‘form a ring, and move around in a kind of shuffling dance, singing all the time’’ According to Forten’s account, reproduced as ‘‘Life on the Sea Islands’’ in the 1997 compilation Work of Teachers in America: A Social History through Stories, several of the children would ‘‘stand apart, and sing very energetically, clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and rocking their bodies to and fro’’ while others shouted in time (p. 129). Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a white colonel of an African American regiment in South Carolina, also provided accounts of a ring dance being performed. In Army Life in a Black Regiment [1962], Higginson described how ‘‘a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the center; some ‘heel and toe’ tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on, others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep steadily circling like dervishes’’ while the ‘‘spectators applaud special strokes of skill’’ (pp. 17–18). Historian Sterling Stuckey has contended that this practice, widely recognized as ‘‘the ring shout’’, has roots in West Africa and that its continuation represents the ongoing importance of West African retentions in African American culture. As the power of the southern planter class eroded African Americans also composed and performed songs that addressed the material realities of a seemingly new world. Spirituals and abolitionist songs were particularly popular genres with which former slaves expressed their newly acquired freedoms. While traveling with troops in 1864, Boston journalist and historian Charles Carlton Coffin observed that African Americans who had fled local plantations celebrated their emancipation with songs of praise. A middle-aged woman asked Coffin: ‘‘Will it disturb you if we have a little singing? You see we feel so happy to-day that we would like to praise the Lord’’ (pp. 110–112). On Helena Island, South Carolina, Charlotte Forten recalled how former slaves sang the abolitionist song ‘‘John Brown’’ passionately as they ‘‘drove through the pines and palmettos.’’ ‘‘Oh, it was good to sing that song in the very heart of Rebeldom!’’ Forten declared (p. 128). Singing spirituals and abolitionist songs was a dangerous, yet empowering act for African Americans in the southern states during the war. While abolitionist songs were liberating for many former slaves, Northern white military leaders used the same genre as a tool for policing African American regiments. Historian Keith P. Wilson contends that white officers used music to impress their own social values on their men. Many of the abolitionist songs played for African American
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regiments were written by white composers and contained lyrics that emphasized the moral and economic responsibilities of emancipation. In this sense abolitionist songs were often reflective of the deeper concerns of Northern whites about a postwar interracial democracy. Despite these efforts African American soldiers also brought their own musical and expressive traditions to bear on army life. Spirituals played a particularly important role in providing solace and inspiration for African American soldiers. In contrast to the patriotic songs of their white counterparts, spirituals drew on the history of enslavement and the prophetic call for freedom that was central to African American life and culture. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bardeen, Charles William. A Little Fifer’s War Diary. Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen, 1910. Buffum, Francis Henry. A Memorial of the Great Rebellion: Being a History of the Fourteenth Regiment New-Hampshire Volunteers. Boston: Franklin Press: Rand, Avery, and Company, 1882. Bruce, George Anson. The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1861–1865 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Catton, Bruce. A Stillness at Appomattox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953. Corneluis, Steven H. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Cuccia, Lenora. ‘‘They Weren’t All Like Lorena: Musical Portraits of Women in the Civil War Era.’’ In Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era, ed. Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Forton, Charlotte L. ‘‘Life on the Sea Islands.’’ In Work of Teachers in America: A Social History through Stories, ed. Rosetta Marantz Cohen and Samuel Scheer. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997. Hays, Will S. ‘‘The Drummer Boy of Shiloh,’’ 1863. Musica International. Available from http:// musicanet.org/. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment [1900]. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962. Lord, Francis A., and Arthur Wise. Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1966. Olson, Kenneth E., Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981. Wiley, Bell I. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union [c. 1952]. New York: Doubleday, 1971. Wilson, Keith P., Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University, 2002. Kerry L. Pimblott
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WAR MUSIC During the American Civil War, soldiers and civilians alike wrote and sang songs that captured the experience of war. The lyrics of these songs ranged from accounts of famous battles to sentimental thoughts of family and home. The Union and Confederacy each had specific songs that celebrated their cause and praised their troops. Particularly in the North, some songs were political in nature, either supporting or criticizing President Abraham Lincoln. Many of the same melodies were popular in both the North and the South, resulting in numerous variants with different lyrics. These words and melodies helped to build morale, fight the doldrums of military life, and unite people. In the end, this music formed a lasting record of what people considered the most pressing aspects of life during the war.
Soldiers and the Army Music was a common form of entertainment during the Civil War era, and musicians were in abundance in both civilian and military life. A corporal in the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Militia commented that ‘‘each company has its excellent choir of singers, but Company F affords instrumental as well as vocal music.’’ He added that ‘‘the Cobb brothers, who are excellent violinists, delight a numerous auditory nightly assembled about their bunks’’ (Haines 1863, p. 11). Eventually the men of the 44th organized a regimental choir and obtained some instruments so that they could start a band. Besides offering comforting diversion, military bands could have tactical importance as well. For example, Confederate bands played during the evacuation of Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the war, in order to mask the sounds of troops and equipment being moved out of the Confederate capital. Wartime songs could inspire soldiers, and help them deal with the perils and hardships of military life. In his 1866 regimental history of the 3rd Louisiana Infantry, W. H. Tunnard recalled how during a rainstorm, ‘‘the Louisianians marched cheerfully forward, shouting forth with stentorian voices the chorus of the ‘Bonny Blue Flag’ and other patriotic songs’’ (p. 124). A wartime rallying song gave one Union soldier a similar, yet more crucial, burst of stamina. The soldier lost an arm to a Rebel cannon ball, yet he sang the chorus of ‘‘Battle Cry of Freedom’’ as the surgeon tended to his ghastly wound. Soon, other patients joined in the chorus: ‘‘We will rally round the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom’’ (Denison 1864, p. 319).
Published Music Public demand for music was so high during the war that publishers in the North printed lyrics and music in many different forms, including songbooks (also called songsters) written specifically for the war effort. George F. Root, an author of numerous Union songs, published a songbook titled The Bugle Call in 1863. Root explained that his GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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book was ‘‘designed for loyal people, whether around the campfire or the hearth-stone,’’ in order to ‘‘arouse every true heart to a greater love of the Union, and a sterner determination to protect it to the last’’ (p. 1). Another book, Songs and Ballads of Freedom, was available from a New York publisher in 1863 for fifteen cents and included both sentimental tunes and patriotic songs. Several of the songs conjured up visions of the home front and loved ones, including ‘‘Who Will Care for Mother Now,’’ ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,’’ and ‘‘When This Cruel War is Over.’’ Soldiers enjoyed writing their own lyrics to existing songs, such as Stephen Foster’s ‘‘Hard Times Come Again No More,’’ which some Federals reworked as ‘‘Hard Crackers Come Again No More’’ in honor of the almost inedible rations the Union Army issued its troops. Southerners appreciated songs that praised secession and the Confederacy, but music had the added challenge of creating a feeling of Confederate nationalism. It is no small irony that the best-known Southern anthem, ‘‘Dixie,’’ was written before the war by a Northerner, Daniel Decatur Emmett. Before the war, most of the South’s sheet music came from Northern publishers, but there was an increase in Southern-produced sheet music and songbooks until paper shortages at the end of the war limited publishing. Confederate songsters were generally marketed to soldiers, but there is evidence that publishers intended to sell these books and sheet music to the public as well. One example of a Southern songbook is The Jack Morgan Songster (1864), which a captain in the Confederate army compiled. The book’s title and first song paid homage to General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate cavalry raider from Kentucky. Not all of the selections were so militant; the songster also included a Confederate version of ‘‘When This Cruel War is Over’’ that was similar to the Northern favorite, but mentioned ‘‘Southern boys’’ and the ‘‘Southern banner’’ in the final verse.
Northern Political Music In the North, popular songs addressed the political nature of the conflict, particularly the debates concerning Lincoln’s leadership, the war, and emancipation. The Republican Party produced such songbooks as The President Lincoln Campaign Songster and The Republican Songster for the 1864 election. Besides songs extolling Lincoln’s presidency, these songsters included lyrics that criticized ‘‘Copperheads,’’ as Northern Democrats who opposed emancipation and demanded an immediate end to the war were called. Lincoln’s detractors had their own tunes, including the ones published in Copperhead Minstrel, an 1863 songbook compiled by Andrew Dickson White, the future co-founder of Cornell University. These antiwar Democrats blamed Lincoln for the war’s hardships and loss of life. A Copperhead version of ‘‘We are Coming, Father Abraham,’’ addressed to Lincoln,
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SONGSTERS To keep the public and the troops entertained and inspired, publishers in both the Union and the Confederacy brought out what they called songsters—that is, booklets of song lyrics. Musical notation was rarely included, however, as the songs were sung to familiar tunes. Examples of songsters include War Songs of the South (1862), The Beauregard Songster (1864), and Songs & Ballads of Freedom: A Choice Collection, Inspired by the Incidents and Scenes of the Present War (1864) (Schultz 2004, p. 136). Soldiers of both camps also wrote their own lyrics to existing songs, and if they were lucky could make some money for their talent. The Boston Daily Advertiser ran this advertisement in 1864: ‘‘George F. Root of Chicago offers $10 each for five Union campaign songs to these tunes, ‘Old Shady,’ ‘Uncle Ned,’ ‘Out of the Wilderness,’ ‘John Brown,’ and ‘America,’ or ‘God Save the Queen’’’ (September 14, 1864, col. C). Writing about war songs of the South in the Charleston Courier, TriWeekly, an unnamed critic called the songs ‘‘the spontaneous outburst of popular feeling. They show the sentiments of the people, and give the lie to the assertion of our enemy, that this revolution is the work of politicians and party leaders alone’’ (May 31, 1862). JEANNE M. LESINSKI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schultz, Kirsten M. ‘‘The Production and Consumption of Confederate Songsters.’’ In Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era, ed. Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. ‘‘War Songs of the South.’’ Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, May 31, 1862, col. C.
declared, ‘‘Your dark and wicked doings a god of mercy sees, and the wail of homeless children is heard on every breeze’’ (White 1863, p. 14). A songbook bearing the nickname (‘‘Little Mac’’) of the 1864 Democratic candidate, former General George McClellan, used music to criticize Lincoln’s leadership and policies, including the president’s emancipation policy (The Little Mac Campaign Songster, 1864).
Songs of Freedom Some songs supported emancipation, such as the compositions of songwriter Henry C. Work, whose songs ‘‘Kingdom Coming’’ and ‘‘Babylon Is Falling’’ championed freeing and enlisting Southern slaves as a suitable retaliation for Southern disloyalty. African Americans wrote and sang songs to express their feelings about the war and emancipation. Versions of ‘‘John Brown’s Body’’ were very popular, including the song of the 1st Arkansas Colored Regiment, which stated, ‘‘We are fightin’ for de Union, We are fightin’ for de law’’ (Cornelius 2004, p. 29). Further, hymns and
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spirituals used religious imagery to celebrate and promote the cause of emancipation. Even the Union rallying song, ‘‘Battle Cry of Freedom,’’ included a reference to emancipation in the line ‘‘although he may be poor, not a man shall be a slave’’ (Cornelius 2004, p. 47). Regardless of what their sentiments were, soldiers and civilians alike relied on music to help them shoulder the burdens of war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abel, E. Lawrence. Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999. Cornelius, Steven H. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Denison, Charles Wheeler. The Tanner-Boy and How He Became Lieutenant-General. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1864. Haines, Zenas T. Letters from the Forty-Fourth Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862–3. Boston: Herald Job Office, 1863. The Little Mac Campaign Songster. New York: T.R. Dawley, 1864. Olson, Kenneth E. Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981. Root, George F., ed. The Bugle Call. Chicago: Root & Cady, 1863. Schultz, Kirsten M. ‘‘The Production and Consumption of Confederate Songsters.’’ In Bugle Resounding: Music and Musician of the Civil War Era, ed. Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Tunnard, W. H. A Southern Record: The History of the Third Regiment Louisiana Infantry. Baton Rouge, LA: Author, 1866. White, Andrew Dickson. Copperhead Minstrel: A Choice Collection of Democratic Poems and Songs, for the Use of Political Clubs and the Social Circle. New York: Feeks & Bancker, 1863.
century white Americans—that the slaves expressed their emotions through music and entertained themselves with songs while doing such repetitive tasks as spinning, weaving, hoeing, picking crops, plowing, or washing clothes. In fact, the repetitive rhythms of the task often entered into the music, while conversely, the music helped maintain the momentum of the task. On the eve of the outbreak of the Civil War, Daniel Robinson Hundley noted in his Social Relations in Our Southern States (1860) that: No matter where they may be or what they may be doing, indeed, whether alone or in crowds, at work or at play, ploughing through the steaming maize in the sultry heat of June, or bared to the waist and with deft hand mowing down the yellow grain, or trudging homeward in the dusky twilight after the day’s work is done—always and everywhere they [the Negroes] are singing (Hundley 1860, pp. 344–345).
In addition to the activities Hundley enumerates, such events as corn shucking, threshing parties, slave ‘‘frolics,’’ and religious services also lent themselves to singing. The slaves sang a variety of songs, ranging from hymns to folksongs and improvised pieces. Though songs could be created individually, most often they were created through communal improvisation. Slave singing used African rhythms, tonalities, and vocal embellishments. Rhythms were often syncopated and set against each other in complicated patterns. The scale on which the music was based might be pentatonic (that is, it used only five notes) or employ microtones (intervals between the standard Western pitches). The vocal embellishments might include yodeling, pitch-bending, and melismata (singing several notes to one syllable of text). In addition, grunts, yells, cries, and moans were common. Writing in the June 13, 1874, edition of Inter Ocean, an anonymous commentator remarked, ‘‘[f]or forty years or more plantation songs have been extraordinarily popular in all quarters. . . . They are valuable as an expression of the character and life of the race which has played such a conspicuous part in the history of our nation’’ (p. 6).
Abolitionist Songs Stephen Rockenbach
SLAVE, ABOLITIONIST, AND CIVIL RIGHTS SONGS In an era when literacy was not universal—indeed, slaves were forbidden to learn to read—song took on many roles: entertainment, worship, and propaganda. Many colonists, including the enslaved Africans, came to America from cultures in which music played an important role; thus the creation of new forms of music was a natural development.
Slave Songs In the African homeland of American slaves, music was thoroughly integrated into the activities of everyday life. Thus it is understandable—even if surprising to nineteenth-
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In the early 1840s abolitionist songs joined temperance tunes as staples of American repertoires. The November 16, 1843, issue of the Emancipator and Free American, for example, advertised a Liberty and Anti-Slavery Song Book, and contained an anonymous letter to the editor telling of an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that ended ‘‘after singing an antislavery song’’ (p. 67). The most popular songwriter of the antebellum period, Stephen Foster, portrayed African Americans in a positive light in his works. This treatment contrasted with the racist caricatures of slaves found in minstrel shows, which were popular entertainments performed by whites who darkened their faces with burnt cork. For example, although the lyrics to Foster’s ‘‘Oh! Susanna’’ seem nonsensical at first, they in fact subtly criticize slavery:
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Slave, Abolitionist, and Civil Rights Songs
The campaign song for the first antislavery party, the Liberty Party, was written in 1844 by a white vocal group, the Hutchinson Family Singers. Their combination of harmonized folk music and personal convictions was potent. They performed often and widely throughout the Northern states, though sometimes they were forced to cancel performances because of the likelihood of violence. Recalling a time when ‘‘the twin offenses of singing antislavery songs and admitting colored people to hear them’’ had caused the Hutchinsons to be driven from a hall, an article in the April 22, 1877, St. Louis GlobeDemocrat described the family’s career: ‘‘[They] had drawn enormous houses wherever they appeared, but being of pronounced antislavery sentiment, and having always introduced this sentiment into their songs, they had frequently met, even in the very heart of New England, with disapprobation’’ (p. 11). In 1864 the Hutchinson Family Singers put their talents to work for Lincoln, publishing ‘‘Lincoln and Liberty’’ in Hutchinson’s Republican Songster. After the Civil War, however, the group largely lost its following and fell apart due to personal conflicts.
Political Songs
Considered by many the most beloved songwriter prior to the Civil War, Stephen Foster offered a humanizing look at the life of a slave in his popular works, including ‘‘Oh! Susanna’’ and ‘‘Old Kentucky Home.’’ The Library Stephen Foster (1826–1864).
of Congress.
I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee I’se gwine to Lou’siana My true lub for to see It rain’d all night de day I left, De wedder it was dry; The sun so hot I froze to def—Susanna don’t you cry. Oh! Susanna, do not cry for me; I come from Alabama, Wid my Banjo on my knee.
The banjo and dialect indicate that the singer is an African American—but slaves would not have been allowed to travel freely and certainly not simply to see a loved one. Foster thus encouraged listeners to think differently about slaves—to consider them human beings—and thus elicited sympathy for the abolitionist cause (Kelley and Snell 2004, pp. 42, 44). Commenting on several Foster tunes, the former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass wrote, ‘‘‘Old Kentucky Home’ and ‘Uncle Ned’ can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root and flourish’’ (Douglass 1950 [1855], pp. 356–357).
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Songs became an important part of the political landscape beginning with the 1840 presidential race between the challenger, William Henry Harrison, and the incumbent, President Martin Van Buren. In addition to individual songs, writers composed entire songsters—booklets of songs written to popular tunes (some by Stephen Foster). During the 1864 presidential election, songsters were published for both President Lincoln and his challenger, George B. McClellan: Lincoln’s was the Republican Songster for the Campaign of 1864; McClellan’s The Little Mac Campaign Songster. The former included such titles as ‘‘Abe Lincoln Knows the Ropes,’’ ‘‘Forward for Lincoln and the Union,’’ ‘‘Lincoln, Freedom, Victory,’’ and ‘‘Rally Boys for Uncle Abe.’’ On the other hand, McClellan’s songster contained more anti-Lincoln songs than it did pro-McClellan ones. The anti-Lincoln songs included such titles as ‘‘Do I Love Abe or Not?’’ ‘‘Abraham Lover of My—Smell,’’ ‘‘Lincoln Written Down an Ass,’’ and ‘‘Abe’s Brother of Negro Descent.’’ Pro-McClellan songs, which drew on the challenger’s storied career as a Civil War general, included the wrapped-in-the-flag number ‘‘Hurrah for McClellan’’: Come, brothers, and unite with us, Come, join us one and all. United we must conquer, But divided we shall fall; Our Union flag we’re raising For McClellan—tried and true, Who’ll uphold it—and revere it— ’Tis the Red, White and Blue. Then hurrah, for McClellan Hurrah for McClellan, Hurrah for McClellan, And the Red, White and Blue.
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Army Bands (The Little Mac Campaign Songster, 1864, p. 9)
In contrast, ‘‘Uncle Abe,’’ from the Lincoln songster, is more down to earth in its patriotism: Uncle Abe, Uncle Abe! Here we are again! We’ve got a platform now, we think that will not bend or strain. Beat the drum, unfurl the flag, Freedom is for all. And so we fling it to the breeze as in the ranks we fall. Ho Uncle Abe! Listen, Uncle Abe, and see! We sing for you, work for you, Hurrah for Liberty! (Republican Songster, 1864, p. 41)
Whatever their style or political leaning, campaign songs were here to stay. Slave, abolitionist, and political songs were, of course, only a part of the body of music that enriched American culture during the Civil War era. Operas and orchestral works by classical European composers as well as American music composed for brass bands or piano, and the ethnic tunes and songs of immigrants, all blended to create a rich musical landscape. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Douglass, Frederick. ‘‘The Anti-Slavery Movement: Lecture Delivered before the Rochester [New York] Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, January 1855.’’ In The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers, 1950. Emancipator and Free American, November 16, 1843, p. 116. Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Music in American Life Series. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Foster, Stephen. Susanna. Louisville, KY: W. C. Peters, 1848. Gac, Scott. Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Hundley, Daniel Robinson. Social Relations in Our Southern States. New York: Henry B. Price, 1860. Keck, George Russell, and Sherrill V. Martin. Feel the Spirit: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American Music. Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies 119. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. Kelley, Bruce C., and Mark A. Snell, eds. Bugle Resounding: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. The Little Mac Campaign Songster. New York: T. R. Dawley, 1864. McNeil, Keith, and Rusty McNeil, eds. Civil War Songbook: With Historical Commentary. Riverside, CA: WEM Records, 1999.
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‘‘Plantation Melodies.’’ Inter Ocean (Chicago), June 13, 1874, p. 6. Republican Songster for the Campaign of 1864. Cincinnati, OH: T. R. Hawley, 1864. St. Louis (MO) Globe-Democrat, April 22, 1877, p. 11. Silverman, Jerry. Songs and Stories of the Civil War. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2002. ‘‘Songs of the Blacks.’’ The Boston Liberator, September 9, 1859, n.p. Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History, 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1983. White, Shane, and Graham White. The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Jeanne M. Lesinski
ARMY BANDS From the regimental field bands (fife and drum corps) of colonial America to the U.S. army bands of the early twenty-first century, music has always been a vital part of American military tradition (Cornelius 2004, p. xiii). The Civil War, often called the ‘‘singing war,’’ epitomized the centrality of music to military life. In America’s Musical Life: A History (2001), the music historian Richard Crawford stated that ‘‘music was used for ‘‘morale building (or esprit de corps), camp duties (which included signaling), public ceremonies, and recreation’’ (pp. 83–84). It was the duty of military musicians to facilitate these tasks.
Functions of Army Musicians There were two types of army musicians: field musicians and bandsmen. Field musicians were often young boys who served as drummers, fifers, and buglers. They sounded camp calls and, in battle, relayed commands through musical signals, allowing officers to communicate quickly with their soldiers over great distances. After 1863 the U.S. Army permitted boys twelve years and older to enlist as field musicians, even though most could not read music. The recollections of Augustus Meyer, who joined the army in 1854 when he was twelve, describe the life of a young field musician in training at the School of Practice for U.S.A. Field Musicians at Governor’s Island, New York. Meyer, who enlisted as a fifer, described the living quarters of field musicians, or ‘‘music boys,’’ as sparse, and the meals as ‘‘meager’’ (Meyer 1914, pp. 1–4). He also recounted learning the various signals that controlled the lives of every soldier. For example, he wrote, ‘‘I was awakened . . . at daylight by a drummer beating the first call for ‘Reveille,’’’ followed by a corporal shouting to ‘‘Get up! You lazy fellows.’’ Soon after dressing, a drummer sounded the beat for ‘‘Assembly,’’ calling for the soldiers to gather outside for roll call. Drums also signaled soldiers to report for sick
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Army Bands
call, guard duty, and at night, ‘‘Taps’’ signaled when soldiers should go to sleep (Meyer 1914, pp. 4–5). The duties of military musicians detailed to bands were different from those of the ‘‘music boys.’’ Army bands played at parades, funerals, and executions, and also gave concerts for high-ranking civilian and military officials. Often during the war, both the U.S. president Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate president Jefferson Davis were serenaded by army brass bands. The bands’ most important function was performing for the troops, and in diaries and letters to their families and friends, Union and Confederate soldiers expressed gratitude and pride in the army service bands. On one occasion, a Union soldier from the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment remarked in 1862 that ‘‘I don’t know what we should have done without our band. It is acknowledged by everyone to be the best in the division’’ (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). It was customary at the time for army commanders to recruit accomplished musicians and bandleaders to serve in volunteer civilian bands or the regular army. The renowned bandleader Patrick Gilmore (1829–1892), who is credited with writing the popular Civil War–era song ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,’’ enlisted with his band of formally trained musicians (Patrick Gilmore’s Band); they were attached to the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry in September 1861. The trooper from the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts related: ‘‘Every night about sundown Gilmore gives us a splendid concert, playing selections from the operas and some very pretty marches, quicksteps, waltzes and the like’’ (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). Many other musicians joined the war effort as well, and by the end of 1861 the U.S. Army had more than 28,000 musicians and 618 bands (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). The Army of the Confederate States of America also had bands, but the scarcity of brass instruments and musicians in the South kept their numbers small.
Bands in Battle Military bands accompanied troops to battle. The First Regiment of Artillery Band (also known as Chandler’s Band of Portland, Maine) was present at the first engagement of the Civil War in April 1861 to witness Major Robert Anderson (1805–1871) surrendering the Fort Sumter garrison to Brigadier General P.G.T Beauregard (1818– 1893), commander of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina. Army bands sometimes played at forward positions in the midst of battles. Union and Confederate officers knew the power of music to inspire troops encamped in the field and in combat. To encourage his men to fight on, Union general Philip H. Sheridan (1831–1888) ordered the band to play during the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House, part of the Appomattox Campaign that led to the surrender of Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to Union general Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. Gen-
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eral Sheridan commanded the bandsmen to ‘‘play the gayest tunes in their books . . . play them loud and keep on playing them, and never mind if a bullet goes through a trombone, or even a trombonist, now and then’’ (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). In another story, Confederate soldiers stationed near Union forces in Fredericksburg, Virginia, during the winter of 1862 to 1863 could hear the Union band playing. A Confederate soldier called from across the Rappahannock River, ‘‘Now give us some of ours,’’ and the Union band broke into a lively rendition of ‘‘Dixie,’’ which was written in 1859 by a Northerner, Daniel Decatur Emmett from Ohio, but was adopted widely as ‘‘a rallying cry for the patriots of the Confederacy’’ and ‘‘a battle song for her soldiers’’ (Harwell 1950, p. 41). Army bandsmen and field musicians also experienced the terror of battle. John A. Cockerill, a sixteen-year-old regimental musician, wrote: ‘‘I passed . . . the corpse of a beautiful boy in gray who lay with his blond curls scattered about his face and his hand folded peacefully across his breast. . . . His neat little hat lying beside him bore the number of a Georgia regiment. . . . At the sight of the poor boy’s corpse, I burst into a regular boo-hoo’’ (Mintz). The dead Confederate soldier probably had been a drummer or bugler; many of the young boys who enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies were. Death was a constant in the war, and casualties among army field musicians and bandsmen were high. Only ten bandsmen of the original thirty-six members of the One Hundred Twenty-fith Ohio Regimental Band (known as the Tiger Band) survived the war (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). Nevertheless, bravery was high among the field musicians and bandsmen. Thirty-two army musicians have received the Medal of Honor, which is awarded by the U.S. Congress for distinguished action in battle; twenty of them served in the Civil War. According to the award citation for William J. Carson, a Civil War recipient: At a critical stage in the battle [at Chickamauga, Georgia on September 19, 1863] when the 14th Corps lines were wavering and in disorder he on his own initiative bugled ‘‘to the colors’’ amid the 18th U.S. Infantry who formed by him, and held the enemy. Within a few minutes he repeated his action amid the wavering 2d Ohio Infantry. This bugling deceived the enemy who believed reinforcements had arrived. Thus, they delayed their attack. (U.S. Army Center of Military History)
When not engaged in musical functions on the field, army field musicians and bandsmen performed noncombatant duties such as assisting the medical staff. They served as stretcher bearers for the wounded, collected wood for splints, helped set up field hospitals, and assisted surgeons with amputations. Whether performing music in noncombatant areas or in the midst of combat, or assisting injured soldiers at the rear of the battle lines, army musicians served the Union and the Confederacy with distinction. Unfortunately, the expense of maintaining army bands after the Civil War seemed unwarranted as Congress faced the
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Elmira Cornet Band. In addition to using field musicians to relay commands on the battlefield by drum, fife, and bugle, most regiments in the Union army also had a military band to provide entertainment to the troops as well as play at parades, funerals, and other ceremonious events. The Library of Congress.
enormous cost of reconstructing the South. The Army Act of 1869 abolished regimental bands. By the early 1900s, however, military officials lobbied successfully to reestablish bands in the regular army, citing the positive impact on the troops (U.S. Army, ‘‘The Civil War’’). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cornelius, Steven H. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Crawford, Richard. America’s Musical Life: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Harwell, Richard Barksdale. Confederate Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950. Library of Congress, Music Division. Presents Music, Theater and Dance. ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.’’ Patriotic Melodies. Available from http://lcweb2.loc.gov/. Meyer, Augustus. Ten Years in the Ranks: U.S. Army. New York: Stirling Press, 1914. Mintz, Steven. ‘‘Children and the American Civil War.’’ Digital History Web site. Available from http:// www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/.
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U.S. Army. ‘‘Bands from 1830–1860: Rise of the Brass Band.’’ U.S. Army Bands Web site. Available from http://bands.army.mil/. U.S. Army. ‘‘The Civil War.’’ U.S. Army Bands Web site. Available from http://bands.army.mil/. U.S. Army Center of Military History. ‘‘Medal of Honor.’’ Available from http://www.army.mil/. Carol J. Gibson
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Dancing
Dance is an expression of feeling, a social communication, and a means of identifying with a group. It releases tension and serves as a means of sexual display. The types of dance that could be most commonly found in Civil War America reflected the ethnic backgrounds of the dancers. Slaves and freed people performed dances with African roots, whereas white Americans adopted forms of European dance. Americans’ social attitudes toward dancing were those common to the European middle classes. The main
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Dancing
Dancing the ‘‘Virginia Reel.’’ Dancing was an important social activity around the time of the Civil War, and learning to dance was considered an important part of a young person’s education. New dances, such as the ‘‘Virginia Reel’’ pictured here, became popular among young Americans looking for entertainment. ª Corbis
attraction of dance lay in the steps and the pleasure of movement. Some religious groups, such as the Baptists and Methodists, frowned upon dance as lewd. Most Americans viewed dancing as a perfectly acceptable form of relaxation and exercise. In upper-class schools, social dancing formed part of the instruction. Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most popular women’s magazine in the mid-nineteenth century, included instructional articles on the correct way to dance. However, some dances provoked the wrath of secular observers, particularly bystanders from an older generation. Alfred L. Carroll, writing in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1865, sharply criticized the new craze for round dances as immoral. Round dances echoed the ring dances of medieval times in that a group of people moved in a circle. Carroll complained that once upon a time, No pure woman would suffer a man to retain her hand in his, much less to encircle her with his arm, in the ordinary relations of social life; and yet, at the bidding of fashion, and because the additional stimulus of music is superadded, she will not only permit these liberties, but will remain willingly strained to his breast for a quarter of an hour at a time, publicly exhibiting herself in a position which in itself she virtuously condemns. (Thompson 1998, p. 178)
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Carroll preferred the waltz, a dance first greeted with alarm but accepted by the 1830s and common throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. The waltz originated with the peasantry of Germany and gradually spread across Europe before coming to America. Dancers performing a waltz engage in whirls, arms-embracing gyrations, and more intimate contact as they move face-to-face in a threefour rhythm. The contact and the energy between dance partners was initially viewed as improper, especially if the partners were not husband and wife. But by the 1860s, Confederate and Union officers were dancing the waltz as well as the polka. The polka also came from Europe. Originally a folk dance from Bohemia, it became a craze in Paris and London in the 1840s before spreading to America. An energetic social dance, the one and two, one and two rhythm captured fans from every social class. Some Americans objected to dances chiefly because they had trouble performing them. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lamented his tendency to step on the dresses of young ladies and tear their hems. Twain wrote in January 1863 about a ball sponsored by the United States Sanitary Commission to raise funds for sick and wounded Union soldiers, at which the partygoers performed a new dance, the Virginia Reel. As he humorously described it, ‘‘The dancers are formed in two long ranks, facing each other, and the battle opens with some light skirmishing between the
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pickets, which is gradually resolved into a general engagement along the whole line; after that, you have nothing to do but stand by and grab every lady that drifts within reach of you, and swing her’’ (Thompson 1998, p. 191). Unlike whites, African Americans did not always have a choice about whether or where to dance. Depending on the whim of the master, slaves would hold dances on their own plantations, or they would obtain a pass to visit another plantation. Some masters encouraged their slaves to dance, and frequently asked (or forced) them to entertain whites at the ‘‘Big House.’’ A former slave, Dan Barton, recollected that, ‘‘They’d dance the buck and wing and another step [probably the chica] that nobody does any more. It went two steps to the right, two steps to the left. The womens shake their skirts and the mens dance ‘round them’’ (Emery 1972, p. 89). Slaves often danced at festivals; the Cake-Walk was a common festival dance. This dance—a straight walk along a path with the dancers balancing a pail of water—was named after the prize given to the couple that spilled the least amount of water: a cake. When left to themselves, without white interference, slaves performed a variety of dances including the ring dance, buzzard lope, water dance, and juba. All of these dances have roots in Africa. The ring dance, possibly originating in the Congo, involved dancing in a ring to celebrate the harvest. The buzzard lope mimicked the act of a bird eating carrion, whereas the water dance involved dancing while balancing a bucket of water on the head. The juba, apparently known in Africa as the Djouba, was characterized by stamping, clapping, and slapping of arms, chest, and thighs, with dancers sometimes balancing pails of water on their heads. Africans habitually carried almost everything on their heads, a custom that persisted in the water dances of the New World. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clarke, Mary, and Clement Crisp. The History of Dance. London: Orbis, 1981. Emery, Lynne Fauley. Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1972. Thompson, Alison, ed. Dancing through Time: Western Social Dance in Literature, 1400–1918: Selections. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998. Caryn E. Neumann
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Lyceum Lectures
Established in the late 1820s the American lyceum was a diffuse circuit of public lectures, debates, and dramatic performances utilized to promote civic education and moral uplift. During its early years the lyceum movement was comprised of local mutual-education societies situated predominantly in the villages and towns of the Northeast.
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Affluent Anglo-American Protestant men met together to read scholarly works, hold debates, and present and hear lectures on topics of importance from the realms of science, art, and industry. By the start of the Civil War the lyceum movement had expanded into the Old Northwest and parts of the South with the public lecture emerging as its most prominent and profitable activity. Renowned orators prepared lectures and followed a well-traveled circuit across the country. The outbreak of sectional conflict, however, transformed the lyceum and its lecture circuit irrevocably as wartime realities resulted in altered cultural tastes. The antebellum lyceum’s emphasis on scientific and literary pursuits was quickly supplanted by lectures addressing contemporary political affairs and light entertainment that offered solace from the tragedies of warfare. The outbreak of the Civil War marked the demise of local lyceums across the country. Laboring under the dual pressures of mass enlistment and lack of resources, many local lyceums were forced to limit operations or close their doors entirely.. With increasing numbers of young men enlisted in the military, the ranks of Ohio’s lyceum movement were depleted, leaving responsibility for the organization’s upkeep in the charge of older residents who lacked the energy and enthusiasm to maintain its formerly robust program. Newspaper editorials across the country lamented the dissolution of local lyceums and expressed considerable concern about the broader implications for American culture and society. An article published in the Dayton Journal on November 18, 1862, expressed concern that in the absence of the local lyceum residents might turn to the kind of ‘‘bar-room clubs, surprise parties, and political plotting and mutual criminations, which culminate in the murderous spirit of the mob, by which peace, morality and public reputation are destroyed’’ (Mead 1951, p. 201). Long understood to be a space for civic and moral instruction, the demise of the lyceum was received with considerable apprehension at the local level. Lyceums that continued to operate during the war years altered their programs in accordance with the broader transformation of cultural tastes initiated by the war. In a significant departure from prewar traditions, many surviving lyceums offered comedy routines, musical acts, and other popular performances in the place of scientific or literary pursuits. Comedic lecturer Charles Farrar Browne (1834–1867) entertained lyceum audiences across the country with performances like ‘‘Children in the Wood,’’ which consisted of a series of satirical and humorous anecdotes. In a review of Browne’s performance in Cleveland in February 1862, a correspondent for Plain Dealer contended: ‘‘[That] the affected seriousness, the pauses here and there to be followed by something immensely ridiculous and comical all combined to make it irresistible’’ (Mead 1951, p. 214). Performances like those delivered by Browne served as an important, albeit temporary, distraction from the painful traumas of war.
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Lyceum Lectures
Free black abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825– 1911). Educated white Protestant men often gathered together
to discuss science, attend debates, and listen to lectures in lyceums across the country. The Civil War expanded the variety of participants in lyceums, with abolitionists such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a free black woman, delivering speeches denouncing slavery. Harper, Frances E. W., photograph.
Despite the widespread appreciation of comedy acts, it was the public lecture circuit that remained the lyceums’ most popular activity. Before the war, lectures addressing explicitly political topics were widely believed to be inappropriate and improper. As broader cultural tastes were transformed by wartime realities, however, public lectures took on an increasingly political tenor. As early as 1854 the Ohio Mechanics Institute presented a course of lectures entitled ‘‘American Slavery,’’ with speakers including the prominent abolitionists Frederick Douglass (1817–1895), William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1979), Theodore Parker (1810–1860), and Wendell Phillips (1811–1884). Similarly, the Young Men’s Lyceum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, held a lecture in March 1861, on the unjust and immoral character of slavery. As the war began lyceums across the nation attempted to satisfy the heightened demand for political lectures by requesting the participation of reform-minded and patriotic orators. In Salem, Massachusetts, lectures such as Charles Sumner’s (1811–1874) ‘‘The Rebellion,’’ Charles C. Coffin’s ‘‘Battle Scenes,’’
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and George William Curtis’s (1824–1892) ‘‘Political Infidelity,’’ provided important information about the war and helped consolidate support for the Union. Not all contemporary observers understood the new political and reformist focus of the lecture circuit to be a positive one. Rather, political lectures were widely characterized as moneymaking ventures that tainted the original function of the lyceum as a site for the production of serious scholarship and moral improvement. Opponents argued that political lectures were in poor taste and rendered the lyceum little more than a lucrative public spectacle. An area of particular contestation was the behavior of figures like the staunch Tennessee unionist William G. Brownlow, whose provocative onstage performances challenged contemporary conventions of public speaking. On January 1, 1863, Brownlow spoke before a full house in Cleveland, Ohio. According to historian David Mead, Brownlow referred to his lecture as a ‘‘stump speech’’ and launched into a bitter attack on the Confederacy during which he asserted that there were better men in the depths of hell than there were amongst the ranks of Southern leaders. Mead relays that, in a review of Brownlow’s lecture, a correspondent for Plain Dealer declared in the January 2, 1863 edition that Brownlow’s audience, while ‘‘intensely interested,’’ was ‘‘disgusted and shocked at some of his low and vulgar expressions.’’ According to the writer, it appeared doubtful that there was ‘‘another man in America who could make use of such vulgarities during a public address without being hissed down at once.’’ (1951, p. 205) In this manner, the controversial style of political lecturers like Brownlow challenged the conventions of public speaking and raised concern in certain quarters. While the Plain Dealer reporter took pains to distinguish between Brownlow and his more refined audience, however, press coverage of other political lectures complicates this characterization of audience responses. Addressing a lecture held in New Orleans on February 3, 1863, a journalist for the Vermont Chronicle reported that pro-Union speeches by military leaders were ‘‘loudly applauded’’ and that ‘‘the horrible tales they told of the intolerance and barbarism of the rebels toward them, roused the audience to a high pitch of enthusiasm and intense excitement.’’ In similar lectures around the country, lyceum audiences responded to political and reformist lectures with an enthusiasm and revelry unmatched in the antebellum era. Thus many of the tensions that emerged around the Civil War lyceum movement were tied both to the changing nature of the public lecture and the audiences that attended them. Indeed, while some historians have depicted the Civil War as having a destructive effect on the lyceum as a more holistic educational institution, others have pointed to the lecture circuit as an example of the lyceums’ ongoing vitality and increasing inclusion. Political and social upheaval wrought by the Civil War opened up the lyceum movement not only to political
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and reformist discourse, but also to a wider variety of lecturers. During the Civil War, African American orators such as Frederick Douglass and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and white suffragists including Mary Ashton Livermore (1820–1905) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) were able to take the stage alongside the affluent white men who had traditionally dominated the lyceum movement. Through the lyceum lecture circuit, speakers such as Douglass, Watkins Harper, Livermore, and Anthony issued powerful critiques of the status quo that were disseminated to a national audience. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bode, Carl. The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Cameron, Kenneth Walter, comp. The Massachusetts Lyceum during the American Renaissance; Materials for the Study of the Oral Tradition in American Letters: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Other New-England Lecturers. Hartford, CT: Transcendental Books, 1969. Mead, David C. Yankee Eloquence in the Middle West: The Ohio Lyceum 1850–1870. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951. Ray, Angela G. The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-century United States. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005. ‘‘Union Demonstrations.’’ Vermont Chronicle 5, (February 3, 1863): 19, col. B. ‘‘The Young Men’s Lyceum.’’ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel 65, (March 16, 1861): col. F. ‘‘Young Men’s Lyceum.’’ Tri-weekly Miner’s Register 59, (December 10, 1862): col. B. Kerry L. Pimblott
Military Lodges Even though the three largest fraternal organizations at the time of the Civil War—the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias—were for the most part institutionally inactive outside the military, the fraternities’ conceptions of manhood and the importance of individual character famously endured the war. Several Masonic lodges were founded as military lodges, and the practice of Masonry was continued by soldiers as a bonding experience, a connection to home life, and a kind of quasi-religious activity. Many stories and legends were told of opposing soldiers coming to aid wounded brethren in battle, which surely appealed to those considering joining a military lodge. One story particularly treasured by contemporary Masons concerns Horatio Rogers of Rhode Island, a general in the Union Army and a Mason, discovering Masonic documents in the pocket of a fallen Confederate soldier. Rogers ensured that the soldier’s body received a proper Masonic burial ‘‘by fraternal hands’’ (Dumenil 1984, pp. 101–102). Such stories are told among Masons in the early twenty-first century to teach that Masonic brotherhood transcends political or religious quarrels (Lowe 2001). Toward the end of the Civil War and immediately following, a controversy erupted among several Masonic lodges regarding the accommodation of handicapped members in their facilities. Following the Masonic ideal of physical ability and bodily perfection, brothers who had lost limbs were often permitted to continue lodge membership, but handicapped new members were barred from joining the lodge as a means of emphasizing cultural norms of manhood of the time. Some Masons feared that if handicapped persons could join the lodge, women—who were considered physically inferior to men—would be next (Carnes 1989, pp. 142–143).
Other Fraternal Organizations
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Fraternal Organizations
Fraternal organizations have a storied and prominent place in the history and development of the United States; however, during the American Civil War fraternal institutions were largely dormant outside the military because the nation was preoccupied with the war. Prior to the Civil War, fraternal organizations had experienced an increase in popularity, while organizations that opposed them experienced a decline. For example, the 1832 presidential candidate of the Anti-Masonic Party was William Wirt (1772–1834), a former Attorney General of the United States and, coincidentally, a member of the Freemasons. College fraternities were slowly gaining popularity until the Civil War, when many colleges shut down or distanced themselves from their fraternal organizations. These trends, however, would prove to be temporary.
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Following the Civil War, however, fraternal organizations flourished and multiplied. Such temperance societies as the Sons of Temperance, the Sons of Honor, and the Independent Order of Grand Templars, all founded before the war, grew in numbers and influence. The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, an anti-immigrant fraternity founded in 1844 that would later become the nucleus for the Know-Nothing and American Republican parties, spawned the Knights of the Golden Circle in 1861. A group of Knights organized themselves in ‘‘Castles.’’ These ‘‘Castles’’ were largely safe spaces for Copperheads—Union men who sympathized with the Confederacy—to gather. The Ku Klux Klan was organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, though its influence directly after the war was not of much consequence (Carnes 1989, pp. 7–9). Oliver Hudson Kelley (1826–1913), a clerk for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tried to capitalize on
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Fraternal Organizations
Etching of the birthplace of the Grand Army of the Republic, 1866. Despite experiencing a lull in membership during the Civil War years, fraternal organizations found new life at war’s end as former soldiers sought to join groups such as the Grand Army of the Republic (for Northern soldiers) and the United Confederate Veterans (for Southern soldiers). Al Fenn/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
the popularity of postwar fraternal organizations by establishing the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry in 1867. Later known as the Grange, the Order promoted
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farming and animal husbandry. In 1880 several Grangers formed the National Farmers’ Alliance. It had similar rituals and enjoyed significant political influence. New
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veterans’ associations were created and emphasized ritual more than the veterans’ organizations that predated the Civil War, such as the Military Order of the Loyal Legion (1865), the Grand Army of the Republic (1866), the Union Veteran Legion (1884), and the United Confederate Veterans (1888) (Carnes 1989, p. 8).
Postwar Fraternal and Anti-Masonic Groups Many new fraternal organizations emerged following the war as insurance societies. The first of these was the Ancient Order of United Workmen in 1868, which blended Masonic and Odd Fellows rituals. Another, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor was formed primarily for workers in the skilled trades, although it also admitted employers, women, and (after 1878) blacks. The order became so prominent—it claimed 730,000 members by 1886—that its rituals and activities became part of the day-to-day life of many tradespeople (Carnes 1989, pp. 8–9). These groups and others later became the foundation of the modern trade union movement. The anti-Masonic movement also revived and gained new influence following the war. Mormons, whose religion and history are closely tied to both the Freemasons and the Anti-Masonic Party, were forbidden to join Masonic groups and largely suppressed the history of their denomination’s Masonic origins. An ‘‘AntiSecrecy Crusade’’ began among evangelical Christians. The movement aimed to restore transparency to all aspects of American life, but particularly focused its attention upon Freemasonry. The Anti-Secrecy movement was largely initiated by Jonathan Blanchard, founder of the National Christian Association; and spread by the revivalist Charles Finney, whose book The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings of Freemasonry, launched a mainstream religious attack on Masons and other secret societies that continues into the early twenty-first century. Despite the influence of anti-Masonic groups, by the turn of the twentieth century 5 million American men belonged to at least one fraternal organization; 854,000 of these were Masons (Vaughn 1990, pp. 9–13). The Civil War provided the context for much of the mystery, excitement, and ritual surrounding fraternal organizations in the twentieth century. One example of this influence is the lore and revisionist history exhibited in D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as saviors of the South, complete with a cameo appearance of Jesus Christ himself. The popularity of the film was partially responsible for the resurgence of the Klan, leading to its expansion to nearly 4 million members in the United States and Canada by the early 1920s. Another well-documented example of the ongoing fascination with the Civil War is the Zeta Chapter of the Alpha Pi fraternity in Dover, Ohio, whose rituals, perhaps as early as 1905, involved
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the skull of William Quantrill (1837–1865), a guerrilla leader who had grown up in Dover and is best known for his role in the Lawrence Massacre of 1863 (Leslie 1995, pp. 53–54, 58–60). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carnes, Mark. Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Dumenil, Lynn. Freemasonry and American Culture, 1880–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Finney, Charles G. The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings of Freemasonry. Cincinnati, OH: Western Tract and Book Society, 1869. Leslie, Edward. ‘‘Quantrill’s Bones.’’ American Heritage 46, no. 4 (1995): 53–60. Lowe, Justin ‘‘Freemasonry and the Civil War: A House Undivided.’’ California Mason Online, (2001). Available at http://www.freemason.org/. Roberts, Allen. House Undivided: The Story of Freemasonry and the Civil War. Fulton, MO: Ovid Bell, 1961. Vaughn, William. ‘‘The Reverend Charles G. Finney and the Post-Civil War Antimasonic Crusade.’’ Social Science Journal 27, no. 2 (1990): 209–222. Christopher D. Rodkey
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Sports
Sports—that is, athletic activities requiring skill or physical prowess and often competitive in nature, have existed since ancient times, when the Greeks and Romans held contests that evolved into the modern Olympic Games. In the nineteenth century, Americans enjoyed such sports as baseball, fishing, hunting, horse racing, rowing, skating, cockfighting, running, bowling, and boxing. Although newspapers did not report much about sports until Reconstruction, the articles that do exist from earlier years give glimpses into the history of American sports.
Game Hunting Hunting and fishing can be considered sports only when they become optional instead of necessary to the subsistence of the hunter or fisherman. The methods employed to hunt game in the period of the Civil War were much different from the managed game hunts of later centuries. Newspaper articles dating from the first decades of the nineteenth century describe organized hunts involving dozens of shooters that took place over large tracts of land in New York and Connecticut. During the hunt the hunters would move systemically so that the game was shepherded into crossfire. Wholesale slaughter ensued. For example, during a two-day outing
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Sports
Skating pond in Central Park, 1863.
Ice skating, sledding, and curling were all seen as pleasant winter pastimes that proved beneficial to
one’s health. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
in North Carolina in 1820, sixty-one men killed 4,028 squirrels (July 14, 1820, n.p.) The same technique was used with fishing, if this excerpt from the ‘‘Cape Cod’’ section of the Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News is any indication: ‘‘Four boats . . . succeeded in driving ashore at Brewster a large school of blackfish, which, with the aid of the people on shore, they slaughtered with spears, lances, scythes, and whatever came to hand’’ (August 23, 1859, n.p.) With this approach to hunting, it is easy to see why the passenger pigeon became extinct, and why the American bison was reduced to a few hundred animals by the mid-1880s.
Fighting Sports Fighting sports consisted of cockfighting, dogfighting, and bare-knuckle boxing. In 1859 a Vermont Chronicle contributor noted an increase in cockfighting, in which two trained roosters fight until one kills the other. The writer remarked, ‘‘The effect of such exhibitions upon the populace is demoralizing in the extreme’’ (November 22, 1859, n.p.). Boxing, a sport that dates from antiquity, was not thought to be more uplifting, especially when it became the subject of gambling. In fact, in 1849 the State of Massachusetts banned prizefighting; yet bare-knuckle
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boxing (without gloves) continued on a limited basis along the East Coast. On October 20, 1858, a match held in Long Point, Ontario, between John Morrissey (1831– 1878), ‘‘Old Smoke,’’ and John Carmel Heenan (1833– 1873), ‘‘the Benicia Boy,’’ sparked the public’s imagination and revived the sport, which eventually evolved into gloved boxing (Mee 2001, pp. 137–139).
Water Sports Water sports of the time included swimming, rowing, and boating. The Eastern colleges such as Yale, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard fielded rowing teams in annual regattas. In the winter, inland bodies of water became the sites of skating parties. On natural lakes and ponds, and at artificial ponds in places such as the fortyacre rink in Central Park in New York City and Jamaica Pond in Boston, men, women, and children could take part in this ‘‘most delightful, agreeable and health-giving of winter recreations,’’ to quote a New York Herald writer (December 11, 1859, p. 4). Sleighing (or sledding) might take place wherever there was a snowy incline. The Scots brought curling (a game resembling bowling, played with granite stones
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that slid across a sheet of ice) with them when they immigrated.
Racing People had long liked to gamble on a race, whether human or animal. Any harvest festival or other gathering—such as a Fourth of July picnic—might become the site of a horse race, though horses were usually reserved for more important work during the war years. Human track and field events took somewhat longer to become popular than the equine versions, yet by the late 1850s a Philadelphia Pedestrian Association had been formed to help its members become better athletes. Foot races were also one of the activities with which Union soldiers filled their idle hours (Cumming 1981, p. 49). The civilian version of foot racing, which went dormant during the war years, resumed quickly after the cessation of hostilities. Distance races and challenges from across the nation appeared in the newspaper New York Clipper and were soon followed with competitions of jumping, sprinting, and throwing. Cumming describes the usual events of a typical athletic meeting in the mid1860s as walking, running, leaping, taking a standing leap over a height, taking a standing leap over a width, a running leap over a height, a running leap over a width, the hop-step-and-jump, and the pole vault. It was not uncommon for such unusual types of races as sack races, or sprints run while carrying weights, to find their way into the competition as well (Cumming 1981, pp. 64–65).
Bowling Bowling or similar games have existed for centuries. During the Middle Ages in Germany, bowling was an integral part of such gatherings as village dances and festivals. The French, English, and Spanish also played games that were forerunners of modern bowling. They were played outdoors or indoors; the number, shape, and configuration of pins varied. Although the British settlers first brought the game to the colonies, the German immigrants, who arrived in several waves in the mid-1800s, had the greatest impact on the popularity of the game in the United States (Weiskopf 1978, pp. 25–26). In 1854, according to one witness, ‘‘the only bowlers were Germans and the only alleys were the very crude ones at the picnic groves and other German resorts’’ (Hemmer & Kenna 1904, p. 30). Yet the popularity of bowling was not dimmed by its early crude surroundings. Conversely, it continued to grow. The largest German population was located in New York City, where the first indoor bowling alley was opened in Manhattan in 1840. Like racing and boxing, bowling later suffered from the gambling and cheating that disreputable people brought to it and was banned in some areas. After the Civil War, however, bowling again grew in popularity.
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America’s National Pastime Baseball beat out other stick-and-ball games (rounders, cricket, stickball) to become the premier organized American team sport. Although some variation of baseball had existed since the early 1800s, it was not until 1842 that the first club was founded—the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club—and until 1845 that the rules of the game were first recorded. Prior to the Civil War, most organized teams were located in cities, with the largest number located in the New York City area, the Hudson River valley, central and upstate New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Yet such Midwestern and Western cities as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Sacramento also hosted organized teams (Kirsch 2003, p. 20). ‘‘[Baseball] has become almost universal, every State in the Union having its clubs, and the rules of the game are laid down by a regular convention,’’ wrote a New York Herald reporter in September of 1859. ‘‘The growth and popularity which this fine game has attained within a few years is amazing. Young men of all classes and ages indulge in it, and the matches are witnessed by immense crowds of spectators’’ (Kirsch 2003, p. 4). Shortly before the outbreak of the war, newspapers began covering baseball and cricket games, as is evident in this headline from the New York Times, ‘‘The New and Philadelphia Cricket Match’’ (July 6, 1860). ‘‘Next to swimming, which is the finest exercise in the world,’’ wrote a New York Herald writer, ‘‘we think base ball is the best exercise’’ (July 27, 1859, p. 4). Though the press coverage helped popularize the game further, it still developed more slowly in the antebellum South, where New Orleans, Louisville, St. Louis, and Houston had teams (Kirsch 2003, p. 25). Yet one of the most significant events affecting the popularization of baseball was the gathering together of large groups of men who were idle a portion of each day. Whether in the military or in prison camps, Civil War soldiers played baseball (Kirsch 2003, p. 135). Although the growth in popularity of baseball slowed during the war, the conflict contributed to the eventual diffusion of the sport. After the war, newspapers began regular coverage of sports, creating the first sports columns (p. xiv). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The College Regatta Yesterday—Progress of Athletic Sports.’’ New York Herald, July 27, 1859, p. 4, col. E. Cumming, John. Runners & Walkers: A Nineteenth Century Sports Chronicle. Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981. ‘‘Demoralizing Sports.’’ Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls), November 22, 1859, issue 47; column E, n.p. ‘‘Gymnastic Sports—Base Ball and Cricket.’’ New York Herald, September 10, 1859, p. 4, col. F. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Hemmer, John G., and W. J. Kenna, eds. Bowling Encyclopedia. Chicago: Western Bowlers’ Journal, 1904. Kirsch, George B. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Mee, Bob. Bare Fists: The History of Bare-Knuckle Prize-Fighting. New York: Overlook Press, 2001. ‘‘Sports of the Forest.’’ Raleigh Register and North-Carolina Gazette (Raleigh, NC) July 14, 1820, issue 1086, col. B. Weiskopf, Herman. The Perfect Game: The World of Bowling. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978. ‘‘Winter in Central Park.’’ New York Herald, December 11, 1859, p. 4, col. D. Jeanne M. Lesinski
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Throughout the Civil War years, card and board games, gambling, and multiple sports were among the favorite activities for ordinary Americans as well as for Union and Confederate soldiers. These activities offered physical and mental breaks from the intense realities of war for both civilians and soldiers (Varhola 1999, p. 96). Examining Americans’ interests in games during the 1860s allows glimpses into the recreation and social details of daily life during the Civil War.
Games Move from Cities to Camps In American homes, apartments, boardinghouses, and tenements, people welcomed both familiar and new forms of recreation during the difficult years of the war. Games were widespread and played in cities, on rural farms or shipboards, or at soldiers’ campsites. For Northerners and Southerners, card and board games were popular forms of entertainment. Euchre, seven-up, twenty-one, poker, checkers, cribbage, dice, and backgammon, were among the favorites. Soldiers, for instance, could pass the time at camps carrying on conversations about life back home or share insights about the enemy while also engaged in contests of skill (Sutherland 1989, p. 13). Multiple efforts were made to enliven the hours, even a little, during the long days and nights at camp. The Civil War created the need for portable entertainment. Shortly after the war started in 1861, Milton Bradley (1836–1911), a printer who worked out of Springfield, Massachusetts, developed a small kit called Games for Soldiers. This set included several popular games, such as checkers and backgammon, and it was designed to fit in a soldier’s knapsack for easy transport between camps (Adams and Edmonds 1977, p. 373). Many organizations in the Northeast purchased the kits to donate to the Union soldiers, helping Milton Bradley to turn his enterprise into
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an established company, both financially and in terms of popularity. The methods of mass printing available in the 1860s allowed a wide circulation of such products as games advertised with war themes. These themes were extended to multiple markets, including children’s games. Some games were explanatory and educational, while others appealed more to the public’s natural interest in and preoccupation with the war (Marten 1998, p. 16). Manufactured card decks with military images and patriotic symbols were common; playing cards used by soldiers and ordinary Americans often had military or political figures and flags. The Union Playing Card Company manufactured such cards used by soldiers in the North, while a card company in the South had images of Confederate generals on the face cards. Regardless of the deck type, soldiers frequently participated in ‘‘throwing the papers’’ (a vernacular phrase for playing cards), including poker and gambling. Although gambling was widespread, particularly among soldiers, many people considered it sinful, and soldiers often eliminated evidence of their participation before leaving to fight (Varhola 1999, p. 98). There are reports of card games played for high stakes as well; in some cases, cheaters as well as unpopular officers were marked for assassination (Sutherland 1989, p. 13). Aside from the manufactured games, soldiers created their own game pieces, including dice, out of available materials. Such handmade designs took on creative shapes and construction. Dice could be imperfectly carved out of wood and used to play craps or to play out simple bets. One game called for placing bets on the numbers that would appear when dice were thrown from a cup (Sutherland 1989, p. 13). Although the risks of betting were high and game materials less than perfect, soldiers sought frequent entertainment through games. Another form of competition that involved making do with what was available in a military camp involved racing lice or cockroaches across strips of canvas and betting on the outcome (‘‘Life in a Civil War Army Camp,’’ 2002).
Family Activities and Socializing For families, evenings and weekends were times for social activities with friends or members of the extended family. Similar to board and card game popularity among soldiers, life at home frequently included activities for relief from such typical daily events as chores or the general stresses of war. Croquet offered one such outlet. During the1860s, croquet became extremely popular for families, and the game’s equipment was a common sight on lawns when weather allowed. Friends and family, both males and females, could gather to socialize on the croquet lawn, which also marked their middle-class social status. Men and women even courted each other during such gatherings. The wide variety of participants, including children and members of both sexes, allowed the game’s social nature to flourish rather than just its competitive aspect. Within croquet’s social context, however, the competitive
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A box of Union playing cards. Though families back home would disapprove, many soldiers gambled with cards for entertainment. During times of battle, soldiers would remove their playing cards from their belongings so if killed, family members would not learn of their wartime habits. The Library of Congress
spirit existed, even thrived. According to historian Jon Sterngass in ‘‘Cheating, Gender Roles, and the NineteenthCentury Croquet Craze,’’ women were particularly clever and competitive croquet players who often defeated male players—and enjoyed doing so (Sterngass 1998, p. 309).
Popular Sports Such other types of games as baseball were also increasing in national popularity during the early 1860s. Large venues for baseball parks were less common in the South
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than the North due to the North’s greater urbanization and diversified population. Immediately before the Civil War began in 1861, baseball’s popularity had been increasingly evident in such Northeastern cities as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. From schoolboys to townsmen, groups across the Northeast gathered to play. With the onset of war, however, the nation’s focus shifted. As soldiers arrived in the Northeastern cities, they became interested in the game, which offered social and physical outlets. Soldiers and officers gathered for recreation and formed baseball teams based on their
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athletic talents rather than their military ranks (Smithsonian Associates, 2004). Southerners played such other team sports as cricket and football, in addition to baseball. As with board games, materials used in sports could be homemade or creative, especially for soldiers with limited resources. Commonly, a stick or fence rail became a bat, and rags or string could entwine available objects to serve as balls. Thus, men from different social classes played together and developed interests in games they could take home to various parts of the country after the war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, David W., and Victor Edmonds. ‘‘Making Your Move: The Educational Significance of the American Board Game, 1832 to 1904.’’ History of Education Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1977): 359–383. ‘‘Life in a Civil War Army Camp.’’ Civil War Armies, 2002. Available online at http:// www.civilwarhome.com/camplife.htm. Marten, James. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Smithsonian Associates. ‘‘The 1860’s—When Men Were Men and They Played Baseball in Washington.’’ 2004. Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter. Available online at http:// civilwarstudies.org/. Sterngass, Jon. ‘‘Cheating, Gender Roles, and the Nineteenth-Century Croquet Craze.’’ Journal of Sports History 25, no. 3 (1998): 398–418. Sutherland, Daniel D. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989. Varhola, Michael J. Everyday Life during the Civil War. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1999. Jenny Lagergren
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Despite a few early military victories by the Confederacy, the harsh reality of wartime subsistence began to surface in the south shortly after the war began. With their local economies stunted due to the faltering of imports and exports, and with inflation and unemployment rising, the civilian population inflicted further hardships on themselves by their sacrificial giving of food and clothing stores to their troops. Perhaps more than at any other time of the year, Christmas correspondence offered an insight into everyday condition of life during the war. Sensing the impending hardship that a Union naval blockade and occupation of the port of New Orleans would incur, J. F. H Claiborne wrote in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi on December 25, 1861, ‘‘Our people live by the transportation of cord wood, charcoal, [and several more items are
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mentioned] to New Orleans, bringing . . . in return, corn and flour and other articles of prime necessity that our soil refuses to produce . . . There are not breadstuffs in the seashore counties to subsist the population one month’’ (The Weekly Mississippian, December, 25, 1861). Many young men were off from home, perhaps for the first time. Their recollections of past holidays were evidenced in the letters they sent home. Isaac Howard, Private, C.S.A., wrote to his father on December 25, 1862, ‘‘There isn’t much preparation for Christmas in camp, the boys are in excellent spirits however, not much doing in the egg-nog line . . . I wish I could send some apples, nice rosy cheeked fellows to Nellie and Susie, bless their little hearts.’’ Seven months later, Howard was killed in Pennsylvania at the battle of Gettysburg (Howard Papers). For all of the tragedies and hardships the war brought to those on both sides of the conflict, there were lighter moments too. The editor of the Vicksburg Sun relives his 1861 Christmas time eggnog experience with some of his friends and their quest to concoct the perfect nog. This story was published in the Fayetteville (NC) Observer, in January 1862: Egg-nog is a very difficult thing to compound to suit one’s palate. We tried the experiment yesterday and after drinking one glass . . . there was too much egg. We diluted the mixture with old Otard (cognac) . . . after two glasses . . . we discovered it was not sufficiently sweet . . . we diluted the mixture . . . but this time it involved opening a second bottle of brandy, which proved to be rather fiery after sipping three or four glasses, so we qualified the mixture with rum. We then smoked a cigar and imbibed three or four (more) glasses . . . we waited for our friends to come, but as they didn’t, we drank to their health . . . on looking up we saw two doors, and as we knew our room had but one, we thought we would we would wait til our friends . . . should return and show us the way out.
Some prominent Southern families fared better during the conflict in its third year. Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of Confederate General James Chestnut and a diarist of the Confederacy, wrote of the Christmas of 1863 in Columbia, South Carolina, of a rather festive dinner despite the shortages that abounded for most families: ‘‘Yesterday dined at the Preston’s with one of my handsomest Paris dresses . . . we had for dinner oyster soup, soup a la reine . . . boiled mutton, ham, boned turkey, wild ducks, partridges, plum pudding . . . and Madeira wine’’ (The Roanoke Times, December 3, 2007). The holidays offered little respite for anyone in uniform, North or South; not even the Generals were immune. A newspaper article published on December 16, 1864 in Columbia, South Carolina, wrote of an apparent false alarm that the Confederate forces were in retreat: ‘‘The holiday season is fast approaching and it is not improbable the (Union) General Grant, who was hurried away from New York by the absurd rumor of the evacuation of Petersburg
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[Virginia] may revisit his family to spend Christmas with them’’ (The Daily South Carolinian, December 16, 1864). By 1864, with many thousands having been killed and many thousands more wounded, hardly a family was left untouched by the ravages of the war. Christmas would never be the same for this generation or for many generations to come. An editorial in the Daily Picayune, [New Orleans], published on December 18, 1864, evinces the somber mood of the times: ‘‘Jolly old elf! He comes but once a year. On this his annual visit, he will pass over many broken shrines and desolate fields—over many new graves . . . under which rest unknown soldiers who have fought their last battle . . .’’ As far away as California, reports of the war back East made their way into the local newspapers. Not all of the accounts related directly to the battles of the day. A story of cultural competition reported in the Richmond (VA) Whig in December 1864 was also reported in a San Francisco paper: The Richmond Whig notices the proposition of the Yankees . . . to furnish a dinner to their soldiers in the field, and proposes to our farmers to imitate their example, one of the few . . . that can be imitated with propriety. The Whig says to the farmers: Send every turkey, chicken or pig they can possibly spare . . . Don’t wait for your neighbor to commence the good work, but right away . . . conscribe certain fat gobblers of your flock and give them a furlough until the 20th of December. (Daily Evening Bulletin, December 24, 1864)
For the ordinary soldier, thoughts of home and hearth were always present. Christmas was not only time for the festivities of family, food, and friends, but also a time of religious reflection. To his niece Martha, Jasper Cockerham wrote from near the Petersburg-Richmond, Virginia, front line on December 26, 1864, ‘‘ The soldiers all look sad and lonely. We have nothing spiritual or refreshing in camp. Have not seen one case of intoxification during our Christmas Holiday’’ (Surry County Genealogical Association Journal, July 3, 1985). Federal occupation of the port of New Orleans in 1862 and the capture of the port of Vicksburg in 1863 effectively denied the Confederacy’s use of inland waterways. The final crushing tactics of Union General William T. Sherman’s march from Chattanooga, Tennessee, through Atlanta, Georgia and onward to the sea effectively cut the South in two. General Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln on December 22, 1864: ‘‘I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton’’ (U.S. War Department, p. 783). The war had cost hundreds of thousands lives through combat and disease. The number of families affected is incalculable and the letters to and from home by both soldiers and civilians reflected the extreme hardships of
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wartime life. On occasion, humor recorded as well. The conflict ended in April but it would not be until Christmas of 1865 that the country would once again celebrate the holidays with some sense of normalcy. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, December 24, 1864. The Daily Picayune, New Orleans, December 18, 1864. The Daily South Carolinian, Columbia, December 16, 1864. Fayetteville Observer, Fayetteville, North Carolina, January 6, 1862. Howard Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘‘Letter from Jasper Cockerham to his Niece Martha Cockerham, during the Civil War.’’ Surry County Genealogical Association Journal. vol. 5, no. July 3, 1985. The Roanoke Times, Virginia, December 3, 2007. U. S. War Department. The War of Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. (Washington, DC, 1880–1901), series 1. vol. 44. serial No. 92, p. 783. The Weekly Mississippian, Jackson, December 25, 1861. Thomas J. Fehn
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Agricultural fairs and livestock shows were familiar events for Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century. The public face of local and state agricultural societies, they ostensibly operated without political or social ideologies. In fact, they supported a class-based view of farming, privileging rural elites and promoting modernization that undermined the community relations, which supported small-scale farming. Although the agricultural societies and the fairs they sponsored were limited in scope and duration—few societies lasted more than a decade—the sporadic appearance of agricultural societies and fairs should not obscure their influence in their own time and their legacy in postbellum fairs and farm organizations. Farm organizations and agricultural fairs operated to encourage scientific planting practices, improve stockbreeding, and promote crop diversification. In both the North and the South, agricultural societies and fairs flourished in areas where emigration to the West had left a more stable population to deal with land at risk from erosion, overuse, and poor farming practices. For these farmers and planters, the only alternative to migration or poverty was better farming. The more substantial farmers formed agricultural societies to address the problem and sponsored lectures on land management and stock breeding, published farm journals, and conducted experiments to
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determine the best planting practices. To promote acceptance of their ideas, farmers of the ‘‘better class’’ offered premiums for improved crops and livestock at local and regional fairs, believing this would encourage poorer farmers to incorporate scientific practices into their farm routines. From the beginning, class differences were apparent in fair activities and in the reactions of farmers. With time and capital to invest in unproven ideas, wealthier planters took the prizes and premiums, and celebrated with dinners that excluded their poorer neighbors. Unable to win prizes or attend the after-fair festivities, working farmers complained bitterly and sometimes ignored the fairs altogether. That was the case for the Brighton Cattle Show, founded in 1816 by the Massachusetts Agricultural Society. By 1837 class differences had become so pronounced that most farmers no longer attended the show. In the South Carolina Low Country, the planter-dominated agricultural society promoted reform by offering premiums to progressive overseers. But again, the larger planters used their influence to obtain awards that reflected well on their own plantations. In contrast, yeomen farmers were more likely to attend local county fairs. Rural elites looked at county fairs—with their horseracing, circuses, and sideshows—with scarcely concealed disdain. But to hardworking farm families, the county fair offered a long-anticipated respite from the year’s labor and the less rigorous criteria for premiums gave them a chance to demonstrate their agricultural skills. Agricultural fairs were conflicted ground in other respects as well, incorporating tensions between rural communities and emerging manufacturing interests and sectional disputes that increasingly characterized American political life. Thus, when Tennessee’s Mark Cockrill won the premium for the finest example of wool fleece in the world at the London Exposition of 1851, Southern farmers interpreted his award as a sectional victory. News of state agricultural fairs regularly appeared in Southern farm journals, always with claims that they were superior to Northern fairs in presentation and attendance. Because of these claims of cultural superiority over Northern industrialism, Southern agriculturalists wavered between the need to demonstrate new farming techniques and the fear that any admission of the need for reform would reflect badly on them. Observers, North and South, were more reluctant to comment on the tension between farming and manufacturing interests that also characterized displays and demonstrations at agricultural and county fairs. The wealthiest planters and farmers often invested in mills and factories that processed agricultural commodities. The transition in the countryside from frontier subsistence-farming to commercial agriculture and small-scale manufacturing transformed labor and community relations as capital undermined or replaced the bonds of kinship and friendship that sustained small-scale agriculture, substituting
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paid labor and capital investment for communal work and shared interests. Increasingly, promoters of manufacturing used local fairs as a means to introduce rural people to the potential benefits of incorporating farm machines into planting and harvesting routines, hiring short-term labor, and maximizing the use of female labor in home manufacturing and local mills. Smaller producers understood that commercialization of agriculture and the increasing reliance on capital investment placed their farms at risk in periods of economic decline. Although they lined up to view the newest machines, they recognized that a way of life was passing. Agricultural fairs provided an opportunity for women to demonstrate their skills as well. Kitchen garden displays, cooking demonstrations, preservation presentations, and sewing and horticultural exhibits were included in areas set aside for women. Larger fairs erected tents and pavilions for women’s exhibits. In the post–Civil War era, no fair was complete without a Women’s Pavilion, and women increasingly took responsibility for the design of the space devoted to their work. The influence of prewar agricultural fairs is apparent in rural reform efforts after the Civil War. Southern agriculturalists, such as Tennessee’s Joseph B. Killebrew, organized farmer clubs, published agricultural newspapers, and revived local and regional fairs. Promoters of New South industrialization organized state and regional fairs and expositions to publicize the reconstruction of the Southern economy and to entice Northern capital investment in agriculture and manufacturing. Despite their influence on the postwar South, the prewar fairs largely failed to meet their founders’ goals. Regardless of their intent to promote better farming practices, antebellum reformers were limited in their efforts. Their experiments were conducted within limited parameters and, despite their efforts to generalize from their own experiences, the claims of men such as John Taylor or Edmund Ruffin did not apply to most farms. After the Civil War, however, a more comprehensive approach to the development of better agricultural practices was instituted through federal and state programs—the land-grant college system of education, agricultural experiment stations, the agricultural extension service, and state departments of agriculture. Thus, while their immediate effect was limited, antebellum agricultural fairs and shows—and the agricultural societies that produced them—influenced rural change and established a legacy that helped shape American life in the twentieth century. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kelly, Catherine E. ‘‘ ‘The Consummation of Rural Prosperity and Happiness’: New England Agricultural Fairs and the Construction of Class and Gender, 1810–1860.’’ American Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1997): 574–602.
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Nelson, Lynn A. Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780–1880. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. Steffen, Charles G. ‘‘In Search of the Good Overseer: The Failure of the Agricultural Reform Movement in Lowcountry South Carolina, 1821–1834.’’ Journal of Southern History 63, no. 4 (1997): 753–802. Summerhill, Thomas. Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Winters, Donald L. Tennessee Farming, Tennessee Farmers: Antebellum Agriculture in the Upper South. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Connie L. Lester
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As critic Brayton Harris characterized it in his 1999 book Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the
Civil War, the early nineteenth century newspaper was less a place to report news than a ‘‘journal of opinion,’’ and a ‘‘vehicle for cultured discourse’’ (1999, p. 3). During the Civil War, however, the telegraph transformed how readers received their news from the front. ‘‘For the first time,’’ writes historian Phillip Knightly, ‘‘it was possible for the public to read what had happened yesterday, rather than someone’s opinion on what had happened last week’’ (2002, p. 20). In turn, this possibility of ‘‘rapid transmission’’ fed an insatiable consumer appetite for battlefield news and images on the homefront. Knightley notes that the pressures of immediacy and of consumer demand created inaccuracy and bias, as one Northern daily correspondent was directed by his editor to ‘‘Telegraph fully all the news you can get, and when there’s no news send rumors’’ (p. 23). Regardless of their publication cycle (most southern newspapers operated as weekly publications) reporters on both sides of the conflict—perhaps in the tradition of the earlier opinion journals—felt it their responsibility to maintain their readers’ morale, which often led to the exaggeration or outright fabrication of reported events.
Newspapers in camp. Technological developments such as the telegraph allowed newspapers to publish up-to-date accounts of wartime events. Newspapers provided an important distraction for soldiers and gave them a temporary reprieve from the hardships of the battlefield. The Library of Congress.
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Another conflict arose during the Civil War that has yet to be fully resolved: How to reconcile the military need to maintain the security of its operations with the journalist’s job to report the news, especially if the information could divulge strategic information, aid an adversary, and influence the events of the war. Thus Civil War correspondents encountered varying degrees of cooperation. In a July 1861 diary entry, London Times correspondent William Howard Russell (1820–1907) recalls in his 1863 book My Diary North and South an encounter with Irvin McDowell in which the general assured the journalist, ‘‘I shall be happy, indeed, to take you with me. I have made arrangements for the correspondents . . . to take the field under certain regulations, and I have suggested to them they should wear a white uniform, to indicate the purity of their character’’ (p. 424). Though Russell suggests no apparent irony in the conversation, other commanders proved less accommodating. Two months earlier, in April 1861, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler (1818–1893) arrested Edward Grandval, who had been discovered communicating with the editor of the Baltimore Sun. The Sun, according to Butler, was ‘‘a known enemy of the Union’’ whom Grandval knew when he contracted with the newspaper’s editor ‘‘to place himself at or as near as possible to Annapolis,’’ where he would ‘‘gather what information he could of the movements and numbers of the troops,’’ and forward it to the editor (1917, p. 59). Butler’s claims, if considered carefully, are exactly the job of the correspondent—to gather information and report the news. Butler, however, appreciated the sensitivity and potential threat of what he regarded as military intelligence being gathered and conveyed to readers, which doubtless included Confederate military and government officials. In a letter to General Winfield Scott (1786–1866), Butler charged that the prisoner had been ‘‘lurking’’ around a colonel’s quarters, where he had examined confidential papers and stolen a revolver; that he had queried the soldiers about troop strength; and that he had attempted to ‘‘tamper with the men’’ by trying convert federal soldiers into secessionists (p. 59). Though he wrote for orders from his superior, Butler had already formed his own convictions about Grandval. ‘‘From the evidence, I have no doubt that he was sent as a Spy upon our movements . . . My own opinion is that the utmost severity is needed towards such a person’’ (p. 60). In closing, he railed, ‘‘Under the guise of bearers of dispatches and reporters of newspapers we are overrun by the meanest and most despicable kind of Spies, who add impudence and brazen effrontery to traitorous and lying reports with which to injure us’’ (p. 60). General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) apparently shared Butler’s appraisal of the press. In his postwar memoir, Fenwick Y. Hedley, a former subordinate of Sherman’s recalled of the general, ‘‘Newspaper correspondents were a special abomination in his eyes, provoking him to great wrath and spasmodic profanity of a highly original pat-
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tern’’ (Hedley 1890, p. 67). While occupying Savannah as a military post, Sherman issued Special Field Order 143, establishing guidelines for the city’s occupants while under military jurisdiction. Among other regulations, the order restricted the city to a maximum of two newspapers and warned that the publication’s editors and proprietors would be ‘‘held to the strictest accountability, and . . . punished severely in person and property, for any libelous publication, mischievous matter, premature news, exaggerated statements, or any comments whatever upon the acts of the constituted authorities . . . ’’ (Tenney 1865, p. 623). The same accountability applied even when the publishers copied such articles from other newspapers, as was common practice at the time. Despite the antagonism between the media and the military the value of newspapers and magazines in the daily lives of soldiers was apparently observed both by officers and relief organizations. Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) found that issuing the daily eighteen ounce ration in the form of bread rather than flour stretched his budget to ‘‘furnish many extra comforts to the men ’’ (Grant 1865, p. 180). In his postwar memoir, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, published in 1885, Grant recalled having rented a bakery, hired bakers, and purchased fuel, all to convert the rations. After two months he had ‘‘made more money . . . than my pay amounted to during the entire war.’’ He used the proceeds to ‘‘furnish many extra comforts to the men,’’ including regimental libraries and magazine subscriptions (p. 180). Similarly, Jonathan Hammond’s 1863 book Army Chaplain’s Manual, Designed as a help to Chaplains in the Discharge of their Various Duties includes instructions for establishing a hospital library and reading room. According to the manual, ‘‘Many of our newspaper and magazine publishers will cheerfully send their publications to such hospitals as may be established in their respective States, or in which they may feel some special interest’’ (p. 83). The job of stocking the library lay with the chaplain, whose duty was to ‘‘make personal application’’ to the publishers and to solicit cast off periodicals from friends (p. 83). Though such donations were old to the contributors, the manual assured, ‘‘they will be new to the soldiers’’ (p. 83). At other times daily news vendors sold copies of their papers in camp, where the publications sparked political debates that eased the psychological hardships. As army surgeon J. A. Mowris recorded in the history of his regiment in his 1865 book A History of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Regiment, N.Y. Volunteers: ‘‘There were times when soldier life seemed intolerably heavy and dull. No wonder the boys sometimes felt despondent as they soliloquized: ‘Our work is digging, we could have done that at home.’ ‘We came to fight and end the war by extinguishing the rebellion.’ ‘We are now nearly a half year in the service and yet at the Capital instead of at the front.’ ‘Burnside, with our great army, has just been repulsed with heavy loss.’’’ But according to
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Mowris, the ‘‘hopeful tone’’ of ‘‘pro-administration journals’’ provided an anecdote to the soldiers’ dejection. ‘‘The good effect of these papers’’ was felt among the troops as ‘‘an efficient moral tonic.’’ (pp. 55–56). Anthony M. Keiley describes a different use during his time as a prisoner of war. ‘‘If newspapers, especially the illustrated ones,’’ could be procured after the construction of a shelter, ‘‘the walls are papered inside, increasing the comfort as well as bettering the appearance of the room’’ (Keiley 1865, p. 72). A few soldiers also published their own camp newspapers. Some may have used the same printing presses retained to print military administration forms. Others used whatever resources were available, including wrapping paper and wallpaper. Most regimental newspapers published infrequently or only for a short time, especially if the troops were often on the move. For the enlisted men who comprised the vast majority of the publishers, the newspapers provided sources of occupation and media for expression. With the caveat that camp newspapers could not publish sensitive strategic information, they were largely uncensored. According to historian Chandra Miller Manning in her 2002 dissertation ‘‘What this Cruel War is Over,’’ the columns of these regimental newspapers ‘‘offered soldiers outlets for complaining about everything from the weather to politics to their officers.’’ In so doing, they served ‘‘important functions’’ for the soldiers by ‘‘allowing them not only to release pent up frustrations, or explore their own emotions but also to deliberate the meaning of the war’’ (p. 11). In his journal of life in the Confederate army published after the war, the 1876 book Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army, W. W. Heartsill recalls the process by which his colleagues issued their camp newspaper. According to Heartsill: [A]t Lancaster and Hudson there was published, or rather written, a Newspaper, which for patience and perseverance will be hard to beat, they get up one copy in regular Newspaper style, then copy off as many as they wish, then let those who wish a copy to write it off; thus [of] each issue there is several copies, which are sent back home. . . . These Papers are of course on the burlesque order; but are as eagerly looked for as any Paper, and long years from now, copies can be found safely stowed away as mementos of frontier life by the ‘‘W.P. Lane Rangers.’’ (p. 56)
A copy of the weekly paper, which Heartsill reproduces in his published journal, includes the obituary of a regimental surgeon, a letter from a correspondent at Ft. Lancaster, and subscription rates as follows: one-year subscription, $5.00; six-month subscription, $3.00; and three-month subscription, $2.00. No subscriptions, the publishers declared, would be accepted for less than three months. The regimental newspaper that published that long, however, was a rare exception.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butler, Benjamin Franklin. ‘‘Letter from Benjamin Franklin Butler to Winfield Scott, April 30, 1861.’’ In Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 1. [Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press], 1917. Frank, Joseph Allan, and Barbara Duteau. ‘‘Measuring the Political Articulateness of United States Civil War Soldiers: The Wisconsin Militia.’’ Journal of Civil War History 64, no. 1. (January 2000): 53–77. Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoir of U.S. Grant. Vol. 1, 1885–1886. Old Saybrook, CT: William S. Konecky, [1999.] Hammond, Jonathan Pinkney. The Army Chaplain’s Manual, Designed as a help to Chaplains in the Discharge of their Various Duties. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincot, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Harris, Brayton. Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999. Heartsill, William Williston. Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army: A Journal Kept by W. W. Heartsill, for Four Years, One Month, and One Day, or, Camp Life: Day-by-Day of the W. P. Lane Rangers, from April 19th 1861, to May20th 1865. [Marshall, TX: W. W. Heartsill, 1876]. Sources in U.S. History Online. Gale . Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Hedley, Fenwick Y. Marching through Georgia : Pen-Pictures of Every-Day Life in General Sherman’s Army, from the Beginning of the Atlanta Campaign until the Close of the War Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry, and Co., 1890. Sources in U.S. History Online. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Keiley, Anthony M. In Vinculis: Or, the Prisoner of War Being the Experience of a Rebel in Two Federal Pens, Interspersed with Reminiscences of the Late War. New York: Blelock & Co., 1866. Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Manning, Chandra Miller. ‘‘When this Cruel War is Over: Why Union and Confederate Soldiers Thought They Were Fighting the Civil War.’’ Ph.D. diss. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2002. Mowris, James. A. A History of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Regiment, N.Y. Volunteers, (Fourth Oneida), from the Date of Its Organization, August 1862, till that of Its Muster Out, June 1865. Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, Printers, 1866.
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Sources in U.S. History Online. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Richards, Eliza. ‘‘U.S. Civil War Print Culture and Popular Imagination.’’ American Literary History 17, no. 2 (2005). Russell, William Howard. ‘‘Diary of William Howard Russell, July, 1861.’’ In My Diary North and South. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham, 1863. Tenney, William Jewett. The Military and Naval History of the Rebellion in the United States. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1865. United States Army. Military Division of the Mississippi. General and Field Orders: Campaign of the Armies of the Tennessee, Ohio and Cumberland, Maj. Gen. W. T. Sherman, Commanding, 1864–5. St. Louis, MO: R. P. Studley and Co., Printers, 1865. Christina Adkins
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Literature
American Literature in the nineteenth century was seen in Europe as a poor emulation of European literature. In the 1850s, a number of authors made national calls for a wholly unique American literature to emerge to distinguish itself from what was being viewed as imitation, particularly of a British style. Essaying and critic E. P. Whipple wrote in an 1850 edition of the newspaper Greenville Mountaineer, ‘‘No matter how meritorious a composition may be, as long as any foreign nation can say that it has done the same thing better, so long shall we be spoken of with contempt, or in a spirit of impertinent patronage.’’ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), whose transcendentalist philosophy placed a premium on individuality, similarly wrote in an 1858 edition of The Kansas Herald of Freedom, ‘‘Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment the emulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half-possession.’’ If the previously criticized literature was being produced as the last throes of the United States’s cultural connection with England, then the authors who answered Whipple and Emerson’s calls produced their literature out of the social and political strife of the Civil War era.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) When President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) finally met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he was said to remark, as noted in the introduction to Beecher’s 1852 book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ‘‘So this is the little lady who made the big war’’ (p. xvi). The book Lincoln referred to was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life among the Lowly, and perhaps no other work of literature caused so great a stir in the national character as Stowe’s serialized novel of the life
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Cover of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1832– 1888) Before her success as the author of the classic children’s
story Little Women, Louisa May Alcott volunteered as a nurse in a Union hospital. Though typhoid fever cut her service short, Alcott recorded her wartime experiences in a series of letters to her family, which were published in Commonwealth magazine and a collection of essays. Baldwin Library, University of Florida Library.
of a slave. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852 and met with unprecedented success, selling more than ten thousand copies in the first week and more than three hundred thousand copies in the first year. The success of the novel was due in part, according to editor Darryl Pinckney, to ‘‘innovations in printing, such as the development of the cylinder press, which made possible the mass production and distribution of inexpensive editions’’ (p. ix). The novel chronicles the life of the slave Uncle Tom, who is sold between different masters of varying compassion only to wind up in the hands of Simon Legree, a cruel plantation owner who eventually orders Tom beaten to death for refusing to tell the whereabouts of other escaped slaves. As Tom is beaten, he forgives Legree’s cruelties and thereby reaffirms the value of Christian forgiveness that Stowe discusses throughout the novel, saying:
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Literature Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ‘em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. Oh, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ‘t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours will never end. (p. 446)
Stowe affirmed her reason for writing the novel, saying, ‘‘The Carthagenian women in the last peril of their state cut off their hair for bow strings to give to the defenders of their country; and such peril and shame as now hangs over this country is worse than Roman slavery, and I hope every woman who can write will not be silent’’ (p. ix). Throughout the novel, Stowe addresses the reader directly. After Simon Legree decides to beat Tom for what will be the last time, the narrative breaks with the following passage: ‘‘Ye say that the interest of the master is a sufficient safeguard for the slave. In the fury of man’s mad will, he will wittingly, and with open eye, sell his own soul to the devil to gain his ends; and will he be more careful of his neighbor’s body?’’ (p. 443). The book was met with harsh criticism in the South, where its descriptions of cruelty were seen as an exaggeration. The Fayetteville Observer in 1855 reported that ‘‘the picture of [slavery’s] cruelties and atrocities given by Mrs. Stowe in her celebrated novel are either gross exaggerations, or so exceptionable as not at all to be taken into the account when forming a judgment of the institution itself.’’ In order to refute the critics as to the validity of the narrative, in 1853 Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which specific accounts of slave cruelty are chronicled. In the Key, according to Pinckney, Stowe is ‘‘eager to give examples of abiding Christian faith among blacks’’ in order to provide evidence of her ‘‘depiction of the system of slavery, because many whites were distressed that she had made a black man sensitive and intelligent’’ (p. xvii). A Florida newspaper, the Pensacola Gazette, refuted Key in 1853, saying: The Uncle Tom was so profitable a speculation, that the ‘‘Key’’ followed as a matter of course. Should the Key turn a good penny for the author, it will probably be succeeded by a ‘‘Peg’’ to hang it on; and this, in the event of further success, by a ‘‘Hammer,’’ to drive the peg home . . . One must be desperately in love with the garbage of Abolition newspapers to read a dozen consecutive pages of this book; and the man whose patience can hold out to the end of it, can get through anything.
As a testament to the power of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Pinckney asserts that ‘‘in the three years following [the book], at least fourteen pro-slavery novels were issued, some of which branded Stowe a mad woman or a plain liar’’ (p. xx). Whether it was loved or hated, her novel ‘‘was
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so popular that it helped to break the prejudice of church people like herself against novel reading—and theater going—as unworthy pursuits (p. xxii).
Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910) Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to slavery what Rebecca Harding Davis’s 1861 novella Life in the Iron Mills was to American capitalism. The story contains detailed descriptions of the working and living conditions of mill workers contrasted with their profiteering overseer, who mistreats them. Hugh, an artistic mill worker, steals a lump of pig iron and sculpts it into an abstract statue of a struggling worker. Hugh is later arrested and subsequently dies in prison, but Davis ends on a hopeful and religious note: ‘‘While the room is yet steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set the promise of the Dawn’’ (p. 65). Davis’s descriptions were one of the first in American history that cataloged the harsh conditions of the working class while simultaneously presenting a scathing criticism of the factory owner Kirby, who at one point says, ‘‘I wash my hands of all social problems, — slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit, —the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other’s throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible’’ (p. 35).
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) Walt Whitman’s literary masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, was first self-published in 1855 with less than glowing reviews, some calling it, as the 2003 edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature notes ‘‘indecent, bold, curious, lawless, [and] obscene’’ (p. 36). According to the Norton Anthology Whitman, unsatisfied with the lack of positive book reviews, ‘‘wrote a few himself to be published anonymously’’ (p. 18). When Whitman released his second edition in 1860, the reviews still did not meet his hopes. One Washington newspaper, the Daily National Intelligencer, in assuming the reaction of another literary critic, Jeffery, wrote in 1860: We do not know that Jeffery would have pronounced ‘‘The Leaves of Grass’’ to be the worst poem ever honored with exquisite typography, imprinted on paper of irreproachable quality, but we are pretty certain he would have conceded to it the merit of being the strangest-born among all the intellectual freaks of nature he had ever been called to inspect and analyze.
That same review goes on to say that ‘‘It were no great wonder, after the success of Walt Whitman, if many persons who have never talked anything but the most unmitigated nonsense should congratulate themselves on the discovery that they have all the while been Miltons in
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Literature
AMBROSE BIERCE Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?) was a journalist, short-story writer, and literary critic known as ‘‘Bitter Bierce’’ by his friends as well as his many readers. Bierce joined the Ninth Indiana Volunteer Infantry in 1861 and remained in the Union Army until his discharge in 1865. He fought at Shiloh, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain (where he received a serious head wound), Franklin, and Nashville; his injuries weakened his health for the rest of his life. Bierce’s war experiences were the source of a number of his short stories, which are considered some of the finest ever written by an American author and continue to be included in anthologies. ‘‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’’ (1890) describes the hanging of a Confederate sympathizer by a group of Union soldiers and is well known for its surprise ending, which was often imitated by later writers. After the end of the Civil War Bierce joined an expedition to inspect army outposts in the West, which eventually brought him to San Francisco. There he worked as a journalist and newspaper editor, becoming highly controversial for his biting satire and social commentary. He began to publish occasional sarcastic word definitions as part of a weekly column in the San Francisco Examiner titled ‘‘Prattle.’’ These definitions were eventually brought together in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), first published as The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906. The entries in the Dictionary reflect Bierce’s bleak view of life as well as his wit: CONTROVERSY. , n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet. DICTIONARY. , n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work. GRAVE. , n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student. HISTORY. , n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
JUSTICE. , n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service. MAN. , n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. NEIGHBOR. , n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient. YANKEE. , n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMN YANK.) At the end of his life Bierce became one of the most famous missing persons in American history. He went to Texas in October 1913 to tour Civil War battlefields and crossed into Mexico, then undergoing an internal revolution. He sent a last letter to a friend in December 1913 and disappeared. Some think he was shot by Mexican revolutionaries, died of disease, committed suicide, or was killed by robbers preying on tourists. His disappearance, however, remains an unsolved mystery almost a century later. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bierce, Ambrose. The Devil’s Dictionary. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co., 1911. Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. Churchill, Allan. They Never Came Back. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1960.
disguise.’’ Whitman was criticized for his lack of poetic meter, for emulating a biblical tone, for openly discussing sexual content, and for using long catalogues and lists of American places and people. It was not until Whitman released other editions of Leaves of Grass that these criticisms became the very arguments used in modern times to celebrate his genius. Future editions of Leaves of Grass include expanded selections of poems and revisions of previous poems, most notably ‘‘Song of Myself.’’ The 1855 edition begins:
The final 1881 edition of the same poem begins the same, but then changes dramatically from the original:
I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
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I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease . . . observing a spear of summer grass. Houses and rooms are full of perfumes . . . the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
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Children’s Literature I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my bood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Before the Civil War began, Whitman made visits to hospitals to cheer patients, and when war broke out, he soon found himself working as a wound dresser for the North. These war experiences became the subject of Drum Taps, a series of poems set during the war. The Civil War: A Treasury of Art and Literature, edited by Stephen W. Sears in 1992, quotes Whitman as once saying, ‘‘Future years will never know the seething hell and the black and infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors (not the official surface courteousness of the generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession War, and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books’’ (p. 13). Despite these words Whitman was able to give readers of his day a taste of the brutalization of war with poems such as ‘‘Beat! Beat! Drums,’’ ‘‘Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,’’ and ‘‘The WoundDresser.’’ Whitman’s response to President Lincoln’s assassination was cataloged in the poems ‘‘O Captain! My Captain!’’ and ‘‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.’’ For twelve years after the war had ended, Whitman gave a lecture on the anniversary of Lincoln’s death to memorialize the president and to show the political importance of the event. One newspaper, in reporting Whitman’s words about Lincoln, wrote: Abraham Lincoln will take first place in the history of the future. He will be like the heroes of the Homeric wars . . . The final use of a heroic eminent life—especially of a heroic eminent death, is its indirect filterings into the nation and the race, and to give also at many removes, age after age, color and fibre to the personalism of the youth and the maturity of that age and mankind . . . Why, if the old Greeks had this man, what trilogies of plays, what epics would have been made out of him . . . When, centuries hence, . . . the leading historians and dramatists seek for some personage, some special event incisive enough to mark with deepest cut this turbulent nineteenth century of ours, . . . the absolute extirpation of slavery from the States, these historians, these dramatists, will seek in vain for any point to serve more thoroughly their purpose than Abraham Lincoln.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anthology of Modern American Poetry, ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston) December 24, 1868; col. B. The Civil War: A Treasury of Art and Literature, ed. Stephen W. Sears. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco) January 12, 1861; col. B. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC) July 14, 1860; col. C. Davis, Rebecca Harding. Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories. Ed. Tillie Olsen. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1972. Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, NC) October 18, 1855; col. D. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York) July 11, 1868; p. 259; col. D. Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, NY) June 17, 1853; col. B. Freedom’s Champion (Atchinson, KS) April 28, 1864; col. F. Greenville Mountaineer (Greenville, SC) March 1, 1850; col. C. The Kansas Herald of Freedom (Wakarusa, KS) August 14, 1858; col. H. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI) May 10, 1865; col. B. The North American (Philadelphia) June 23, 1892; pg. 5; col. E. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. Nia Baym. 6th ed., vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Pensacola Gazette (Pensacola, FL) May 7, 1853; col F. Poetry and Eloquence from the Blue and the Gray: The Photographic History of the Civil War, ed. Francis Trevelyan Miller. New York: Castle Books, 1957. Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) March 22, 1896; p. 8; col. A. St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, MO) April 19, 1882; p. 6; col. F. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, [1852] ed. Darryl Pinckney. New York: Penguin Books, [1998.] John L. Reilly
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Although literature for children and young adults is a welldeveloped genre in the twenty-first century, in the 1800s it was in its beginning stages in both the United States and England. Children learned to read from hornbooks (sheets of parchment or paper mounted on a piece of wood and covered with a transparent layer of horn), and then primers (first readers). The material they read was meant to instruct them on good moral values. At this time, children were treated as small adults rather than as having unique needs. Yet, as views on childrearing evolved toward a greater awareness of children’s developmental needs, the
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material written for children began to change as well. At the same time, public education was expanding, adding to the pool of readers. Most juvenile books were geared toward ten-year-olds, though a few were designed for younger children. Technical advances made during the industrial revolution also had an impact on reading: They made printed material (magazines, pamphlets, and books) affordable for a wider range of readers. Magazines were often sold for 2 to 3 cents, ‘‘dime novels’’—the equivalent of a cheap paperback in the twenty-first century— for 10 cents, and hardbound books for 50 cents to $1.50. However, during the war years, in regions where Americans suffered economically, even such modestly priced reading material became a luxury.
Boys’ Adventure Stories By the mid-1860s adventure stories geared toward boys had become very popular. Full of action and suspense, they usually appeared serially in juvenile or general readership magazines before being sold in book form. Numerous magazines for children were founded over the course of the nineteenth century. They were often published by such civic-minded organizations as churches, which meant that the emphasis was more on moral development than entertainment. During the war years, a reader could choose from some dozen magazines, such as All the Year Round, The Student and Schoolmate, Child’s World, and The Boy’s Own Magazine. This last title enjoyed a healthy existence from 1855 to 1874 because its publishers, the husband-and-wife team of John and Mary Bennett, knew their audience and offered the magazine at a reasonable price (2 cents, gradually increasing to 6 cents). It contained adventure stories illustrated with woodcuts, stories of school life, articles on cricket, and articles on scientific topics. There were also puzzles and contests in which winners would receive such prizes as watches and pencil cases. The Boy’s Own Magazine was quite a success, for in 1863 subscriptions numbered 40,000 (Meigs et al 1969, p. 249). The Irvin P. Beadle Company of New York specialized in dime novels—pocket-sized booklets printed on white rag paper and sporting a colored cover. Beadle titles included detective stories, mysteries, and frontier adventures that were often printed in series. Edward Sylvester Ellis wrote approximately two hundred such novels, eighteen of them during the Civil War period. His most popular title, selling more than 600,000 copies, was the 1860 tale Seth Jones; or the Captives of the Frontier (Bingham 1980, pp. 191–192). Another prominent author of this period was the Unitarian minister Horatio Alger, whose Frank’s Campaign (1864) was the first of many rags-to-riches stories published by Loring, a Boston firm (Bingham 1980, p. 197). An anonymous reviewer for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper called Alger’s debut novel a ‘‘well written story, full of unpretentious interest, and inspired by genial feeling and good moral motive’’ (December 17,
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The poet Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894). Christina
Georgina Rossetti was one of the few reputable poets that wrote for children in newspapers. Her famous piece, Goblin Market (1862), includes evil fairies that are changed with love. Rossetti, Christina, portrait by James Collinson.
1864, p. 203). While the attraction of Alger’s books for juvenile readers was their entertainment value, parents could be assured that good moral values were being imparted, even if the writing was often lackluster. Another type of adventure tale was the travel adventure, such as the Woodville Series (1861–1871), popularized by former schoolteacher William Taylor Adams, who wrote under the pseudonym Oliver Optic.
Realistic Domestic Stories Whereas publishers gave boys tales of adventure, they offered girls realistic stories of American life. Jane Andrews introduced readers to The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball That Floats in the Air (1861), a story about girls who live in different countries, and Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, who published as Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, released the popular tale Faith Gartney’s Childhood (1863) (Meigs et al 1969, p. 204). Aiming for the attention of somewhat younger readers was Sophie May, writing as Rebecca Clarke. In 1863 she introduced a series of books based on the character Little Prudy (Little Prudy [1863], Little Prudy’s Sister Susy [1864], Little Prudy’s Captain Horace [1864], etc.), which ran until 1865 (Meigs et al 1969, p. 204). While A. R. Baker of the Lowell Daily
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Children’s Literature
‘‘THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY’’ One of the most popular stories of the Civil War era, ‘‘The Man without a Country’’ (1863), was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in December of 1863. This tale, written by the Reverend Edward E. Hale under the pseudonym Frederick Ingham, U.S.N., recounts the life of Philip Nolan, a man found guilty of participating in Aaron Burr’s failed efforts to create a republic in the Southwest. During his trial Nolan angrily declares that his wish is to never hear of the United States again. The court takes him at his word and sentences him to stay aboard various ships, and for more than fifty years he is not allowed to set foot on or even see the United States. While the story is fictional, its verisimilitude struck many contemporary readers. An anonymous reviewer for the Daily Cleveland Herald described the tale as ‘‘extraordinary,’’ adding, ‘‘Whatever may be the truth of the story—and it seems impossible to be believed—it is one of those extraordinary narratives that impress the reader with its truthfulness, even when known to be pure fiction’’ (November 24, 1863, col. C). As well as impressing readers with its realism, the tale had another effect: It engendered feelings of loyalty in the North and thus encouraged enlistment (Meigs et al. 1969, p. 207). JEANNE M. LESINSKI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Atlantic Monthly for December.’’ Daily Cleveland Herald (Cleveland, OH), November 24, 1863, col. C. Meigs, Cornelia, et al. A Critical History of Children’s Literature: A Survey of Children’s Books in English, rev. ed. London: Macmillan, 1969, p. 207.
Citizen and News described Little Prudy as ‘‘excellent and pleasant for the little folks’’ (Baker 1864, n.p.), the following year a critic complained about Cousin Grace, from the same series: ‘‘It contains many things which are quite too good for their surroundings, and much that is really excellent; but altogether it confirms the opinion which is frequently forced upon us, that the work of preparing juvenile books in series is carried out too fast’’ (Boston Daily Advertiser, October 26, 1864, n.p.).
Other Genres Such other genres as the fairy tale, fantasy, poetry, and novelty had also formed part of juvenile offerings since the 1850s. The fairy tales of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (such as ‘‘The Ugly Duckling’’) and of the German folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (such as ‘‘Hansel and Gretel’’) were widely popular. Another enduring tale of the time is the 1865 fantasy Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). Although many of the poems for children that appeared in the newspapers were trite, there were such notable exceptions as Christina Georgina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862), in which the evil
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Cover of Ragged Dick, a book by Horatio Alger Jr. Horatio Alger Jr. was a Unitarian minister and prominent author of the Civil War era, writing many adventures for boys. This title, along with Frank’s Campaign, are two examples of his tales of rags-toriches. The Library of Congress.
fairies are changed through the power of love. Coventry Patmore attempted to gather the best children’s verse of the time in his 1863 compilation The Children’s Garland from the Best Poets. Novelty books, among them puzzle books, books containing silhouettes to be cut out, and illusion books held great appeal. J. H. Brown’s Spectropia; or Surprising Spectral Illusions (1864) was printed in black and white, and hand-painted in bright colors. If the reader stared at the pictures for a time and then turned their attention to the ceiling or wall, a ‘‘ghost’’ in complementary colors could be seen. In Shadow and Substance (1860), the illustrator Charles Henry Bennett produced drawings of human figures casting unusual shadows (Quayle 1971, pp. 133–135). Some of what were to become among the best-loved children’s classics were written during the last third of the century, after the Civil War: Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868–1869), Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883), and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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(1894–1895). A new generation of literate children were ready to make these works their own. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, A. R. Lowell Daily Citizen and News (Lowell, MA), January 1, 1864. Bingham, Jane, and Grayce Scholt. Fifteen Centuries of Children’s Literature: An Annotated Chronology of British and American Works in Historical Context. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston), October 26, 1864, col. H. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York), December 17, 1864. Meigs, Cornelia, et al. A Critical History of Children’s Literature: A Survey of Children’s Books in English, rev. ed. London: Macmillan, 1969. Quayle, Eric. The Collector’s Book of Children’s Books. London: Clarkson N. Potter, 1971. Jeanne M. Lesinski
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Photography PHOTOGRAPHY : AN OVERVIEW
Richard C. Keenan WAR PHOTOGRAPHY
Christina Adkins CIVILIAN PHOTOGRAPHY
Christina Adkins
PHOTOGRAPHY: AN OVERVIEW The American Civil War was the first war to be extensively documented by photography. The photographic process was still in its infancy in the first quarter of the nineteenth century; by modern standards it was a cumbersome and primitive process. With the advent of the war, photography, which had been largely limited to portraiture and the visual recording of landmarks, both natural and humanly constructed, took a new direction and discovered a new purpose. It recorded history with a graphic reality unrealized in any written description; it largely dispelled the romantic imagery of equestrian prowess, flashing sabers, and desperate but heroic stands by larger-thanlife figures—images derived from paintings and illustrations that had been the more commonly depicted views of war before the photograph. Photography presented to the public the devastation of war and its destructive aftermath in all their grim reality. Although the Civil War was not definitively documented on film, there were approximately one million photographs taken between 1860 and 1865, and there were more than 3,000 photographers actively practicing their profession in the United States (Schwarz 2000, p. 1515).
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Among these photographers was a relatively small group who worked as the first photographers of the devastations of war. The most notable members of the group were Alexander Gardner (1821–1882), Timothy H. O’Sullivan (c. 1840–1882), and James F. Gibson (b. 1828), all of whom began their careers working for Mathew Brady (1823–1896), an enterprising producer of daguerreotypes whose name became all but synonymous with Civil War photography. Popular American photography began in the 1840s with the daguerreotype, a process for reproducing images on a light-sensitive, silver-coated metal sheet. The process, patented in 1839, had been developed by Louis Daguerre (1787–1851), a French artist and chemist. There was one image produced with each sitting, and the subject was required to hold completely still for a period of time that could last up to a full sixty seconds in order to effect the proper exposure. These proto-photographs were generally kept in decorative boxes designed to protect the product. Daguerreotype studios flourished in New York City in the 1840s, and one of the more successful of these studios was owned by the enterprising Mathew Brady.
Brady’s Early Work Brady, the son of Irish immigrants, began as an art student who also made watch and instrument cases, including cases for daguerreotypes, which awakened his interest in this new technology. He took lessons in the daguerreotype method from Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), an art instructor and portrait painter who learned the process from its inventor, Louis Daguerre (Morse is better known to posterity as the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and the Morse code). Brady enjoyed great success with daguerreotypes, and in 1842 opened his own studio and portrait gallery in New York. In 1849 he opened a second gallery in Washington, DC In 1854 he opened an additional gallery in New York. He became world-renowned, winning prizes for his work at the 1851 World Exposition in London and the 1853 World’s Fair in New York. Brady photographed every president of the United States from John Quincy Adams to William McKinley, with the exception of William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841 after a little more than a month in office. Brady’s best-known presidential photographs are those of Abraham Lincoln, most notably the one that for many years appeared on the American fivedollar bill. In the 1850s Brady began to turn his attention from the daguerreotype to a new method of photography known as the wet plate process, developed by an Englishman named Frederick Scott Archer. This process used a mixture of nitrocellulose dissolved in acetone called collodion. The collodion was mixed with additional chemicals, applied to a carefully cleaned glass plate, and allowed to stand until it formed a glutinous, jelly-like consistency. The plate was then immersed in liquid silver nitrate in a darkroom,
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Images captured by Civil War photographers delivered the brutality of the conflict to the American public in a way never before seen. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. The Library of Congress. War dead at Gettysburg.
creating sensitivity to light in the gelatinous collodion that would last only as long as the plate remained wet. The wet plate was then placed in an opaque holder and subsequently transferred to the focused and positioned camera, with the subject already in place for the exposure. After exposure, the collodion plate was removed from the camera, again in its opaque holder, and returned to the darkroom, where it was placed in a bath of chemical developer followed by a bath of fixer, usually potassium cyanide. The plate was then washed in water, dried, and given a protective coat of light varnish. The wet plate process was less expensive and gave a sharper image with a greater contrast on the gray scale, unlike the darker quality of the daguerreotype. Moreover, the wet plate process produced a negative from which the photographer could make additional positive photographs in the darkroom. With the addition of the wet plate process, Brady’s studios went on to even greater success. Brady placed particular emphasis on large portraits, some as large as 17 by 21 inches, which were called ‘‘Brady Imperials.’’ An Imperial could be carefully retouched with paint or ink to create an impressive lifelike portrait that would sell for fifty to a hundred dollars on average. Brady favored
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the Imperials, both for the money they brought to the studio and, in particular, for their artistic prestige.
Cartes de visite and the Civil War Brady’s assistant, later the manager of his Washington, DC, studio, Alexander Gardner, wanted to place greater emphasis on the carte de visite, a smaller photograph (2 ½ x 4 inches) printed on thin cardboard. This process had first been developed by a Frenchman, Andre´ Disde´ri, who patented his concept in 1854. His process allowed eight negatives to be taken on an 8 x 10 glass plate. The carte de visite, a descendant of the Victorian calling card, from which it derives its name, was extremely popular with the public. The paper print photograph could also be mounted on a slightly larger and heavier piece of card stock with a sentiment (usually a poem or quotation) printed below. The photograph might be a famous landmark or person, or a family member. During the Civil War, thousands of proud young soldiers in new uniforms, on duty and far from home, would stand in line at the photographer’s wagon found at almost every encampment to have a carte de visite taken. It would then be mailed home, where it would be placed in the family album for posterity.
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The carte de visite also went the other way, and many a soldier carried with him a small likeness of his wife, children, mother or sweetheart. Brady was initially resistant to making these mementos and wanted to concentrate more of the studio’s time on the Imperial portrait, with its greater immediate profit and prestige. Gardner, an astute businessman as well as a talented photographer, saw greater profit in the volume that cartes de visite, which sold individually for between ten and twenty cents, would bring. Using existent equipment, Gardner improvised a four-lens camera that could make four images on one glass plate, quadrupling the studio’s volume of production of the small photographs. At Gardner’s urging, Brady entered into an agreement with the Anthony Brothers, who operated the largest photographic supply company in the country, to produce and distribute the small photographs. The Brady studios would supply the negatives and in return would receive a substantial royalty from the sales (Sullivan 2004, pp. 26–27). Perhaps the most poignant story concerning the carte de visite is that of an unknown soldier, a sergeant who served with the 154th New York Volunteer Regiment. On July 1, the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, the sergeant was mortally wounded and died before he was able to reach the safety of the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge. After the battle, his body was found, but without identification. In his hand was an ambrotype photograph of three small children. The young woman who found the body gave the photograph to her father, the owner of a local tavern. The tavern keeper displayed the photograph, and it became a curiosity and conversation piece. Some months later, in November 1863, Dr. John Francis Bourns, a Philadelphia physician who had come to the battlefield hospital to lend assistance to the sick and wounded, saw the photograph and became intrigued with the case of this unknown soldier. After first locating and marking the grave where the sergeant was buried, he set out to identify and locate the children. Bourns had the photograph of the children duplicated as a carte de visite. Because the format was not expensive, he made multiple copies and circulated them widely. On October 19, 1863, the Philadelphia Inquirer carried the story, and other newspapers throughout the Northeast gave it widespread distribution. Finally, in Portville, New York, Mrs. Philinda Humiston responded to the story. She was the wife of Sgt. Amos Humiston and the mother of eight-year old Franklin, six-year-old Alice, and four-year-old Frederick. She had sent the photograph to her husband months before but had not heard from him since the conclusion of the Gettysburg battle. Sgt. Humiston was thus conclusively identified. The public was greatly moved by the story, and Dr. Bourns sold hundreds of copies of the carte de visite with the poignant image of the orphan children. He donated the proceeds of the sales to Mrs. Humiston and her family (Dunkleman 1999, pp. 12–17).
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Stereographs Another photographic innovation that became extremely popular in the 1850s was the stereograph. The stereograph was a set of photographs (paper prints from glass negatives) printed side by side, with one print having a slightly different, all but indiscernible depth of field, taken by a double-lens specially designed camera. These dual photographs, placed side by side on cardboard, were viewed through a handheld binocular frame with a slight magnification. The view for the spectator was a single three-dimensional image. The stereograph remained a popular entertainment device in American homes into the early twentieth century. It brought to quiet domestic parlors not only the visual pleasures of faraway places with strange-sounding names never before seen, but also the destruction and devastation of the American Civil War. The continuing demand for cartes de visite and stereographs greatly increased Brady’s profits and reputation. In 1864 he opened a new and highly luxurious studio at Broadway and Tenth Street in New York City. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, one of the most popular periodicals of the time, waxed eloquent about the studio’s ‘‘costly carpet . . . elegant and luxurious couches . . . and artistic gas fixtures.’’ There was also a private entrance for ladies arriving in evening dress ‘‘to obviate the unpleasant necessity of passing, so attired, through the public gallery.’’ The greatest experience of Brady’s career came with the visit of the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, son of Queen Victoria, and heir to the British throne. The prince, later King Edward VII (1841–1910), was on a diplomatic visit to Canada and North America, the first member of the British royal family to visit the United States. Brady invited the prince and his entourage to visit the studio, and the prince readily accepted. He and others sat for individual and group portraits, and spent several hours touring the studio and viewing Brady’s prized collection of photographs of prominent Americans. The New York Times reported that the royals ‘‘complimented Brady highly upon his proficiency and art’’ (Sullivan 2004, 28–29). Brady at the peak of his career enjoyed his artistic recognition and high social standing, but he was not a man with a sound fiscal sense. He lived a life of luxury, traveled often, made some bad investments, and spared little or no expense for the equipment and interior decoration of his studios. In later years he lost everything, including a large collection of negatives held by the Anthony Brothers as security for the purchase of photographic supplies.
Battlefield Photography The relatively new technology of photography and the American Civil War came together on July 21, 1861. Brady, among a handful of Washington photographers, followed the Federal Army to Manassas, Virginia, just south of the capital, where Union troops engaged the new Confederate Army near Bull Run Creek in the first land battle of the war.
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Mathew Brady (1822–1896) and company, Petersburg, Virginia. Developments in photography allowed the Civil War to be the first conflict to be captured on still media. Mathew Brady, already a well-known professional photographer before the war, and his staff became famous for images capturing different aspects of Civil War battles. The Library of Congress.
Initially Brady was motivated by the opportunity for business profit, but gradually he developed the idea of photographing the war as an important contribution to the new visual dimension of history presented by photography. This first experience, however, produced no known photographs whatever. The newly formed Confederate Army overwhelmed the Federal troops, and the engagement turned into a rout. Brady and other photographers had to hastily pack up their equipment (delicate and easily damaged in the great urgency) and toss it into darkroom wagons as they joined the hasty retreat of soldiers and civilian spectators back to Washington. Brady’s studios continued to be in the forefront of efforts to document the war in photographs, although Brady, afflicted with deteriorating eyesight, gradually took a less active part in on-site photography. Others, particularly Gardner and O’Sullivan, along with James Gibson, took many of the photographs that came to the public’s attention as the work of ‘‘Mathew Brady Studios.’’ This identification became a point of contention, particularly
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with Gardner, who resented not receiving credit for his work. Sometime in 1862 or 1863, he left Brady and opened his own studio in Washington with his brother James. Timothy O’Sullivan and others also left Brady and went to work for Gardner. Both Gardner and O’Sullivan went on to distinguish themselves in the annals of photography, receiving due recognition for their compositions. Gardner photographed the meeting between McClellan and President Lincoln, formally posed with military staff outside McClellan’s tent, which is perhaps his best-known photograph, as well as much of the destruction of the city of Richmond. At the end of the war Gardner photographed the conspirators convicted in Lincoln’s assassination and their subsequent execution. Another associate of Gardner’s, George Barnard, followed General Sherman’s Army on its march through Georgia and made memorable photographs of the stark devastation of the countryside and the destruction of Atlanta. Gardner’s and Gibson’s photographs of the aftermath of the Antietam battlefield were the first graphic images of
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battlefield dead to reach the American public. The photographs could not be directly reproduced in newspapers because the half-tone process that enables such reproduction of photographs was not invented until the 1880s. Engravings, however, were made from the photographs, depicting such scenes as the Confederate dead who fell near the Burnside Bridge and along the fenced area known as Bloody Lane. The engravings were initially reproduced in Harper’s Weekly, and the original photographs, displayed at Brady’s New York studio, both horrified and fascinated the public, who came to see them in great numbers (Schwarz 2000, p. 1516). A reporter for the New York Times visited the studio during the Antietam exhibit, and recognized a deeper significance and value that transcended the more lurid and sensational aspects of the exhibit. In the October 20, 1862 edition of the newspaper, the unidentified reporter wrote the following: ‘‘Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it’’ (Frassanito 1978, p. 16). O’Sullivan’s photographs of the Gettysburg battlefield, appearing in a later exhibit, produced a similar reaction—particularly the photograph of the bloated bodies of Federal dead lying in a field near the McPherson woods, titled ‘‘A Harvest of Death’’ (Schwarz 2000, p. 1446). In addition to corpses on the battlefield, skeletonized buildings, and devastated countryside, photographers of the Civil War period recorded in both quantity and detail soldiers posing on captured breastworks and gun emplacements, regiments on parade or drilling in the fields, army encampments, and the formidable and growing ironclad navy. The only missing element is the actual combat. There are no photographs of armies moving into active combat or the explosions, caught at the moment of impact, that are such a distinctive part of war photography in later generations. This omission had nothing to do with the courage or initiative of the photographers; it was the primary limitation of photography at the time. The exposure time for the wet plate process took approximately ten to thirty seconds, depending on the intensity of the light. Officers and enlisted men could hold such poses without difficulty, but horses, mules, and flying flags could be a problem. Any movement before the exposure was complete would produce a blur in the final image. The photographing of actual battle or combat action was not possible in the 1860s. To compensate for this limitation, photographers would often recreate a particular battlefield scene to enhance its dramatic effect, moving corpses, equipment and weapons into a variety of poses. A good example of this technique is the often-reproduced photograph taken by Alexander Gardner of a dead Confederate sharpshooter in the Devil’s Den area of the battle of Gettysburg. William Frassanito, after a painstaking analysis of the photograph and of others taken
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in the same area, demonstrated conclusively that the body of the sharpshooter had been moved and rearranged, and a number of exposures had been taken of the various positions (Frassanito 1975, pp. 191–192). Most of the Civil War photographs that have survived were taken by Northerners. Southern photographers were active in the beginning of the war, and were in fact the first Civil War photographers on record. The photographs of the Confederate general staff that appear most often in books about the war, along with other high-ranking officers in Southern uniforms, were taken by photographers in the South. Noted Southern photographers include Andrew Lytle of Baton Rouge and George S. Cook of Charleston, among others. As the Union blockade gradually but effectively reduced all commerce with the world outside the Confederacy only contraband goods were readily obtainable. Photographic supplies and necessary chemicals, including cameras and replacement parts, became increasingly scarce and were simply unavailable in the South by 1863. By the end of the four-year conflict, several hundred thousand photographs had been taken; a large percentage of those were portraits. Mathew Brady’s photographic collection consisted of some 6,000 negatives and photographs taken by his studio and those of other photographers, which he purchased during his lifetime. These photographs were acquired by the War Department in 1874 and are now stored in the National Archives. In addition, there are major collections in the Library of Congress and the Connecticut State Library in Hartford. Other substantial collections can be found in the Boston Public Library, Princeton University’s Firestone Library, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunkelman, Mark H. Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Frassanito, William A. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978. Frassanito, William A. Early Photography at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1995. Frassanito, William A. Gettysburg: A Journey in Time. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1975. Schwarz, Angela. ‘‘Photography.’’ In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, ed. David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000. Sullivan, George. In the Wake of Battle: The Civil War Images of Mathew Brady. Munich and New York: Prestel Verlag, 2004. Richard C. Keenan
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WAR PHOTOGRAPHY The Civil War was the first conflict to be extensively documented by photographers. Between 1860 and 1865, about one million photographs depicted some aspect of a nation at war (Sullivan 2004, p. 6). During this time, military photography radically altered the vision of battle held in America’s popular imagination. In illustrated weeklies, popular histories, and children’s textbooks, antebellum print culture produced scenes that celebrated and romanticized war with little acknowledgment of its attendant loss (Frassanito 1978, pp. 27–28). Though images of battlefield casualties constituted only a small portion of the photographs taken during the war, the pictures of the dead captured by such Civil War photographers as Mathew Brady (1823–1896) and his associates confronted the public with drastically different and haunting tableaus. Though a few photographic images of war had been produced during the Crimean War (1853–1856) in Europe and the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) in the Southwest, they were not widely circulated in the United States. Rather, the most abundant visual representations of combat were artist illustrations, particularly woodcut engravings. The technology did not yet exist to replicate photographs in newspapers or magazines, so during the Civil War these publications employed graphic artists to redraw photographic images for their readers. But before that, artists worked without photographic referents, and the illustrations they produced, according to historian William Frassanito, depicted war as ‘‘a glorious adventure.’’ Most depicted action scenes of troops in the midst of battle or of individual soldiers in heroic postures. The dead and wounded were pictured, but their presence was subordinated to the unity of the heroic battle scene. The casualties were almost never shown as mutilated, dismembered, or rotting (Frassanito 1978, p. 28).
The 1862 Antietam Exhibit That type of representation changed when a series of battlefield photographs, titled ‘‘The Dead at Antietam’’ went on display in Mathew Brady’s New York studio. The photographs had been made by Alexander Gardner (1821–1882), one of Brady’s associates. Portable photo laboratories in horse-drawn wagons gave photographers the mobility to perform field work and follow the military engagements (Bleiler 1959 [1866]). But as the photo process required extended exposure, the technology did not lend itself to recording action shots of engagements, nor did the obvious hazards of setting up equipment in the middle of combat zones (Cobb 1962, pp. 128–129). The process was also complicated by possession of the battlefield after the fighting had ended. Thus, the most dramatic battlefield images taken by photographers were necessarily taken afterward. If burial details had finished clearing the battlefield and interring the dead before the photographers arrived, they documented the aftermath by focusing on the scarred landscape. Alexander Gardner and his assistant
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made their well-known death studies at Antietam soon after the battle ended. Many of the dead remained where they had fallen on the battlefield in abject postures and in various stages of decomposition (Frassanito 1978, pp. 51–52). Gardner’s images presented a terrible spectacle to the viewers who studied the images in Brady’s gallery. A reporter who covered the story for The New York Times acknowledged that though most civilians ‘‘recognize the battle-field as a reality . . . it stands as a remote one.’’ The photos in the exhibit had begun to change that conception. According to the Times, the photographer had ‘‘done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it’’ (October 20, 1862, p. 5). Some of the battlefield scenes were so graphic that when they were redrawn as magazine illustrations, artists and editors had to select the subjects carefully so as not to offend the sensibilities of their readers. According to the historian Donald Keyes, however, ‘‘There was no escaping the truth of the photograph when the camera dispassionately surveyed the carnage and wreckage of humanity and buildings’’ (Keyes 1976–1977, p.121). As the Times reporter noted, the photos bore a ‘‘terrible distinctiveness’’ so that with the use of a magnifying glass, ‘‘the very features of the slain may be distinguished’’ (October 20, 1862, p. 5). The reporter also speculated that ‘‘Of all objects of horror one would think the battle-field should stand preeminent.’’ But rather than the repulsiveness one would anticipate, the photographs elicited ‘‘a terrible fascination . . . that draws one near these pictures, and makes him loth [sic] to leave them.’’ The article continued, ‘‘You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men’s eyes’’ (October 20, 1862, p. 5 ). In a study of photography that was published in the July 1863 Atlantic Monthly, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), an eminent Boston physician, discussed the Antietam exhibit as evidence that ‘‘the field of photography is extending itself to embrace subjects of strange and sometimes fearful interest.’’ Holmes had traveled to the site in search of his son soon after the battle ended, and the photographs in ‘‘The Dead at Antietam’’ captured the consequences that Holmes had witnessed firsthand. He testified to the realism of the photographs by declaring, ‘‘Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations’’ (Holmes 1863, p. 11). Holmes also described his own experience of viewing these ‘‘terrible mementos’’ and their capacity to ‘‘thrill or revolt those whose soul sickens at such sights’’ (pp. 11–12). Looking over the prints, Holmes remarked, was ‘‘so nearly like visiting the battlefield’’ that ‘‘all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene . . . came back to us, and we hurried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we
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would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented’’ (Holmes 1863, p. 12).
Stereographs and Portraits What no doubt increased the vividness of the photographs and amplified the viewer’s response was that many of the photographs were produced as three-dimensional, or stereoscopic, images. A camera containing two side-by-side lenses would capture almost identical images. When viewed simultaneously under a stereograph viewer—the forerunner of children’s 3D View-Master toys—the two distinct images were combined by the viewer’s brain to create the optical illusion of a single image with depth (Zeller 1997, pp. 13, 16). Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an avid collector of stereographs and had invented the first practical handheld viewer in 1859 (Zeller 1997, p. 14). The images from ‘‘The Dead at Antietam’’ were reproduced and sold widely—stereographs for fifty cents each, two-dimensional cartes de visite and album cards for a quarter. The scenes were also redrawn by artists and printed in the illustrated magazine Harper’s Weekly (Zeller 1997, p. 38). While the battlefield photos generated the most reaction from viewers, they actually constituted only a small portion of the photographs taken to document the war. More than three thousand photographers were working in the United States at the time (Sullivan 2004, p. 6); at least three hundred of those photographed some aspect of the war (Moyes 2001, p. 17). Most worked as portrait artists, taking pictures of individual soldiers (Zeller 2005, p. 88). In his study of the Union soldier, The Life of Billy Yank, the historian Bell Irvin Wiley cites an official from the U.S. Sanitary Commission who commented on the ‘‘immense number’’ of soldiers who had their likenesses taken by photographers (Wiley 1971, p. 367). According to Wiley, ‘‘during their first weeks in uniform countless soldiers visited the ’daguerrean artists’ who set up shop in camp or in near-by towns’’ (Wiley 1971, p. 25). In a letter dated February 1862, Warren Hapgood Freeman wrote to his father, ‘‘There is a photograph artist about the camp, but he has such a crowd about his saloon all the time that I have not been able to get a picture yet’’ (Freeman 1871). A few photographers, such as Alexander Gardner, who left Brady and established his own gallery in 1863, reproduced maps, took images of large landscape views, and documented various aspects and activities of army life. Of the extensive collections of Civil War photographs that survive in the National Archives, ‘‘Soldiers at Rest after a Drill’’ depicts troops seated on the ground reading letters and playing cards. Other prints include regimental group portraits, an army blacksmith’s forge, cavalry columns, refugees fleeing a combat zone, religious services, railroad bridges, the construction of telegraph lines, councils of senior generals with President Lincoln, people and places related to Lincoln’s assassination, and fugitives who fled slavery as they arrived at Union lines.
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MATHEW BRADY Mathew Brady was perhaps the preeminent figure of Civil War photography, but his role in photographing the war has often been misunderstood. Brady was the first person to dispatch a corps of photographers to document the war (Trachtenberg 1985, p. 3). While the images that resulted were copyrighted in the names of individual photographers, the press largely credited Brady for the work of his employees. Many have speculated that this fact ultimately led to Alexander Gardner’s decision to leave Brady’s employ in 1863 (Zeller 2005, p. 103). Brady’s reputation remains largely unchallenged throughout the postwar nineteenth century—for example, an 1891 New York World article referred to Brady as ‘‘the grand old man of American photography’’ and as ‘‘a man who has photographed more prominent men than any other artist in the country’’ (Townsend 1891, p. 26). Later, however, as scholars began to differentiate the work of several photographers, some questioned whether Brady’s name was merely the equivalent of a corporate brand (Panzer 1997, p. 3). In fact, Brady did personally continue to produce images consistent with his earlier portraits of famous subjects. But he also devoted much of his effort to compiling as comprehensive a collection as he could, through directing the work of his employees and buying negatives of pictures taken by other photographers (Library of Congress, n.p.). He spent $100,000 to finance his war enterprise, but sold his collection to the U.S. government for approximately $25,000 to pay his debts (Townsend 1891, p. 26; Panzer 1997, p. 19). ‘‘No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives,’’ Brady later lamented. ‘‘The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life’’ (Library of Congress, n.p.). CHRISTINA ADKINS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Library of Congress. ‘‘Mathew B. Brady: Biographical Note.’’ In American Memory: Selected Civil War Photographs. Available from http://memory. loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwbrady.html. Panzer, Mary. Mathew Brady and the Image of History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1997. Townsend, George Alfred. ‘‘Still Taking Pictures.’’ New York World, April 12, 1891, p. 26. Reprinted in Mary Panzer’s Mathew Brady and the Image of History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1997. Trachtenberg, Alan. ‘‘Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs.’’ Representations 9 (Winter 1985): 1–32. Zeller, Bob. The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005.
Between November 1861 and March 1862, Timothy O’Sullivan (c. 1840–1882) visited the war zone in Beaufort, South Carolina, where defeated planters had abandoned their lands but former slaves were not yet recognized as free by U.S. government policy (Wilson 1999, p. 108). During his time in Beaufort, O’Sullivan photographed the African Americans of the ‘‘Old Fort Plantation,’’ which became the largest group photo of enslaved men and women ever
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More than one million photos are thought to have been taken during the Civil War, capturing numerous facets of army life. Photograph by Mathew Brady. The Library of Congress. Union artillery unit posed with cannons and horses.
recorded (Wilson 1999, p. 108). Photo collector and author Jackie Napolean Wilson notes the symbolism in the photograph as the subjects ‘‘stand in a wake of light emerging from the darkness of shadows.’’ As Wilson explains, the men and women in the photograph are bewildered survivors of an American tragedy (Wilson 1999, p. 108).
A Military Photographer Most of the photographers who documented the war, either for their own enterprise or as military contractors, did so as civilians (Zeller 2005, p. 88). A notable exception was a Union officer, Captain Andrew J. Russell (1830– 1902), who was uniquely positioned to capture much more with his camera. Officially, Russell’s assignment as the photographer of military railroads required him to photograph aspects of railroad infrastructure. The photos were then reproduced and distributed to various military and government authorities (Zeller 2005, pp. 89–90). But Russell also photographed war scenes because he was often traveling with the troops. Most notably, he took rare shots of the second battle of Fredericksburg. Russell photographed soldiers huddled together ready to move on a moment’s notice. He also set up his camera on the periphery of the battle and documented the engagement as it progressed. His photos include pictures of what may be smoke from an artillery battery and images of casualties
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taken twenty minutes after the battle (Zeller 2005, pp. 91– 99). Russell is credited with raising the bar of Civil War photographic achievement in that he was able to follow an army in action (Zeller 2005, p. 91).
Other Applications of Civil War Photography But the documentary value of photography was employed for other purposes as well. The U.S. Congress commissioned photographs to record the condition of prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia, the site of a notorious Confederate prison camp (Orvell 2003, p. 65). The images, which revealed prisoners near starvation, were used as evidence in the trial of the jailer in charge of the camp, Henry Wirz, who was ultimately convicted and executed for war crimes. The Daily National Intelligencer reported the testimony of a U.S. Army surgeon, V. A. Vanderkief, who supervised the treatment of reclaimed prisoners at Annapolis, Maryland. The Intelligencer reported that ‘‘a photograph of a man . . . reduced to a mere skeleton was exhibited,’’ to which the witness testified that ‘‘a large number of prisoners who came from Andersonville were of the appearance of that exhibited by the photograph’’ (August 30, 1865, col. A). In addition, a report issued by the Surgeon General’s Office gauging the material available for a medical history of the war recounted the early uses of medical photography.
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War Photography
Although photographic technology did not yet allow for images of actual fighting, some camera operators would take images of the battlefield after the hostilities ended, before dead soldiers were removed. Newspaper editors often sanitized the etchings based on those pictures, fearing their readership would be too unsettled by the graphic nature of war captured by the photos. The Library of Congress Ravages of war.
In 1862, the Surgeon General’s Office directed army medical officers to forward monthly reports with details of their surgical cases and pathological specimens. The plan was to establish the Army Medical Museum for the advancement of medical study. Eventually a photograph gallery was also established at the museum. According to George Otis, the author of the Surgeon General’s report, ‘‘Typical specimens were reproduced, and the photographs, accompanied by brief printed histories, were distributed to medical directors, to be shown to the medical officers serving with them. [ . . . ] Numerous patients in hospitals were photographed, and the Museum now possesses four quarto volumes, with
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over a thousand photographic representations of wounded or mutilated men’’ (Otis 1865, p. 7). This early medical photography allowed army surgeons to document and disseminate knowledge of injuries and treatments that were developed during the war. After the Civil War, the commercial market for military photographs rapidly disappeared. In 1865 and 1866, Alexander Gardner published two volumes of Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War. Rather than reproducing the original photographs with artist sketches, the book was produced with actual photographic positives pasted into the pages. The collection was expensive to produce
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and sold few copies (Bleiler 1959 [1866]). By then, many Americans eschewed reminders of the devastating conflict, especially images that so vividly preserved its violence. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bleiler, E.F. Introduction to Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, by Alexander Gardner. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959 [1866]. ‘‘Brady’s Photographs: Pictures of the Dead at Antietam.’’ New York Times, October 20, 1862. p. 5. Cobb, Josephine. ‘‘Photographers of the Civil War.’’ Military Affairs 26, no 3 (1962): 127–135. Frassanito, William A. Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978. Freeman, Warren Hapgood. ‘‘Letter from Warren Hapgood Freeman to J. D. Freeman.’’ In Letters from Two Brothers Serving in the War for the Union to Their Family at Home in West Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge, MA: H.O. Houghton and Co., 1871. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. ‘‘Doings of the Sunbeam.’’ Atlantic Monthly, July 1863, 1–15. Keyes, Donald. ‘‘The Daguerreotype’s Popularity in America.’’ Art Journal 36, no. 2 (1976–1977): 116–122. Moyes, Norman B. American Combat Photography from the Civil War to the Gulf War. New York: MetroBooks, 2001. Otis, George Alexander. Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials Available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1865. Sullivan, George. In the Wake of Battle: The Civil War Images of Mathew Brady. New York: Prestel Publishing, 2004. ‘‘Trial of Henry Wirz: The Proceedings of Yesterday.’’ Daily National Intelligencer. August 30, 1865, col. A. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971 [1952]. Wilson, Jackie Napolean. Hidden Witness: African American Images from the Dawn of Photography to the Civil War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Zeller, Bob. The Civil War in Depth: History in 3-D. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1997. Zeller, Bob. The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005. Christina Adkins
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CIVILIAN PHOTOGRAPHY During the Civil War, photography became an important medium through which Americans documented the conflict in their own private collections, communicated sentiment to loved ones, and mourned the losses they endured. At the beginning of the Civil War, new army recruits and civilians on the home front rushed to take portraits for exchange with distant loved ones. By one account, nearly twenty thousand letters and ‘‘two or three bushels’’ of photographs were mailed daily from a single post office at Nashville (Fitch 1863, p. 313). Portrait photography was so prevalent that newspaper articles offered advice on ‘‘How to Photograph Pleasing Countenances’’ and ‘‘How to Dress for a Photograph.’’ The Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer advised that when dressing for a photograph, ‘‘violent contrasts of color should be especially guarded against.’’ It also advocated the use of the powder ‘‘puff box,’’ as freckles appeared ‘‘most painfully distinct’’ when photographed (February 3, 1865). The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin reported that a photographer in Cleveland, Ohio, had attempted to alleviate the ‘‘stereotyped solemnity’’ of the portrait-sitter by placing a mirror next to the camera. Subjects could then see their own expressions as they were captured by the camera. Reportedly, the result was that the ‘‘stern scowl is suddenly changed to a pleasant smile’’ (April 25, 1863). As a corollary to the small card-mounted portraits known as cartes de visite, photo albums became popular, as they allowed people to arrange their own personal photo archives and place them on display in their homes (Trachtenberg 1985, pp. 6–7). Newspaper classifieds regularly contained advertisements for new types of photo albums. Eastman’s Book and Stationary Store in Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, claimed to offer the best albums on the market, purportedly manifesting ‘‘decided improvements over any heretofore made’’—though what these innovations might have been they did not specify (Lowell Daily Citizen, February 19, 1862). An 1865 article in the Daily Cleveland Herald announced the introduction of a new type of album, the Photograph Family Record, which was intended to preserve the ‘‘likeness, descriptions, and records’’ of each family member. Each record included spaces for two photographs taken at different times in a person’s life, a blank marriage certificate, and places to record birth dates, genealogy, education, politics, and various other personal information up to the date of death and place of burial. The article concluded that the new album ‘‘affords opportunity for a complete family history, which cannot but become a highly-prized memorial’’ (August 3, 1865). Indeed, these personal photo collections were among the valuables saved in times of crisis. For example, one witness to the Confederate raid on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, recalled seeing ‘‘ladies escaping from their houses with
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Civilian Photography
nothing but a few photographs or an album’’ (Schneck 1864, p. 64). Another resident who lived near the soonto-be-burned courthouse recalled salvaging a few books, the family Bible, and a photograph album by stowing them in a neighbor’s house (Schneck 1864, p. 47). While the fact that so few things were salvaged was due to the desperation of the situation, the choice of what to save reveals much about the importance of photographs. For hospital supervisor Elvira Powers, the photo album she received from her patients was a token of mutual esteem. The album had her name engraved on it and was ‘‘of a size to hold one hundred pictures.’’ No gift, she declared, was ‘‘more acceptable than the album, especially . . . [if it contained] the faces of the donors’’ (Powers 1866, pp. 201–202). By the 1860s, though, photo collecting was not exclusively a personal matter; photo-reproduction processes had created new commercial possibilities. Whereas the earlier daguerreotype portrait had allowed for only a single copy of a photograph, the carte de visite process, developed in 1850, allowed for multiple prints from a single negative. Meanwhile, the reproduction and sale of celebrity portraits meant that in addition to pictures of their nearest and dearest, people could purchase small portrait prints of famous figures. Whereas enthusiasts previously had to attend galleries to view images of the most prominent public figures of the time, they could now collect prints of such images in their own album archive. This became the pastime of Southern diarist Mary Chesnut, who in 1861 recorded a peculiar morning encounter with South Carolina Governor John Manning. When Manning arrived for breakfast in full formal attire as if dressed to attend a ball, Chesnut ‘‘looked at him in amazement.’’ But Manning assured her, ‘‘I am not mad. . . . I am only going to the photographer.’’ Manning’s wife wanted a portrait taken in his dress attire. Chesnut accompanied Manning to the studio, along with her husband James Chesnut Jr. and the former governor, John Means. Afterward, the diarist received a gift of a photo album in which she was to ‘‘pillory all celebrities’’ (Chesnut 1981, p. 37). Though Chesnut’s social circle comprised a veritable who’s who of famous Confederates, she may have acquired photographs for her album not only from personal acquaintances but also from the portrait copies that were widely available for sale. Chesnut later wrote that her photograph book contained ‘‘one of all the Yankee generals’’ (Chesnut 1981, p. 731). To amuse the young son of a Confederate colonel, Chesnut handed him a photo album; on flipping through it, the child exclaimed ‘‘You have Lincoln in your book! I am astonished at you’’ (Chesnut 1981, p. 412). Chesnut also recorded an instance in which a suitor submitted his portrait to his intended, a common ritual in nineteenth-century courtships. Sally ‘‘Buck’’ Preston was the object of a Confederate major’s attentions—though only after her own older sister had rejected him. The officer, Chesnut noted, sent Sally his photograph, and in
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due time ‘‘cannonaded’’ her with marriage proposals (Chesnut 1981, p. 445). Photography was so integral a part of the cultural experience of the war that it became the subject of literary compositions. For example, an anonymous poem titled ‘‘The Carte de Visite’’ appeared in the September 1862 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. It tells the story of a soldier who stops to rest on a stranger’s front porch. During this respite, he describes a terrible battle to a mother and daughter. An unidentified youth killed in action becomes the subject of particular concern, as the daughter begins to worry that the soldier is referring to her beloved. When the soldier reveals a photograph of the young ensign, the image confirms the daughter’s worst fears. The poem concludes, ‘‘when we buried our dead that night / I took from his breast this picture—see! / It is as like him as like can be / . . . One glance, and a look, half sad, half wild, / passed over her face, which grew more pale, / Then a passionate, hopeless, heart-broken wail’’ (pp. 479–480). While this poem is fictional, during the war it indeed became common practice to identify casualties from family photographs and other items they carried on their person. ‘‘Ordinarily,’’ wrote Edward Parmelee Smith, who ministered among the casualties, ‘‘in the inside breast pocket of the blouse, there would be a letter from friends, a photograph, a Christian Commission Testament or Hymn Book , with the name and regiment and home address’’ (Smith 1869, p. 236). At Gettysburg, a soldier was found slain on the battlefield with no identification but the ambrotype of his three children. In Incidents of the United States Christian Commission (1869), Smith reflected that perhaps no other story of the war ‘‘became so widely known or excited such deep sympathy.’’ According to Smith, the soldier was found clutching the photograph so that it ‘‘must have met his dying gaze’’ (pp. 175–176). The case came to the attention of civilian doctor J. Francis Bourns. To discover the identity of the soldier and notify his family, Bourns had the photograph reproduced, then furnished the image and details to the press. The incident and the search became a national story, and copies of the children’s image were reproduced and sold for the benefit of the family. Eventually, the soldier was identified as Sergeant Amos Humiston. When the Humiston family was finally located, Bourns arranged to meet them. According to the Washington Daily National Intelligencer, Bourns ‘‘found them living in the same humble house in which the father had left them when he went forth to the service of his country; and when the children gathered together and grouped as they are in the ambrotype, it was seen that there could be no mistake in the family’’ (February 24, 1864). Bourns returned the original portrait to Humiston’s widow, along with the money collected from the sale of the photo reprints and various contributions. Copies of the children’s photograph, the article added, were still available for sale at a Seventh Street bookstore and in the Patent Office at the National Fair. On January 23, 1866, the Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, OH)
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Soldiers on both sides of the Civil War often kept pictures of their loved ones close to their person. After the Battle of Gettysburg, an unknown fallen soldier clutching a portrait of his children became famous after a doctor reproduced the image in newspapers, hoping to identify the man. The Library of Congress. Last thought of a dying father.
reported continued fundraising efforts for the support of Frank, Frederick, and Alice, the children of the patriot martyr of Gettysburg’’ (The Scioto Gazette, January 23, 1866). A musical composition entitled ‘‘The Children of the Battle-field’’ was published and sold with a brief narrative of the family history and a reproduction of the children’s likenesses. The music sold for fifty cents per copy, and card-sized photographs for a quarter. According to the Gazette, the music would be a welcome addition ‘‘in every circle where music is a part of home enjoyment, and where are those who with gratitude remember our country’s brave defenders.’’ According to Smith, the Humiston family relocated to the National Orphan Homestead, founded at Gettysburg, where Mrs. Humiston worked as an undermatron and where seventy war orphans then resided. Offering an appropriate conclusion to the sentimental story, Smith reported that the ‘‘morning after the children came to the institution, it was found that they had gone out quietly and decked their father’s grave with beautiful flowers’’ (Smith 1869, p. 176).
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While the case of the Humiston family was exceptional for the amount of media attention it received, William Howell Reed recounted a similar scene of pathos in his memoir Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac (1866). Reed recalled conducting a roadside funeral and interment for a man who had died on an ambulance bivouac. The man had no identification, and Reed found in the man’s packet ‘‘only a photograph of a little infant, which showed that there was one tie at least to bind him to this world.’’ After placing the photo ‘‘upon his breast, and covering it with his blouse,’’ Reed began the burial and the man ‘‘was laid down to rest’’ (pp. 16–17). Such stories, however fact-based, were influenced by a cultural association between mourning and photography. Since the development of the daguerreotype in the 1830s, it had become common to commission memorial photographs of recently deceased loved ones. As the genre developed, subjects were commonly posed in lifelike postures. Children, whose memorial photos were sometimes their only recorded likenesses, were pictured as if sleeping.
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Reading and Reading Groups
According to historian Miles Orvell (2003), such images were consistent with the Victorian view of death as a bodily sleep from which the deceased would awaken in heaven, and thus offered comfort to the bereaved (pp. 24–25). ‘‘Spirit photography,’’ the discovery of which coincided with the Civil War, also became a popular form of memorial image in the nineteenth century. In March 1861, William Mumler photographed himself alone in his studio, but when he developed the plate he found an additional figure in the frame. Several people claimed that this ‘‘spirit extra’’ was the ghost of Mumler’s dead cousin, to whom the image bore a strong resemblance (Kaplan 2003, p. 18). Soon, other photographers began to discover their own ‘‘spirit extras.’’ Though spirit images were the result of double exposures superimposed by these photographers, some photographers may have actually believed in the authenticity of their apparition (‘‘Gone but Not Forgotten,’’ p. 6). Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., a photo collector and doctor by profession, dismissed spirit photographs as the result of overwrought mourners and unscrupulous photographers. ‘‘The actinic influence of a ghost on a sensitive plate is not so strong as might be desired,’’ Holmes wrote sarcastically, ‘‘but considering that spirits are so nearly immaterial . . . the effect is perhaps as good as ought to be expected.’’ Holmes elaborated on what he perceived to be the usual scenario: ‘‘Mrs. Brown, for instance, has lost her infant, and wishes to have its spirit-portrait taken with her own. A special sitting is granted, and a special fee is paid. In due time the photograph is ready, and, sure enough, there is the misty image of an infant in the background. Or, it may be, across the mothers lap.’’ It may be impossible to identify the child. But, wrote Holmes, ‘‘it is enough for the poor mother, whose eyes are blinded with tears, that she sees a print of drapery like an infant’s dress, and a rounded something, like a foggy dumpling, which will stand for a face: she accepts the spirit-portrait as a revelation from the world of shadows’’ (Holmes 1862, p. 14). But even after belief in the authenticity of spirit photography had subsided, the genre maintained its popularity (‘‘Gone but Not Forgotten,’’ p. 6). According to art historian Louis Kaplan (2003), spirit photography during the Civil War helped mourners to feel connected with dead loved ones and to withstand the daily tragedies and losses that surrounded them. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chesnut, Mary. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, ed. C. Vann Woodward. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Fitch, John. Annals of the Army of the Cumberland: Comprising Biographies, Descriptions of Departments, Accounts of Expeditions, Skirmishes, and Battles, 5th ed. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864. ‘‘Gone but Not Forgotten.’’ Special online feature prepared in conjunction with the P.O.V. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
documentary A Family Undertaking. PBS.org, 2004. Available from http://www.pbs.org/. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. ‘‘Doings of the Sunbeam.’’ Atlantic Monthly, July 1863, pp. 1–15. ‘‘How to Dress for a Photograph.’’ Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, February 3, 1865. ‘‘How to Photograph Pleasing Countenances.’’ San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 25, 1863. Kaplan, Louis. ‘‘Where the Paranoid Meets the Paranormal: Speculations on Spirit Photography.’’ Art Journal 62, no. 3 (2003): 18–29. Orvell, Miles. American Photography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ‘‘Photograph Albums: Just Received a Large and Well Selected Stock Direct from the Manufacturers.’’ Advertisement. Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, February 19, 1862. ‘‘Photograph Family Record.’’ Daily Cleveland (OH) Herald, August 3, 1865. Powers, Elvira J. Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron and Visitor. Boston: Edward L. Mitchel, 1866. Reed, William Howell. Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1866. Schneck, B. S. The Burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 2nd rev. ed. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1864. The Scioto Gazette, Tuesday, January 23, 1866, issue 49, col C. ‘‘Sergeant Humiston.’’ Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, February 24, 1864. Smith, Edward Parmelee. Incidents of the United States Christian Commission. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1869. Trachtenberg, Alan. ‘‘Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs.’’ Representations 9 (Winter 1985): 1–32. Christina Adkins
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Reading and Reading Groups
Civil War soldiers avidly read newspapers to learn about news from home. Newspapers obtained by soldiers were sometimes traded with the enemy in picket exchanges. All types of paper were used for these newspapers, from wallpaper to wrapping paper. The exchange of letters, newspapers, and fiction among soldiers and their families helped them to maintain their emotional connections even while at a physical distance. Soldiers gained access to books from shipments from home, picket exchanges, religious and charitable sources, and traveling loan libraries. Men also read while convalescing after battle injuries. A field nurse, Jane Stuart Woolsey, wrote in her 1870 book Hospital Days that ‘‘Soldiers were omnivorous
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readers, but many wanted a better order of books than novels and magazines. One of the forwsiest of the ‘inv’lids’ was a devourer of everything Mr. Sumner wrote. Files of the ‘Scientific American’ were in demand. The personage of Cicero and the store-room of Shakespeare went about the wards. Dickens was very popular. I think David Copperfield was the favorite story’’ (p. 59). Novels by well-known British and American authors were among the favorites read aloud in camp, both North and South. In their letters and journals some soldiers mentioned reading Walter Scott (1771–1832), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), James Fenimore Cooper (1789– 1851), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), and Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1831–1891). The chaplain of the 8th Connecticut Volunteers in wrote home: ‘‘Dickens has a great run. The tales of Miss Edgeworth and T. S. Arthur are very popular. The Army and Navy Melodies are hailed with delight’’ (Koch 1918, p. 4). George Williams, a Union soldier, recalled reading groups in camp in his 1884 article ‘‘Lights and Shadows of Army Life’’: ‘‘Especially when the army was in winter quarters and books were in short supply, a good reader with a copy of Bulwer-Lytton, Scott or Dickens could be assured that his hut would be filled with listeners. The standard rule about extinguishing lights at taps was seldom enforced under such conditions’’ (p. 808). For soldiers of both armies a camp fire served as a makeshift memory of the family hearth. George Freeman Noyes recalled in his 1863 book The Bivouac and the Battlefield, Campaign in Virginia and Maryland, ‘‘Around each pyramid of flame sat the men, engaged in various avocations; some, of course, cooking, for no camp fire was ever without a soldier making coffee, no matter what the hour; some reading or playing cards.’’ Noyes said that he regretted the boredom of do-nothingism in camp during the war: If you wish to demoralize a man, to dilute his manliness, corrode his patriotism, steal away his cheerfulness, destroy his enthusiasm, and impair his health, pen him up in an isolated camp with little to do, no books to read, no resources against idleness; if you wish to demoralize an army, march it off from a severely contested battle-field into the woods, and condemn it to a month or two of listless do-nothinginsm. At such a time the men need, as never so much before, books of a cheerful and moderately exciting character, strong, bracing stories like those of Charles Kingsley, quiet pictures of homelife like that fascinating sketch of ‘‘John Halifax, Gentleman,’’ military tales like those of Lever, the wonderful character pieces of Charles Dickens, and choice productions of our American authors. (p. 224)
Cheap fiction was popular in camp. Soldiers often read nickel and dime novels. These 4 inch by 6 inch, 100-page volumes could fit into a soldier’s pocket and their low price appealed to many. Private Dwight Henry Cory, a Union soldier who had a good voice and liked to
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sing, was one of these readers of popular fiction. In his journal on Friday, March 3, 1865, reproduced in the ‘‘Dwight Henry Cory Letters,’’ he wrote: ‘‘Read storys or novels as they are commonly called and answer letters. In fact these two vocations are the chief employment of the soldier in camp.’’ When Civil War soldiers mentioned their reading in their letters home, they often spoke of reading from the Bible or prayer books. Robert Cruikshank, for example, wrote to his wife Mary on September 21, 1862, from Arlington Heights, Virginia, that ‘‘They read their Bibles every day.’’ He asked his wife on November 15, ‘‘Send me papers with the war news.’’ Henry Cory told his wife: ‘‘Dear, you sent a big letter but not much reading . . . . They call me their chaplain. I have a testament in my pocket. I read a chapter every day.’’ One source of soldiers’ reading material was the regimental library. Alonzo Hall Quint, a Union soldier who kept the volumes within one of these, preserved his writings in the 1863 published work The Potomac and the Rapidan and Army Notes, 1861–63. He wrote, Among devices for this vacation period we have a small regimental library . . . . I owe public thanks for this especially to Mr. MH Sargent, who interested himself most generously and heartily in obtaining and forwarding the books . . . the nest egg of which was a kind donation from Mr. Tolman’s church at Wilmington . . . If the donors could see the eagerness with which the books are read, they would feel still happier in doing good (p. 94).
Among the most read of these books, Quint noted, were those of Dickens. ‘‘Among the most read (I take from the book where I charge volumes, to show the taste) are Deacon Safford, Winthrop’s John Brent, Dickens’s Christmas Stories, Abbot’s Practical Christianity, Dexter’s Street Thoughts, the Lives of Washington, Jackson, Fremont, Franklin, and Boone’’ (p. 94). While marching through the south, Louis J. Dupre´, in Knoxville, Tennessee, saw books in southern homes. He wrote in his 1881 book Fagots from the Campfire, ‘‘In every house there was Weems ‘Life of Washington,’ Jefferson’s ‘Notes on Virginia.’ and Brownlow’s ‘Whig’ and the National Intelligencer’’ (p. 137). Likewise, August Joseph Hickey Duganne wrote in his 1865 book Camps and Prisons, Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf of seeing books while he was part of a Northern occupying force: Meanwhile, here we sit, hostile strangers from the North, amidst the dusty lumber of a southern home. The family portraits rest against the wall, backs turned upon us. I handle many a duplicate of favorite authors in my home library. Here stand, in line, battalia of books, which show the classic taste of their collector. The British Poets muster, rank on rank, some ninety strong; the British Essayists beneath, and here are Dickens, Irving, Cooper, Bulwer, Thackeray; with hundreds, rank and file, of literary yeomen, and brave historians. (p. 56)
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Reading was also practiced by prisoners of war. Confederate captain Robert E. Park of the 12th Alabama Regiment wrote on February 8, 1865 from a Baltimore prison, ‘‘Some read novels and histories, others study ancient and modern languages and mathematics, and these divert for the time, their minds from the painful, desperate, hopeless surroundings’’ (Park 1877, p. 46). Reading fiction aloud was a popular pastime in many homes. Families and friends often gathered in the front room parlor of a home or by the fireplace to read aloud to each other. In the North free blacks were among those who met in reading circles. In one southern home Bill Arp read The Arabian Nights aloud to his family, as he noted in his 1903 book From the Uncivil War to Date: ‘‘We love to read the Arabian Nights, and we rejoice with Ali Baba who outwitted the forty thieves and with Alladin who found the wonderful lamp. Just so we rejoice in Cinderella for marrying the prince, and we take comfort in it, although we know it never happened’’ (p. 188). Books were also vocalized in Joseph Waddell’s household in Augusta, Virginia. He notes in his diary that on Thursday evening September 25, 1857, ‘‘Kate was reading The Life of Charlotte Bronte and would persist in reading passages aloud, not withstanding my restlessness.’’ Waddell was then reading Count Robert of Paris and The Pira. He had just finished reading The Ocean by Gipe. The night that Kate read aloud from Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte, he had been reading the newspaper. Belle Kearney of Vernon, Mississippi, recalls in her 1900 book A Slaveholder’s Daughter that she made a bargain with her younger brothers, enticing them to house work in return for reading aloud to them from Dickens or Scott. ‘‘Well,’’ I answered, ‘‘suppose we make a bargain? If you will cook every time mother gets sick, I will tell you one of Dickens’s stories or one of Walter Scott’s novels as regularly as the nights roll around.’’ ‘‘All right! I’ll do it!’’ was the ready assent; — and the compact was sealed. It was never broken. As the days went by and mother’s health failed to improve, and my work failed correspondingly to grow lighter, the younger boys were pressed into service by similar agreements . . . Every night after our lessons were learned for the next day, we gathered around the hearth in mother’s room and I told the boys the promised stories; going into the smallest details; dwelling on peculiarities of characters, painting minutely their environment, waxing humorous or pathetic according to the situation; all the while watching closely the faces of my auditors. There they would sit for hours, my little brothers, listening intently to every word that was uttered; at time clapping their chubby hands with intense enjoyment, or doubling up their bodies with convulsive laughter, or holding their lips together with fore-finger and thumb to prevent too boisterous an
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explosion of hilarity, at other times allowing the great tears to roll down their cheeks, or with bowed heads sobbing aloud. My precious little comrades! They constituted my first audience and it was the most sympathetic and inspiring that has ever greeted me in all the after years (p. 25).
Stories were available in Northern homes as well as southern ones. In some cases the younger children just looked at the pictures. While Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend was being serialized in Harper’s in 1864, one reader wrote about the fondness of her children for the visual content of the magazine: The appearance of Harpers Magazine at our house is an event of great importance with my children. The illustrations in it are the chief cause of this. [On one page there is an] illustration of winged children as ‘‘Angels of the Household.’’ All the children are mischievous. One of them raids a cookie jar as her sister looks on and reaches up for it; three children slide down a banister; one pulls at a cat’s tail; another breaks a mirror. Meanwhile, a little girl with wings holds up torn pages in her hand and stomps over shattered shards on the floor as her parents look on (pp. 820–821).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arp, Bill. From the Uncivil War to Date, ed. Marian Arp Smith. Atlanta, GA: Hudgins, 1903. Cory, Dwight Henry. Dwight Henry Cory Letters. Ehistory.com. Available from http://ehistory.osu. edu/. Cruishank, Robert. ‘‘Robert Cruishank Collection: Letter to his wife Mary of September 21, 1862.’’ Ehistory.com. Available from http://ehistory.osu. edu/. Dupre´, Louis J. Fagots from the Campfire. Washington, DC: Emily Thornton Charles and Co., 1881. Duganne, August Joseph Hickey. Camps and Prisons, Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf. New York: J. P. Robens, 1865. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (August 1864): 820–821. Kaser, David. Camp and Battle: The Civil War Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Kearney, Belle. A Slaveholder’s Daughter. New York: Abbey Press, 1900. Documenting the American South. Available from http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Koch, Theodore Wesley. War Libraries and Allied Studies. New York: G. E. Stechert and Co., 1918. McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the History of African-American Literary Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
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Noyes, George Freeman. The Bivouac and the Battle Field, or Common Sketches in Virginia and Maryland. New York: Harpers, 1863 Park, Robert E. ‘‘Diary of Captain Robert E. Park.’’ Southern Historical Society Papers, Richmond 3, no.1, January 1877, p. 46. Quint, Alonzo Hall. The Potomac and the Rapidan: Army Notes from the Failure at Winchester to the Re-enforcements of Rosencrans, 1861–3. Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1864. Waddell, Joseph. The Diary of Joseph Waddell (1855–1865). Valley of the Shadow. Available from http:// etext.virginia.edu/. Williams, George F. ‘‘Lights and Shadows of Army Life.’’ Century Magazine (October 1884): 808. Woolsey, Jane Stuart. Hospital Days. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1870. Robert P. McParland
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Vices on the Home Front VICES ON THE HOME FRONT : AN OVERVIEW
Adrienne M. Petty GAMBLING
Aileen E. McTiernan ALCOHOL
Anurag Biswas SMOKING AND TOBACCO
Adrienne M. Petty
VICES ON THE HOME FRONT: AN OVERVIEW In December 2006 the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board voted against a plan to open a casino near the historic Gettysburg battlefield, one of the most sacred sites of the Civil War. The plan failed, in large measure, because of public opposition: Modern-day residents of Gettysburg feared that the casino would tarnish the battlefield’s legacy and harm its appeal as a family tourist attraction (Foster 2006). This controversy is in many ways similar to how people living during the Civil War responded to activities that were considered bad habits at the time. Although some people freely indulged in gambling, smoking, and drinking alcohol for fun and to escape the uncertainty of war, others decried these vices as outside the boundaries of respectability.
Gambling During the colonial era and early nineteenth century, public lotteries were an accepted and common means of raising money for cities, states, and even Protestant churches. Revenue generated in lotteries helped these
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institutions complete essential but costly building projects such as schools, bridges, roads, and jails. Denmark Vesey, the former slave in South Carolina who planned a slave insurrection in 1822, had purchased his freedom with $1,500 he won in a lottery intended to support work on East Bay Street in Charleston (Fabian 1990, p. 126). People also gambled in more informal ways. As eighteenth-century aristocrats had done, Southern slaveholders organized and bet on horse races, cockfights, and card games. Among the Northern working class, betting on dogs, cocks, cards, and dice was a common pastime in urban taverns. At public gatherings such as markets and fairs, professional gamblers even made their livings by swindling unsuspecting people out of their money (Fabian 1990, pp. 1–2). By the late 1830s, however, reformers had begun to argue that the social and moral cost of lotteries far outweighed the benefits. They also argued that gambling threatened the very foundations of the American republic. In addition to undermining people’s personal well-being, they argued that gambling was dangerous to public welfare and the Protestant work ethic because it falsely deluded people into thinking that they could make a quick buck. In the 1840s and 1850s Northern newspapers focused particularly on gambling by African American men and women who engaged in ‘‘policy play.’’ Policy dealers let poor people wager pennies or nickels on the numbers drawn in official and unofficial lotteries (Fabian 1990, p. 136). Opposition to policy play and other forms of gambling waned during the Civil War era, but picked up momentum during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. On the American frontier, gambling thrived because of the unsettled nature of life there. Many in gold rush California made their fortunes not from frugality and hard work, but from taking on enormous risk that generated lucky windfalls. Even those who did some of the most demanding jobs found amusement in gambling. In their leisure time, cowboys and sailors gambled in cattle towns and port cities (Fabian 1990, pp. 5–6). The Civil War was a watershed moment in the history of gambling in the United States. With the consolidation of capitalism during the Civil War, people turned to new forms of gambling. Angry farmers began to decry the greed of those who profited from speculations in agricultural commodities. According to Ann Fabian in Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth-Century America, farmers alleged that these traders were the direct descendants of evil gamblers who ‘‘lived as parasites on the productive economy’’ (1990, p. 9). Despite the efforts of reformers, gambling flourished before, during, and after the war. Gambling continued in private even though laws against it had become widespread by the 1890s. In the early twenty-first century, of course, gambling is legal and prevalent.
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a writer in 1854 New York who criticized women on the fringe of society who ‘‘are aping the silly ways of some pseudo-accomplished foreigners in smoking tobacco through a weaker and more feminine article, the cigarette’’ (Sobel 1978, pp. 9–10). But after the Crimean War (1853–1856) and Civil War, soldiers who had turned to the quick smoke of cigarettes on the battlefield continued to use them when they returned home, helping to spread the habit. During the 1880s, dramatic changes in manufacturing and marketing secured the place of cigarettes as the most popular form of tobacco consumption (Burnham 1993, p. 89). Reformers warned about the temptation that cigarettes posed to young people, but they never succeeded in outlawing them. In contrast to gambling, which became socially unacceptable and illegal by the early twentieth century (only to regain legitimacy by the end of the twentieth century), tobacco use continued to be regarded as a minor vice until the late twentieth century, when health concerns made cigarettes less socially acceptable.
Alcohol
‘‘Our patriots.’’ Despite efforts by Northerners to curtail tobacco consumption, sales of cigars increased in the 1860s. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Smoking Just as gambling became a target for reformers during the 1830s, tobacco use also rankled reformers, particularly in the North. It was offensive because it was considered unhealthy, rude, and a waste of money. At the same time, many Americans, particularly Southerners, did not attach any social stigma to tobacco. During the nineteenth century chewing tobacco and cigar smoking were the dominant forms of tobacco consumption among men of all classes in all regions of the country. In 1850 Americans bought ten cigars per capita; by 1860 they were buying twenty-six cigars per capita (Burnham 1993, p. 88). Women in the South had a penchant for pipe smoking and dipping snuff. Many Union soldiers expressed amazement in their letters and diaries over the extent to which women in the South used tobacco. Cigarette use started in the nineteenth century as a practice among people who were considered deviant. People characterized cigarettes as effeminate, and argued that no ‘‘real man’’ would be caught smoking them. Robert Sobel in They Satisfy: The Cigarette in American Life quotes GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
In their cautionary tales against the evils of gambling, exgamblers of the nineteenth century often connected gaming with alcohol and cigars. It is not surprising, then, that reformers viewed these minor vices as part of the same problem. Although alcoholic beverages were socially acceptable and even preferred during the early 1800s because they posed less of a threat to people’s health than polluted water, reformers began to define them as morally unacceptable by the midnineteenth century. The years before the war witnessed the spread of temperance societies devoted to either decreasing or totally eliminating alcohol manufacturing and use. During the war, the temperance movement lost some of its momentum because reformers were preoccupied with the more pressing work of either fighting as soldiers or aiding the war effort. At the same time, the use of alcohol among civilians paralleled soldiers’ use of spirits. In addition to seeking an escape from the cruelty of war, Union and Confederate soldiers drank to prove their manhood. The ritual of drinking also became important among working-class immigrants in the North. The Civil War reinforced opposition to alcohol consumption by unleashing an increase in its popularity as a means of escape (Burnham 1993, p. 59). Use of alcohol among soldiers and civilians during the Civil War was one of several factors that contributed to passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Prohibition movement during the Progressive Era. Despite reformers’ efforts to curb this constellation of vices—gambling, tobacco use and smoking, and alcohol use—Americans indulged in them before, during, and after the Civil War. Even with the successful defeat of efforts to build a casino near the hallowed Gettysburg battleground, Americans now, as then, continue to gamble and engage in
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other pastimes as an escape from the sometimes brutal realities of life. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burnham, John C. Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History. New York and London: New York University Press, 1993. Fabian, Ann. Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops: Gambling in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Foster, Margaret. ‘‘Gettysburg Casino Denied.’’ Preservation Online, December 21, 2006. Available from http://www.nationaltrust.org/. Sobel, Robert. They Satisfy: The Cigarette in American Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978. Adrienne M. Petty
GAMBLING Throughout the Civil War, gambling was perceived by the majority of the populace as an immoral and pernicious practice. Still, roulette parlors, gambling saloons, and secret card rooms operated across the country from New York to San Francisco. Opponents criticized gambling as ‘‘the most dangerous of all vices’’ (Daily Cleveland Herald, January 10, 1862), arguing it posed nothing but a nuisance to the nation. In accordance with public perspective, the legislature elevated the vice to criminal status. In fact, in March 1864, the Daily Miners’ Register reported gambling was an indictable crime ‘‘in every loyal State and Territory of the Union, except Colorado, New Mexico and Idaho.’’
Public Opposition Public condemnation of gambling stemmed from the belief that it served no purpose besides contaminating society by promoting a lifestyle of crime and obtaining money by illegitimate means. An editorial from the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin addressed the evils of gambling; the author attributed a laundry list of moral damages that society has suffered to the existence of gambling establishments: . . . the sudden and unaccountable failures among business men, resulting on account of their suddenness in injury to creditors and the impairing of the general credit; the coming, unforeseen, of utter desolation upon the happy homes of love and plenty; the degradation and disgrace of honorable men; the hopeless ruin of many a promising youth; the following of suicide upon suicide in rapid succession; and worst of all, because fraught with all the ills society is heir to—the alarming
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increase among us of gamblers and other thieves and robbers. (1862)
The same newspaper reflected (February 3, 1863) on the prevalence and the perils of gambling since the settlement of the Lower Mississippi Valley. The appeal of games of chance was pervasive: gambling sites ranged from public hotels to private homes, sparing no segment of society from the resultant catalogue of crimes. Such common-law crimes as murder, robbery, larceny, and arson threatened to corrupt society, sparking a ‘‘crusade against the evil’’ of gambling (Daily Evening Bulletin, December 18, 1862). The apparent menace of wagering was continuously pointed out, but warnings did little to eradicate the practice. Mysterious gambling rooms hidden from the public allowed obscure card and roulette games to be conducted very quietly behind secret walls within legitimate establishments. Conducting business under such underground pretexts sparked speculation about what occurred behind closed doors—causing the public imagination to assume only the worst. In San Francisco, the ground floor of an old gambling hall was rumored to conceal a deadfall, a trap in which men were entombed after being robbed and murdered. When the hall was demolished in 1864, however, the Daily Evening Bulletin disappointed its readers’ expectations by reporting that no bones or human remains were found (May 25, 1864). The police proved rather ineffective at suppressing gambling establishments, and were often compensated for turning a blind eye to any activities they did observe (Fayetteville Observer, October 19, 1863). While some men were arrested and indicted for illegal gambling, Judge Blake observed that gambling prosecutions were not sufficiently representative of its prevalence in San Francisco. In his charge to a grand jury in 1862, he further lamented: ‘‘I do not suppose that gambling can be entirely prevented, but it may be reduced to a small proportion and compelled to hide itself in that obscurity which becomes its ruinous and demoralizing tendencies’’ (Daily Evening Bulletin, November 10, 1862).
Gamblers and Gambling Establishments Gambling dens were frequented by prominent middleand upper-class businessmen as well as by men engaged in professional gambling. Some entertained gambling as a sport—or even a fashionable social activity. Noting the appeal of the element of risk over the financial aspect of the game, the New Haven (CT) Daily Palladium reported that it had become ‘‘fashionable’’ to form exclusive clubs of wealthy men to play cards for small stakes, using the money merely ‘‘to give piquancy to the game’’ (July 27, 1864). In South Carolina, the Camden Confederate, described the bifurcation in gambling practices in the city of Richmond. The so-called House of Lords was strict about admitting only invited guests, and only those in possession of considerable wealth, including quartermasters and commissaries. The House of Commons, less luxurious yet more
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accessible, was maintained for those of less extravagant means; it welcomed congressmen as well as army and naval officers (October 23, 1863). Though congressmen were not considered to be heavy gamblers themselves, according to the Daily Evening Bulletin, the gamers in the Western states executed considerable control over their cohorts in the lobby: they were the ultimate manipulators of the legislature (March 8, 1864). Yet wherever gambling had been sanctioned by law, inevitably misguided laborers could be found squandering their savings. Destroying the honest independence of men, and embodying the very essence of sin, gambling halls threatened to corrupt society. Gamblers cheated and robbed each other on a regular basis. In fact, a stranger entering into a certain gambling den in Cleveland ‘‘was as sure to be plundered as if he were found on the highway and robbed with a pistol at his throat’’ (Lowell Daily Citizen and News, January 21, 1863). Every gambling hall had its professionals—regulars permanently residing there. The Daily Evening Bulletin relayed the chronicle (originally reported in the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, Nevada) of a gambler appearing as a witness at trial. Inquiring as to the witness’s profession, the judge was rather astonished to hear his response: ‘‘Rough gambling!’’ repeated the Judge—‘‘I would ask you, sir, what you mean by ‘rough gambling!’’ ‘‘I means, yer Honor, that my style is, where the run o’ the cards doesn’t fetch me a feller’s money, I knocks him down and takes it anyhow.’’ (February 27, 1864)
Some of these professionals utilized gambling as their sole source of income, though many lost everything they had and more. Thinking they could win back their life savings if they had just another hundred dollars—then another hundred, then another—many men found themselves homeless and penniless upon departure. The tale of one inveterate gambler was recounted in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel: after losing every penny he had, followed by his land, his house, and his furniture, he lost his young and beautiful wife in a game of cards (July 28, 1863).
Gambling and the Churches While social gambling was publicly denounced across the country, fairs and raffles organized for the benefit of religious institutions created much contention. In 1862 the Boston Investigator denounced church festivals—only decades prior these gatherings had been ‘‘patronized only by the worst characters’’ (December 24, 1862). Such religiously sponsored lotteries or gambling involved such prizes as dollbabies, plum cakes, or paintings to raise money for ‘‘heathens,’’ orphanages, or other virtuous causes. In 1861, an editorial in the Boston Investigator epitomized the irony of the practice, noting: ‘‘[t]he principle is certainly the same, whatever the form of the game or the object of the stake’’ (May 22, 1861; emphasis in original).
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Objections to gaming under the guise of the religious institutions included the preservation of the innocence of youth. Impressionable children attending such religious fairs would be misguided by the fascination and the pleasure of games of chance and their associated transgressions. Church-sanctioned gambling was condemned as worse than ‘‘the lowest gambling hell,’’ due to its nature as ‘‘sugar-coated, heaven-liveried, and hence all the more fascinating and dangerous,’’ reported the Boston Investigator (December 24, 1862). By 1863, the Church was treated no differently than public or private establishments that promoted lotteries; church festivals or bazaars employing such games were required to take out a license for the practice. The license for practicing lottery games required a fee of one thousand dollars, but the penalty for failing to obtain the license cost three thousand dollars (Vermont Chronicle, April 14, 1863). Even with lotteries, raffles and games of chance sanctioned by clergymen and regulated by the government, the practice, though frequented by the majority, was not universally sanctioned. By 1864, with the Civil War well underway, some Christians sought to raise money to aid the suffering soldiers through games of chance. Such pretenses were endorsed by the New York Times, but the Vermont Chronicle objected, emphasizing, ‘‘We are not under obligations to do it in any particular way [especially such means as are] subversive of the great principles of morality and religion’’ (February 6, 1864). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Early Lessons in Gambling.’’ Boston Investigator, December 24, 1862. ‘‘Gambling.’’ Camden (SC) Confederate, October 23, 1863. ‘‘Gambling.’’ Fayetteville (NC) Observer, October 19, 1863. ‘‘Gambling at Fairs.’’ Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls, Windsor, and Montpelier, VT), February 6, 1864. ‘‘Gambling for a Wife.’’ Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, July 28, 1863. ‘‘Gambling in Cleveland.’’ Daily Cleveland Herald, January 10, 1862. ‘‘Gambling in San Francisco.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), February 3, 1863. ‘‘Gambling in San Francisco, and Its Remedy—No. 1.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), December 18, 1862. ‘‘Judge Blake’s Charge as to Gambling.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), November 10, 1862. ‘‘One of the Gambling Dens in Cleveland.’’ Lowell (MA) Daily Citizen and News, July 21, 1863. ‘‘Police Intelligence: Descent on an Alleged Gambling House.’’ New York Herald, January 9, 1861. ‘‘Progress of Gambling.’’ New York Herald, December 14, 1861.
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‘‘Religious Gambling, &c.’’ Boston Investigator, May 22, 1861. ‘‘Rough Gambling.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), February 27, 1864. ‘‘Saratoga: The Ladies’ Fashions–Gambling.’’ New Haven (CT) Daily Palladium, July 27, 1864. ‘‘Transforming an Old Gambling Hall.’’ Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), May 25, 1864. ‘‘Uncle Sam on Religious Gambling.’’ Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls, Windsor, and Montpelier, VT), April 14, 1863. [Untitled.] Daily Miners’ Register (Central City, CO), March 1, 1864. Aileen E. McTiernan
ALCOHOL In the early 1800s alcoholic beverages were consumed at levels far above present-day per capita consumption. Milk was often a premium commodity and fruit juices were rare. Water was oftentimes unclean, whereas alcohol was distilled and germ-free. As a result, whisky quickly became a staple. It was made in the mills and while price of production varied according to time and place, especially in the Confederacy, many found the beverage affordable. Most people also believed in the medicinal value of alcohol, as many tonics and elixirs of the time contained a high percentage of alcohol. As industrialization progressed and American cities prospered, saloons became a social hub for the working class. In an effort to draw more patrons, saloons created the ‘‘free lunch’’—free only after the patron had laid down his money for drinks. As the Civil War dragged on, most American distilleries were closed, as they were considered ‘‘nonessential industries’’ in the war effort (Jahns 2003, p. 11). This led to an increase in the production of illegal alcohol, and moonshining, bootlegging, and the smuggling of alcohol from Canada and the tropics flourished.
Temperance Societies During the initial decades of the nineteenth century, wine and beer were not looked down upon, but as the midcentury approached, the notion developed that all spirits were sinful and wrong. T. S. Arthur (1809–1885) expressed the sentiments of an increasing number of concerned citizens when he declared in Grappling with the Monster (1877), ‘‘[t]he CURSE is upon us, and there is but one CURE: Total Abstinence, by the help of God, for the Individual, and Prohibition for the State’’ (Furnas 1965, p. 15). Such beliefs led to the growth of the temperance movement, which held that drinking was a serious threat to family life and that the use of alcohol should be limited, if not banned outright. The U.S. temperance movement originated around 1826, with the formation of the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance. The efforts of this group led to a decrease in per capita consumption of
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pure alcohol, from a high of more than seven gallons per year in 1830 to just over three per year in 1840, the largest ten-year drop in U.S. history (‘‘Alcohol,’’ 1998 p. 149). Over the next few years, more temperance organizations of a general and national character were formed than during any other period in U.S. history. By 1832 all but three states had societies. The Washingtonian movement, organized in Baltimore in 1840, was followed by the Martha Washington movement in 1841. The Sons of Temperance formed in 1842, as did the Order of Rechabites, and the Congressional Temperance Society of 1833 was revived on the basis of total abstinence (Cherrington 1920, p. 94). The first state to adopt a law prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcohol was Maine, in 1851. The famous Presbyterian clergyman Lyman Beecher exclaimed from the pulpit ‘‘This thing is of God, that glorious Maine law was a square and grand blow right between the horns of the Devil’’ (Eddy 1887, p. 425). Soon Delaware, following Maine’s example, passed its first prohibition law, only to have it declared unconstitutional the following year. Over the following years, similar laws were enacted in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, and Minnesota. They met with varying fates, including veto by governors, repeal by legislatures, and invalidation by state supreme courts. Not all members of the public were opposed to drinking. In the 1850s, citizens of Chicago fought against the enforcement of Sunday closing laws, which prohibited saloons from serving alcohol on the Sabbath. According to Virgil W. Peterson (1949), an armed mob of protesters burst into the city’s business district, only to be met by police. Fortunately, the mob was dispersed before the mayor found it necessary to use the cannon he had hurriedly planted around City Hall (p. 120). Conversely, in 1865, women in the town of Greenfield, Ohio, frustrated with their drunk and disorderly men, took it upon themselves to break into the local saloon and wreck the establishment; they then proceeded to Linn’s drug store, where they smashed more casks of alcohol (July 28, 1865). The Civil War years were anomalous ones for the temperance movement. Those involved in the crusade against the immoralities of alcohol were either off fighting in the war or too busy aiding the war effort. Upon the war’s end, temperance societies once again took up the fight. In 1874, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded. The only temperance organization still in operation, the WCTU has worked continuously since its inception to educate the public and to influence policies that discourage the use of alcohol and other drugs (‘‘Alcohol,’’ 1998, p. 149).
Politics and Alcohol When asked his opinion of whiskey, one Southern senator remarked: Well, if by whiskey you mean that degradation of the noble barley, that burning fluid which sears
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Tree of Temperance. One of a pair of prints issued by A. D. Fillmore in 1855 extolling the social and moral benefits of temperance and condemning the evils of alcohol. The Library of Congress
the throats of the innocent, that vile liquid that sets men to fighting in low saloons, from whence they go forth to beat their wives and children, that liquor the Devil spawns which reddens the eye, coarsens the features, and ages the body beyond its years, then I am against it with all my soul. But, sir, if by whiskey you mean that diadem of the distiller’s art, that nimble golden ambrosia which loosens the tongue of the shy, gladdens the heart of the lonely, comforts the afflicted, rescues the snake-bitten, warms the frozen and brings the joys
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of conviviality to men during their hard-earned moments of relaxation, then I am four-square in favor of whiskey. From these opinions I shall not waver. (Lowry 1994, p. 6)
These words summarize the contradictory positions many politicians held. The temperance movement shaped political rhetoric, and parties with names such as the ‘‘Rum Democrats’’ and the ‘‘Temperance Men’’ sprang up. When Father Theobald Matthew of Ireland toured the United States from 1849 to 1851, administering the pledge of total
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abstinence to some 600,000 persons in twenty-five states, he was awarded with a White House dinner and a Senate reception (Couling 1862, p. 326). Ironically, the same government that had praised Father Matthew for his antidrinking campaign concluded a treaty with King Kamehameha III of Hawaii in 1850 permitting the sale of liquor in the king’s formerly sovereign nation. If some fought against alcohol, other fought to protect its availability. In response to the repeal of the Maine’s 1851 law prohibiting alcohol, John Pendleton Kennedy remarked: ‘‘Many quack politicians have been wasting their energies for years, upon the abortive attempt to legislate peaceable families into the disuse of spirituous liquors, by bringing alcohol into platforms and making parties upon it: —but alcohol has gained the day and the Maine Liquor Law has become a dead letter’’ (Kennedy 1861, p. 37). Temperance advocates such as Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts (1812–1875) and Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy (1816–1891) of Kansas criticized the idea of federal revenues coming from the liquor industry. With the onset of the Civil War, the federal government reinstituted excise taxes on whiskey and tobacco in an effort to fund the Union army, and in 1862 it imposed a liquor and beer tax. Rates increased several times between 1863 and 1868, and the initial tax of 20 cents per gallon eventually rose to $2 per gallon (McGrew 1972). In response, alcohol producers engaged in mass tax-evasion schemes and organized the first industry lobby—the United States Brewers Association. The Association rapidly launched a legislative campaign and succeeded in 1863 in reducing the tax rate on beer from $1 to 60 cents (Cherrington 1969 [1920], p. 157). Following the war, alcohol taxes were kept in place as a means to help finance the rebuilding of the nation. Faced with enormous debt, both state and federal governments continued to collect and enforce the whisky taxes. Yet, the federal government noted an interesting phenomenon: As the rates increased, the revenues did not. In fact, the number of gallons reported actually declined. Various attempts were made to enforce the tax laws; for example, in 1868 the sum of $25,000 was appropriated for the detection of violators. Still, fraud continued almost unabated. Liquor was stockpiled to hedge against future tax increases, as taxes were not applicable to liquor on hand. Congress eventually reduced the tax from a high of $2 per gallon to 50 cents in 1869. The happy result was a rise in collections from $13.5 million in 1868, to $45 million in 1869, and $55 million the following year. Taking further precautions, the government stipulated that new stamps be developed for alcohol containers to preclude counterfeiting and tampering (Cherrington 1969 [1920], pp.156–162). While the Civil War marked a hiatus in nineteenthcentury struggles over alcohol consumption, following
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the war temperance societies resumed and expanded their activities. These activities eventually led to the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol from its passage in 1919 until its repeal in 1933. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Alcohol.’’ West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1998. Cherrington, Ernest H. The Evolution of Prohibition in the United States of America. Westerville, Ohio: American Issue Press, 1920. Reprint, Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1969. Couling, Samuel. History of the Temperance Movement in Great Britain and Ireland. London: William Tweedie, 1862. Eddy, Richard. Alcohol in History: An Account of Intemperance in All Ages. New York: The National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1887. ‘‘Female Riot in Greenfield, Ohio—Putting Down Rum.’’ Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, Friday, July 28, 1865. Furnas, J. C. The Life and Times of the Late Demon Rum. New York: Putnam, 1965. Jahns, Art. ‘‘The Windsor/Walkerville Connection.’’ Walkerville Times, March 2003. Kennedy, John Pendleton. The Border States: Their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1861. Lowry, Thomas P. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994. McGrew, Jane Lang. ‘‘History of Alcohol Prohibition.’’ National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972. Peterson, Virgil W. ‘‘Vitalizing Liquor Control.’’ Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 40, no. 2. (1949): 119–134. Anurag Biswas
SMOKING AND TOBACCO Though they were bitter enemies, at least one thing united many men in the Union with both women and men in the Confederacy: their fondness for tobacco. The plant was the stimulant of choice for soldiers, as well as for southern women on the home front. Over the course of the war, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes became popular among Union and Confederate soldiers. The use of cigarettes on the battlefield laid the groundwork for the mass production and consumption of cigarettes that began during the 1880s and became popular among both women and men by the 1920s.
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A chewing tobacco emblem. Prior to the Civil War, Americans either chewed, dipped, or smoked tobacco in pipes. Lacking the time and equipment needed for these consumption methods, many soldiers took to smoking cigarettes, a habit they continued in civilian life. The Library of Congress
Tobacco Use before the Civil War Tobacco, whether chewed or smoked, was an early and popular product of the New World. After learning its use from Native Americans during the colonial period, Europeans who had spent time in North, Central, and South America took the practice back to Europe. Indigenous people in the Chesapeake region of North America often smoked tobacco in pipes. By 1612 English settlers in Virginia were cultivating the plant and it soon became the main export crop of the North American colonies. The cigarette, in particular, had its origins in South and Central America, where the Maya smoked tobacco wrapped in banana skin, bark, and maize leaves. The Spanish gave these leaf-wrapped tobacco sticks the name ‘‘papalettes,’’ and replaced the maize-wrappers with fine paper. By the mid-nineteenth century papalettes crossed into France, where the tobacco monopoly there named them cigarettes.
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In the United States people indulged in tobacco even though they suspected it was unhealthy and found it socially unpleasant. One encyclopedia published during the nineteenth century described tobacco as ‘‘bitter, acrid, and poisonous.’’ John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) was quoted in the February 25, 1861, edition of the Fayetteville Observer as contending that ‘‘abandonment of the use of tobacco would add five years to the average human life.’’ Nevertheless, pipe smoking emerged as the most popular form of tobacco consumption during the colonial period, and it continued into the antebellum era among men in both sections and women in the South. Even president’s wives smoked pipes, including Rachel Donelson Jackson (1767–1828), the Tennessee-reared wife of Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), the seventh president of the United States, and Margaret Mackall Taylor (1788– 1852), the Maryland-born wife of Zachary Taylor (1784– 1850), the twelfth U.S. president. Members of the elite
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TOBACCO ADVERTISING AND THE CIVIL WAR From the stereotypical Indian chief to the contemporary image of the Marlboro Man, tobacco manufacturers have exploited American iconography to promote their products. It is not surprising, then, that the Civil War, a decisive moment in United States history, emerged as a popular theme in tobacco packaging and advertising. During the war itself, companies targeted tobacco users on both sides of the conflict with advertisements that reflected their divergent political beliefs. In the years following the war, however, manufacturers used advertising images to bring about reconciliation between the North and the South. As sectional tensions heated up, tobacco companies marketed snuff, chewing tobacco, and cigars to Southerners with package labels that depicted images of slavery and Southern political leaders. An 1859 label perpetuated the myth of the happy slave by featuring a smiling slave family enjoying the father’s banjo playing. On another label, a manufacturer of Cuban cigars featured John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina politician who first advocated states’ rights and later became the seventh Vice President of the United States (Quigley 2006, p. 55). During the war, tobacco package labels continued to reflect the allegiances of both sides. A Petersburg, Virginia, manufacturer portrayed cannons on its product labels. One 1862 label featured Union soldiers under the banner, ‘‘Our Country’s Pride.’’ ‘‘The Twin Sisters,’’ an 1863 label by C. S. Allen & Company, depicted profile images of embracing sisters who represented Liberty and Union. Labels intended to appeal to Unionists also used eagles, shields, and the Stars and Stripes as symbols of liberty (Quigley 2006, pp. 55–56). After the Reconstruction era, manufacturers once again used Civil War images to generate a mass market for the burgeoning cigarette industry. One historian has written that tobacco
also dabbled in the use of snuff during the revolutionary era, in imitation of European aristocrats, and took up cigar smoking after soldiers adopted the practice during the Mexican War (1846–1848). By far the most common form of consuming tobacco before the Civil War, however, was chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco was distinctly American and could be found in the mouths of yeoman farmers in the South as well as settlers on the expanding frontier. The practice was especially prevalent in the rural South. ‘‘The South Carolina Gentleman,’’ a song included in Songs of the War . . . , published in 1863, mocked a tobaccochewing slave owner: This South Carolina gentleman, one of the present time. He chews tobacco by the pound, and spits upon the floor, If there is not a box of sand behind the nearest door; And when he takes a weekly spree he clears a mighty track
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companies in the North and South used themes of Civil War reconciliation to appeal to consumers. The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, published an advertisement containing sketches of Northern and Southern senators accompanied by testimonies about Blackwell’s Bull Durham Tobacco (August 2, 1884, col. D). Likewise, the Duke Tobacco Company of Durham, North Carolina, published a twenty-nine-page souvenir album in 1889 titled ‘‘The Heroes of the Civil War.’’ It featured multicolored images of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and other war heroes interspersed between advertisements for the company’s various brands of cigarettes. The company’s purpose in producing the album was to promote ‘‘kindly feeling’’ between the sections (Blight 2001, p. 201). According to Blight, ‘‘those famous generals, dead and alive, depicted in colorful sketches by the Duke Company . . . had become commodities; their images were salable memories in the name of good will and good business’’ (Blight, p. 201). ADRIENNE M. PETTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ‘‘Images of Native Americans in Advertisements.’’ Available online at http:// www.cwrl.utexas.edu/. News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), August 2, 1884; issue 66; col. D. Quigley, Paul D. H. ‘‘Tobacco’s Civil War: Images of the Sectional Conflict on Tobacco Package Labels.’’ Southern Cultures 12 (2006): 53–57.
Of everything that bears the shape of whiskeyskin, gin and sugar—brandy sour, peach and honey, Irrepressible cocktail, rum and gum and luscious Apple-jack (p. 28)
Although they were teetotalers for the most part, some slaves also had a healthy appetite for pipe smoking and chewing tobacco, whether they were working, enjoying leisure time or celebrating a rare holiday. In his classic 1974 book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Eugene Genovese explains that slaves traded and bartered goods for tobacco and, if possible, grew their own. They soaked tobacco in sugar and honey in order to chew it. Another way of consuming tobacco prevalent in the South was snuff, a form of powdered tobacco, usually flavored, that people typically packed between their cheek and gum in a practice known as dipping. The manufacture of chewing tobacco and snuff was based in Richmond, Virginia. The city boasted a sizable slave labor force and convenient access for shipping the finished product to
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major markets. In his 1996 book Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris, Richard Kluger writes that, on the eve of the Civil War, more than fifty tobacco factories were operating in Richmond, Virginia.
Tobacco Use during the Civil War The outbreak of the Civil War not only disrupted tobacco production in Richmond’s factories but also hampered the growing of tobacco in the southern countryside. In March 1862 the Confederate Congress passed a joint resolution recommending that states plant food crops instead of tobacco. After the First Battle of Manassas, several tobacco warehouses in Richmond were converted into prisons for Union soldiers. These limits on tobacco planting and manufacturing, however, did not curb southerners’ robust appetite for it. In account after account Union soldiers unaccustomed to seeing women use tobacco were shocked when they observed women engaged in the practice. Zenas T. Haines, a member of the Massachusetts Fortyfourth Regiment, wrote a letter from Washington, North Carolina, on March 20, 1863, where he and other troops occupied the home of an enslaved woman in order to seek shelter from a drenching downpour. He sat watching ‘‘Aunt Fanny’’ in amazement as she dipped snuff: Our presence must have caused a large consumption of this consoling article. She transferred the snuff from a tin box to her mouth with a sweet gum wood stick, which she used like a toothbrush, and then left the handle sticking out of her mouth. Aunt Fanny afforded me the first opportunity I ever had of witnessing the operation of ‘‘dipping,’’ [ . . . ] which is said to prevail among the white women as well as the black ones at the South. (p. 87)
Bell Irvin Wiley, author of The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union, quotes soldier John Tallman, who wrote, ‘‘thare are some nice looking girls, but they will chew tobacco, Sweet little things. Don’t you think ‘I’ for instance would . . . make a nice showing rideing [sic] along in a carriage with a young lady, me spitting tobacco juice out of one side of the carriage and she out the other . . . wall aint that nice, oh, cow!’’ (1971, p. 101). Even some Confederate soldiers found tobacco chewing and snuff dipping among women to be unladylike and distasteful, as Wiley notes in The Life of Billy Yank. Philip Daingerfield Stephenson of the 13th Arkansas Infantry and Washington Artillery expressed amazement about the snuff habit of a woman who visited him while he was sick: ‘‘I found, oh I found that my pretty Josephine ‘dipped!’ Dipped snuff! Alas, alas! How rude the awakening. The sweet ideal shattered irreparably. For no conceivable future enchantment could reconstruct that ideal— with a snuff stick in her mouth’’ (p. 368). Civilians in the border states indulged in tobacco use too. In a January 7, 1863, article in The Daily Cleveland, it was reported that in Missouri, ‘‘tobacco is used among
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natives in the rural districts indiscriminately by both sexes, children as well as adults, both for chewing and smoking.’’ So popular was tobacco among women and men in the Confederacy that ordinary citizens expressed their appreciation to the troops with gifts of tobacco. Washington Lafayette Gammage, in his history of the Fourth Arkansas regiment, reported that hundreds of ‘‘weary soldiers’’ in his regiment received ‘‘shoes and hats and coats and tobacco from the grateful people’’ as they marched through Lexington, Kentucky, in September 1863. Northern women also sent tobacco to their loved ones serving in the Union army, but they eschewed the use of tobacco themselves. During the 1830s, in fact, many Northern women reformers became involved in the temperance movement. In addition to condemning alcohol consumption and gambling, these women targeted tobacco use for health reasons and on moral grounds. An 1841 issue of The Emancipator, warned readers, ‘‘if your children ever hanker after the vile weed, so as to form any of these slavish disgusting habits, it will, in nine cases out of ten, be your own fault. If you cling even stealingly to the loathsome wormleaf yourself, they will find it out, and you cannot expect to deter them’’ (Humphrey 1841, p. 172).
Cigarette Smoking after the War The temperance movement ebbed during the Civil War, but it regained momentum later, when cigarette manufacturing and smoking became more widespread. During the war more and more soldiers turned to cigarettes as a way to achieve a quick escape from the harshness of the battlefield. Many Union soldiers who had become hooked on tobacco during the war exposed civilians to the practice once they returned home. As various manufacturers found ways to market cigarettes after the war, many civilians and veterans alike became prime consumers of the new product. In response, some women’s groups in the North stepped up their campaign against tobacco. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement targeted the evils of cigarettes, in particular, and expressed alarm over their growing use not only among men but also among boys. In Connecticut, according to the article ‘‘To Be Taught Good Habits’’ in an 1886 issue of the Boston Daily Advertiser, a temperance advocate named Miss Greenwood secured passage of a bill that authorized teaching public school children the evil effects of using tobacco and liquor. Jerome E. Brooks reprints in his 1954 book The Mighty Leaf: Tobacco through the Centuries a message the temperance movement distributed in a pamphlet: ‘‘I’ll never use tobacco, no; It is a filthy weed; I’ll never put it in my mouth.’’ Said Little Robert Reed. ‘‘It hurts the health; it makes bad breath; ’Tis very bad indeed. I’ll never, never use it, no!’’ Said Little Robert Reed (pp. 242–243)
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Although some middle class women in the South increasingly became active in the temperance movement, most rural women continued to crave tobacco. According to an 1896 article in the News and Observer, ‘‘In Court for Failing to Provide His Wife with Snuff and Tobacco,’’ a woman in Mooresville, North Carolina, even went so far as to take her husband to court for failing to provide for her needs because he went off and ‘‘stayed some two or three days, and not a chew of tobacco or a dip of snuff in the house.’’ BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooks, Jerome E. The Mighty Leaf: Tobacco through the Centuries. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952. Fayetteville Observer, (Fayetteville, NC) Monday, February 25, 1861; issue 999; col. F. Gammage, Washington Lafayette. The Camp, the Bivouac, and the Battlefield, Being the History of the Fourth Arkansas Regiment, from Its First Organization Down to the Present Date. Little Rock: Arkansas Southern Press, 1958. Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. Gottsegen, Jack J. Tobacco: A Study of Its Consumption in the United States. New York: Pitman Publishing Corp., 1940. Haines, Zenas T. Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862–3. Boston: Printed at the Herald Job Office, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online:
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Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Humphrey. ‘‘Keep Your Children from Using Tobacco.’’ The Emancipator, February 18, 1841; issue 43, p. 172, col C. ‘‘In Court for Failing to Provide His Wife with Snuff and Tobacco.’’ The News and Observer, (Raleigh, NC) July 21, 1896; issue 122, pg. 3, col D. Kluger, Richard. Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Palmer, George Putnam. Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Patriotic Songs: New York, May, 1864. New York: Loyal Publication Society, 1864. Songs of the War . . . , Albany: J. Munsell, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. ‘‘To Be Taught Good Habits: A Bill to Instruct School Children of the Evil Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco Passes the Connecticut House.’’ Boston Daily Advertiser, February 25, 1886; issue 48, col F. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, [1971]. ‘‘Women and Children Chewing Tobacco.’’ The Daily Cleveland, January 7, 1863; issue 5; col C. Adrienne M. Petty
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Gale Library of Daily Life
American Civil War
Gale Library of Daily Life
American Civil War VOLUME 2
Steven E. Woodworth EDITOR
Health and Medicine n
Health and Medicine Overview
Twenty-first-century Americans are likely to react with horror when reading about or—worse still—seeing graphic depictions of medicine as it was practiced during the Civil War. For those who have grown up taking for granted the best medical care history has yet known, the standards of care and the level of ignorance of Civil War medical men are indeed a shocking contrast. Yet the physicians of the mid-nineteenth century were not fools, and the surgeons of the Civil War armies were not—for the most part, at least—uncaring and incompetent quacks. During the war years, dedicated medical personnel applied themselves diligently to repairing the damage war had wrought and made real progress in that direction. On the civilian front, throughout the nineteenth century the medical profession made steady progress in combating the many ills to which human flesh is heir, and a measure of its success can be seen in steadily rising average life expectancies. For the average modern student of the war the limitations of Civil War medicine are perhaps most vividly pictured by the typical army surgeon’s medical instrument kit, in which the most prominent object was a large bone saw. Surgeons of the day plied such saws actively in cutting through bones as part of the operation of amputating a limb. Amputations were appallingly common during the war, and numerous accounts of major battles tell of steadily growing piles of severed limbs outside the field hospitals where the surgeons were hard at work. Adding to the horror of the scene, supplies of anesthesia might well run out before the midway point of a major battle, and subsequent amputations were performed with the aid of several burly male nurses pinioning the screaming patient to the operating table. The prevalence of amputation was not, however, entirely a factor of medical incompetence. Civil War rifles fired large slugs, usually about 0.58 of an inch in diameter, made of soft lead. Traveling at low velocity, such a slug would carry bits of soiled clothing with it
into the body, starting the process of infection at the moment of wounding. Upon striking a bone, the slug would flatten and shatter the bone rather than pierce it cleanly. The resulting mass of splintered bone and mangled flesh would present severe challenges even to modern surgeons trying to save a limb. Even if the bone could be set, the infection that often followed such a wound often proved fatal to the patient, and the only way to be sure of removing all of the infection was to remove the area of damage. Numerous accounts tell of wounded soldiers who steadfastly refused amputation only to die of gangrene or blood poisoning several weeks later. Generally for a shattered limb, amputation was the only reasonable treatment and proved to be a life-saving one in many cases. That amputation was not more effective than it was in saving life was due to what was probably the greatest shortcoming of the Civil War medical profession: an all but complete ignorance of germs and of antiseptic practices. Surgeons did not realize that they were spreading infection by using unsterilized instruments in one operation after another. Often during a major battle, Civil War surgeons came to look more like butchers than physicians, wiping their bone saws on their aprons before starting the next amputation. Infection of the stump could often follow and sometimes proved fatal. Still, odds of survival were better for amputees than for those with shattered limbs who refused the procedure. Civilians, of course, rarely had to face the horrors of amputation. Yet disease could and frequently did carry off Americans of any age group living in any part of the country, and medical care could be as inadequate on the home front as it was on the battle fronts. Cholera and typhoid were common and deadly diseases throughout the United States during this period. It was typhoid that took the life of Lincoln’s favorite son, Willie, in February 1862. Small pox was not yet extinct and still took many lives, as did a host of other maladies. Doctors did what they could, but the medicines of the day could be as bad as—or worse than—the diseases they were supposed to
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Battlefield Wounds
THE CONQUEST OF PAIN One of the most noteworthy medical advances of the nineteenth century—the discovery and use of reliable general anesthetics— took place in the 1840s, less than two decades before the Civil War. Prior to the introduction of ether and chloroform, surgery (including dental extractions) and childbirth were dreaded ordeals. Chloroform, also known as methyl trichloride, was discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie (1782–1848), an American physician, and rediscovered independently in 1832 by Euge`ne Soubiran, a French chemist, and Justus von Liebig, a German professor. Guthrie’s method of synthesizing chloroform was relatively simple; it involved mixing chlorinated lime with whiskey. The compound was known locally as ‘‘Guthrie’s sweet whiskey.’’ Diethyl ether, first synthesized by the German Valerius Cordus in 1540, was known to have anesthetic properties but was not used in surgery until 1842. In March of that year, Crawford Long (1815–1878), a physician practicing in Georgia, used ether to anesthetize a patient in order to remove a cancerous tumor from his neck. Ether was also used in the mid-1840s for dental surgery. The most important use of both anesthetics from the standpoint of the civilian population in those last years before the Civil War, however, was the relief of pain in childbirth. Dr. Long began to use ether to help women in childbirth shortly after his successful 1842 operation; in fact, when he died in 1878, he was on his way home after delivering a baby. The use of either anesthetic to ease the pain of delivery was controversial in the 1840s, however. Dr. Long was accused of witchcraft by some Southerners and of disturbing the natural order by others. Many people interpreted Genesis 3:16 as implying that easing the pain of childbirth by administering anesthesia is contrary to God’s will. When the Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson
cure. Many mid-nineteenth-century medicines were purgatives, since the medical wisdom of the day held that sickness might be cured by purging impurities from the system. Among the worst was mercury calomel, which was not only a diuretic but also a poison. Midnineteenth-century medical men were not oblivious to the fact that the calomel they prescribed did not necessarily produce the desired results in many of their patients, so they took the logical step and began prescribing much larger doses. Not all of the doctors’ ministrations were harmful though. Quinine is an example of a Civil War era medicine that was actually somewhat effective against malaria, although doctors prescribed it fairly freely for many sorts of diseases against which it had no discernable effect. Medical authorities also strove to design and build hospitals that were both comfortable and healthy for the sick and wounded soldiers and made great advances in the quality of hospital care. The giant Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond was the largest and most dramatic example, but a number of northern hospitals established during the
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(1811–1870) first administered chloroform to a woman in childbirth, he was criticized by some conservative clergy. The debate over the moral legitimacy of obstetrical anesthesia, however, was effectively ended in 1853, when Dr. John Snow (1813–1858)—a devout churchgoer—administered chloroform to Queen Victoria for the birth of her youngest son, Prince Leopold. Thereafter, women on both sides of the Atlantic were able to benefit from the use of anesthesia during delivery. Neither drug was ideal, however. Ether is highly flammable and is easily ignited by an open flame, a spark, or even a hot metal surface. It also frequently causes nausea and vomiting when the patient recovers consciousness. Its chief advantage over chloroform is that it has a higher margin of safety (that is, the difference between a therapeutic and a toxic dose is greater). Chloroform, while nonflammable, requires a skilled anesthesiologist, as it is relatively easy to give a patient an overdose. In addition, chloroform has been known to cause liver damage and abnormal heart rhythms leading to death. Both compounds have been largely replaced by halothane, sevoflurane, and other modern inhaled anesthetics; nevertheless, for civilians and soldiers alike during the Civil War, these first general anesthetics were truly ‘‘wonder drugs.’’ REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Keys, Thomas E. The History of Surgical Anesthesia. Rev. ed. New York: Dover Press, 1963. Radford, Ruby L. Prelude to Fame: Crawford Long’s Discovery of Anaesthesia. Los Altos, CA: Geron-X, 1969.
war were at least equally good. Most physicians took their duties very seriously and worked steadily throughout the war years to improve the quality of their care. The experience gained by surgeons during the Civil War brought important improvements to both military and civilian medicine in the years that followed. Nevertheless, medical care presents one of the most striking contrasts between the everyday life of the mid-nineteenth century and that of the early twenty-first. Steven E. Woodworth
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Civil War combat was up close and personal. Because of the relatively limited range of the weapons used and the inability to accurately observe enemy formations from any great distance, most fighting was done within a few hundred yards of the opposition. As a result, munitions retained their maximum ability to deliver horrific damage to the human body.
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Battlefield Wounds
The threat of injury in some sort of military action was an almost daily reality for most troops. Soldiers faced wounds or death from three distinct classes of weapons: small arms (pistols, shotguns, rifles, muskets, and carbines), artillery, and edged weapons (swords, sabers, and bayonets). Each presented its own unique threat to a serviceman’s body, though the degree of their lethality and the damage they could inflict varied due to a host of factors. The injuries caused by these weapons ranged from minor to serious, disabling, or fatal. They also had a psychological impact on both the victim and those witnessing his distress.
Wounds from Small Arms Fire According to statistics in the multivolume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, published by the U.S. government between 1870 and 1888, the vast majority of battlefield wounds, 88 percent to be precise, were caused by rifle or musket fire. Pistol or shotgun rounds were responsible for 9 percent of the wounds recorded at field hospitals. Twelve percent of gunshot wounds were caused by the .69-caliber smoothbore musket round, whereas 76 percent were inflicted by the more common .58-caliber ‘‘Minie´’’ bullet (commonly, but incorrectly, called a ball), used in the rifled muskets of both armies. Between 1863 and 1865 fewer smoothbores were in use than was the case in 1861 and 1862. Hence, the number of injuries caused by .69-caliber rounds decreased dramatically, while those inflicted by Minie´ bullets rose. Both smoothbore and rifled muskets propelled a soft lead projectile at a relatively slow muzzle velocity. While both could kill, the Minie´ bullet caused infinitely greater damage than the round .69-caliber musket ball because of its conical shape. According to Confederate surgeon Deering Roberts, smoothbore musket balls ‘‘caused many fractures in bones on the extremities’’ (Bollet 2002, p. 148). The Minie´ bullet’s effect on its victim, however, was usually much worse because the soft lead bullet tended to flatten and distort when it hit, greatly magnifying its potential for damage. ‘‘The shattering, splintering, and splitting of a long bone by the impact of the minie . . . ball,’’ Roberts recorded, was ‘‘both remarkable and frightful’’ (Bollet 2002, p. 148). A surgical textbook published during the war also spoke of the ‘‘frightful traces of devastation’’ left by Minie´ bullets (Bollet 2002, p. 146). In his memoir, The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War (1987), Albert G. Hart noted that the rifled musket and Minie´ bullet combined to vastly increase the striking power of projectiles, resulting in ‘‘more dangerous wounds.’’ Whereas a smoothbore round might be deflected from a thigh bone ‘‘with no serious injury,’’ a Minie´ bullet ‘‘under similar conditions might not only fracture, but crush two or three inches of the bone’’ (p. 34). The fact that a high percentage of wounds treated by field hospitals had been caused by Minie´ bullets and musket balls
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indicates that small arms fire was generally not immediately fatal. Indeed, there are many examples of men shot through the head who lingered for hours or days before they died. Where a man was hit could make a huge difference to his chances for survival. According to the Medical and Surgical History (1870–1888, vol. 3, p. 392), wounds to the chest or abdomen were either immediately fatal or led quickly to death; they were responsible for 51 percent of battlefield deaths but only 18 percent of recorded wounds. Injuries to the head and neck accounted for 42 percent of those killed in action, but a mere 11 percent of wounds. Hits to the legs or feet killed only 5 percent of those who died in battle, but on average produced 35 percent of a battle’s wounded, whereas injuries to the arms or hands were responsible for 3 percent of battlefield fatalities and 36 percent of wounds. In most cases, therefore, small arms fire wounded, rather than killed. The majority of men struck by small arms fire experienced similar sensations. In his memoir, Fighting for the Confederacy (1989), artilleryman Edward Porter Alexander recalled being hit by a sharpshooter’s bullet during the siege of Petersburg, Virginia (June, 1864 to April, 1865). Ricocheting off ‘‘hard ground,’’ the bullet flew upward and struck the colonel in the left shoulder, going under his shoulder bones and ‘‘lodging in the muscle behind.’’ Alexander felt his arm go numb, but ‘‘no real pain’’ (p. 445). E. D. Patterson recalled being struck by a bullet at very close range in the Battle of Frayser’s Farm, June 30, 1862. ‘‘I fell forward across my gun, my left arm useless falling under me,’’ he reported. However, Patterson ‘‘did not at the moment feel any pain, only a numbness all over my body. I felt as if someone had given me an awful jar, and fell as limber as a drunken man. I could not even tell where I was hit’’ (Wiley 1971 [1943], pp. 265–266). For most men, the first instinct after being hit was to determine the nature and extent of their wounds. In a memoir entitled Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac (1887), Frank Wilkeson recalled that wounded men ‘‘almost always tore their clothing away from their wounds, so as to see them and to judge of their character’’ (p. 204). Long experience made veterans ‘‘exceedingly accurate judges’’ of wounds and they could quickly tell whether an injury was fatal or not. Wounds from bullets, therefore, generally afforded men the opportunity to evaluate their chances of survival. Those injured by other weapons were often not so lucky.
Wounds from Artillery Fire Fragments from exploding shells accounted for 12 percent of all wounds treated at field hospitals, whereas grapeshot or canister rounds were responsible for 1 percent of the total (Medical and Surgical History,
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Injured Union soldiers housed in a hospital railroad car, February 27, 1864. Wounded soldiers did not always receive medical treatment on the battlefield or in field hospitals. Only those who did not die immediately, did not die before they could be reached by medical aid, or those without fatal wounds saw hospitals, such as this railroad car. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
1870–1888, vol. 3, p. 696). The small percentage of wounds resulting from artillery fire appears at first to make a case for the ineffectiveness of cannon on the Civil War battlefield. Close examination of after-action reports published in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, and of regimental histories, memoirs, and diaries, leads to a different conclusion, however. Official statistics reflect only those wounds treated at field hospitals. Men who were killed outright on the battlefield, who succumbed to their wounds before reaching medical aid, or who were considered to have mortal wounds upon reaching a hospital, were not recorded as wounded but rather as killed in action. For understandable reasons, no effort was made to officially determine the cause of death for these men. Thus, the nature and cause of their wounds never became part of the statistical record. In his Civil War Medicine (2002), Alfred Bollet points out that it is highly likely that artillery munitions—shells, grapeshot, and canister—accounted for a high percentage of fatal wounds on the battlefield (p. 84). The reasoning behind this assumption is easily understood: Civil War
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artillery was most effective in a defensive role. At great distances, field pieces fired solid shot (the stereotypical solid cast-iron round cannon ball) or exploding shells. Solid shot was intended to break down fortifications and structures, but could also be useful against tightly massed bodies of troops. A twelve-pound iron ball hurtling into the bodies of unprotected men would often cause crushing injuries that were quickly fatal. Shells, on the other hand, were designed to explode and throw jagged metal fragments in all directions, intending to inflict injuries and death over a wide area. Although shell fuses sometimes proved faulty and ordnance occasionally failed to explode or fragment satisfactorily, shellfire generally killed rather than wounded. Examples of lethal shell explosions are readily found. In a skirmish near Stevensburg, Virginia, in October 1863, a shell fired from a Confederate cannon exploded among a group of Union troops. The shell ripped off the top of one victim’s head, killing him instantly. Another quickly bled to death when a piece of shell ruptured an artery in his thigh. A third Federal was so badly torn apart by the
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Battlefield Wounds
explosion that his bowels and part of his spine protruded from his body. This final victim, although mortally wounded, was not killed instantly. The dying man begged his enemies for water and pleaded for them to shoot him and end his misery. Indeed, wounds from artillery fire were generally more gruesome than those caused by other means. Frank Wilkeson reported that the most horrific wound he ever saw was the result of an exploding shell. A Federal soldier, lying face down to obtain cover, was struck by a shell fragment that tore the flesh off both thighs, ‘‘exposing the bones.’’ The soldier bled to death within minutes (Wilkeson 1887, p. 205). Solid shot could be just as deadly. During the Mine Run Campaign, of November 26 to December 1, 1863, several men were killed when solid shot burrowed into the ground beneath their prone position. Although not a mark was found on their bodies, they had been killed by concussions. Wounds caused by grapeshot and canister were almost universally fatal. Considered close-range ordnance, grapeshot and canister were specially designed as antipersonnel weapons. Grapeshot consisted of ‘‘nine cast-iron balls of varying sizes’’ held between wooden plates that were secured together by ‘‘a vertical rod with nuts on each end’’ (Medical and Surgical History, 1870–1888, vol. 3, p. 697). Canister was a tin can filled with two dozen or so round musket balls. When either type of ammunition was fired, cannon became, in essence, huge shotguns. The wooden plates or tin can came apart, allowing the balls to spray over a wide area. Remnants of the plates, rod, nuts, and tin can also became projectiles. Effective up to a range of several hundred yards, a well-placed canister round could cover an area dozens of yards wide and deep. Men caught in its blast often received multiple wounds simultaneously and were sometimes all but obliterated by the impact. An eyewitness to the Battle of Franklin, of November 30, 1864, for example, described the terrible destruction caused by a Federal gunner firing off his cannon: ‘‘Like a huge thunder bolt that awful roar and flash went blasting through that crowd of men, annihilating scores. Arms, legs and mangled trunks were torn and thrown in every direction’’ (McDonough and Connelly 1983, p. 114). Few men hit by grapeshot or canister survived to reach a field hospital. It is this that accounts for the fact that only a tiny percentage of reported wounds were recorded as having been caused by artillery projectiles. By contrast, bountiful evidence of deaths inflicted by these weapons can be found in the testimony of men who survived the war.
Wounds from Edged Weapons Swords, sabers, and bayonets were responsible for only a minuscule number of wounds treated by surgeons—no more than 0.4 percent of the total (Bollet 2002, p. 84). Despite its widespread portrayal in works of art, fiction,
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and film, hand-to-hand combat was relatively rare in the Civil War. The effectiveness of small arms and artillery fire meant rival bodies of troops seldom came close enough to fight with bayonets or clubbed muskets— and one side or the other usually gave way before the moment of contact was reached. Nonetheless, such combat did on occasion take place, and when it did, witnesses or survivors were quick to recall its vicious finality. Injuries from the swords carried by officers were indeed rare. The officer’s sword was more a badge and tool of rank than a combat weapon. In close action an officer was more apt to use his pistol, and hence wounds or deaths from swords were quite unusual. Sabers, used almost exclusively by cavalry, were more formidable weapons, although mounted troops tended to prefer firearms to edged weapons in combat. When sabers were used, the very nature of a cavalry melee worked against their lethalness. Two men dueling with each other on moving horses generally slashed with their sabers rather than trying to stab. The result was seldom fatal, as the saber was designed to be a stabbing, not a cutting, weapon. The cuts about the face, hands, and arms that were most typical could be painful, but seldom proved fatal and often did not even require a visit to a surgeon. Bayonets and clubbed muskets were another story. Rare though bayonet fighting was, when it did occur it was incredibly savage. ‘‘It would be impossible to picture that scene in all of its horrors,’’ one Union colonel recalled of a bayonet fight. ‘‘I saw a Confederate . . . thrust one of our men through with the bayonet, and before he could draw his weapon from the ghastly wound, his brains were scattered on all of us that stood near, by the butt of a musket swung with terrific force’’ (McDonough and Connelly 1983, p. 117). Little wonder that wounds inflicted in this kind of combat almost invariably proved fatal and thus sent few men to hospitals.
Effect of Wounds on Morale Death and wounds inflicted on the battlefield had a psychological as well as a physical impact. Men unaccustomed to the realities of combat were shaken by their first exposure to the brutal damage or death inflicted by a wide variety of weapons. A sudden wave of casualties in the ranks of a green unit could lead it to flee to the rear. Sometimes, the death of an admired leader, or simply a single particularly gruesome wound, could cause a military formation to break apart. However, even in their first combat, most soldiers absorbed the horror around them and continued to perform their duty. Caught up in circumstances and influenced by the odd mixture of emotions that overcome men in battle, they kept fighting. In the aftermath of their initial combat, however, most soldiers recoiled at the evidence of the damage inflicted by rival armies.
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AMBROSE BIERCE’S ‘‘CHICKAMAUGA’’ Ambrose Bierce’s short story ‘‘Chickamauga’’ (1889) contains horrifying descriptions of the injuries inflicted on soldiers and civilians alike during the Civil War, as the following excerpt shows. Bierce (1842–1914?) works these descriptions into a plotline full of irony: A little boy wanders off into the woods to play soldier, falls asleep in the forest, and wakes up after dark to have his innocent childish notions of soldiering destroyed by the realities of war: One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure. . . . The [boy’s father] loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. . . . [B]ack at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child. Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. . . . A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal-a dog, a pig—he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. . . . Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him was alive with them-all moving toward the brook. . . .
appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child; the child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took a more serious view of the situation. . . . Shifting his position, [the child’s] eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He recognized the blazing building as his own home! For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a halfcircuit of the ruin. There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles—the work of a shell. The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries-something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw-from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave this man the
SOURCE: Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. New York and Washington: Neale Publishing Company, 1909, pp. 46–57.
In his The Life of Johnny Reb (1971), the historian Bell Irvin Wiley traces a common evolution in the way soldiers responded to combat. One Georgian’s reaction to his first battle at Gaines’ Mill on June 27, 1862, was typical of those new to fighting. Recalling ‘‘friends falling on both sides dead and mortally wounded,’’ he found it ‘‘impossible to express’’ his feelings ‘‘when the fight was over and I saw what was done.’’ Viewing the battlefield he admitted ‘‘the tears came . . . free, oh that I never could behold such a sight again to think of it among civilized people killing one another like beasts’’ (Wiley 1971 [1943], p. 32).
Continued exposure to the hardships of soldiering and the realities of battle quickly transformed men into veterans, however. Before long they took death and wounds, even those of close friends and comrades, in stride. ‘‘I saw the body [of a man killed the previous day],’’ wrote Private Henry Graves, ‘‘and a horrible sight it was. Such sights do not affect me as they once did. I can not describe the change nor do I know when it took place, yet I know that there is a change for I look on the carcass of a man now with pretty much such feeling as I would do were it a horse or hog’’ (Wiley 1971 [1943], p. 35).
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Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck. REBECCA J. FREY
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Field Hospitals: An Overview
At Vicksburg, John T. Sibley saw a shell tear off the arm of a soldier standing nearby, and noted the lack of reaction among the men in his unit. ‘‘I am astonished at my own indifference, as I never pretended to be brave; it distresses me at times when I am cool and capable of reflection to think how indifferent we become in the hour of battle when our fellowmen fall around us by scores’’ (Wiley 1971 [1943], p. 35). Union Captain Francis Donaldson, recalling childhood games in which he and his brother aped the ‘‘indifference’’ of famous military commanders to the ‘‘work of death’’ going on about them, remarked: ‘‘I little thought then that my attempts at being funny would ever be recalled to mind so vividly as they were at Gettysburg,’’ where two fellow officers ‘‘were shot down on either side [of] me, [one] killed outright, and to view with actual indifference an occurrence that at any other time would have horrified me’’ (Donaldson 1998, p. 322). Troops quickly hardened to the business of war. They viewed wounds and death as part of their trade and came to look upon them analytically. Such detachment, however, could never completely inure a soldier to the wounding or death of a dear friend or family member. Nor could it remove from his mind the fear of being maimed, disfigured, or left wounded on the field of battle without aid or assistance. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander. Ed. Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Cozzens, Peter. The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997. Donaldson, Francis Adams. Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experiences of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson, ed. J. Gregory Acken. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998. Hart, Albert G. The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War. Palmyra, VA: Old Soldier Books, 1987. McDonough, James Lee, and Thomas Connelly. Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983. The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861–1865), Surgical Section, Vol. 3. Prepared under the direction of Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1870–1888. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.
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Wilkeson, Frank. Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887. Jeffrey William Hunt
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Field Hospitals FIELD HOSPITALS : AN OVERVIEW
Jeffrey William Hunt COMRADES AND THE AMBULANCE CORPS
Jeffrey William Hunt TRIAGE AND SURGERY
Anurag Biswas EVACUATION HOSPITALS
J. Douglas Tyson and Jenny Lagergren
FIELD HOSPITALS: AN OVERVIEW No other part of the battlefield represented such an odd mixture of hope and terror as the field hospital. The writings of veterans almost universally picture it as a place to be feared and avoided if at all possible. To the men who survived the conflict, hospitals presented a gruesome compendium of the horrors of the war, second only to the sight of torn, bloated, lifeless bodies on the field of battle. Yet the field hospital’s staff, medicines, facilities, and surgeons were the only hope desperately wounded men had to save life and limb. It was predictable that there would be contradictory views of the hospital. Only there could wounded soldiers find relief from their pain, comfort and assistance in their weakened and helpless condition, and life-saving surgery and medical care. At the same time, however, the hospital was a site of agony and misery—the place where men with mangled limbs, bleeding bodies, torn flesh, blinded eyes, and worse, were brought together. It was the spot where overworked doctors hurriedly examined and probed painful wounds; where, all too often, surgeons used their instruments to amputate shattered and infected limbs. Field hospitals were facilities where mortally wounded men were given a few comforts and set aside to die. They were in short a concentration of the vilest aftereffects of battle. The common perception of Civil War hospitals and surgeons was generally quite negative during the conflict. Time did little to alter that point of view and, in fact, did much to reinforce it. The disorganized and grossly inadequate efforts made by both Union and Confederate medical departments at the start of the war were widely reported in newspapers of the day. However, both sides were able to rapidly improve the standard of care delivered to sick and wounded soldiers alike. This remarkable advance in battlefield medical
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HOSPITAL TRAINS The Civil War was the first railroad war. Both sides used trains to move troops and supplies to the front and transport sick and wounded men to general hospitals located throughout the North and South. Initially, ordinary boxcars were used to haul patients. These cars had no provisions for the feeding, care, or comfort of wounded soldiers, who endured journeys lasting hours, and sometimes days, without medical attention or basic necessities. The agony and misery such trips entailed was extreme, provoking demands for change. The industry-poor Confederacy could do little to remedy such problems. The North, with facilities for building locomotives and railway cars, developed hospital trains. Specially designed ‘‘ambulance cars’’ were built, each containing space for thirty hospital litters, suspended three high from stanchions by rubber straps. The litters, complete with mattresses and pillows, swung gently, preventing the pain previously caused by any movement of the trains. Each car had a seating area and a fully stocked pantry. A stove heated the cabin. Kitchen and dining cars accompanied the ambulance cars, as did sleeping cars for doctors and nurses staffing the train. The locomotive and tender were painted bright red, and U.S. Hospital Train was emblazoned in large red letters on every car. These trains provided all the facilities of an efficient and well-regulated hospital. Sick and injured troops were never without food, water, comfort, or medical care while being carried to their destination. JEFFREY WILLIAM HUNT
SOURCE: Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002.
practices saved many lives before the war was over (Bollet 2002, p. xiii). But improvements and innovations seldom made headlines and largely went unnoticed. The horror, fear, and sadness surrounding even an efficiently run and effective field hospital kept most veterans from seeing or understanding the vast change for the better made by dedicated doctors, surgeons, officers, and administrators. Postwar memoirs and regimental histories are full of stories of needless amputations conducted without anesthesia. Also prevalent are tales of incompetent surgeons, indifferent doctors, callous nurses or stretcher-bearers, and half-trained medical students conducting unnecessary surgery on injured soldiers simply to gain experience (Bollet 2002, p. xiii).
Perception vs. Reality The attitude of many soldiers toward the men who worked in field hospitals, and toward what went on in them, is abundantly clear in an account given by a Union
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officer wounded during the May 23 to July 9, 1863, siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana: The surgeons used a large Cotton Press for the butchering room & when I was carried into the building and looked around I could not help comparing the surgeons to fiends. . . . [A]ll around on the ground lay wounded men; some of them shrieking, some cursing & swearing & some praying; in the middle of the room was some 10 or 12 tables just large enough to lay a man on; these were used as dissecting tables & they were covered with blood; near & around the tables stood the surgeons with blood all over them & by the side of the tables was a heap of feet, legs & arms. (Wiley 1952, p. 148)
The bloody mass of waiting wounded, the tables, the appearance of the surgeons, and the agony of the injured were, of course, very real. But the words this injured soldier used to describe what he saw—‘‘butchering,’’ ‘‘fiends,’’ ‘‘dissecting’’—reveal all too well how he perceived those who were about to save his life. His point of view was hardly unusual. For people unaccustomed to the sight of mass casualties gathered together, or the instruments and operations of surgeons, revulsion and horror were common reactions. Wounds, after all, are horrific to look at; suffering is difficult to hear or see, and the methods used by doctors and surgeons to treat major wounds must, of necessity, sometimes cause pain. The very tools used to repair and heal—probes, saws, scalpels, needles—were enough to make most witnesses shudder, especially if they did not fully understand what was being done or why. Any modern person who has felt ill at ease while staring at medical instruments in a doctor or dentist’s office has had a similar, although certainly less intense, experience. Furthermore, field hospitals posed dangers that were unrecognized at the time. The Civil War was fought just prior to the discovery of bacteria and their role in causing infections, and the development of methods of sterilization used to prevent the transmission of disease from cross-contamination. One Federal surgeon, looking back on the war from the vantage point of 1918, was amazed at the ignorant practices employed between 1861 and 1865: We operated in old blood-stained and often pusstained coats. . . . We used un-disinfected instruments from un-disinfected plush-lined cases, and still worse, used marine sponges which had been used in prior pus cases and had been only washed in tap water. If a sponge or an instrument fell on the floor it was washed and squeezed in a basin of tap water and used as if it were clean. Our silk to tie blood vessels was un-disinfected. . . . The silk with which we sewed up all wounds was undisinfected. If there was any difficulty threading the needle we moistened it with . . . bacteria-laden saliva, and rolled it between bacteria-infected
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Field Hospitals: An Overview fingers. We dressed wounds with clean but undisinfected sheets, shirts, tablecloths, or other old soft linen rescued from the family ragbag. We had no sterilized gauze dressing, no gauze sponges. . . . We knew nothing about antiseptics and therefore used none. (Wiley 1952, p. 148)
Little wonder then, that wounds frequently became infected even after successful operations. Very often, injured men who survived the trip from the battlefield to the field hospital and underwent life-saving procedures died weeks or months later from the unrecognized bacteria that caused gangrene, tetanus, and other complications. Nonetheless, field hospitals saved many more lives than they took. Fortunate to be working, for the most part, on healthy young men, inured to hardship by a soldier’s life, surgeons and doctors ministered to a population with a better than average likelihood of healing and recovering. If infection could be avoided, and the wound was at all survivable, medical personnel usually managed to save life, if not limb.
Supplies At the war’s outset, the typical surgeon used his own personal instruments, usually brought into service from prewar private practice. He was authorized by the government to purchase and use whatever medicines or supplies he thought appropriate. Hospital stewards in every regiment carried a medical knapsack, which was similar in shape and size to the pack carried by infantrymen and worn in identical fashion. Union hospital steward Charles Johnson recalled that this knapsack contained such emergency supplies as ‘‘bandages, adhesive plaster, needles, artery forceps, scalpels, spirits of ammonia, brandy, chloroform and ether’’ (Commager 1973 [1950], pp. 195–196). The type and quantity of supplies and medicines at the field hospital was constrained by the necessity of mobility. The number of wagons and ambulances assigned to a hospital was finite, and care had to be taken not to overload vehicles that would be pulled by mules or horses over rough and difficult roads. The standard stock of medicines in a field hospital consisted of ‘‘opium, morphine, Dover’s powder, quinine, rhubarb, Rochelle salts, castor oil, sugar of lead, tannin, sulphate of copper, sulphate of zinc, camphor, tincture of opium, tincture of iron, tincture opii, camphorate, syrup of squills, simple syrup’’ and a wide variety of alcohol (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 195). Most medicines were compounded in liquid or powdered form. Few pills were available, so powders were typically mixed with water and drunk by the patient. Precise measurements were not made and surgeons simply apportioned the amount of medicine they thought necessary (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 195).
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The resulting lack of uniformity in supplies, instruments, and medicines proved a logistical nightmare. Combined with the widely varying levels of experience and skill found among surgeons and stewards, it also frequently resulted in poor or indifferent care for the sick and wounded. By late 1862, however, changes born of experience and good leadership began to address these concerns. Among the many vital improvements made by Jonathan Letterman, medical director of the Army of the Potomac from July 1862 to January 1864, was standardization of equipment and medicines for field hospitals. Letterman developed a thoroughly modern system of evacuating wounded from the battlefield, totally reformed the organization and staffing of field hospitals, and established standardization in the army’s Medical Department. Letterman introduced a standard medical kit for each doctor, equipped with exactly the same instruments, arranged in precisely the same fashion (Freemon 2001, p. 75). He also oversaw the adoption of the Autenrieth Wagon—a specially designed supply wagon that carried a standard set of surgical instruments and medicines, arranged to provide immediate and unfettered access in time of need. Because every wagon was identically organized, packed, and equipped, any surgeon could find exactly what he needed from any such wagon, regardless of the unit to which it belonged (Bollet 2002, pp. 244–245). These reforms, first instituted in the Army of the Potomac, were later extended to all Union armies and replicated as much as possible by the Confederates.
Organization One of the greatest challenges facing Union and Confederate medical departments was the problem of how best to utilize their resources. Every regiment was entitled to a surgeon, an assistant surgeon, and one hospital steward. The latter carried out the same function as the military medic or corpsman of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Surgeons held officer’s commissions, while the steward was equivalent in rank to a sergeant. Special duty men, drawn from regimental ranks, would do the odd jobs—cooking, drawing water, and so on— necessary for the hospital to function. All were responsible to the regimental commander. The titles of these men were sometimes deceptive, however. The term surgeon was applied to any officer assigned medical duties, even if he did not have surgical experience. Many ‘‘surgeons’’ were simply doctors, of varying educational background and experience, and some were mere medical students (Freemon 2001, p. 41). Nonetheless, the medical personnel assigned to a regiment were the primary source of care in camp and aid on the battlefield. As their unit moved toward battle, they selected a sheltered spot behind the lines on which
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Field Hospitals: An Overview
Surgical tent at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863. In their attempts at repairing battle-wounded soldiers, surgeons operating in field hospitals often labored long hours under grisly conditions. Wounded soldiers who survived amputation surgery often succumbed to infections contracted through the use of unsanitary medical equipment. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
to establish the regimental field hospital. If at all possible, the site chosen was near a source of water—either a stream or well—and beyond the range of small arms fire, if not always artillery fire. Houses or barns, if available, were often requisitioned for use by the surgeons. Such structures supplemented the meager four tents allotted to reach regimental hospital by army regulations: two small tents for the officers, one small kitchen tent, and one hospital tent capable of holding eight cots (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 194). At the beginning of the conflict every hospital was marked by a red flag. By early 1864, however, a yellow flag with a large green H painted or sewn on it was the standard banner used to designate the presence of a field hospital. These flags helped walking wounded, ambulances, and litter-bearers find the facility, and hopefully kept the enemy from firing on it (Bollet 2002, p. 218). The assistant surgeon, accompanied by the steward with his knapsack, followed closely behind the battle line. Their job was to establish a field dressing station as near to the firing line as practicable, where they would provide first aid and immediate emergency care. Here wounded men received initial treatment to stop bleeding, splint fractures, and relieve pain, usually through the administration of opiates.
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The assistant surgeon was also responsible for making initial triage decisions—determining the order by which wounded were taken to the regimental hospital, based on the severity of their wounds. Lightly wounded men had their injuries dressed and were either sent back to the firing line or ordered rearward under their own power. Badly hurt men whose lives might be saved by immediate surgery were assigned first priority for transportation by ambulance or stretcher-bearers. Those believed to have mortal wounds were made comfortable and set aside to die. If they did not die, they would be sent to the hospital when resources and time allowed (Bollet 2002, pp. 100–101). The regimental hospital system, used by both sides in the first year of the war, proved wasteful and inefficient. It required great redundancy in supplies and equipment and proved problematic on the battlefield. Even in a large engagement, a significant number of surgeons and stewards would be idle when their unit was not involved in combat, even as the small staffs of other hospitals were being overwhelmed by a flood of casualties. The wide range of skill levels among surgeons meant that the quality of care provided was uneven at best. Some regimental hospitals refused to treat wounded not from their own command, and there was an almost total
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Field Hospitals: An Overview
lack of coordination among the field hospitals, as well as between the field hospitals and the large general hospitals in rear areas. Once again it was Jonathan Letterman who developed the answer to seemingly intractable problems. His solution was to concentrate medical supplies and personnel in division hospitals. The elimination of regimental hospitals allowed for the pooling of surgeons and doctors (Freemon 2001, p. 75). The division hospitals were better staffed and equipped and became the primary field unit of the medical departments of North and South, although there were a few brigade-level hospitals, especially in the Rebel armies. The typical division hospital was run by a surgeon-in-chief, who was one of the most experienced surgeons at the facility. He directed the activities of three operating surgeons and nine assistant surgeons. There was also an officer who oversaw the provision of food and shelter for staff and patients; he worked under the direction of the surgeon-in-chief, as did the enlisted men assigned duty as nurses (Bollet 2002, pp. 106–107). The best surgeons were attached to division or brigade hospitals, where they were tasked with performing surgical procedures assigned on the basis of skill and experience. Military rank was irrelevant in these assignments. As a result, a soldier would have the services of the man best suited to deal with his particular injury. Surgeons of lesser abilities staffed the dressing stations behind the battle lines, administering emergency aid and conducting first-level triage. Almost all surgery, however, was performed at the brigade or division level (Freemon 2001, p. 46). Medical equipment and supplies were also issued on the brigade or division level. The average Union division hospital was issued eighteen wagons, including four Autenrieth wagons, twenty-two hospital tents, and sufficient surgical instruments, equipment, medicines, and other supplies to care for 7,000 to 8,000 casualties at one time (Coggins 1962, p. 116). This equipment was in addition to the emergency medical supplies maintained at the regimental level, as well as the regimental ambulances. When the Medical Corps’ Ambulance Service was created by the U.S. Congress on March 11, 1864, the number of ambulances assigned to each regiment was fixed according to the unit’s strength. A regiment with 500 or more troops would be allowed three ambulances; a command of 200 men or less was worthy of a single vehicle. Additional ambulances were assigned to corps headquarters and would be sent to whatever divisional field hospital needed them most (Bollet 2002, p. 105). The hallmark of Letterman’s organizational system was concentration of resources and flexibility. Letterman’s system began in the Army of the Potomac and soon spread to all Federal forces. To the extent possible given the South’s lack of industrial capacity—which cre-
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HOSPITAL SHIPS Both North and South used waterways to evacuate sick and wounded during the Civil War. Early in the conflict, efforts to utilize ships for medical purposes proved chaotic and haphazard. Civilian craft, under contract to each army’s quartermaster corps, were used to evacuate patients. Often captains commanding these vessels, and the quartermasters who controlled them, made medical duties a low priority. Injured men were sometimes left to languish on vessels for days before beginning their journey to a hospital. Ships used to transport casualties lacked medical staff, military discipline, organization, adequate food, supplies, and facilities of any kind to care for or treat their patients. Public outcry in response to these facts produced rapid change. The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy both purchased vessels to act solely as hospital ships. The United States Sanitary Commission and the Western Sanitary Commission did the same. Even the Confederacy managed to designate some of its limited floating stock for a hospital role. By 1863, specially designed hospital ships were in operation in every theater of war. The biggest and best ships were literally floating hospitals, outfitted with hundreds of regular hospital beds organized into wards; operating rooms; and quarters for a full complement of surgeons, doctors and nurses. They also came equipped with bathrooms, laundries, steam-powered fans to circulate air below decks, elevators for moving patients between decks, gauze blinds to protect passengers from smoke or embers spewed by a ship’s stacks, and even cold water produced by passing water in pipes through ice chests to faucets located conveniently about the vessel. These ships saved many lives and alleviated much suffering wherever they sailed. JEFFREY WILLIAM HUNT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.
ated shortages of purpose-built ambulances, Autenrieth wagons, tents, medicines, surgical instruments, and so on—Confederate armies also copied Letterman’s design. As might be expected, many of the ambulances and much of the equipment used by the Rebel medical services was captured from the enemy (Coggins 1962, p. 117). Letterman’s reforms made a world of difference and vastly improved both the quality and speed of battlefield medical care. Combined with the development of specialized military vehicles and a well-organized system to evacuate wounded from the front lines to the dressing stations, then to the field hospital and finally rearward to general hospitals, the reorganization of medical services
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Comrades and the Ambulance Corps
and the development of brigade and division field hospitals made for a revolution in military medicine. European armies were quick to take note and soon copied these American innovations. The system of battlefield medical care developed between 1862 and 1865 remained standard both in the United Sates and Europe until after World War II (Bollet 2002, p. 107). No matter how helpful in saving lives Letterman’s innovations were, however, they could not erase the damage caused by ignorance of bacteria and of the importance of sterilizing medical instruments, bandages, dressings, sheets, and hands. Such ignorance cost hundreds, if not thousands of men their lives. No amount of organization could have prevented the heart-rending agony, fear, courage, stoicism, and sadness that were all too often seen at field hospitals. Despite this, the tireless efforts of overworked surgeons and medical staff, who scarcely took a moment to eat or sleep so long as injured men suffered, made the field hospital an example of inspiring selflessness and the highest devotion to duty. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Coggins, Jack. Arms and Equipment of the Civil War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962. Commager, Henry Steele. From the Battle of Gettysburg to Appomattox. Vol. 2 of The Blue and the Gray. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950. Reprint, New York: Mentor, 1973. Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. Jeffrey William Hunt
COMRADES AND THE AMBULANCE CORPS Civil War battles were incredibly bloody affairs. Every large engagement produced tens of thousands of casualties in the span of one to three days. Wounded numbering in the thousands presented a challenge of enormous proportions to both Union and Confederate Armies. The dictates of humanity as well as military necessity required the prompt evacuation and medical treatment of wounded soldiers. From the medical standpoint, the motivation was to save life and limb, as well as to ease pain and suffering. From a military perspective, maintenance of morale and manpower were the critical factors. Troops fought better if they believed prompt and adequate care would be delivered to them if wounded. The evacuation of stricken soldiers removed an unnerving distraction for
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men still locked in combat. In addition, men whose lives were saved and bodies repaired by hospitals could be sent back to the ranks once their wounds healed. Both North and South entered the war utterly unprepared to deal with the flood of wounded men streaming from the battlefield. Previous conflicts provided little guidance, as they had produced nothing like the scale of casualties typical of the Civil War. The frontier experience of the small regular army provided even less preparation for officers faced with the need to evacuate and care for large numbers of wounded.
An Inadequate Approach Past experience, however, was the only guide available. As Frank Freemon points out in his 2001 book, Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War, the initial medical organization of Northern and Southern armies was based on regulations of the prewar United States military (p. 28). Control of ambulances and medical evacuation fell under the authority of the Quartermaster Corps. The ambulances, of which there were only a few, were used to haul supplies to the battlefield and were driven by civilian contractors. Once emptied of cargo, they would be available to carry wounded. Each regiment was responsible for providing its own stretcher-bearers. In his 1988 book Soldiers Blue and Gray, James Robertson observes that commanders were unlikely to assign their best men to such duties. The standard pool from which stretcher-bearers were drawn was the regimental band. Generally, there were not enough musicians available, so various men deemed poor soldiers would be called on to round out details. Stretchers were not supplied to regiments, and thus makeshifts of every sort—from blankets to house doors—were pressed into service (Robertson 1988, 160). In his book Civil War Medicine (2002), Dr. Alfred Bollet explains that the shortcomings of this system were apparent as early as the battle of First Bull Run (First Manassas) on July 21, 1861. Civilian drivers, exhibiting little desire to risk their lives, fled the field or stayed far to the rear. Quartermasters often commandeered ambulances to move ammunition or other equipment, making them unavailable to evacuate the wounded (Bollet 2002, pp. 103, 117). The relative handful of stretcher-bearers available were quickly overwhelmed or failed to do their duty (Robertson 1988, p. 160). Injured soldiers had only limited options if no ambulance or stretcher-bearers reached them. If still mobile, they could leave the field under their own power and attempt to reach a field hospital. Such attempts were risky, however. Unaided movement could aggravate wounds or cause additional injury. Loss of blood or shock could quickly overcome the victim, leading to his collapse, sometimes in a spot where he might remain
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Comrades and the Ambulance Corps
The early carnage of Civil War battles found both Union and Confederate armies unprepared to handle the large number of casualties. In order to devote more men to fighting, military commanders eventually dedicated the task of removing the wounded from the battlefield to the expressly-created ambulance corps. National Archives/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Ambulatory Union soldier casualties.
unnoticed for hours or days, if he were noticed at all—a situation that could prove fatal. The second option was to be helped from the field by unwounded or lightly wounded comrades. This was a much safer method of evacuation, as it ensured assistance and care (no matter how minimal) all the way to a field hospital. Helping a wounded friend was a natural impulse. Soldiers often served alongside members of their family or prewar community, and shared emotional connections borne of common sacrifice and service. Men were inclined to go to the aid of a friend in distress—and doing so, incidentally, also provided them with an honorable excuse for leaving the zone of danger. From a military standpoint, however, this form of assistance was the worst system imaginable, as it removed healthy men from the firing line, thus significantly multiplying the effect of casualties. The final option for men too badly hurt to move on their own, and unlucky enough to fall out of reach or view of comrades, was to lie on the field until the fighting ended. In this circumstance an injured man had no one to provide aid, except, perhaps, a nearby soldier who shared his fate. For soldiers without food, medical aid, or sometimes even water, the odds of survival grew worse with each passing hour on the battlefield. The experience of Major John Haskell during the battle of Gaines’ Mill, on June 27, 1862, provides a
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graphic example of the difficulties wounded men faced early in the war. Haskell was leading an attack when an artillery projectile smashed his right shoulder and virtually ripped off his arm. Unconscious for an unknown length of time, Haskell awakened to find his arm ‘‘wrapped around’’ the blade of his sword in a ‘‘most remarkable manner’’ (Haskell 1960, p. 34). On sitting up, Haskell passed out. Awakening a second time, he managed to separate the remnant of his arm from his sword. Stuffing the injured limb into the breast of his coat, Haskell got up and started for the rear, using a flagstaff as a crutch. On his way, the major heard a close friend crying for help. Finding the man lying in a ravine and shot through the lungs, Haskell held up his shattered arm, explaining he could not help. Seeing a nearby soldier, the major ordered him to aid his friend. Accomplishing this, Haskell continued rearward, but did not get far before falling down. Weak from loss of blood, he was unable to get back up. Luckily, a fellow officer saw his distress, dismounted, put Haskell on his horse, and took him to a surgeon who provided first aid and sent Haskell to a field hospital via ambulance (Haskell 1960, pp. 34–36). Encapsulated in this account are all the perils a wounded man faced early in the war. No stretcherbearers were present to evacuate Haskell or his wounded comrade. One man was too badly wounded to move on his own, while Haskell’s efforts to reach the rear alone
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Comrades and the Ambulance Corps
THE FATHER OF BATTLEFIELD MEDICINE Jonathan Letterman (1824–1872) was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, the son of a local surgeon. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1849 and became an assistant surgeon in the Army Medical Department that same year. In the 1850s Letterman was assigned to various military campaigns in Florida (against the Seminole Indians), New Mexico Territory (against the Apaches), and California (against the Utes). Letterman returned East at the beginning of the Civil War. He was named medical director of the Department of West Virginia in May 1862 and medical director of the entire Army of the Potomac just one month later. General George McClellan (1826–1885) gave Letterman, now a major, full permission to reorganize the army’s medical service as seemed best to him. Letterman introduced a series of forward first aid stations at the battle of Antietam in 1862 as well as the practice of triage (sorting the wounded into categories in order to focus treatment on those most likely to survive). At the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 Letterman created a large field hospital on the grounds of a local farmer to treat Confederate as well as Union wounded left behind after the three-day battle. The hospital was named Camp Letterman in his honor. Members of the U.S. Sanitary Commission visited Camp Letterman to bring supplies and help transport the more severely wounded to permanent hospitals elsewhere. One member of the commission reported that Letterman gave soldiers from both armies the best care he could: ‘‘The surgeon in charge
ultimately failed. Stragglers and friends provided the only assistance. The ambulance that finally evacuated the major was found well to the rear of the firing line. In all likelihood, Haskell would not have survived if he had fallen somewhere outside the view of his passing comrade. The inadequacy of this haphazard system was obvious. Nonetheless, it continued in the eastern Union Army until the late summer of 1862, and in the western Federal army until early 1863. Fortunately for the hundreds of thousands of men destined to be wounded in the middle and latter stages of the conflict, change eventually came.
The Letterman System By mid-1862, voices advocating change and modernization of medical evacuation services were heard in both the North and South. The man who brought about those changes for the Union was Jonathan Letterman, who became the medical director of the Army of the Potomac in late June 1862. Letterman urged the creation of a dedicated ambulance corps, equipped with its own wagons, ambulances, tents, and supplies, and staffed by personnel specifically detailed and trained for the job of evacuating and caring for the wounded. Vehicles, equipment, and personnel would be under
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of our camp, with his faithful dresser and attendants, looked after all their wounds, which were often in a most shocking state, particularly among the rebels. Every evening and morning they were dressed. Often the men would say, ‘That feels good, I haven’t had my wound so well dressed since I was hurt’’’ (Camp Letterman General Hospital). Letterman’s system was so successful that it was established by an act of Congress in March 1864 for all Union armies in the field. Letterman moved to San Francisco after the war and worked in the veterans’ hospital at the Presidio. Saddened by the death of his wife in 1867, he died a few years later at the relatively young age of 48. In 1911 the hospital at the Presidio was named Letterman General Hospital to commemorate his work. Letterman was buried in Arlington National Cemetery; his epitaph reads, ‘‘Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, June 23, 1862 to December 30, 1863, who brought order and efficiency into the Medical Service and who was the originator of modern methods of medical organization in armies’’ (‘‘Jonathan K. Letterman’’). REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Camp Letterman General Hospital.’’ Voice of Battle: Gettysburg National Military Park Virtual Tour. Available from http://www.nps.gov/. ‘‘Jonathan K. Letterman.’’ Arlington National Cemetery. http://www.arlington cemetery.net/.
the sole authority of medical officers and could not be interfered with by anyone. Major General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, instantly saw merit in Letterman’s proposal and ordered its implementation (Bollet 2002, pp.103–105). By the battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) on September 17, 1862, Letterman’s ambulance corps had begun to take the field. Although not fully staffed, equipped, or trained, it performed well. The battle of Fredericksburg, on December 13, 1862, was the first full test of the ‘‘Letterman System.’’ In a single day of combat, 9,028 Union soldiers were wounded. Within just twenty-four hours of the end of the fighting, virtually every wounded man had been removed from the battlefield and taken to a field hospital (Bollet 2002, p. 125). So effective was the new method of evacuation that Surgeon General William Hammond urged its adoption by all Union armies. Inexplicably, the War Department and General-in-Chief’s office rejected the proposal. The logic of what Letterman was doing, however, could not be denied, and commanders of other Northern armies replicated his system. At the same time, Confederate armies, urged on by Dr. Hunter McGuire of the Army of Northern Virginia, were putting in place a system
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Triage and Surgery
virtually identical to Letterman’s. On March 11, 1864, the U.S. Congress passed legislation creating the Medical Corps’ Ambulance Service, and requiring the army to adopt Letterman’s system everywhere (Bollet 2002, pp. 105–106).
Inevitable Horrors Although the new ambulance corps made an enormous difference, it could not solve all the problems or prevent all the terrors associated with removing injured soldiers from the battleground. Even trained stretcher-bearers were not always able or eager to evacuate wounded from a battlefield swept by enemy fire. Generally in a hurry to get out of danger, they tended to move quickly, which did little for the comfort or safety of an injured man on a litter. Major battles producing heavy casualties in short periods of time could still overwhelm the ability of stretcher-bearers to promptly remove or even find wounded men, especially in the hilly, heavily wooded terrain typical of most engagements. At the beginning of the war the only ambulances available were two-wheeled carts or ordinary wagons. Lacking springs, these vehicles, often moving over unpaved and rutted country roads, provided a jarring and extraordinarily painful ride for wounded men. New four-wheeled ambulances with springs came into use by late 1862. They provided greater comfort but were always in short supply. In the aftermath of any large engagement, there were never enough purpose-built vehicles to transport the wounded and anything that rolled was pressed into service. The results were often heart-rending, especially for an army forced into a lengthy retreat. No better example of this sad reality can be found than in the aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg. During its retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia was forced to transport 8,500 badly wounded soldiers over a hundred miles back to Virginia. There were not enough ambulances to do the job, so every available vehicle was utilized. The resulting misery endured by the wounded was grimly predictable and altogether too common in the annals of Civil War battles. Brigadier General John Imboden was given the job of protecting the fifteen-mile-long procession of wagons and ambulances carrying the wounded southward. His vivid description of what the injured endured is one of the most memorable accounts of the horrors associated with the evacuation of the wounded: From almost every wagon for many miles issued heart-rending wails of agony. For four hours I hurried forward . . . and in all that time I was never out of hearing of the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hard-working surgeons from still worse cases that had to be left behind. Many of the wounded . . . had been without food for thirtysix hours. Their torn and bloody clothing, matted
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and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them, and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky. . . . The jolting was enough to have killed strong men. . . . From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these: ‘‘O God! Why can’t I die?’’ ‘‘My God! Will no one have mercy and kill me?’’ ‘‘Stop! Oh! For God’s sake stop just for one minute; take me out and leave me to die on the roadside.’’ ‘‘I am dying! I am dying! My poor wife, my dear children, what will become of you?’’ Some were simply moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them; while the majority, with a stoicism sustained by sublime devotion to the cause they fought for, endured without complaint unspeakable tortures, and even spoke words of cheer and comfort to their unhappy comrades of less will or more acute nerves. . . . No help could be rendered to any of the sufferers. No heed could be given to any of their appeals. Mercy and duty to the many forbade the loss of a moment in the vain effort then and there to comply with the prayers of the few. On! On! We must move on. . . . There was no time even to fill a canteen of water for a dying man; for, except the drivers and the guards, all were wounded and utterly helpless in that vast procession of misery. (McDonald 1907, pp. 318–319)
It was a scene that no witness could ever forget. ‘‘During this one night,’’ Imboden wrote, ‘‘I realized more of the horrors of war than I had in all the preceding years’’ (McDonald 1907, p. 319). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. Haskell, John Cheves. The Haskell Memoirs, ed. Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood. New York: Putnam, 1960. McDonald, James Joseph. Life in Old Virginia, ed. J. A. C. Chandler. Norfolk, VA: The Old Virginia Publishing Co. (Inc.), 1907. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Jeffrey William Hunt
TRIAGE AND SURGERY Brigadier-General Gladden of South Carolina, at the Battle of Shiloh in 1863, had his left arm shattered by a cannon ball. As William Stevenson, a volunteer for the
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Triage and Surgery
An artificial leg patented on January 12, 1864. With thousands of soldiers losing arms and legs during Civil War fighting, demand for artificial limbs increased greatly, inspiring inventors to develop and patent better medical devices. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Confederacy, recalled in his 1862 book Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services . . . : Amputation was performed hastily by his staffsurgeon on the field; and then, instead of being taken to the rear for quiet and nursing, he mounted his horse, against the most earnest remonstrances of all his staff, and continued to command. On Monday, he was again in the saddle, and kept it during the day; on Tuesday, he rode on horseback to Corinth, twenty miles from the scene of action, and continued to discharge the duties of an officer. On Wednesday, a second amputation, near the shoulder, was necessary. Against the remonstrances of personal friends, and the positive injunctions of the surgeons, he persisted in sitting up in his chair . . . till Wednesday afternoon, when lockjaw seized him, and he died in a few moments. (pp. 179–180)
Albeit heroic, death often befell those who survived surgery in the Civil War. Initially, both sides of the conflict were ill-prepared to handle mass casualties, and at the onset of the war there were 113 surgeons in the U.S. Army, of which twenty-four joined the Confederate army and three were dismissed for disloyalty. By the end of the war more than 12,000 surgeons had served in the Union army and nearly 3,200 in the Confederate army.
Triage Although infection was yet to be understood, battlefield surgical conditions were far from primitive. Medical staff
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assessed the wounded in a system of triage. Soldiers brought in with head, chest, or stomach wounds were considered the least likely to survive; they were given morphine and water to ease their pain as they waited to die. This allowed doctors who were stretched to their limits (after the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, the ratio of patients to doctors was nearly 300 to 1), to attend to the soldiers who could be saved. As a result, those slightly wounded and considered beyond help were set aside.
Amputation Even in the early twenty-first century, many misconceptions persist about battlefield surgery during the Civil War. It is often thought that the injured soldier received inadequate treatment, an untrained surgeon giving him a doubtful glance before concluding amputation was the only solution—without anesthetic—only to have the patient die after surgery from ‘‘surgical fevers,’’ such as deadly septicemia or gangrene. Contrary to this popular belief, however, amputation was not the first course of action. Surgeons took great care not to amputate, oftentimes causing greater harm than good. George Worthington Adams quotes William Williams Keen, a renowned surgeon of the war and West Point military cadet, in his 1985 book Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War, where Keen stated, ‘‘I have no hesitation in saying that far more lives were lost in refusal to amputate than by amputation’’ (p. 163). British and American civilian surgeon observers also felt that too few amputations were done, resulting in
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deaths that could have been prevented if amputation was chosen. William M. Caniff, professor of surgery at the University of Victoria College in Toronto, published in the British medical journal Lancet on February 28, 1863, and reprinted by Alfred J. Bollet in his 2004 article ‘‘The Truth About Civil War Surgery’’ that, ‘‘Although a strong advocate of conservative surgery. . . I became convinced that upon the field amputation was less frequently resorted to than it should be; that while in a few cases the operation was unnecessarily performed, in many cases it was omitted when it afforded the only chance of recovery’’ (p. 27). When amputation was the chosen course of action, surgeons had a choice of performing a ‘‘flap’’ operation (which was the preferred method by the end of the war) or the circular procedure that left a small area open, prone to infection. The ‘‘operator,’’ wielding his bone saw (thus the moniker of ‘‘Sawbones’’ attributed to Civil War doctors) would saw through the bone of the limb to be amputated. The arteries were then tied off using sutures of horsehair, silk, or cotton threads. After the bleeding was controlled, the surgeon scraped the freshly cut bone smooth so it would not damage the skin to be sewn shut. In the ‘‘flap’’ procedure, the extra skin would then be sewn shut and a small hole would be left for drainage. Finally, the appendage would be set in isinglass plaster and bandaged. As an alternative to amputation, surgeons on both sides of the war tried using a medical technique called excision, or resection. Wherever bone was damaged, the broken pieces were removed from the limb in the hopes that the healthy bone would reattach itself. Many soldiers, however, preferred to have prosthetics attached to an amputated limb rather than have a poorly functioning limb that was shortened. Excisions also resulted in higher mortality rates than did amputations.
Infection Infection ran rampant under the poor sanitary conditions of the camps. Hospital gangrene threatened to infect even the simplest cut and resulted in severe pain and fever for the patient, and the formation of pus at the wound site—the foul smell that pervaded the hospitals of the time. Where amputation was afforded, the threat of infection persisted. Often soldiers would not make it to the surgical theater for many days after being wounded. Surgeons at the time thought it was imperative to operate within the first day of receiving the wound to avoid the period during which infection could set in. Within a few days ‘‘laudable pus’’ would often appear, which doctors at the time believed was how clean tissue replaced itself within the body; in actuality, healthy tissue was already undergoing decomposition. William Stevenson noted in his 1862 book Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: ‘‘On account of exposures, many wounds were gangrenous when the patients reach
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the hospital. In these cases delay was fatal, and an operation almost equally so, as tetanus often followed speedily. Where amputation was performed, eight out of ten died’’ (p. 177). Operations at the time were disease-ridden from beginning to end. Everything the surgeons used was unsanitary. The operating table, tools—literally everything— was pus- and blood-laden. Between surgeries, tools were cleansed in nothing more than cold water; if surgical forceps or an incision knife was dropped on the floor, it too would be cleaned in the same water. Wounds were often wrapped in unsterilized, wet bandages. Although germs were not fully understood at the time, medical staff did have sterilizers such as bichloride of mercury, sodium hypochlorite, and carbolic acid. The error in reasoning occurred when disinfectant was used after infection had already set in.
Anesthesia Anesthesia was introduced to the medical community in 1846. Thus, most surgeries during the Civil War were carried out under anesthesia. There is a record in the United States Surgeon-General’s Office 1879 publication Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, however, in which, at the Battle of Iuka in September 1862, 254 casualties were operated on without the use of anesthetic, the single largest such documented case. Chloroform and ether were the types of anesthetics used. Usually a cloth was placed over the face of the patient and a few drops were placed on the cloth as the patient breathed in the fumes. Chloroform was usually preferred to ether because of ether’s explosive chemical properties.
By War’s End Despite the lack of preparation, Union surgeons treated more than 400,000 wounded men—about 245,000 of them for gunshot or artillery wounds—and performed at least 40,000 operations. Less complete Confederate records show that fewer surgeons treated a similar number of patients. Oftentimes, soldiers were operated on by surgeons of the opposing forces. Thomas Ellis, a Union surgeon, gives an account of a Confederate major from a North Carolina regiment in his 1863 book Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon; or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life: ‘‘The major was shot in the thigh, fracturing the bone very badly and rendering amputation necessary, he thanked us for our attention stating that he had not expected such kind treatment at our hands’’ (p. 76). In the 1862 article ‘‘Surgeon at Work,’’ Harper’s Weekly reported, ‘‘Arteries are tied, ligatures and tourniquets applied, flesh wounds hastily dressed, broken limbs set, and sometimes, where haste is essential, amputations performed within sight and sound of the cannon. Of all officers the surgeon is often the one who requires most nerve and most courage’’ (p. 439).
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According to the United States Sanitary Commission’s 1869 work Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion, ‘‘The whole number of casualties during the forty-eight months of the war, among 2,480,000 white soldiers, was 858,000. The total number of deaths in the same service was about 250,000, making the ratio of deaths to the whole number of casualties as 100 to 343’’ (p. 9). The surgeons on both sides did well to keep the men of the nation alive for without them, untold numbers would have perished, making Reconstruction for a war-weary nation nearly impossible. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, George Worthington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside, 1985. Bollet, Alfred J. ‘‘The Truth About Civil War Surgery.’’ Civil War Times 43, no. 4 (2004): 27–33, 56. Coco, Gregory A. Gettysburg, The Aftermath of a Battle. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1995. Ellis, Thomas T. Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon; or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life. New York: J. Bradburn, 1863. Stevenson, William G. Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services. . . . New York: A. S. Barnes and Burr, 1862. ‘‘Surgeon at Work.’’ Harper’s Weekly 6, no. 289 (1862): 439. United States Sanitary Commission. Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion, v. 2, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1869. United States Surgeon-General’s Office. The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. Washington. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1870. Anurag Biswas
EVACUATION HOSPITALS During the Civil War years, 1861 through 1865, hundreds of hospitals, including evacuation hospitals—those situated far from the battlefields, often in larger cities— became important scenes for dealing with the thousands of injured or ill soldiers. In addition to the common problems soldiers endured, like bullet wounds and gangrene, many people fell ill with infectious diseases unrelated to battlefield wounds, such as typhoid fever or dysentery, and required hospitalization. In the early 1860s, links between health and sanitation were poorly understood, and there was not yet knowledge of antiseptic principles or an understanding of the spread of bacteria and germs. Also, anesthesia was becoming widely
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used, but still largely experimental. The emerging role of hospitals and health care professionals in dealing with large numbers of people requiring treatment, pushed the hospital system forward during this historical military and medical period. In April 1861 the people of the United States and the new Confederate States of America found themselves unprepared for the fierce and bloody struggle that awaited them. The shocking realization that the war would not be short was accompanied by another epiphany: The wounded were piling up, and the hospitals of the time were severely inadequate. The medical system as it existed, including the establishment of hospitals, faced a myriad of challenges, including the accommodation of thousands of wounded soldiers. Before the war, most people who became ill had been accustomed to home care. With home care more common, hospital buildings were rare before the war. In fact, the early causalities of the war during the fall and winter of 1861, created the need for several buildings to be used as hospitals, as there were not adequate numbers already established; churches, courthouses, barns, stores, warehouses, and multiple other buildings became interim hospitals (Cunningham 1958, p. 45). One account from Private David Holt of the Sixteenth Mississippi Regiment, details the early limitations of these temporary hospitals from his observations in Bedford County, Virginia: This old one-story freight station had been converted into the receiving room of a temporary hospital, and the ward for the wounded and very sick was a long shack about ten feet high at the eaves with a shingle roof and the ground for a floor. I never went into the ward, but Milton [a hospital worker] said there were not enough cots and some of the sick and wounded lay on the floor. He also said it was hotter than the hinges of hell. (Cockrell and Ballard 1995, p. 106)
Also contributing to the problems was the common medical doctrine of the time that recovery from disease or injury in large hospitals tended to take longer than in the preferred small private hospitals. Large public hospitals were thought to be full of ‘‘tainted air which fills the wards and . . . enfeebles the nervous system,’’ leading to new diseases and slower healing of wounds (‘‘Military Hygiene,’’ November 5, 1861, n.p.). The notion that mortality rates were higher inside hospitals than outside them meant that there were very few large hospitals built at the time. Soldiers often preferred to be treated at camp at the temporary or mobile field hospitals. They feared the unfamiliarity of the hospitals that were located far from the battlegrounds in the cities. Rumors and first-hand accounts from patients, frequently reported lack of organization in hospitals, crowded corridors, shortages of medical supplies, and minimal individualized attention for patients. (Rutkow 2005, p. 152). Private houses were thought to be more hygienic.
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Wolfe Street Hospital, Alexandria, VA. Prior to the Civil War, physicians thought it healthier for the
sick and injured to recover at home. However, faced with large numbers of soldiers distant from their homes, both Union and Confederate armies began building hospitals where wounded soldiers could convalesce for an extended period of time. ª Medford Historical Society Collection/Corbis.
An ‘‘Ancient and Fossilized’’ Medical System
Confederate Hospitals
After the Battle of Bull Run (known as the First Battle of Manassas by the Confederate forces) on July 21, 1861 the casualties began to mount. Because existing hospitals could not deal with the numbers, military evacuation hospitals were set up in buildings intended for other purposes: ‘‘[P]ublic buildings, school-houses, churches, hotels, warehouses, factories, and private dwellings’’ became the treatment centers for sick and wounded soldiers from all over the country (Otis 1865, p. 152). On August 3, 1861, there were 945 sick and wounded soldiers in the five hospitals in Washington, DC; many were divided among the hospitals improvised at Miss English’s Seminary and the Columbia College buildings, not to mention the House and Senate Chambers in the Capitol Building (‘‘Sick and Wounded Soldiers,’’ August 8, 1861). However, these buildings were still insufficient in size, supplies, toilet facilities, ventilation, and heating. The New York Times (July 27, 1861) noted less than a week after the Battle of Bull Run that ‘‘we are inexpressibly pained to learn from Washington that very inadequate provision has been made by the regular authorities, for the proper care of the wounded in the late battle. . . . [S]ome of our gallant soldiers, for want of hospital garments, even yet lie sweltering in their bloody uniforms, festering with fever and maddened with thirst.’’ The Medical Department’s preparations were ‘‘ancient and fossilized’’ and only adequate for a force of ‘‘less than fifteen thousand men’’ (n.p.). Clearly, new measures had to be taken. Plans on both sides varied widely over time and place.
In the South, soldiers were not always sent to division hospitals. According to Confederate medical department regulations, the sick and wounded were to be ‘‘sent to the hospitals representing their respective states,’’ unless their sickness or wounds were too severe and another hospital was closer (Confederate States of America War Department 1863, p. 56). By 1862, more hospitals were being built, but there were still too few to take care of the soldiers needing treatment and long-term care. However, positive changes persisted throughout the years of the Civil War; by 1863, many more hospitals had been created. Hospitals in Richmond, Virginia had the best reputation and were thought of as the medical center for the Confederacy (Cunningham 1958, p. 50). On October 11, 1861, Chimborazo, the most wellknown Confederate hospital, opened in Richmond, Virginia. The hospital was located on the edge of Richmond, which allowed convenient access to York River Railroad. Chimborazo had room for approximately 8,000 patients, and it eventually became regarded as the best hospital in the North and the South. Chimborazo Hospital grew its own food, and even had around two hundred cows and a herd of goats on its hospital farm.
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Union Hospitals The Saterlee Hospital in Philadelphia, developed by William Hammond after he became the Surgeon General in
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April of 1862, exemplified the grand visions held for a nationwide military hospital system. The structure had twenty-eight pavilions, with room for well over a thousand patients. ‘‘With barbershops, laundries, a pharmacy, and smoking rooms, the complex was a city unto itself, and following further additions, by war’s end bed capacity reached an amazing 3,519’’ (Rutkow 2005, p. 157). Another Union hospital, Mower U.S. General Hospital, was constructed by architect John McArthur Jr. in Philadelphia, in the city’s Chestnut Hill area. Named after an Army surgeon, Thomas Mower, the hospital was in operation from 1863 to 1865. During those years, it treated over 20,000 patients, most of whom were Union soldiers. Saterlee and Mower U.S. General were two of several hospitals that became established in Philadelphia. In fact, by 1865, there were twenty-seven hospitals in the city (Adams 1958, p. 155). Like the city of Washington, Philadelphia played a key role in the development of the hospital system. In both the North and the South, a directory was created to present organized information about patients in over two hundred hospitals (Denney 1994, p. 12). The public was gaining both a familiarity with the hospital system, and experiencing the advancement of the American hospital system. By the end of the war in 1865, the United States’ hospital system had undergone significant changes in the architecture, organization, and administration of hospitals, and laid the foundation for a better hospital system across the country.
New Plans, New Hospitals Medical treatment of injured soldiers took place in a series of locations. After being stabilized, or if further care not available at the field hospital was needed, a wounded soldier was transported to a hospital camp or a division or regimental hospital (though this step was often skipped). From there the surviving soldier would be transported to a general hospital for extended care and convalescence. In 1864 the Union soldier Henry Meacham was wounded in the arm and underwent an amputation in a battlefield hospital before being taken to City Point Hospital for extensive care and convalescence: ‘‘We were treated well and had all the comforts that could be expected. Never but once while at City Point did I have occasion to find fault with my treatment . . . I had good care.’’ After leaving City Point, Meacham was transferred to the Third Division Hospital near Alexandria, Virginia, and found it ‘‘very pleasant . . . ; the ground was kept neat and clean, and everything was neat about the building and tents. We were treated kindly’’ (Meacham 1869?, pp. 28–29). In order to establish hospitals that were both sufficient in size and properly ventilated, many facilities were built according to the new ‘‘pavilion’’ model. Adelaide Smith described one of these, Fort Schuyler Hospital along the East River in New York, as being ‘‘formed like a wheel, the hub being headquarters and spokes extending into wards for patients’’ (Smith 1911, p. 31). Other pavilions were triangular in design, such as Lincoln
Ward in Armory Square Hospital, Washington, DC. Wounded soldiers recovered in newly built hospitals until their wounds healed enough to return home or to the front lines of conflict. The Library of Congress.
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Hospital in Washington, DC. The pavilion plan allowed the assignment of different medical problems to separate buildings, which were no more than two stories in most cases. With the larger buildings, design was an important consideration, and structures were created to foster more hygienic practices. For instance, there was an emphasis on incorporating fewer ninety-degree angles to prevent the accumulation of hard to clean dirt. These hospitals also featured ventilation refinements in the form of ridge-ventilated ceilings, which could be closed off during the winter, when shaft ventilation would substitute. According to the New York Times, the ‘‘ventilation of these buildings is their triumphant singularity, and, properly arranged, completely ignores contagion.’’ The construction was such that each building ‘‘admits of the freshest circulation of air,’’ allowing the wards to be cool and comfortable in the summer—forming a ‘‘seductive place for convalescing patients to lounge’’ (April 9, 1862, n.p.). These pavilion hospitals were commissioned in both the North and South—some with the wards directly connected to the central building, others with free-standing buildings. In July 1864, the Union Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, issued official orders that all new military hospitals were to be built in the detached pavilion style with sixty beds per ward, and that no other buildings were to be used as hospitals unless inspected by the Medical Corps. These pavilion hospitals would feature dining rooms, kitchens, laundry facilities, quartermaster offices, storage areas for patients’ effects, guardhouses, dead houses, housing for female nurses, operating rooms, stables, and a chapel (Otis 1865, pp. 153–154). The new hospitals were built quickly and cheaply. They were supplied primarily through donations from citizens, without which the majority of hospitals would not have lasted. Throughout the summer of 1861 Northern and Southern newspapers published letters from military staff, war department officials, and private citizens calling for contributions and volunteers. Lists of contributed items were also printed in these newspapers. The war departments, the Northern Sanitary Commission, volunteer organizations, and independent hospitals also directly solicited more donations. This practice was especially commonplace in the South, where hospital supplies often ran low. However, the North was not without its needs. In October 1861, acknowledging the poor quality of hospital care in the North, the federal government made an appeal ‘‘to the loyal women of America.’’ The authorities admitted that ‘‘lives [were] lost because the government cannot put the right thing in the right place at the right time.’’ While the U.S. Sanitary Commission had been created to solve the problems, the commission still had to rely on voluntary contributions, which at that point numbered around sixty thousand articles (United States Sanitary Commission 1861, pp. 1–2).
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Under the supervision of the Sanitary Commission, Northern hospitals underwent required inspections that examined ‘‘theoretically and practically all questions of diet and cooking [,] . . . climate, malaria and contagions, [and] ventilation’’ (New York Times, June 25, 1861). A questionnaire of 179 items was filled out by inspectors regarding the health of the patients and the environment of the hospital, with consideration given to such things as the latrines, soldiers’ diets, the laundry, and hygiene (Bollet 2002, p. 225). After inspections, unfit hospitals would be reformed, ‘‘careless or ignorant officials’’ would be chastised or removed, and every hospital was made to adhere to the ‘‘uniformity of plans and harmony of action between the States’’ (New York Times, June 25, 1861). General hospitals were built across the nation, both near the front lines and far away. By June 1865 the Union had 204 hospitals and the Confederates had created about 154. The majority of Northern hospitals were in and around Washington, DC, whereas in the South, though Richmond had many, hospitals were concentrated in several areas, as nearly all the fighting took place throughout the Southern states (Bollet 2002, p. 221–223).
Hospital Services The evacuation or general hospitals, as well as the soldiers’ homes, were intended to be places where sick and wounded soldiers could rest, recuperate, receive any needed medical attention, and prepare to return to either their regiment or, in the case of disabled soldiers, to their homes. Over the course of the war, women became the backbone of Union and Confederate hospitals—as matrons, nurses, volunteers, or simply by making donations. Certainly, these women did not lack for patriotic fervor. A New York woman wrote directly to President Lincoln: ‘‘[W]ere I a man I would . . . fight in a moment. . . . [Being unable to,] I offer my services to nurse our wounded soldiers. I do not wish any pay for my services, but only to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers who are fighting for the rights of our glorious country’’ (New York Herald, April 22, 1861). In the South, many women were moved by the desire to contribute ‘‘to the comfort of the men who had been wounded in protecting their homes’’ (Stevenson 1862, p. 190). They volunteered for hospital duty in droves, and their effect on soldiers in hospitals was profound. William Stevenson, a Confederate wounded at Shiloh, found the hospital nearby to be in a state of chaos, with men going untreated, unskilled young surgeons wreaking havoc on bodies, and disease spreading—until the nurses arrived: ‘‘Their presence worked like a charm. Order emerged from chaos, and in a few hours all looked cleaner and really felt better, from the skill and industry
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of a few devoted women’’ (Stevenson 1862, pp. 177– 178). In her book Hospital Days (1870), Jane Stuart Woolsey noted that women nurses were of all sorts: ‘‘volunteers paid or unpaid; soldiers’ wives or sisters who had come to see their friends, and remained without any clear commission or duties; . . . [and others] sent by state agencies or societies . . . [and] set adrift . . . without training or discipline . . . or officers’’ (p. 43). Despite this lack of oversight, the air and tone of a hospital, according to Woolsey, would invariably improve within only a few days of the women’s arrival. The character of many nurses was so stubborn that they would ‘‘gaily starve . . . [themselves] to feed a sick soldier . . . [and] cheerfully sacrifice time, ease and health, to the wants or whims of a wounded man’’ (Woolsey 1870, pp. 43–44). At most general hospitals the first order of business was recuperation. Wounds and diseases were cared for by nurses and surgeons, who generally made rounds once a day. Volunteers read and wrote letters for the infirm. Many hospitals featured extensive grounds for walking, which aided in both physical and mental recovery. Meals were provided daily, as well as medicine, depending on availability. When it was time for a sick or wounded soldier to leave the hospital, either to return to his regiment or to return home, most hospitals offered assistance in procuring papers, pensions, transportation, and back pay. Some hospitals had cemeteries for those who did not recover. In addition to general hospitals, specialty hospitals were created. Philadelphia’s Turner’s Lane Hospital catered to nerve injuries and neurological disorders. A Nashville hospital dealt with venereal diseases. A specialty hospital in Washington, DC, which was named the Desmarres Hospital after it was moved to Chicago in 1864, dealt with both eye and throat injuries and diseases, while the Confederacy opened an eye hospital in Athens, Georgia. Both sides responded to the immense need for orthopedic hospitals for soldiers with wounds or injuries to the extremities, as well as those who had lost limbs and needed prostheses (Bollet 2002, pp. 227–229).
Results In a few short years, the medical situation on both sides had drastically improved. ‘‘Never before, in the history of the world,’’ declared the Union medical officer George Alexander Otis, ‘‘was so vast a system of hospitals brought into existence in so short a time . . . [or] has the mortality rate in military hospitals been so small’’ (Otis 1865, p. 152). By 1865 it was realized that ‘‘the ill-ventilated barracks and private edifices . . . occupied as hospitals during the earlier part of the war’’ (Otis 1865, p. 87) were indeed only contributing to disease. The creation of the Sanitary Commission and the reforms it enacted, especially mandatory hospital inspections, helped
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pave the way for a new era of expectations for public hospitals. The designs of the pavilion hospitals influenced hospital architecture, and the creation of specialty hospitals continued beyond the war. While the majority of general hospitals closed after the war, the very idea of what a hospital is and what it should be had been forever altered in America. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, G.W. Doctors in Blue. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958. ‘‘The Army Hospitals at Washington.’’ New York Times, August 13, 1861. Bollet, Alfred J. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Cockrell, T. D. and M. B. Ballard, eds. A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia: The Civil War Memoirs of Private David Holt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. ‘‘Condition of Our Wounded.’’ New York Times, July 27, 1861. Confederate States of America. War Department. Regulations for the Medical Department of the C.S. Army. Richmond, VA: Ritchie & Dunnavant, 1863. Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray, The Confederate Medical Service. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958. Denney, R. E. Civil War Medicine: Care & Comfort of the Wounded. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1994. ‘‘Health of the Army: The Sanitation Commission.’’ New York Times, June 25, 1861. ‘‘Local Military Matters.’’ New York Times, July 10, 1861. Meacham, Henry H. The Empty Sleeve; or, The Life and Hardships of Henry H. Meacham, in the Union Army. Springfield, MA: Author, 1869?. ‘‘Military Hygiene.’’ North American and United States Gazette, November 5, 1861. Otis, George Alexander. Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials Available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865. ‘‘A Patriotic Lady Offers Her Services to Nurse the Wounded.’’ New York Herald, April 22, 1861. Rutkow, I. M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005. ‘‘Sick and Wounded Soldiers.’’ (Letter to the editor.) Washington, DC, Daily National Intelligencer, August 8, 1861. Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse during the Civil War. New York: Greaves Publishing Company, 1911. Stevenson, William G. Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: Being a Narrative of Personal Adventures in GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Courier, and Hospital Services. New York: A. S. Barnes & Burr, 1862. United States Sanitary Commission. General Aid Society for the Army (Buffalo, NY). Report of Delegates from the General Aid Society for the Army at Buffalo, N.Y.: To Visit the Government Hospitals, and the Agencies of the United States. Buffalo, NY: Franklin Steam, 1862. United States Sanitary Commission. To the Loyal Women of America. Washington, DC: Author, 1861. ‘‘Ward’s Island.’’ New York Times, April 9, 1862. Woolsey, Jane Stuart. Hospital Days. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1870. J. Douglas Tyson Jenny Lagergren
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Disease
During the Civil War more soldiers died as a result of disease than perished at the hands of the enemy. Disease caused roughly 65 percent of all deaths and left hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers permanently disabled. Such estimates do not account for the number of deaths that can be attributed to disease on the home front. Sick soldiers returning home or seeking care in general hospitals carried illness back to their communities, further adding to the devastation. Disease was truly an equal opportunity killer, striking rich and poor, black and white, and men and women indiscriminately. President Abraham Lincoln’s (1809–1865) eleven-year-old son, William Wallace Lincoln, for example, died from typhoid fever in February 1862. Disease contributed to the war’s unprecedented mortality rates while also exacting a heavy psychological burden on the sick, their caregivers and dependents, and the community at large. Likewise, disease crippled armies, reducing available manpower, and sometimes altered a commander’s campaign strategy. Despite the war’s heavy disease-related death toll the Civil War marked a period of steady improvement in mortality rates among soldiers. Fewer soldiers per capita died from disease during the Civil War than any other previous American war. Improvements in medical knowledge, medicine, facilities, and a general awareness of the need for proper sanitation contributed to this distinction, but despite those advances disease remained the war’s principal killer. Throughout history disease has been a constant companion of warfare. Wars typically involve armies filled with soldiers who are in constant close proximity to one another, human waste, animal waste, and who are subject to bouts of malnutrition, fatigue, depression, and unsanitary conditions. Most Civil War soldiers came from rural agrarian backgrounds. Farmers and laborers living in a rural setting are by the nature of their occu-
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pation relatively isolated from contact with large numbers of individuals. Their separation greatly reduced their exposure to various childhood and epidemic diseases. When those men enlisted in the military and were suddenly thrust into a highly concentrated setting, their immune systems were unprepared to guard against an onslaught of new bacteria and viruses. Inadequate and often nonexistent physical examinations for recruits facilitated the spread of diseases among Civil War soldiers. Most men joined the military without an inspection, while those who were examined only received a cursory physical exam. A New Jersey volunteer described the scene of one examination: The company was drawn up in line on one side of the room and when a man’s name was called he would step up to the doctor, who to him the following questions. Were you ever sick in your life, have you got the rheumatism, have you got varicose veins, and other questions of like matters, instead of finding out for himself by actual examination whether you had or not. If the questions were answered in the affirmative and he had no reason to doubt it, he would give us a thump on the chest, and if we were not floored nor showed any other sign of inconvenience, we were pronounced in good condition. (Robertson 1988, p. 147)
Without the benefit of proper physical examinations, both armies enlisted thousands of soldiers and sailors who were unfit for duty and were highly susceptible to disease. The vast majority of soldiers contracted some form of disease during their first weeks of military service. Those first weeks of duty were a period of enormous physical and psychological adjustment. Physically, soldiers grew accustomed to a new diet and sleep routine. Psychologically, most soldiers combated homesickness that sometimes turned into prolonged bouts of depression. The average soldier was sick at least three times annually between 1861 and 1865. Approximately 5 percent of all soldiers diagnosed with a disease died as a result of that ailment or from mounting complications stemming from their original malady. For unknown reasons, soldiers serving in the western theatre suffered a higher disease mortality rate than their eastern counterparts. Additionally, African American soldiers reported a higher rate of disease and disease mortality than did white soldiers. Lackluster conditions, inadequate supplies, preexisting conditions, and overt racism possibly account for those higher numbers.
Childhood Diseases The types of diseases contracted by soldiers can be divided into three main categories: childhood diseases, camp diseases, and epidemic diseases. Soldiers raised in rural areas usually had little exposure to childhood diseases such as chicken pox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough. The worst of these was measles. In the
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but instead a reflection of dozens of memoirs and diaries read by the Georgian author in preparation for writing the book. Childhood diseases frequently reduced a regiment’s fighting strength by half before the unit ever fired a single volley toward the enemy. Childhood diseases reappeared throughout the war. During the summer and fall of 1862 a second wave of childhood diseases spread throughout both armies, claiming the lives of hundreds and debilitating thousands. As late as winter 1865 diseases such as measles and chicken pox continued to plague both armies, even among veteran regiments.
Camp Diseases
Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston (1807–1891). During the Civil War, the mortality rate from disease outnumbered the rate from combat injuries. In an attempt to limit his troops’ exposure to disease, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston restricted civilian contact with his soldiers. The Library of Congress.
summer of 1861 measles struck several regiments in surgeon Legrand Wilson’s brigade. More than two hundred men died from measles in his brigade that summer. With hundreds more inflicted the Confederates converted a neighboring tobacco warehouse into a measles hospital. ‘‘About one hundred sick men,’’ wrote Wilson, as reprinted in Robertson’s book, ‘‘crowded in a room sixty by one hundred feet in all stages of measles. The poor boys lying on the hard floor, with only one or two blankets under them, not even straw, and anything they could find for a pillow. Many sick and vomiting, many already showing the unmistakable signs of blood poisoning’’ (p. 149). Measles were so prevalent in the army that twentieth-century writers such as Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) incorporated the disease into their fictionalized accounts of the war. In Mitchell’s 1936 book Gone With the Wind heroine Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband, Charles Hamilton, died from measles while in camp and prior to seeing battle. Mitchell’s choice of disease was more than an act of literary convenience
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Soldiers who survived bouts with childhood diseases also faced a number of camp diseases. Camp diseases were caused by a variety of factors, including poor sanitary conditions, vitamin deficient diets, inadequate shelter, contaminated drinking water, and insect infestations. Union soldiers benefited from the work of organizations such as the United States Sanitary Commission, the Christian Commission, the Western Sanitary Commission, and the Young Men’s Christian Association, whose combined efforts worked toward improving sanitary conditions. Their volunteers instructed soldiers and their commanders on the importance of maintaining both a hygienic body and campsite. The Confederacy never developed a similar network of sanitary crusaders. Their armies depended on staff surgeons and commanders to improve camp conditions. James M. McPherson reproduces the words of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, in his 2001 book Ordeal by Fire: ‘‘Our poor sick, I know suffer much, but they bring it on themselves by not doing what they are told. They are worse than children, for the latter can be forced’’ (p. 385). Maintaining a sanitary camp was beyond the capabilities of most soldiers and commanders. Sites placed on low-lying land or flood plains were subject to sitting water. Soldiers often slept on the damp ground. In such a state of affairs soldiers caught a variety of respiratory ailments, including bronchitis and pneumonia. Charles Smedley relayed an example of such problems in his 1865 memoir Life in Southern Prisons from the Diary of Corporal Charles Smedley: ‘‘Last night was the coldest we have had for some time. My attack of bronchitis has extended far into the chest, and is going to bring on that terrible ‘‘army scourge’’ again’’ (p. 33). Bronchitis was accompanied by a persistent cough and chest pain. Once diagnosed, soldiers could spend as much as a month in the hospital before their lungs regained normal function. Under regular circumstances bronchitis was rarely fatal, but diseases of the respiratory system proved to be cyclical for Civil War soldiers. Within days after being released from the hospital soldiers again began experiencing inflammation of the bronchial tubes
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accompanied by an abrasive cough, muscle pain, and a bloody mucus discharge. For many, such discomforts were routine parts of the daily life of a Civil War soldier. Large armies produced substantial amounts of human waste. Disposing of human excrement in a sanitary fashion required special planning, especially when armies were on the move. Soldiers frequently scraped out temporary latrines, also known as sinks, during short encampments. Such facilities provided no privacy and were usually located within close proximity to where soldiers ate, drank, and slept. Physicians did not understand the need to locate latrines a significant distance downstream from a camp’s source of drinking water. Consequently, soldiers often drank water gathered within a few yards of their latrines. Feces contain high levels of bacteria. One poorly placed latrine could spread bacterial infections such as pneumonia and diarrhea throughout an entire company of soldiers with devastating effect. Soldiers held in prison camps experienced frightening conditions. About Andersonville, John Worrell Northrop recorded the following account in his 1904 book Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons in the South in 1864: ‘‘Men unable to go to the swampy sinks, have dug holes close by where they lay. The rains wash these away or overflow them, and the filthy contents are carried into our resting places’’ (p. 71). Northrop’s description, though written while in prison, portrays similar conditions in thousands of military camps, where many soldiers paid scant attention to the devastating effects of improper sanitation. Dietary deficiencies weakened soldiers’ immune system and increased their susceptibility to certain types of disease. Soldiers’ letters regularly complained about their substandard diet. They ate sparingly during a campaign and when they did manage to eat a sufficient number of calories, it usually consisted of meals rich in corn protein and saturated fat. Poor diet made soldiers prone to ailments such as diarrhea and dysentery. More soldiers suffered from chronic bouts of diarrhea during the war than of any other disease. Editor David P. Jackson published the words of ancestor Oscar Lawrence Jackson in the 1922 edition of The Colonel’s Diary: ‘‘A great many of our men,’’ Oscar Lawrence Jackson wrote, ‘‘suffered with diarrhea and some with fevers and our regiment gradually ran down in strength’’ (p. 57). Diarrhea confounded physicians, who struggled to find an effective treatment and remained uncertain about its principal causes. Cases of diarrhea and dysentery steadily increased throughout the war, whereas diagnoses of more fatal diseases such as typhoid fever slowly decreased. Private Peter W. Homer, 1st New Jersey Cavalry Regiment, Army of the Potomac, was admitted to the hospital in January 1863 after enduring a prolonged bout of typhoid aggravated by an ‘‘exhausting diarrhea, from ten to twelve thin watery evacuations daily,’’ recounted George C. Rable in his 2002 book Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (p. 105). GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
A DEADLY TREATMENT Surgeons in the Civil War operated under difficult conditions. Despite their heroic efforts, they often could not save their patients, who suffered from wounds and complications for which the surgeons lacked the proper medicines or technologies. Surgeons also routinely used practices that were more dangerous than helpful. For example, they often treated gunshot wounds by ‘‘hermetically sealing’’ the opening, a practice in which a wound was closed without removing the bullet. The practice was later all but condemned because of its nearly 100 percent mortality rate. George Alexander Otis’s 1865 report on surgical procedure during the Civil War recorded only one soldier who made a full recovery after having his wound hermetically sealed. The passage below describes that soldier’s treatment for a bullet wound: Corporal Peter Welker, Co., A., 1st U.S. Sharpshooters, was admitted July 30th, 1863, into Mount Pleasant Hospital, at Washington, having received, at Manassas Gap, July 23, 1863, a gunshot wound of the chest. The missile entered near the nipple, between the fourth and fifth ribs, traversed the lung, and emerged at the inferior border of the scapula, fracturing the sixth rib. Treatment: Opiates and stimulants, the wound being hermetically sealed. When admitted, the patient had much pain in his chest dyspacea. The latter increased almost to suffocation, and was accompanied by fever. On July 31st the posterior wound gave way, and a profuse discharge of clotted blood and purulent matter escaped. The next day the anterior wound was opened, and a pint of matter of similar character escaped, after which the patient became much better. He continued to improve until furloughed. On December 13th, 1863, when readmitted, he had entirely recovered. (Otis 1865, p. 22) CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
SOURCE: Otis, George Alexander. Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials Available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865. Available online from http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/.
Homer, age twenty-six, died several weeks later after recovering from typhoid but eventually succumbing to successive bouts of diarrhea. Dietary deficiencies also caused such prominent and deadly diseases as scurvy and dyspepsia, but diarrhea was the most common.
Epidemic Diseases Soldiers weakened by the rigors of military service and protracted exposure to childhood and camp diseases were especially at risk to contract any one of a number
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of epidemic diseases. An epidemic disease differed from most camp diseases because of the rate of its expansion and the geographic size of its growth. Common Civil War epidemics included malaria, cholera, and small pox, but at times camp diseases such as diarrhea occurred in such widespread numbers that it too could be considered a disease of epidemic proportion. A vaccination existed for small pox but its supply was irregular and the results of the inoculation varied. Civilians constantly worried that approaching armies might introduce an epidemic into their community. Residents of Bartow County, Georgia, located in northwest Georgia, grew so concerned about the rate of small pox in the Army of Tennessee that several dozen families sought refuge at locations far removed from the army months prior to beginning phases of the Atlanta campaign. Army commanders also worried that civilians might transmit epidemic diseases to their forces. While in winter quarters at Dalton, General Joseph E. Johnston (1807– 1891) issued firm orders restricting civilian access to his post, citing the risk of the spread of disease as a major factor. Meanwhile in Christiansburg, Virginia, located in southwest Virginia, conditions at Montgomery White Sulphur Springs Hospital reached near chaos as a small pox epidemic ravaged their soldier patients, staff, and the surrounding community. As conditions worsened the psychological and physical hardships imposed on the staff as a result of the disease created internal strife as commanders and their subordinates uncharacteristically sniped at one another, each blaming the other for their post’s situation. Malaria, like small pox, played a prominent role in the war’s military history. Commanders serving in mosquito-infested areas had to account for malaria when planning their military campaigns. During the Peninsula campaign Union troop numbers were reduced dramatically by outbreaks of malaria. Gerald F. Linderman recounted the words of one Union soldier in his 1987 book Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War, that ‘‘at times one might sit in the door of his tent and see as many as six or seven funeral parties bearing comrades to their humble resting places. . . . Our army seemed on the point of annihilation from disease’’ (p. 116). As the Army of the Potomac approached the Confederate capital Richmond many of its regiments were missing as many as 75 percent of their men due to numerous outbreaks. Malaria rarely killed soldiers but did weaken their bodies, allowing accompanying illnesses such as diarrhea to become increasingly deadly. About 5 percent of soldiers who had malaria died, while more than half returned to active duty following a hospital stay or recuperation period that typically lasted for two or more weeks. Small pox, malaria, influenza, yellow fever, cholera, and other forms of epidemic disease spread virtually uncontested throughout the war. Even when such dis-
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eases were not present, the mere threat of their arrival and dispersion was enough to have a tremendous psychological impact upon a soldier’s psyche. Union soldiers such as Alfred Lewis Castleman saw the South as a land of epidemic diseases and some worried that this fact might provide the Confederates with a distinct advantage. Castleman wrote in his 1863 book The Army of the Potomac, Behind the Scenes, ‘‘They [Confederates] will then, I think, fall back on the Cotton States, luring us on to an enemy more formidable than their guns—rice swamps, hot weather, and yellow fever’’ (p. 110). Some Confederate civilians saw this as an advantage. In her 1911 book The Journal of Julia LeGrand, New Orleans 1862–1863 Julia Ellen LeGrand Waitz reproduced this journal entry: ‘‘I feel that these insolent invaders with their bragging, should be conquered—come what will. Better to die than to be under their rule. The Yankees have established strict quarantine. The people of the town are frightening them terribly with tales about the yellow fever. We are compelled to laugh at the frequent amusing accounts’’ (p. 46).
Venereal and Behavioral Diseases Venereal disease too struck numerous soldiers, embarrassing the infected and further reducing their side’s effective fighting force. Such disease typically involved a plethora of symptoms including, but not limited to, painful urination, genital swelling, persistent rash, and genital bleeding. The surviving medical records of the Army of Tennessee indicate that no soldier died as a result of a venereal disease, but fewer than half of those infected returned to active duty. Camp followers, like prostitutes, transmitted venereal diseases such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and herpes to soldiers. This became such a problem for the Army of Tennessee that surgeons opened a venereal disease hospital in Kingston, Georgia. During winter 1863–1864, Army of Tennessee general Joseph E. Johnston received reports that many of his men at winter quarters in Dalton, Georgia, had been slipping south along the railroad to a house located on the northern bank of the Etowah River. There, the men were reportedly soliciting the services of a known prostitute, Mary Edwards. Eager to stop this behavior, Johnston ordered a detachment of cavalry to destroy Edwards’ brothel. The horse soldiers attached chains to the building and pulled it off of its rock foundation, toppling it into the Etowah River. Enraged, Edwards wrote an angry letter to Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown protesting Johnston’s actions. Brown, unaware of the details of the situation, forwarded her letter along with a few harsh words of his own to Johnston. Johnston curtly replied, defending his actions and claimed that women such as Edwards had ‘‘disabled more men than the enemy’’ through their illicit behavior. A number of behavioral diseases also impacted the daily lives of Civil War soldiers, such as alcoholism and
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other forms of drug addiction. Most soldiers drank, but many developed severe alcohol problems. Alcohol provided soldiers with a release from the stressful toll of daily life. During periods of inactivity, such as winter quarters, alcohol relieved boredom and tempered feelings of homesickness. Jenkins Lloyd Jones, in his 1914 book An Artilleryman’s Diary, notes from December 1864 when serving in Savannah, ‘‘Our camp is right by a liquor saloon, which is sold indiscriminately. Nearly all of a neighboring regiment are beastly drunk, and with their unearthly yells and maniac demonstrations are making the air hideous. Our own Battery also presents a sad sight. Last night—was helplessly drunk. . . . Oh, why will not out officers put a stop to this demoralization’’ (p. 280). Soldiers recovering from battle wounds, particularly Union soldiers, frequently received pain relievers such as morphine and laudanum either during surgery or throughout their recuperation. Supplies of these painkillers were limited in the Confederacy due to the blockade and poor domestic production. Morphine and laudanum were highly addictive painkillers necessary, though not always available, to ease a soldier’s pain during intensive surgical procedures such as amputations. Surgeons, however, also used these drugs as sleep aids. Wounded soldiers recovering in hospitals regularly received various assorted doses of morphine to induce sleep. Such usage over even a short period of several days was enough to produce a life-long addiction for many soldiers. Post bellum physicians further aggravated the problem through their continued over-reliance on those and other painkillers. Civil War veteran surgeon and post bellum physician Robert T. Ellett of Christiansburg, Virginia, for example, routinely prescribed morphine to patients experiencing difficulty sleeping or hypertension. For those affected, postwar drug addiction was a wartime legacy many soldiers carried with them for the rest of their lives. The Civil War was a medical catastrophe. More soldiers died from disease than battle. Most physicians and surgeons had little understanding about the relationship between soldiers’ physical environment and their state of health. Medical personnel treated the disease and not the patient, frequently conquering one only to lose to another enemy whose presence attracted less attention. If they must die, soldiers wanted to do so with their face to the enemy in a manner somehow befitting all the glories of war. Disease brought a slow painful death void of heroism, yet all too familiar for most soldiers. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Castleman, Alfred Lewis. The Army of the Potomac, Behind the Scenes: A Diary of Unwritten History: from the Organization of the Army . . . to the Close of the Campaign in Virginia, about the First Day of GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
January, 1863. Milwaukee, WI: Strickland and Co., 1863. Courtwright, David T. ‘‘The Hidden Epidemic: Opiate Addiction and Cocaine Use in the South, 1860–1920,’’ Journal of Southern History 49, no. 1 (February 1983): 57–72. Gone With the Wind. Directed by Victor Fleming. MGM Pictures, 1939. Jackson, David P., ed. The Colonel’s Diary: Journals Kept before and during the Civil War by the Late Colonel Oscar L. Jackson of Newcastle, Pennsylvania, Sometime Commander of the 63rd Regiment O. V. I. New Castle, PA: David P. Jackson, [1922]. Jones, Jenkins Lloyd. An Artilleryman’s Diary. Madison: Wisconsin History Commission, 1914. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Northrop, John Worrell. Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864 . Wichita, KS: J. W. Northrop, 1904. Rable, George C. Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue & Gray. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Shyrock, Richard H. ‘‘A Medical Perspective on the Civil War,’’ American Quarterly 14, no. 2 (Summer 1962): 161–173. Smedley, Charles. Life in Southern Prisons from the Diary of Corporal Charles Smedley, of Company G, 90th Regiment Penn’s Volunteers, Commencing a Few Days before the Battle of the Wilderness. [Lancaster, PA:] Ladies’ and Gentleman’s Fulton Aid Society, 1865. Waitz, Julia Ellen LeGrand. The Journal of Julia LeGrand, New Orleans 1862–1863. Richmond, VA: Everett Waddey Co., 1911. Keith S. He´bert
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Surgeons
When the U.S. Civil War began in April 1861, both the Union and Confederate sides were woefully underprepared to deal with the heavy flow of casualties that would soon result. New and ballistically advanced weaponry meant that an arm or leg bone could be easily shattered from a distance of several hundred yards. Many physicians of the era had been well trained at the medical schools that had sprung up in the first half of the nineteenth century, but their education rarely included the treatment of battlefield injuries.
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AN AFRICAN AMERICAN SURGEON IN THE UNION ARMY Cortlandt van Rensselaer Creed, M.D. (1833–1900), was the first black graduate of Yale and the first black person to receive a medical degree from an Ivy League university. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Creed was the grandson of Prince Duplex, a soldier in the Revolutionary War who gained his freedom from slavery by serving in the Continental Army. Creed’s mother, Vashti Duplex, was the first black schoolteacher in New Haven. His father, John William Creed, a native of the West Indies, worked as a Yale janitor but also built up a highly successful local catering business. Creed’s parents were married by the Reverend Leonard Bacon, a professor of theology at Yale and an outspoken abolitionist. Cortlandt Creed could not apply to Yale as an undergraduate because of his race; however, what was then known as the Medical Department of Yale College (now the School of Medicine of Yale University) was separate from the undergraduate school and accepted Creed when he applied in 1854. He completed his M.D. in 1857, submitting a dissertation on the circulation of the blood to fulfill the degree requirements. After graduation, Creed developed successful mixed-race practices in both New Haven and Brooklyn, New York. When the Civil War began in 1861, Creed offered his services as a field surgeon but was initially turned down because he was black. When Abraham Lincoln authorized the recruitment of black troops in 1863, however, Creed became acting surgeon of the 30th Regiment U.S.C. Infantry and served at the front until the end of the war in 1865. ‘‘On every side,’’ he wrote, ‘‘we behold colored sons rallying to the sound of Liberty and Union’’ (Medical News Today). Creed gained a considerable reputation after the war as an outstanding surgeon and medical examiner, being frequently mentioned in the New York Times as well as the local New Haven newspapers. When President James Garfield was shot in July 1881, Creed was consulted by surgeons in Washington to help locate the bullet in Garfield’s body in order to remove it before infection could develop. X-ray machines did not yet exist and surgeons often found it difficult to find bullets within soft tissue. Garfield died of generalized blood poisoning two months after the shooting. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Creed, Cortlandt van Rensselaer. ‘‘Dissertation on the Blood.’’ M.D. thesis, Yale Medical Department, 1857. ‘‘Honoring First African American Alumnus.’’ Yale Medicine (Autumn 2007): 50–51. ‘‘Yale Celebrates 150th Anniversary of First African American Graduate.’’ Medical News Today, May 31, 2007. Available online from http:// www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/72602.php.
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Nor were these newly enlisted army doctors immune from the dangers of battle themselves—indeed, they were as much at risk of death or injury from enemy fire as were ordinary soldiers and officers. One surgeon, John H. Brinton, with a naval convoy near Belmont, Missouri, recalled that as he ‘‘stood on the front of our boat . . . I saw a puff of smoke afar off, and in a few seconds a huge projectile flew past us, and far above our heads.’’ A second projectile that followed, he continued, ‘‘seemed to give birth to a black line, at first well up above the Mississippi, but gradually sinking as it came nearer. It seemed to making a bee-line for my eye, but fortunately changed its mind’’ (Brinton 1914, p. 72).
Dire Shortage of Doctors About 1.5 million men served three-year stints in the Union Army, though an equal number served briefer three-month stints. The most accurate Confederate Army figures suggest a total force of 1.2 million, with two-thirds, or 800,000 men, serving a full three years (Heidler 2002, p. 373). Yet at the outset of the war there were only a handful of surgeons who were genuinely qualified as battlefield trauma specialists. To remedy this, civilian doctors were recruited to become field surgeons. These men left their positions at urban hospitals and medical schools, and their families, to serve in the Army as commissioned personnel. Neither the War Department in Washington, DC, nor the one in Richmond, the Confederate capital, had adequate stockpiles of medical supplies at the onset of the conflict. In civilian life surgeons customarily carried their own instruments with them, a practice that continued in the field hospitals. These items included scalpels, bullet extractors, and clamps to stanch bleeding vessels. Surgeons also carried a supply of sewing needles and catgut to close wounds. The majority of battlefield wounds came from conical-shaped lead bullets known as Minie´ balls, which were fired from .58-caliber musket rifles; used by both sides, these bullets were ideal for shattering bones.
Primitive Conditions Two types of hospitals were used during the Civil War: field hospitals, which were temporary and traveled with an Army division; and general hospitals, which were located further away from the battlefield. Railroad cars and river steamboats were also converted into medicaltreatment facilities, especially in the North. The wounded would be carried by other soldiers to the surgical field stations after a retreat, or sometimes by local civilians recruited to help. A field station might be a tent or barn, but more often was simply a designated area out in the open, marked by a green flag to signify to enemy shooters that medical treatment was taking place. At field hospitals, surgeons often used an ordinary wagon tailgate, or two barrels with a door stretched
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across, as an operating table. Nearby might be an Autenrieth medicine wagon, a four-wheeled vehicle that served as a mobile pharmacy and was stocked with medicines and surgical supplies. Chloroform, a liquid created by mixing chlorine and methane, had recently begun to replace ether as an anesthetic. Ether was a far more flammable compound, and thus potentially dangerous on the battlefield. For injuries to the arms, legs, hands, and feet caused by Minie´ balls, amputation was the most commonplace procedure. While awaiting treatment, the injured soldier would be dosed with whiskey and, if it was available, opium, a powerful narcotic. Once he was brought to the operating table, anesthesia was administered via a rag soaked with chloroform or ether and placed over the nose and mouth. A surgical assistant would then begin counting aloud the passing seconds, which was done for two reasons: The patient would not be stunned into unconsciousness by chloroform or ether indefinitely, and recent medical advances showed that the quicker an operation was performed, the better the prognosis. Furthermore, the sooner a wound was closed up, the less chance there was of sepsis, or infection. The ideal surgery, according to common wisdom, lasted less than three minutes.
‘‘The Veterans of a Hundred Fights’’ A scalpel made the first incision, and arteries were tied off with oiled silk; a bone saw completed the amputation. Piles of severed limbs, especially during such major battles as Gettysburg and Chickamauga, were left in heaps at the roadside, or carried off by local farmers as pig feed. The stump was then doused with carbolic acid (also known as phenol), a strong disinfectant that also sped up the formation of scar tissue. Sanitary conditions, however, were still quite primitive. ‘‘We operated in old blood-stained and often pus-stained coats, the veterans of a hundred fights,’’ wrote one surgeon, W. W. Keen, a half-century later. ‘‘We used undisinfected instruments from undisinfected plush-lined cases, and still worse, used marine sponges which had been used in prior pus cases and only washed in tap water’’ (Keen 1918, p. 24). Keen also recalled that silk to tie blood vessels was undisinfected. One end was left long hanging out of the wound and after three or four days was daily pulled to see if the loop on the blood vessel had rotted loose. When it came away, if a blood clot had formed and closed the blood vessel, well and good; if no such clot had formed then a dangerous ‘‘secondary’’ hemorrhage followed and not seldom was fatal. (Keen 1918, p. 24)
Wounds often became infected by gangrene, a type of tissue death that affects extremities when blood flow is restricted; this infection often then spread from the dead tissue to living tissue. Many firsthand reports written by those who worked in or visited military medical
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facilities noted that gangrene’s particular stench was overwhelming. At field hospitals, surgeons toiled under grueling conditions, bound to service by an Army rule that required them to remain at their post until every wounded soldier had received medical attention. Twenty-four-hour stretches at a field operating unit without food or rest were not uncommon, and there were reports of surgeons simply collapsing from exhaustion, then returning to work after their colleagues revived them. Hands rife with blisters and swollen feet were two of the most common signs of overwork for field doctors, but doctors were also subject to those infectious diseases that are estimated to have killed more Union and Confederate soldiers than bullets— namely, dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. Field surgeons frequently had to cross enemy lines after control of territory had changed hands, in order to bring back their side’s wounded. Doctor J. Franklin Dyer kept a journal during his three years with the 19th Massachusetts Infantry and wrote scores of letters home to his wife. One recounted a battle on the Potomac River, which concluded with a Confederate victory. The Confederate colonel informed Dyer’s commanding officer that ‘‘a surgeon would be permitted to cross and attend to the wounded still remaining. On preparing to cross I was told by Colonel Burt [the Confederate officer] that I should be held as a prisoner, . . . [after which] I declined to cross. He was not well pleased and expressed a great desire to shoot me. He was unquestionably drunk’’ (Dyer 2003, pp. 7–8).
How-To Manuals Surgeons were provided with some instructions on how to treat gunshot wounds, which were relatively rare in civilian life at the time. To Union doctors, U.S. Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond issued Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays, which contained crucial information on the treatment of battlefield injuries and on ways to to reduce the chance of infections from poor sanitary conditions at camp. Confederate physicians were similarly provided with J. Julius Chisholm’s Manual of Military Surgery. The Confederacy, however, was at a dire disadvantage, despite the fact that several Army doctors based in Washington, DC, had fled the capital at the onset of war to serve in their native South and for its military. The South’s medical resources were limited, and the situation only worsened as the war dragged on and supply lines were cut. John H. Worsham, a soldier with the 21st Regiment Virginia Infantry, was surprised ‘‘how the Confederacy got along with such a small variety of medicines, which consisted, in the field, almost entirely of blue powders, one kind of pills, and quinine’’ (Worsham 1912, p. 160). The Surgeon-General’s Office of the Confederate States of America even issued its field physicians an 1862 tome titled General Directions for Collecting and
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Army doctors performing an amputation. Advancements in weaponry resulted in greater horrific injuries on the combat lines. The majority of doctors on both sides of the conflict had never faced such large scale carnage but soon learned how to expediently handle amputations and other operations under makeshift conditions. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Drying Medicinal Substances of the Vegetable Kingdom, which was a comprehensive guide to the plants of the Southern states and their various medicinal properties. The Confederate doctor Herbert M. Nash recalled the winter quarters of 1863–4, when the younger and men of the artillery of [General Alexander P.] Hill’s corps, to which I was now attached, and nearly all of whom expected to return to college again if not killed in battle, sent to the University of Virginia for text-books, had regular hours for study when not engaged in military exercises, and at night by the light of fatted-pine torches (candles not to be had) . . . Mathematics and Latin and Greek authors were studied with deep interest under the supervision of our chaplain, himself a scholar of no mean pretensions. Joining these classes, I soon found that after a long neglect of the classics the effort to construe Horace was no
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easy task, especially while seated on a log, and by the light of a pine-knot. (Nash 1938 [1906], pp. 2–3)
Forerunner of the Army Medical Corps Civil War doctors also treated the wounded at newly established general hospitals, located much farther away from the battlefield, such as Chimborazo Hospital in the Confederate capital of Richmond, which had 6,000 beds and was the largest military medical facility in North America at the time (Medicine of the Civil War, 1973, p. 5). In the North, Hammond, who took over as U.S. Surgeon General in April 1862, managed to implement several new procedures that comprised major advances in military medicine. These included an inspection system for hospitals—the guidelines of which were laid out in one section of the Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays—and the creation of a genuine ambulance corps GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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for emergency medical care in wartime. Previously, when it became necessary to move large numbers of wounded or recovering men from field hospitals, the Army Quartermaster would commonly hire civilians to serve as drivers. But according to one Union doctor, Henry I. Bowditch, these drivers ‘‘were men of the lowest character, evidently taken from the vilest purlieus of Washington’’ (Bowditch 1863, n.p.). Bowditch recalled that the drivers of the wagon train he traveled in were seemingly in no hurry to reach the wounded at Centreville; they frequently stopped to rest their horses, and after his own driver began falling asleep, Bowditch was forced to take the reins and drive through the night. Upon spotting a fruit orchard the next day, the drivers stole fruit from the trees. Finally, upon reaching the wounded, ‘‘the drivers did not feel it to be their duty to help the sufferers, but sulked, or swore, or laughed, as it pleased each’’ (1863, n.p.). Bowditch delivered a report on this state of affairs to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement on September 22, 1862. Not long afterward, his own son, a lieutenant, was wounded and died on the battlefield for lack of a stretcher and medical personnel to bring him to a field hospital. U.S. Surgeon General Hammond and his secondin-command in Washington, Dr. Jonathan Letterman, were successful in winning approval for the creation of a legitimate Ambulance Corps, which was first deployed as a regular army unit at the Battle of Antietam. Its drivers were military personnel attached to the Medical Department of the Army of the Potomac, and as such subject to the strictest military discipline. The immediate improvement in treatment and casualty rates that resulted from their work led Congress to approve the Ambulance Corps Act of March 11, 1864, which established such units in all army divisions.
First Female Army Doctor While women during the Civil War were almost entirely relegated to work as nurses, one notable woman did serve as an Army surgeon, though her military career was marked by controversy and a few instances of open hostility. Mary Edwards Walker was a native of Oswego, New York, and earned her M.D. from Syracuse Medical College in 1855. She was an advocate of women’s rights and known for her habit of wearing men’s trousers, which was a shocking sight for most at the time and considered an outrageous blurring of gender lines. At the outbreak of war, she traveled to Washington to work in a general hospital but was required to serve as a nurse, not a physician. In 1862 she traveled to Virginia battlefields and began treating the wounded, while formally requesting a military commission. A year later, Walker was appointed the surgeon for a Union outfit positioned near Chattanooga, Tennessee— because her predecessor had died, and she was the near-
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est qualified surgeon. The regiment was fiercely opposed to having a woman doctor, and some members formally petitioned the Army to rescind her appointment. At one point, Walker was accused of spying for the Confederacy and was briefly detained as a prisoner of war, but in September of 1864 she finally won an Army commission that gave her a salary of $100 per month and made her the first commissioned female surgeon of the U.S. Army. She eventually won over many of the men, particularly because of her belief that many of the amputations performed were unnecessary. Walker was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, but after her discharge in 1865 she was given a meager pension that was less than some veterans’ widows received.
Medical Advances Life-saving techniques were perfected by the surgeons who risked their lives to treat the wounded, and these advances were crucial to the development of modern medicine and trauma care. The estimated 500,000 injuries treated by doctors on both sides represented a massive, hands-on teaching experience that resulted in the development of new and more efficient surgical techniques and led to groundbreaking ideas about postoperative care (Smith 2001 [1962], p. 2). Indeed, the first federal medical research facility in the United States was established as a result of the war, when the Army Medical Museum began collecting scores of pathology specimens for investigative purposes. This facility later became the National Museum of Health and Medicine. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowditch, Henry I. A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States, As Drawn from the Extra Sufferings of the Late Lieut. Bowditch and a Wounded Comrade. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863. Brinton, John H. Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon U.S.V., 1861–1865. New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1914. Dyer, J. Franklin. The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon, ed. Michael B. Chesson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Heidler, David Stephen, Jeanne T. Heidler, and David J. Coles. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Keen, W. W. ‘‘Military Surgery in 1861 and 1918.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 80: Rehabilitation of the Wounded. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1918. Medicine of the Civil War. Bethesda, MD: National Library of Medicine, 1973. Available from http:// www.nlm.nih.gov/.
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Nursing: An Overview
Nash, Herbert M. ‘‘Some Reminiscences of a Confederate Surgeon.’’ Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 3rd ser., no. 28 (1906): 122–144. Reprinted in College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 3rd series. Philadelphia: College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 1938. Smith, George Winston. Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories during the Civil War. Madison, WI: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1962, Reprint, Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2001. Worsham, John H. One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry; His Experience and What He Saw during the War 1861–1865. New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1912. Carol Brennan
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Nursing NURSING : AN OVERVIEW
Keith S. He´bert ARMY NURSES
Carol Brennan VOLUNTEER NURSES
Carol Brennan
NURSING: AN OVERVIEW The Civil War was a watershed moment in the history of the American nursing profession. The war served as the primary impetus fueling an increasing demand for and recognition of the contributions of nurses as medical care providers. Prior to 1861, men dominated the newly developed nursing profession. During the war, the demand for nurses quickly outpaced the existing supply, providing women with opportunities to volunteer outside the home. By 1865 Americans no longer considered nursing to be a male occupation. And it was the wartime sacrifices of tens of thousands of women that made possible the profession’s postbellum development.
Antebellum Nursing The term nurse lacked any uniform definition during the antebellum period, due in part to deficiencies in nursing’s professional development. Today, nursing is an occupation within the medical profession. Prior to the Civil War, the term nurse typically described someone who cared for children or was a wet nurse. Some excerpts from the ‘‘help wanted’’ advertisements published in the New York Evening Post in 1824 reflect such usage. For example, an advertisement placed on March 11, 1824, read: ‘‘A Nurse Wanted—wanted, a middle aged woman, capable of taking care of children. Apply at
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No. 77 Fulton Street.’’ A similar advertisement in May 1824 read: ‘‘Wet Nurse: A Healthy young woman, with a good fresh breast of milk, wants a situation in the above capacity, in a respectable family. The most respectable references can be produced, as to character, ability, &c.’’ In addition, Southern plantation households used similar language when referring to slaves who worked in the nursery. Throughout American history, mothers and other female members of households traditionally worked within the home, where they attended to the bulk of their family’s medical needs. While the use of male physicians increased during the antebellum period, mothers still exercised great authority, because patients by and large remained at home, and only rarely received care in a hospital. Many of the first female nurses to work outside the home were the spouses and daughters of male physicians, whom they routinely accompanied during house calls. These women served as an invaluable buffer between the male physician and the household’s females, often working more as a source of comfort and support than as a medical care provider. Several factors hampered the development of the antebellum nursing profession. Demand for nurses existed only in the nation’s few hospitals. Such facilities were rare, except in such cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Gender-based expectations also inhibited the profession. Though by and large it was men who worked as nurses, nursing was still considered a feminine activity and was associated with mothers, not professionals. A lack of training and educational opportunities also limited the profession’s development. Most nurses learned their skills through observation rather than as part of a regimented training program. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in America, saw a need to develop such a program. In 1858 she started the nation’s first nurses’ training school at the New York Infirmary. Her efforts, however, were more reflective of her own feminist program than representative of any mass movement toward educating nurses. Antebellum attitudes toward women and toward sex also hampered the profession’s development. If nursing was conceived as a feminine activity, women were nonetheless considered poorly suited to serve as professional nurses. Antebellum women were seen by American culture as too weak, physically and emotionally, to endure the sight of blood. A female nurse, it was also believed, would be unable to control male patients. Perhaps most importantly, they would be exposed to the sight of male genitalia. While those prejudices were influential, the principal factor hampering the profession’s development remained the lackluster demand for nursing, a reflection of the domestic nature of antebellum healthcare. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) and Mary Seacole (1805–1881), British nurses during the Crimean
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Nursing: An Overview
War (1853–1856), directly influenced Civil War nursing. Nightingale’s efforts to improve sanitary conditions for British soldiers in Scutari, Turkey, attracted international attention and directly influenced the duties of Civil War nurses. Her focus on sanitation was unprecedented. Like Nightingale, Mary Seacole—a woman of mixed racial ethnicity—nursed soldiers serving in frontline units and frequented the battlefields tending to the wounded. Both women were acclaimed by American newspapers, which printed many stories documenting their heroism. Those stories helped to recast the image of the nurse in the American imagination. In 1860 Nightingale opened the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas Hospital in London. That same year, she published Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. This book served as the standard nursing text for decades. In it, Nightingale clearly defines nursing as women’s work: ‘‘If, then, every woman must at some time or other of her life,’’ she wrote, ‘‘become a nurse, i.e., have charge of somebody’s health, how immense and how valuable would be the produce of her united experience if every woman would think how to nurse’’ (Nightingale 1860, preface). The book also established a set of practical guidelines that defined nurses’ distinctive role in providing health care. Nightingale fashioned nurses as sanitary crusaders and observers who monitored the health of men—duties that formed the daily life of Civil War nurses.
Civil War Nursing Nurses, both male and female, have cared for wounded soldiers in every American war. During the Civil War, nurses worked in hospitals, on the battlefield, and in their homes. The war significantly altered the course of American nursing in two major ways. First, the carnage of the war created an unprecedented demand for nurses. This need made it possible for nursing to become a standard occupation within the American medical profession. Second, while the majority of wartime nurses were male, the contributions of thousands of female nurses helped alter the image of the professional nurse and changed American nursing from a male-dominated to a largely female profession. The Civil War set the stage for subsequent developments in the history of American nursing. A myriad of factors motivated Americans to become nurses during the Civil War. ‘‘I long to be a man,’’ wrote Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women (1868– 1869), who served as a Civil War nurse, ‘‘but as I can’t fight, I will content myself with working for those who can’’ (Young 1996, p. 448). Judith White Brockenbrough echoed similar sentiments when she wrote: ‘‘We must do what we can for the comfort of our brave men. We must sew for them, knit for them, nurse the sick, keep-up the faint hearted, give them a word of encouragement in season and out of season’’ (McGuire 1889, p. 13).
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Estimating the number of nurses who served during the Civil War is difficult, due to the destruction of Confederate Medical Department records, the large number of volunteer nurses, and the haphazard manner in which the military identified nurses. While an exact figure is impossible to provide, it has been estimated that there were as many as 400,000 Civil War nurses, though that number includes individuals who performed duties associated with but not directly related to nursing. During the war, the term nurse was associated with a variety of duties and types of individual. It did not by any means refer only to trained medical professionals. For example, both armies still referred to slave women charged with the care of children as nurses. Men whose work in the hospital involved such menial chores as chopping wood or transporting soldiers were often referred to as nurses. The word was also used for agents of the Sanitary Commission or Christian Commission, and for nuns from the Sisters of Mercy or Sisters of Charity. It might also be used to describe a person charged with caring for an ailing soldier within the privacy of their home, or a woman who accompanied her husband in camp, tending to the sick and wounded. Some generalizations can be made about Civil War nurses. A majority were enlisted soldiers pressed into duty as nurses. While many soldiers fulfilled this assignment admirably, others did not. After the Battle of Shiloh, Union Army surgeon Robert Murray advocated for future use of fulltime nurses, a group that included a large number of women. Murray complained that wounded soldiers were ‘‘left partially attended to by an unwilling and forced detail of panic-stricken deserters from the battle-field’’ (The War of the Rebellion, ser. 1, vol. 10, p. 299). Soldier nurses were routinely accused of shirking the more dangerous duties of the frontline soldier. Both armies created strict regulations that governed who among the enlisted ranks would serve as nurses. While most regiments detailed active soldiers, male nurses in general hospitals tended to be convalescing soldiers recovering from their injuries. There were several ways for women and men to become nurses. Some were mustered into service by the military and received payment for their work. Most women volunteered, either through local or national associations or by receiving permission from a commanding officer. The majority of female volunteers came from middleclass or upper-class social backgrounds, which enabled them to leave their homes for extended periods while others (servants, parents, or slaves) tended to their domestic affairs. These women usually earned no compensation. Still other women, and most men who worked as nurses, had their duties thrust upon them in ad hoc fashion, due to their proximity to a battlefield or field hospital. The war significantly altered the development of the nursing profession. The entrance of women into nursing
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Nurse caring for wounded soldiers. As Civil War fighting created battle injuries on an unprecedented scale, nurses quickly demonstrated their value by tending to the sick. Though most of the nurses serving during the conflict were male, the thousands of women who proved themselves as capable volunteers established nursing as an acceptable field of employment for women after the war. ª Corbis.
outside the home was a significant new development, even if men in the ranks comprised the majority of wartime nurses. Nonetheless, there continued to be resistance to female nurses. ‘‘It seems,’’ wrote Kate Cumming, a volunteer nurse serving in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, ‘‘that surgeons entertain great prejudices against admitting ladies into the hospital in the capacity as nurses’’ (Cumming 1998 [1866], p. 12). ‘‘Hardly a surgeon of whom I can think received or treated them [women nurses] with even common courtesy,’’ wrote volunteer nurse Georgeanna M. Woolsey (Bacon 2001 [1899], p. 142). ‘‘Government had decided that women should be employed, and the army surgeons—unable, therefore, to close the hospitals against them—determined to make their lives so unbearable that they should be forced in self-defense to leave’’ (Bacon 2001 [1899], p. 142). If many surgeons initially saw female nurses as a potential threat to their authority, such objections grew increasingly less pronounced as women nurses proved their worth. In fact, some physicians strongly advocated their usage, or sought to recruit them. On May 14, 1861, a Georgia physician, H. L. Byrd, made an emotional plea in the Savannah Daily Morning News soliciting female nurses. ‘‘Every physician of experience,’’ he
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wrote, ‘‘knows that much of his success depends upon the nurse who attends upon his patients in civil practice. . . . It is much more important that he should have an educated nurse upon the battle field.’’ Initially, both armies accepted female nurses with great reluctance and only under strict guidelines. In the Union Army, for example, the superintendent of women nurses, Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), established a set of criteria that women had to meet. ‘‘No woman under thirty years need apply to serve in government hospitals,’’ wrote Dix. ‘‘All nurses are required to be very plain-looking women. Their dresses must be brown or black, with no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoopskirts’’ (Young 1959, p. 61). On August 2, 1862, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported ‘‘that several young ladies of . . . [Kingston, New York] volunteered as army nurses, but have been rejected on account of their good looks.’’ Regulations also forbade female nurses from fraternizing with patients and frowned upon excessive physical contact. The sights, sounds, and smells of Civil War hospitals were also major obstacles for many women. Civil War nurse Amanda Akin Stearns, who volunteered at the Armory Square Hospital in Washington, DC, described
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her initial trepidation: ‘‘I meekly followed through the long ward, unable to return the gaze of the occupants of twenty-six beds, to the table in the center, and with a sinking heart watched her [the matron] raise the head of a poor fellow in the last stages of typhoid, to give him a soothing draught. Could I ever do that? For once my courage failed’’ (Stearns 1909, p. 13). Cumming remembered that the ‘‘foul air from the mass of human beings at first made me giddy and sick, but I soon got over it’’ (Cumming 1998 [1866], p. 15). In 1864, after having served as a nurse, Georgeanna Woolsey warned women who aspired to become nurses that such work was inappropriate for ‘‘a delicate creature whose head is full only of the romance of the work’’ (Woolsey 1864, pp. 136–137). The regimented daily life of a Civil War hospital helped nurses overcome the revulsion brought on by the sights, sounds, and smells they encountered. ‘‘My day begins early,’’ wrote Emily Elizabeth Parsons; with ‘‘reveille at six, I must be up before to get the beds made, ward swept out, dressings attended to, and wounds unbandaged and washed ready for the surgeon’s inspection’’ (Parsons 1984 [1880], pp. 18–21). Stearns described her hospital ward as a ‘‘solar system: every ward revolves around on its own axis’’ (Stearns 1909, p. 15). The daily work of female nurses mirrored the standards established by Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing, as it was primarily focused on improving the sanitary conditions of a hospital and observing patients to better attend to their needs. Female nurses generally were not seen as medical care providers. They did dispense medicine, change bandages, and perform other medically related chores, but their daily tasks revolved more around sweeping floors, opening windows, circulating air, preparing meals, and consoling patients. Sometimes, female nurses and the wounded soldiers they treated forged a unique bond. Many wounded soldiers arrived at a hospital scared and fearful of death. The hospital greeted them with putrid smells and gory sights that prevented a soldier from emotionally escaping the carnage of the battlefield. Numerous sources record that during periods of intense pain and fear, wounded soldiers in the field and in hospitals frequently called out for their mothers. Women thus were able to fill a role that men could not: surrogate mother. Elizabeth Comstock, a Union nurse, described a particularly touching encounter with one wounded soldier: ‘‘He opened his eyes, and, with an earnest appealing look at me, tried to speak. There was sufficient of memory and of reason left for him to remember his mother, and of sight to see that a woman stood beside him: and, mistaking me for his fardistant mother, he said ‘Mother, I knew you would come’’’ (Comstock 1895, pp. 114–115). Louisa May Alcott recalled that wounded soldiers wanted a woman’s touch: ‘‘I had forgotten that the strong man might long for the gentler tendance of a woman’s hands,’’ she wrote, ‘‘the sympathetic magnetism of a woman’s presence’’ (Alcott 2004 [1863], p. 88).
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Providing medical care for wounded enemy soldiers sometimes pitted a nurse’s responsibilities against her national sympathies. Nurses usually acted in a professional manner, tending to the enemy’s needs while privately displaying their prejudices. Union nurse Abby Hopper Gibbons recalled, ‘‘We have always observed that the Rebs make more noise when they are suffering than our men do’’ (Gibbons 1896–1897, p. 89). Nurses on both sides of the conflict tended to see the enemy as an inferior example of masculinity compared to their own soldiers. Overall, however, they treated enemy soldiers quite well, as evidenced by the writings of Union nurse and spy Sarah Emma Edmonds: [As] I looked upon . . . [the rebel soldier] in his helpless condition, I did not feel the least resentment, or entertain an unkind thought toward him personally, but looked upon him only as an unfortunate, suffering man, whose sad condition called forth the best feelings of my nature; and I longed to restore him to health and strength; not considering that the very health and strength I wished to secure for him would be employed against the cause which I espoused. (Edmonds 1865, p. 154)
Medical personnel attached to armies in the field also routinely exposed themselves to the additional risk of being captured by the enemy. During a battle, nurses did their best to move the wounded to the rear, where surgeons were stationed. Many enlisted nurses died while attempting such feats. During a retreat, they had to decide whether to flee with the army or remain behind and treat the wounded. When the Union Army fled from the battlefield at Chickamauga, blue-clad medical staff tending to the wounded at two field hospitals, Crawfish Springs and Cloud’s Farm, remained and fell into enemy hands. Confederate forces removed all of the nurses from the two field hospitals, minus one who was allowed to remain to treat a wounded Confederate officer. When an unidentified medical staff member asked what could be done for a severely wounded Union sergeant, a Confederate officer reportedly replied, ‘‘Take the damn Yankee out and shoot him . . . [that] is the proper way of disposing of him’’ (The War of the Rebellion, ser. 2, vol. 6, pp. 567–568). Hundreds of enlisted nurses who remained behind during a retreat to care for the wounded became prisoners of war and had to endure the hardships of life in a Civil War prison camp. The Civil War significantly altered the course of the nursing profession in America. Due to the actions of women nurses, nursing evolved into a female occupation following the war. The war enabled men to see and accept women as nurses. By the late nineteenth century, nursing schools existed throughout most of the country, providing women with educational opportunities. And, finally, individual acts of compassion and personal sacrifice on the part of Civil War nurses greatly improved the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers. Nurses were a physical and emotional expression of what was good about humanity during a war that, at times,
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Army Nurses
displayed the nation’s most inhumane qualities. Nursing provided women with a way to contribute to the war effort, thereby adding their experiences and stories to a conflict otherwise dominated by male narratives. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcott, Louisa May. Hospital Sketches, ed. Alice Fahs. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, [1863] 2004. Bacon, Georgeanna Woolsey, and Eliza Woolsey Howland, eds. Letters of a Family during the War for the Union, 1861–1865. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse, & Taylor, 1899. Reprint, Roseville, MN: Edinborough Press, 2001. Comstock, Elizabeth L. Life and Letters of Elizabeth L. Comstock. Compiled by Catherine Hare. Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1895. Culpepper, Marilyn Mayer, and Pauline Gordon Adams. ‘‘Nursing in the Civil War.’’ American Journal of Nursing 88, no. 7 (1988): 981–984. Cumming, Kate. Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. Ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1998. (Orig. pub. in 1866 as A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee.) Edmonds, Sarah Emma. Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. Hartford, CT: W. S. Williams, 1865. Gibbons, Abby Hopper. Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons: Told Chiefly through Her Correspondence. 2 vols. Ed. Sarah Hopper Emerson. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896–1897. McGuire, Judith White Brockenbrough. Diary of a Southern Refugee, during the War, 3rd ed. Richmond, VA: J. W. Randolph & English, 1889. Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. New York: D. Appleton, 1860. Parsons, Emily Elizabeth. Civil War Nursing: Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons. Boston: Little, Brown, 1880. Reprint, New York: Garland, 1984. Stearns, Amanda Akin. The Lady Nurse of Ward E. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1909. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 4 series. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1900. Woolsey, Georgeanna [Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon]. Spirit of the Fair. New York: Metropolitan Sanitary Fair, 1864. Young, Agatha [Agnes Brooks Young]. The Women and the Crisis: Women of the North in the Civil War. New York: McDowell & Obolensky, 1959. Keith S. He´bert
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ARMY NURSES At the onset of the American Civil War in 1861, the U.S. Army Medical Bureau was unprepared for the staggering number of wounded the battlefields would produce over the next four years. There was a corps of trained physicians within the military, with a few doctors specializing in gunshot trauma, but no staff of trained nurses to care for patients. This lack held true in the Confederate states as well, which suffered from a more marked lack of resources and personnel. Regular-duty soldiers were often drafted to help army doctors, and scores of women volunteered as well.
Dorothea Dix During the mid-nineteenth century, the word nurse had not yet come into its common usage to mean a professionally trained person who works in the medical field. Instead it was a term more loosely applied to anyone who helped another during a time of medical distress. There were no schools of nursing at the time; however, a British woman, Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), was working to establish professional guidelines and standards in England. Her work was becoming known in the United States as well. Nightingale shared her ideas with Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), a reformer from the Boston area, already famous for her efforts to improve the care of prisoners and the mentally ill over the previous two decades. Given Dix’s reputation, war department officials named her the new superintendent of women nurses in June 1861. This appointment would become the starting point for the first professional corps of nurses inside the U.S. military; however, Dix’s stint as its supervisor was a controversial one. Clashing over entrance requirements with senior officials who wanted more male nurses, Dix firmly believed that women were better suited for the work and decreed that applicants must be at least thirty years of age. This stipulation, she believed, would keep the Army’s nursing corps free from women who were seeking to meet a mate, because the age of thirty was considered well past the point of marital eligibility. According to Ira M. Rutkow, there were between 3,000 and 5,000 women who served as volunteer nurses on both sides of the conflict (Rutkow 2005, p. 170). There were far more male nurses in service, however. Soldiers or recuperating patients were frequently drafted into service in both the field hospitals—which traveled with units and served as urgent-care facilities—and the general hospitals, located further away from the battle sites and designed for longer-term recuperative care. Rutkow estimates that the ratio of male to female nurses was five to one on both the Union and Confederate sides (Rutkow 2005, p. 172).
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Army Nurses
Long Shifts and Sleep Deprivation One example of a soldier who was pressed into nursing duty was William Winters, who served with the 67th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was in his early thirties and a father of three when he enlisted, and kept a record of his service and wrote letters home to his wife that were published as The Musick of the Mocking Birds, the Roar of the Cannon: The Civil War Diary and Letters of William Winters. He was drafted into nursing service in early 1863 aboard a makeshift hospital boat on the Ohio River, the steamer Fanny Bullitt. ‘‘Today there has been four deaths in the different wards,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I have but one in my ward as yet. [B]een very busy—have had no relief for 38 hours’’ (Winters 1998, n.p.). A few weeks later he wrote, I had just finished the last kind offices of friendship for Permenas Lick. I gave him his last dose of medicine and the last drink of water that he took on earth and closed his eyes in death. I nursed him for about a week or a little over and done all in my power, but it was of no avail. (Winters 1998, n. p.)
Like Winters, many male caregivers did the best job they could, but some army officials came to believe that women were better suited to such work. The director of a Confederate army hospital in Virginia issued a call for female nurses, asserting that soldier-nurses were ‘‘rough country crackers,’’ many of whom were unable to distinguish ‘‘castor oil from a gun rod nor laudanum from a hole in the ground’’ (MacPherson 1998, p. 479). The Confederate States of America government, centered in Richmond, agreed. In September 1862 it enacted staffing guidelines for general hospitals and urged hiring ‘‘preference in all cases to females’’ (MacPherson 1998, p. 479). Several women nurses distinguished themselves in general hospitals and on the battlefield. One of the more famous examples of the latter category was Mary Ann ‘‘Mother’’ Bickerdyke (1817–1901), who aided Union troops in the western theater. Bickerdyke, a native of Ohio, had more medical experience than most volunteer nurses, having supported herself as a practitioner of folk medicine in Galesburg, Illinois, before the war. When her community asked her to deliver supplies it had collected to a field hospital in Cairo, Illinois, she was so moved by the plight of the wounded that she immediately volunteered her services. Bickerdyke served with Union troops during the gory Battle of Vicksburg and was named chief of nursing by Ulysses S. Grant (1822– 1885). She was reportedly the only woman another famous Union general, William T. Sherman (1820– 1891), would permit inside his camps.
Perilously Close Clara Barton (1821–1912), who would later gain fame as the founder of the American Red Cross, also distin-
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BECOMING AN ARMY NURSE Army Nurses faced many of the same hardships as the soldiers for whom they cared. Many of the women who joined the army as nurses had limited medical training. All cared for and comforted sick and dying soldiers, but they faced hardships beyond the battlefield. They performed jobs that many in society deemed inappropriate for their sex and, as a result, often faced social censure. Sarah Palmer describes this attitude in The Story of Aunt Becky’s Army-life (1867): Standing firm against the tide of popular opinion; hearing myself pronounced demented-bereft of usual common sense; doomed to the horrors of an untended death-bed-suffering torture, hunger, and all the untold miseries of a soldier’s fate; above the loud echoed cry, ‘‘It is no place for women,’’ I think it was well that no one ever held a bond over me strong enough to restrain me from performing my plain duty, fulfilling the promise which I made my brothers on enlistment, that I would go with them down to the scene of conflict, and be near when sickness or the chances of battle threw them helpless from the ranks. I found it was a place for women . . . It was something to brave popular opinion, something to bear the sneers of those who loved their ease better than their country’s heroes, and who could sit down in peace and comfort at home, while a soldier’s rations, and a soldier’s tent for months and years made up the sum of our luxurious life. (pp. 1–2) CARLY S. KALOUSTIAN
SOURCE: Palmer, Sarah A. The Story of Aunt Becky’s Army-life. New York: J.F. Trow and Co., 1867.
guished herself as a war nurse. Her first forays came just days after the war broke out in April 1861, when she visited wounded men who were being housed in the U.S. Senate chamber, so great was the shortage of hospital beds in Washington. Barton soon devoted herself to the cause, and eventually served near the front lines. She described crossing the pontoon bridge across the Rappahannock River during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. An officer stepped to my side to assist me over . . . the end of the bridge. While our hands were raised in the act of stepping down, a piece of an exploding shell hissed through between us, just below our arms, carrying away a portion of both the skirts of his coat and my dress, rolling along the ground a few rods from us like a harmless pebble
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Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: The Untold Story of Civil War Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005. Winters, William. The Musick of the Mocking Birds, the Roar of the Cannon: The Civil War Diary and Letters of William Winters, ed. Steven E. Woodworth. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Carol Brennan
VOLUNTEER NURSES When President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers on April 15, 1861, to help defend federal properties during the first weeks of the war, countless Union women also responded to the call for civilian help. Excluded from actual military service, Union women—and their Confederate sisters—volunteered as nurses despite the fact that most had little or no practical training. According to Ira M. Rutkow in Bleeding Blue and Gray: The Untold Story of Civil War Medicine, between three and five thousand women served as volunteer nurses on both sides of the conflict (2005, p. 170).
No Professional Nurses
Clara Barton (1821–1912): war nurse and the founder of the Red Cross. Clara Barton was influenced to aid soldiers after
her visit with the wounded, only days after the war began. She became dedicated to helping injured soldiers and eventually found herself near the front lines of battle. National Archives and Records Administration.
into the water. The next instant a solid shot thundered over our heads, a noble steed bounded in the air, and, with his gallant rider, rolled in the dirt, not thirty feet in the rear! Leaving the kindhearted officer, I passed on alone to the hospital. In less than a half-hour he was brought to me— dead. (Barton 1922, p. 217)
The Civil War marked the last time that the U. S. military went to war without a corps of trained nurses. In the Spanish-American War of 1898, Barton’s Red Cross answered the Army’s call for 700 nurses to assist its medical personnel in Cuba and the Philippines. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, William Eleazar. The Life of Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922. MacPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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The contemporary image conjured by the word ‘‘nurse’’— a professionally trained person who works in the field of health care—was not used at the time of the Civil War. Instead it denoted anyone who helped another in distress; sometimes it referred to the wife of an officer who followed the regiment, or laundresses for army units who assumed nursing duties in times of need. The most common type of Civil War nurse, however, was a male soldier who was recovering from wounds himself but was more able-bodied than other patients. Rutkow places the ratio of male to female nurses at five to one on both sides of the battle (Rutkow 2005, p. 172). There were no professional schools of nursing up through the 1850s; however, in 1860 Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), who had gained fame for the corps of nurses she trained to aid British troops during the Crimean War (1853–1856), published the first manual on nursing, which was widely read on both sides of the Atlantic. In Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not, she reflected, ‘‘Every woman, or at least almost every woman . . . has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid,—in other words, every woman is a nurse’’ (Nightingale 1860, p. 3).
Religious Women as Caregivers The first wave of women who were recruited by military hospitals consisted of women from religious communities, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. In fact, Nightingale’s only genuine training came from time
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Volunteer Nurses
WALT WHITMAN, VOLUNTEER NURSE While Walt Whitman (1819–1892) is far better known as a poet than as a nurse, some of his greatest poetry came out of his work as a volunteer nurse in wartime Washington. Because he was middleaged when the war began, Whitman did not serve in the military during the Civil War; however, two of his brothers volunteered to fight on the Union side. Whitman’s nursing work began when his brother George was wounded at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. Whitman went to Falmouth, Virginia, to look for his brother and care for him. He originally meant to stay only a week and then return to Brooklyn, but decided that he could not leave the wounded soldiers that he saw while caring for George. Whitman had been working for various newspapers in New York City, but took a job in the Army Paymaster’s Office in Washington in order to stay in the capital and visit the wounded. Whitman spent much of his salary from 1862 through 1865 on food or other small items for the soldiers he visited. He also wrote letters to the wounded men’s loved ones, as many of the soldiers were illiterate or had had their arms amputated. In 1865 Whitman published Drum-Taps, a collection of poems he wrote about his experiences as a nurse, tending to soldiers’ emotional and physical wounds and listening to their memories of battle. The following is an excerpt from ‘‘The Wound-Dresser,’’ a poem from Drum-Taps that was also included in later editions of Leaves of Grass: Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in;
spent at an exceptionally well-run hospital in Kaiserswerth, Germany, that was staffed by Lutheran deaconesses belonging to an order founded by Pastor Theodor Fliedner in 1836. In the United States, several communities of Roman Catholic sisters were already serving as nurses in urban hospitals. Confederate authorities requested that the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland, come to Richmond to help care for the wounded. Initially, church authorities in the United States objected but were convinced of the contributions to the war effort the church could make. In Philadelphia, at the newly built Satterlee Hospital, Sister Mary Gonzaga, another Sister of Charity, supervised a team of forty nurses who came from across the United States to serve in the war effort. These lifetime members of Roman Catholic religious communities were actually preferred by hospital doctors over women from civilian life who volunteered as hospital nurses, for the latter had no experience and were far more likely to voice opinions and raise objections to treatment and care. The nuns, it was said, were far more docile and quite used to the hardships of life as a nurse (Rutkow 2005, p. 169).
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Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground; Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital; To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return; To each and all, one after another, I draw near-not one do I miss; An attendant follows, holding a tray-he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied and fill’d again. . . . The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night-some are so young; Some suffer so much-I recall the experience sweet and sad; (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips). (Whitman 1914, pp. 241–244) REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Price, Angel. ‘‘Whitman’s Wartime Washington: Whitman’s Drum Taps and Washington’s Civil War Hospitals.’’ Available from http://xroads.virginia.edu/. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1914. (Drum-Taps was often included in later editions of Leaves of Grass).
Many civilian women who rushed to volunteer as nurses were answering the call issued by the Women’s Central Association for Relief in New York City. The first women nurses came under the supervision of Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), a well-known reformer who had improved prison care and petitioned federal and state governments to establish mental hospitals over the past two decades. Dix was a no-nonsense, authoritarian figure and issued strict entrance requirements for the women who came to her headquarters on H Street in Washington, DC. They were barred from wearing curled hair, hoop skirts, or jewelry, and instructed to wear plain garments of black or brown cloth. Furthermore, Dix wanted them to be thirty years of age or older. Thirty was considered well past the limit of marital eligibility, and Dix believed that the rule would discourage women from volunteering as a way to look for husbands. But Dix soon fell out with Army officials and the executives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, the organization that had begun training volunteer nurses, and was forced to relinquish much of her authority. As the demand for nurses increased after the first major battles in 1861, with
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Volunteer Nurses
Michigan Soldiers’ Relief Society at a Union field hospital Though men assumed the majority of nursing positions during the Civil War, the efforts of women filled an important role. Unable to enlist for combat, women volunteered to serve as nurses, establishing the occupation as a socially acceptable source of employment for females after war’s end. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
thousands of wounded needing urgent care, Dix’s standards were ignored altogether.
A Turning Point for American Women Northern and Southern women alike served as nurses in military facilities under the intense objections of many, from their families to Army doctors to the soldiers themselves, who were appalled by the idea of a woman seeing them incapacitated. In an era when not even the bare kneecaps of adults made public appearances in polite society, it was thought that women were ill-suited to handle the rigors of seeing bloody bandages, dealing with bedpans, and bathing patients. Yet most women were made of far sturdier material than the cultural taboos of the era made them out to be, and many rose to the challenge of the demanding, often gruesome work and the personal hardships that came with it. One such woman was Hannah Ropes, who was nearing fifty when she enlisted as a nurse at a Washing-
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ton hospital. Ropes came from a prominent Maine family; she had been active in the abolitionist movement and had worked in social reform efforts in New England. She wrote many letters to her grown daughter, Alice, who voiced hopes of joining her mother at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, but Ropes would not permit it. ‘‘It is no place for young girls. The surgeons are young and look upon nurses as their natural prey’’ (Rutkow 2005, p. 179). In the fall of 1862, Ropes was promoted to head nurse at Union Hotel Hospital, one of the first buildings in the federal capital to be converted for use as a hospital, but the immense building was poorly laid out and ill-suited for such use.
Louisa May Alcott’s Experience Life at Union Hotel Hospital was detailed by a 30-year-old journalist from Massachusetts who arrived as a volunteer nurse in December 1862. Louisa May Alcott (1832– 1888) had yet to achieve the major fame she would earn
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for her semi-autobiographical tale of her three sisters and herself, Little Women. But she did gain some literary notice for her Hospital Sketches, written after she was forced to give up her 90-day stint early after contracting typhoid fever. In this 1863 work, Alcott wrote that on her third day on the job, the hundreds of wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg arrived at dawn, but before she even saw her first battlefield wounds, ‘‘the first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that ever assaulted the human nose’’ (Alcott 1885, p. 28). Alcott wrote of the dreadfully unsanitary conditions at the hospital, and of the rats and lice that infested every floor. She shared a room with another nurse, which she described as well-ventilated thanks to its broken windows; their furniture consisted of a pair of iron beds with threadbare mattresses and ‘‘furnished with pillows in the last stages of consumption [tuberculosis]’’ as well as a fireplace too small to hold a log entirely (Alcott 1885, p. 61). ‘‘I tripped over it a dozen times a day, and flew up to poke it a dozen times at night. A mirror (let us be elegant!) of the dimensions of a muffin, and about as reflective, hung over a tin basin, blue pitcher, and a brace of yellow mugs’’ (Alcott 1885, p. 62). There was a closet for belongings, but it was already full, and ‘‘I always opened it with fear and trembling, owing to rats, and shut it in anguish of spirit’’ (Alcott 1885, p. 62). Alcott and the other nurses were forced to abandon whatever task they were doing once the dinner bell was rung, for if they came late to the table, they sometimes found most of the food gone. The three daily meals . . . consisted of beef, evidently put down for the men of [17]76; pork, just in from the street; army bread, composed of saw-dust and saleratus [baking soda]; butter, salt as if churned by Lot’s wife; stewed blackberries, so much like preserved cockroaches, that only those devoid of imagination could partake thereof with relish; coffee, mild and muddy; tea: three dried huckleberry leaves to a quart of water flavored with lime also animated and unconscious of any approach to clearness. (Alcott 1885, p. 63)
Despite the hardships, Alcott tried to venture out every day for a walk—a young single woman, living alone in a large city where she had no family and no real constraints on her daily life, was a remarkably rare occurrence in this era—and was fascinated by the Southern blacks she saw for the first time in her life, whom she described as far different from ‘‘the respectable members of society I had known in moral Boston’’ (Alcott, 1885, p. 74). Slavery had been abolished in the federal capital district only the previous April with the Compensated Emancipation Act, which authorized payments to slaveholders in exchange for freeing them. The newly freed slaves continued to work for their former masters for the most part. Alcott wrote that she . . . had not been there a week before the neglected, devil-may care expression in many of
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the faces about me, seemed an urgent appeal to leave nursing white bodies, and take some care for these black souls.. . . I liked them, and found that any show of interest or friendliness brought out the better traits which live in the most degraded and forsaken of us all. (Alcott 1885, p. 75)
Alcott remarked on the cheerful demeanor of blacks and obvious affection for their children, and noted that ‘‘the men and boys sang and whistled all day long . . . as I listened, I felt that we never should doubt nor despair concerning a race which, through such griefs and wrongs, still clings to this good gift, and seems to solace with it the patient hearts that wait and watch and hope until the end’’ (Alcott 1885, p. 75).
A Strong-Willed Southern Nurse Confederate women also took up nursing the wounded in sometimes hastily established hospitals. Felicia Grundy Porter was a well-known Tennessean who set up hospitals in Nashville and served as president of the Women’s Relief Society of the Confederate States. Kate Cumming, a native of Scotland who had emigrated with her family first to Canada before settling in Mobile, Alabama, cared for the wounded at a Corinth, Mississippi, hospital that handled victims of the Battle of Shiloh. She was in her late twenties at the time, and served against the strenuous objections of her family. She first chronicled her experiences in an 1866 book, A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. These passages were later revised for her 1895 title, Gleanings from Southland: Sketches of Life and Manners of the People of the South before, during, and after the War of Secession, with Extracts from the Author’s Journal. In the final weeks of the war Cumming traveled with the Confederate Army of Tennessee in Georgia, and her journal recounts that she did not learn of the surrender of the Confederate forces on April 9, 1865, until eight days later. ‘‘The enemy did not come last night, but I expect they will honor us today,’’ Cumming wrote on April 19. ‘‘We sat up all night in terror, starting at every sound’’ (Cumming 1895, p. 222). Later that evening, she watched from the balcony of the house where she was staying as Union troops destroyed railroad tracks. A few weeks later, she reacted strongly to news that President Andrew Jackson was planning to station federal troops in the vanquished Southern states. ‘‘What wound was ever healed by constant irritation?’’ she wrote. ‘‘If he wishes the South to live in peace and harmony with the North, it will never be done by oppression. History gives us no such examples’’ (Cumming 1895, pp. 235–236). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcott, Louisa M. Hospital Sketches and Camp and Fireside Stories. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1885. Cumming, Kate. Gleanings from Southland: Sketches of Life and Manners of the People of the South before, during, and after the War of Secession, with Extracts
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Faced with staggering numbers of wounded soldiers, Civil War doctors and surgeons learned how to treat a wide variety of injuries by testing new techniques. Technologies such as sedatives, hypodermic syringes, and stethoscopes became widely used throughout the war, improving upon the medical care available to soldiers. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc. Medical supplies.
from the Author’s Journal. Birmingham, AL: Roberts & Son, 1895. Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1860. Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: The Untold Story of Civil War Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005. Carol Brennan
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When the Civil War began, the world was undergoing vast changes in medical knowledge. The old ‘‘heroic therapies’’ such as bleeding, cupping, and the use of leeches had fallen out of favor by 1860, and were being replaced with experimental (and not always successful or beneficial) medical treatments. Treating wounds and illnesses with medication had become common—opiates, stimulants, sedatives, diuretics, purgatives, and more were widely available and used. The first pills had been made in the early 1800s. The stethoscope and the hypodermic syringe were new. The use of anesthetics had begun in the 1840s; they allowed more extensive surgeries that previously had been impossible. At the same time, the causes and transmission of diseases was a subject of debate. Vaccines and various
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treatments were still in their early stages. There was no understanding of microbiology, of the nature of germs and bacteria. Most epidemic diseases were blamed on ‘‘miasma’’ and ‘‘effluvia,’’ unseen contagions that were in the air causing diseases and infections. Sanitation was in its very early stages, and the outrageously unhygienic surgical conditions were rarely blamed for their disastrous effects. The war itself ushered in a new era in medical understanding at the expense of many lives. For a soldier recovering from a wound or struggling with an illness, Civil War medicine could be a blessing or a curse.
Anesthetics and General Medications Anesthetics were widely used in both the North and the South for serious operations and for the treatment of painful wounds. The surgeon J. H. Brinton wrote of using chloroform on patients in a Nashville hospital: ‘‘when patients are first brought here it is often necessary to place them under the influence of chloroform while their wounds are being prepared, and obtund the pain caused by the remedies applied; afterward it is not refused them if the dressing is likely to be painful’’ (Barnes 1870– 1888, vol. 3.2, p. 846). Although no exact number can be known, it is estimated that anesthetics were used in about 80,000 instances. Out of a group of nearly 9,000 cases cited in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, chloroform was used 76.2 percent GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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PTSD AND THE CIVIL WAR SOLDIER Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) did not become a diagnostic category in American psychiatry until the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, after the condition had been studied systematically in veterans of the Vietnam War (1965–1975). Veterans of World Wars I (1914–1918) and II (1939–1945) were more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from ‘‘shell shock’’ or ‘‘traumatic war neurosis.’’ Until the early 2000s, however, no one had studied the mental and physical aftereffects of combat in Civil War veterans. In 2006 a team of researchers at the University of California, Irvine, published the results of their study of 17,700 Civil War veterans who had received standardized medical examinations over their postwar lifetimes by U.S. Pension Board surgeons. The results indicated that Civil War veterans suffered profoundly from posttraumatic stress, probably more so than veterans of later wars, for several reasons: • The youth of Civil War soldiers. Between 15 and 20 percent of Union volunteers were between the ages of nine and seventeen. The researchers found that these young veterans were 93 percent more likely than the oldest soldiers (thirty-one or older) to experience both physical and psychiatric problems after the war, and to die at early ages. • Loss of friends and family. Companies in Civil War armies were often made up of men from the same town, neighborhood, or extended family. This fact meant that a soldier whose company suffered heavy losses in battle was far more likely to grieve the loss of several close friends and relatives than his twentiethcentury counterparts. Veterans from companies that lost large percentages of soldiers in battle were 51 percent more likely than other veterans to suffer heart attacks, stomach disorders, or mental illness after the war. • The psychological impact of close-quarter or hand-to-hand combat, which was a common field tactic in the Civil War. Psychiatry had not become a separate medical specialty at the time of the Civil War, although mental illnesses of various types were certainly recognized, and hospitals for the treatment of the mentally ill had existed in the United States since the early nineteenth century. In 1844 thirteen superintendents of what were then called insane asylums formed the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane. In 1921 the name changed to the American Psychiatric Association. Civil War battlefield surgeons did not use terms such as ‘‘battle shock’’ or ‘‘PTSD’’ for posttraumatic symptoms in the soldiers they treated; instead, they used phrases such as ‘‘nervous disease’’ or ‘‘irritable heart syndrome’’ for psychiatric disorders resulting from combat stress. There was also a relatively new psychiatric hospital
of the time, ether in 14 percent, and a mixture of the two in 9.1 percent (p. 887). Chloroform was safer than ether, but both were toxic; as the Union surgeon C. J. Walton stated: ‘‘While I could not dispense with chloroform, I must protest against the extravagant and indiscreet use of it. It is a most potent agent, and should be
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just for veterans—St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. This institution had been founded by Congress in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, or GHI. Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), the social reformer whose work led to the foundation of the first public mental hospitals in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, was also responsible for the establishment of the GHI. Dix instructed the hospital to provide ‘‘the most humane and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia’’ (The United States Congressional Serial Set 1855, p. 10). The GHI provided psychiatric treatment for several hundred Union soldiers both before and after the war; many were eventually buried on its grounds. During the war soldiers were referred to the hospital after being evaluated by battlefield surgeons for malingering and deception. After the end of the war the increase in the number of mentally ill veterans led Congress to pass an act on July 13, 1866, that permitted the GHI to admit all men who had served as Union soldiers in the Civil War and were found insane within three years of discharge by reason of mental illness related to military service. Many of these veterans needed custodial care for the rest of their lives; Dr. Charles H. Nichols, the first superintendent of the hospital, saw to it that they received the best care possible at the time. He said, ‘‘The patriotic sacrifices of the military patients will always entitle them to our best endeavors to promote their comfort and their restoration to health’’ (Report of the Department of the Interior 1849, p. 174). St. Elizabeths received its present name informally during the Civil War, as some soldiers who were treated there for physical injuries hesitated to use ‘‘Government Hospital for the Insane’’ for their return address when writing to loved ones back home. They called the hospital ‘‘St. Elizabeths’’ after the name given to its grounds by the original colonial landowner in 1663. Congress finally made the name change official in 1917. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kanhouwa, Surya. ‘‘A Century of Pathology at Saint Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC.’’ Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 121 (1997): 84–90. Pizarro, Judith, Roxane Cohen Silver, and JoAnn Prause. ‘‘Physical and Mental Health Costs of Traumatic War Experiences among Civil War Veterans.’’ Archives of General Psychiatry 63 (2006): 193–200. Report of the Department of the Interior. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1849, p. 174. The United States Congressional Serial Set. Washington: United States. Government Printing Office, 1855, p. 10.
used with the utmost caution’’ (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 3.2, p. 888). Surgeons agreed that it should be used only as long as necessary, and then, ‘‘its administration should be discontinued . . . thereby avoiding . . . its toxical effect’’ (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 3.2, p. 888). Both were carefully administered to soldiers by a cloth or sponge held over the
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nose and mouth. In the Southern army, where anesthetics could be harder to get, Surgeon J. J. Chisolm developed an inhaler that used less chloroform, and administered it directly into the nostrils via two nose pieces (Barnes 1870– 1888, vol. 3.2, pp. 888–889). Opium and morphine were seen as essential medications. They were available as pills or powder. Morphine could be injected as well, and small amounts of opium could be taken with alcohol in a solution called laudanum (Bollet 2002, pp. 238–239). Opiates seemed effective in treating a variety of symptoms, and so the drugs were liberally prescribed for everything from battlefield wounds to dysentery, and even for more common complaints such as headaches. It is estimated that the Union used about 10 million opium pills plus about 3 million ounces of opium powder and other opium mixed concoctions (Bollet 2002, p. 240). The Confederacy likewise prescribed opiates, but perhaps not as liberally: Because of the Union blockade, they were often hard to come by, so some Southerners turned to growing and harvesting their own poppies to create opium (Jackson 1863, pp. 103–104). The use of antiseptics to prevent infections could not be relied on during the Civil War because general medical knowledge and practice at the time did not take sanitation into account. Surgeon W.W. Keen remembered that: ‘‘we used undisinfected instruments from undisinfected . . . cases, and still worse used marine sponges which had been used in prior pus cases and had been only washed in tap water’’ (Adams 1952, p. 125). Under such unsanitary conditions, a soldier recovering from surgery could expect infection to set in. However, antiseptics were available. Surgeons used ‘‘not only carbolic [acid], but many of the other chemicals that rank high as antiseptics’’ such as iodine, bromine, alcohol, and many other acids (Adams 1952, pp. 127–128). The problem was knowing exactly when to apply the treatment, and infected wounds usually had gone beyond repair before an antiseptic was applied. Because of the often unsatisfactory effects of other medical treatments, proper diet became a treatment unto itself. Depending on the disease, each hospital made an effort to supply soldiers with food that would nourish them and aid in their recovery. Common medical treatments included turpentine, ingested or applied to wounds and irritated skin; diaphoretics, including potassium nitrate, tartar emetic, and a combination of ipecac and opium called ‘‘Dover’s powders,’’ to induce sweating in order to cool fevers; calomel, a powder used as a purgative or laxative; and ipecac, which was prescribed heavily to induce vomiting. Many of the medicines were dangerous and toxic, such as the several compounds formed from mercury. Many were used irresponsibly, as when a patient suffering from dehydration might be given a diuretic. Due to the Union blockade, obtaining certain medications was often difficult in the South. The Regulations
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for the Medical Department of the C.S. Army suggested more than sixty ‘‘Indigenous Remedies for Field Service and Sick in General Hospital.’’ Among the items listed are hemlock and American hellebore as sedatives; and stimulants from parts of junipers, sassafras, lavender, and horsemint (CSA War Department 1863, p. 62). Citizens throughout the South were urged to grow and donate these indigenous plants to aid the Confederate army. Perhaps one of the most used medications was quinine. An 1864 New Hampshire newspaper declared it ‘‘king of the medicines’’ (‘‘Quinine and Its Substitutes,’’ March 4, 1864), and it was so effective in treating malarial diseases that the Daily Cleveland Herald suggested ‘‘that every person who has a friend in the army send him a dollar’s worth of quinine’’ to be drunk in coffee each morning so as to avoid ‘‘chronic diarrhea, fever and ague, and bilious fever’’ (‘‘Quinine for the Army of the Potomac,’’ July 22, 1864). Quinine was used far more frequently than any opiates, as it seemed to not only treat, but also to prevent malaria and reduce general fevers.
Medical Procedures A soldier wounded on the field of battle had a long road ahead of him. His first stop would usually be a makeshift dressing station, where medical officers would check wounds for hemorrhaging, apply simple bandaging and tourniquets, and ply the soldier with either alcohol or opium or both to ease pain and forestall shock. A wound might either be plugged with lint, or have lint applied outside as a pad. His next stop would be a field hospital, where he would sit on the ground awaiting his turn to be seen. Attendants might prioritize those with treatable, but serious wounds, and treat those with lesser wounds—those with mortal wounds were regularly passed over in favor of more treatable wounds. Once upon the operating table, anesthetic would be administered, and wound-specific operations would begin. General wound care sought to stop bleeding and seal the wound, to ease pain, and to stop infection. Wounds were packed with lint or sometimes sealed with a solution made of beeswax called cerate. ‘‘Astringents’’ applied to wounds would help blood clot (Bollet 2002, pp. 233–234). Ligation, an operation that involved tying off major arteries, was perfected during the war, and ligation of a vessel was lauded as a way to avoid amputation from gangrene. Wounds in which a bone was shattered might be excised instead of amputated by removing part of the destroyed bone, hoping that the bone would heal and bond over the break. However, recovery from such an operation was difficult, and usually resulted in a loss of function of the limb (Bollet 2002, p. 147). Wounds to the head and torso were more likely to be mortal than wounds to the extremities. In a survey of 3,717 abdominal wounds, 87 percent were fatal (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.2, p. 202), though when the
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Setting a broken leg. Advances in medicine during the Civil War included the use of anesthetics, allowing for more efficient and complicated surgeries to treat war wounds. Chloroform-soaked cloths, as seen in the photograph, were placed over a patient’s nose and mouth to temporarily induce unconsciousness and alleviate pain. ª Corbis
intestines were not punctured, recovery was more likely. Head injuries did not fare much better: ‘‘Of one hundred and eighty-six cases of balls penetrating the cranial cavity, one hundred and one were fatal’’ (Barnes 1870– 1888, vol. 1, p. 316). Operations to remove objects from the skull had about a 50 percent mortality rate, whereas cases where the object was left in had similar results. When deciding whether to attempt to save a probably mortally wounded man with a long, complicated, and dangerous surgery, or to save several men with treatable wounds, surgeons usually chose the welfare of the many over the one. Injuries to the extremities comprised about 70 percent of the total injuries (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 3, p. 691). When the bones of an extremity were shattered, or the tissue damaged beyond repair, amputation was the preferred treatment. Amputations were quick and usually successful, and anesthetic was almost always used. However, due to unsanitary operating and wound management conditions, infection was common, and there often were complications in recovering from the operation. Mortality rates increased in cases where the amputation was closer to the body trunk, and when there had been a long interval between injury and surgery.
Treating Diseases and Infections Diseases of all kinds ran rampant through both armies. Out of a selection of 304,369 deaths cited in Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, about 61 percent were caused by disease. The most common
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form of disease was diarrhea and dysentery. Although they did not have the highest mortality rate, they were the most widespread (the terms diarrhea and dysentery were often used to mean the same thing). The Union reported about 1,739,135 cases (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 2) and the Confederacy, though lacking an exact number, could also say that it was also the most common affliction (Bollet 2002, p. 284). Treating dysentery was not always easy. Assistant Surgeon James DeBrulen commented: ‘‘chronic diarrhea has been extremely common in the hospital, and in many cases so rebellious as to defy all modes of treatment we could devise’’ (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 42). In some stages, dysentery was curable, noted the surgeon William Wright, but in others it became ‘‘indominable [sic]: the cases in which a judicious course of treatment was pursued before emaciation’’ usually had favorable results; after emaciation had set in, most cases were fatal (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 62). There was little consensus on a cure, but doctors combated dysentery with nearly every medicine available: mercurials, opiates, and sulphate of copper, nitric acid, purgatives, Dover’s powder, turpentine, mucilage, ipecac, quinine, bismuth, and many more. Opium and purgatives (laxatives) generally were the most relied upon. One doctor stated that ‘‘opiates and the ordinary astringents have been worse than useless,’’ whereas another confidently stated that ‘‘I have used opium extensively . . . in combination with astringents’’ and had wonderful results. One agreedupon treatment was a strict diet: ‘‘only bland and unirritating food’’ such as ‘‘milk, whey, eggs, mucilages,
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essence of beef, chicken soup’’ as well as a diet of fresh vegetables and peanuts (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 45). At Rock Island prison hospital patients were given beef tea and bromide of potassium, and out of 2,629 cases, only 159 died (Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 53). Soldiers would be afflicted with dysentery for varying amounts of time. Private Joseph Westurn of New York fought the disease from July until December, continually relapsing and requiring a new treatment each time ( Barnes 1870–1888, vol. 2.1, p. 46). Nearly as widespread as dysentery were fevers. Malarial fevers sprang up yearly, especially in swampy areas, and were treated with multiple doses of quinine a day. Typhoid fevers were treated with turpentine and cold compresses, whereas the diarrhea that came with it was fought with opiates, Dover’s powders, and other diaphoretics to lower the patient’s body temperature. Other than diseases, infections from wounds and operations plagued both armies. A wound received on the battlefield would be primed for infection from the start. Unsanitary surgical techniques propagated the problem. Surgeons did their best to remove foreign bodies from wounds, realizing the problems they caused. They would slough off infected tissue—not because they knew it bred infectious bacteria, but because they simply knew it was beneficial in some way. Hospital gangrene and erysipelas were constant fears. These infections spread through the body quickly and often led to secondary amputations, with high mortality rates. Doctors found bromine to be a successful treatment for gangrene later in the war, and the infection was mostly eradicated by the end of the war.
Getting Better The evolution of medicine through the experience of war had a tremendous effect. For humanity in general, the Civil War ushered in the sanitary age of medicine and helped refine the prescription of medication and important surgical techniques. Surgeons’ basic observations on the spread of diseases and infections would be validated by Joseph Lister’s bacteriology work in 1865. Doctors experimented with new procedures such as plastic surgery, the treatment of chest, abdominal, and head wounds, and blood transfusions; all of these would continue to be perfected after the war. Experimenting with medications led to better understanding of appropriate use and dosage. Overall mortality rates fell drastically during the war, and would continue to do so afterwards as Americans, and the world, learned from the experience of the war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, George W. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952.
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Barnes, Joseph K. Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1870–1888. Bollet, Alfred J. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. Confederate States of America War Department. Regulations for the Medical Department of the C.S. Army. Richmond, VA: Author, 1863. Jackson, H. W. R. The Southern Women of the Second American Revolution. Atlanta, GA: Intelligencer Steampower Press, 1863. Otis, George Alexander. Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials Available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1865. ‘‘Quinine and Its Substitutes.’’ New Hampshire Statesman, Concord, NH, March 4, 1864. ‘‘Quinine for the Army of the Potomac.’’ Daily Cleveland Herald, Cleveland, OH, July 22, 1864. United States Sanitary Commission. The Soldier’s Friend. Philadelphia: Author, 1865. J. Douglas Tyson
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Public health and sanitation in America during the Civil War era was virtually nonexistent, but the efforts of reformers—many of whom worked to improve conditions in U.S. Army camps on the Union side—led to intensive clean-up efforts later in the nineteenth century. Military camps and hospitals were breeding grounds for many of the diseases that regularly felled urban populations, such as typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery.
Deadly Miasmas The medical community was woefully unaware of many of the basic tenets of public health and sanitation when the Civil War began in 1861. There was little knowledge about the causes of preventable diseases, and the correlation between germs and sickness had not yet been established by scientific observation and controlled experimentation. The commonly held belief at the time was that diseases are caused by vaporous exhalations known as miasmas, from a Greek word that means ‘‘pollution.’’ Miasmas were associated with the rank odors of such things as sewer gas or piles of garbage. The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), a civilian organization founded in 1861 under the auspices of the federal government, was set up to inspect Union camps and hospitals and offer recommendations and guidelines to prevent infections and infectious diseases. Despite the commission’s valiant efforts, the casualty numbers from the war paint a stark picture of how poor conditions were: The total number of war dead was an estimated 690,000, but only 240,000 of that number
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Public Health and Sanitation
died from battlefield injuries; a staggering 425,000 were killed by such diseases and wound complications as typhoid fever and gangrene (Sutherland 1989, p. 19). In civilian life, the death rates from preventable diseases were also high. Indoor plumbing was a rarity found usually in only the wealthiest households, and even then, the pipes were not always hooked up to municipal sewer systems, which were also still uncommon. When the sewer pipes were connected to a sewer system, they often emptied into the same water source that supplied local drinking water. Most households used either an outhouse or an ‘‘earth closet’’ located inside the house. The latter was a specially constructed wooden chamber with a seat; waste went into a galvanized metal tube, but once too much waste had accumulated, the drain would have to be cleaned out. Outhouses, often located in the same backyard where livestock animals were kept, were similarly constructed and these, too, would overflow. At night, most families relied on relieving themselves in the chamber pot, the contents of which would be tossed onto the street the next day. Garbage collection was also a rarity in most communities. In some cases, cities allocated funds for this task, but corrupt local district leaders often took the money without hiring collectors. In upscale urban neighborhoods, where residents banded together to pay for private collection, garbage did not pile up to the point of making certain avenues impassable, as it did elsewhere.
Overcrowded Manhattan New York City presented a particularly foul scenario. Immigration over the past two decades had brought an influx of new inhabitants to the city, many of whom were relegated to living in abject squalor. Multistory tenement buildings began to crop up, which housed dozens of people in one or two rooms with a single window overlooking a garbage-strewn airshaft. Each floor usually had a version of the earth closet, but no running water or indoor heating. Cholera and typhus outbreaks were common. Typhus is a highly communicable disease, and the organisms (rickettsiae) that cause it are transmitted by lice living on the human body. Typhus should not be confused with typhoid fever, which is contracted from ingesting food or water contaminated with the feces of an already infected person; however, both diseases are equally swift-moving and often deadly. Cholera also results from poor sanitary conditions, and regular outbreaks occurred in the nineteenth-century United States every spring when passenger ships began dislodging new immigrants and travelers at the international ports of arrival. These diseases reached every quarter—even President Abraham Lincoln’s eleven-year-old son Willie died of typhoid fever in February 1862—a personal loss from which neither Lincoln nor his wife ever fully recovered.
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Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), leader of medical volunteerism. Upon its creation in 1861, the United States
Sanitary Commission organized the efforts of women, who brought clean bedding, food, and medical supplies to Union soldiers. Led by Frederick Law Olmsted, volunteers visited soldiers’ campsites, offering medical care and sanitation instruction. The Library of Congress.
The decision to locate the federal capital in Washington had always been much maligned, for the city had been built on swampy land, which is known to be a breeding ground for mosquitoes, the carriers of deadly malaria. Cities further south were usually even more dismally filthy, for the balmy weather only exacerbated the stench and the germ colonies that came from untreated sewage, garbage piles, and the waste droppings of horses.
Stephen Smith and the Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health In the 1850s, the New York City physician Stephen Smith emerged as a prominent and tireless advocate for improved public health and sanitation. Early on, he was one of the few among the medical profession who recognized the link between the abominable living conditions of the poor and outbreaks of disease. A few years before the onset of the Civil War, Smith was appointed
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to supervise a quarantine facility on Roosevelt Island during a typhus outbreak in the city. When he realized that an extraordinary number of patients were coming from the same tenement building on East 22nd Street, he went to inspect the property himself. ‘‘The doors and windows were broken,’’ he reported. ‘‘The cellar was partly filled with filthy sewage; the floors were littered with decomposing straw, which the occupants used for bedding. . . . The whole establishment was reeking with filth, and the atmosphere was heavy with the sickening odor of the deadly typhus, which reigned supreme in every room’’ (Rutkow 2005, p. 267). In 1859 Smith founded the New York Sanitary Association, which worked to improve conditions in the city. He soon became known as a prominent Sanitarian, as public-health reformers were called. Some of his like-minded colleagues played a key role in the establishment of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). One of these fellow reformers was Frederick Law Olmsted, who resigned as New York City’s parks commissioner to serve as executive director of the USSC. Smith also worked for the USSC, and served as acting assistant surgeon at a Union Army base at Fort Monroe, Virginia, during the war. Once back in civilian life, he refocused his efforts to clean up New York City, and established a commission that funded a groundbreaking 1864 sanitary survey of the island of Manhattan. He chaired the commission and sent physicians to inspect each of the thirty-one districts into which he divided the borough. The conditions these doctors found were so dreadful that the report of their findings, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York, upon the Sanitary Condition of the City, caused a major public outcry. Its publication became the turning point for public health and sanitation efforts in New York City. Smith’s Report detailed horrendous overcrowding in the city, where about half a million people lived in a twosquare-mile area (Rutkow 2005, p. 270). Some lived in tenements, but others who had their own plots of land raised hogs in their backyard and lived right next to manufacturing enterprises, in an era when zoning laws were nonexistent. One of Smith’s inspectors wrote of ‘‘a sausage and fat-boiling establishment . . . [where the] heads and of animals are received . . . and the parts which can be profitably [used] are selected, while the rest is thrown upon the ground or buried[;] adjoining streets have no sewerage, and this building no drainage’’ (Rutkow 2005, p. 310). Another physician hired for the job visited a residence near Avenue B and Attorney Street, and found ‘‘two of the scrofulous children in that house on crutches. The grave has a strong claim upon others.’’ The inspector noted several livery stables nearby, and remarked that ‘‘the prevalence and fatality of pulmonary diseases among horses in overcrowded and neglected stables is only equalled by
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the fatality of like maladies in the women and children of tenant-houses’’ (Rutkow 2005, p. 175). Smith took his Report to Albany and testified before the New York state legislature. Finally, in 1866 a new Metropolitan Health Bill—part of it drafted by Smith— was enacted. Two years later, Smith became commissioner of the New York City Board of Health. The Metropolitan Health Bill was a groundbreaking piece of legislation that was widely copied by other cities in their efforts to curb disease outbreaks. Some of its most significant reforms included the removal of slaughterhouses to locations outside city limits, new health standards for the dairy industry, and the regular removal of horse droppings from city streets. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Citizens’ Association of New York. Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York, upon the Sanitary Condition of the City. New York: D. Appleton, 1865. Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: The Untold Story of Civil War Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005. Smith, Stephen. The City That Was. New York: F. Allaben, 1911. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Carol Brennan
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United States Sanitary Commission
The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a volunteer agency run under government auspices that sought to ensure the health and safety of Union Army soldiers during the American Civil War. It also collected donations of clothing, blankets, food, and medical supplies for military personnel, trained volunteer nurses, and ran a service that located lost or missing soldiers on behalf of their families. Commonly referred to as ‘‘the Sanitary’’ during its years of operation between 1861 and 1865, the USSC served as an umbrella organization for the scores of soldiers’ aid societies formed at the local level. One volunteer, Katharine Prescott Wormeley, called it ‘‘the great artery which bears the people’s love to the people’s army’’ in her 1863 book, The United States Sanitary Commission: A Sketch of Its Purposes and Its Work (p. xv).
A Surge of Patriotism When the war began in April 1861, a Chicago journalist and women’s rights activist named Mary Livermore was in Boston visiting her ailing father. She was a committed abolitionist, as a result of an earlier job as a tutor on a
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Virginia plantation, where she had been appalled by the treatment of slaves. She was also active in the Universalist religious movement; with her husband, a minister, she edited the Chicago-based Universalist newspaper, New Covenant. During her visit to Boston, Livermore was stirred by the patriotic fervor and outpourings of support she witnessed on the streets in the days following the declaration of war. One aspect of this was the hasty assembling of volunteer units in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s request for 75,000 civilians to serve a three-month stint protecting federal property until regular troops could be mustered. In her 1888 memoir, My Story of the War: A Woman’s Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience, Livermore reported that Boston’s historic Fanueil Hall was the designated assembly point for these militias, who arrived from elsewhere in New England by train and ‘‘were escorted by crowds cheering vociferously’’ down residential and commercial streets where nearly every address displayed the U.S. flag (p. 90). In New York City, affluent women met on April 25 to form the Women’s Central Relief Association
(WCRA), whose goal was to organize soldiers’ aid efforts. Its founding members invited a prominent New York Unitarian minister, Dr. Henry W. Bellows, to participate, and Bellows soon traveled to Washington with a delegation of physicians. Their aim was to meet with government officials and formally define the WCRA’s role in the war effort. Bellows soon decided, however, that a larger organization with a more overtly medical mission was necessary. His model for this new organization was the British Sanitary Commission, which had helped eliminate brucellosis—an infectious disease transmitted from livestock to humans—during the Crimean War of 1853–1856. Military officials, however, were uneasy with the idea of an American sanitary commission, believing that civilian interference in Army camps would only prove problematic. Even President Lincoln warned that a USSC could become the proverbial ‘‘fifth wheel’’ in the war effort, but despite these reservations, he signed a bill authorizing its creation as an official government entity of unpaid volunteers on June 18, 1861. The president was convinced by USSC supporters that a centralized agency was the best way to placate the growing number of women asserting their intention to contribute to the war effort in a useful way. A Western Sanitary Commission under similar charter was organized three months later in September 1861, and headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, in order to meet the needs of Union soldiers in that region of the country.
Leadership and Organization
Henry W. Bellows (1814–1882). In 1861, a small group of wealthy women from New York looked to contribute to the war by providing aid to soldiers. Henry W. Bellows, a Unitarian minister, helped organize the group, which eventually evolved into the United States Sanitary Commission. The Library of Congress.
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The executive leadership of the USSC was entirely male. Its first executive secretary was a prominent New Yorker, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who took a break from his post as commissioner of Central Park, which he had designed, to run the USSC. The WCRA was eventually subsumed into the USSC, but its first few months of collecting goods for soldiers— such as hospital gowns and bedding—proved extraordinarily fruitful at the first USSC collection depot in New York City. The work of the volunteers was initially disorganized, but as one Mrs. Sherwood recalled years later in an article she wrote for the New York Times, Bellows was confident that blunders were an inevitable part of a new organization. ‘‘Dr. Bellows would say, as we told him of more boxes gone to the wrong place, ‘let us go ahead and make more mistakes’’’ (May 28, 1898). Bellows soon began writing instruction pamphlets that were distributed to USSC auxiliaries; these dealt with such matters as the ideal way to pack and label shipments of clothing and blankets, and the proper method of making items like sanitary bandages. Another key USSC figure was Louisa Lee Schuyler, who came from a prominent New York family. Schuyler was the great-granddaughter of the first Secretary of the
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U.S. Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and organized the WCRA’s New York office, then went on to coordinate bandage-collection efforts in the city. In Chicago, the Northwestern auxiliary of the USSC was run by the aforementioned Livermore and Jane Hoge. Hoge was active in charitable work aiding the poor and immigrants in Chicago, and went on to serve as a volunteer nurse aboard hospital ships the USSC later created.
A Range of Volunteer Efforts The volunteer efforts coordinated by the USSC took many forms. In the initial months of the war, for example, there was a call for Northern women to organize sewing circles to make hoods known as havelocks. These hoods were linen and were worn over a regulation uniform cap; they offered soldiers protection from both rain and sun. Fueling the demand for havelocks were worries that Union soldiers might suffer sunstroke in the Southern states, where the climate was considered dangerously tropical by Northerners. A veritable ‘‘havelock mania’’
raged across several states during the first year of the war. By May 20, some 1,100 of the cap covers had been sewn by the Ladies Havelock Association of New York City, according to a New York Times report from that day—but the headgear was later deemed useless, for it actually increased body temperature, and the mania died away. Scores of Northern women also demonstrated their desire to contribute to the war effort by collecting lint for bandages. A New York Times article dated April 22, 1861, with the quaint title ‘‘Work for the Ladies,’’ urged women’s groups in churches to organize bandage-making crews. It also promised that such women would have allies: Recounting how women in Paris had made bandages for injured soldiers during the Paris Commune uprising of 1848, it declared, ‘‘[t]here are French ladies in this city who would gladly give their aid now to anything that may be undertaken here.’’ Jane Woolsey, a young woman from an affluent New York City family, described the activity that ensued in a letter to a friend:
‘‘The Sanitary.’’ A volunteer organization committed to improving the physical well-being of Northern soldiers, the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) coordinated the efforts of women looking to support the troops. In addition to providing extra supplies, the USSC also worked to improve hygiene in the army camps in hopes of limiting the spread of disease. ª Bettman/Corbis.
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‘‘Inside the parlor windows the atmosphere has been very fluffy since Sumter, with lint-making and the tearing of endless lengths of flannel and cotton bandages and cutting out of innumerable garments’’ (Attie 1998, p. 35). Woolsey would go on to become a well-known pioneer in medical education thanks to her experiences as a volunteer nurse during the war. Women who lived far from USSC offices also contributed. In her New York Times article, Mrs. Sherwood recalled the packages the USSC branches received from women around the country, often containing clothing and food that donors hoped would find their way to soldiers in need. One letter accompanying a donation read, ‘‘These clothes belonged to my poor Bob. He would have gone to war had he lived, but he died last Winter, and I send these clothes for some young man whom they may fit, and some jelly for the sick in the hospitals’’ (May 28, 1898). Over time, a standard list of useful items was established and these items were packaged together in what became known as Comfort Bags. Bags contained such items as pen and paper, shaving supplies, and even needles and thread so that soldiers could repair their own uniforms. A miniature Bible or a small knife for woodcarving—a popular hobby at the time—might also be included. In his 1866 memoir, Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac, Doctor William H. Reed recalled the arrival of one such shipment of Comfort Bags: In all my hospital experiences I have never seen anything which has given such real pleasure to the men. Those who were able to move gathered round the stoves in their wards, the cripples of all kinds crept up and sat up! on the adjoining beds, each waiting for his gift. As it was handed to him, he went to the bottom of it with the pleased curiosity of a little child searching the stocking for the gifts of Santa Claus on Christmas morning. (p. 151)
In a number of major cities, efforts to raise money to meet the USSC’s needs periodically took the form of charity events known as Sanitary Fairs. These popular events were staged in Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. They featured booths with donated items for sale— including costly antiques and works of art—and gave those outside the USSC volunteer network a chance to contribute their support. The Fairs raised enormous sums for the USSC, which were used for administrative purposes, such as sending out field agents, or to train nurses, and also to assemble and distribute Comfort Bags, with the goal of providing one to each Union soldier every month. Some of the work performed by USSC volunteers tapered off as the war dragged on and the enthusiasm of the first months waned. Reports of corruption occasionally surfaced, including claims that local farmers paid by the USSC to deliver donated supplies instead sold them to troops, or that unscrupulous Army officers took the
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Comfort Bags or other items for themselves. The USSC leadership launched internal investigations whenever such allegations arose, realizing that their mission depended heavily on the public’s trust.
Hygiene Inspections In addition to collecting supplies for soldiers through its local depots and volunteer workers, the USSC trained nurses and regularly sent experts to Union camps to inspect hygiene conditions. The agents—of whom Livermore was one—looked into sanitary practice at field hospitals and kitchens, ensured that latrines had been dug in a place where freshwater supplies could not become contaminated, and issued recommendations on how to improve conditions. In early 1863, reports began appearing in Northern newspapers that infectious diseases were killing far too many Union soldiers, and that this was directly attributable to unhygienic camp conditions. In response, the president of the Western Sanitary Commission, James Yeaton, sent a letter to the New York Times in which he reported on his visits to General William T. Sherman’s corps after their defeat near Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. Yeaton found that the incidence of sickness was not as dire as he expected, but did note that ‘‘the great danger to be apprehended is from the want of a proper vegetable diet. Symptoms of scurvy have already made their appearance, and it behooves friends at home to make prompt efforts to aid in remedying this.’’ His letter urged readers to donate pickles, sauerkraut, and other canned fruits and vegetables (New York Times, March 22, 1863).
Hospital Ships The USSC established hospital ships that plied the rivers and brought wounded Union soldiers from the areas near battlefields further north to safety and medical care. In her 1867 memoir The Boys in Blue: Or, Heroes of the ‘‘Rank and File,’’ Hoge recalled witnessing men being loaded onto the ships. ‘‘Many of these men were raving in the delirium of fever, fainting from exhaustion, or maddened with festering or undressed wounds, unamputated limbs, and raging thirst, which must be quenched before the removal could take place’’ (p. 67). Hoge also recounted the aftermath of the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh in southwestern Tennessee, which left more than 8,000 Union wounded. ‘‘The cabin floor of the hospital boat, where the operations were performed, ran in streams of blood, and legs and arms, as they were rapidly dismembered, formed a stack of human limbs’’ (p. 67).
The USSC Postal Service Another division within the USSC located Union soldiers on behalf of their families. Though both Union and Confederate mail services worked remarkably well during the war, families sometimes waited months for a
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letter from a loved one in the field. To help locate missing soldiers, or determine if they had become a casualty of war, the USSC established a Hospital Directory that featured names of all Union soldiers recuperating in Washington, DC, hospitals. This directory eventually came to encompass all military medical facilities under the supervision of the War Department, and was one of the most costly expenditures of the USSC—but also the most priceless. In her 1863 book Wormely refers to the many heartbreaking inquiries the division received; one particular one provided the names and last-known whereabouts of two of the letter-writer’s nephews, and concluded with the remark that ‘‘these are two out of fourteen nephews that I have no account of since the battle of Fredericksburg’’ (p. 235).
Aid to Newly Discharged Veterans The last major fundraising effort for the USSC, a second Chicago Sanitary Fair, opened several weeks after the end of hostilities, and the funds raised were used to continue the USSC’s work in aiding newly discharged veterans returning to civilian life. Those veterans who could not find their families or were permanently disabled came under the auspices of the Special Relief Department of the USSC. According to a New York Times report, this department’s duties included investigating ‘‘the condition of discharged men who are assumed to be without means to pay the expense of going to their homes, and . . . [furnishing] the necessary means where the man is found to be truly and really in need’’ (January 29, 1865). One of the USSC’s last significant efforts was the publication of a booklet titled The Soldier’s Friend, which was distributed to Union soldiers. It listed the location of USSC branches and depots, as well as addresses for the newly created Soldiers’ Homes, which offered returning soldiers a way station as they made their way back home—or refuge if they discovered there was no home left to which they could return. The booklet also featured valuable information on artificial limbs, back pay, and pensions. In this capacity, the USSC served in place of a national organization or agency to help veterans, the first of which came into existence in April 1866 as the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for former Union soldiers. Only in 1921, following World War I, would a federal-level agency, the Veterans’ Bureau, come into being to provide official federal assistance to those who had served their country. The USSC disbanded in May 1866, a month after the Grand Army of the Republic was founded. Though prominent men served in its executive ranks, a tremendous amount of work was carried out by Livermore, Hoge, Woolsey, Schuyler, Wormeley, and countless other women. Many of them gained their first experience in financial and organizational administration, and
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went on to serve in the social-reform movements that gained momentum later in the century. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Attie, Jeanie. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. ‘‘From City Point.’’ New York Times, January 29, 1865. ‘‘The Havelock Cap-Covers.’’ New York Times, May 20, 1861. Hoge, Jane [Mrs. A. H. Hoge]. The Boys in Blue; Or, Heroes of the ‘‘Rank and File.’’ Chicago: C. W. Lilley, 1867. Livermore, Mary A. My Story of the War: A Woman’s Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience as Field and Hospital Nurse in the Union Army. Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington, 1888. Miller, Francis Trevelyan, and Robert Sampson Lanier, eds. Prisons and Hospitals. Vol. 7 of The Photographic History of the Civil War. New York: Review of Reviews, 1911. Reed, William Howell. Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1866. ‘‘The Sanitary Condition of Gen. Grant’s Army.’’ New York Times, March 22, 1863. Sherwood, Mrs. ‘‘Memories of 1861–64; The Sanitary Commission.’’ New York Times, May 28, 1898. ‘‘The Wants of the Western Sanitary Commission.’’ New York Times, August 22, 1862. ‘‘Work for the Ladies.’’ New York Times, April 22, 1861. Wormeley, Katharine Prescott. The United States Sanitary Commission: A Sketch of Its Purposes and Its Work. Boston: Little, Brown, 1863. Carol Brennan
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Sanitary Fairs
Despite their somewhat clinical-sounding name, sanitary fairs were lavish, well-attended charity events held in several major Northern cities with the goal of raising funds for the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). This quasi-government organization, run mostly by volunteers, inspected Union Army camps and hospitals to ensure they were adhering to proper hygienic standards, and at the local level collected food, blankets, and medical supplies for soldiers fighting the Confederacy. These sanitary fairs, held between 1863 and 1865, were organized and run by the regional auxiliaries of the USSC and took place in Chicago, Boston, New York, and St. Louis. Altogether, the events collected an estimated $2.7 million for the USSC. This figure was nearly half of the USSC’s total revenues during its five years in operation, and its equivalent amount in twenty-first-century dollars is $30 million (McCarthy 2003, p. 196).
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Sanitary Fairs
There were some seven thousand local auxiliaries established after the start of the American Civil War in April 1861, and their active participants were among the most affluent and prominent women in each community (McCarthy 2003, p. 194). The sanitary fairs held in the larger Northern cities were well-attended and immensely successful charity events that became the focal point of an otherwise somber social season during the war years. There was an attempt, however, to make the goals of the USSC, and the sanitary fairs themselves, of interest to all who supported the Union cause. A press release issued to the clergy urged them to enjoin their congregations to participate. They were asked to issue a
plea from their pulpits, calling on ‘‘every loyal and patriotic workingman, mechanic or farmer, who can make a pair of shoes or raise a barrel of apples . . . to contribute something that can be turned into money, and again from money into the means of ensuring the health and life of our national soldiers’’ (McCarthy 2003, p. 196).
Opposition to the USSC The USSC’s founding members modeled their organization in part on the British Sanitary Commission, which operated during the Crimean War of 1853–1856 and made immense strides in reducing disease outbreaks
The Sanitary Fair was a project to benefit the United States Sanitary Commission, which gave supplies and health information to the troops during the Civil War. The Art Brooklyn Sanitary Fair, 1864.
Archive/Museum of the City of New York/The Picture Desk, Inc.
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among British troops. Nonetheless, many politicians in Washington, along with top military brass, feared the meddling of self-appointed experts and opposed the USSC’s offer to help the war effort; even President Abraham Lincoln warned that the Commission could become the proverbial ‘‘fifth wheel to the coach’’ (Miller 1911, p. 330). However, the surgeon general, Thomas Lawson, and War Secretary Simon Cameron both urged Lincoln to sign a June 18, 1861, proposal calling for the establishment of the USSC as an official government entity. The two men were part of a small contingent who believed it was wise to placate the growing number of Northern women who were eager to contribute to the war effort in a useful way.
Goals and Operations The USSC operated on several levels. It trained volunteer nurses for field hospitals, and sent representatives to inspect army camps, field hospitals, and hospital ships to determine whether or not they maintained proper sanitary conditions. The volunteers also instructed camp kitchen personnel on food-safety issues and operated a post office service that located missing soldiers on behalf of their families. At the local level, sewing and knitting circles were organized to make uniforms, socks, gloves, and blankets for soldiers, and depots were established in cities and towns that accepted donations of both goods and money. The items collected by the USSC at these depots were either donated directly to soldiers or used for the sanitary fairs. The goal of the sanitary fairs was to supply Union military personnel some of the basic necessities above and beyond what an already-overextended War Department could provide. One of their most significant contributions was the ‘‘comfort bag,’’ assembled by USSC volunteers and distributed in the thousands to Union soldiers. These contained needles and thread, so that soldiers could repair their own uniforms, a miniature Bible, and a small knife for woodcarving—a popular hobby at the time—along with a comb, packets of coffee and sugar, and other incidentals that were gratefully received. ‘‘If the comfort bag contained no letter, with a stamped envelope, and blank sheet of paper added, its recipient was a little crestfallen,’’ wrote Mary Livermore, head of the USSC Chicago auxiliary, in her 1888 memoir, My Story of the War. ‘‘The stationary was rarely forgotten. Folded in the sleeves of shirts, tucked in pockets, wrapped in handkerchiefs, and rolled in socks, were envelopes with stamps affixed, containing blank sheets of notepaper and usually a pencil was added. The soldiers expressed their need of stationary in almost every letter they wrote’’ (p. 140).
Fairs as Events Livermore was a prominent journalist and women’s rights activist who headed the USSC’s Northwestern chapter in Chicago. She was instrumental in organizing the first
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sanitary fair, called the Northwestern Sanitary Fair, in October 1863. This event was notable for the $80,000 raised (in twenty-first century dollars, the equivalent of $1 million), part of which came from the sale of the original Emancipation Proclamation document (donated by President Lincoln), which fetched $3,000 at auction (Livermore 1888, p. 196). The document was destroyed just a few years later, however, during Chicago’s notorious 1871 fire. Other cities quickly copied Livermore’s example. The Great Western Sanitary Fair in Cincinnati was held in December 1863, followed closely by a Boston event staged at the Boston Athenaeum that same month. The fairs’ opening night galas quickly became eagerly anticipated social events, and wealthy families donated valuable items to be sold at auction. The Boston fair was notable for the sale of a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto, donated by Peter Chardon Brooks, the son of Boston’s first millionaire. Civic pride and a confluence of wealth and power resulted in the New York Metropolitan Sanitary Fair topping the record for fundraising when its April 1864 event collected a stunning $2 million for the USSC (Silber 2005, p. 186). The New York fair was held at the since-demolished Palace Garden on 14th Street at Union Square, and its opening-day festivities included a military parade through the city and an opening address delivered by General John Adams Dix, who had stepped down from his position as U.S. Treasury Secretary when the war began. Dix told the crowd, according to a frontpage article in the New York Times, that ‘‘our enemies abroad have said that the South . . . [is] animated by the highest enthusiasm, and that we are comparatively cold and unmoved by the high motives of action. It is precisely the reverse; the contributions of the Northern people in treasure and blood have been voluntary offerings and sacrifices on the altar of their country’’ (April 5, 1864). Among the Metropolitan Fair’s most popular attractions was the Knickerbocker Kitchen, a temporary restaurant whose main novelty was the staff of socialites—from some of New York’s oldest Dutch families, such as the Roosevelts—who waited on tables. The same New York Times front-page article also reported that three pickpockets were arrested on the first day of the Fair in the Palace Garden, and forced to parade through the crowd with a placard reading Pickpocket around their necks. Baltimore, St. Louis, and Philadelphia all hosted sanitary fairs to raise money for Union soldiers and sailors over the course of 1864 and 1865. The final one, held in Chicago, opened on May 30, 1865, having already been planned by the time the war ended on April 9. Though the fairs were a quickly forgotten part of the war effort, for a generation of women who devoted their time and energy to them, they served as an invaluable introduction to the worlds of planning, organization, fundraising, financial administration, and outright commerce. The skills they learned would later be deployed in the burgeoning social
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Sanitary Fairs
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED, SANITARY COMMISSIONER AND CONSERVATIONIST Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was one of a group of men involved with the work of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) and its sanitary fairs. By the early twenty-first century, however, he was better known as a landscape architect—he designed Central Park in New York City as well as many other famous parks and college campuses—and as an early conservationist than as a Civil War journalist and sanitary commissioner. Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a wellto-do merchant. As a boy, Olmsted loved to explore the woods near his home, but had to give up plans for college when his eyes were damaged by exposure to poison sumac. Olmsted turned to agriculture and journalism, acquiring a farm on Staten Island in 1849 and taking a research journey through the South between 1852 and 1857 to write articles for the New York Daily Times (now The New York Times). Olmsted’s articles for the Times were eventually collected into a set of volumes titled Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom of America, first published in London in 1861. Olmsted’s vivid first-person writing about the ills of slavery helped to shape public opinion in the North in the early months of the Civil War. After returning from the South Olmsted turned his interest in gardening and landscape design to the development of Central Park in New York City. Olmsted envisioned the park as a space for enjoyment of nature that should be open to everyone. Although this concept of a ‘‘public’’ park seems obvious in the early 2000s, it was revolutionary in the late 1850s. Olmsted took a leave of absence from his work as director of Central Park to work for the USSC in 1861. In 1863, however, he was sent west to study the Mariposa mining estate in the Yosemite Valley and to manage it as a public park granted by Congress to the state of California. Two years later Olmsted drafted ‘‘Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865,’’ in which he set forth his vision of the national park as a place for all persons, not just the wealthy and powerful. Olmsted’s view of nature as a source of spiritual and mental well-being was the basis of his determination to make this treasure freely available to all citizens. His 1865 report, available from the Yosemite Online Library, stated:
reform and women’s suffrage movements that gained steam in the decades following the war. The recipients of the Sanitary Fair’s efforts, the soldiers, were profoundly grateful to the USSC and the women who organized and staffed the fairs. Livermore, in her memoir, reprinted a letter from several wounded men who were recovering at a Memphis military hospital. The letter, addressed to ‘‘the Managers of the Northwestern Fair,’’ asserted that its writers ‘‘are deeply grateful for the sympathy manifested towards us in words and deeds. We are cheered, comforted, and encouraged. . . . In the light of your smiles, and in this great earnest[ness] of your sympathy, we have an additional incentive never to relax our efforts for our native land, whose women are its
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It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men . . . that it not only gives pleasure for the time being but increases the subsequent capacity for happiness and the means of securing happiness. . . . The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them [have been] a monopoly, in a very peculiar manner, of a very few very rich people. The great mass of society, including those to whom it would be of the greatest benefit, is excluded from it. In the nature of the case private parks can never be used by the mass of the people in any country nor by any considerable number even of the rich, except by the favor of a few . . . . It was in accordance with . . . the duty of a Republican Government that Congress enacted that the Yosemite should be held, guarded and managed for the free use of the whole body of the people forever, and that the care of it, and the hospitality of admitting strangers from all parts of the world to visit it and enjoy it freely, should be a duty of dignity. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850–1920.’’ The Library of Congress, May 3, 2002. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/. Olmsted, Frederick Law. ‘‘Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865.’’ Yosemite Online Library. Available from http://www.yosemite.ca.us/. Stevenson, Elizabeth. Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000.
brightest ornaments, as well as its truest patriots’’ (Livermore 1888, p. 460). BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Art People.’’ New York Times, April 5, 1985. Livermore, Mary. My Story of the War: A Woman’s Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience as Field and Hospital Nurse in the Union Army. Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington, 1888. ‘‘Luxury against Patriotism.’’ New York Times, April 2, 1864, p. 6. McCarthy, Kathleen D. American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700–1865. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
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‘‘Metropolitan Fair; The Grand Opening Yesterday.’’ New York Times, April 5, 1864, p. 1. Miller, Francis Trevelyan, and Robert Sampson Lanier, eds. Prisons and Hospitals. Vol. 7 of The Photographic History of the Civil War. New York: Review of Reviews, 1911. Silber, Nina. Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Vogel, Carol. ‘‘An Old Master Sold at Auction Raises Doubts.’’ New York Times, February 17, 2000. Carol Brennan
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Civilian Health Care
For most of the nineteenth century, health care in the United States took place within the confines of the home. Physicians routinely paid visits to their patients to deliver diagnoses or to dispense treatments by the fireside. Only rarely were individuals treated in infirmaries. What few hospitals existed at the outbreak of the Civil War were typically considered the last refuge of the insane or fatally ill. Soon after the onset of hostilities between the North and South, however, this situation changed, with many doctors soon finding their services in high demand on the battlefield. As a result, in-home medical care became harder for Americans to secure, especially in war-ravaged areas of the South. Still, as a percentage of the general population, the number of physicians remained high. Additionally, large numbers of midwives and folk healers—white and black alike—continued to provide care alongside their licensed counterparts. Indeed, one of the chief impediments to civilian health care in the South during the Civil War was not a lack of medical practitioners but a lack of supplies. In particular, the Union blockade of Confederate ports prevented many much-needed medicines, deemed to be contraband during the conflict, from entering the region. With their already limited pharmacopeia continued shrinking in size, southerners began to seek alternative remedies in native medicinal plants. Both lay and professional practitioners were aided in their attempts at alternative homeopathy by the 1863 publication of Francis P. Porcher’s work Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medical, Economical, and Agricultural. Written at the behest of the Confederate surgeon general, Porcher’s book identified a number of indigenous plants that could serve as substitutes for many of the major refined pharmaceuticals of the age. Ultimately, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests aided doctors and herbal healers, as portions of Porcher’s work were widely reprinted throughout southern newspapers during the war. One southerner’s description of the situation is recounted in Parthenia Antoinette Hague’s 1888 work A Blockaded Fam-
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ily: Life in Southern Alabama during the Civil War: ‘‘the woods . . . were also our drug stores’’ (p. 46). Beyond foraging through forests for alternative remedies, southerners also raised curatives in their own gardens. For instance, refined opium, one of the favored painkillers of the age, quickly came into short supply. Many citizens planted rows of poppies in their gardens to make opium. Such measures proved to be a very successful enterprise too. The homegrown products were just as effective as the ones that would have otherwise been purchased in stores and such individual production assured that pain relievers would be available when needed. Regarding medical care for slaves on the home front, it remained similar to that of whites during the period. Physicians, who were typically kept on yearly retainer by an owner to attend their slaves, routinely traveled to the plantation to administer treatment either in the slave quarters or in the master’s home. In these cases practitioners also faced a shortage of essential medications. For example, former slave Louis Hughes remembered in a 2005 reprint of his autobiography, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, The Autobiography of Louis Hughes, an instance during the war when he was treated for chills and fever. Since quinine was rare, he drank a tea made from lemon leaves. ‘‘I was treated in this manner,’’ Hughes recounted, ‘‘to some advantage.’’ He admitted that not all were so lucky however. While this makeshift remedy worked for him, the same ‘‘cannot always be said of all methods of treatment’’ (p. 73). Aside from dealing with a dearth of pharmaceuticals, many doctors also had to manage their medical stores more closely. Not long after the outbreak of hostilities, Union and Confederate armies began appropriating existing supplies for military use. Basic items such as bandages and surgical implements quickly became scarce. For physicians on the home front, this situation only grew worse over time. While civilian aide agencies such as the United States Sanitary Commission emerged early in the war to assist in forwarding supplies to physicians on the battlefield, health care workers at home still had to scrounge for even the most rudimentary tools of their trade. Notwithstanding the scarcity of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, civilian practitioners faced no shortage of sickness during the Civil War. Although spared the devastation of communicable diseases like typhus, measles, and whooping cough that spread rapidly through crowded, squalid military encampments, civilians in the South still suffered from high rates of infectious disease. The subtropical climate of certain portions of the region, for example, ensured that endemic ailments like malaria and yellow fever continued to wreak havoc. Moreover, chronic malnutrition compromised the immunity of many residents, creating conditions in which simple sicknesses could readily develop into deadly maladies. As for
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Civilian Health Care
MEDICINE’S INTERNAL CIVIL WAR: MAINSTREAM MEDICINE AND HOMEOPATHY At the time of the Civil War, there were a number of different approaches to medicine in the United States, each having its own schools and curricula. It was not until the Flexner Report of 1910 that there was any attempt to standardize the training and certification of American physicians. What we now think of as mainstream or scientific medicine (sometimes called allopathic medicine) had a serious rival at the time of the Civil War-homeopathy. Homeopathy is now considered an alternative form of treatment and is used by only 2 percent of Americans, but in the 1860s, it was more popular in many areas of the country than mainstream medicine. Homeopathy is a form of treatment in which the practitioner administers, in extremely dilute formulations, substances that would ordinarily cause symptoms similar to the patient’s illness. For example, arsenic and belladonna, which cause fever in humans when given in large doses, are used by homeopaths in extremely small doses to treat fevers. The founder of homeopathy, a German chemist and physician named Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), experimented with minute doses of a wide range of plant and mineral compounds, believing they cured patients by stimulating the body’s own vital force. Although a commonplace modern criticism of homeopathy is that the remedies used are so diluted that they retain too little of the original substance to have any effect on the body, it is likely that their very mildness was one reason for the popularity of homeopathy in the United States from the 1830s to the 1860s. Mainstream medical practitioners often used bloodletting and dosed patients with such harmful compounds as calomel (mercurous chloride, used as a laxative). While some turned to folk remedies or Native American herbal treatments as alternatives to mainstream medicine, others were attracted to homeopathy because its practitioners had largely been educated in Europe. Immigrant homeopaths were often more highly educated than American allopathic physicians. The first American homeopath was Hans Gram, a Boston-born
residents of the North, they too suffered from disease, especially the ever-present plague of urban life in the nineteenth century: tuberculosis. There were numerous practical and epidemiological challenges civilian health care workers faced during the Civil War. In general, however, physicians, midwives, and folk healers continued to serve the American public without interruption, even if sometimes without necessary medicines and supplies in hand. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Current, Richard N., ed. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, vol. 2. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
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physician of Danish extraction who went to Europe to study homeopathy and returned to the United States to open a homeopathic practice in 1825. In less than a decade there were several schools of homeopathic medicine, the most famous of which was the Homeopathic Medical College of Philadelphia. In 1844 practitioners of homeopathy in the United States formed the American Institute of Homeopathy. Orthodox or mainstream physicians began to oppose homeopathy in the early 1840s. The American Medical Association, founded in 1847, was organized at least in part to counteract the American Institute of Homeopathy. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), a physician practicing in Boston, delivered two public lectures in 1842 on ‘‘Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions,’’ in which he systematically mocked the underlying assumptions of homeopathy. When the Civil War began, the medical corps of the Union Army were dominated by allopathic doctors, and its examining boards routinely denied military commissions to homeopaths. This exclusion had the unfortunate side effect, however, of intensifying the shortage of experienced surgeons in the army, as many homeopaths in the 1860s had had more training in surgery than their mainstream medical counterparts. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. ‘‘Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions.’’ 1842. Available online from http://homeoint.org/cazalet/holmes/index.htm. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). ‘‘Research Report: Questions and Answers about Homeopathy.’’ Available online from http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/. Rutkow, Lainie W., and Ira M. Rutkow. ‘‘Homeopaths, Surgery, and the Civil War: Edward C. Franklin and the Struggle to Achieve Medical Pluralism in the Union Army.’’ Archives of Surgery 139, no. 7 (2004): 785–791.
Flannery, Michael A. Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy. New York: Pharmaceutical Products Press, 2004. Hague, Parthenia Antoinette. A Blockaded Family: Life in Southern Alabama during the Civil War [1888]. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, [1995.] Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social and Military History. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000. Hughes, Louis. Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, The Autobiography of Louis Hughes. Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2002.
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Porcher, Francis Peyre. Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, Medical, Economical, and Agricultural [1863]. San Francisco: Norman Pub., 1991. Rothstein, William G. American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972. Amy Crowson
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In a time before bacteriology and aseptic surgery were understood, before many of the technological advances of the twentieth century, Civil War doctors were making great advances in medicine, not only in battlefield techniques in caring for the injured, but also in medicine as a whole. Doctors practicing medicine and learning through trial by fire on the front lines of the Civil War took exceptional care of the wounded.
Advances in Medical Techniques and Understanding For the first time in the United States, compiling a complete medical history was possible due to an accumulation of adequate records and detailed reports. This led to the publication of the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870), which was identified in Europe as the first major academic accomplishment in U.S. medicine (Blaisdell 1988, p. 1046). Thomas Ellis, an army surgeon during the Civil War, wrote, ‘‘Among the few benefits derived from the war, is the marked improvement in military surgery. Some of the surgeons; who now skillfully perform the necessary operations, and judiciously decline to amputate where a hope of saving the limb exists, were[,] at the commencement of the rebellion[,] inadequate to the positions they occupied’’ (1863, p. 231). Among advances in medical techniques there were modifications of surgical apparati and appliances, and doctors soon after the war learned about hospital gangrene, septicemia, and the effects of malnutrition, such as diarrhea. Although the use of anesthesia was not new at the time, during the war surgeons developed an inhaler for its administration; the previous method involved placing a chloroform or ether-doused rag over the face of the patient (Belferman 1996). Over the course of the war, surgeons learned about treating head injuries and how to ligate arteries and better treat chest wounds, and they expanded their knowledge of spinal injuries. After the war, thermometers became widely available, as did stethoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, and hypodermic needles, which already had been widely used in Europe (Adams 1985, p. 176). Infectious wounds proved to be the bane of both the Union and Confederate armies. The concept that cleanliness led to fewer complications was understood,
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but the reasons why were yet unknown. It was not until 1865 that Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic surgery. Prior to this, it was common for doctors to dig bullets and mortar fragments out with their bare fingers, sometimes using unsanitized instruments and employing only a quick rinse in cold water to rinse off the blood before moving on to the next patient (Belferman 1996). Chronic diarrhea was a serious problem for both armies, and was responsible for more deaths than any other disease. Soldiers’ rations consisted of dried beef or pork, coffee, and hard-tack biscuits that were often infested with weevils. Fresh fruits and vegetables were a luxury for a soldier. Malnutrition resulted in vitamin deficiencies. In turn, a vitamin-C deficiency led to scurvy and niacin deficiency led to pellagra. These conditions often caused skin infections, dementia, diarrhea, and sometimes, death (Bollet 2002, p. 87). U.S. mortality rates from disease were about 65 per 1,000 for the troops that fought in the Civil War. Comparatively, mortality rates for U.S. troops fighting in the Mexican War of 1846 and those of the British troops in the Crimean War of 1854 were about 104 per 1,000 and 232 per 1,000 troops, respectively (Otis 1865, p. 93).
Medicines Sarah Emma Edmonds, a nurse for the Union army, noted the ‘‘liberal distribution of quinine and blue pills, and sometimes a little eau de vie, to wash down the bitter drugs,’’ given to the soldiers to cure a multitude of illnesses (1865, p. 282). Although morphine and quinine were plentiful and did much good, the ‘‘blue pill,’’ calomel, and tartar emetic contained high levels of mercury and antimony, which led to heavy metal poisoning. This was such a problem that General William Hammond of the North forbade the use of mercurials, calomel, and tartar emetic by the end of the war. Mercury was also the treatment of choice for syphilis, diarrhea, dysentery, and typhoid (Adams 1985, p. 154). Treatment included hourly administration of mercurous drugs, which often resulted in heavy metal poisoning of the patient. Ensuing symptoms included tongue swelling, bone necrosis, gangrene, loosening and loss of teeth, and excess salivation—anywhere from a pint to a quart a day was common.
Ambulance Corp Ghastly accounts were told of men being left to die on the battlefield. In one instance, after the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5–7, 1864), so many men were wounded that they became lost in the brush and were not rescued. Then a fire erupted, burning to death hundreds of men. Henry Bowditch, a soldier in the Union army, beseeched Congress to arrange and equip an ambulance corp of detailed soldiers, similar to those that the English and French armies had at the time. Bowditch had lost many comrades in battles fought around Centreville, Virginia, and also
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Advances in Medicine
DENTISTRY IN THE CIVIL WAR Dentistry in the United States had made a number of advances in the decades preceding the Civil War. Like veterinary medicine, dentistry had become a profession separate from general medicine and surgery in the nineteenth century. In the early part of the century most American dentists qualified for the profession by apprenticing themselves to established practitioners. The first independent school of dentistry in the United States, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, was established in 1840. By the time of the Civil War there were four American dental schools, all of them in the North. Southern as well as Northern dentists trained in these schools, and dentists on both sides used the same textbooks, A Practical Treatise on Operative Dentistry (1859) and The Principles and Practice of Dental Surgery (1863), both published in Philadelphia. The American Dental Association (ADA), founded in 1859, was headquartered in New York City. Bitterness following the Civil War led Southern dentists to form their own professional organization, the Southern Dental Association, which did not rejoin the ADA until 1914. The Confederacy established a separate dental corps to treat soldiers at the front. Dental surgeons in the Confederate Army were assigned to hospitals and combat regiments as medical surgeons. Union soldiers who did not have a dental corps either had to make do with local dentists in the towns where they were stationed, or request treatment from contract dentists hired by the Union Army or from dentists who had joined Union regiments as soldiers and were practicing dentistry unofficially. Behind the lines Civil War dentists performed fillings and tooth extractions as well as instructing soldiers in basic oral hygiene. On the battlefield itself, injuries to the mouth and jaw were often treated by military surgeons as well as dentists, and instruments used to prepare teeth for fillings were part of many doctors’ surgical field kits.
had lost his son, a lieutenant with the First Massachusetts Cavalry. He remarked, ‘‘a wounded soldier is liable to be left to suffer, and die . . . on the battle-ground, without the least attention. . . . This happens, first, because Congress readily refuses to establish any definite and efficient Ambulance Corps in the armies of the Republic; and second, because the War Department declines to do anything in the premises’’ (1863, p. 6). By the war’s end, Jonathan Letterman, the medical director of the Union’s Army of the Potomac, had developed a system for evacuating the wounded, and established ambulances and dedicated personnel for each regiment to take the wounded off the battlefield.
Hospitals Initially, both the Union and the Confederacy thought the engagements between the two armies would be small, pitched battles. The country was unprepared
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The dental textbooks in use in the early 1860s indicate that American dentists were knowledgeable about the advantages and drawbacks of different types of fillings. Unlike some of their European counterparts, they did not use lead to fill teeth because it was known to be dangerous to one’s health. Gold was the preferred filling material because it was strong, easily placed in the tooth, and compatible with the body’s tissues. Other dentists used an amalgam made of silver and tin. On the battlefield, dentists and surgeons used a mixture of zinc chloride and zinc oxide to make temporary fillings that could be replaced later with permanent ones. Because of the Northern blockade, Southern dentists had difficulty obtaining gold for use in fillings during the war; there was only one dental supply company in Atlanta that was able to obtain gold for either civilian or military dentists. As the Confederate currency lost its value, the cost of a gold filling soared to $120— more than ten months’ pay for a private in the Confederate Army. Some information about Civil War dentistry has been obtained from the skulls of Confederate soldiers from the Battle of First Bull Run (1861) and the Battle of Glorieta Pass (1862) in New Mexico. The fillings in the soldiers’ teeth were mostly gold, probably placed before the war, although one soldier had had his teeth filled with a mixture of mercury and tin. In another case the soldier’s dentist had filled a tooth with thorium, not knowing that it is a radioactive material. He may have mistaken it for tin. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Asbell, Milton B. Dentistry: A Historical Perspective: Being a Historical Account of the History of Dentistry From Ancient Times, with Emphasis on the United States from the Colonial to the Present Period. Bryn Mawr, PA: Dorrance and Co., [1988]. Glenner, Richard A., and Willey, P. ‘‘Dental Filling Materials in the Confederacy,’’ Journal of the History of Dentistry 46, no. 2 (July 1998): 71–75.
when, in 1862, large-scale, devastating battles resulted in mass casualties. As the war raged, larger and better field hospitals developed. According to George Adams, regimental hospitals clustered together as brigade hospitals, with some differentiation of duty for the various medical officers; the chief surgeon of the brigade was in charge. Soon, brigade hospitals clustered into division hospitals, and 1864 saw the formation of corps hospitals. There the best surgeons would operate; another surgeon would be responsible for records, another for drugs, another for supplies, and yet another would treat the sick and lightly wounded (Adams 1981). Confederates developed the prototypes of mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) units as they fled before General William Tecumseh Sherman’s advance (Belferman 1996). At this time, female nurses were introduced to hospital care, and Catholic orders entered the hospital business. Nursing was elevated to a profession, with thousands of
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women working in hospitals for the first time. Civilians joined the Sanitary Commission, a soldiers’ relief society that set the precedent for the development of the American Red Cross. By the last year of the war, in 1865, there were 204 Union general hospitals with beds for 136,894 patients (Adams 1981). The pavilion-style general hospitals were wood-built, clean, and had ample ventilation and sufficient bed space for eighty to one hundred patients; they became the model for large civilian hospitals over the next seventy-five years (Blaisdell 1988, pp. 1045–1046). Furthermore, specialist hospitals and departments to treat the specific problems of wartime soldiers appeared for the first time. The famous neurological hospital Turner’s Lane was founded in Philadelphia, where W. W. Keen (1837– 1932) is considered by some to have originated neurology in the United States. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) further advanced neurology by characterizing new syndromes of causalgia—triggered by nerve damage—and ‘‘phantom limb,’’ and Jacob Da Costa (1833–1900) described ‘‘soldier’s heart,’’ the medical concept known today as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or ‘‘shell shock’’ (Bollet 2002, p. 363). The gains in medical knowledge during and immediately after the Civil War led to the development of a system of managing mass casualties that included the establishment of aid stations, field hospitals, and general hospitals. This system set the pattern for management of the wounded during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War (Blaisdell 1988, p. 1050). In the Union army 30.5 percent of soldiers died during battle or from battle wounds; in the Confederate army the percentage was 36.4. Although the Civil War produced a high number of casualties, mortality rates due to direct combat and to disease both decreased. By the end of 1865 army doctors had set up large hospitals. The benefits of asepsis and general prevention of disease were better understood. The training of nurses became standardized. Medical professionals, soldiers, and civilians were also educated in issues of public health. Finally, the importance of specialization for certain diseases and
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the need for expanded laboratory studies were recognized (Adams 1985, p. 240). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, George W. ‘‘Fighting for Time.’’ In The Image of War, 1861–1865, vol. 4, ed. William Davis. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981. Available from http://www.civilwarhome.com/. Adams, George Worthington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. Dayton, OH: Morningside, 1985. Belferman, Mary. ‘‘On Surgery’s Cutting Edge In Civil War: Medical ‘Turning Point’ Is Focus of New Museum.’’ Washington Post, Washington, DC, June 13, 1996. Blaisdell, F. W. ‘‘Medical Advances during the Civil War.’’ Archives of Surgical History 123 (1988): 1045–1050. Bollet, Alfred J. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. New York: Galen Press, 2002. Bowditch, Henry I. A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States, as Drawn from the Extra Sufferings of the Late Lieut. Bowditch and a Wounded Comrade. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863. Edmonds, S. Emma E. Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-fields. Hartford, CT: W. S. Williams, 1865. Ellis, Thomas T. Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon, or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life. New York: John Bradburn, 1863. Marks, James Junius. The Peninsular Campaign in Virginia, or, Incidents and Scenes on the Battle-fields and in Richmond. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864. Otis, George A. Reports on the Extent and Nature of the Materials Available for the Preparation of a Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865. Anurag Biswas
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Work and Economy n
Work and Economy Overview
Even though the war was occupying the labors of the hundreds of thousands of young and middle-aged men who were serving as soldiers, the work of America had to go on. Scarcely more than ten percent of the American population served in the armies at any one time during the course of the war. Most Americans spent the war years at home, working at many familiar tasks and some unfamiliar ones. Farming was still the occupation of a great many Americans in mid-nineteenth century, and in many ways its labor continued as it had before the outbreak of the conflict. Farmers still sowed and reaped, sheared sheep, milked cows, or slaughtered hogs as they had in peace time. But some things were different. In many parts of the South that anticipated the coming of the Union armies, as well as those parts of Pennsylvania visited by Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army in 1863, farmers often saw their livestock confiscated, their fields trampled, and their food supplies depleted by hordes of hungry, hostile soldiers. A more subtle but no less painful loss was the destruction of fences. Most fences in the United States of the Civil War years were made of split rails with their ends crisscrossed to form zigzag fences five feet or more in height. This was necessary because farmers commonly let their livestock, especially hogs, run wild in the woods, and under the laws then prevailing, it was every farmer’s responsibility to fence such animals out of the fields where they grew crops. If a farmer had no fence, his own and his neighbors’ pigs would soon devour his crop as it stood in the field. Soldiers were always looking for good, dry, seasoned firewood, and the fence rails were perfect. When soldiers made a farmer’s fence into ‘‘the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,’’ that year’s crop was most likely a loss. For other farmers, the Civil War was a time of doing more with less. Many of the soldiers who filled the ranks of the armies were farm laborers, and their absence
exacerbated America’s chronic labor shortage and enhanced the desirability of labor-saving machines. From this was born the wisdom of Cyrus McCormick’s decision to move his mechanical reaper business from his native Rockcastle County, Virginia, to Chicago, Illinois, a burgeoning rail hub smack in the middle of a vast expanse of the world’s finest farmland. The war years saw vast increases in the use of McCormick’s machine, as the mechanical reaper did the work of thousands of sturdy farm lads now shouldering rifles for the Union cause. The South had never had much interest in machinery of any sort—save cotton gins—and certainly not mechanical reapers. After all, the South had slaves. Bondmen continued to perform much of the South’s agricultural labor during the war, but their eagerness to escape at the first opportunity and their growing awareness that their days of unrequited toil were approaching an end made them an increasingly problematic source of labor for the flagging Confederacy. By 1860, more Americans than ever before were employed in non-farm labor, and the war brought added stimulus for the growing industrialization that gave them their new types of work. Textile mills such as the pioneering facility in Lowell, Massachusetts, employed many ‘‘operatives,’’ or factory workers, as they were then called, and many of those were young, unmarried women. Heavier industries, such as the foundries that made cannon, rails, or locomotives, employed exclusively male workers. The North had much more of both types of industry, with Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works being the only facility south of the Mason-Dixon Line that could make either a locomotive or a heavy cannon. During the course of the war, the Confederacy developed a small military-industrial base of its own, and many of the operatives in establishments making tents, uniforms, or even gunpowder, were women. Some of these were put out of work when Union armies destroyed their factories. Ulysses S. Grant on one occasion allowed each member of the female workforce of a
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Manufacturing: An Overview
Confederate tent factory to take as much cloth as she could carry as a kind of severance package prior to the destruction of the establishment. William T. Sherman on another occasion had the entire workforce of a Confederate factory, all of them young women, shipped north of the Ohio River. Wartime labor for many Southern women did not, however, involve factory work but rather many of the farm duties of an absent husband. This meant performing duties and assuming responsibilities a woman would not have ordinarily done in prewar days, but most of the women thus circumstanced seemed to have found it more of a burden than a liberation. Scores plied their fighting husbands with letters begging them to somehow get out of the army, get a furlough, or, in some cases, to desert their duties so as to come home and provide for their suffering families. The situation in the North was less dire. A smaller percentage of Northern men went into the military, and the U.S. government was far more reliable in paying its soldiers. The Northern economy also remained sound enough that the money paid to the soldiers retained some, though by no means all, of its value, unlike the almost completely depreciated currency of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, many Northern women labored against severe hardship. The widow of one Illinois soldier, confined to her bed by sickness, lay on her back while knitting a pair of badly needed trousers for her teenaged son, on whose labor the family now depended for survival. Elsewhere in Illinois, in a small town a few miles from the Wisconsin line, boys in their young teens organized themselves into a sort of club known as the ‘‘sawbuck rangers,’’ dedicated to sawing up a winter’s supply of firewood for neighborhood families whose chief breadwinners were away in the army. The work of Americans during the early 1860s differed according to their location in the country, their station in life, and the fortunes of war. For most, it was a time of increased labor to meet the demands of the wartime economy and the needs of their own families. Steven E. Woodworth
n
Manufacturing MANUFACTURING : AN OVERVIEW
Steven Barleen NORTHERN MANUFACTURING
Steven Barleen SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING
Steven Barleen FACTORIES
Steven Barleen ARMS MANUFACTURING
Carol Brennan
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SHIPBUILDING
Jeffery Seymour TEXTILES
Pamela L. Kester
MANUFACTURING: AN OVERVIEW When the Civil War began in 1861, neither side in the conflict expected it to last very long. The South expected that due to the superiority of its fighting spirit it would defeat the North quickly on the battlefield and force it to recognize the independence of the Confederate States of America (McPherson 1988, pp. 316–317). Many people in the North were also eager for a brawl, expecting that with the Union’s greater population and industrial capacity, it would quickly be able to make the South come to its senses (Foote 1958, pp. 50–60). As the next four years would demonstrate, however, both sides were grossly mistaken in their initial assessments of the other’s ability to sustain the war, but in the long run the North was correct about its ability to overwhelm the states in rebellion. The North outstripped the South in manufacturing capacity and manpower, and while the Union struggled during the first few years of the conflict in coordinating its manufacturing resources, it was eventually able to meet all of its supply needs. The Confederacy, on the other hand, despite its attempts to develop a manufacturing base before and during the conflict, had an economy largely based on investment in slaveholding and land ownership (Luraghi 1978; Wright 1978; Genovese 1965). Even though the South desperately tried to marshal its manufacturing resources to supply its wartime needs, it simply lacked the manpower and manufacturing base to effectively counter the North’s advantages in these areas.
An Unequal Contest At the start of the conflict the manufacturing balance sheet between the North and the South was quite lopsided in favor of the Union. One historian notes that the North had 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South’s 18,000; the North had 1,300,000 industrial workers compared to the South’s 110,000. Massachusetts alone produced over 60 percent more manufactured goods than all the Confederate states put together, Pennsylvania nearly twice as much, and New York more than twice as much (Foote 1958, p. 60). Another study demonstrates that the total value of manufactured goods in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi was less than $85 million while New York alone produced goods worth almost $380 million (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 164). Historian James McPherson points out the irony in this disproportion: while many in the South believed that cotton production would provide them with the wealth to fund their war, the states that grew the cotton possessed
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Augusta Powder Works, Augusta, Georgia. Recognizing the greater manufacturing ability of its Northern opponent, the South nonetheless made great strides in closing this competitive advantage. Prior to the war’s outset, Confederate states embarked on a furious, government-organized campaign to build factories, such as the Augusta Powder Works pictured here, to manufacture supplies rather than import them. The Library of Congress
only 6 percent of the nation’s cotton manufacturing capacity (McPherson 1982, p. 23). Furthermore, the states that remained within the Union had a better than ten-to-one advantage in the gross value of manufactured goods over the states that made up the Confederacy, with the latter producing only 7.4 percent of the nation’s gross value of these goods (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642). The free states had 84 percent of the nation’s capital invested in manufacturing in 1860. In such crucial industries as iron production, the South lagged far behind: During the year ending June 1, 1860, the Confederate states produced 36,790 tons of pig iron, while the figure for Pennsylvania alone was 580,049 tons (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 164). In other industries with a direct connection to warfare, the Northern states had 97 percent of the country firearms in 1860, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and more than 90 percent of its boots and shoes (McPherson 1988, 318). Confederate manufacturers were at a considerable disadvantage because they had largely depended on Northern technological know-how to develop and run their industries, and many of these workers returned to
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the North at the start of hostilities. In addition, many of the mechanics who were Southern-born chose to seek glory in uniform rather than stay on the job in Southern manufactories (Dew 1966, pp. 90–91). Reflecting the problem in home-grown expertise, James McPherson estimates that the South had contributed only seven percent of the important inventions in the United States between 1790 and 1860 (McPherson 1982, p. 25). Furthermore, many of the South’s industries were located in the Upper South close to coastal areas and were therefore always vulnerable to Union invasion (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 164). Another great advantage for Northern manufacturers was the population base from which they drew their workers. In 1861 the North had twenty-two million people compared with 9 million in the Confederacy. Of the latter, three and a half million were slaves, and while the South increasingly tried to incorporate enslaved people into its manufacturing workforce as the war progressed, it found this a difficult endeavor (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642; Dew 1966, pp. 250–264). Not only did the North’s population dwarf the South, the North was also more intensively engaged in industry at the outset of hostilities. Only forty percent of the Northern labor force worked in agriculture, while the slave states had 84 percent of their labor force occupied in farming. Consequently, the slave states had only ten percent of their population living in urban areas of 2,500 people or more, while the free states had 26 percent of their population living in such areas (McPherson 1982, p. 24). The North’s advantage in terms of population resulted from the steady flow of immigrants to the port cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, from which many of them fanned out across the North to take manufacturing jobs in inland towns. This influx of workers did not cease during the war, with more than 800,000 new immigrants arriving between 1861 and 1865 (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163).
The Southern Response Statistics like these certainly give the impression that the South faced an uphill battle in meeting its manufacturing needs. While it certainly did struggle to meet its needs, it made a great effort to do so. Historian Raimondo Luraghi has argued that despite the omnipresent issue of states rights, the Confederate government took a decisive role in managing its industries through what might be called the first instance of forced industrialization through state socialism. The South’s industrialization program had no equal until the rise of the Soviet Union in the early part of the twentieth century (Luraghi 1978, pp. 112–132). The authors of Why the South Lost the Civil War point to some of the ways in which the Confederacy brought its manufacturers under its control. One was conscription, which allowed the government to exempt skilled workers. The other was the
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THE SULTANA DISASTER, APRIL 27, 1865 The explosion of the Sultana, a Mississippi River steamship transporting Union soldiers recently released from Confederate prison camps, in April 1865 was the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. It is estimated that more passengers on the Sultana lost their lives than on the Titanic in 1912. The Sultana had been built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1862 for the cotton trade on the lower Mississippi. After 1864 the War Department commissioned the vessel for troop transport. On her last voyage, the Sultana left New Orleans on April 21, 1865, with livestock and about seventy-five cabin passengers bound for St. Louis, Missouri. The ship stopped at Vicksburg on April 24 to take on more passengers—Union soldiers recently released from prison camps at Andersonville and Cahaba. Although the Sultana had a legal capacity of 376 persons, more than 2,100 soldiers came aboard, filling every available space on the decks as well as the cabins. Many of these men had been severely weakened by wounds, malnutrition, and disease (Ambrose 2001). The severe overcrowding helped set the stage for disaster. As the ship steamed north of Memphis, Tennessee, one of its poorly maintained boilers exploded at about 2 a.m. on the morning of April 27; two of the other boilers then followed. Many passengers were killed immediately by the blast; others were scalded by escaping steam or burned to death in the fire that engulfed the ship when hot coals from the exploding boilers set fire to the wooden decks. Still others drowned or perished from hypothermia after jumping into the cold waters of the Mississippi. For months after the disaster, bodies were found downstream as far as Vicksburg. Many victims were never recovered. About eight hundred people survived the initial explosion and fire, but three hundred of these died within a few days of severe burns or exposure. Estimates of the death toll range between 1,300 and 1,900.
imposition of public domination over rail transportation. Thus the Confederate government in Richmond could force industrialists to do its bidding by denying them manpower or transportation (Beringer et al. 1986, p. 217). These authors then note that the government in Richmond also invested in manufacturing, establishing factories such as the Augusta Powder Works in Augusta, Georgia, which produced nitre (potassium nitrate, a chemical used to make gunpowder), lead, rifles, shoes, buttons, and other items. Moreover, this governmentinduced and controlled activity turned Southern cities into large industrial centers (Beringer et al. 1986, p. 217). Early in the short history of the Confederacy, the New York Herald reported on the frenetic pace of development that it saw occurring in the South: We perceive that the States of the Southern confederacy are bestirring themselves in the manufacturing line, with a view to provide for their own wants in those articles for which they were heretofore dependent upon New England. Cotton mills, shoe factories, yarn and twine manufactories
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It is thought that the boiler’s explosion was the result of the Sultana’s careening; that is, as the overcrowded and top-heavy ship struggled around the bends in the Mississippi, she tilted from one side to the other. The four boilers were interconnected in such a way that the tilting caused water to flow out of the uppermost boiler on that side of the ship. Since fires were still burning underneath the boilers, the empty boiler would develop hot spots. When the ship tilted in the other direction, water would rush back into the empty boiler, turn at once into steam, and create a temporary surge in pressure. This effect of careening could be prevented by keeping high levels of water in the boilers; however, the Sultana’s boilers were leaky and one had been hastily and improperly repaired when the ship stopped at Vicksburg. The Sultana disaster received surprisingly little press coverage at the time, most likely because the other events of April 1865— Robert E. Lee’s (1807–1870) surrender, the end of the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln’s (1809–1865) assassination—were foremost in the public’s attention. The tragedy was soon forgotten, though it cost nearly two thousand lives. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambrose, Stephen. ‘‘Remembering Sultana.’’ National Geographic News, May 1, 2001. Available from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/. Potter, Jerry O. ‘‘Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War.’’ American History Magazine, August 1998. Available from http://www.historynet.com/. Salecker, Gene Eric. Disaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
are being put extensively into operation in Georgia and other States. An association of Southern merchants is busily engaged in locating sites for all kinds of factories, with the assistance of competent engineers, where the indispensable water power can be made available. In the neighborhood of Columbus, Georgia, there are already established cotton and woolen mills, a tan yard and a shoe factory, grist mills and saw mills, of the capacity and operations of which a description will be found in another column. In New Orleans there is a very large factory at work in manufacture of brogans, an article of immense consumption on plantations, and hitherto supplied by the factories of Lynn and other New England towns. It is evident that the Southern confederacy is straining every point to make itself independent of the North commercially as well as politically. (March 17, 1861, p. 4)
Besides largely being cut off from the importation of Northern goods, the North’s blockade of the Southern coastline meant that items manufactured abroad would
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be severely curtailed as well. Early in the conflict, the government in Richmond tried to secure some necessary manufactured items from abroad. A Savannah, Georgia, newspaper reported on April 10, 1861, just a few days before shots were fired at Fort Sumter and only nine days before President Lincoln announced the blockade of Southern ports, that an American visiting a Prussian arms factory witnessed the manufactory of arms, where 60,000 rifles and 50,000 swords for the South were being produced (Daily Morning News, April 10, 1861, col. A). Whether this particular shipment of arms got through the blockade is unknown but it is likely that it did. Historians have estimated that despite the Union Navy’s best efforts to maintain the blockade, the South exported at least a million bales of cotton and imported 600,000 rifles (McPherson 1982, p. 179). McPherson goes on to point out that while such large numbers may call the blockade’s effectiveness into question, the blockade nevertheless cut the South’s seaborne trade to less than a third of normal (McPherson 1982, p. 179). This impact meant that the Confederate government would have to get the most out of its own manufacturing base without being able to rely on help from abroad. The most important manufacturing center of the Confederate States was in Richmond, where such factories as the Tredegar Iron Works provided the war effort with such essential items as cannons. The importance of Richmond’s manufacturing establishments was one of the reasons that General Robert E. Lee sacrificed so much to prevent the city from falling under Union control (McPherson 1982, pp. 235–236). Other historians point out that while the South as a whole was largely agricultural, Virginia was a partial exception. ‘‘Virginians envisioned a Confederacy filled with large factories, teeming cities, and prosperous merchants . . . Safely protected from more efficient Northern competitors, Virginia would give Southerners the industrial muscle they needed to sustain political independence’’ (Carlander and Majewski 2003, p. 335). Early visions of turning the South into an independent manufacturing behemoth eventually came to naught. With a much smaller manufacturing base, the curtailing of imports due to the loss of trade with Northern states as well as the naval blockade, and the lack of an adequate supply of free labor for its manufactories, the South failed to develop an effective manufacturing base. The economic base of the South was weakened as the war continued. The real output of the Confederacy declined as many of the best workers left the factories for the army. The blockade cut the Confederacy off from the benefits of foreign trade, led to inefficient use of Southern labor, and compounded the difficulties of replacing worn-out or destroyed machinery. In addition, Union troops concentrated on destroying railroad equipment and entire factories and on cutting the supply lines of raw materials (Lerner 1955, pp. 20–40).
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The Confederacy had simply started too far behind the Union in terms of manufacturing, and despite trying to catch up to the North, it faced too many obstacles to be successful. The antebellum South’s planter economy was no match for the capitalist entrepreneurial spirit of the Northern manufacturers.
Northern Adjustments Despite the North’s advantages, however, it was unable to capitalize on them and overwhelm its weaker adversary early in the conflict. For the first few years of the war the South was able to take advantage of the North’s inability to marshal its manufacturing resources. Initially, the North scrambled to meet its supply needs, even going abroad to import such essential items as rifles (Ransom 2006). For the Union the problem was not a lack of manufacturing facilities but a lack of coordination. During peacetime, manufacturers competed with one another and were not in business to cooperate. Moreover, most manufacturers in this period served local needs and did not ship their goods great distances or consider the needs of consumers in distant markets (Zunz 1990, pp. 12–15). Therefore military procurement officers had to encourage far-flung manufacturers to work together and pool their resources into large cooperative operations that met the military’s needs. This wartime effort led to the development of a national market that linked distant consumers with manufacturers (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 5). Even though effective coordination took some time, Northern producers were quick to see the money-making potential in supplying the needs of the Union Army and Navy. An article in the Chicago Tribune from the first year of the war illustrates some of the efforts taken by Midwestern manufacturers: Every day brings with it illustrations of the widespread activity caused by the preparations of the government for a long war. Passing through an alley . . . we found it barricaded with packing boxes. The boxes are the work of a man who three months ago could hardly find any occupation. He is now making packing boxes for the government with all the hands he can employ . . . The receipts of clothing at the arsenal are enormous. To inspect the operations is well worth a day’s time. One single establishment delivers daily 3,000 shirts and 2,000 pairs of drawers; from another is received an equal number of hose . . . The number of mills running solely upon army cloths and army flannel is becoming legion . . . scarce a day passes in which some cotton mill is not altered into a woolen mill, and set at work upon cloth and flannel. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)
To meet the needs of the war, many Northern manufacturers converted their operations to allow them to make goods needed by soldiers. For example, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire, at
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that time the largest textile manufacturer in the world, began making rifles (Hareven and Langenbach 1978, p. 10). The same newspaper article quoted above describes other wartime manufacturing conversions: Where hayforks and scythes took the attention of a manufacturer, sword blades and bayonets are produced instead. Brass turners have left off making faucets and door keys, and are doubling the product of their industry in making trappings for cavalry and the more delicate workmanship upon gun carriages, sword sheaths, &c. Trunk makers have taken to the fashioning of knapsacks, and men who once made carriages for the wealthy, are now making ambulances for the soldier. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)
What all this activity meant for cities like Chicago is described further in the Tribune article: The result is that the city is gradually becoming one vast workshop, and the hum of industry each day grows louder and louder. From the streets beggary has almost disappeared, and the demands upon the committee by the families of absent volunteers are daily diminishing from the abundance of employment offered to the industrious. The present war may pinch in some places, but it carries employment and comparative ease to others. (October 21, 1861, p. 2)
Despite the ambitions of Northern manufacturers to supply the military, however, many industries suffered economically during the initial months of the war due to the loss of their Southern customers and the accompanying sudden changes in market conditions. In fact, almost six thousand Northern businesses failed in the first year of the war, with financial losses totaling an estimated $178.5 million (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 8). Textile manufacturers suffered because of the loss of their cotton supply from Southern plantations, which resulted in a 74 percent drop in production (McPherson 1982, p. 372). Other manufacturers who suffered losses were iron producers, shoe manufacturers, and coal producers (McPherson 1982, p. 372). As manufacturers adjusted to wartime production needs, however, things began to turn around. The manufacturing index for the Union states alone rose to a level 13 percent higher by 1864 than that for the country as a whole in 1860 (McPherson 1982, p. 372). A Boston newspaper article describes the result of war production for Worcester, Massachusetts: The manufacturing interests of Worcester have been favorably affected by the war. Most of the establishments are in full operation. Most of the establishments are in full operation, many of them running over time, and with much more than the usual complement of hands, in the manufacture of articles worn by soldiers, or in making tools and
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machinery for the manufacture of those articles. (Boston Daily Advertiser, November 29, 1861, col. D)
With the boom in wartime profits, some manufacturers must have worried about the end of the war and the accompanying drop in military orders. A Mississippi newspaper article from 1863 reports the claims of a traveler just from the manufacturing districts of the North who reported that Northern manufacturers were doing so well that they callously did not want to see the war end: ‘‘All are making money by contract, working night and day, and are willing to pay three hundred dollars for substitutes out of their profits. Manufacturers make no complaint of their taxes. They feel none of the horrors of war, and care nothing about it’’ (Natchez Daily Courier, June 25, 1863, col. D). The Civil War indeed proved to be a boon to Northern manufacturers, who supplied their nation with the tools of war needed to carry it to victory. The United States emerged from the conflict with a rapidly expanding manufacturing base that would in a few decades be the largest in the world. The 1860s was a period of transition for manufacturers from the small to mid-size manufactory to the large factories that would come to dominate American life. While these changes would have occurred without the Civil War, wartime necessities served to nationalize markets, increase cooperation between government and industry, and expand the size of manufacturing operations. The war speeded up the modernization of American industry but was not the cause of it (McPherson 1982, p. 373). Many veterans returned to their cities to join a new army: the legions of industrial workers that soon filled America’s factories (Johnson 2003). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beringer, Richard, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Boston Daily Advertiser, November 29, 1861, Issue 128, col. D. Carlander, Jay, and John Majewski. ‘‘Imagining A Great Manufacturing Empire: Virginia and the Possibilities of a Confederate Tariff.’’ Civil War History 49, no. 4 (2003): 334–352. Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1861, p. 2. Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), April 10, 1861, Issue 85; col. A. Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy, Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1966. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House, 1958. Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.
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Northern Manufacturing
Hareven, Tamara K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag, Life and Work in an American Factory-City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Johnson, Russell L. Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. Lerner, Eugene. ‘‘Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861–1865.’’ Journal of Political Economy 63, no. 1 (1955): 20–40. Luraghi, Raimondo. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South. New York: New Viewpoints, 1978. Maslowski, Peter, and Allan R. Millett. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: The Free Press, 1984. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Natchez (MS) Daily Courier, June 25, 1863, Issue 193, col. D. New York Herald (NY), March 17, 1861, pg. 4; col. C. Ransom, Roger L. Confederate States of America. Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Online, eds. Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Stutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Shi, David E., and George Brown Tindall. America, A Narrative History, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860–1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978. Zunz, Oliver. Making America Corporate, 1870–1920. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Steven Barleen
NORTHERN MANUFACTURING At the beginning of the Civil War, neither side was prepared for the long, bloody struggle that lay ahead. The overwhelming superiority that the North enjoyed in its manufacturing capacity should have given it the clear advantage, but in 1861 the North’s industries were not coordinated enough to efficiently supply the vast requirements of Northern armies. Furthermore, the majority of industries in the North were still small affairs, largely
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American inventor, Samuel Colt (1814–1862). In spite of early setbacks, Samuel Colt eventually persevered in his design and manufacture of a revolver with a reliable repeating feature. After the guns proved usable during the Mexican-American War, orders for the weapons increased, with Colt revolvers becoming a popular choice for both Union and Confederate troops. Kean Collection/ Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
shops or mid-sized manufactories that primarily served local markets (Zunz 1990, p. 13). While there were many large factories as well, especially in textile manufacturing, where large factories with efficient modes of production had existed for some time, the widespread industrialization that would transform the country in the latter part of the nineteenth century was only in its beginning stages in most industries. For example, in Cincinnati in the 1850s, out of 1,259 manufactories only 21 employed more than hundred workers, while 1,207 establishments had less than fifty workers (Ross 1985, p. 80). Therefore, the Union government faced the task of coordinating disparate industries to produce maximum manufacturing efficiency in the service of its war machine. Over the four years of the war, government and manufacturers worked hand-in-hand to accomplish this goal, and in doing so paved the way both for victory and for the massive industries that would come to dominate much of American life in the decades following the conflict. Despite its need to organize and consolidate industrial production, the North’s stronger manufacturing base still gave it an advantage over the South at the start of the war, an advantage it would maintain and increase
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Northern Manufacturing
throughout the conflict. The 1860 census shows that the total number of manufacturing establishments in the free states and territories was 108,573, while the states that would make up the Confederacy only counted 20,573 establishments. In terms of capital investment, the North had $840,802,835 invested in industry, whereas the South had only $95,922,489 invested in its industrial base (‘‘Manufacturing in the Slave States’’). The North also had a huge population advantage, which enabled it to simultaneously supply its factories with workers and its armies with soldiers. Because of its commitment to free labor and manufacturing, the North had for decades attracted large numbers of immigrants, with most workers coming through ports in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and then fanning out throughout the Northeast, where they supplied manufacturing establishments with an ever increasing workforce pool (Wright 1978, pp. 121– 125; Stott 1990, pp. 68–84). Even during the war, immigrants continued to arrive in large numbers: From 1861 to 1865, over 800,000 immigrants disembarked in the North (Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163). Southern factories, on the other hand, had to rely on a much smaller supply of white laborers, who were augmented by the numerous slaves hired out to Southern factories by their owners (Dew 1966). The problem for the U.S. War Department was not a paucity of manufacturing establishments or workers, but the lack of coordination between the many manufacturing establishments, which were used to competing with one another and were often narrowly focused on local markets. With the fall of Fort Sumter, federal officials realized that they would need to move quickly to consolidate the North’s disparate modes of production, transportation, and communication by having government agents work closely with manufacturers (Whitten and Whitten 2006, p. 5). The challenges they faced were vast. At the start of the conflict, basic needs such as armaments and uniforms could not adequately be supplied by the nation’s manufacturing system. In October of 1861, M. C. Meigs, quartermaster-general to the secretary of war, lamented the ‘‘imperative demand for more army cloth than the present manufacturing resources of the North can furnish.’’ The supply situation, Meigs asserted, was so bad that governors ‘‘daily complain that recruiting will stop unless clothing is sent in abundance and immediately to the various recruiting camps of regiments.’’ Soldiers were reported to be ‘‘compelled to do picket duty in the late cold nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only the thin summer flannel clothing’’ (Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1861). Besides its problems with uniforms, the North found arms manufacturers unable to supply its soldiers with the weapons of war. At the start of the conflict, the Northern states produced 97 percent of the nation’s firearms at
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factories such as the New Haven Arms Factory (which would become the Winchester Repeating Arms Company after the war), the Springfield Armory, and the Colt Manufacturing Company. However, massive government orders for weapons could not be met without vastly expanding arms production (McPherson 1988, p. 318). In fact, during the first year of the conflict, the North had to import 80 percent of its firearms (Morris 2005, p. 54). The Comte de Paris, Louis Philippe Albert d’Orleans, who served on the staff of General McClellan, described the North’s inability to adequately supply its armies with arms: The armory in Springfield had only the capacity for producing from ten to twelve thousand [weapons] yearly, and the supply could not be increased except by constructing new machines. . . . During the first year of the war the ordnance department succeeded in furnishing the various armies in the field, not counting what was left at the depots, one million two hundred and seventy-six thousand six hundred and eighty-six portable firearms (muskets, carbines, and pistols), one thousand nine hundred and twenty-six field or siege guns, twelve hundred pieces for batteries in position, and two hundred and fourteen million cartridges for small arms and cannon. (Commager 1973, p. 103)
However, the situation began to improve as the war dragged on: ‘‘In 1862,’’ according to the Comte de Paris, ‘‘the Springfield manufactory delivered two hundred thousand rifles, while in the year 1863, during which there were manufactured two hundred and fifty thousand there, the importation of arms from Europe by the Northern States ceased altogether’’ (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 103). The war was a boon to manufacturers. The DuPont Company, for example, massively expanded its operations to meet the military’s voracious appetite for gunpowder, and emerged from the Civil War as the nation’s largest manufacturer of gunpowder and other explosives (Zunz 1990, p. 16). Other companies expanded production rapidly as well, as the following notice in the New Haven Daily Palladium from May 19, 1865 testifies: ‘‘The Meriden Manufacturing Co. have a contract for five thousand breech-loading magazine carbines, Triplett’s patent, for the State of Kentucky. The arms are to be finished in July, and the armory is run night and day.’’ The massive expansion of the arms industry, along with the growing demand for other products and parts made out of metal—from iron plates for warships, to railroad track, to horseshoes for army horses—greatly expanded the North’s steel industry. The demand for military goods even prompted manufacturers to convert their operations. For example, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, the largest textile factory in the world, located in Manchester, New Hampshire, manufactured
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Northern Manufacturing
locomotives and rifles during the Civil War (Hareven and Langenbach 1978, p. 10). Northern manufacturers also introduced several innovations. One of these was the repeating rifle, which allowed a soldier to fire several shots without reloading. According to the Comte de Paris, the rifle’s reception by the troops was very favorable: ‘‘Many extraordinary instances have been cited of successful personal defence due to the rapidity with which this arm can be fired, and some Federal regiments of infantry which made a trial of it were highly pleased with the result’’ (Commager 1973 [1950], p. 104). John D. Billings, a member of the 10th Massachusetts battery of light artillery, recalled several other inventions produced by Northern manufacturers, such as the ‘‘combination knife-fork-and-spoon,’’ the ‘‘water filterer,’’ and the ‘‘fancy patent-leather haversack.’’ One product that seems an essential for soldiers but, according to Billings, didn’t catch on was an early form of the bulletproof vest: These ironclad warriors admitted that when panoplied for the fight their sensations were much as they might be if they were dressed up in an oldfashioned air-tight stove; still, with all the discomforts of this casing, they felt a little safer with it on than off in battle. . . . This seemed solid reasoning, surely; but, in spite of it all, a large number of these vests never saw Rebeldom. Their owners were subjected to such a storm of ridicule that they could not bear up under it. . . . [T]he ownership of one of them was taken as evidence of faint-heartedness. (Commager 1973 [1950], pp. 216–217)
A connection between manufacturers and the government had always existed in the United States, but the Civil War raised this connection to a new level. In the process, many manufacturers used their connections with government agents to secure manufacturing contracts that would make them rich. Many were able to stay home and let substitutes go do the fighting for them, because the 1863 Conscription Act allowed them to do so. A significant number of Civil War-era manufacturers and financiers, such as John Rockefeller, John Pierpont Morgan, Jay Gould, and Philip Armour, later went on to become the famous ‘‘robber barons’’ of the decades of rapid industrialization that followed the Civil War. An excellent case in point is J. P. Morgan, who as perhaps the most famous investment banker in American history became the archetype of the robber baron. Morgan, who got his start before the Civil War, and was well off before Fort Sumter, made a fortune during the war off of government manufacturing contracts. Despite such corruption, and various road bumps and false starts, the North was able to use its superior manufacturing capacity, along with its vast numbers of workers and troops, to grind down the Confederate Army’s ability to respond militarily to its invasion of
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the South. In 1865 Union armies marched in victory parades throughout the North to celebrate their efforts in preserving the Union. Northern manufacturers did not march in parades of their own, but they were also instrumental in their nation’s victory as the suppliers of the instruments of war. Their efforts, too, laid the groundwork for the massive industrialization that was to follow, which by 1880 had transformed the United States into the world’s foremost industrial power. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1973. Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Hareven, Tamera K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934. ‘‘Manufacturing in the Slave States: Establishments, Capital Invested, Product Value, and Employment, by State: 1860–1870’’ (Series Eh40-49). In Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition, ed. Susan B. Carter et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available online from http://hsus. cambridge.org/. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Millett, Allan R., and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1984. Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Times Books, 2005. New Haven Daily Palladium, May 19, 1865. ‘‘The Purchase of Cloth Abroad.’’ Chicago Tribune October 31, 1861. Ross, Steven J. Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 1985. Stott, Richard B. Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
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Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860–1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins, 1980. Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870–1920. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
ments are being remodeled, improved and enlarged, and new ones are springing up, while a much larger number still determined upon, are not yet, however, located’’ (‘‘Southern Manufactures,’’ 1861, p. 187). Despite such optimism, the South began the conflict with a substantial disadvantage in terms of its industrial capabilities. In 1861, the United States was only a few decades away from becoming a global manufacturing superpower, but most of that incipient producing might was located in the North. The gross value of manufactured items produced in the states that made up the Union was more than ten times greater than the gross value of items manufactured in the states that made up the Confederacy, which collectively produced just 7.4 percent of the nations manufactured goods at the start of the war. Another stark statistic for the Confederacy was that the Union produced 97 percent of the nation’s firearms (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642). The state of Massachusetts alone produced more industrial goods than all of the states of the Confederacy combined (McPherson 1982, p. 23). In terms of manpower for its manufacturing base, the North also clearly had the advantage: There were twenty-two million people in the states that made up the Union, whereas the Confederacy had a population of only nine million, with one-third of those being slaves (Tindall and Shi 1992, p. 642). The reason for the South’s distant position behind the North in manufacturing lay in a history of Southern investment in land and slaves, which had made the South largely rural in nature. At the start of the Civil War, the South had few cities of any size and the vast majority of its people lived in rural areas. Whereas around 35 percent of the population of New England and around 21 percent of the population of the Middle Atlantic States lived in urban areas, in the South only Virginia had an urban population that even came close to 10 percent of the state total, and the urban population of the South was less than 5 percent (Fox-Genovese 1988, pp. 74–76). The rural nature of the South,
Steven Barleen
SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING On April 14, 1861, after a short, bloodless battle, the Confederate States of America raised its flag over Fort Sumter, a coastal fortification in South Carolina, and in doing so initiated a war that its manufacturing base was ill equipped to deal with. One challenge among many for the Confederacy in the coming conflict was to make the best use of its much smaller manufacturing base in order to keep both the civilian population supplied with the necessities of life and the military supplied with the necessities of war. The manufacturing advantages of the North seemed overwhelming when compared to the South’s largely agriculturally based economy, and yet many in the South were confident that their region could rise to the challenge and mobilize and equip an army that could successfully challenge the North, both on the field of battle and in the factory. In fact, some saw the arrival of conflict with their Northern neighbors as being a positive impetus for the development of the nascent Southern manufacturing base. For example, the June 1861 issue of the Southern Cultivator boldly proclaimed: ‘‘We notice with unfeigned pleasure the impetus which the secession movement has given to the manufacturing enterprises in the South. Old establish-
Manufacturing differences between the North and South, 1860
Number of manufacturing establishments North South
110,000 18,000
Percentage of the gross value of the nation’s manufacturing goods 92.6 7.4
Percentage of nation’s capital invested in manufacturing 84 16
Number of workers engaged in manufacturing
Total population
1,300,000 110,000
22,000,000 9,000,000*
*Out of the 9 million population figure, 3.5 million were slaves. SOURCES: Foote, Shelby. The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House, 1958, p. 40. Tindall, George Brown and David E. Shi. America, A Narrative History, Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, p. 642. Millett, Allan R. and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: The Free Press, 1984, p. 164.
Manufacturing difficulties. The Civil War challenged the South’s small manufacturing base to find ways to keep its civilians and soldiers supplied with military and agricultural necessities. Illustration by GGS. Gale.
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Tredegar Iron Works, April 1865. An emphasis on producing cash crops for export in the South led to a manufacturing imbalance with the industrial North. Confederate leaders hoped, however, war would provide the impetus for the South to become more industrial and build more factories, such as the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. The Library of Congress.
Southern methods of agriculture—which were laborintensive and thus did not require as many manufactured farming instruments as were typically used on Northern and Western farms—and heavy investment of capital in land and slaves did not provide strong incentives for the establishment of a local industrial base. Despite these stark figures, the South had a great deal of wealth that could have been put into manufacturing. Robert Fogel and Stanely Engerman in their seminal Time on the Cross (1974) point out that the South as an independent nation ranked fourth in the world in terms of wealth. The South’s wealth, however, was based largely on the ownership of slaves and land, and with these two resources, the South became a major exporter of crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo. An article in the October 12, 1861, edition of the Raleigh (North Carolina) Daily Register asserts that in 1860 the North exported slightly less than 98 million dollars worth of products, whereas the South exported around 219 million dollars worth. Unfortunately for the Confederacy’s quartermasters, the South’s exports could not be used to equip an army (Nicholson 1861). Despite being well behind the North in manufacturing, several historians have concluded that Southern manufacturing deficiencies were not the chief cause of the South’s ultimate defeat. The Civil War was still largely a low-technology conflict and Southern manufacturers in
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conjunction with government planners did a fairly good job of maintaining production throughout most of the war. Also, because it took so long for the North to coordinate the full capacity of its manufacturing base, Southern manufacturing deficiencies were not felt for some time as strongly as they might have been. Despite the lack of urban centers and the structure of the Southern economy, several Southerners during the decades leading up to the Civil War had provided the region with a nascent industrial base. Historian Chad Morgan points out in his study of manufacturing in Georgia that during the 1850s, while the number of manufacturing establishments only increased from 1,527 to 1,890, the amount of money invested in these industries increased from $7,086,525 to $16,925,564 (2005, p. 10). According to the 1860 census, the total number of manufacturing establishments in what would be the Confederate states numbered 20,631, with the lead being taken by Virginia, home to more than 25 percent of these enterprises, followed by North Carolina, with nearly 4,000. The 1870 census indicates that the South had 33,360 manufacturing establishments, an increase of 62 percent over the course of the decade, despite the destruction brought to the South by Northern armies (Carter et al. 2006). The problem was that while the South was developing its industries, the North was developing its own faster, so that even though the South had 20 percent of the nation’s industrial base in
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1840, by 1860, despite a strong attempt by Southern industrialists to catch up, the South’s share of the nation’s manufacturing output was only 16 percent (Morgan 2005, p. 6). From the beginning of the war, the government in Richmond encouraged manufacturing in two ways: It established direct state ownership of essential industries, especially ordnance and munitions production, and at the same time promoted private enterprise through the use of various incentives and penalties. These ranged from giving further contracts to businesses that produced according to Richmond’s demands, to punitively taking over businesses that didn’t meet the requirements set for them. Conscription, which passed the Confederate Congress on April 16, 1862, also aided the wartime manufacturing effort by allowing the government to exempt certain industrial workers from military service. Many patriotic Confederates declared their intention to meet the manufacturing demands of war in the face of the Northern blockade of the South’s coasts. In November 1861, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, wrote optimistically of the South’s ability to meet its logistical requirements, even if doing so might require its citizens to sacrifice: As long as hostilities continue the Confederate States will exhibit a steadily increasing capacity to furnish their troops with food, clothing, and arms. If they should be forced to forego many of the luxuries and some of the comforts of life, they will at least have the consolation of knowing that they are thus daily becoming more and more independent of the rest of the world. If in this process labor in the Confederate States should be gradually diverted from those great Southern staples which have given life to so much of the commerce of mankind into other channels, so as to make them rival producers instead of profitable customers, they will not be the only or even the chief losers by this change in the direction of their industry. (Davis 1906 [1861], p. 643)
Similarly, optimistic pronouncements came from many other quarters as well. An announcement concerning the production of gunpowder published in the September 14, 1861, edition of the Raleigh Daily Register proclaimed: ‘‘We are glad to see that North Carolina is taking the lead in the manufacture of this indispensable article in the prosecution of the war. . . . This company expects soon to be able to turn out one thousand kegs a day.’’ And in an editorial titled ‘‘An Appeal to Planters,’’ published in the March 19, 1862, Savannah (Georgia) Daily Morning News, the following is found: ‘‘We must not only have soldiers sufficient to prevent our gallant army from falling prey to superior numbers, but we must encourage domestic manufactures that shoes and clothing may be furnished for that army.’’ Despite the best efforts of Southern manufacturers and politicians to ensure that the war effort would be
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supplied, problems with supply abounded. In his 1907 memoir, Edward P. Alexander, who had served as chief of ordnance for the Army of Northern Virginia, recalled some of the logistical successes and failures. On the one hand, the Ordnance Bureau in Richmond was notable ‘‘for its success in supplying the enormous amount of ordnance material consumed during the war’’ (p. 54). On the other hand, the quality of at least some of the material produced by Southern manufacturers was questionable: ‘‘Our arsenals soon began to manufacture rifled guns, but they always lacked the copper and brass, and the mechanical skill necessary to turn out first-class ammunition’’ (p. 54). Through the capture of Northern guns, Alexander remarks, his soldiers were able to get the arms they needed, but ‘‘we were handicapped by our own ammunition until the close of the war’’ (p. 54). Colonel William Allan, who was the chief of ordnance of the Second Army Corp, recalled that in 1864 the Ordnance Department was not providing his men with enough nails and horseshoes. To compensate, he combed his units for blacksmiths and put them to work, producing what Richmond should have been providing him. However, this innovative plan was disrupted by a lack of iron. Allan responded by sending his own wagons and men to Richmond to obtain the iron from a manufacturer there. The story demonstrates obvious problems with Southern manufacturing and supply during the Civil War. In this case, the supply of raw materials was available but not the ability to turn them into manufactured products that could get to troops in the field. Of course, a major problem the South faced in trying to keep its factories running stemmed from its need to supply its armies with soldiers while also supplying its manufacturing establishments with workers drawn from a population much smaller than its enemy’s. Also, while the North gained over 800,000 immigrants between 1861 and 1865, the Confederacy not only did not see a gain in immigration during the war, it also lost many of its skilled workmen at the start of the conflict, as they returned to their homes in the North or donned Confederate uniforms (Dew 1966, pp. 228–264; Millett and Maslowski 1984, p. 163). As many as 750,000 men fought for the Confederacy, and this near total mobilization of young Southern white men inevitably translated into a shortage of industrial workers (Millet and Maslowski 1984, p. 163). Despite starting the war well behind the North in terms of manufacturing capacity, the Confederacy made a strenuous effort to supply its needs. However, in the end Southern manufacturing was no match for the producing power and manpower of the Union. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Edward Porter. Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907.
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Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr. The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988. Boritt, Gabor S., ed., Why the Confederacy Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Carter, Susan B. et al., eds. ‘‘Manufacturing in the Slave States: Establishments, Capital Invested, Product Value, and Employment, by State: 1860–1870’’ (Series Eh40-49). Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available from http://hsus.cambridge.org/. Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1973. Davis, Jefferson Finis. ‘‘Letter from Jefferson Finis Davis, November 18, 1861.’’ A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865, ed. James D. Richardson. Nashville, TN: United States Publishing Company, 1906. Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966. Fayetteville (NC) Observer, July 17, 1862. Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1974. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Genovese, Eugene. The Political Economy of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. J., H. H. ‘‘An Appeal to Planters.’’ Savannah (GA) Daily Morning News, March 19, 1862. Luraghi, Raimondo. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South. New York: New Viewpoints, 1978. McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Millett, Alan R., and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1984. Morgan, Chad. ‘‘The Public Nature of Private Industry in Confederate Georgia.’’ Civil War History 50, no. 1 (2004): 27–46. Morgan, Chad. Planter’s Progress: Modernizing Confederate Georgia. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. Nicholson, A. O. P. ‘‘The Southern Confederacy Its Commercial and Financial Independence.’’ Raleigh GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
(NC) Daily Register. October 12, 1861, Issue 82; col. A. Raleigh (NC) Daily Register. September 14, 1861, Issue 74, col. C. ‘‘Southern Manufactures,’’ Southern Cultivator (1843– 1906). Atlanta: June 1861; Vol. 19, Issue 6. Tindall, George Brown, and David Shi. America: A Narrative History, 3rd ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1992. Whitten, David O., and Bessie E. Whitten. The Birth of Big Business in the United States, 1860–1914: Commercial, Extractive, and Industrial Enterprise. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Wilson, Harold S. Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002. Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Steven Barleen
FACTORIES When the Civil War began in 1861, the large factory operation had not yet become the normal means of production in the United States. Instead, the 1860s were a transitional period between earlier forms of manufacturing and the factory system that would come to dominate the American landscape over the course of the decades to follow. While some industries, such as textiles and meatpacking, had already begun the transformation process from small shop and mid-sized manufactory to large factory, most industrial workers still labored in small manufacturing operations. These maintained a different rhythm and style of work than the factory system that would later transform the lives of workers and the landscapes of America’s large cities and small towns. Thus, most workers during the Civil War still worked in shops that reflected more traditional forms of manufacturing. For example, in New York City in 1860, small shops predominated in the metal trade: only fourteen out of fifty-eight establishments had more than ten workers (Stott 1990, p. 47). The smallness of shop operations meant that workers often labored alongside their supervisor, who was oftentimes the shop’s owner. This individual was likely a skilled craftsman who had worked his way up in his profession to the point where he owned his own operation. The pace of work in such establishments was not regulated by the rhythm of machines, and labor was not usually subdivided into monotonous, simple tasks (Stott 1990, pp. 36–37). One of the most important factors in the shift from small manufactories to large factories was the steam engine, which allowed factory owners to run larger and more complex machinery that could do the work
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The invention of the steam engine allowed factory owners to run larger and more complex machinery. It fueled the shift from small shops to large factories. Photograph by Philip James Watt’s steam engine. Gendreau. ª Bettmann/Corbis.
previously done by several laborers. During the 1860s, around 50 percent of the country’s manufacturing enterprises still relied on waterpower (Gutman 1977, p. 33). Waterpower fluctuated based on the amount of water available in streams or rivers, which rose and fell, and thus could limit the size and output of an industrial operation. Steam power, in contrast, promised a steady supply of energy, allowing costly work stoppages to be avoided. It also meant that there was no limit on the size of a manufacturing operation. The introduction of steam power also made it possible for a factory to be located anywhere, not just next to a river. Before the rise of steam power, the need to be positioned near a stream or river meant that many shops were located in rural areas, but with the rise of the steam engine these operations began to move to large cities and grow in scale (Hunter 1985, p. 104). The decade before the Civil War witnessed a massive growth in the use of steam power, and new industries using this technology sprung up. For example, in 1850 in Massachusetts, 43 percent of manufacturing operations used steam power, but by 1860, the percentage had increased to 56 percent (Hunter 1985, p. 110). This rise in the use of steam power directly contributed to the growth of American cities, with the accompanying rise of concentrated manufacturing establishments and the rapid growth of immigrant working-class populations that would fill
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the factories with workers. Between 1840 and 1880, the total U.S. population nearly tripled, the number of industrial workers more than quintupled, and capital investment increased more than eightfold (Hunter 1985, p. 112). Printing establishments provide an excellent example of how the steam engine enabled operations to grow to massive size. For example, just before the Civil War, the New York firm Harper’s employed numerous workers with subdivided tasks, supervised by scores of foremen in a seven-story operation (Stott 1990, p. 50). While the small shop and mid-sized manufactory were still dominant in American manufacturing at the start of the Civil War, many industries—such as meatpacking, textiles, and arms manufacturing—had begun to move toward the large factory model. Indeed, the textile mills that began springing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the 1820s can be considered the first modern factories. By the time of the Civil War, many of these were mechanized to an unprecedented degree, and employed large and highly regulated workforces of a thousand or more (Rodgers 1974, p. 20). The rise of the factory system increasingly meant that artisans who had previously worked on a product from start to finish now found themselves either tending a machine or performing the same task all day, as
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managers sought to subdivide labor in an effort to create more efficient systems of production. While many think of the assembly line as originating with Henry Ford in the early part of the twentieth century, James Barrett (1987) points out that assembly line production was employed in the meatpacking industry well before Ford’s Model T (p. 20). Whereas in a small butcher shop, a butcher performed every task in the processing of each animal, thereby requiring that butchering be done by a skilled craftsman, large meatpacking plants divided the slaughter of each animal among multiple workers along an assembly line that could be sped up at will by the foreman. Many other industries went through the same development from small shops where workers performed tasks by hand from start to finish, at their own pace, to factories where work was highly subdivided, regimented, and mechanized. As the war began, both the North and South faced the necessity of putting hundreds of thousands of men under arms, while at the same time continuing to keep their factories running. This did not present as much of a difficulty for the North, with its large pool of immigrants, as it did for the South, with its much smaller white population and its large black population that consisted primarily of slaves living in rural areas. The Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, provides an excellent example of some of the unique difficulties that Southern factories encountered during the Civil War. By the time the Civil War began, Richmond was the most important center of iron production in the South, and the Tredegar Iron Works was the largest of the mills, employing over 1,500 workers (Dew 1966, p. 3). The start of the conflict meant that Tredegar would have to rapidly increase production to meet the needs of the Confederacy. However, Tredegar initially encountered problems in stepping up production due to several factors: First, a number of workers rushed to join the newly formed Confederate Army; second, immigration as a source of labor had dried up due to the war; and finally, many of the mechanics with manufacturing know-how who had been employed at Tredegar were from the North and returned home at the start of the war. To fill these gaps, the managers at Tredegar hired almost three times as many youths as they had the previous year, and they increased the number of slave workers to around 10 percent of the labor force (Dew 1966, pp. 90–91). By 1863, Tredegar’s labor shortage had become so acute that its owners were forced to hire 113 black convicts (p. 253). With large numbers of slave workers, Tredegar’s management also faced the constant problem of its workforce liberating itself by running away (p. 255). By 1864, even slave labor was in short supply, and slave owners were able to command higher and higher rates for the renting of their slaves. Tredegar found itself in a bidding war for the renting of slaves with other manufacturing interests and even the army itself, so that prices for renting slaves jumped from a
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low of $225 to as much as $400 in a short time. Additionally, federal raids throughout northern Virginia further reduced the supply of available labor (p. 259). Nonetheless, by the end of the war, Southern factories were almost completely dependent on slave labor. For example, during the last few months of the war, more than three-quarters of the workers at the Naval ordnance works at Selma were slaves (p. 263). Southern factories were hampered throughout the war not only by labor shortages, but also by problems with the supply of resources needed for manufacturing war essentials. By contrast, the North was able to moreefficiently utilize its factories as the war progressed, a development that proved crucial to its eventual victory. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barrett, James R. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, 1894–1922. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966. Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Gutman, Herbert G. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Hareven, Tamara K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Hunter, Louis C. Steam Power. Vol. 2 of A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780–1930. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985. Morris, Charles R. The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Times Books, 2005. Rodgers, Daniel T. The Work Ethic in Industrializing America, 1850–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Ross, Steven J. Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890. Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 1985. Stott, Richard B. Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1990. Steven Barleen
ARMS MANUFACTURING The manufacturing of arms during the Civil War occurred mainly at two sites: the U.S. Government Arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts, commonly known as the Spring-
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field Armory, and—on the Confederate side—the Virginia Manufactory of Arms at Richmond, known as the Richmond Arsenal. Together these sites produced the majority of the shoulder-fired muskets used by soldiers in both armies during the four years of the war.
The Springfield Armory The Springfield Armory’s origins dated back to 1777, when a site once used for military training on the Connecticut River in southern Massachusetts began making gun carriages and cartridges. It became a major ammunition and weapons depot, and was a target of the 1787 Shays Rebellion, when a group of disgruntled farmers led by Daniel Shays attempted to seize control of the site and the state in order to prevent foreclosures on their land. The Springfield Armory began making muskets in 1795, after President George Washington decided that a domestic manufacturing site was necessary in order to reduce the fledgling nation’s dependence on foreignmade firearms. The nearby village of Springfield grew in size and wealth during the first half of the nineteenth century as the Springfield Armory’s output expanded. Highly skilled gunsmiths, often German or Irish immigrants, were the most vital members of the workforce, but in 1819 a new lathe was developed that allowed relatively unskilled workers to mass-produce the muskets. The U.S. Ordnance Department’s decision to foster the development of interchangeable parts for muskets led to several more innovations at Springfield, including an early example of an assembly-line system, in which individual workers—some skilled, some unskilled—made various parts of a product. The writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the armory, and the immense stockpiles of new weapons he saw prompted him to pen the 1843 antiwar poem ‘‘The Arsenal at Springfield.’’ Labor tensions arose at the Springfield Armory in the 1840s, prompting a Congressional investigation. Periodically, military control was imposed at the site in order to rein in workers who were determined to protect their job status and wages, which were extraordinarily high for the western Massachusetts area. Indeed, workers were paid so well that many remained there until retirement, and though the European-style apprentice system had long been officially abolished, many of them still managed to pass their jobs down to sons or other family members. Military control resumed at the Springfield Armory in April 1861 when the Civil War began. Springfield became the sole federal armory after the site at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was set ablaze by retreating federal troops at the onset of the war. The newly installed commandant at the Springfield Armory was Captain Alexander Dyer, who immediately required all workers to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. Workers promised to ‘‘support, protect, and defend the
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Constitution and Government of the United States against all enemies . . . and . . . that [they would] well and faithfully perform all the duties which may be required . . . by law’’ (Whittlesey, p. 158). Dyer also instituted two ten-and-ahalf-hour shifts, making the site a near round-the-clock operation, along with a raft of new rules prohibiting loitering, smoking, reading, and casual conversation on the job.
A Target of Espionage and Sabotage In 1861 the Springfield Armory employed 350 men and produced 1,500 rifle-muskets per month (Wilson 2006, p. 119). In 1864 nearly 2,500 workers were employed at the Armory, and production that same year reached a peak of 250,000 (Hattaway 1997, p. 38). During the war, however, the Armory had a difficult time maintaining an adequate workforce, as smaller rifle-musket manufacturers began springing up in the city to answer the demand of the Ordnance Department, attracting workers who sought both more money and less draconian working conditions. The Springfield Armory was an obvious target for Confederate spies. It was ringed by an iron fence and heavily guarded by a Union Army detachment. After the war’s end, revelations surfaced that in 1864 two enemy agents, possibly men disguised in women’s clothing, had succeeded in planting a grenade-like device in the extremely flammable armory—but the gunpowder-filled iron pellet failed to ignite. A massive fire earlier that same year, in July, was attributed to spontaneous combustion, and destroyed the milling shop and dozens of milling machines. Because tables and other pieces of furniture were saturated with oil due to the nature of rifle manufacturing, the building was extremely flammable; however, firefighters on staff prevented the conflagration from spreading to other buildings.
The Richmond Arsenal The Confederate states entered the war at a serious disadvantage in respect to armament stores. The decision to locate the capital of the Confederacy at Richmond, Virginia, was partly due to the fact that it was the most industrialized city in the largely agrarian South. One of Richmond’s most impressive plants was the massive Tredegar Iron Works, a privately owned foundry that had been making iron locomotive carriages and railroad tracks since the late 1830s. The city was also the site of the Richmond Armory and Arsenal, which had been in operation since the 1790s but operated at a far lower capacity than its Springfield counterpart. The Richmond site turned out an average of 2,130 muskets annually prior to war compared to the Massachusetts numbers of 1,500 muskets every month, but Confederate firepower increased with the help of machinery taken from the Union-sacked federal armory at Harpers Ferry (Bilby, 1996). The Richmond Arsenal began making the ‘‘C. S. Richmond,’’ a .58-caliber musket that would be used by the majority of Confederate infantry.
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Arms Manufacturing
Armory room. The outbreak of fighting in 1861 forced factories in the North and South to produce weaponry on a large scale. Since it was more industrialized than the South, the North quickly became the home to a number of gun manufacturers, notably in the state of Massachusetts. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Responsibility for finding a solution to the serious disadvantage created by the South’s minimal supply of the raw materials and skilled artisans necessary for arms manufacturing fell to the Confederate Army’s Ordnance Bureau chief, Josiah Gorgas. He ordered a massive material effort to be implemented: Church bells were taken down and melted to provide cannon-making material, and even the stills used by moonshine makers were seized for their copper parts, which were made into musket percussion caps. Because potassium nitrate was crucial to the production of gunpowder, Gorgas sent crews into Appalachian caves to collect saltpeter, its naturally occurring mineral form. He even decreed that chamber pots should be leached of organic nitrogen, a byproduct of human digestion. The Tredegar Iron Works made cannons for the Confederate Army, and outfitted the South’s first ironclad battleship, the C.S.S. Virginia; at the height of the war, it employed a thousand workers (Heidler, p. 1970). A natural target of enemy spies, it was guarded by the
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Tredegar Battalion, one of the Confederate side’s homeguard units. Like the Richmond Arsenal, the Tredegar Works was forced to employ women and children as the war dragged on and labor shortages worsened; it also made use of slave labor. An article in the July 29, 1864, Richmond Whig reports the beating of a slave by the foreman of the arsenal’s smithing shop, who whipped the man after he denied the accusations of other workers that he was stealing copper. The article focused not on the fact that a worker had been whipped, but on whether he had been excessively whipped, and if this punishment should be an issue for the local magistrate. ‘‘We do not advocate negro murder, or cruelty towards negroes, but certainly it is much better when negroes are caught stealing to thrash them soundly than to pester the courts with their cases,’’ the newspaper opined (p. 2).
Spectacular and Tragic Explosions Rates of injury and even death were high at the Richmond Arsenal because 77
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of the dangerous nature of the work done there, and the large number of unskilled employees. Indeed, in July 1861 a respected scientist lost his life at the Confederate States Laboratory adjacent to the Arsenal: Joseph Laidley, a chemist working for the Confederate cause, reportedly walked into a building with a lit cigar, though this account was disputed even at the time. ‘‘The wooden out-building and the interior one in which the powder was manufactured, were found blown down, and many of the timbers wrenched, twisted and broken in a manner to show the almost inconceivable power of the powder,’’ the Richmond Dispatch reported. ‘‘Mr. Laidley was found lying on his back, one of the most horrible objects of mutilated humanity which it is possible to conceive. . . . [N]othing remained to mark the features of a man, except a pair of whiskers and a portion of the neck’’ (July 4, 1861, p. 2). A far deadlier explosion, which left forty-five women and children dead, occurred at the Confederate States Laboratory on March 13, 1863. A report published a week later in the Daily Morning News of Savannah, Georgia, recounted that victims jumped into the river with their clothes aflame, and a boy named Currie ‘‘had his clothing burned entirely off, and ran about crying, ‘mother, mother!’ He soon died.’’ The paper attributed the fire’s cause to ‘‘the ignition of a friction cannon primer.’’ One of the employees, Mary Ryan, ‘‘was working taskwork, filling these [primers] on a board in which they were inserted. Instead of taking them from the board singly, she struck the board upon the bench in her haste to empty them, and the explosion of one of them by the concussion was the dire consequence’’ (‘‘Explosion at the Confederate States Laboratory Works on Brown’s Island,’’ March 20, 1863). As Union troops neared Richmond and the city was forced to evacuate, Confederate officials ordered troops to dump 25,000 rounds of artillery ammunition into the James River. Reportedly, they also ordered troops to set fire to the Richmond Arsenal, as well as other buildings— though some Virginians later disputed this account. The Tredegar Iron Works survived, but was consumed by flames a century later. The Springfield Arsenal continued to serve as a main supplier of rifles to the U.S. Army up until the Vietnam War. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bilby, Joseph G. Civil War Firearms: Their Historical Background and Tactical Use and Modern Collecting and Shooting. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996. ‘‘Charged with Cruelty to a Negro.’’ Richmond Whig (VA), July 29, 1864, p. 2. ‘‘The Explosion at the Confederate States Laboratory Works on Brown’s Island.’’ Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), March 20, 1863.
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Hattaway, Herman. Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Heidler, David Stephen, Jeanne T. Heidler, and David J. Coles, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. ‘‘Horrible Catastrophe.’’ Richmond Dispatch (VA), July 4, 1861, p. 2. Whittlesey, Derwent Stainthorpe. The Springfield Armory: A Study in Institutional Development. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1920. Wilson, Mark R. The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Carol Brennan
SHIPBUILDING When hostilities began after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in April 1861, both sides of the conflict geared up for war. Each side faced different challenges in order to accomplish its goals. Interestingly, both sides had to build a navy from very little, but it was the Northern states that were able to outproduce the Southern ones.
The Confederacy When the Confederate government was formed in February 1861, its new Congress established a Navy Department on February 21. Its biggest challenge was to build a serviceable fleet completely from scratch. Over the course of the war the Navy Department, headed by Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory (1813–1873), scrambled to accomplish a great deal with limited means. Furthermore, the Confederate Navy competed with the Army for resources and transportation. These issues plagued the Confederate Navy because President Jefferson Davis and most of the rest of the government tended to ignore the navy in favor of the army. The Confederacy acquired ten ships by purchase or capture in 1861 that mounted only fifteen guns. After the central government in Richmond began to operate, the various Confederate states handed over another fourteen vessels. Mallory made an effort to buy and convert merchant vessels for conversion to military purposes, but this initial move was meant only as a temporary measure until new warships could be built. The South, however, had only two major shipbuilding facilities in operation at the outbreak of hostilities. The more famous of these was the Gosport Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, which had its name changed in 1862 to Norfolk Naval Shipyard after the Union recaptured the facility; the other was in Pensacola, Florida, and was primarily a coaling and refitting station. There were also a number of private shipyards in
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Diagram of the H. L. Hunley. Known as the first submarine to destroy an enemy ship, the Confederate vessel H. L. Hunley sank on its maiden voyage in 1864 after torpedoing the U.S.S. Housatonic in the Charleston Harbor. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
the South, most of which were rather modest in size. The majority of these shipyards were in the coastal towns of the South; however, river towns like Columbus, Georgia, and Selma, Alabama, became focal points of ship construction as the war lengthened. Secretary Mallory also sent agents abroad, particularly to Great Britain and France, to secure vessels of war from a variety of shipbuilders. The most famous of these vessels were the commerce raiders Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah. These ships would wreak havoc on the shipping of the United States. Unable to compete with Northern industrial capacity, Mallory believed that quality was better than quantity. In a letter to a congressman, the secretary stated that he regarded the ‘‘possession of an iron-armored ship as a matter of the first necessity. [The] inequality of numbers may be compensated by invulnerability: and thus not only does economy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting with iron against wood’’ (Still 1987, p. 8). Ironclad ships became the hope of the Confederate Navy against the Federal Navy. Congress allotted two million dollars for building ironclads. There were several facilities in the South able to produce or roll iron, but only eleven were large enough to produce enough for the navy’s needs. Another way to combat the might of the Union Navy was to offer letters of marque and reprisal, which allowed private citizens to be considered enemy combatants; if these private vessels sank or captured an enemy vessel, prize money would be awarded. Several types of ships were built by civilians in order to take advantage of the letters and possibly become wealthy. These vessels tended to be experimental in design. One ironclad, the
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Manassas, and the submarines, like the H. L. Hunley, fell into this category. Some citizens also built ships to be given to the navy to use. One instance of this was David S. Johnson, who built the gunboat Chattahoochee in Saffold, Georgia, along the lower Chattahoochee River. In all, between 1861 and 1865, Southern shipbuilders laid down 150 vessels. The competing interests of the Confederate government, the states, and private citizens hampered the overall effort to build enough warships.
The Union At the time of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, the United States Navy had ninety ships, of which forty-two were in commission. Most were stationed around the globe carrying out a variety of missions outside the United States. In the aftermath of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for a blockade of Southern ports as part of the strategy to strangle the rebellious states into submission. With over three thousand miles of coastline, the Union needed more ships than it had in 1861. Within a year a vast construction program was under way. About 300 vessels were added to the Union Navy; these newer vessels started to make the blockade effective. By the end of the war, 418 vessels had been purchased, of which 313 were steamers. More than 200 other warships were built under contract, and over sixty of these were ironclads. These ships made the U.S. Navy one of the largest, most modern, and most powerful navies in the world. The important shipyards in the North included: Philadelphia; Boston; New York City; Portsmouth, Maine; and the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. In addition, there were dozens of private shipbuilders on the coasts, the Great Lakes, and along the Mississippi
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and Ohio Rivers. The state of Pennsylvania alone could outproduce the entire South. While the Merrimack was slowly going through its transformation, the shipbuilders and iron makers in New York built the Monitor in about ninety days. The average price of a Union ironclad ended up being about $400,000. As wide-ranging as were the designs of Confederate ships, Union ships were just as varied, if not more so. There were fast cruisers to chase down the commerce raiders the South unleashed, as well as ironclads, a submarine program, and river vessels. The most successful of the river vessels may have been the double-enders, which were capable of going up- or downriver without having to turn around. The size of the Federal Navy tipped the scales in favor of the Union during the war. Mostly it was the effort of the fleets to not only blockade the Southern coastline, but also to be able to attack shore fortifications at various points in order to slowly reduce the capacity of the Confederate war effort.
Labor Interestingly, Northern shipbuilders also had problems with a scarcity of labor like the South. Many shipyard workers joined the military for patriotic reasons. Others went into the Navy hoping to strike it rich with prize money made from captures. Later in the war, some shipyard workers were conscripted. In the South, hundreds of qualified carpenters, mechanics, ironworkers, and many other workers simply left because they were foreign-born and had no reason to support the rebellion. Those who were left volunteered for the army or were later drafted. The army was reluctant to allow these individuals to leave the land forces in order to resume their trade. As the war dragged on, the increasingly stringent draft measures continually reduced exemptions to the skilled workers the shipyards needed. The U.S. Navy Department worked better with the Union Army to deal with these issues than the Confederates ever did. In addition, Union shipyards were willing to hire black workers who had fled northward from the Confederate states. Because of these manpower shortages and the need to complete the ships rapidly, wages for Northern workers tended to rise throughout the war. From late 1862, wages rose from $1.42 per day to $3.51 in March 1865 (Roberts 2002, p. 135.) Even so, labor strikes were fairly common in Eastern shipyards. New York City’s shipbuilders suffered through a number of strikes late in 1862 and early in 1863, well before the draft riots of the latter year. The Boston Navy Yard shut down three times during 1863. Because of a tighter labor market, the Western shipyards experienced very few strikes. Strikes were also common during the first year of the war for Southern shipbuilders. One strike occurred
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in New Orleans during November 1861, when the workers pushed for an increase in pay, which delayed the construction of several vessels. A more revealing episode came in 1864 at Selma, when Commander Catesby R. Jones (1821–1877) was threatened by his workers that they would strike if not given a wage of ten dollars a day because they had heard that the Atlanta shops were paying that price (Still 1987, p. 73). The Confederate Navy tried a variety of ways to supplement the work that required completion. There were generous offerings of overtime pay. The Navy also shifted workers from one facility to another hoping to catch up on the backlog of work. A rivalry developed among these establishments for workmen, however, which hampered cooperation when it was needed the most. Eventually, this caused the Navy simply to take control over many of the works; even then, the deteriorating value of Confederate money exacerbated the problems. When one facility raised its wages, the other local producers would also have to raise their wages or lose their workers. Further compounding the production issue was that workers were organized into local defense units. Lieutenant Robert D. Minor (1821–1871), placed in charge of the ordnance works at Richmond, complained that his men were in the field and could not supply ammunition. Eventually Southern shipbuilders followed the example of their Northern counterparts and put African Americans to work. A cross-section of free skilled and slave unskilled laborers worked in Southern shipyards. In the ordnance works of the navy in 1865, more than half the workers were African American (Still 1987, p. 69). In the end a greater industrial capacity and a more stable workforce allowed the Union to build a much larger navy than the breakaway states. Even though the Confederate Navy had several successes, it was eventually restricted to fighting a defensive war, always responding to the initiatives of its Union counterpart. As the coastal cities fell to Union forces, the Confederates adapted as best they could, but in the end it was not enough. Even the commerce raiders, which greatly annoyed Yankee merchants, were only a nuisance to the Union’s war effort. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Canney, Donald L. Lincoln’s Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998. Hackemer, Kurt H. The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847–1883. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
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Textiles
Roberts, William H. Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Still, William N., Jr. Confederate Shipbuilding. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1987. Jeffery Seymour
TEXTILES In the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, America’s transition from an agricultural economy to a nation of industry accelerated. The nation’s manufacturing centers, located primarily in Northern cities, were connected to labor markets, suppliers, and wholesalers by an ever-expanding network of roads, canals, rivers, and railroads. Remarking on the mountainous wooded landscape that housed much of the nation’s industry, Thomas Kettell wrote in his tract Southern Wealth and Northern Profits that ‘‘the mountain torrents of New England have become motors, by which annually improving machinery has been driven’’ (Kettell 1860, p. 52). A significant portion of the nation’s industrial output consisted of textiles, a word that literally means ‘‘that which is woven.’’ During the nineteenth century, textiles were chiefly made from five natural materials—hemp, flax, silk, wool, and cotton—or combinations thereof. Textile mills powered by water or coal sprang up in every Northern state, producing spun thread, yarn, ribbons, and a range of woven fabrics. While the production of these materials had been a household function at the start of the nineteenth century, by the 1830s, family self-sufficiency was relinquished in favor of inexpensive mass-produced goods. Technological ingenuity drove the Anglo-American textile industry. Following the development of the power loom in England in 1784, William Horrocks engineered mechanized improvements in 1813. Other advancements in textile manufacture included the transition from water power to steam; the use of iron in the carding process; advances in the techniques of bleaching; and the development of the first synthetic dyes in 1856. In a related advance, Elias Howe patented the lock-stitch machine in 1846, and Isaac Merritt Singer did the same with the flying-shuttle machine in 1851. The Singer Sewing Machine Company, which sold machines on installment and provided free instructions to homemakers, quickly became the leader in the home sewing machine business.
Cotton Becomes King Although the United States produced a variety of raw materials for textiles, cotton quickly eclipsed all others. An early industrialist named Samuel Slater (1768–1835) established one of the first U.S. cotton mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793, a year after Eli Whitney’s
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cotton gin automated the process of separating cotton fibers from cotton seed. New England retained its concentration of textile mills up until the Civil War, producing almost 70 percent of the nation’s total textile output by 1840. According to Treasury Department reports, by the 1850s, the Northern states manufactured five times as much cotton goods as the Southern states (Kettell 1860, p. 37). Silk, another textile produced for both import and local consumption, was also made in the North. The invention of the Jacquard loom in France in 1804 sparked an increase in the use of this fiber. Boasting the region’s leadership role in the U.S. silk industry, a Philadelphia newspaper was able to boast in 1858 that ‘‘from indisputable data . . . textile fabrics are produced here on a scale which constitutes this city the great centre of that production for the whole United States’’ (North American and U.S. Gazette, March 5, 1858). While the wool industry in the United States never achieved the export capacity of the cotton industry, it did keep pace with new technology and thus satisfied local demand. As Samuel Slater’s biographer, George S. White, commented in 1836, England’s leading position in the textile industry—particularly its share of the woolen market—might well be eclipsed by the United States, ‘‘where ingenuity and enterprise eminently mark the national character’’ (White 1836, p. 222). Because of its versatility, raw cotton quickly established itself as one of the nation’s primary exports. By 1834, the Southern cotton crop accounted for onehalf the total cotton grown worldwide. Between 1835 and 1858, overseas demand—primarily from England— increased on average by 12.5 percent per year (Kettell 1860, p. 38); by 1860, cotton accounted for almost half of all U.S. exports. As an editorial in the New York Herald reported that same year, the Southern states exported four and a half bales of raw cotton, a quantity worth $25 million ‘‘before the merchant, the mariner, or the manufacturer had put a hand to it to double, triple and quadruple its value’’ (July 26, 1860, p. 4). While U.S. cotton growers provided sufficient quantities of raw materials to keep factories in operation, quality also factored largely into the demand for Southern cotton. The highly desirable long-staple Sea Island cotton (with filaments of 1–1/8 inch in length and over) was grown only in Georgia, while New Orleans produced an especially soft and silky variety of cotton that could be had no where else. Goods produced in ‘‘the colonies’’ were ‘‘preferred to English, by reason of their superior texture; and also, that they shrunk much less in the process of printing,’’ reported the Boston Daily Advertiser, quoting a London source (March 21, 1876). England needed large amounts of raw materials in order to keep its urban industrial base growing. With regard to cotton, it found a source in the American South, and abolished import duties in order to make
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Two sisters working at a sewing machine, circa 1864. While most of the cotton the United States produced was grown in the South, few textile mills existed there, leaving Southerners unable to turn raw material into cotton cloth. Consequently, women began making homespun cloth and using sewing machines, introduced in the late 1840s, to fashion apparel for the family. London Stereoscopic Company/ Hulton Archive/Getty Images
transatlantic trade more attractive. As a writer noted in the London Times, ‘‘the importation of cotton into this country [England] . . . is so large and so steady that we can steer our national policy by it; it is so important to us, that we should be reduced to embarrassment if it were suddenly to disappear’’ (Kettell 1860, p. 39).
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Although cotton cultivation had been attempted— sometimes unsuccessfully—in India, Jamaica, Australia, China, and Africa, the quality of cotton grown in these areas proved to be inferior to that of the Southern United States. In addition, Southern growers had an efficient and cost-effective labor force: slaves. Ironically, while the slavery issue was hotly debated in the English
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Parliament, and some called for a ban on anything other than ‘‘Free Labour Cotton’’—cotton harvested without employing the ‘‘domestic institution’’ of slave labor— the country’s demand was so great that none but slave labor could fulfill it. The year after England repealed its import duty on raw cotton, the country’s demand for plantation-grown cotton fiber increased sixteen-fold (Kettell 1860, p. 41). ‘‘The jump which the consumption of cotton in England has just made [following the repeal of the import duty] is but a single leap, which may be repeated indefinitely,’’ the Times writer predicted. ‘‘There are a thousand millions of mankind upon the globe, all of whom can be most comfortably clad in cotton. Every year new tribes and new nations are added to the category of cotton wearers.’’ With cotton such a ‘‘universal necessity,’’ England ‘‘must continue to hope that the United States will be able to supply us in years to come with twice as much as we bought of them in years past’’ (Kettell 1860, p. 41). Although demand from England remained strong, the moral questions swirling around the slavery debate in Parliament cast a pall over trade relations with the Southern states.
Fashion Trends Related to the increasing demand for U.S. textiles were developments in fashion. The years just prior to the U.S. Civil War saw the advent of the hoopskirt or cage crinoline, which was introduced in 1857. This marvel of engineering—a metal cage supported at the waist and ingeniously hinged to allow for movement and collapsibility—encouraged stylish women to wear ever-more voluminous skirts, some of which reached 15 feet in circumference. Silk taffetas in plaid and striped patterns, as well as iridescent or ‘‘shot’’ versions—available in ever-increasing combinations of vivid hues following the invention of synthetic coal tar dyes in 1856—also gained popularity among more affluent ladies (Tortora and Eubank 1998, p. 302). Among men, a new demand for cotton came with the 1850s introduction of blue jeans, a garment made from heavy cotton denim devised by the German-born entrepreneur Levi Strauss (1829–1902) in San Francisco to address the needs of miners for sturdy work overalls during the California gold rush. Such other items of clothing for men as frock coats, trousers, and vests, were now factory-made and easier to obtain. Manufactured in standard sizes rather than made to order, some vests and trousers featured hidden buckles that allowed their fit to be adjusted, as well as manufactured hooks and eyes, snaps, and buttons (Tortora and Eubank 1998, p. 302). While the South exported its luxurious long-staple cottons to overseas markets and Northern textile mills, the garments worn by the men, women, and children at work in the cotton fields were crafted of cheap, roughtextured cotton or wool obtained from manufacturers in
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Rhode Island or Europe. Most slaves were issued two outfits per year, one for warmer months and one for cooler weather. A coarse white homespun cloth frequently used in garments worn by slaves in both the South and in the West Indies became known as negro cloth (Bishop 1866, p. 339).
Textiles in the Union The Southern states were a primary market for Northern manufactured goods prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Of the $60 million worth of purchases estimated to have been made by Southern consumers in 1860, over a third consisted of boots and shoes, while textiles came in a close second (Kettell 1860, p. 60). ‘‘The shipowners and the manufacturers of New England, the merchants and mechanics of New York, and the manufacturers and miners of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all draw no small portion of their daily wages and profits from the stream that rises in the cotton fields of the South,’’ asserted a New York Herald editorial in the summer of 1860, addressing this trade between North and South (July 26, 1860, p. 4). The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 interfered initially with this profitable trade. In addition to leaving Northern businesses holding trade losses totaling $300 million, the war disrupted the North’s supply of raw cotton and labor (Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, July 7, 1864). While Northern textile mills experienced a temporary setback in 1860, their initial losses were mitigated by the new orders that poured in from the Union Army. The Civil War generated an immediate and substantial demand for ready-to-wear uniforms. In the Union Army alone, over 1.5 million uniforms were required each year between 1861 and 1865, and the cloth for all these uniforms was a product of the Utica Steam Woolen Company, of upstate New York (Coates 2002, p. 103). Because textile mill machinery was already operated in large part by women, the transfer of men from the factories into the Union Army also affected wartime industrial output in the North far less than it did in the South. In fact, the war accelerated the spread of mechanization and the efficiencies of the factory system. The number of sewing machines used by Northern factories doubled between 1860 and 1865, and shoe production increased as a result of the development of a machine for sewing the uppers to the soles (Depew 1895, p. 571). To supply the textiles needed for uniforms, tents, and other supplies, smugglers provided Southern cotton while wool came from New England and the Western states. To meet demand, Northern mills also turned to Britain and France, where English woolens and Egyptian and Indian cotton were readily available. This transatlantic trade was made easier because such Northern ports as New York City were already central to the textile
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export business, having eclipsed such Southern ports as Charleston years before. Also affecting the Northern textile industry during wartime was the Morrill Act. A controversial measure supported by Northern Republicans and spearheaded by the Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill (1810– 1898), the Act established a tariff wall designed to protect Northern industrial manufacturing from foreign competition. The Morrill tariff, which went into effect on April 1, 1861, imposed a protective tax of between twenty and fifty percent on imported silk, cotton, woolens, and iron. Although the tariff provoked some manufacturers in England to shift their support to the Confederacy, its impact was so minimal that two further tariffs were enacted during the war as a way to fund the war effort. Because of the favorable balance of trade resulting from the importation of raw cotton by the North, French and English markets continued to do business with the United States despite the costs on their products imposed by the Morrill tariff (Boston Daily Advertiser, March 21, 1876).
Textiles in the Confederacy Textile manufacturing in the South, more specifically the manufacture of cotton fabrics, had increased dramatically during the 1850s. Such companies as the Charleston Cotton Manufacturing Company, which began business in the summer of 1850, inspired one business journal to note that ‘‘our Southern friends [seem] . . . destined to become largely interested in fostering at home those branches of industry to which their great staple owes its importance and value’’ (North American and United States Gazette, July 2, 1850). Despite this expansion and the advocacy of such individuals as the South Carolina businessman William Green, the industry was still in its infancy when war broke out in 1861. As Edward A. Pollard explained in his The Lost Cause, ‘‘the South entered the war with only a few insignificant manufactories of arms and materials of war and textile fabrics. She was soon to be cut off by an encircling blockade from all those supplies upon which she had depended’’ (Pollard 1866, p. 132). With President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in April 1861, ordering naval commanders to blockade Southern ports, the importation of foreign goods to the South slowed dramatically. Apart from a small amount of goods smuggled in by blockade runners, Southern stores quickly found their shelves emptied of inventory. The slogan ‘‘Cotton is king’’ reflects the heady exuberance of many in the South following the formation of the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Representatives of the city of Columbus, Georgia, even published an open invitation to Northern ‘‘men of reason’’ in the New York Herald. While regretting that ‘‘circumstances have made it necessary to dissolve the government of the United States,’’ the writers proclaimed that ‘‘the boasted
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shuck and hay trade of the Northern States dwindles into utter insignificance compared to this great staple,’’ cotton. ‘‘We invite . . . all the manufacturing and commercial men of the North, who are our friends, to leave the bleak republican North. Unite with us; make our homes your homes, and you shall share the prosperity and happiness in store for us’’ (April 9, 1861, p. 2). Unfortunately for the residents of Columbus, Georgia, and elsewhere throughout the South, prosperity and happiness were not the end result of secession. Although the much-hated Morrill tariff applied only to Northern exports, the Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s policy of free trade was undermined by the antislavery debates ongoing in England. Like England, Europe ‘‘entirely misapprehended the controversy between the Northern and Southern States of the Union,’’ according to the London Times (March 5, 1861, p. 2). Observing the tensions between North and South only weeks before the firing upon Fort Sumter drew the new Confederate States of America into war, the Times writer maintained that ‘‘the slavery question . . . has been merely introduced as a blind . . . and the real point of contention lies in the national tariff.’’ Southern interests, in fact, ‘‘have only one object, which is to get the highest price for the greatest quantity of cotton’’ (March 5, 1861, p. 2). While the South had great quantities of cotton, it had few mills to process it, resulting in clothing shortages. Homespun clothes for civilians quickly became the norm. In order to reproduce anything even remotely resembling the crinoline, fashion-conscious Southern women relied on their wits and the textiles to be found in their homes to maintain their wardrobes. Like Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, they made use of everything from window curtains to bed hangings. Skirts and blouses were cut from aprons, shawls, and other large spans of cloth, while sleeves became tighter so that new sleeves could be cut out of fuller existing sleeves. Kid gloves were replaced by silk or lace mitts, new hair ribbons were a rarity, and white summer dresses were no longer trimmed with French lace. Women also patched their clothing with scraps cut from discarded garments. As Elzey Hay wrote in Godey’s Lady’s Book, recalling Southern fashion during wartime, ‘‘Before the blockade was raised all learned to wear every garment to the very last rag that would hang on our backs’’ (Hay 1866, p. 32). Perhaps fortunately, most American fashion magazines were published in such Northern cities as Philadelphia and Boston. With the circulation of these periodicals now restricted to the North, Southern women felt less pressure to conform to the latest styles. ‘‘We knew very little of the modes in the outer world,’’ Hay recalled (Hay 1866, p. 32). ‘‘Now and then a [fashion magazine] . . . would find its way through the blockade, and create a greater sensation than the last battle.’’ According to Hay,
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Agriculture . . . the finest traveling dress I had during the war was a brown alpaca turned wrong side out, upside down, and trimmed with quillings [small rounded ridges in a piece of cloth] made from [an] umbrella cover. I will venture to say that no umbrella ever served so many purposes or was so thoroughly used up before. The whalebones served to stiffen corsets and the waist of a homespun dress, and the handle was given to a wounded soldier for a walking stick. (Hay 1866, p. 32)
As the supply of textiles continued to diminish throughout the South, prices correspondingly went up. In the bonnet market, for example, a well-connected milliner could pay the going rate for a simple bonnet, refashion it, and then sell it for four times her investment (Hay 1866). For the average Southern woman, however, wartime required a return to home industry. In addition to their own fashion needs, the wives and mothers of Confederate soldiers had to find a way to outfit their loved ones. Hand looms and spinning wheels were retrieved from attics, and the womenfolk set about transforming King Cotton into cloth. A popular song of the era, reportedly written by Carrie Belle Sinclair, captures the spirit of the times. ‘‘The homespun dress is plain, I know,/ My hat’s palmetto, too; But then it shows what Southern girls/ for Southern rights will do,’’ are some of the lyrics to ‘‘The Homespun Dress.’’ ‘‘We scorn to wear a bit of silk,/ A bit of Northern lace,/ But make our homespun dresses up,/And wear them with a grace’’ (Silber and Silverman 1960, p. 68). After the Reconstruction, in the New South Era, the cotton industry would resume its development, fueled by inexpensive water power, low taxation, and boosterism by the likes of Henry Grady. By 1880, over 14,000,000 acres were under cultivation in the South (Steele 1885, p. 306). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bishop, J. Leander. A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Edward Young & Co., 1866. Coates, Earl J. Don Troiani’s Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. ‘‘Cotton and the Constitution: The Relations of Politics, Industry, and Trade.’’ New York Herald, July 26, 1860, p. 4. Depew, Chauncey M., ed. One Hundred Years of American Commerce: A History of American Commerce by One Hundred Americans. 2 volumes. New York: D.O. Haynes & Co., 1895. ‘‘Factories at the South.’’ North American and United States Gazette, July 2, 1850, p. B3. Hay, Elzey. ‘‘Dress under Difficulties; or, Passages from the Blockade Experiences of Rebel Women.’’ Godey’s Lady’s Book, July 1866, p. 32. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Kettell, Thomas Prentice. Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, as Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures: Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the Republic. New York: George W. & John A. Wood, 1860. Letters from the 44th Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862–3. Boston: Boston Herald, 1863. Lord, Daniel. The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, 2nd ed. New York: New York Times, 1861. ‘‘The Morrill Tariff in Europe.’’ Daily Morning News, (Savannah, GA) March 27, 1861. ‘‘Our Columbus Correspondence.’’ New York Herald, April 9, 1861, p. 2. Pollard, Edward A. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, 2nd edition. Chicago, IL: E.B. Treat & Co., 1890. Silber, Irwin, and Jerry Silverman, compilers. Songs of the Civil War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Steele, Joel Dorman. A Brief History of the United States. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1885. ‘‘Textile Fabrics: Their Production and Distribution.’’ North American and United States Gazette, March 5, 1858, col. B. ‘‘The Textile Trades: From the London Hour.’’ Boston Daily Advertiser, March 21, 1876. Times (London, England), March 5, 1861, as reported in the Daily (Savannah, GA) Morning News, March 27, 1861. Tortora, Phyllis, and Keith Eubank. Survey of Historic Costume, 3rd ed. New York: Fairchild Publications, 1998. White, George S. Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures, 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: privately printed, 1836. Pamela L. Kester
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Fredonia Jane Davis, a Georgia farmwoman, wrote to her brother, a Confederate soldier, from her mother’s farm in Decatur in 1862: ‘‘Ma had her wheat cut last week—it is not very good, therefore we will not eat much biscuit next year. The corn looks very well but we are deep in the grass. I expect we will have to let some of it go. We have tried to get help but can not’’ (Rasmussen 1965, p. 188). The Buttles family living in Wisconsin, in contrast, purchased a new cultivator in 1862, reducing the amount of physical labor required on their farm. The prior year they had built a new stable with the help of twenty neighbors despite low crop prices. The Buttles also bought a new horse in 1863
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and cut their neighbor’s wheat while he served in the army (Rasmussen 1965, p. 191). The Civil War brought obvious disadvantages to the South when the Union blockade and military invasion disrupted agricultural production and markets. Similarly, Northern agriculture benefited from the price increases driven by wartime demand and the North’s relatively secure borders. Historians disagree very little about these broad conclusions. They have, however, revealed fascinating details leading to more complex and informative explanations of the factors underlying the distinction between agriculture in the North and the South during the Civil War.
Early Farming Antebellum agricultural science experienced a period of intense development resulting from soil exhaustion throughout the eastern United States. Colonial growth came less from labor than from the abundance of land available after Native Americans had been removed through disease and warfare. Cheap land encouraged poor conservation habits; most Americans simply moved to new soil when an area’s productivity declined. Tobacco and corn, the two most abundant crops in the colonial period, made quick work of Eastern soils, draining them of essential nutrients in a matter of a few years. While population pressures induced New Englanders to begin conservation efforts in the late eighteenth century, however, the Southern colonies were not under similar pressure. The historian Sarah Phillips notes that Northern and mid-Atlantic farmers were diversifying their crops, using crop rotation, and adding livestock to provide manure for fertilizer, helping them to manage sustainable and settled farming practices (Phillips 2000, p. 802). Cheap Western (today’s Midwest) land and its suitability for grain crops, which commanded high prices in the East, created new pressure for Northern agricultural improvements. During the 1830s and 1840s agricultural societies, journals, and education programs acquired new importance across the nation. Americans were responding to earlier destructive agricultural practices with significant effort. Southern farms, like their Northern counterparts, had contributed to soil depletion. After cotton became a major cash crop in the South, the depletion rates rose even more quickly. Southern agrarians recognized the need for change. Soil exhaustion in the Upper South encouraged westward migration, which was intensified by the emphasis on short-staple cotton. With the migrating farmers went their slaves and capital. The farmers left behind called for better conservation and crop diversification; however, the constraints of and profits from slavery offered little incentive for such dramatic changes. As Phillips notes, Southern agricultural reformers like the planter Edmund Ruffin were unwilling to place reform above slavery. Ruffin said in one address, ‘‘I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the entire exist-
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ing social, domestic, and industrial conditions of these slaveholding states, with all the now existing evils of indolence and waste, and generally exhausting tillage and declining fertility, to the entire conditions of any other country on the face of the globe’’ (Phillips 2000, p. 807). Choosing slavery over innovation kept both better soil conservation practices and mechanical innovations out of the South. The problems for Southerners during the war were not limited to their lagging behind other regions in agricultural science. The huge investment made in growing short-staple cotton left the region dependent on the rest of the country for many agricultural products. This dependency was a significant contributor to the Confederacy’s defeat and Southern agriculturalists knew it. A reporter for the Southern Cultivator remarked too late in 1861, ‘‘The absurdity of our importing Hay from Maine, Irish Potatoes from Nova Scotia, Apples from Massachusetts, Butter and Cheese from New York; Flour and Pork from Ohio, or Beef from Illinois, is apparent at a glance. . . . Let us at least show the world that we are AGRICULTURALLY INDEPENDENT’’ (Coulter 1927, pp. 4–5). The extent of regional resistance to agricultural innovation before the war should not be exaggerated, however. Twenty years before open hostilities, there were Southerners who advocated reform through diversification. During the late 1840s Richard Peters experimented with varieties of cattle, sheep and goats. Perhaps his most significant success was breeding a goat for the production of acceptable mohair. Other Southern farmers worked to develop a commercial fruit industry, particularly peaches in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and apples in the Appalachian foothills (Bonner 1948, pp. 252–253). Although such efforts were relatively minor, they indicate that the South was capable of some changes.
Results of the War When the war came both the North and the South faced new agricultural conditions and needs. Within the opening year of the war, Southern farm production was disrupted and failed to recover. The historian Eugene Lerner maintained in the late 1950s that the decline was severe. He noted that during the war the Southern horse population experienced a decline of 29 percent and that of cattle dropped by 32 percent, while the value of farm implements dropped 46 percent and the value of farms was reduced almost in half (Lerner 1959, p. 117). The South was in such disarray by the end of the conflict that there are no comprehensive data on the region’s agricultural capacity in 1865. Fighting the war demanded the services of the men who had managed and labored on the farms. Even with efforts to rotate soldiers from the front to their homes during harvest season, the South’s
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Agriculture
‘‘King Cotton Bound; or, The Modern Prometheus.’’ After President Lincoln blockaded Southern ports, the Confederacy lost its primary source of revenue, exported cotton. Without a diversified agricultural base or income from the cotton trade, daily life in the South became difficult as common foodstuffs, such as grain, meat, and produce, became scarce. HIP/Art Resource, NY.
needs exceeded the capacity of the region to maintain both a standing army and a healthy agricultural system. Garland Brinkley offered another approach to understanding the postwar decline in the productivity of Southern agriculture. He contended that a significant factor was the impact of diseases endemic in the region, specifically rampant infestations of hookworm. Brinkley noted, ‘‘Ubiquitous hookworm symptoms were reported by Confederate medical personnel even though they were unaware of hookworm itself’’ (Brinkley 1997, p. 119). The symptoms of the parasite’s presence in humans include lethargy, anemia, vomiting, rash, and in extreme or repeated cases—juvenile cases in particular—a decline in mental capacity. Brinkley concluded that so many Southerners were infected during and after the war that the disease significantly reduced the region’s capacity for agricultural production. Historians have alternated between a theory of continuity and a theory of postbellum change in evaluating the effects of the war on agriculture. Paul Gates’s 1965 book Agriculture and the Civil War helped establish one account of what happened. Gates argued that Northern and Midwestern farmers experienced less change
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from the war itself than from long-established economic trends, including the growth of cities, railroad development, and market shifts. Dairy production, for example, gained new life from faster trains, which could move dairy products into urban areas before they spoiled. Wheat production grew not so much from war needs but from rising European demand (Gates 1965, pp. 3–6). When Gates examined agriculture in the South, he found that a steady decline in production contributed significantly to Southern defeat. The Confederate government attempted to direct agriculture across the Southern states in an unprecedented effort that the historian Raimondo Luraghi described as ‘‘state socialism’’ (Miller 1979, p. 436). The Confederate government tried solutions that undermined its social structure, including the impressment of slaves, as noted by the historian Bernard Nelson (p. 392). Attempts at the state and national level to restrict cotton planting in 1862 faced the commonsense observation that rising cotton prices would work against a policy of restriction. Profits won out over patriotism during the first full year of the war. Focusing more on slavery, Gavin Wright’s seminal work The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century supported the theory that the Civil War brought about significant changes in Southern agriculture. Wright convincingly demonstrated that slavery limited agricultural development before the war and established an inflexible system ill suited to wartime. Prior to the war wealthy planters, unlike small farmers who had to maintain significant investments in subsistence production, could afford to make decisions about crops and labor management on the basis of prices for their products. In the postbellum era the same planters had little capital and few choices when they faced a decline in cotton demand. Wright maintained that the depressed world cotton market would have arrived regardless of the Civil War, but that the combination forced Southern cotton producers to gamble by raising production and thus further depressing prices. The result was the beginning of a long period of poverty and agricultural decline. Similarly, historian John Otto contended that the devastation of the war required farmers to remake the agricultural system in the South. The war imposed new conditions, including higher labor costs, low capital reserves, and an inability to afford farm machinery. Labor organization was perhaps the most significant change. In cotton production most landowners after the war turned to forms of tenancy and sharecropping, while farmers growing other crops, particularly sugar in the Deep South, turned to wage labor. It is difficult to sustain the argument that little changed in agriculture at the national level during the Civil War, particularly if one examines the efforts of the federal government. Congress passed four laws in 1862 that continue to shape American farming. The first,
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which was legislation creating the Department of Agriculture, may not have dramatically altered farm production during the war; however, the newly organized department began by printing annual reports encouraging innovations in crop science and mechanization. Within a few years the department was poised to become a world leader in agricultural research. The second enactment, the Homestead Act, helped encourage Western land development in the Great Plains region; combined with the Pacific Railway Act, the Homestead Act directed Americans toward productive agricultural expansion. Finally, the Morrill Land Grant College Act created institutions of higher learning with a focus on the agricultural sciences. Although there was no immediate benefit from this effort, it would help the United States become a leader in crop science. Although the South found it difficult to modernize its agricultural practices for more than a generation after the war, Southern farmers and the entire nation faced a transformation in farming. Mechanization increasingly replaced hand labor and agricultural science dictated farming practices. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bagley, Jr., William Chandler. Soil Exhaustion and the Civil War. Washington, DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1942. Bonner, James C. ‘‘Advancing Trends in Southern Agriculture, 1840–1860.’’ Agricultural History 22 (1948): 248–259. Brinkley, Garland L. ‘‘The Decline in Southern Agricultural Output, 1860–1880.’’ The Journal of Economic History 57 (March 1997): 116–138. Coulter, E. Merton. ‘‘The Movement for Agricultural Reorganization in the Cotton South during the Civil War.’’ Agricultural History 1 (1927): 3–17. Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Lerner, Eugene M. ‘‘Southern Output and Agricultural Income, 1560–1880.’’ Agricultural History 33 (1959): 117–125. Luraghi, Raimondo. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation South. New York: New Viewpoints, 1978. Miller, Randall M. ‘‘The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century.’’ The History Teacher 12 (May 1979): 435–437. Nelson, Bernard H. ‘‘Confederate Slave Impressment Legislation, 1861–1865.’’ Journal of Negro History 31 (1946): 392–410. Otto, John Solomon. Southern Agriculture during the Civil War Era, 1860–1880. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994. Phillips, Sarah T. ‘‘Antebellum Agricultural Reform, Republican Ideology, and Sectional Tension.’’ Agricultural History 74 (2000): 799–822.
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Rasmussen, Wayne D. ‘‘The Civil War: A Catalyst of Agricultural Revolution.’’ Agricultural History 39 (1965): 187–195. Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. David F. Herr
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Shortages
Shortages during the Civil War touched soldiers and civilians alike. The citizens of the Confederate States were especially devastated by shortages: Civilian crops were appropriated for the military, livestock were stolen by the Union army, railroad and port blockades stopped precious supplies of food from reaching their destinations, and the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation took slaves out of the fields. To add insult to injury, hungry civilians had to contend with greedy merchants who used food as a source of speculative profit. It is little wonder that riots, generally referred to as ‘‘bread riots,’’ swept across the South. The Confederacy attempted to rectify the shortage situation in the South by encouraging farmers to replace cash crops like cotton and tobacco with food-bearing plants and grains. ‘‘[A]s long as the war lasts, let every man do all he can to raise and produce things that are required for food and clothing,’’ insisted the Southern Cultivator; otherwise, ‘‘if we suffer for the necessaries of life it is our own fault’’ (‘‘Planting in 1863,’’ January/ February 1863, p. 30). Following this ‘‘good, sound, practical common-sense advice’’ would mean that while farmers would lose money from not raising cash crops, ‘‘the present high prices will quickly be materially reduced’’ and widespread starvation would be halted (p. 30). By 1863 food shortages had made it difficult for the Confederate States of America to provision its starving army. James A. Seddon, Jefferson Davis’s secretary of war, recommended the appropriation of civilian foodstuffs to feed the soldiers. Seddon called on each county, parish, or ward to appoint a committee of three or more ‘‘discreet citizens’’ who would be charged with ascertaining ‘‘what amount of surplus corn and meat, whether bacon, pork or beef ’’ could be supplied to the military (New York Times, April 19, 1863, p. 1). Such committees would be expected to fix prices, pay citizens for the materials appropriated by the government, and make sure those materials reached the nearest military quartermaster. Seddon’s demand on the civilians of the South was taken as an encouraging sign in the North. Whereas ‘‘the President of the United States has not had to send a message to Congress on the danger of starvation[,] . . . Jeff. Davis and his Secretary of War, Seddon have,’’ declared the Boston Independent. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Lacking a diverse agricultural system and being forced to divert the limited food available to its troops, the South found feeding its civilian population difficult. Bread riots began to break out in the spring of 1863, the largest of which took place in Richmond, Virginia, and was only quieted when Governor John Letcher promised the all-female mob that more food would be distributed to them. The Library of Congress. John Letcher (1813–1884).
‘‘[R]ebel authorities affirm that if they are vanquished it will be for want of food’’ (April, 23, 1863, p. 8). Throughout the South, it was not only the military that suffered from a lack of food. According to the Christian Inquirer, for example, only the Union capture of New Orleans ‘‘saved this region from the starvation that was staring them in the face’’ (March 21, 1863, p. 2). In other Southern cities and towns, the hunger of civilian populations led to rioting and looting during 1863. Despite ‘‘the efforts of Confederate journals North and South to conceal the fact, or deprive it of its importance, no doubt remains that very serious bread riots have taken place,’’ declared the New York Times (‘‘Famine in the South,’’ April 20, 1863, p. 4). ‘‘[W]omen have been
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leaders; and that fact alone proves that absolute hunger must be the cause’’ (p. 4). The most famous of the bread riots took place in Richmond, Virginia—the capital of the Confederacy— on April 2, 1863. According to historian Alan Pell Crawford, these riots were the culmination of a series of factors. The quick rise of the population of Richmond after it became the Confederate capital, appropriation of food supplies by the military, hoarding of scarce foodstuffs by speculators, the destruction of valuable farmland throughout Virginia, and the diminishing value of Confederate money all made Richmond ripe for civil disturbance (Crawford 2002, pp. 21–23). To make matters worse, heavy snows during March made it difficult for rural farmers to get their produce to market. Despite Jefferson Davis’s command to send ‘‘nothing of the unfortunate disturbance of today over the wires for any purpose’’ (Crawford 2002, p. 26), news of the Richmond bread riot quickly reached Northern media outlets, which published a variety of somewhat contradictory accounts. The New York Times for April 8, 1863, quoted the eyewitness account of one Col. Stewart, a recently released prisoner of war. From his prison window Stewart saw ‘‘a great bread riot, in which about three thousand women were engaged, armed with clubs, guns and stones. . . . [They] broke open the Government stores and took bread, clothing and whatever else they wanted’’ (‘‘Bread Riot in Richmond,’’ p. 1). Also on April 8, the New York Herald weighed in on the significance of the riots: ‘‘Virginia is the most fruitful grain raising States in the South . . . and if the want of food manifests itself in such a demonstrative fashion as to bring out a hungry mob of three thousand women into the streets of the capital, we can readily imagine how dire must be the distress existing in the other States’’ (‘‘The Situation,’’ p. 4). On April 9, 1863, the New York Observer reported that ‘‘the rioters were composed of about 8,000 women, who were armed with clubs, and guns and stones[;] . . . they broke open government and private stores, and took bread, clothing, and whatever else they wanted’’ (‘‘Bread Riot in Richmond,’’ p. 118). The April 10 New York Times reported that neither Richmond’s mayor nor General Winder could appease the crowd as it rioted through the streets; instead, Jefferson Davis himself had to be called on to quiet the rabble-rousers. Davis agreed to supply the rioters with ‘‘daily rations,’’ after which the throng returned to their homes carrying their hard-won loot (‘‘The Rebel Bread Riots,’’ p. 1). According to the Times, a ‘‘renegade Confederate General . . . publicly stated that from all the information in his possession he thought the Southern Confederacy might, possibly, hold out for three months under the present circumstances, but no longer, unless they obtained better means of procuring food and clothing. . . . [S]tarvation and insurrection is inevitable, unless relief is obtained’’ (p. 1).
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The April 17, 1863, edition of the New York Herald described the riot as a ‘‘popular movement’’ in ‘‘consequence of the exorbitant prices’’ of food and materials in Richmond, and provided the fullest account (‘‘Interesting from the South: ‘The Food Question,’’’ p. 1). On the morning of April 2, before the riot, the paper reported, ‘‘a large meeting, composed principally of the wives and daughters of the working classes, was held in the African church, and a committee appointed to wait upon the Governor to request that articles of food should be sold at government rates’’ (p. 1). The women who met with Governor Letcher found no help forthcoming, so took matters into their own hands. The riot began when ‘‘a body of females, numbering about three hundred, collected together and commenced helping themselves to bread, flour, meat, articles of clothing, &c,’’ at which ‘‘the entire city was thrown into consternation’’ (p. 1). The women were not to be stopped: ‘‘[H]atchets and axes in the hands of women rendered desperate by hunger made quick work, and building after building was rapidly broken open’’ (p. 1). In response, the governor called out the city guard to help storeowners control the rioters; ‘‘a few individuals attempted to resist the women, but without success’’ (p. 1). Finally, the mayor read the crowd the Riot Act, but to little avail—‘‘during the reading of that document a portion of the crowd suspended operations; but no sooner had the Mayor concluded than the seizure of provisions commence again more vigorously than before’’ (p. 1). Governor Letcher then addressed the masses and tried to shame them by ‘‘characterizing the demonstration as a disgrace and a stigma upon the city’’ (p. 1). It was not until the ‘‘arrest of about forty women, and the promise of the Governor to relieve the wants of the destitute’’ that the riot broke up, however (p. 1). In the end, ‘‘a large amount of bread and bacon was carried off, and all engaged in the riot succeeded in getting a good supply of provisions’’ (p. 1). In an effort to hide the true nature of events from Northern officials, ‘‘leading men of the city attempted to circulate the report that the women were ‘Irish and Yankee hags,’ endeavoring to mislead the public concerning the amount of loyal sentiment in the city’’ (p. 1). However, ‘‘the fact of . . . [the rioters’] destitution and respectability was too palpable, and the authorities are forced to admit the conclusion that starvation alone incited the movement’’ (p. 1). According to Crawford, the popular movement that led to the Richmond bread riots was begun when one Mary Jackson began discussing the practices of food speculators with her neighbors in the working-class neighborhood of Oregon Hill. Word soon spread of Mary Jackson’s idea to confront the governor over the issue. A group met at the Belvidere Hill Baptist Church to put together a list of demands. When the governor tried to postpone a meeting with the women, they took to the streets, some of them armed with knives, hatchets,
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or guns. They marched down Capital Hill toward Main Street, where shops and the government commissary were located. Once they reached the shopping area, they broke into the commissary and smashed store windows, grabbing food and other supplies. Richmond’s mayor and governor attempted to halt the progress of the throng but no headway was made until Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, appeared on the scene. According to the memoirs of Varinda Davis, ‘‘the president told the mob that rioting was not the way to redress their grievances[;] . . . such disorder . . . would only make matters worse. . . . [I]t would discourage farmers from trying to bring their produce to town, further restricting access to food’’ (Crawford 2002, p. 24). Davis declared, ‘‘we do not desire to injure anyone . . . but this lawlessness must stop. . . . I will give you five minutes to disperse, otherwise you will be fired upon’’ (Crawford 2002, p. 24). The crowd finally broke up, and arrests were made. The Richmond riot resulted in pervasive unease and fear of further uprisings. Indeed, it was not the only April bread riot. The New York Observer and Chronicle of April 16, 1863, reports that ‘‘soldiers wives and others rose en masse’’ in Petersburg, Maryland, and ‘‘visiting the stores of the mercenary speculators who have been enriching themselves . . . helped themselves forcibly to what they wanted, pitching out goods to the poor and needy as they went’’ (p. 126). In Atlanta, Georgia, ‘‘some fifteen or twenty women . . . made an impressment of about 200 pounds of bacon belonging to private parties’’ (p. 126). Apparently, they first offered to purchase the bacon at government rates, but were met with denial so took the bacon instead. Rioters also rose in North Carolina that spring. The April 19, 1863, New York Times reported that near Raleigh, North Carolina, ‘‘a company of women, most of them soldiers’ wives, went to the store of William Welsh[,] . . . [where they] rolled out several barrels of molasses and divided it’’ (‘‘Bread Riots in Raleigh, N.C.,’’ p. 1). In Salisbury, North Carolina, another band of women appropriated flour, salt, and molasses from private owners and then divided their takings equally amongst themselves (p. 1). The summer of 1863 proved quieter than the spring, but the troubles were not yet over. Mobile, Alabama saw two riots on September 4, 1863. Demonstrators holding banners that read ‘‘Bread or Blood’’ and ‘‘Bread and Peace’’ marched down Dauphine Street ‘‘armed with knives and hatchets,’’ and broke ‘‘open the stores in their progress, . . . taking for their use such articles of food or clothing as they were in urgent need of’’ (‘‘The Bread Riot in Mobile,’’ New York Times, October 1, 1863, p. 4). When ordered to halt the progress of the rioters, the Seventeenth Alabama regiment said they ‘‘would rather assist those starving wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of men who had been forced to fight in the battles of the rebellion’’ (p. 4). The mayor of Mobile halted the riot with promises and the women
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returned to their homes; ‘‘in the evening, however, the riot broke out again, more fiercely than ever’’ (p. 4). Most Northern press coverage of Southern bread riots was sympathetic to the women who were forced into violence in order to feed and clothe themselves and their family members. Occasionally, however, a more mocking or censorious tone crept into reports. Vanity Fair, for example, noted that while ‘‘the ‘Southern Chivalry’ are fond of boasting that they are the best bred people in the world, . . . they lately had . . . the worst bread riots that ever the world heard of’’ (‘‘Our View of It,’’ May 2, 1863, p. 35). The same publication, reporting on a riot in Milledgeville, Georgia, involving ‘‘about three hundred women . . . [who] pitched into a dry-goods store . . . and seized . . . fine goods,’’ remarked that ‘‘the whole fray . . . would naturally resolve itself into a bonnet-box—that is, in a pugilistic, not modistic, sense. . . . [W]hile one half of the Southern females is contending with the other half in wild rushes over a box of ruches, the proprietor might be enabled to call in the police and quell the row’’ (‘‘The ‘Wayward Sisters’ Down South,’’ May 9, 1863, p. 54). Regardless of how the bread riots are conceived, the undeniable fact is that some Southerners were left with no other recourse but to loot in order to meet their basic survival needs. The Civil War was a ‘‘total war,’’ aimed at and affecting civilians as well as soldiers. Southern rioting and looting illustrate just how well Union tactics to demoralize and starve the Confederate States of America succeeded. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘Army Correspondence.’’ Christian Inquirer, March 21, 1863. ‘‘The Bread Riot in Mobile.’’ New York Times, October 1, 1863. ‘‘Bread Riot in Raleigh, N.C.’’ New York Times, April 19. 1863. ‘‘Bread Riot in Richmond.’’ New York Observer, April 9, 1863. ‘‘Bread Riot in Richmond.’’ New York Times, April 8, 1863. Crawford, Alan Pell. ‘‘Richmond’s Bread Riot’’ American History 153, no. 4 (2002): 20–26. ‘‘Domestic.’’ New York Observer and Chronicle, April 16, 1863. ‘‘Famine in the South.’’ New York Times, April 20, 1863. ‘‘General News.’’ Independent, Boston April 23, 1863. ‘‘Interesting from the South: ‘The Food Question’; The Bread Riot in Richmond.’’ The New York Herald, April 17, 1863. ‘‘News of the Week.’’ Circular, New York, January 10, 1861. ‘‘Our View of It.’’ Vanity Fair, May 2, 1863. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
‘‘Planting in 1863.’’ Southern Cultivator, January/ February 1863. ‘‘The Rebel Bread Riots.’’ New York Times, April 10, 1863. Seddon, James A. ‘‘The Food Question.’’ New York Times, April 19, 1863. ‘‘The Situation.’’ The New York Herald, April 8, 1863. ‘‘The ‘Wayward Sisters’ Down South.’’ Vanity Fair, May 9, 1863. Micki Waldrop
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The underground economy—or black market, to use the term coined after World War I to describe illegal commodity exchange—often thrives during wartime as governments impose tighter restrictions, attempting to proscribe certain items or to limit trade between one side and the other. The U.S. Civil War was no exception. The laissez-faire ideas that prevailed in the nineteenth century kept political leaders of the Union and the Confederacy from introducing regulations on consumer consumption of liquor and other substances. Despite taxes on virtually all commodities, the Union did not experience severe shortages or exorbitant prices during the war, and never imposed widespread rationing on its citizenry. Consequently, few Northerners ever encountered the underground economy. In the South, however, the region’s lack of industry and manufacturing, a poor transportation and distribution system, the Union blockade, disruptions caused by the Union army’s penetration, and the Confederacy’s own economic policies resulted in shortages of everything from shoes, leather, food, and salt to military arms and ammunition. As the war wore on, Southerners faced runaway inflation, widespread shortages, and, for some, the real possibility of starvation. Southern women, especially those left behind by Confederate soldiers, demanded government action. An observer of a riot in Richmond, Virginia, watched as crowds of mostly female Southerners armed with ‘‘clubs, axes, brooms, etc.,’’ rushed ‘‘frantically up and down the street, crying for bread,’’ and raided prisons, warehouses, and grocers for food in response to sky-high prices and government inaction (Scioto Gazette, October 25, 1865). Similar events also were reported in Richmond, Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Augusta, Georgia. Confederate states and cities sometimes responded with price controls or antimonopoly laws, which almost never succeeded. In Richmond, for example, General John Winder (1800–1865) instituted price controls in spring 1862, but farmers and fishermen stopped selling their products at the stipulated prices, and the controls were rescinded within a month. Some merchants were punished if enough people complained that their prices had far
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exceeded the prescribed limit, or if they sold inferior provisions. In Mobile, Alabama, a trader who was convicted of violating the city’s price controls was fined and jailed for three months. A Richmond butcher named Louis Frick was charged with selling ‘‘filthy and unsound meat’’ when one of his customers broke open a sausage Frick had sold him to discover ‘‘a number of puppy’s claws,’’ according to an account from the Richmond Examiner (reprinted in the Cleveland Daily Herald, October 3, 1863). Probably the most widespread and profitable blackmarket activities involved the ‘‘contraband trade’’ with the enemy, and illegal speculation in cotton; these two sometimes were closely linked. Civilians in areas between the Union and Confederate armies often traded with the enemy. The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion note that in all areas of the South where Union forces penetrated, military officers complained of civilians engaged in illegal trade (U.S. War Department 1995). Southerners who found themselves in Union-occupied areas often continued to support the Confederacy by selling salt, coffee, shoes, leather, food, weapons, and ammunition to Confederate guerrillas, regular Confederate army units, or civilians. In 1864, for example, the Eleventh Wisconsin Infantry surprised a boatload of men and women carrying supplies of coffee, salt, and a chest full of merchandise from Union-occupied Louisiana to outlying Confederate forces. In December of the same year the colonel of the Third Minnesota Infantry reported that between Memphis and rural Arkansas ‘‘an extensive contraband trade is carried on . . . at enormous profits (such as a bale of cotton for a barrel of salt) to the parties at Memphis engaged in it,’’ and concluded his report with a list of recently captured articles that included ‘‘10 barrels salt, 1 barrel pork, one-half barrel molasses’’ (U.S. War Department 1995, Vol. 51, p. 990). Union soldiers on garrison duty in occupied territory spent much of their time stopping illegal trade. The Lincoln administration recognized fairly early in the war that the United States needed Southern cotton to supply Northern textile mills and to export to Great Britain. To restore the flow of cotton after secession, the administration devised a system overseen by Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) to license individuals to trade Northern goods for Southern cotton and other agricultural products in areas that came under the Union flag. Unfortunately, as cotton prices skyrocketed, the temptations became too great for many soldiers, officers, and civilians, and corruption flourished. Unlicensed speculators flooded into areas controlled by the Union military, trading supplies or Union gold to Southerners for cotton. Jewish merchants were singled out by military officers for their participation in the illegal cotton trade. In late 1862 Ulysses S.
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Needing to supply Northern textile factories with cotton and retain trade with the British, the Federal government devised a system of exchange with the South, managed by then Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. The Library of Congress. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873).
Grant banned all Jewish traders from his theater of operations. Soldiers often made fortunes trading or seizing cotton and selling it at a premium—often using government ships or wagons to transport it to markets in Memphis or New Orleans. The practice became so widespread among the military in the Mississippi River Valley that Lincoln appointed a special commission headed by General Irvin McDowell (1818–1885) to investigate. The commission exonerated General S. R. Curtis of using his position to obtain and sell cotton in violation of regulations, but the testimony confirmed the existence of a thriving and extremely profitable black market in cotton and supplies. Captain S. N. Wood of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry, for instance, admitted to making $20,000 in cotton speculation (Chattanooga Daily Gazette, July 10, 1864). The commission’s final report was never made public. In 1862 William T. Sherman (1820–1891) argued that the legal and illegal trades in cotton, supplies, and gold were prolonging the war: The ‘‘secessionists’’ who traded cotton to Northern speculators ‘‘had become so open in refusing anything but gold . . . . Without money . . . they cannot get arms and ammunition of the English colonies;
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Major General Irvin McDowell (1818–1885) of the federal army. Skyrocketing prices for cotton during the Civil War
tempted many soldiers to sell confiscated bales to black-market traders. Disturbed by the practice among his own troops, President Abraham Lincoln assigned General Irvin McDowell to investigate reports of illegal cotton trade on the Mississippi River. The Library of Congress.
and without salt they cannot make bacon and salt beef. We cannot carry on war and trade with a people at the same time’’ (U.S. War Department 1995, Vol. 17, pp. 140– 141). Despite the efforts of Sherman and other officials to curb illegal trade, where large profits or dire necessity existed, the underground economy continued to flourish throughout the Civil War. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chattanooga Daily Gazette, July 10, 1864. Cleveland Daily Herald, October 3, 1863. Cole, Garold L. Civil War Eyewitness: An Annotated Bibliography of Books and Articles, 1955–1986. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Coulter, E. Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: A History of the South. Vol. 7. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962. Fite, Emerson David. Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Freehling, William W. The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Gallman, J. Matthew. The Civil War Chronicle. New York: Gramercy, 2003. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. O’Connor, Thomas H. ‘‘Lincoln and the Cotton Trade.’’ Civil War History 7, no. 1 (1961): 20–35. Ramsdell, Charles. Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Scioto Gazette, October 25, 1865. Smith, George Winston, and Charles Judah. Life in the North during the Civil War: A Source History. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966. Speyer, Ronald Jeffrey. ‘‘The McDowell Commission: February–July, 1863.’’ Ph.D. diss., St. John’s University, 1974. U.S. War Department. War of the Rebellion Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing, 1985. Robert S. Shelton
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The announcement of a blockade of the southeastern coastline of the North American continent was the second military proclamation made by President Abraham Lincoln in the opening days of the American Civil War, following his call for 75,000 men to suppress the Rebellion. It was in part a response to recent events at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. When Confederate batteries opened fire on the Union-held fort in April 1861, precipitating the Civil War, neither side foresaw a prolonged conflict, and thus neither government had a strategy for extended military and naval engagement. The action at Fort Sumter was to some degree a naval conflict, as the necessary supplies, military reinforcement, and proposed relief of the fort needed to come by sea to a military installation originally established to protect the city from coastal invasion. A small relief force was sent by sea from New York City, but arrived too late. Fort Sumter was forced to surrender on April 14. The loss of Fort Sumter and the port of Charleston underscored for both sides the importance of coastal access. For the Union, an effective blockade now seemed essential. As part of the initial call to arms, President Lincoln announced the naval blockade of the enemy
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coastline on April 19. Almost immediately, potential conflicts with international law became apparent. The federal government did not recognize the Confederate States as a country, but as an organization of insurrectionists leading an illegal rebellion. If the Confederacy was not a country, then foreign nations could grant them neither official recognition nor aid. If this were the case, could the United States legally ‘‘blockade’’ its own coastline? Could such a blockade be construed as an implied recognition of the Confederacy as a nation? The matter was troubling for Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s secretary of the navy. Welles believed that the proper action would be to close all Southern ports, a concentrated naval action that would place considerably fewer demands on the small naval force available at the current time and in the foreseeable future. However, Lincoln and his closest advisor in the cabinet, Secretary of State William Seward, believed that the blockade was imperative. They chose to ignore the issue of legality under international law, and instituted the blockade. Welles readily complied with the official position. Initially, three blockading squadrons were created: the North Atlantic Squadron, the South Atlantic Squadron, and the Gulf Squadron. Just before Admiral David Farragut’s capture of the city and port of New Orleans in 1862, however, the Gulf blockade force was divided into an East and a West Squadron, resulting in a total of four squadrons. The U.S. Navy, however, lacked the ships necessary to establish a true blockade. The enemy coastline ran from Virginia to Florida along the Atlantic Coast, north along the western coast of Florida, and west along the southern border on the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the border between Texas and Mexico. To institute a total blockade, the squadrons would need to cover more than 3,600 nautical miles of coastline with numerous tributaries that opened on navigable rivers. In the course of the war, approximately 1,300 ships attempted to elude the blockade; 1,000 or more did so successfully. In 1861 the total strength of the U. S. Navy was ninety ships. Of that number only forty-two were in commission. Just twenty-four of the commissioned vessels were steam-powered, and eighteen of these were cruising in distant seas around the world, maintaining American presence and protecting commercial shipping. In the waters of the North Atlantic, only three steampowered ships were available for blockade duty. To meet the immediate need, Welles began acquiring any available vessel that could mount a few guns and was sufficiently seaworthy to sail south along the coast of the Confederacy and help to establish the blockade. He also began an extensive shipbuilding and acquisition program that would, by 1864, increase the total number of ships from ninety to more than 670 (Simson 2001, pp. 53–54). To implement the blockade effectively, Welles formed an advisory panel called the Blockade Strategy Board,
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charged with collecting and reviewing information pertaining to coastal surveys and charts, weather, tide and current conditions, and distances. A primary concern was the establishment at selected locations of refueling stations for blockading steamships. It was essential that a Union ship that might sight a blockade-runner have sufficient coal for the full head of steam needed for effective pursuit and capture. The board was an experienced and highly competent group, with scientific resources unavailable to the Confederacy. Welles’s first appointment was Alexander Dallas Bache, a great grandson of Benjamin Franklin. Bache was the superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey, an independent agency charged with the responsibility of charting the North American coastline. In addition to Bache were Captain Samuel F. Du Pont and Commander Charles H. Davis, both active naval officers, Major J. G. Barnard of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox. The Board produced five reports at intervals throughout the summer of 1861. The first report of July 5 called for a secure refueling and supply depot to be established at Fernandina, a small town on Amelia Island just off the Atlantic coast of Florida at the mouth of the St. Marys River. The second report of July 13 suggested the establishment of refueling and supply stations at three locations on the coast of South Carolina: Bulls Bay, north of Charleston; St. Helena Sound, between Charleston and Savannah; and Port Royal Sound, slightly north of Savannah. The third report of July 16 recommended that the area patrolled by the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron be divided into two parts. The coastline from Cape Henry, Virginia, to Cape Romain, South Carolina, a distance of 370 miles, would be the northern sector. The southern sector would extend 220 miles further south, from Cape Romain to St. Augustine, Florida. The northern sector was topographically different from the southern, and was largely comprised of barrier islands of sand that often altered with tides and currents. These barrier islands separated the inland rivers and sounds from the Atlantic, and were linked to the open sea by inlets that occurred at irregular geographic intervals. The Board proposed blocking these inlet channels with hulks, out-of service-ships that would be towed to the appropriate location and scuttled. Particular emphasis was placed on Hatteras Inlet at the southern end of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The inlet provided access to both Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, two of North Carolina’s principal outlets to the sea. The fourth report, delivered on July 26, cited the particular importance of the coast of Georgia, and of controlling the inland waterway from Savannah to the St. Marys River. The fifth and final report, received by Welles on August 9, concentrated on the Gulf of Mexico, beginning with the Florida Keys and placing particular emphasis
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A captured blockade runner’s vessel. Attempting to circumvent President Lincoln’s blockade of Southern ports, private ship owners used small, fast-sailing ships to outrun Union naval patrols. Lacking a diverse industrial base, the Confederacy depended on blockade runners to export cotton to ports in the Caribbean and return with much needed war supplies. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
on the details of the coastal areas of New Orleans and Mobile Bay (Simson 2001, pp. 57–58). Jefferson Davis, president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, attempted to counter the Union blockade by calling for privateers—nonmilitary, privately owned vessels—that would, with government authorization under what were termed letters of marque, attack and pillage enemy shipping. Davis’s invoking of this kind of government-sanctioned piracy, which had already been outlawed by most of the maritime powers of Europe, was hasty and injudicious, but it underscored a serious deficiency in the Confederacy’s power to wage war effectively: It had no navy. Welles’s counterpart, newly appointed Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, realized that the South did not have the resources and industrial strength to build a navy that would compare in size to the North’s, so he developed other priorities to combat the blockade and render it ineffective. Mallory had little faith
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in privateers, and quietly treated Davis’s proclamation with benign neglect. He knew that history had shown that privateers had never proved decisive in winning any war. They were also civilian enterprises, not subject to naval discipline, and could not be relied upon to carry out established strategy. Mallory preferred instead the idea of commerce raiders—armed commercial ships that would avoid conventional naval engagement but were instead specifically charged with the mission of attacking the commercial shipping of the Northern states. He proposed to concentrate on New England shipping, reasoning that if the Confederacy could inflict sufficient damage on New England’s maritime economy, the New England states would force the federal government to sue for peace. Other priorities of Mallory’s for building an effective navy included equipping all vessels fighting for the Confederacy with newly developed ‘‘rifled’’ guns, which were far more accurate than the more common smooth-
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bore weapons, and experimenting with submarine warfare. His highest priority, however, was the production of the ironclad warship, the new naval weapon of the future. With a sufficient number of steam-powered ironclads, Mallory believed the Confederacy could break the blockade at will and even seize control of the North Atlantic. When Virginia’s secession from the Union resulted in the Confederate seizure of the Federal shipyard at Norfolk and of the steam frigate, the U.S.S. Merrimack, Mallory took the opportunity to fulfill his highest priority. The Merrimack was converted into the Confederacy’s first ironclad, the C.S.S. Virginia (newspapers in the North continued to identify the ship by its original name). In March 1862 at Hampton Roads, the Virginia inflicted the worst defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Navy prior to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in World War II: Three ships were sunk, one was severely burned, and three others were run aground and left helpless. Three hundred men on the Union side were killed. Only the falling tide and the Virginia’s shallow draft and limited mobility prevented a greater disaster. On the second day of the battle, the Virginia fought to a draw with the Union ironclad, the U.S.S. Monitor. Ironclads would continue to be built and commissioned by both sides, but they would never prove decisive for the Confederacy in naval engagements. The outcome at Hampton Roads also made it clear that Confederate ironclads would not be able to destroy the Union blockade.
The Effects of the Blockade Despite this disappointment, President Davis and many others in the South believed that the blockade would eventually be effectively destroyed by the European need for cotton, particularly that of Great Britain. Europe had become highly dependent on high-quality American Cotton. In 1840 the South produced 60 percent of the world’s cotton. In the years just before the war, 80 percent of Great Britain’s cotton came from the North American continent. Nathaniel Dawson, a cotton grower, lamented in an 1862 letter to his fiance´e, Elodie Todd, that the ‘‘largest cotton crop ever’’ sat in warehouses unable to move because of the blockade. In her reply, Ms. Todd prayed for ‘‘foreign aid in breaking the blockade,’’ expressing the hope of many in the South (Sword 1999, p. 106). For a time, Great Britain seemed strongly inclined to recognize the Confederacy, and intervene. Attempting to force the issue, the Confederacy began to severely restrict its cotton shipments—a strategy dubbed King Cotton diplomacy. The hope was that the denial of prized cotton would force Britain to use its naval power to open the blockade and restore European maritime trade with the Confederacy. The Confederate government called upon cotton growers to use the land to grow much needed food instead. In New Orleans, 2.5 million bales of cotton were burned. Geoffrey Ward (1990) cites a
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letter written on April 26 by a young Louisiana woman who witnessed the conflagration: ‘‘We went this morning to see the cotton burning—a sight never before witnessed and probably never again to be seen. Wagons, drays— everything that can be driven or rolled—were loaded with the bales and taken to burn on the commons’’ (p. 95). It was common belief that without American cotton, the economy of Great Britain could not survive. ‘‘The cards are in our hands!’’ declared the Charleston Mercury, and ‘‘we intend to play them out to the bankruptcy of every cotton factory in Great Britain and France for the acknowledgement of our independence’’ (Ward 1990, p. 94). Although many of the Midland cloth mills in England were shut down as the blockade took effect, British mill owners had a surplus of American cotton purchased in 1860, and also began to look to cotton from India and Egypt to offset the eventual deficit. In the beginning, there was considerable sympathy for the Confederacy. The infamous Mason and Slidell affair of November 1861, in which the U.S.S. San Jacinto stopped the Trent, a British mail steamer, and took two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, as prisoners, greatly inflamed public opinion in London and other capitals of Europe. British diplomacy brought about their release before the end of the year. To many in positions of power in Great Britain, the Confederacy seemed a gallant enterprise, fighting for its independence and the preservation of a way of life dominated by landed gentry, a culture not unlike that of Great Britain. Officially, Great Britain asserted a political and imperial view that did not sympathize with geographic entities declaring independence, but it did nonetheless have a need for unrestricted cotton trade. It was also annoyed with the Federal Navy’s growing presence in the North Atlantic in the exercise of the blockade. As Great Britain weighed the matter, certain events came together that made the British government decide to remain neutral: the failure of General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to win decisive victories in the North after attempts at Antietam and Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg and subsequent Union control of the Mississippi, which effectively split the states of the Confederacy. Finally, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863) eclipsed the states’ rights issue by bringing the moral issue of slavery to the forefront. As a nation, Great Britain took great pride in its reputation as the naval power that had eliminated the transatlantic slave trade thirty years earlier.
Blockade Running In the early years of the war, the blockade seemed to have little effect, as blockade-runners, the South’s only connection to an outside world cut off by the cessation of maritime trade, seemed able to penetrate at will. The small ships that ran the Union Blockade were swift steamers with shallow drafts, streamlined vessels often
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DAVID FARRAGUT: FIRST ADMIRAL OF THE U.S. NAVY The naval battles of the Civil War generally receive less attention than the land campaigns, even though the Union blockade of the Confederacy and several naval engagements in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Mississippi were important factors in the outcome of the war. The Union Navy was unprepared for war; it consisted of ninety ships of war, but only 42 were ready for active service in the spring of 1861. It had only 7600 sailors and 1467 officers in 1861, but by the end of the war, the Navy had 51,500 sailors and 7500 officers. The Union sailors included 18,000 African Americans (twelve of whom were women); unlike the Union Army, the Navy accepted black volunteers from the beginning of the Civil War. Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, issued an order in September 1861 providing for the hiring of runaway slaves as seamen, firemen, or navy yard employees with full pay. The Civil War was a turning point in the history of naval as well as land warfare. Prior to the 1840s, fighting ships around the world had been constructed largely of wood and powered by sail. The U.S. Navy was one of the earliest to recognize the importance of steampowered vessels; in the twenty years before the Civil War, the Navy had largely replaced its older sailing vessels with steamships. Its fleet was the third most efficient in the world, surpassed only by the navies of England and France. At the head of the Union Navy was David Farragut (1801– 1870), the son of a Spanish merchant captain who had come to America in 1776 and served in the Revolutionary War. Farragut was born in Tennessee and settled in Virginia, but decided to remain in the Union Navy at the beginning of the Civil War. He had joined the Navy as a midshipman in 1810, when he was only nine years old. He served in the War of 1812; at the age of twelve, he was given command of a British ship captured by the U.S.S Essex and brought the captured vessel safely to port.
designed with innovative features such as collapsible funnels and masts that would enable them, if pursued, to reduce wind resistance and gain additional speed. The Bermuda, the first of these runners to get through the blockade, arrived in Savannah from Liverpool, England, on September 18, 1861. Its primary cargo consisted of four large pieces of artillery. In October the Bermuda departed for England, where it sold a cargo of prized cotton for a high profit (Norris 2000, p. 243). In addition to whatever cargo the blockade-runners brought, they also did much for the general morale of the people of the South. Mary Chestnut, the noted diarist of Confederate life on the home front, offered this succinct and somewhat poetic observation: ‘‘An iron steamer has run the blockade at Savannah. We raise our wilted heads like flowers after a shower’’ (Ward 1990, p. 166). The standard pattern for a blockade-runner returning from a foreign port was to stop in Bermuda (a British
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Farragut proved himself one of the ablest Union commanders of the Civil War. Given the U.S.S Hartford as his flagship, he took the port of New Orleans on April 29, 1862, an important morale boost for the Union. The Navy created a new rank for him, that of rear admiral, in July 1862. Prior to that time the Navy had used only the term flag officer in order to separate itself from the aristocratic traditions of European navies. Farragut won another strategic victory for the Union at the Battle of Mobile Bay in August 1864. Mobile, Alabama, was the Confederacy’s last remaining port on the Gulf of Mexico. The battle was the occasion for the quotation by which Farragut is still remembered. At the time of the Civil War, a torpedo was a naval mine placed in a harbor, not a self-propelled underwater weapon of the type used by twentieth-century submarines. When Farragut’s fleet entered Mobile Bay, which had been heavily mined by the Confederate Navy, one of the Union ships struck one of the torpedoes and sank. The others began to pull back. Farragut asked the captain of one of the other ships what the trouble was. When told that it was torpedoes, Farragut replied, ‘‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!’’ The rest of Farragut’s fleet succeeded in entering the bay and forcing the surrender of the Confederate ships. After the victory of Mobile Bay, Farragut was promoted to vice admiral in December 1864 and to full admiral in July 1866, the first four-star commander in the history of the U.S. Navy. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black Sailors: The Howard University Research Project. Available from http:// www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/sailors_index.html. Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
possession), Havana, or one of the smaller ports in the Caribbean. Goods from Europe came in heavy merchant ships, which were able to transport large quantities. In the Caribbean ports the goods were transferred to the somewhat smaller, but decidedly faster, shallow draft blockade-runners. Some blockade-runners were lightly armed, but most were not armed at all. Under international law, the crew of a ship that returned fire while being lawfully pursued would be officially guilty of piracy and subject to hanging. The independent blockade-runners, however, were not as patriotically motivated in their pursuit of the Confederate cause as commonly believed. Unlike the North, the South, with its largely agricultural economy, did not have the manufacturing base it needed to fight the kind of war it had undertaken. It had to import cannons, gunpowder, small arms and rifles, uniforms, and other things needed to meet the logistical needs
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Scott’s Great Snake. As part of Union strategy to crush the South, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposed to first blockade Southern sea ports, then take control of the Mississippi River, and eventually return east to defeat the Confederacy in their capital of Richmond, Virginia. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
of a modern army. Cloth, medicine, and machinery were also much needed imports. The Confederate government commissioned merchant ships as blockade-runners, but the South was never a maritime power; it had nothing that even approximated a merchant fleet. Independent blockade-runners would often run the blockade with cargoes of prized cotton, but found it more profitable to bring back cigars from Havana, perfume and fine wines from France, and silks, soaps, spices, and other luxury items. Although generally recognized staples, such as books or stationery, were in short supply, luxury items were often readily available, albeit at very high prices. Patriotic idealism aside, the law of supply and demand frequently led the South to circumvent the naval blockade in one way or another to get the things it desperately required. The South, for example, needed salt, necessary to preserve meat in the days before refrigeration, and salt came from the North. The South also needed medicines, surgical instruments, clothing, leather goods, and, to feed both the white populace and slaves
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in an agricultural economy largely given over to cotton and sugar production, it needed corn and pork. At the same time, the North still needed things from the South, such as cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco. Despite the war, the North and the South carried on a brisk trade in basic commodities, to the decided advantage of Northern merchants. This exchange of contraband goods developed in those Southern cities that came under Northern occupation. Nashville and Memphis, once the Union established control, were both depots through which Northern goods were shipped to the South. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was in command in Memphis before his army moved toward Georgia, tried to stop the passage of contraband to the South, but was unsuccessful. Finding that many of the confiscated goods on the way to the South came from Cincinnati, he noted with some slight exaggeration that ‘‘Cincinnati furnishes more contraband goods than Charleston, and has done more to prolong the war than the whole state of Carolina’’
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(Catton 1981, p. 144). A Congressional committee appointed in 1864 to investigate the trade in contraband between North and South remarked that Unionoccupied New Orleans ‘‘had helped the Confederacy more than any of the Confederacy’s own seaports, with the exception of Wilmington, North Carolina’’ (Catton 1981, pp. 144–145). Throughout the war, there were few signs of notable deprivation among the middle class. In a January 1864 letter to her mother, Mary Mallard described the unexpected abundance she had discovered in Atlanta: ‘‘You would be amazed to see how full all the stores are at present. They are flooded with calicoes, and light spring worsted goods’’ (Myers 1972, p. 1134). Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, an English officer with the elite Coldstream Guards, and a noted chronicler of the war who would later publish a compelling account of the battle at Gettysburg, remarked on the evident lack of hardship at a dance he attended in Galveston, Texas, shortly after entering the country through Mexico in 1863: ‘‘[T]he ladies were pretty, and considering the blockade, they were very well dressed’’ (Fremantle 1957, p. 185). Those without the resources to pay the exorbitant prices for contraband goods did what they could with what they had, and came up with creative substitutes for articles in short supply. ‘‘Confederate needles’’ were made from the thorns of hawthorn bushes, rope was fashioned out of Spanish moss, and paintbrushes used hog bristles (Ward 1990, p. 166). Coffee substitutes were made out of all manner of things, including peas, corn, beets, and pumpkin seeds. The Macon Daily Telegraph, commenting on these improvised brews, declared that ‘‘all that is wanted is something to color the water; it is coffee or dirty water, just as you please’’ (Ward 1990, p. 166). In the course of the war, blockade-runners brought in approximately 60 percent of the rifles and small arms, 30 percent of the lead needed for bullets, and about 60 percent of the saltpeter (potassium nitrate) needed for the production of gunpowder. Although 92 percent of all attempts to run the blockade were successful, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the essential needs of the Confederacy. As the war progressed, the effectiveness of the Union blockade grew, slowly constricting the South’s ability to traffic the high seas. The blockade remained in effect until officially lifted by President Andrew Johnson, on June 23, 1865. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Bern. By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962. Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War, ed. John Leekley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981.
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Fowler, William M., Jr. Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War. New York and London: Avon Books, 1990. Fremantle, A. J. L. ‘‘A Journey across Texas: Three Months in the Southern States: April, June, 1863.’’ In The Confederate Reader, ed. Richard B. Harwell. New York: Longmans, Green, 1957. Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate Navy. Annapolis, MD: Navy Institute Press, 1996. Myers, Robert Manson, ed. The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1972. Letters written by the family of the Rev. Dr. Charles Colcock Jones between 1854 and 1868. Norris, David A. ‘‘Blockade of the CSA.’’ In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, eds. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992. Simson, Jay W. Naval Strategies of the Civil War: Confederate Innovations and Federal Opportunism. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2001. Sword, Wiley. Southern Invincibility: A History of the Confederate Heart. New York: St. Martin’s Press/ Griffin, 1999. Ward, Geoffrey. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York: Vintage, 1990. Richard C. Keenan
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War Profiteers
War profiteering is the act of an individual or company making an unreasonable financial gain from selling goods or services during wartime. Certainly, suppliers who feed and transport soldiers, dispose of the dead, and produce weapons and clothing for the military are all necessary for the waging of war. Sometimes the paranoia and common mistrust of others that comes with war leads people to confuse the economic realities of war with war profiteering. For example, wartime food shortages result in significantly higher food prices in urban areas, leading city-dwellers to accuse farmers of gauging produce prices (Norton 1919, pp. 546–547). Basic foreign trade with enemy or neutral countries, and protecting intellectual property can be interpreted as profiteering or even treason (Hammond 1931, p. 3). Strong feelings about the moral reprehensibility of war profiteering sometimes provoke general, public accusations that take the form of racial or religious discrimination against certain groups (Korn 1951, pp. 294–295). All of these things did happen during the U.S. Civil War, but war profiteering of the period went beyond these.
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Brooks Brothers Clothing Store. Many merchants delivered substandard products to the Union government at inflated prices. After delivering poor quality uniforms to volunteer soldiers from New York, the Brooks Brothers company became symbolic of businesses that sold shoddy goods during the Civil War. The Art
War profiteering by suppliers with government contracts was widespread; even military uniforms were so badly made that they may have contributed to the low morale of soldiers early in the war. The uniforms of New York’s volunteer soldiers—supplied by the Brooks Brothers of New York City—were so cheaply made that the soldiers were mocked (Brandes 1997, p. 71). The term shoddies became the euphemism, coined by Harper’s Weekly, for clothing manufacturers such as the Brooks Brothers, who maximized their profits by supplying poorly constructed garments made of cheap fabrics (Brandes 1997, p. 73). So widespread was the use of this term that a contemporary novel by Henry Morford, The Days of Shoddy (1863), dubbed the war profiteers the ‘‘shoddy aristocracy’’ or the ‘‘shoddocracy,’’ which became ‘‘a metaphor for Civil War business itself’’ (Brandes 1997, p. 69).
Archive/The Picture Desk, Inc. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Almost as soon as the Civil War began, rumors of war profiteering began to circulate. The New York Herald, for example, claimed that a quarter of the first $200 million spent on the war had been ‘‘dishonestly pocketed’’ (Brandes 1997, p. 67). These accusations were probably exaggerated, but were not completely without merit. In 1861 it was Secretary of War Simon Cameron (1799–1889), whose family owned the rail lines from Washington, DC, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who set the price and policies for soldiers to be transported during the war, despite his clear conflict of interest. To be sure, Cameron’s decisions were made under the assumption that the war would not last long—and there were no other rail options for transporting soldiers into Pennsylvania—but it set a precedent for many rail lines to profit heavily from the war (Brandes 1997, p. 73–74). The technological advances of the nineteenth century contributed to the potential for war profiteering during the Civil War. The need for transportation and weapons is an economic reality of war, and the complexities of the use of war-related technology during the Industrial Revolution led to stock-market speculation, jumps in executives’ incomes, and significant corporate profits reaped from intellectual property and patents (Brandes 1997, p. 69). Samuel Colt (1814–1862), the founder of Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, had a long history of marking up the price on military-issue weapons during wartime; before the Civil War began he had sold similar weapons to both American civilians and the British government for lower prices. At the beginning of the war Colt expanded his manufacturing plant, and had 1,000 employees with a $50,000 monthly payroll. In 1864 the plant was destroyed by a fire, and the estimated loss was $1.5 to 2 million (Brandes 1997, p. 88).
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Brandes, Stuart. Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Hammond, Matthew. ‘‘Economic Conflict as a Regulatory Force in International Affairs.’’ American Economic Review 21, no. 1 (1931): 1–9. Korn, Bertram. American Jewry and the Civil War. Philadelphia: Jewish Publishing Society of America, 1951. Norton, J. P. ‘‘Industry and Food Prices after the War.’’ Scientific Monthly 8, no. 6 (1919): 546–551. Christopher D. Rodkey
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Currency
Both the Union and the Confederacy faced major problems in financing the Civil War. The war called for the creation of armies that quickly dwarfed any previously seen on the North American continent. Equipping, supplying, and paying these troops put monumental strains on governmental budgets and on the general economies of both sides. As the war began, both sides believed it would be a brief conflict. Both greatly underestimated the costs, efforts, and the changes that fighting the war would produce in their respective societies. Historian John Steele Gordon has noted, ‘‘While individual battles may be decided by tactics, firepower, courage, and—of course—luck, victory in the long haul of war almost always goes to the side better able to turn the national wealth to military purposes’’ (Gordon 1997, p. 67). The North had a much larger economy, and had a governmental system already in place for administering the borrowing and taxation that would be needed to finance the war. This was a decided advantage in the Union’s favor.
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Currency
Wartime pressures led both the North and the South to print paper money, and both sides eventually saw the destructive consequences of inflation. HIP/Art Resource, NY. A Union one dollar bill, 1862.
The Union and Confederate governments both used a combination of borrowing, taxing, and printing paper money to finance the war. The Union raised about 20 percent of its war financing through taxes, the Confederacy only about 10 to 12 percent (Hughes and Cain 2003, pp. 258–259; McPherson 2001, p. 222). The fact that the Union paid for the war primarily through increased taxes and borrowing, rather than by simply printing paper money, was another important advantage for the North.
Background When the Civil War began, the only currency in the United States was gold and silver coins, and the paper money issued by state and private banks. Gold and silver money was called ‘‘specie.’’ Silver was used only for smalldenominations coins. Many people believed that only specie was real money, and distrusted paper money—a distrust that went back to the nation’s experience during the American Revolution, when the Continental paper money issued by the government depreciated so badly that the phrase ‘‘not worth a Continental’’ was used to describe something worthless. Earlier in the nineteenth century the banknotes issued by the Second Bank of the United States had functioned as a sound, respected paper currency. However, Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), who had a lifelong distrust of all banks and a special enmity for the Second Bank of the United States, had killed the bank, and no similar institution took its place.
Confederate Currency The Confederacy borrowed heavily to raise money to finance the war. By the end of the war the Southern government had sold $2 billion in bonds. The first bonds the Confederate government, issued in 1861 in
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the amount of $15 million, sold quite well because of enthusiastic responses by the Southern people. But the liquid assets—especially the gold assets—of the Southern populace were quickly depleted, and later issues of bonds did not sell as well. The Confederate government eventually turned to the printing press—printing paper money, backed by nothing. This kind of money is sometimes called ‘‘fiat money’’ because it has value only because of a government decree (or ‘‘fiat’’) that declares it has value. Overall, the Confederacy raised about 10 percent of the war costs by taxes, about 30 percent by borrowing, and about 60 percent by printing money (McPherson 2001, p. 222). Christopher G. Memminger (1803–1888), the secretary of the treasury in the Confederate government, was a ‘‘sound money’’ man who distrusted paper currency, but the Confederate Congress balked at increasing taxes or depending more on loans. One of the major financial problems in the Confederacy was this use of paper money as the primary way to finance the war effort. In many ways, this was unavoidable. Although there was much wealth in the Southern states, a great deal of that wealth was tied up in property: land and slaves. There was not much liquid wealth for the government to tax, and at the beginning of the war, there was no governmental mechanism in place to administer and collect taxes or arrange bond sales or other forms of loans. To further the problem, when the Confederate government did enact taxes, state governments often paid the taxes for their citizens—but the payments were made in stateissued paper currency, which contributed to further inflation. There was a wide variety of paper money circulating in the South during the war. Paper money was issued not only by the Confederate national government and
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state governments, but also by cities, towns, and even private businesses, in small denominations. Some of these, called ‘‘shinplasters,’’ were for denominations of less than $1. The South did not have printing establishments capable of turning out high-quality banknotes, and in fact, at the beginning of the war some Confederate money was printed surreptitiously by banknote printers in the North. The difficulty of getting these notes delivered to the South finally ended this practice. Currency printed in the Confederacy was generally low quality, on low-grade paper. In a form of economic warfare aimed at disrupting the Southern economy, the North produced counterfeits of the Confederate currency and tried to get these circulated in the South, hoping to further erode the Southern people’s confidence in their currency. Even Southern newspapers noted that these Northern counterfeits were generally better quality than authentic Confederate money. Confederate paper currency depreciated rapidly, especially at times when the war effort was going badly for the South. Consumer prices inflated tremendously in the South due to commodity shortages and the depreciation of the currency. The economist Eugene Lerner believed that the stock of currency in the South increased eleven times over during the war (Lerner 1955, p. 21). Eventually, there was much more currency in circulation than the South’s economy really demanded; this is the classic recipe for inflation—too much money chasing too few goods. Memminger estimated that by late 1863 there was $700 million worth of currency circulating in an economy capable of absorbing only $200 million (Thomas 1979, p. 257). When money began to depreciate rapidly, people had little incentive to hold on to it—the longer one held it, the less it would be worth. So people spent the paper currency rapidly, which in turn contributed further to depreciation and the rising prices of goods. Many businesses refused to take Confederate notes as payment on debts or for purchases. The Confederate government had never made the currency ‘‘legal tender,’’ which would have required businesses to accept it. Commodities came to be used in business transactions, sometimes in simple bartering arrangements, and at times in combination with paper currency. Confederate paper money could not be used to pay taxes to the Confederate’s national government, or to buy its bonds. As the historian Emory Thomas suggested, ‘‘A government which refused to accept its own money did not exactly inspire soaring confidence’’ (Thomas 1979, p. 82). Economic historians continue to debate the precise rate of inflation in the South during the Civil War, but all agree it was incredibly high. James M. McPherson, one of the preeminent historians of the Civil War era, cites a figure of 9,000 percent (2001, p. 226). In February 1864 the Confederate congress attempted to deal with the oversupply of currency by passing a currency reform act that required that all existing Con-
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federate currency be redeemed for new notes at a rate of three-to-two. This did reduce the amount of currency in circulation and succeeded in stabilizing prices for a few months, but the fear that such a forced redemption might be required again in the future further eroded people’s confidence in the currency.
Union Currency The notes circulated by private banks and by the U.S. Treasury before the Civil War were supposed to be redeemable in gold on demand. However, in December 1861 banks and private businesses suspended the practice of converting notes into gold. The government soon followed suit, suspending the convertibility of its Treasury notes into specie. In February 1862 Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, allowing the government to issue the first inconvertible currency, which came to be called ‘‘greenbacks’’ because of the color of the paper. As the term ‘‘legal tender’’ implies, businesses were required to accept this money. Although some taxes could be paid with the greenbacks, tariff duties (import taxes) had to be paid in gold, and the government made interest payments on its own bonds only in gold. However, government bonds could be purchased with the paper money. There was no provision in the law for the ultimate convertibility of the greenbacks into specie, but many people believed that at some future date, after the war ended, the greenbacks would be redeemable in gold. Resorting to the use of paper money was generally seen as an unfortunate emergency measure demanded by the crisis of the war. Like the Confederacy’s Memminger, Salmon Chase (1808–1873), the secretary of the treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet, distrusted paper money. He believed issuing paper money was immoral and destructive. However, with an eye to getting name recognition that might help in future political endeavors, Chase put his own picture on some of the first issue of greenbacks. After the Civil War Chase became chief justice of the Supreme Court, and ruled in one case that the issuance of the greenbacks had been unconstitutional. Similarly, many of the politicians who had supported the issuance of the greenbacks during the war quickly called for their suspension when the war ended. The National Banking Acts passed in 1863, 1864, and 1865 were among the clearest examples of the wartime expansion of federal authority during the Civil War. Under the 1863 law federally chartered banks could be created if they met certain standards. These banks could issue banknotes if they held a required percentage of their assets in U.S. government bonds, as guarantees that their banknotes could be redeemed. This provision meant that these banks not only supplied a sound currency, they also constituted a market for the government’s own bonds. The 1865 act imposed a 10 percent tax on state banknotes. Because anyone using greenbacks or the notes from the federally chartered banks
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Confederate currency. With much of its wealth tied up in land and slaves, the South could not easily raise large sums of money to finance a prolonged conflict. Eventually the South began to simply print money to pay for the war, causing Confederate currency to quickly lose its value. The Library of Congress.
could avoid paying this tax, the state banknotes were quickly driven out of circulation. Greenbacks were not backed by any precious metal; they were valuable only because the government decreed that they were legal tender and must be accepted by creditors and merchants in payment of debts and for purchases. As in the South, these greenbacks depreciated, but never to the extent that Confederate paper money did. Estimates of the rate of inflation suffered by the North range from 80 to 100 percent; it is probably safe to say that the cost of living roughly doubled in the North because of wartime inflation. Greenbacks were preferred to Confederate money by some merchants in the upper tier of Confederate states, and even the Confederate treasury in Richmond held some Union greenbacks as financial assets in its vaults. The first issue of greenbacks was $150 million. By the end of the war a total of $450 million had been issued.
Aftermath The Fourteenth Amendment included a provision that guaranteed the repayment of the federal war debt, but disallowed the repayment of the Confederate war debt. This meant that all Confederate bonds, as well as all
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Confederate currency, technically became worthless as soon as the war ended, although some of these documents eventually acquired considerable value as collector’s items. In the decades after the Civil War the question of what kind of money the United States should have was debated repeatedly. Groups such as the Greenback Party and later the Populists wanted an expansion of the amount of currency in circulation, in part because this caused inflation that could help debtors pay off debt. The Greenback Party wanted the paper money from the Civil War to stay in circulation, whereas those who advocated a ‘‘hard money’’ or ‘‘sound money’’ policy wanted all the greenbacks to be redeemed and the country to go back to a gold standard as quickly as possible. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Curry, Leonard P. Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. Gordon, John Steele. Hamilton’s Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.
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Hammond, Bray. ‘‘The North’s Empty Purse, 1861–1862.’’ American Historical Review 67, no. 1 (October 1961): 1–18. Hammond, Bray. Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks and Politics in the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970. Hughes, Jonathan, and Louis P. Cain. American Economic History, 6th ed. New York: Addison Wesley/Pearson Education, 2003. Lerner, Eugene M. ‘‘Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861–1865.’’ Journal of Political Economy 63, no. 1 (February 1955): 20–40. McPherson, James M. Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New American Nation Series. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Willard, Kristen L., Timothy W. Guinnane, and Harvey S. Rosen. ‘‘Turning Points in the Civil War: Views from the Greenback Market.’’ American Economic Review 86, no. 4 (September 1996): 1001–1018. Mark S. Joy
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Labor LABOR : AN OVERVIEW
Jamie Bronstein CHILD LABOR
Jamie Bronstein PAID LABOR
Jamie Bronstein WOMEN LABORERS
Jamie Bronstein
LABOR: AN OVERVIEW As had been true since the colonial period, American workers during the Civil War, male and female, occupied a continuum from unfree and unpaid to free and paid. Neither slaves nor indentured servants nor apprentices were completely in control of either their work schedules or their labor contracts. The Civil War proved to be the key event that changed the nature of labor in the United States. Not only did the end of the war bring the end of slavery in the form of the Thirteenth Amendment— but the rapid industrialization associated with the war also helped to end apprenticeships in many fields and emphasize the use of larger amounts of semiskilled labor. Finally, the removal of large numbers of workers from industrial or agricultural labor into military service gave the remaining workers temporary leverage to seek higher wages and better working conditions, thus paving
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the way for the trade union movement of the postwar period.
Labor in the South In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, approximately four million African Americans remained enslaved in the South. Even after the eleven states that would form the Confederate States of America seceded, four border states remained in the Union, making unfree labor a characteristic of both the Union and the Confederacy. As the slaves had before the Civil War, they continued to perform a vast array of duties during the conflict. These included field work in diverse settings; domestic labor; the performance of artisanal trades; animal husbandry; work in industrial settings, like iron foundries; and coal mining. Although slaves were theoretically unpaid and unwaged, in practice some owners who hired out their slaves did allow them to keep their earnings after paying the master a set fee; or, as in the case of William Weaver’s Buffalo Forge, the owners allowed slaves to perform ‘‘overwork’’ for credit that could then be used to buy consumer goods (Dew 1994). Slaves and their masters continually renegotiated their economic relationships during the Civil War. As the war wore on, many slaves found that the nature of their work was transformed. Lucinda Davis, a young Creek woman from Oklahoma then working on a plantation in Texas, reported that adult male slaves had all slipped away behind Union lines, leaving the women and children to bring in a harvest of green corn in the midst of the battle for the area (Davis 1996, p. 116). John Fields, a slave living in Kentucky, credited the use of slave labor by the South with its ability to earn early victories. He learned of the Emancipation Proclamation’s passage in 1864 at the age of sixteen. Fields and his brother ran away to try to join the Union Army only to be refused for being too young. Fields was able to hire out his labor for $7 per month, marking his transition from slave to paid worker (Fields, p. 3). The Civil War forced a transformation in the nature of work for factory workers. The South had lagged far behind the North in its level of industrialization and manufacturing before the war; however, as soon as the war began, the Confederate government embarked on an ambitious state-led manufacturing program. The Confederacy gave advances of 33 to 50 percent on government contracts to entrepreneurs who thought they would be able to provide essential materials for the use of the army and the states. The Confederate states also regulated the wartime labor market, first by legislating a draft covering all white men between eighteen and thirty-five, and then by exempting industrial workers in those industries that were productive. (Morgan 2004, pp. 4, 11). The shortage of skilled white workers in some industries in the South elevated the status of workers who had previously been overlooked in a society where slaves and land conferred status. For example, because
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Labor: An Overview
steel production was in its infancy, iron was a key commodity during the Civil War. As a result, the demand for the services of blacksmiths and farriers (persons who shoed horses) soared in both the North and the South. Some blacksmiths and farriers worked in uniform for army units, but others worked for the government from their own small shops or had their slaves do so. Both the Northern and the Southern armies exempted blacksmiths and farriers from the draft, but used bonuses to entice them into military service. The Southern labor shortage also brought more white women and children into the manufacturing labor force. Augusta, Georgia, became a center of Southern manufacturing, as one large textile factory named the ‘‘Augusta Factory’’ employed 750 hands. Factory work remained culturally problematic, however. On the one hand, manual labor was associated with slaves, making the status of male factory workers ambiguous; on the other hand, married women and children were supposed to be economic dependents and not work in factories at all. A compromise was struck whereby factories hired almost exclusively single women; only three percent of the Augusta Factory’s mill women were married (Whites 1995, p. 82). The removal of breadwinners from the family circle combined with the lack of paid work opportunities for married women meant destitution for many families. In response, institutions like Augusta’s Purveying Association were set up to organize the distribution of charity. The Augusta Purveying Association ended by serving 800 families, including some who had been displaced and were living in railroad cars (Whites 1995, p. 78). The Augusta Factory made a donation of $40,000 to the town’s poor in 1863, and also distributed vast amounts of cloth to the poor. The fact that the factory acted paternalistically helped increase the acceptability of factory work in that part of Georgia. Wartime realities made continued employment in Southern factories uncertain. One such factory, in Bellville, Georgia, supplied not only cloth for clothing and hats for ‘‘negroes and laborers’’ but also tents for soldiers and cloth casings for artillery. When the factory burned in 1862, poor white families were deprived of their only means of support (Daily Morning News, February 28, 1862). In 1864 the Daily Richmond Examiner reported that 400 young Southern women working in one Roswell, Georgia, factory found their work had been interrupted by Sherman’s march; the factory that they had worked in was burned to the ground and they were involuntarily shipped north, away from their families (August 11, 1864). Southern middle-class families coped with the strains of the war and the absence of male breadwinners by sending into employment many members who had not had to work before. Paid sewing assignments became a major resource for married women, whether they were
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hired by those few upper-class women who could afford to have dresses made or by the Confederate government in the ‘‘sewing manufactories’’ popping up in many government buildings by 1863. Other government jobs—including hand-signing Confederate banknotes—became a major source of employment for male and female white workers, but such assignments did not ensure prosperity. Employees of the postal service petitioned the Confederate government to allow their families to shop at military commissaries, since with rising prices their salaries were totally inadequate. J. B. Jones, a Confederate war clerk, noted that meat was scarce and that the price of all groceries had risen; he was thankful that he and his family owned their own furniture, despite the fact that it had probably passed through twenty families before ending up in his own home (Jones 1866, p. 35). While work in Southern factories and for the Confederate government was noteworthy because it represented change, the majority of white workers in the South who were not incorporated into the army still lived and worked on farms. Women and children did assume new tasks, including the marketing of crops and livestock as well as bookkeeping; however, gender roles died hard. Bad harvests and the commandeering of goods by both Northern and Southern troops kept many Southern families in a perilous state, and as James McPherson has argued, resulted in demoralizing letters begging loved ones to go absent without leave and come home to resume work with the harvest (1997, p. 135).
Labor in the North The Northern economy suffered through a recession in 1861, as the immediate impact of war was a decrease in the demand for goods and services. By 1862, however, many manufacturing plants were able to shift over to production for the government or the army, and the economy began to recover and then to boom. Prices for necessities escalated as material was diverted from the consumer market to fill army contracts; wages also escalated, albeit less quickly. In many industries, workers took advantage of their temporary scarcity to strike for higher wages and better conditions; one historian, Joseph Rayback, counted 300 new union locals spread over sixtynine different trades (1966, p. 111). The fate of free black labor in the North, which had always been controversial, became even more of a flashpoint during the war. There were a few white workers like Alonzo Draper—the leader of a major strike among the shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1860, who then stepped forward to lead a regiment of black troops during the Civil War. But more typical were the hundred white caulkers whose case was reported in the Boston Liberator. In April 1863, these men walked away from their jobs at the Navy Yard, refusing to work alongside a skilled black caulker from Baltimore. Frederick Douglass had written of similar discrimination in New
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Bedford years before in his autobiography (Douglass, 1963, p. 113). The relationships among black and white workers became an urgent question as slaves freed themselves by running away to the Northern lines, where they were pressed into largely unpaid service as valets, cooks, ditchdiggers and water carriers for the Union forces. The tension broke into a firestorm in the first few days of July 1863, as mobs of white workers in New York City destroyed the city’s central draft recruiting offices, burned black homes and schools, and tortured black people. While some Northern workers fought for higher pay or quarreled over the question of who deserved work, other workers slipped into the jobs that grew up as a result of the war. Black and white women as well as some men served as nurses in makeshift army hospitals and on hospital ships. The poet Walt Whitman worked in a parttime job in the Army Paymaster’s Office during the three years that he visited convalescent wards around Washington, DC, bestowing little gifts of food, tobacco, and time on the wounded soldiers (Price 2004). Others performed volunteer labor with the two great wartime institutions on the Union side: the Sanitary Commission, which provided soldiers in the field and convalescing in hospitals with clean bedding, bandages, letter-writing services, and an improved diet; and the Christian Commission, which provided soldiers with Bibles and religious tracts. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daily Morning News (Savannah, GA), February 28, 1862. Daily Richmond (VA) Examiner, August 11, 1864. Davis, Lucinda, ‘‘Creek Freedmen’’ In The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives, eds. T. Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, pp. 107–117. Dew, Charles. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1963. Fields, John W., in WPA Slave Narrative Project, Indiana Narratives, Volume 5, Federal Writer’s Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, available from www.loc.gov. Jones, John Beauchamp. A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital. Volume 2. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1866. The Liberator (Boston, MA), April 10, 1863. McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1997. Morgan, Chad. ‘‘The Public Nature of Private Industry in Confederate Georgia.’’ Civil War History 50, no. 1 (2004): 27–46.
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Price, Angel. ‘‘Whitman’s Drum Taps and Washington’s Civil War Hospitals’’ (2004), available from http:// xroads. virginia.edu/. Rayback, Joseph. A History of American Labor. New York: The Free Press, 1966. Whites, LeeAnn. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Jamie Bronstein
CHILD LABOR Although white children—especially those living in urban areas—were likely to receive at least a few years of organized education, most nineteenth-century Americans felt there was a moral benefit to children’s gainful employment. ‘‘A certain amount of work is necessary for the proper education of children,’’ the Colorado Daily Miners’ Register noted in 1865. ‘‘Their future independence and comfort depend on being accustomed to provide for the thousand constantly recurring wants that nature entails on them.’’ The extent to which this ideal was met, however, depended on the region of the country in which one lived and the race of the child in question.
Southern Children For black children living in the South, work was a fact of life. The youngest children watched the babies and did errands; older children often performed a stint of labor as domestic servants before graduating to the fields as quarter- or half-hands at the age of ten or twelve. Except for those black children who were able to flee with their families to Northern battle lines, the Civil War did not change the reality of work. ‘‘The times I hated most was pickin’ cotton when the frost was on the bolls,’’ a former slave, Mary Reynolds, reported: My hands git sore and crack open and bleed. We’d have a li’l fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn’t stand it no longer, we’d run and warm our hands a li’l bit. When I could steal a tater, I used to slip it in the ashes and when I’d run to the fire I’d take it out and eat it on the sly. (Reynolds, p. 239)
As the war continued, black child workers faced long days in the fields supported by dwindling food supplies, suffered punishment at the hands of frustrated masters for wartime reverses, did heavy farm labor tasks formerly performed by men, or endured involuntary relocation to areas far from Union control, like Texas. And for children, even the war’s end did not mean an end to involuntary servitude—apprenticeship laws forced children to labor on plantations without wages until the age of twenty-one, even without parental consent (Mintz 2004, p. 114).
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‘‘Powder monkey.’’ Children contributed to the war effort on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Some youths volunteered at home to make extra supplies such as bandages for hospitals or preserved foods to supplement a soldier’s rations. Others found action on the front lines, such as the children who earned the nickname ‘‘powder monkeys’’ from carrying ammunition to naval gun crews. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Poor Southern white children also suffered hardship, assuming childcare responsibilities for younger siblings, foraging in the woods and fields for weeds and berries to supplement meager wartime diets, and peddling small items. With fathers absent, they also assumed larger responsibilities for farming chores alongside their mothers.
Northern Children In the North, children were more likely to attend school, but those old enough to supplement the family income through paid labor might attend only intermittently. In industrializing Massachusetts, the law required that children under fifteen attend school for eleven weeks out of the year and children under twelve for eighteen weeks; but as the Civil War wore on, this requirement, often disregarded, became even more moot. The scarcity of factory labor attracted children into the workforce who might otherwise have been at school; with fathers and older brothers gone off to the war, these younger children were a crucial support to their families. In the absence of safety covers over mill machinery, disasters could easily happen. The Dover Gazette told the sad tale of John Francis Horrocks, a fourteen-year-old boy work-
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ing in the Portsmouth Steam Factory in New Hampshire in 1863. He found his leg caught in the mill gearing, which stripped his thigh of half its flesh and pulled his femoral artery out of his body. During the war, young children were encouraged to labor to support the war effort, as well as to bring income to their families. Fourteen-year-old Susie Baker—a former slave—did laundry for a United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiment, taught school, and served as a nurse (Mintz 2004, p. 119). In Ohio, ten-year-old Emma Andrews took to her needle and sewed 229 towels for soldiers in connection with her local aid society. During school vacations, children flocked to the woods to pick fruit, which was used both to make medicinal wine for soldiers and to help them prevent scurvy (Brockett and Vaughn, 1867, p. 82). Children enlisted with both the Confederate and Union armies as drummer boys, or, if they were able to lie about their age, as infantrymen. Adelaide Smith, an army nurse, made one injured and emaciated fifteen-year-old boy her hospital orderly rather than send him back to the Thirty-seventh New Jersey Regiment, where he had enlisted against his parents’ wishes (Smith 1911, p. 86). In contrast with children living in the Northeastern part of the Union, fewer than half of school-aged children living in the West spent their days in school. Thus in the many areas of the West that were untouched by the war, children engaged in work from the time they could be helpful. They planted and harvested, fed animals, rode the range after livestock, sewed clothes, ran errands, cooked and cleaned, and sometimes helped out in retail establishments and mining camps. Stephen Mintz has described the gradual development over the course of the nineteenth century of two warring concepts of childhood (2004, p. 152). One concept was rooted in the idea that children, whether in farm or factory, should contribute through their work and wages to the success of the family. The other concept regarded childhood as an innocent time during which children should be protected from labor and from other worldly realities and given an education. The Civil War set back the progress of the second concept of childhood, as orphaned children and young war veterans were absorbed into the postwar labor force. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brockett, Linus, and Mary C. Vaughan. Woman’s Work in the Civil War. New York: R.H. Curran, 1867. Daily Miners’ Register, Central City, Colorado, March 4, 1865. Dover Gazette, Dover, NH, May 1, 1863. Hindman, Hugh. Child Labor: An American History. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002.
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Mintz, Stephen. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Reynolds, Mary. The American Slave, vol. 5: 236–246, available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/. Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse during the Civil War. New York: Greaves Publishing Company, 1911. West, Elliott. Growing up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Jamie Bronstein
PAID LABOR At first, despite the removal of about one-third of the industrially-employed waged workers from the Northern labor market to the Union army, wages for labor in the North during the Civil War were not much different than they had been in the antebellum period. Laborers earned about a dollar a day, while master artisans took account of the cost of their materials and added a standard fee for working the materials into finished products. Prices began to climb as agricultural produce was diverted for army use, and more than one-third of the workforce was diverted into uniform. In the antebellum period labor activism had been channeled in the direction of land reform, cooperative workshops and stores, and the ten-hour work day. Throughout the Civil War, however, rampant inflation combined with more slowly rising wages brought financial issues to the center; the cost of living index escalated from 100 in 1860 to 176 by 1865. Workers responded to their immediate wage problem by forming union locals; Joseph Rayback reports in his 1966 book A History of American Labor that by November, 1865, sixty-nine trades had organized three hundred locals. Also formed during the Civil War were some of the large cross-trade labor associations that would dominate the postwar period: the miners, the train engineers, and the house carpenters among them. The war did not deter these new locals from striking. Urban artisans demanded a rise in the rates that they were paid for piecework. Laborers on canals and railroads from San Francisco to New York struck for higher wages. The New York Herald reported on March 24, 1863, that four hundred tailors at Brooks’ Brothers paraded down the streets of the Bowery demanding a pay raise. Miners in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, protested low pay and poor conditions by turning off pumps and allowing mines to fill with water. Other miners withheld coal from the government, a move that their employers argued was tantamount to treason. By the war’s second and third years, those workers who remained in the workforce achieved some success using the leverage of the
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labor shortage to wrest concessions from their employers. In 1864, for example, Pennsylvania miners were receiving $3 to $4 a day in wages, well up from their prewar level. The need to raise and maintain an army also contributed to conflict between workers and employers. The prevailing wage rate of $13 a month for Union soldiers, plus a $100 bonus, was well under the market rate for paid labor, never mind life-threatening labor—and this resulted in a shortage of volunteers. The government’s decision to respond with a draft, yet allow individuals to hire a substitute or pay a commutation fee, helped to convince workers that the Civil War was a ‘‘rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.’’ Urban workers’ resistance to the draft became most patent in July 1863, when mobs attacked black homes and schools and destroyed New York’s recruiting office. The denouement of the Draft Riots illustrates that even when workers were not dissuaded from striking by arguments centering on nationalism or patriotism, their attempts could be limited by the large numbers of men in uniform available to put down labor unrest. An 1864 military order, General Order 65, outlawed picketing and protected strikebreakers. As Northern workers were siphoned away from the labor market and into the army, new categories of workers took their place, at least temporarily. The war attracted many women into paid positions, and wages rose across all classes and grades of labor. Nonetheless, women were still paid less than were men working in the same industries. In 1864 a Contract Labor Law allowed employers to bring European workers into the country—the first step in the major wave of European immigration that would follow the war and begin to make up for the demographic disaster that war had caused. While labor scarcity during the war had done much to advance the cause of paid labor, demobilization after the war accomplished the opposite—especially as a recession set in between 1866 and 1868. Terence Powderly, later the Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor, noted in his 1889 memoir Thirty Years of Labor that as soon as the war ended, a dozen men would show up for an advertised position that had lain open an entire week during the war. The National Labor Union, one of the forerunners of the Knights of Labor, was founded in 1866 as a result of workers’ perceptions of their declining position.
The South The South faced an even more intractable labor problem than the North: not an absence of workers, but an absence of industrial production. At the outset of the war the South had 20,600 factories with 111,000 workers, compared with the North’s 100,500 factories with 1.1 million workers. Part of the Southern response was to expand its existing factories for wartime production and to fill the factories with unpaid labor of every description: slaves who had
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Locomotive engine. The civilian workforce was often directly affected by Civil War hostilities, as evidenced in this picture of train workers righting a locomotive overturned during fighting at the Second Battle of Bull Run. The Art Archive/National Archives, Washington, DC/The Picture Desk, Inc.
been impressed from their masters, convict labor, and prisoners of war. The reliance on various types of slave labor both before and during the Civil War meant that Southern workers lacked the history of labor activism that characterized the antebellum North. Thus despite levels of price inflation that reached 900 percent, strikes were rare. In 1862, as the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel reported, journeymen printers at a major Richmond newspaper struck for an increase in wages, taking advantage of the fact that their skills were scarce and that every printer not at work in a newspaper office had been conscripted; but the printers were the exception. The largest paid-labor question in the South was not the formation of a union movement or any kind of class cohesiveness among white workers, but rather, ‘‘Will the freedmen work for wages?’’ As early as 1862, as soon as some Southern areas were under federal control, former slaves came forward to demand wages for their continued labor on plantations; and plantation owners were forced to pay. Former slaves were also quickly contracted to build roads for the government and to mine coal for mine owners, also for wages. In the South after the war, while some former slaves were hired directly under labor contracts, the majority worked as sharecroppers. The war had set back the South-
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ern infrastructure—much was destroyed, and nothing could be built during the war. The collapse of banking and the worthlessness of the Confederate dollar also prevented postwar investment. Without capital and infrastructure Southern workers could not be as productive as Northern workers. Southern wages declined from their wartime levels, creating a situation whereby the North and the South were two distinct and separate labor markets: one flourishing, and one poor. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alpert, Cady, and Kyle D. Kauffman. ‘‘The Economics of the Union Draft: Institutional Failure and Government Manipulation of the Labor Market during the Civil War.’’ Essays in Economic and Business History 17 (1999): 89–107. Craig, Lee A., and Thomas Weiss. ‘‘Agricultural Productivity Growth during the Decade of the Civil War.’’ Journal of Economic History 53, no. 3 (September 1993): 527–548. Crews, Edward. ‘‘The Industrial Bulwark of the Confederacy.’’ Invention and Technology (1992): 7–17. Hutchinson, William, and Robert A. Margo. ‘‘The Impact of the Civil War on Capital Intensity and Labor Productivity in Southern Manufacturing.’’
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Explorations in Economic History 43, no. 4 (2006): 689–704. Kneller, Pamela. ‘‘Welsh Immigrant Women as Wage Earners in Utica, New York, 1860–1870.’’ Llafur, Journal of Welsh Labor History 5, no. 4 (1991): 71–79. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, August 21, 1862; November 20, 1862. The New York Herald, March 24, 1863. Palladino, Grace. Another Civil War: Labor, Capital and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840–1868. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Powderly, Terence Vincent. Thirty Years of Labor. Columbus, OH: Excelsior Publishing, 1889. Rayback, Joseph G. A History of American Labor. New York: Free Press, 1966. Jamie Bronstein
WOMEN LABORERS During the Civil War, the scale of participation by working men in both North and South meant that women— previously relegated to the domestic sphere by the ideals of the time—were forced to assume greater and more varied work responsibilities. Not only did they continue their unpaid labor at home—unwaged labor that expanded to include home production of textiles in the South—they also engaged in farming, in paid factory labor, and in paid and unpaid positions supporting the armed forces. Slave women, who found the prospect of running away to Union lines more logistically challenging than did slave men, continued to perform the fieldwork, domestic service, cooking, and childcare they had been doing for generations. Increasingly, this work was done under greater than usual duress: Troops crossed through plantations, commandeering food, while masters who became impoverished were no longer willing or able to provide for their slaves. Mary Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate brigadier general, reported that because the price of raw cotton had sunk to five cents a pound, and finished cloth was thirtyseven cents a yard, masters were hiring out slaves for the price of food and clothing (Martin and Avery 1905, p. 139). Southern white women who had never been expected to work outside the home took on new economic roles. Because it was impossible to industrialize the Southern economy speedily, the kind of work that was done in factories in the North—like the production of cloth—was often farmed out to white women and slaves working on individual plantations. Virginian Myrta Lockett described sewing for the soldiers: Sewing machines had been carried into the churches, and the sacred buildings had become depots for bolts of cloth, linen, and flannel. Nothing could be heard in them for days but the click of machines, the
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tearing of cloth, the ceaseless murmur of voices questioning, and voices directing the work. Old and young were busy. Some were tearing flannel into lengths for shirts and cutting out havelocks and knapsacks. And some were tearing linen into strips and rolling it for bandages ready to the surgeon’s hand. Others were picking linen into balls of lint. (Lockett Avery 1903, pp. 28–29)
The notion that the work was being done in the service of the war effort helped to redirect suspicions about the unladylike nature of manual labor. J. B. Jones, a Confederate war clerk, noted in his memoir, ‘‘Everywhere the ladies and children may be seen plaiting straw and making bonnets and hats.’’ He remarked that even Jefferson Davis’s wife could be seen with her household sitting on the front porch making straw hats (Jones 1866, p. 16). Young women were also sent from their homes to work in Confederate cotton factories. In 1864 four hundred young Southern women working in one factory in Roswell, Georgia, found their work interrupted by Sherman’s march to the sea. The factory that they worked in was burned to the ground and they were involuntarily shipped north (Daily Richmond Examiner, August 11, 1864). In the North as in the South, farmwomen filled the gap when husbands went off to fight. Those sectors of the farm economy traditionally given over to women and children— the production of eggs, chickens, and hogs, for example— boomed as workdays became longer. Women also performed work traditionally relegated to men: They plowed, planted, and harvested crops; mended fences; tended animals; kept household books, and oversaw the work of slaves and servants. Eliminating the traditional gendered division of labor in this way helped to produce a permanent increase in farm production (Craig and Weiss 1993, p. 544). Northern women also undertook volunteer work with the United States Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission—sewing tents, rolling bandages, and holding bazaars to raise funds. In the South, although there were no similar overarching organizations, Mary Chesnut recalled writing letters to ‘‘sister societies at home,’’ for women’s help with nursing and rounding up supplies (Martin and Avery 1905, p. 100). All these activities were seen as extensions of the normal domestic duties of women, as was women’s labor in field hospitals and hospital ships. Nonetheless, the departure of men from the labor force led to a temporary reevaluation of the capabilities of women workers in other sectors of the paid workforce. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin reported that the former Massachusetts governor Edward Everett called for women to contemplate work as bookkeepers, clerks, accountants, artists, sales personnel, and ‘‘attendants in establishments of every kind where the labor is not too severe for females’’ (September 13, 1862). Women were hired by the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel to set type—a move that precipitated a strike by all of the newspaper’s male printers. As
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Women Laborers
The influence of women. Women in both the North and the South were pushed from the domestic sphere into the fields and factories to fill gaps left by men away at war. This shift in the role of women continued after the war’s end, as both women and men reached a greater understanding of women’s potential in the workforce. The Library of Congress.
H. M. Gitelman (1965) records, the Waltham Watch Company recruited women in Maine and the Massachusetts countryside. In 1864 Waltham’s female workforce, its wages lagging far behind those of male workers, threatened to strike, but the company capitulated before a strike became necessary. Women’s wartime participation in the workforce— and the creation during the war of vast numbers of disabled veterans—helped to create permanent changes in the notion of ‘‘women’s work.’’ In the face of an enormous number of casualties, Northerners reevaluated the concept of the ‘‘family wage’’—the notion that male breadwinners should earn enough to support their families without their wives working.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Craig, Lee A., and Thomas Weiss. ‘‘Agricultural Productivity Growth during the Decade of the Civil War.’’ Journal of Economic History 53, no. 3 (1993): 527–548. Daily Richmond Examiner, August 11, 1864. Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Gitelman, H. M. ‘‘The Labor Force at Waltham Watch during the Civil War Era.’’ Journal of Economic History 25, no. 2 (1965): 214–243.
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Jones, J. B. (John Beauchamp). A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1866. Lockett Avery, Myrta, ed. A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861–1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer. New York: D. Appleton, 1903. Electronic edition available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/. Martin, Isabella D., and Myrta Lockett Avery, eds. A Diary from Dixie, as Written by Mary Boykin Chesnut. New York: D. Appleton, 1905. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, January 29, 1863. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, September 13, 1862. Jamie Bronstein
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The Civil War was the first ‘‘modern’’ war, in terms of its weaponry. Torpedoes, land mines, machine guns, ironclad ships all made their first appearance in the 1860s. But technological advances that helped determine the war’s outcome went beyond military innovations. Some technological innovations did help the military effort. Others had no military value but created an economic value that was equally crucial. It was the North that had the upper hand technologically when the Civil War began in 1861, and the North held that hand throughout the war. Both the North and the South were heavily dependent on agriculture. But in the South, agriculture was by far the key component of the economy. In the North, agriculture was important, but manufacturing was beginning to play a far greater role. By the time the Civil War began, the north had more than 110,000 factories; the South had only 18,000 (Stewart 2000, p. 15).
Cotton and the South’s Agrarian Heritage The South was not bothered by its agrarian character; in fact, it embraced it. In his inaugural address as President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis noted with no small amount of pride that Southerners are ‘‘an agricultural people—whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country’’ (Davis 1861). That commodity was cotton, and it was cotton more than anything else that determined the South’s adherence to slavery. References to ‘‘King Cotton’’ were no exaggeration: The cotton industry brought $100 million into the South annually (Stewart 2000, p. 45). To cultivate, King Cotton required human energy, and the cheapest and most plentiful form of human energy came in the form of slaves.
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Because the South had always relied on cheap slave labor, it never bothered to mechanize its farming production. In the North, the Industrial Revolution had come full force and there was no financial need for slaves. In the largely agrarian South, by contrast, to abandon the slave system would not only break the plantations financially, it would let loose an entire new work force in the form of freed slaves, who might work for less than their white counterparts. One observer, a writer named Samuel Powell pointed out in Notes on Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (1861) a key reason why slavery was never abandoned in the South for more technologically advanced means of farming: ‘‘A great secret of the productiveness of slave labor is that the tiller of the soil is nourished with the simplest, the coarsest, and the grossest fare’’ (p. 7). ‘‘The slave system,’’ he continued, ‘‘builds no cities, few mills, few ships; it does little for common roads and bridges, canals, manufactures, trade, or commerce of its own—its gifts and its mission do not seem to lie in that way’’ (p. 8).
A Serious Miscalculation The South believed—mistakenly, as it turned out—that its dominance of the cotton market would help it in two ways: First, the lack of cotton for Northern textile mills would put them into an economic tailspin and force them to make peace and accept the secession of the Confederacy. Second, countries like the United Kingdom, which used large quantities of cotton, would want to ally themselves with the South to ensure an uninterrupted supply. What happened instead was that Northern textile mills substituted cotton with wool and began manufacturing woolen goods—which had added the benefit of producing record profits for sheep farmers (Catton 1971, p. 172). Meanwhile, Britain actually had a surplus of cotton at the start of the Civil War and thus had no reason to take sides in another nation’s domestic battle (Stewart 2000, p. 16). The cotton surplus did not last, of course, and other countries besides the United Kingdom relied on Southern cotton. But as the war dragged on, the foreign markets decided to look elsewhere for their cotton, and they increased imports from India, South America, and Egypt (Danbom 2006, p. 115). This turn of events was a blow to the South, which simply lacked the means or the knowledge to create its own industrial boom.
Technology’s Role in Agriculture Many of the implements and devices used during the Civil War had been around for some time, but the presence of cheap labor in the North, as well as the South, kept farmers from taking any real interest in automation. As the Civil War drew thousands of young men and boys away from their homes and farms, it
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Technological Advances in Agriculture and Industry
With thousands of men fighting in the war rather than working in the fields, labor saving technologies, such as steam-driven farm implements, became an important factor in the industrialized North. Whereas Southern agriculture depended on a labor force made unstable by the Emancipation Proclamation, the North improved their productivity by replacing manpower with machine power. Hulton Archive/Getty Images. A John Fowler clip drum.
became clear that labor-saving devices might turn out to be a necessity. Cyrus McCormick’s reaper was developed in the 1830s and mass-produced beginning in the 1840s. It essentially increased the speed of cutting wheat by as much as fivefold. A farmer could clear a 15-acre field of wheat in a day with a McCormick reaper and just eight men. Using sickles or cradles (the older way), the farmer would need fifteen men (Danbom 2006, pp. 110–111). Because of the vast increase in productivity, farmers were able to satisfy the national need for wheat, and also to cater to a growing overseas demand for grains. Just before the Civil War, the United States was exporting eight million bushels of wheat per year; by the middle of the war, that number had risen to 27 million bushels per year (Danbom 2006, p. 111). Other devices that were either created or perfected during the Civil War included improved plows, a corn planting machine, steam-driven threshing machines, and a two-horse cultivator (Catton 1971, p. 172). Those machines that had been driven by oxen in the past were
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now being driven by horses; the streamlined machines called for animals that were themselves more streamlined; faster and more efficient than the reliable but lumbering ox (Danbom 2006, p. 111).
Drawing the Country Closer Together The Union government was concerned with more than mending the rift with the South. Expanding the nation’s boundaries west of the Mississippi was a key concern, and new and existing technology was used to make this goal more reachable. Using relatively new technologies to assist in wartime efforts made those technologies more familiar and also more easy to assimilate into civilian use. The telegraph had been invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844, and its presence during the war provided something that to that point had been impossible to imagine: the ability to send news quickly from one point to another and, in this case, directly from the battlefield. Telegraph operators would travel with the troops and set up their equipment on the battlefield to send news, which could be reviewed by the government and by
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the press. A series of drawings in the January 24, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly shows how the telegraph operators would move their equipment and send telegraphic messages once it was set up safely. During the course of the war, some 1,100 telegraph operators accompanied the troops, a number of which lost their lives along with the soldiers (Plum 1882, p. 376). Photography, still new at the start of the Civil War, proved to be one of the most effective ways of capturing not only the events of the war but also the grim mood of the participants (Mindell 2000, p. 4). Photographers, the best known of which is Mathew Brady, accompanied the troops to the battlefields, often capturing the devastation left behind after particularly brutal fights. Trains helped carry supplies to the troops during the Civil War, and extending rail service to the Pacific coast was considered essential to the economic expansion of the United States. Congress passed two Pacific Railroad Acts during the Civil War, one in 1862 and one in 1864. These acts extended rail service to Sacramento, California and Portland, Oregon. Without these railroads, it is doubtful that the Great Plains would have become an agricultural resource (Danbom 2006, p. 112). Less glamorous, but nonetheless important, inventions also proved their value during the war. Signal flares, used by the U.S. Navy, were the invention of Martha Coston, who carried on the work of her late husband in perfecting the flares’ performance. She patented the flares and sold the rights to the Union government, also acquiring the contract to manufacture the flares (Macdonald 1992, p. 182).
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Although neither side could know it at the time, one legacy of the Civil War was that it served as a catalyst for a new national direction that would increasingly rely on machines and technology for economic growth and expansion. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Army Telegraph: Setting Up the Wire During an Action.’’ Harper’s Weekly, January 24, 1863, p. 53. Catton, Bruce. The Civil War. New York: American Heritage Press, 1971. Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural Life in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Davis, Jefferson. Inaugural Address of President Davis, Delivered at the Capitol, Monday, February 18, 1861, at 1 o’clock, p.m. Montgomery, AL: 1861. Macdonald, Anne L. Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. Mindell, David A. War, Technology, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Plum, William R. The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Company, 1882. Powell, Samuel. Notes on ‘‘Southern Wealth and Northern Profits.’’ Philadelphia: C. P. Sherman and Sons, 1861. Stewart, Gail. The Civil War: Weapons of War. San Diego: Lucent Press, 2000. George A. Milite
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Politics n
Politics Overview
Politics was fundamental to the Civil War. Politics had been the way Americans expressed and dealt with their differences before the Rebels had, in Lincoln’s phrase, appealed ‘‘from the ballot to the bullet.’’ Even during the war itself, most of the goals the two sides sought were political objectives—the maintenance or the establishment of national sovereignty, preserving or revoking the legal status of slavery. The Prussian militarist Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum, ‘‘War is politics carried on by other means,’’ was never more apt than during the American Civil War. During the decades leading up to the war, Americans had expressed their growing sectional differences through national politics. Antislavery Northerners strove to gain enough political power to limit the spread of slavery and make at least that very small start toward a time in the distant future when the ‘‘peculiar institution’’ might be rolled back and finally abolished. On the contrary, proslavery Southerners made it the cornerstone and chief goal of their own politics to protect slavery not only in the states where it already existed, but throughout all the territories of the United States. By prevailing politically, they hoped to make slavery safe from all attempts to abolish it, and also to demonstrate that it was above moral reproach, the accepted and universal policy of the United States. When they failed to achieve these goals politically—when in the presidential election of 1860 they suffered a severe setback in the election of a president pledged to halt the further spread of slavery in the territories—proslavery Southerners waged a successful political campaign within the South aimed at persuading a majority of their fellow Southerners to declare their states no longer part of the United States, and to organize a new slaveholding republic, the Confederate States of America. The average American in the mid-nineteenth century paid more attention to politics than does his counterpart of the early twenty-first. Much of the energy and
excitement that modern Americans derive from, for example, spectator sports, their predecessors in the nineteenth century put into politics. They turned out in large numbers to hear political speeches and cheered vociferously for their candidates. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, crowds stood to listen to the contending politicians for well over two hours at a stretch, and the debates were not unusual in that respect. The spectators reacted intensely to political speeches, and heckling of speakers was not uncommon. During the Civil War the North continued to have a functioning two-party system. The Republicans and Democrats had contended for power in the region before the conflict started, and continued to do so throughout its course. The Democrats were in some ways helped by their temporary separation from the Southern wing of the party, which for years had been the tail that had wagged the Democratic dog. Yet, without the voting strength of the South, the Democrats were unable to win national elections or to gain control of Congress, and even though the proslavery fire-eaters of the South were absent from the party during the war years, the Democrats remained divided. War Democrats, as their name implied, favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, and some of them, such as Tennessee senator Andrew Johnson (1808–1875), came to support the Lincoln administration. Peace Democrats, in contrast, labeled the war both wicked and a failure. Americans ought not to fight other Americans—presumably even if the other Americans had started the shooting—and no one, as far as the Peace Democrats were concerned, ought to fight for the freedom of blacks, whom they preferred to see continue as slaves. In any case, they maintained, the North would never succeed in subduing the South, and therefore the continuance of the conflict was nothing but a waste of life. The government should at once suspend hostilities and open negotiations to make the best deal possible, even if it meant recognizing Confederate independence. Peace Democrats and War Democrats polarized the wartime Democratic Party, and yet members of the party
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during those years did not always fit neatly into one camp or the other. The views of Civil War Democrats ran the gamut from the Peace to the War camps of their party. The Republican Party also had its internal divisions. The Radical Republicans, who tended to dominate the party’s contingent in Congress, favored abolition of slavery and the passage of laws tending to protect the civil rights of the former slaves and even to establish racial equality. They demanded vigorous and ruthless prosecution of the war and appropriate punishment of the traitors who had launched and supported the rebellion. The Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which the Radicals controlled, kept a wary eye on generals who did not seem to display sufficient zeal for the causes of victory and abolition, or who betrayed an undue tenderness for the rights or property of guilty traitors who, as far as the Radicals were concerned, had forfeited both. Conservative or moderate Republicans were no less committed to winning the war, but were more willing to be magnanimous with Rebels who laid down their arms, and more ready to accept at least some measure of gradualism in the changing status of African Americans. Lincoln, who was himself a moderate, balanced precariously throughout the war between that faction and the hard-liners in Congress. He was as skillful a politician as ever occupied the White House, and he used—and needed—all of his political skill in order to keep Northerners politically unified enough to keep fighting the Rebels and not each other. The Confederacy, in contrast, was, as historian George Rable calls it, ‘‘a revolution against politics’’ (Rable 1994). As most white Southerners saw it, politics had failed them, had not secured them their rights, and had allowed them to be outvoted in a nation that had less and less sympathy with their ‘‘peculiar institution.’’ What was needed, they maintained as they founded the new Confederacy, was a government that would not be moved by political forces, but instead would be governed by men who acted solely on the basis of principle, without regard to the tawdry concerns of politics. The irony that secessionist political leaders had used every political trick in the book to bring their states out of the Union and into the new slaveholders’ Confederacy was apparently lost on practically all of them. No one embodied the new Confederate ideal of the principled leader who disdained politics any more than the man they selected as their first and, as it turned out, only president. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi prided himself on those very qualities. Northern senators who had had to contend with him during the years leading up to the war complained that he was self-righteous, proud, and rigid, and the war had not reached its midpoint before many of his fellow Confederates were making the same accusations. Making matters worse was the fact that from the day he was elected
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Confederate president, Davis was a lame duck. Hoping to insulate the presidency from politics, the writers of the Confederate constitution had specified that the president was to be elected to a nonrenewable six-year term. As is the case with any lame-duck president, Davis’s political clout was weakened by the fact that everyone knew he would never head a party’s ticket in any future election. As a further bulwark against the evils of party politics— and because all good Southerners should be united as one in their determination to repel the ‘‘invaders’’— politicians of the new Confederacy gloried in the fact that their republic possessed no political parties, and throughout its history the Confederacy never developed a two-party system. Yet this feature, which Southerners at first touted as another of their many advantages over the despised Yankees, turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Political parties can serve to channel political disagreement into constructive—or at least survivable—courses. The disintegration of the two-party system in the United States during the 1850s had been a harbinger of the impending crisis of the Union. Within the Confederacy, the absence of political parties actually led to increased acrimony in political debate. Without party loyalties to hold them in line, Confederate politicians resorted to bitter personal rhetoric and gauged their support of legislation according to their personal loyalty to—or hatred of—Jefferson Davis. By the latter years of the war, the supporters and opponents of the Confederate president were on their way to becoming a two-party system of their own, but the added rancor lent by the personal nature of their debates had compounded the Confederacy’s difficulties. Despite the problems caused by the Confederacy’s unintentionally chaotic political system and the further problems caused by his own stubborn and undiplomatic nature, Davis succeeded in securing passage of every piece of major legislation he sought, and blocking every one he opposed, up until the closing months of the war. Nonetheless, he could have secured heartier cooperation throughout the Confederate system if he, and it, had used more effectively the methods of politics, distasteful as they could sometimes be. Less than 100 miles north of his capital, Lincoln was even then demonstrating how it could be done. Steven E. Woodworth
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Abolitionists
More than 200 years before the first shot was fired during the American Civil War, early Quaker colonists protested against the institution of slavery in the New World. Their struggle to end the practice of human bondage in the colonies and the United States was called the ‘‘abolitionist movement,’’ and many of the advocates
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of the abolitionist cause were opposed to slavery based on their religious beliefs and moral values. In 1693, Pennsylvania Quakers instituted a policy that its citizens should only purchase African slaves in order to set them free because of their view that slavery, in any form, was abhorrent to their religious beliefs (Horton 2001, p. 35). In his antislavery publication ‘‘All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates’’ (1737), Benjamin Lay (1681–1760) encouraged his fellow Quakers to completely reject the institution of slavery in America. Lay believed that slavery was a morally corrupt institution, and he was vehemently opposed to its continuation in America. Lay declared: [Y]ou that practice Tyranny and Oppression for Slave-keeping is such, he that assumes in arbitrary Manner, unjustly, Dominion over his FellowCreature’s Liberty and Property, contrary to Law, Reason or Equity, He is a wicked sinful Tyrant, guilty of Oppression and great Iniquity: But he that trades in Slaves and the Souls of Men, does so; therefore . . . . Beside, Friends, the very Name of the Tyrant is odious, to God, to good men, yea to bad Men too; and the Nature and Practice is much worse. And Friends, you that follow this forlorn filthy Practice, do you not consider that you are opening the Door to others, or setting them an Example to do the like by you, whenever it shall please the Almighty to suffer them to have power over us, as a Scourge to us for our Sins, what Reason then shall we have to complain. (Lay 1737, pp. 43–44)
Because of Lay’s almost fanatical opposition to slavery and his theatrical stunts that attempted to call attention to the horrors of slavery, many members of Quaker meeting houses banned him from their premises (Soderlund 1985, pp. 14–18). By 1758, Quaker abolitionists condemned slavery at their yearly meeting and decided that any Quakers who participated in the slave trade through buying, selling, or importing slaves would be expelled from the Quaker congregation. Because of the efforts of early abolitionists such as Lay, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780 (Horton 2001, pp. 35–36). One of the earliest African American abolitionists was David Walker (1785–1830), the son of a free black mother and a father who was a slave in North Carolina. Walker was an antislavery advocate who published David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World on September 28, 1829, in Boston. David Walker’s Appeal was one of the earliest and most important abolitionist writings of the time, and it was smuggled into towns and cities across the country. Walker was considered a dangerous man: He encouraged slaves to rebel against their masters by running away, insurrection, or by whatever means necessary, including outright rebellion and violence, to obtain their own freedom and to bring down
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the institution of slavery (Hinks 1997, pp. 237–240). He wrote: [I]f you commence, make sure work—do not trifle, for they will not trifle with you—they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us to that wretched condition— therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. Now, I ask you, had you not rather be killed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the life of your mother, wife, and dear little children? Look upon your mother, wife and children, and answer God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; in fact, the man who will stand still and let another murder him, is worse than an infidel, and, if he has common sense, ought not to be pitied. (Walker 1830, pp. 29–30)
Walker warned white slave owners and all white citizens of the United States that it would be better to free the African American slaves than to wait for them to free themselves; slaves eventually would be free, no matter what their white masters did to try to impede their efforts: Remember Americans, that we must and shall be free and enlightened as you are, will you wait until we shall, under God, obtain our liberty by the crushing arm of power? Will it not be dreadful for you? I speak Americans for your good. We must and shall be free I say, in spite of you. You may do your best to keep us in wretchedness and misery, to enrich you and your children, but God will deliver us from under you. And wo (sic), wo (sic), will be to you if we have to obtain our freedom by fighting. Throw away your fears and prejudices then, and enlighten us and treat us like men, and we will like you more than we do now hate you. You are not astonished at my saying we hate you, for if we are men we cannot but hate you, while you are treating us like dogs and tell us now no more about colonization, for America is as much our country, as it is yours. (Walker 1830, pp. 79–80)
In his Appeal, Walker also encouraged white Americans to end the institution of slavery in a peaceful way so that people of European and African descent could live together harmoniously: —Treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness together. For we are not like you, hard hearted, unmerciful, and unforgiving. What a happy country this will be, if the whites will listen . . . But Americans, I declare to you, while you keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support you and your families, we cannot be your friends. You do not look for it, do you? Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will become a united and
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Abolitionists happy people. The whites may say it is impossible, but remember that nothing is impossible with God. (Walker 1830, p. 80)
Walker’s words were thought to be incendiary and seditious, and a reward was posted for his capture, dead or alive, by Southerners in the slaveholding states. The Appeal encouraged slave rebellions and incidents of slaves standing up to their masters, and it is considered to be one of the most important works of antislavery literature written by a black abolitionist.
Impact of Antebellum Abolitionists on the Civil War During the 200 years that slavery was legal in the American colonies and the United States, European Americans, as well as free and enslaved black people, struggled to bring an end to the institution of slavery. White citizen activists used methods different from blacks’, including individual and group protests, legal actions in the courts, or appeals to state and federal governmental actors who were sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. None of these approaches was entirely effective on its own, but in combination with other means, their efforts were the driving impetus that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, and the eventual abolition of slavery completely after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The abolitionist movement in the United States included both white and black members, although most historical accounts focus mainly on the efforts of wellknown African Americans such as Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), an escaped slave and abolitionist. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became associated with the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805– 1879) and worked with him and other white abolitionists to spread the word about the evils of slavery in the United States. Douglass had a unique perspective as an abolitionist because he was an African American former slave and had personally experienced the horrors of slavery. He was strongly influenced by Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper the Liberator, and although he preferred a peaceful solution to the slavery problem, he knew that a totally nonviolent approach probably would not be possible in the Southern slaveholding states. Douglass, Garrison, and other antislavery advocates resolved to hold 100 conventions in one year to help spread the abolitionist message. According to Douglass: The year 1843 was one of remarkable anti-slavery activity. The New England Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting, held in the spring of that year, resolved, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his friends, to hold a series of one hundred conventions. The territory embraced in this plan for creating anti-slavery sentiment included New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. I had the honor to be chosen one of the agents to assist in these proposed
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conventions, and I never entered upon any work with more heart and hope. All that the American people needed, I thought, was light. Could they know slavery as I knew it, they would hasten to the work of its extinction. (Douglass 1881, p. 229)
In addition to his other abolitionist work, from 1847 to 1863 Douglass published the North Star newspaper. Its mission was to work to ‘‘abolish slavery in all its forms and aspects, advocate universal emancipation, exalt the standard of public morality, and promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people, and hasten the day of freedom to the Three Millions of our enslaved fellow countrymen’’ (Douglass 1881, p. 233). Many of Douglass’s and Garrison’s writings induced the men and women of America to fight to abolish slavery permanently in the United States, at any cost. Garrison believed that the United States should abolish slavery immediately, and one solution would be to separate the Southern slaveholding states and the Northern antislavery states (Richman 1981, pp. 328–329). One of the most active abolitionist organizations in the United States during the pre–Civil War period was the American Anti-Slavery Society. Antislavery activists, including Garrison and Arthur and Lewis Tappan, established the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 to campaign for the eradication of slavery in the United States. Its members included prominent members of Philadelphia society, and its goal was to end slavery through legal and peaceful methods, though some of its members advocated revolution as a means to end the abominable practice. Article III of the American Anti-Slavery Society provided: The objects of this society are the entire abolition of slavery in the United States. While it admits that each State in which slavery exists has, by the constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned require its immediate abandonment, without expatriation. The society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slave trade, and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common country which come under its control, especially in the District of Columbia, and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any State that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. (Garrison 1833)
Some abolitionists favored the use of any means necessary to end slavery in the United States, including violent slave uprisings and rebellions, and direct confrontation with the proslavery forces in American society. Some of these antislavery advocates planned slave insurrections and collaborations between abolitionist whites,
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Abolitionists to the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them a sense of their manhood. No people he said could have self respect, or be respected, who would not fight for their freedom. (Douglass 1881, pp. 279–280)
Most other religious abolitionists favored peaceful resolution of the issue of slavery. For example, William Henry Furness (1828–1867) was a Philadelphia minister who favored using peaceful methods to hasten the end of slavery and maintaining the union between the slaveholding and free U.S. states. In an 1860 speech he declared: [I]f Slavery be peacefully abolished,—and most earnestly do I pray that it may be so abolished, and only so,—for no other than a peaceful abolition of it, would I ever lift a finger or breathe a word, for no other could be really successful: if, I say, Slavery is peacefully abolished, it will only be through the united effort of the whole people of the land. And, being united in the accomplishment of so humane a work, the people will naturally, and almost unconsciously, have a bond of union formed between them all, so strong that no geographical divisions, no diversity of their lesser interests, will be able to break it. (Furness 1860, p. 9)
Famous abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859). John Brown was a religious man who considered slavery immoral and in direct conflict with the Bible. He was one of the most famous of abolitionists who believed in using any means necessary to stop slavery, including violence and confrontations with those who supported the institution. National Archives & Records Administration.
free blacks, and African slaves (Higginbotham 1980, pp. 26–30). These actions were partly responsible for precipitating the Civil War, and had a direct and lasting impact on both proslavery and antislavery Americans. One of the most famous proponents of this approach was John Brown (1800–1859), a religious man who vehemently believed that slavery was an abomination that violated biblical precepts. Douglass met Brown in 1847 and later described Brown’s mission to fight slavery at any cost, even if he had to kill slave owners: He denounced slavery in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain their liberty in any way they could, did not believe that moral suasion would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish the system.. . . An insurrection he thought would only defeat the object, but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force which should act in the very heart of the south. He was not averse
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Some moderate antislavery activists believed that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be the best legal method to abolish slavery, but it was an unlikely solution because of the number of proslavery legislators in Congress: It would be impossible to get Congress to vote for its passage and the president to ratify the amendment. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips (1811– 1884), a colleague of Garrison’s, said that ‘‘[t]he distant hope of Constitutional amendment not only allows but makes it necessary that we should remain in The Union, performing its sinful requirements while they continue the law of the land, in order to effect our object’’ (Richman 1981, p. 328).
Positive Outcomes The infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court case (1857) galvanized the abolitionist movement and helped to precipitate to the Civil War. In the decision, Chief Justice Taney wrote that a black person, whether free or slave, could not be a citizen of the United States, and that blacks were ‘‘so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’’ The decision also declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, thereby allowing the expansion of slavery into the western territories. The written opinion of Chief Justice Taney, a former slave owner from Maryland, so inflamed both antislavery and proslavery forces that it eventually led to bloody conflicts in Kansas and, in the end, the Civil War (Simon 2006, pp. 1, 9). On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation
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Act. This law made slavery illegal in Washington, DC. It was the first time that the U.S. government had taken any legislative action to abolish slavery. Lincoln freed the slaves in the slaveholding states when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Ultimately, after the end of the Civil War, Congress passed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, effectively abolishing slavery in the United States and entitling African Americans to enjoy the rights and privileges of American citizenship. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapman, Maria Weston. ‘‘‘How Can I Help Abolish Slavery?’ or, Counsels to the Newly Converted.’’ Antislavery Tracts No. 14, New York: Office of the American Antislavery Society, 1855. Available from the Antislavery Literature Project of Arizona State University, http://antislavery.eserver.org/tracts/. Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time. Hartford, CT: Park Publishing, 1881. Available from Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, http:// docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglasslife/. Foster, Stephen Symons. ‘‘Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery.’’ Antislavery Tracts No. 7. New York: Office of the American Antislavery Society, 1855. Available from the Antislavery Literature Project of Arizona State University, http:// antislavery.eserver.org/tracts/. Furness, W. H. ‘‘The Blessings of Abolition: A Discourse Delivered in the First Congregational Unitarian Church.’’ Sunday, July 1, 1860. Philadelphia: C. Sherman and Sons, 1860. Available from the Antislavery Literature Project of Arizona State University, http://antislavery.eserver.org/ religious/. Garrison, William Lloyd. ‘‘The Declaration of the National Anti-slavery Convention.’’ The Liberator, Philadelphia, December 14, 1833. Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr. In the Matter of Color, Race, and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Hinks, Peter P. To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
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Lay, Benjamin. ‘‘All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates.’’ Philadelphia: Author, 1737. Available from the Antislavery Literature Project of Arizona State University, http://antislavery.eserver.org/religious/. Richman, Sheldon. ‘‘The Antiwar Abolitionists: The Peace Movement’s Split Over the Civil War.’’ Journal of Libertarian Studies 5, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 327–340. Simon, James F. Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States Of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts. September 28, 1829. Boston: Author, 1830. Jocelyn M. Cuffee
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Civil Liberties and Censorship
Civil liberties is a general term that refers to freedoms protecting individuals from arbitrary interference by government. The phrase itself was first used in England around 1644, but the concept goes back further in English law to Magna Carta (the ‘‘Great Charter,’’ 1215), a document that King John (1166–1216) was forced to sign by the barons of England that imposed limitations on his powers as monarch. In particular, the king gave up the power to imprison people without a trial, to seize people’s lands as he pleased, or to raise taxes without ‘‘the common consent of the kingdom’’ (Magna Carta 1215). Civil liberties as understood in the twenty-first century includes such freedoms as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the right to a speedy and fair trial, and the right of due process. In American law, the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution, proposed by James Madison in 1789 and ratified by three-quarters of the states in 1791—is considered the foundational document of civil liberties in the United States.
Lincoln’s Suspension of Habeas Corpus The Civil War was the first period in American history in which the scope and extent of civil liberties in the United States became a matter of open disagreement between the executive branch of the federal government (the President) and the judicial branch (the Supreme Court). The dispute was precipitated in 1861 by Lincoln’s
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Civil Liberties and Censorship together with the day and cause of his [her] caption and detention, you safely have before Honorable [judge’s name and judicial district], within the circuit and district aforesaid, to do and receive all and singular those things which the said judge shall then and there consider of him [her] in this behalf; and have you then and there this writ.
President Lincoln’s secretary of war, E. M. Stanton (1814– 1869). E. M. Stanton was the secretary of war for President
Lincoln during the time of the Civil War. In this position, he ordered in 1862 that habeas corpus be suspended for a variety of crimes for both civilians and soldiers, including Lambdin P. Milligan (1812–1899). MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
suspension of habeas corpus, which can be briefly defined as a citizen’s right to petition for relief from unlawful detention or imprisonment (of themselves or another person). To make use of habeas corpus, the petitioner asks for a writ (a legal order issued by a court) of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, to use the technical legal phrase. The Latin words go back to the Middle Ages and are a command issued in the monarch’s name to a lower court or officer holding someone in custody to present that individual before a judge or higher court. Thus habeas corpus is essentially a procedure to examine the legality of someone’s detention or imprisonment. Articles 36 and 38 through 40 of the Magna Carta are usually considered to be the foundation of habeas corpus in English law, although the phrase itself was not used until 1305, in the reign of King Edward I (1239–1307). The customary form of words used in American law for a writ of habeas corpus is as follows: We command you that the body of [person’s name], in your custody detained, as it is said,
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Habeas corpus is mentioned in the Constitution of the United States in Article One, Section 9, also known as the Suspension Clause: ‘‘The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.’’ It was Lincoln’s use of the Suspension Clause in 1861 that brought him into conflict with the Supreme Court—in particular, with Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777–1864). Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland on April 27, 1861, as a response to riots in the city of Baltimore that broke out when the first Union troops arrived in the city in response to Lincoln’s call for volunteers. In addition to the breakdown of public order, Lincoln was concerned that Maryland might secede and join the Confederacy, which would leave the federal capital surrounded by enemy territory. He had also received requests from several Union generals to set up military courts in order to deal with Copperhead Democrats and supporters of the Confederacy living in Union states. Lincoln’s order of suspension was carried out by General Winfield Scott: HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, April 27, 1861. The undersigned, General-in-Chief of the Army, has received from the President of the United States the following communication: COMMANDING GENERAL ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES: You are engaged in repressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of the military line which is now used between the city of Philadelphia via Perryville, Annapolis City and Annapolis Junction you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety, you personally or through the officer in command at the point where resistance occurs are authorized to suspend that writ. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. In accordance with the foregoing warrant the undersigned devolves on Major-General Patterson, commanding the Department of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland; Brigadier-General Butler, commanding the Department of Annapolis, and Colonel Mansfield, commanding the Washington Department, a like authority each within the limits of his command to execute in all proper cases the instructions of the President. WINFIELD SCOTT. (Lincoln 1861a)
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In December 1861, Lincoln extended the suspension of habeas corpus to Missouri, addressing his order to Major General Henry Halleck (Lincoln 1861c).
Ex parte Merryman (1861) Ex parte Merryman is a case that came before Chief Justice Roger Taney in his capacity as a Maryland circuit judge in the early summer of 1861, after Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus in Maryland. Ex parte is a legal term that means ‘‘from one party [to the case] only.’’ Among other legal applications, ex parte is traditionally used with the names of petitioners for a writ of habeas corpus. John Merryman was an officer in the Maryland cavalry who assisted in ejecting a Union general from Baltimore and in blowing up several railroad bridges to prevent the movement of additional Union troops into the city in April 1861. Merryman was seized by Union troops several weeks later and held in Fort McHenry outside Baltimore. He immediately petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus. The following day, Chief Justice Taney, who was sitting as a circuit judge for the Baltimore circuit (Supreme Court justices acted as circuit judges when the Supreme Court was not in session—until 1869, when the practice was abolished), ordered the government to show just cause for Merryman’s detention. When Taney was informed that Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus (a decision that had been kept secret at first), he issued a judicial opinion to the effect that the President acting alone does not have the constitutional authority to suspend the right; only Congress can put the Suspension Clause into effect. The question as to whether only Congress has the authority to suspend habeas corpus, however, has not been definitively decided as of the early 2000s (Rehnquist 2000b). Using President Andrew Jackson’s defiance of a former Chief Justice, John Marshall, as precedent, Lincoln simply ignored Taney’s opinion that Merryman was illegally confined. On July 4, however, Lincoln justified his actions before Congress gathered in special session: Soon after the first call for militia it was considered a duty to authorize the commanding general in proper cases according to his discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus . . . This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly. Nevertheless the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ should not himself violate them [but] the whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made
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in such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? (Lincoln 1861b)
Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in order to preserve the Union continues to be one of the most controversial executive decisions in American history (Rehnquist 2000a).
Ex parte Milligan (1866) Ex parte Milligan was another landmark civil liberties case that emerged from the Civil War. Lambdin P. Milligan (1812–1899) was a lawyer and Confederate sympathizer from Indiana who was accused in 1864, along with four other men, of conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States and conspiracy to aid the Southern rebellion. Part of the plot involved seizing a federal arsenal in order to raid a military camp near Chicago that held Confederate prisoners of war. One of the defendants turned state’s evidence against the others, who were sentenced to death by hanging by a military court in the fall of 1864. The reason why Milligan and his co-defendants had been tried by a military rather than a civil court is that Edwin Stanton had ordered, in his capacity as Secretary of War in 1862, that habeas corpus be suspended for people accused of various crimes even if they were civilians. In addition, Stanton’s proclamations ordered such persons to be tried before military commissions rather than civil courts. This provision meant not only that the accused could be detained for long periods of time but also that such procedural rights guaranteed by the Constitution as the right to a jury trial would be denied. Stanton justified his actions on the basis of an old Roman maxim, Inter arma silent leges, which can be loosely translated as ‘‘When the guns speak, the [civil] laws must keep quiet.’’ If Lincoln had not been assassinated in April 1865, it is highly likely that he would have set aside the death sentence imposed on Milligan and the others by the military court (Rehnquist 1996, p. 8). By the time of the Indianapolis treason trials, as they were known, Sherman was completing his march through Georgia, the end of the war was in sight, and the public mood was shifting toward clemency rather than harshness toward those accused of treason. Andrew Johnson, who became President on Lincoln’s death, intended to have the death sentence imposed in 1864 carried out in May 1865. At this point, however, Milligan and the other defendants petitioned the federal court in Indianapolis for a writ of habeas corpus. In January 1866, the case came before the Supreme Court under the title of Ex parte Milligan. The defendants were ably represented by a future president, James A. Garfield, who
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argued that even in wartime civilians should not be tried by military courts as long as the civil courts are open for business. The majority opinion of the Court contained a famous passage: The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority. (Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. [4 Wall.] 2, 120–121, 1866)
Censorship of the Press in the North Censorship in general refers to the examination of letters, print matter, or other media in order to remove materials considered morally harmful or politically sensitive. The term comes from the period of the Roman Republic (443–22 BC), in which the censors were magistrates of high rank responsible for taking a periodic census and for supervising public morality. The American Civil War was the first conflict in the nation’s history in which some censorship of the press in both North and South was justified on the grounds of military necessity. This necessity in turn was the byproduct of changes in technology and communications which had led to the rapid growth of popular newspapers in the 1830s and 1840s. The invention of the electric telegraph in 1838 by Samuel F. B. Morse (who gave his name to the Morse code alphabet devised by his assistant, Alfred Vail) made it feasible—and profitable— for newspaper owners to hire reporters and correspondents in distant cities to write and transmit local news stories via telegrams. By 1858 the construction of a transatlantic telegraph cable made it possible to set up news bureaus overseas, and by 1861 there was a telegraph line from New York to San Francisco, part of a 50,000-mile network crisscrossing the United States (Harris 1999). In addition to the increased speed of news transmission, the use of woodcut illustrations—direct reproduction of daguerrotypes or photographs was not possible with the printing presses of the 1860s—greatly increased the visual appeal of American newspapers. As the number of subscriptions rose, newspapers began to pay their top-level employees handsome salaries; by 1861, one upper-level manager at the New York Herald was paid more than the members of Lincoln’s cabinet (Harris 1999, p. 27). The fact that newspapers had become a major industry helps to explain why censorship of the
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press during the Civil War was a touchy issue. In addition, the nation had no precedents to guide either the press or the government in handling such questions as reporting on troop recruitment or movement (Sears 1994, p. 17). Newspaper correspondents had little experience, let alone training, in discriminating between genuine news and ‘‘chin music’’—gossip or local hearsay (Sears 1994, p. 18). There were two major considerations that guided Northern officials in their censorship of the press. The first was the possibility that reporters would assist the enemy by revealing secret military information. One motivation for so doing was financial rather than political, however; some reporters hoped to boost their newspaper’s subscription base (and their own salaries) by printing information before their rivals could obtain it. The editor of Harper’s Weekly commented on economic as well as political motives for publishing military secrets in the spring of 1862: A censorship of the press is one of the temporary inconveniences which the present unexampled rebellion has involved. At the outbreak of the war there were throughout the North journals conducted by unprincipled men which were prepared deliberately to afford aid and comfort to the enemy. Ever since then there have been journals which, without the excuse of rebel sympathies, have been willing to betray strategical secrets, in order to outstrip their rivals in the publication of military and naval intelligence. The only means of checking the one and the other was a press censorship, and it is to the credit of Mr. LINCOLN that he did not hesitate to establish it. (May 17, 1862)
A second potential problem was the effect on public morale, were the press to expose some of the government’s dirty laundry, so to speak. This concern was not groundless; one of the earliest European war correspondents, William Howard Russell (1821–1907) of the London Times, was credited with forcing the resignation of the British government during the Crimean War (1853–1856) by his candid accounts of the poor training and leadership of the British troops sent to the Crimea. As it turned out, the Times sent Russell to cover the opening months of the American Civil War in 1861. When Russell’s account of the Union defeat at Bull Run as ‘‘a miserable, causeless panic’’ accompanied by ‘‘scandalous behavior’’ reached the Northern public, the British reporter received threatening letters. His press credentials were revoked in 1862 and he returned to London shortly afterward (Sears 1994, p. 18). Newspaper censorship in the North passed through several stages. At the beginning of the war, Generalin-Chief Winfield Scott declared that the Washington telegraph office would no longer carry dispatches related to military information that had not first been approved by the commanding generals or admirals. The Confederate government in Richmond took the
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THE GENERAL AND THE JOURNALIST Although relations between military commanders and newspaper reporters during the Civil War could be disharmonious, few generals were as hostile to the press as William T. Sherman. Newspaper correspondents believed that the First Amendment gave them complete freedom to report whatever they wished; Sherman, on the other hand, was infuriated when newspapers printed Union orders of battle and other sensitive military information prior to combat. In addition to giving away troop movements and positions, some reporters helped to spread rumors that Sherman was mentally ill. A reporter for the New York Tribune once remarked that ‘‘being a cat in hell without claws is nothing to [being] a reporter in General Sherman’s army’’ (Brown 2004). On one occasion, a field correspondent for the New York Herald named Thomas Knox published an account of the Union defeat at Chickasaw Bluffs in 1862 in direct defiance of Sherman’s orders calling for secrecy. Upon receiving a copy of Knox’s article from a Union naval officer, Sherman responded: The spirit of anarchy seems deep at work at the North, more alarming than the batteries that shell us from the opposite shore. I am going to have the correspondent of the New York Herald tried by court-martial as a spy, not that I want the fellow shot, but because I want to establish the principle that such people cannot attend our armies, in violation of orders, and defy us, publishing their garbled statements defaming officers who are doing their best, and giving information to the enemy. You of the Navy can control all who sail under your flag, whilst we of the Army are almost compelled to carry along in our midst a class of men who on government transports usurp the best accommodations on the boats ... and report their limited and tainted observations as the history of events they neither see nor comprehend. (U.S. Naval War Records 1911, p. 234) Knox was duly court-martialed and sentenced to banishment from the Union’s western theater of operations. He and his newspaper appealed to President Lincoln, who offered to revoke the court’s sentence, provided that Grant, Sherman’s superior, was
same step. Scott did not, however, impose direct controls on the reporters’ mail or on what they sent back to their editors. Edwin Stanton (1814–1869), who became Lincoln’s Secretary of War in January 1862, moved government censorship of the press to a higher level by putting all telegraph lines in Union territory, not just those coming out of Washington, under the direct control of the War Department. Moreover, war correspondents were required to sign formal pledges not to publish any material on restricted topics. Stanton was criticized heavily by the New York Times and other Northern newspapers for his gag orders; in addition, the news blackout undermined the administration’s credibility by fueling the
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willing to allow Knox to return to Union headquarters near Vicksburg. In a letter to Knox, Grant refused permission ‘‘unless General Sherman first gives his consent to your remaining’’ (Bowman 1865, p. 450). Knox then sent Lincoln and Grant’s letters to Sherman, along with a written request for permission to remain. Sherman’s reply was forthright: After having enunciated to me that newspaper correspondents were a fraternity bound together by a common interest that must write down all who stood in their way, and that you had to supply the public demand for news, true if possible, but false if your interests demanded it, I cannot be privy to a tacit acknowledgement of the principle. Come with sword or musket in your hand, prepared to share with us our fate in sunshine and storm, in prosperity and adversity, in plenty and scarcity, and I will welcome you as a brother and associate; but come as you now do, expecting me to ally the reputation and honor of my country and my fellow soldiers with you, as the representative of the press, which you yourself say makes so slight a difference between truth and falsehood, and my answer is, NEVER. (U.S. Congressional Serial Set 1887, p. 895) Knox left the Vicksburg theater immediately and never returned. REBECCA J. FREY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowman, Samuel Millard, and Richard Biddle Irwin. Sherman and His Campaigns: A Military Biography. New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1865. Brown, Dale E. ‘‘Sherman and the Reporter.’’ Parameters (Autumn 2004). U.S. Congressional Serial Set. Miscellaneous Documents. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1887. U.S. Naval War Records. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series 1, vol. 24. January 1–May 17, 1863. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911.
growth of wild rumors about plots to overthrow the government in Washington and similar conspiracy theories (Sears 1994, p. 21)
Military Censorship of Journalists The third stage of press censorship in the North was a series of decisions taken by individual Union commanders to ban newspaper correspondents from their camps. Although General Sherman’s hostility to ‘‘the set of dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan’’ is well known, other generals were equally distrustful of reporters (Sears 1994, p. 16). General Henry Halleck, the senior commander of the Union forces at the Battle of Shiloh, set the precedent of
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banning newspaper reporters—these ‘‘unauthorized hangerson’’—from his camp on May 13, 1862 (Sears 1994, p. 22). And although Sherman’s 1863 court martial of Thomas Knox, a reporter for the New York Herald, is the best-known instance of the army’s suspicious attitude toward the press (Brown 2004), there were other instances of Union generals getting even with reporters who aroused their anger. In 1864, General George Meade not only expelled Edward Crapsey, a correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, from his camp, but had the unfortunate reporter mounted on a mule and paraded around the camp wearing a placard that read ‘‘Libeler of the Press’’ while the regimental band played the ‘‘Rogue’s March’’ (Finney 2003).
Censorship of the Press in the Confederacy Most of the conflicts between freedom of the press and strategic military considerations were fought out in the Northern newspapers. There were two reasons for the relatively low level of press censorship in the South: the impact of the war on the size and frequency of publication of Southern newspapers; and consistent support for the Confederate government on the part of newspaper editors. With regard to the first factor, the South had only half as many newspapers as the North in 1861 and only a quarter of the Northern papers’ circulation (Harris 1999, p. 12). Several major Southern newspapers ceased publication entirely during the war. The others dwindled from four to two pages per issue as a result of shortages of reporters as well as newsprint, as the South drafted more and more categories of able-bodied men for military service (Sears 1994, p. 19). With regard to the second factor, few Southern editors took an oppositional stance toward the government in Richmond. Their support stood in sharp contrast to the adversarial attitude of many Northern newspapers toward the Lincoln administration, particularly such stridently Democratic newspapers as the Chicago Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the New York World (Harris 1999, p. 22). As an example of the generally cooperative position of the Southern press, the editor of the Charleston (SC) Mercury sent the paper’s correspondent in Richmond the following instructions in early 1862: ‘‘Be therefore, I suggest, as amiable as consistent with truth . . . [and present] as much as possible of the bright side of things’’ (Sears 1994, p. 19).
Finney, Torin R. ‘‘Reporting the American Civil War.’’ First posted 2003; available online at The Bohemian Brigade [Civil War re-enactors who portray newspaper correspondents], http:// www.bohemianbrigade.com/. Harris, Brayton. Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999. Lincoln, Abraham. Message to Congress, July 4, 1861. In The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series IV, I, pp. 311–321. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901. Available online at http://facweb. furman.edu/benson/docs/lincoln.htm. Lincoln, Abraham. Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus relating to the events in Baltimore. Washington, DC: Headquarters of the Army, April 27, 1861. Available online at http:// www.civilwarhome.com/. Lincoln, Abraham. Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus relating to the events in Missouri. Washington, DC: Headquarters of the Army, December 2, 1861. Available online at http:// www.civilwarhome.com/. Magna Carta (1215). Modern English translation with annotations available online at Sources of English Constitutional Law, http://www. constitution.org/. Rehnquist, William H. All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime. New York: Random House, 2000. Rehnquist, William H. ‘‘Civil Liberty and the Civil War: The Indianapolis Treason Trials.’’ Remarks delivered at the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, October 28, 1996. Available online at http://social. chass.ncsu.edu/. Rehnquist, William H. Remarks at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association, Norfolk, Virginia, May 3, 2000. Available online at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/. Sears, Stephen W. ‘‘The First News Blackout.’’ Civil War Chronicles (Winter 1994): 16–23. Taney, Roger B. Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Available online at http:// www.tourolaw.edu/. Rebecca J. Frey
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Dale E. ‘‘Sherman and the Reporter.’’ Parameters, U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Autumn 2004, inside back cover. ‘‘The Censorship of the Press.’’ Harper’s Weekly, May 17, 1862, p. 306. Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866). Available online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/.
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The election of 1860 did much to increase the inevitability of civil war. An article published in the Charleston Mercury on November 17, 1856, conveyed South Carolina’s apprehensions about the new presidential election
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cycle: ‘‘The Presidential contest of 1856 is ended, and that of 1860 has just commenced. The struggle for the Presidency is over, and James Buchanan is elected, but the issues involved in the contest are not yet settled. These are yet in the womb of the future, and what the next four years may bring forth, we must wait and see, hoping for the best while we should be forearmed against the worst.’’ The debates that shaped the election of 1860 comprised a referendum on the nation’s past, present, and future. And the election’s outcome stood to affect the daily lives of millions of Americans, as the future prospects for a united nation hung in the balance.
Parties and Candidates On November 6, 1860, approximately 81 percent of eligible voters in America went to the polls to cast their ballot in support of one of four national candidates for president. In reality, none of the four could truly call themselves a national candidate. During the 1850s, congressional debates over the future expansion of slavery had increasingly divided the nation into slaveholding and non-slaveholding sections. At the beginning of the 1860 election, the Democrats were the only party with a national constituency—but they too would soon splinter. American politics has been dominated by a twoparty system throughout most of its history. During the antebellum period, the Whig and Democratic parties vied for national supremacy until the former collapsed during the early 1850s due to sectional strife within the party. Some mourned the Whig Party’s demise; for example, the editor of The Weekly Raleigh Register (North Carolina) asserted, ‘‘The Whig party more than once had saved the country from impending ruin, in 1820, 1832, and in 1850. Without Henry Clay where would we have been?’’ (March 8, 1854). As the Democratic Party splintered and the Republican Party gained additional support among Northern voters, former Whig and Know-Nothing Party members formed a new Constitutional Union Party. During their May convention, the delegates nominated John Bell of Tennessee as their presidential candidate. The party’s ticket also included the famed orator and former Whig, William Everett of Massachusetts. The Constitutional Union Party had constituents in most Southern communities, but their principal base of support came from Upper South states that longed for the days of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and wanted to resolve the nation’s sectional tensions. Although the Constitutional Union Party had no chance of seeing its candidate elected, it sill had enough influence to shape the outcome of both the Republican and Democratic Conventions. Republicans sought a moderate candidate who would appeal to former Whigs and Know-Nothing Party members in the North. Southern Democrats, already distrustful of Northern Democrats, wanted to select a candidate
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who would force Southerners to take a stand on what they considered to be the key election issues. They worried that a more moderate stance might attract additional voters into the Constitutional Union Party fold. Left without a national party, many Southern former Whigs reluctantly entered into the Democratic fold, whereas in the North, the collapse of the Whig Party gave rise to a new national party, the Republican Party. Founded in 1854, the Republican Party was from its earliest beginnings a sectional party supported by an unprecedented coalition of abolitionists, free-soilers, free laborers, former Northern Democrats, and former Northern Whigs. In 1856 the party ran its first presidential campaign, nominating John C. Fre´mont, a famed explorer, military officer, and one-time senator and governor of California, as its candidate. While Fre´mont lost that election, his party’s strong showing among the New England and upper Midwestern states, and its victory over the American-Know NothingWhig Party candidate, Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States, showed that it could successfully attract voters in areas that had once been Democratic Party strongholds. During the 1858 congressional elections, Abraham Lincoln, a little-known Illinois lawyer, former Whig, and one-term congressman, attracted national attention as the state’s Republican Party candidate, running to unseat six-term Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln’s ‘‘House Divided Speech,’’ given following his acceptance as the party’s candidate for the Senate, expressed the sentiments of both the party and its growing number of supporters. ‘‘I believe this government cannot endure,’’ declared Lincoln, ‘‘permanently half slave and half free. . . . Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all states, old as well as new—North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition?’’ (Basler, 1953, vol. 2, pp. 461– 462). Even though Douglas emerged victorious from that campaign, Lincoln’s well-fought challenge attracted the attention of the national Republican Party. Lincoln’s ‘‘Cooper Union Speech,’’ delivered in February of 1860, further enhanced his newfound position as party spokesperson. ‘‘If [slavery] is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension— its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them?’’ (Basler, 1953, vol. 3, p. 549).
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A piece of campaign propaganda from the election of 1860. A former senator from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin served as Abraham Lincoln’s vice presidential running mate in the 1860 election. Both men supported the idea that laws for slavery should be consistent throughout the entire United States. The Library of Congress.
When the Republican Party met in Chicago in June 1860 to nominate a presidential candidate, the initial frontrunner was New York Senator William H. Seward, but his bid lost momentum as the members began to see the need for a less polarizing figure. Two years earlier, during a speech delivered in Rochester, New York, Seward had referred to the nation’s sectional crisis as an ‘‘irrepressible conflict.’’ Democrats cast Seward as a radical whose abolitionist zeal would bring the country to
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war. Northern voters did not see Lincoln as a radical. Indeed, his views on slavery, sectionalism, secession, and numerous other issues, as displayed during the LincolnDouglas debates (1858), appeared to be quite amorphous. On the issue of slavery, Lincoln’s support of Congress’s power to prohibit slavery in the territories permanently alienated Southern voters. Many Northern farmers who saw slavery as a threat to free labor shared Lincoln’s views, however. While Northern farmers and
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industrial workers alike feared that emancipation might drive down wages and create massive unemployment, their anxieties were calmed by Lincoln’s assurances that he would uphold the slaveholder’s constitutional rights where the institution currently existed. Lincoln’s nomination was also the result of the party’s pragmatism. Republicans needed to win Illinois, a Democratic stronghold. Lincoln, rather than Seward, most appealed to Midwestern voters. While the Democratic Party was still a national party at the start of the 1860 election, finding a candidate who could appease its Northern and Southern constituents proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States, did not seek a second term. Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas seemed to be the party’s leading potential candidate. Douglas had spent the better part of his life preparing to become president. But his popularity had waned among Northern and Southern voters during the late 1850s. In the North, many believed that Douglas’s support of popular sovereignty catered to Southern interests. On March 1854 a crowd in Cleveland, angered by Douglas’s role in the proposed territorial expansion of slavery, hung ‘‘an effigy of Senator Douglas . . . with the words, ‘Stephen Arnold Douglas, hung for treason,’ attached’’ (Daily Cleveland Herald, March 24, 1854). At the same time, statements made by Douglas during the 1858 senate campaign had alienated large segments of Southern voters. During a debate with Lincoln held in Freeport, Illinois, Douglas argued ‘‘the people have the lawful means to introduce it [slavery] or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations’’ (August 27, 1858). His views became known as the Freeport Doctrine. This version of popular sovereignty angered Southerners, who argued that the Constitution protected a slaveholder’s right to transport his property anywhere in the country. National events further divided the Democrats. In October of 1859, the abolitionist John Brown led an attack on a Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown intended to capture the arsenal’s weapons and distribute them to slaves along the Shenandoah Valley, thus inciting a massive slave rebellion. Though his plan failed, Southerners saw the scheme as a product of Northern abolitionism and the Republican Party. Despite Northern Democrats’ (as well as many Republicans’) condemnation of Brown’s actions, large numbers of their Southern counterparts entered the 1860 election season convinced that Northern interests threatened slavery and the Southern way of life. In February of 1860, two months prior to the scheduled Democratic National Convention, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi prepared a series of resolutions that became the Southern platform. Davis, who later served as the President of the Confederate States
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of America, called for the adoption of a federal slave code as a means of enforcing the recent Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s decision argued that Congress lacked the power to restrict slavery in federal territories. Davis now wanted a federal slave code that would ensure slaveholders’ right to transport their slaves wherever they pleased. The Southernsponsored federal slave code was a direct response to Douglas’s Freeport Doctrine. Southern Democrats made it clear that if Douglas did not endorse a federal slave code, they would block his nomination. When the national party convention convened at South Carolina Institute Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23 through May 3, 1860, Douglas and other Northern Democrats staunchly refused to include a federal slave code in their party platform, asserting that its insertion would alienate their Northern constituents. When Douglas’s supporters rejected the Southern platform, a party of Deep South delegates, along with a handful of Upper South members, protested by walking out of the convention. The Alabama delegate and renowned ‘‘fire-eater’’ William Lowndes Yancey declared that the South was as a minority whose rights had been trampled upon by rising industrial powers. We have come here, with the twofold purpose of saving the country and of saving the Democracy; and if the Democracy will not lend itself to that high, holy and elevated purpose [,] . . . it will be our duty to go forth and make an appeal to the loyalty of the country to stand by that Constitution which party organizations have deliberately rejected. . . . [The party’s Northern leaders who] ask the people to vote for a party that ignores their rights, and dares not acknowledge them . . . ought to be strung upon a political gallows higher than that ever erected for Haman. (Walther, 2006, pp. 249–252).
As Yancey led the Southern delegation out of the Charleston Convention, the national Democratic Party perished. Without a uniform platform that appealed to both Northern and Southern constituents, the Democratic Party appeared to be incapable of contending for the office of president in light of the ascendancy of the Republican Party. On June 18, 1860, the Democratic Party reconvened its nominating convention in Baltimore, Maryland. Initially, only a handful of Southern delegates attended the meeting. Those who had walked out of the Charleston Convention had decided to hold their own meeting in Richmond, Virginia, on June 11. Hoping to somehow reform the national party, most of the Richmond delegates eventually traveled to Baltimore to participate in the Northern convention, but the split proved to be irrevocable. In Baltimore, the issue of endorsing a federal slave code remained the central divisive issue. Consequently, Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas as their candidate for president, whereas Southern Democrats formed a Southern wing of the
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Democratic Party with Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as their presidential nominee. In an effort to appeal to Southern voters, Douglas selected a former Georgia governor, Herschel Johnson, to be his running mate.
The Campaign The former Louisiana governor and prosecessionist Paul O. He´bert told the readers of The Weekly Mississippian that ‘‘Mr. Lincoln’s election is a foregone conclusion. . . . ‘What will the South do?’ . . . We have the power to bring these men—this aggressive majority—to rue with sorrow the day they forced us to the wall, and we should do it; now is the time’’ (November 7, 1860). Like He´bert, most Americans understood that the election of 1860 would only further aggravate the nation’s sectional division. Astute observers understood that if Lincoln and the Republicans managed to win the collective electoral votes of the nation’s non-slaveholding states, this gain would be sufficient to secure victory without garnering a single Southern supporter. The key to Lincoln’s victory would be defeating Douglas in such pivotal states as Illinois and Pennsylvania, which had supported the Democratic candidate in 1856. The 1860 election saw the introduction of what would prove to be a significant aspect of American politics. For the first time ever, a presidential candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, actively campaigned in person during a whirlwind tour that included stops in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Typically, electors chosen by the party represented candidates locally, by making a select number of campaign speeches, writing newspaper editorials, or engaging in debate with the opposing party’s local elector. Lincoln, Bell, and Breckinridge, the election’s other candidates, made few public appearances. By and large, they relied on local electors to promote their campaigns. Douglas’s campaign was aided by the nation’s expanding railroad network, which allowed him to tour large sections of the country during a short period of time. During his trips, he made numerous campaign stops, frequently addressing a mixed crowd of supporters and critics. His behavior attracted sharp criticism from several newspaper editors who found his campaign to be unpresidential. ‘‘The movements of this most stupendous of all demagogues [Douglas] are laughable,’’ wrote an editor for the Atchison, Kansas, newspaper Freedom’s Champion. ‘‘The fellow is a bore. Without an idea that a statesman should be proud of. . . . It seems as if he feared that if he got hold of a new idea it would choke him to death. If he would only say something new, or even say his old things in a new way, it would be some relief’’ (September 22, 1860). In a bold effort to rekindle support among Southern voters, Douglas embarked on a tour of the Deep South states of Georgia and Alabama. While Douglas did not
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achieve a broad base of support among Southern voters, he did garner significant amounts of local support in select counties. In Cass County, Georgia, for example, the editors of the Cassville Standard published several biographical sketches of Douglas in an attempt to convince locals of his southern sympathies. Such portrayals appeared in a few other regional newspapers. Most contained some account of Douglas’s Pearl River, Mississippi, plantation home or made reference to his efforts to resolve the nation’s sectional divide. When Douglas’s Western and Atlantic Railroad train made an overnight stop in Kingston, Georgia, for fuel and water, crowds soon flocked to the town in anticipation of a Douglas speech. Here Douglas’s inclusion of Herschel Johnson, a close friend of many locals, helped his cause. While Douglas attracted perhaps the largest crowd in the county’s antebellum history, his efforts fell short of producing a local victory in the election. Other stops along the trip found residents less hospitable. In Montgomery, Alabama, an unidentified man hit Douglas with several eggs following a poorly received speech. Most Southern newspaper editors strongly condemned Douglas’s campaign. The editor of the Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, for example, declared: ‘‘Keep it before the people that Stephen Arnold Douglas, who is coming South, to divide and distract the sons of the South, and sow discord among brethren, has lately made stumping tours through the leading Free-soil States, and had not one word to say against stealing the property of the South’’ (October 22, 1860).
Election Results On November 6, 1860, voters across the nation went to the polls in record numbers to cast their ballots. The results displayed and foretold the nation’s impending crisis. Lincoln won the election, receiving 39.8 percent of the popular vote and 180 electoral votes despite not appearing on the ballot in ten slave states. Douglas won the second-largest percentage of the popular vote with 29.5 percent, but managed only a meager twelve electoral votes, winning Missouri and a portion of New Jersey. The nation’s slaveholding states, except Missouri, split their votes between Breckinridge and Bell. Perhaps most revealing was the fact that the electoral totals won by Breckinridge, Bell, and Douglas combined were still fifty-seven votes shy of Lincoln’s total. The Southern slaveholding states responded to Lincoln’s election in piecemeal fashion. One week after the election, the residents of Aiken, South Carolina, angrily ‘‘turned out en masse to celebrate the event by a torch light procession. . . . All the residences along the line were filled with the fair sex, who sanctioned the proceedings. . . . Midway in the procession . . . was the effigy of Abe Lincoln, with the following placard suspended in the right hand: ‘Abe Lincoln First President Northern Confederacy.’’’ (Charleston Courier Tri-Weekly, November 15, 1860).
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Similar acts occurred throughout the region. On December 20, 1860, the state of South Carolina seceded from the Union. By the time Lincoln delivered his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, seven slave states had followed suit. When Alabama seceded on January 11, 1861, their secession ordinance proclaimed that ‘‘the election of Abraham Lincoln . . . to the office of president . . . by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama . . . is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify’’ secession (Ordinances of Secession of the 13 Confederate States of America, 1861). While historians remain divided over precisely when the Civil War became an ‘‘irrepressible conflict,’’ the results of the election of 1860, as evidenced by the actions of seven slaveholding states, clearly shows that Lincoln’s election only further aggravated existing sectional tensions. Even if the election did not directly push the nation into civil war, its results clearly hastened the South’s journey toward disunion. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barney, William L. Battleground for the Union: The Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848–1877. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990. Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vols. 2 and 3. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Walther, Eric H. William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Keith S. He´bert
A Challenge to ‘‘True Womanhood’’ In the nineteenth century the ‘‘cult of true womanhood’’ dictated societal expectations for women. According to historian Barbara Welter in her 1966 article ‘‘The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,’’ the ‘‘four cardinal virtues’’ of true womanhood were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Pious women acted as moral safeguards and submissive women kept good order in society. The loss of purity in a woman was so unnatural that she became a ‘‘fallen woman’’ unworthy of true womanhood. A true woman’s place was in the private domestic sphere of the home, creating a moral haven for her husband and family. Any woman who stepped beyond the boundaries of true womanhood threatened to disrupt the social order, including wreaking havoc in the home. Southern women, both white and black, had additional restraints in a culture dominated by male honor, male power, and slavery. The emergence of feminist action in the United States dates from the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. In 1848 women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1920) proclaimed in The Declaration of Sentiments that ‘‘all men and women are created equal.’’ She proceeded to list grievances against the ‘‘tyranny of men,’’ reproduced by Laura A. Belmonte in her 2007 book Speaking of America: Readings in U.S. History, that included obstacles to women’s participation in economic independence, education, and the political process. The response to Seneca Falls was mixed. In its 1848 article ‘‘Woman’s Rights,’’ the Syracuse Recorder referred to the meeting as ‘‘excessively silly,’’ and the Oneida Whig in ‘‘Bolting among the Ladies’’ regarded it as the ‘‘most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history’’ of womanhood. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s (1818–1895) Rochester newspaper North Star had a favorable opinion of the convention, endorsing it in the article ‘‘The Rights of Women’’ by asserting that ‘‘Right is of no sex.’’
Competing Interests
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The word feminism is a modern word that came into use in the early twentieth century. It was not a term that individuals used during the Civil War. The ideas of feminism, however, existed during the Civil War era and before. Feminism is a belief in the theory of economic, social, and political equality of the sexes. Thus, anyone who advances equality can be considered feminist. The Civil War provides many examples of individuals and groups exhibiting feminist ideals. The reactions to these ideals show that nineteenth-century society was not ready for a feminist movement to take hold.
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During the Civil War, feminist activists put the issue of women’s rights on hold to focus on the cause of Union and emancipation. The women’s rights conventions held annually since 1848 abruptly stopped in 1861. Many women’s rights activists who were also involved in the abolitionist movement struggled with which cause should have priority during the war, women’s rights or emancipation? The debate over this question was fierce. Although reluctant at first, the most famous women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) agreed that emancipation should be the first cause, stating in the 1863 ‘‘Resolutions and Debate’’ that ‘‘there is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a
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the WLNL existed to build an alliance with Republican leaders that could be beneficial to the women’s fight for suffrage following the war. When Republican leaders refused to endorse women’s suffrage after the war’s end, choosing instead to pass a universal male suffrage amendment, Stanton and Anthony were furious. In 1866, they sent a petition for universal suffrage to Congress. When abolitionist Gerrit Smith (1797–1874) refused to endorse it, believing it would hurt the cause of black suffrage, Stanton responded, and William E. Gienapp reproduced in his 2001 edited work The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection, that Smith’s action revealed that ‘‘to demand protection for woman against her oppressors, would jeopardize the black man’s chance of securing protection against his oppressors’’ (p. 361).
Breaking Gender Roles
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902). After working toward the abolition of slavery,
many leading female speakers of the period, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sought to achieve full rights for women in American society. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom.’’ Others were not so quick to sacrifice the rights of women for the rights of slaves. Ernestine Rose, a Polish immigrant and long-time women’s activist, questioned the abandonment of women’s rights, claiming in the same debate that while women ‘‘desire to promote human rights and human freedom . . . in a republic based upon freedom, woman, as well as the negro, should be recognized as an equal with the whole human race.’’ On May 14, 1863, Stanton and Anthony formed the Woman’s Loyal National League (WLNL), dedicated to a constitutional amendment that would end slavery forever. Although there was no mention of women’s rights in the final resolution adopted by the WLNL, the organization hoped that debates on emancipation would logically move to debates on women’s rights. Stanton and Anthony believed that the WLNL could exert political influence on Republican political candidates to push not only for the issue of emancipation but also later for the issue of women’s rights. In many ways
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Some women challenged gender norms during the Civil War by disguising their gender in order to serve as soldiers. It is unclear how many women served in this capacity since neither the Union nor Confederate armies allowed women to legally enlist. It has been noted that the number of such was extremely small, estimated at a little more than 0.01 percent of the total number of soldiers and less than 0.003 percent of the total number of women in America at that time. Many women who served in this capacity were discovered early in their service and discharged. Others like Sarah Emma Edmonds, alias Franklin Thompson, and Albert D. J. Cashier served for years without discovery. Cashier lived as a man throughout much of her adult life before her sex was discovered in 1913. Edmonds left her Michigan unit in April 1863 after contracting malaria, fearful that she would be discovered and discharged. Consequently, her alias Franklin Thompson became a deserter. Following her recovery, Edmonds served as a female nurse for the duration of the war. Years after the war, Edmonds appealed to have ‘‘deserter’’ removed from Franklin Thompson’s name and in 1886 was awarded a pension for her service. Reporting on the story, The Galveston Daily News in the 1886 article ‘‘Romance of the War’’ seemed more interested in Edmonds’s service as a female following the war, what the paper referred to as ‘‘her proper character,’’ rather than in her two-year service as a Michigan infantryman. Women nurses and doctors also challenged nineteenthcentury gender norms by caring for men who were strangers, men whose bodies were not only exposed but also violently wounded. For many women, medicine seemed a logical occupation, given that most of the medical care of the sick was done within the home by women. There was, however, a societal aversion to women becoming nurses and doctors, as it directly challenged the true womanhood ideals. Women nurses expressed not only satisfaction in their work but also
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disappointment at the hostility of male doctors. Gienapp reproduced the feminist sentiments of Cornelia Hancock, a Union Nurse at Gettysburg, describing her satisfaction with her role. Hancock, writing home to her sister in 1863, asserted: ‘‘I am as . . . dirty as a pig and as well as I ever was in my life.’’ She added, ‘‘there is all in getting to do what you want to do and I am doing that’’ (p. 190). Southern women faced even more adversity, as nursing challenged the expected role of a southern lady. When Phoebe Yates Pember received an offer from the Confederate secretary of war to become a matron in the largest Confederate hospital, Chimborazo, in Richmond, Virginia, she was shocked to find that male doctors treated her with open hostility. Pember, Gienapp noted, claimed that ‘‘the natural idea that such a life would be injurious to the delicacy and refinement of a lady—that her nature would become deteriorated and her sensibilities blunted, was rather appalling’’ (p. 204). Mary Edwards Walker, a graduate of Syracuse Medical College, was unable to secure a military commission as a doctor, forcing her to offer her services as a volunteer. Not only did she receive the cold shoulder from Union men but Confederate as well. In 1864, while serving as a doctor in the field, Walker was captured. Her male attire initially fooled the Confederates but, as Elizabeth D. Leonard recounted in her 1994 book Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War, when they discovered Walker was a ‘‘female doctor,’’ one Confederate captain stated that the troops were ‘‘amused and disgusted . . . at the sight of a thing that nothing but the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce’’ (pp. 138–139). The most famous Civil War battlefield nurse, Clara Barton (1821–1912), expressed feminist sentiments in her writing during and after the war. While motivated by the ‘‘patriot blood’’ of her father, Laura Belmonte reprinted in her 2007 book Speaking of America: Readings in U.S. History, Barton initially admitted that she struggled with her ‘‘sense of propriety’’ as a woman (p. 365). She quickly recanted in shame, writing that if nursing was too ‘‘rough and unseemly for a woman’’ it was equally ‘‘rough and unseemly for men’’ (p. 365). In a poem composed years after the Civil War, Barton captured the essence of not only women’s expectations based on true womanhood, but also women’s challenges to those expectations. The 1892 poem ‘‘The Women Who Went to the Field’’ mocks the true womanhood ideal when Barton notes that the expectation was that women would ‘‘scream at the sight of a gun’’ and ‘‘faint at the first drop of blood.’’ The theme of true womanhood continues: ‘‘That the place for the women was in their homes, there to wait patiently, wait until victory comes.’’ Barton proceeded to write that these women were ‘‘uninvited, unaided, [and] unsanctioned’’ but
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through their experiences came knowledge, and according to Barton ‘‘knowledge is power.’’ Women’s roles in the workplace and at home significantly changed due to the absence of men. Women moved into the public sphere as paid employees and exercised greater responsibility on plantations and farms all over the North and South. In Cincinnati, Ohio, women workers protested their low wages to President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Showing an astute sense of the market structure, the women requested that their work come directly from the government rather than from independent contractors who, Gienapp notes in his book, ‘‘fatten on their contracts by grinding immense profits out of the labor of their operatives’’ (p. 194). When southern women moved into government jobs they still found themselves bound by the cult of true womanhood. In Gienapp’s book, Sally Putnam described the hundreds of ‘‘intelligent and deserving women’’ who sought government work, noting that ‘‘none could obtain employment . . . who could not furnish testimonials of intelligence and superior moral worth’’ (p. 206). In the South, women on the farms and plantations faced enormous hardships as a result of out-of-control inflation that made a loaf of bread unaffordable. On April 2, 1863, several thousand women marched to Richmond and took what they needed from bakers and grocers. When one participant was asked if the crowd was celebrating, Gienapp noted that the woman replied ‘‘we celebrate our right to live’’ (p. 200). Socially bound by the ideals of true womanhood, some women chose to step beyond those boundaries to exercise feminist action during the Civil War. While suffragists increased their political knowledge, women soldiers, nurses, doctors, and workers challenged not only existing gender roles but also existing racial stereotypes. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, Clara. ‘‘The Women Who Went to the Field,’’ 1892. Available from http://www.nps.gov/. Belmonte, Laura A., ed. Speaking of America: Readings in U.S. History, vol. 1 to 1877, 2nd edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007. Blanton, DeAnne. ‘‘Women Soldiers of the Civil War.’’ Prologue 25, no. 1 (Spring 1993). Available from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/. ‘‘Bolting among the Ladies.’’ Oneida Whig, August 1, 1848. American Treasures of the Library of Congress: The Seneca Falls Convention. Available from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/. Clinton, Catherine. Tara Revisted: Women, War & the Plantation Legend. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.
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Gienapp, William E., ed. The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. ‘‘Resolutions and Debates, Women’s National Loyal League Meeting, New York City, May 14, 1863.’’ Available from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/. ‘‘The Rights of Woman.’’ North Star, July 28, 1848. American Treasures of the Library of Congress: The Seneca Falls Convention. Available from http://www. loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/. ‘‘A Romance of the War: Mrs. S. E. E. Seelye Wishes the Removal of the Charge of Desertion on Record against Her.’’ The Galveston Daily News, March 25, 1886. Available from http://infotrac. galegroup.com/. Tubman, Harriet. ‘‘Harriet Tubman’s Letter to Abraham Lincoln,’’ 1862. Welter, Barbara. ‘‘The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860.’’ American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 151–174. ‘‘Woman’s Rights.’’ The Recorder, August 3, 1848. American Treasures of the Library of Congress: The Seneca Falls Convention. Available from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/. Lisa Guinn
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Lectures and Speeches LECTURES AND SPEECHES : AN OVERVIEW
Judith P. Bruce GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
James Onderdonk JEFFERSON DAVIS ’ S SPEECH OF RESIGNATION FROM THE U . S . SENATE
Matthew M. Mitchell DAVIS ’ S AND LINCOLN ’ S INAUGURAL ADDRESSES
Brian Matthew Jordan THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
Stephen Rockenbach
LECTURES AND SPEECHES: AN OVERVIEW Before the first shot was fired on Fort Sumter, the war proved divisive within each side. Whether in drawing rooms or over factory din, Northerners and Southerners argued. They looked to two men, President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to galvanize their armies and lead them to victory.
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Jefferson Davis’s Resignation from the Senate Jefferson Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate on Monday, January 21, 1861, twelve days after Mississippi, his home state, seceded from the Union. The secession effectively ended his tenure in the Senate and cast the proud and often overbearing Davis into uncertainty (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, pp. 50–51). The noted Civil War historian Shelby Foote observed that Davis’s public glory was shadowed by private tragedy and sorrow. Like his adversary, Abraham Lincoln, Davis was born in Kentucky and lived in a log cabin. Though not accomplished as a student, he was liked and admired by his classmates. He graduated from West Point in 1828 still a private, a mere twenty-third out of a class of thirty-four. He was widowed after three months of marriage when his first wife, Knox Taylor, succumbed to a fever that had stricken them both. Davis recovered from the fever but never lost the gaunt, pallid look of a survivor of a nearmortal illness (Foote 1958, vol. 1, pp. 5–8). Though Davis considered himself more of a military leader than a statesman, he entered politics nonetheless. Contributing to the noisy antebellum rhetoric that deepened the chasm between the North and the South, a defiant Davis declared on the eve of Lincoln’s election in November 1860: ‘‘I glory in Mississippi’s star. . . . But before I would see it dishonored I would tear it from its place, to be set on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign around which her bravest and best shall meet the harvest home of death’’ (Foote 1958, vol. 1, p. 4). Later, when Davis heard the news of Mississippi’s secession, he waited and wondered whether he would be arrested as a traitor, which he hoped would give him the opportunity to test the right of secession in the federal courts. He never doubted the right of secession, just its wisdom, as the threat of war became increasingly probable. Thus when Davis rose from his seat in the Senate to declare his resignation and confirm the secession of Mississippi from the Union, his somber demeanor lacked the bluster of his November speech (Foote 1958, vol. 1, pp. 1–2, 4). For now he realized the dangers that lay ahead. Addressing President Lincoln and the Senate in a voice that faltered at the start but grew stronger, he declared: We but tread in the paths of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard . . . not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children. (Foote 1958, vol. 1, p. 5)
Using the lion as a metaphor for England and a bear as a symbol of the Union, Davis continued: ‘‘[W]e will invoke the God or our fathers who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear: and thus putting our trust in God and in our
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own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.’’ He concluded by stating, ‘‘Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to me to require, it remains only for me to bid you a final adieu’’ (Foote 1958, vol. 1, p. 5).
First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln With full understanding of the importance of his inaugural speech, Abraham Lincoln tried to avoid offending Southerners and people in slave states that had not seceded by March 1861, such as Virginia and Maryland. His strategy was not only intended to mollify Southerners but also to make the Confederacy look like the aggressor if it refused to preserve the peace. Thus the North would be more likely to blame the secessionists and then agree to war against them. Accordingly, Lincoln reminded all listeners on Inauguration Day, March 4, 1861, that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Thus changing the government established by the Constitution would require either an amendment to the Constitution or a revolution to overthrow it. Lincoln then expressed willingness to accept an amendment to uphold slavery in states where it now existed. But if states insisted on tearing apart the Union, then as President he had the authority to wage war on those in rebellion. He would take no action, however, while a chance of peace existed (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, p. 54). ‘‘[T]he government will not assail you, unless you first assail it’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 262). ‘‘The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government’’ (Faragher et al. 2002, p. 450). Still, Lincoln sought to assuage disgruntled Southerners: ‘‘We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.’’ Lincoln continued: ‘‘The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 263). The reaction to Lincoln’s address was mixed. People heard in the speech the ideas they chose to hear. Many Northerners hailed its moderation, firmness, and effort to reach out to the South. On the other hand, many in the South deemed it a declaration of war (McPherson 1988, p. 263). Meanwhile, people across the country waited and watched day by day for the next significant act that would determine whether the country went to war. They had only to wait until the next month; the Confederates opened fire on the Union-occupied Fort Sumter in South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. When Union forces fired back, the American Civil War began.
First Inaugural Address, Jefferson Davis While the Confederate Constitution drafted in February 1861 copied the U.S. Constitution verbatim in most
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areas, it permitted the Confederate President only one six-year term. Jefferson Davis appeared to be the ideal candidate—an experienced statesman as a senator and former secretary of war, and most importantly, a secessionist. Davis accepted the candidacy out of a sense of duty and honor, not because he sought it or even wanted it. The elections for the provisional government, a one-chamber congress, and a provisional president, took place in November 1861. Davis was only the provisional president until his inauguration on February 18, 1862 (McPherson 1988, pp. 257–259). Although adult Southern white males were given the right to vote for the Confederate President, it was a feeble attempt at democracy since only one candidate was proposed by the state delegations. The newly elected Davis, when first introduced to a cheering crowd, imprudently crowed: ‘‘The time for compromise has now passed . . . The South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 259). The bellicose declaration affected the lives of many people—Northerners and people in the Border States and upper South, who were all easily alarmed and worried by the prospect of war. Though the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Northern Republican, had prompted several Southern states to secede, the threats of the Confederate President made Americans anxious over the possibility of bloodshed. Not surprisingly, Davis presented a more reserved message in his inaugural address, when he stated that the Confederacy possessed peaceful intentions and welcomed any states that ‘‘may seek to unite their fortunes to ours’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 259). Davis never mentioned slavery in his speech, instead extolling the agrarian life of the South. He asserted, ‘‘It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look around upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole, where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed against honor and right and liberty and equality.’’ Continuing, he said: ‘‘Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by His blessing they were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their posterity.’’ He said in closing: ‘‘With the continuance of His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity’’ (Foote 1958, vol. 1, pp. 40–41). The people of the Deep South reacted with pride in their new leader, thankful they had chosen well. Day after day they boasted of his trim, erect figure, his handsome features, his eloquent oration, and his charm and dignity of manner (Foote 1958, vol. 1, p. 40). And Davis worked hard to maintain a connection to the
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An illustration of Jefferson Davis’s inauguration. During his inauguration speech after winning the presidency of the Confederacy, Davis emphasized the South’s desire to peacefully coexist with their Northern neighbors and be allowed the liberty to make decisions that reflected their beliefs. HIP/Art Resource, NY
people of the South. He made a point of staying personally accessible and appealing directly to Southerners by addressing crowds in his many visits throughout the South. In the two years after his election he visited all the Confederate states, many of them twice. In contrast, Lincoln rarely left Washington, choosing instead to concentrate on directing military affairs (Foote 1958, vol. 1, p. 826).
The Emancipation Proclamation President Lincoln harbored strong antislavery sentiments, yet he respected the constitutional rights of slaveholders. Pressure from abolitionists persuaded him to back the emancipation of slaves—if not from a moral standpoint, then as a military strategy to show that the Union stood firm against slavery (American Presidents 1992, p. 87). So Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, yet waited for a Union victory to declare it. When the Union defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland in September 1862, Lincoln found his opportunity. On September 22, 1862, he issued the proclamation that freed slaves in states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863 (Faragher et al. 2002, p. 465). The proclamation declared that slaves ‘‘shall be then, and thenceforward, and forever free; and the exec-
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utive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons’’ (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, p. 171). The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy or to slave states outside the Confederacy. Though the proclamation affected slaves outside the reach of the Federal armies, the significance of the decree forced Europe to favor the Union for moral reasons and impelled slaves to flee their masters in Confederate states and seek refuge in the North or in Union-occupied areas (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, pp. 170–172). Although Lincoln possessed the power to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War historian Bruce Catton asserted that Lincoln knew that the document had to be ratified by ‘‘the tacit consent of the people at home and by the active endorsement of the soldiers in the field’’ (Catton 1960, p. 378). The Thirteenth Amendment made the act of emancipation a part of the Constitution. Although Congress endorsed the amendment, it was not until after Lincoln’s death that a sufficient number of states ratified it. On December 6, 1865, Georgia became the twentyseventh state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.
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Lincoln relied upon his army to back him. With the exception of some abolitionist regiments, however, most Union soldiers were indifferent to slavery; instead, they fought for the Union. Once the proclamation was issued, some soldiers from the border states and other areas sympathetic to the South opposed the freedom of blacks. Still, by the end of the war, 180,000 black men had fought for the Federals (Catton 1960, pp. 378–379). The response by the Confederacy was deadly. Confederate President Jefferson Davis responded to the Emancipation Proclamation by telling the Confederate Congress that it was ‘‘the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man.’’ Then the Confederacy began to capture black Union officers and soldiers in order to execute them (McPherson 1988, p. 566). It is no wonder that Davis was tried as a criminal after the war and sentenced to prison. The paramount effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was not just that it freed slaves but that it also provided the North with a dual purpose for fighting—to reunite the nation and to extend human freedom—goals that changed the character of the war (Catton 1960, p. 249). And it was this proclamation that affected so many thousands of lives, none more important than those of liberated slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation also gave Northerners a moral and emotional reason to back the war. Now they knew that lives lost, injured, and absent represented freedom for others as well as preservation of the ideal of a united nation. The proclamation also affected the South. Southerners previously accustomed to the luxury of commanding forced labor now had to do for themselves. Slaves had provided the foundation of the Southern agrarian economy; without them, the pampered and the oppressive were forced to step into their shoes and provide the lost labor of the slave. Not surprisingly, the Southern economy crashed, not to recover for two more generations. The preservation of the ideal of a Confederate nation faltered with the Emancipation Proclamation, and then died under the weight of the Union battle victories that followed.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Once a hired laborer mauling rails on a flatboat along the Mississippi River, later a shopkeeper and self-taught lawyer, Abraham Lincoln rose from a log cabin to the White House in our country’s most divisive and catastrophic time—the Civil War. And amid the turmoil of bloodshed and animosity, he delivered one of the bestknown speeches in U.S. history, the Gettysburg Address. The opening lines are unforgettable: ‘‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’’ (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, p. 244).
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The national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was dedicated on November 19, 1863. The tremendous significance of the Union victory at Gettysburg in July 1863 had garnered national interest and drew crowds to the parade and cemetery site. President Lincoln, who wrote and polished the speech over several weeks, delivered his brief yet powerful message at the dedication after the famous orator Edward Everett had spoken for two hours (Catton 1960, pp. 330–331). With concise eloquence, President Lincoln honored the sacrifices of the soldiers and urged continued support for the war: ‘‘The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced’’ (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, p. 244). Lincoln’s speech made clear that the significance of the war went beyond the dispute over slavery—the war had put democracy and the underlying historical values of American society on trial. Lincoln urged renewed commitment to the task of winning the war and reuniting the nation through the sacrifices of the fallen: It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’’ (Catton 1960, pp. 331, 437–439)
Lincoln knew that the combined Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg (the latter having taken place on July 4, 1863) had altered the course of the war in favor of the North. Yet if Unionists failed to support the war and withstand the casualties, then the Union battle triumphs would have been in vain. If Lincoln had lost the presidential election the next year, his successor might negotiate concessions to the South. In writing the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln sought to rally the North to fight to preserve the Union (Kagan and Hyslop 2006, p. 245). Many people learned that Gettysburg was the bloodiest and mightiest battle ever waged on American soil, costing the two armies 50,000 casualties, though few understood its importance. The historian Bruce Catton maintained that the deeper significance of Gettysburg was not understood at once by those who heard the president’s address; the crowd at the cemetery dedication in 1863 failed to appreciate the full significance of Lincoln’s words (Catton 1960, p. 437). Most observers paid more attention to the photographer setting up his equipment than they did to the speech. When Lincoln finished he received only scant polite applause. The initial response by critics and the media was mixed, though it changed to positive in the days after the speech (Foote 1958, vol. 1, pp. 832–833).
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Lectures and Speeches: An Overview
Lincoln’s second inaugural address. After winning reelection in 1864, Lincoln stressed that at the end of the Civil War, the North and South should look to rebuild a unified nation, as each side had suffered greatly and needed no further punishment. General Photographic Agency/Getty Images
Only after some time for reflection did people of the North heed the president’s words and understand the importance of sustained daily commitment to the war effort.
Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln By early 1865, the territory of the Confederacy had been reduced to North and South Carolina and southern Virginia, with the Confederate army dead, in prison, or otherwise in disarray. President Lincoln won reelection intent on finishing the war by bringing the South to its knees. Yet in his second inaugural address he conveyed a conciliatory and visionary tone. Lincoln surmised that the four years of war could be summarized as one side trying to destroy the Union while the other side tried to hold it together (McPherson 1988, p. 859). President Lincoln reasoned that both sides had borne the cost of war, had shared the blame for it, and should celebrate the end of it. A humane peace was due both
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sides—no punishment should be meted out to the South. Likewise, all must accept the fact that slavery no longer existed; by March 1865 Congress had passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional, and eighteen states had already ratified the amendment. Lincoln acknowledged the mystery of the cause and the impact of the war: ‘‘Neither side,’’ he said, ‘‘expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.’’ ‘‘Both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes’’ (Catton 1960, pp. 581, 584). In the shortest inaugural speech since George Washington’s second inaugural address, Lincoln, a master of the English language, stated:
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Gettysburg Address 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 finish the work we are in; 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. (Foote 1958, vol. 3, p. 813)
As with the Gettysburg Address, initial reaction to the inaugural address was mixed but then turned positive. A Pennsylvania resident said of the address: ‘‘While the sentiments are noble, [Lincoln’s address] is one of the most awkwardly expressed documents I ever read—if it be correctly printed. When he knew it would be read by millions all over the world, why under the heavens did he not make it a little more creditable to American scholarship?’’ (Foote 1958, vol. 3, p. 814). On the contrary, reaction in Great Britain was favorable. The Duke of Argyll wrote: ‘‘It was a noble speech, just and true, and solemn. I think it has produced a great effect in England.’’ Meanwhile, the London Spectator proclaimed: ‘‘No statesman ever uttered words stamped at once with the seal of so deep a wisdom and so true a simplicity’’ (Foote 1958, vol. 3, p. 814). Lincoln had the awkward, if not contradictory, task of promising that the war would continue to the full extent of Southern stubbornness, yet at the same time promise future peace and unification. He must have succeeded to some extent, as many have compared his second inaugural address to the cogent eloquence of the Gettysburg address. Though Lincoln was assassinated before he could implement his plan for reconstructing the nation, he did experience the satisfaction of Confederate surrender the very next month. Many Americans, though they may have read or heard the words of the president and later rejoiced at the end of the war, were burdened with the loss of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. They replanted and rebuilt and recovered, or at least tried to—for the bloody acrimony had devastated the land, its traditions, and the hearts and souls of an entire generation. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The American Presidents. Danbury, CT: Grolier Incorporated, 1992. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1960. Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and his Hour. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Faragher, John Mack, Mari Jo Buhle, Daniel Czitrom, and Susan H. Armitage. Out of Many: A History of the American People. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. 3 vols. New York: Random House, 1958.
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Kagan, Neil, and Stephen G. Hyslop. Eyewitness to the Civil War: The Complete History from Secession to Reconstruction. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006. McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Oates, Stephen B. With Malice toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Harcourt, 1982. Judith P. Bruce
GETTYSBURG ADDRESS On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short oration at the dedication ceremony at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He had been invited to present ‘‘a few appropriate remarks’’ (Wills 1992, p. 25) ‘‘to perform this last solemn act to the soldiers dead on the Battle Field’’ and his speech was not expected to take long (Boritt 2006, p. 41). The principal oration was to be delivered by Edward Everett (1794–1865), the former president of Harvard and a well-known speaker who had gained fame in his speeches dedicating several Revolutionary War sites. Everett spoke for two hours but his speech is little noted nor remembered; Lincoln’s 272 words, delivered in the space of approximately three minutes, have shone for generations across the ensuing century and have had an impact on audiences around the world. It is difficult to reconstruct the immediate impact of Lincoln’s words either upon the crowd at Gettysburg or on those who would read them in the newspapers in the weeks after the ceremony—though not for want of scholarly discussion. William E. Barton, a Lincoln scholar writing in the 1950 edition of his history, Lincoln at Gettysburg, observed: As to the effect of its delivery, there is equally impressive proof that the address was several times interrupted by applause and that there was prolonged applause at the close; that there was applause at the close only and that it was perfunctory; that there was no applause because people who heard the address were disappointed in it; and that there was no applause because the occasion was so solemn and the address was so impressive that applause would have seemed profane. (1950, p. iii)
In an earlier biography of Lincoln, Barton described the reaction to the speech in similar fashion: The address was received without enthusiasm and left the crowd cold and disappointed; it was received in a reverent silence too deep for applause; it was received with feeble and perfunctory applause
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Gettysburg Address
An illustration depicting Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address. To honor the hundreds of war dead, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Though just over two minutes long, the address has become one of the most famous in American history. The Library of Congress.
at the end, but it was the man and not the address that was applauded; it was received with applause in several places and followed by prolonged applause. (1925, p. 218)
Positive Press Reactions The contradictions surrounding the reactions to the speech that Barton identified persist to this day. Accounts in newspapers of the day vary according to the partisanship of the paper. Press reactions would have been of great importance to Lincoln for he realized the press’s power. One acknowledgment of this recognition is that several members of the press had been invited to sit on the speakers’ platform at Gettysburg (Boritt 2006, p. 57). A professor visiting from England remarked upon the reach of the press and noted that American farmers were avid readers of newspapers; nearly a third of all the newspapers in the world at that time were published in America (p. 59). People would often read papers aloud to others, guaranteeing that the reports in the press would spread to the furthest reaches of the country and even to the illiterate. Lincoln would have been aware of these realities and probably anticipated
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that his speech would be read or heard by thousands more than were present at Gettysburg. The spectrum of reaction in the press was wide. The Boston Herald reported that the speech had been interrupted five times for applause and that at its conclusion the president received ‘‘long continued applause’’ (November 20, 1863, p. 2). This version apparently circulated in New England papers sympathetic to the president, as a nearly identical description appeared in the Farmer’s Cabinet, an Amherst, New Hampshire, paper six days later (November 26, 1863, p. 2). The New Hampshire paper added that the crowd then gave three cheers for the president and governors present. This description is nearly identical to the front page story in the November 21 edition of the Chicago Tribune, which reported: ‘‘The conclusion of the President’s remarks was followed by immense applause, and three cheers given for him, as also three cheers for the Governors of the States’’ (November 21, 1863, p.1). Barton quotes several papers that were effusive in their praise of the president’s speech and recognized its power, elegance, and impact. The Springfield (MA) Republican wrote on November 20: ‘‘. . . the rhetorical honors of the occasion were won by President Lincoln.
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His little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma.’’ Similarly, the Providence Journal asked, ‘‘But could the most elaborate and splendid oration be more beautiful, more touching, more inspiring than those thrilling words of the President?’’ The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin editorialized, ‘‘It is warm, earnest, unaffected and touching. Thousands who would not read the long elaborate oration of Mr. Everett will read the President’s few words, and not many will do it without a moistening of the eye and a swelling of the heart’’ (Barton 1925, p. 222). Similarly, the Chicago Tribune’s reporter wired from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ‘‘The dedicatory remarks by President Lincoln will live among the annals of man.’’ Barton believes that this simple line is the first written acknowledgment of the power and eloquence of what would come to be known as the Gettysburg Address (p. 116).
Negative Press Reactions Democratic and Copperhead papers, opposed to Lincoln’s administration and the war, were generally bitterly critical when they reported Lincoln’s remarks at all. The Harrisburg Patriot and Union reported, ‘‘We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of’’ (Barton 1950, p. 115). The Chicago Times, which had been suspended for one day by military order and reinstated by Lincoln, attacked the speech, and of the president’s remarks on the front page stated simply, ‘‘President Lincoln made a few remarks upon the occasion.’’ In an editorial on November 23, the paper accused the president of mocking the Union dead by misstating the cause for which they had died— the Union—and not freedom or equality for blacks. ‘‘How dared he, then, standing on their graves, misstate the cause for which they died, and libel the statesmen who founded the government? They were men possessing too much self-respect to declare that negroes were their equals, or were entitled to equal privileges’’ (Mitgang 2000, p. 361). Similarly the Register from Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln’s hometown, printed only the first two lines of the speech and then attacked the president, saying, If the above extract means anything at all, it is that this Nation was created to secure the liberty of the negro as well as of the white race, and dedicated to the proposition that all men, white and black, were placed, or to be placed, upon terms of equality. This is what Mr. Lincoln means to say, and nothing else, and when he uttered the words he knew that he was falsifying history, and enunciating an exploded political humbug (Barton 1925, p. 220).
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Curiously, it seems that the Copperhead papers were the first to identify the true political importance of the speech, however vituperatively. The Chicago Times, along with the Detroit Free Press, the Indiana State Sentinel, and the New York World recognized the true impact and meaning of Lincoln’s words. The speech is a war speech; in it Lincoln must comfort the bereaved, assure them that their dead have not died in vain, and give them courage to continue the struggle. Lincoln accomplishes this eloquently but he also suggests a change in the war’s aims and in the true provenance of the country. The war is now undertaken not only to preserve the Union but also to continue a great experiment—to test whether a government can maintain the proposition of equality (Wills 1992, p. 37). Simply put, four score and seven years before the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg was 1776; Lincoln is clearly referring to Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence. He elevates the self-evident truths of the Declaration over the legal compromises of the Constitution and in three minutes restates the foundation of the country. It is the proposition that all men are created equal that must bind the disparate elements of the nation together. The editors of the Copperhead papers were violently opposed to this interpretation of history, but it is Lincoln’s vision that will prevail and the speech marks perhaps the most concise and clearest definition of democracy extant. Despite some favorable reaction in the press, however, coverage of Lincoln’s remarks was not widespread. Most journalists present at the dedication did not offer detailed commentary on the speech, however friendly they may have been toward Lincoln. Their editors back home did the same, mostly contenting themselves with printing the text of the address. Most of the Democratic papers, however, tried to hide or ignore the President’s speech (Boritt 2006, pp. 140–141). Robert Reid, a Civil War historian, examined the files of 260 contemporary newspapers that covered the president’s speech and corroborated Barton’s earlier conclusion that reaction varied markedly (1967, p. 51). Reid also noted that press reactions were closely correlated to two primary variables: the political stance of the paper and its frequency of publication. According to Reid, weeklies gave little coverage to the ceremony while dailies typically covered the dedication. This difference may have simply been a matter of capacity. Weeklies in the Civil War era averaged four pages in length and half of those were given over to advertisements. It may be that the dailies, large metropolitan papers, simply had more space. In all cases where the event was reported, relatively more space was devoted to Everett’s speech. Reid reports that in Republican papers 40 percent placed Lincoln’s speech on the front page while 62 percent gave that placement to Everett’s speech. In papers classified as anti-administration, 55 percent placed Everett’s speech on the front page while only 14 percent placed Lincoln’s there (Reid 1967, p. 53).
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Gettysburg Address
First page of the second draft of the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg Address was given by President
Abraham Lincoln at the dedication ceremony at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, PA. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Eyewitness Accounts Reminiscences of people who were present at Gettysburg that day mirror the newspaper reports in their variability. Anna Morris Ellis Holstein, a nurse at a hospital in Gettysburg, described her experience at the ceremony very matter-of-factly: ‘‘. . . we were so fortunate as to have a place directly in front and within a few feet of our martyred President, and there heard distinctly every word he uttered of that memorable speech, which will last while the Republic endures’’ (Holstein 1867, p. 54). John Russell Young, who had been dispatched to Gettysburg by the Philadelphia Press to report on the occasion, recounted in an 1887 letter to the editor that ‘‘very few heard what Mr. Lincoln said, and it is a curious thing that his remarkable words should have made no impression at the time.’’ Young repeated the story of the hap-
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less photographer who was positioning his equipment to take the president’s photograph and missed his opportunity because Lincoln’s speech was so short. According to Young, many on the platform were more entertained by the photographer’s evident distress at his failure than were interested in the president’s address (Young 1886). Emory Sweetland, detailed by his Union Army unit to care for the wounded at a military hospital in Gettysburg, was also present for the dedication. In a talk to fellow veterans, he recalled that ‘‘I was present and I heard it. It made an impression on my mind that will never be effaced. He continued to speak in the same eloquent manner a few minutes and sat down amid silence like death’’ (Dunkelman 1994, pp. 48–49). Though there is little doubt that Sweetland was present at Gettysburg, in his talk he confused the dedication of the cemetery with the laying of a cornerstone there, which did not take place until after Lincoln’s assassination. This confusion casts some doubt on the accuracy of his remembrance. On the other hand, Robert Bloom related a less enthusiastic response: ‘‘A Gettysburg college student who heard [Lincoln] and remarked to a companion, ‘Well, Mr. Lincoln’s speech was simple, appropriate, and right to the point, but I don’t think there was anything remarkable about it’’’ (Bloom 1981, p. 773). The Associated Press reporter present at the dedication, Joseph Gilbert, recalled in 1917 that the audience stood mute, listening reverently while Lincoln spoke. ‘‘It was not a demonstrative nor even an appreciative audience. Narratives of the scene have described the tumultuous outbursts of enthusiasm accompanying the President’s utterances. I heard none. There was no outward manifestation of feeling. His theme did not invite holiday applause, a cemetery was not the place for it, and he did not pause to receive it’’ (Barton 1925, p. 214). Colonel Clark Carr, a member of the Cemetery Commission from Illinois who was also present for the President’s speech, remarked that the insertion of applause in newspaper transcripts of speeches was an ‘‘invariable custom of the time . . . Except as he concluded, I did not observe it, and at the close the applause was not especially marked. The occasion was too solemn for any kind of boisterous demonstration’’ (Carr 1909, p. 60). In a letter to the editor of the Manchester (New Hampshire) Mirror, and reprinted in the New York Times on July 3, 1887, twenty-four years after the battle, a writer identified as W. C. K., who claimed to have been present at the speech as part of the ‘‘guard of honor,’’ recounted his experience there: The speech was not read. Mr. Lincoln held a piece of paper crumpled in his hand, but did not once
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Jefferson Davis’s Speech of Resignation from the U.S. Senate refer to it while speaking . . . He spoke without the slightest hesitation, and with an intense earnestness such as I have never heard from any other man . . . The speech made a most profound impression upon the audience. Men lowered their voices in discussing it with each other. I may be permitted to add that when the President began speaking I was a Democrat, when he finished I was a Republican— a conversion as sudden as that of St. Paul, and, I trust, as permanent. (July 3, 1887, p. 11)
In his essay on the Gettysburg Address, Glenn La Fantasie concluded that those who heard Lincoln’s speech reacted very differently, but emotionally, to the president’s words. Some people apparently clapped wildly during the speech while others stood in silent awe of the speaker and his eloquence (1995, p. 81). But it was perhaps Edward Everett, the occasion’s featured orator, who best summarized the importance that the country and world would attach to Mr. Lincoln’s words. In a note to the president the day after the ceremony at Gettysburg he commented, ‘‘I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours as you did in two minutes’’ (Boritt 2006, p. 146). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, William E. The Life of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2. Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1925. Barton, William E. Lincoln at Gettysburg: What He Intended to Say; What He Said; What He Was Reported to Have Said; What He Wished He Had Said. New York: Peter Smith, 1950. Bloom, Robert L. ‘‘The Gettysburg Address.’’ Lincoln Herald 83, no. 4 (1981): 765–774. Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Carr, Clark. Lincoln at Gettysburg. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1909. ‘‘Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.’’ Boston Herald, November 20, 1863, p. 2. Dunkelman, Mark H. ‘‘An Impression That Will Never Be Effaced: Emory Sweetland Remembers November 19, 1863.’’ Lincoln Herald 96, no. 2 (1994): 44–50. Farmer’s Cabinet, November 26, 1863, p. 2. Holstein, Anna Morris Ellis. Three Years in Field Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1867. La Fantasie, Glenn. ‘‘Lincoln and the Gettysburg Awakening.’’ Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 16, no. 1 (1995): 73–89. Mitgang, Herbert. Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000.
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Reid, Robert F. ‘‘Newspaper Response to the Gettysburg Address.’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 53, no. 1 (1967): 50–60. ‘‘Special Dispatch to the Chicago Tribune.’’ Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1863, p. 1. W.C.K. ‘‘Lincoln at Gettysburg.’’ Letter to the editor of the Manchester (NH) Mirror, reprinted in the New York Times, July 3, 1887, p. 11. Wills, Gary. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Young, John Russell. ‘‘Letter to the Editor.’’ The New Mississippian, no. 11, May 18, 1886, col. E. James C. Onderdonk
JEFFERSON DAVIS’S SPEECH OF RESIGNATION FROM THE U.S. SENATE Jefferson Davis, long a staunch supporter of the Union and a beloved representative of the state of Mississippi, was the fourth and final Southern senator to announce his resignation from the U.S. Senate on January 21, 1861. As one of the most highly respected and reputable men serving in Washington, Davis received the honor of being the final Southern representative to give a farewell address to the Senate. His speech not only declared Mississippi’s severance from the Union, it also specifically warned of the dangers of entering into a civil war. At the time of his farewell address, Davis was in poor health. Suffering from several ailments, including dyspepsia and facial neuralgia, he had been bedridden for the past week. Acting against the advice of his physicians, Davis arrived at the Senate early on Monday morning to say his final farewell to his fellow senators. Only a few days before, he had received word from Governor Pettus of Mississippi to hastily return home, in order to assist in forming the Confederacy. During the previous weekend, the city of Washington had been abuzz with anxiety and excitement over rumors of Davis’s imminent farewell address. Regarded as one of the great orators of the Senate, Davis was highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats. He had a long record of serving his nation, including posts as secretary of war and as a battlefield officer in the Mexican War. When South Carolina began moving toward succession, Davis recommended that the Southern states secede before Lincoln could be inaugurated. He would not consider any compromise proposals that did not require the Republicans to abandon their elected platform and allow the further spread of slavery in the territories. In his much-anticipated farewell address, Davis first asserted that there was ‘‘satisfactory evidence that the
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Jefferson Davis’s Speech of Resignation from the U.S. Senate
State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States.’’ He then expressed strong hopes for ‘‘peaceful relations’’ between the recently seceded states and the rest of the Union (Congressional Globe 36th Congress, 2nd Session, January 21, 1861, p. 487). The nation reacted with little surprise to Jefferson Davis’s farewell speech. The states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and his own Mississippi had all already voted in state-level conventions to secede from the Union. Representatives of those states who functioned in any capacity in the federal government were resigning their positions and returning to their home states for service (Mobile Weekly Advertiser, January 12, 1861). The main reason for excitement over Davis farewell speech was that many Washington representatives viewed Davis as the spokesman for the Southern Democrats. His farewell symbolized a crack in the sovereignty of the nation and the beginning of the Southern states’ permanent dissolution from the Union. In many places throughout the South, the act of state succession was met with public rejoicing. The Daily Morning News in Savannah, for example, reported on January 22, 1861, that there was ‘‘tremendous enthusiasm’’ in Montgomery over news of Georgia’s succession. Yet when Davis gave his farewell address, newspapers across the country merely viewed his farewell as a footnote. For example, the January 21, 1861, New Orleans Bee reported his departure in a single sentence: ‘‘The Mississippi Senators have also retired from the Senate of the United States.’’ With many states on the verge of seceding and news of U.S. Army garrisons being commandeered by Southern militias, Davis’s speech may have not been considered as newsworthy as it would otherwise have been. In particular, newspapers were greatly concerned with the recent skirmishes at Fort Sumter. After South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, the federal garrison at the Charleston fort was repeatedly petitioned to surrender by the Confederate militia. With Union reinforcements blocked from assisting the fort, it was only a matter of time before either surrender or conflict would occur. Many major newspapers, including the Daily National Intelligencer of Washington, DC, were focused on covering the ‘‘impressive incident’’ that was taking place at the fort and would soon become the staging point for the first conflict of the Civil War (Daily National Intelligencer, January 12, 1861). Although Davis’s farewell address expressed hopes for a peaceful break between nation and state, many Northerners felt he should be arrested as a traitor. The January 19, 1861, Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, for example, remarked that while the ‘‘Great Speech of Jefferson Davis’’ revealed him as ‘‘the eloquent, patriotic and gallant champion of State Sovereignty,’’ his ‘‘mouth [was] full of treason.’’ The New York Herald noted that GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Davis was named in an affidavit for the ‘‘Wholesale Charge of Treason,’’ along with fifty-two other sympathizers of the secessionist states by a councilor to the Supreme Court (January 25, 1861). As Davis prepared to return to Mississippi, many people across the nation began to wonder if the Union would be able to firmly stand without the recently seceded states. A few days after his farewell address, Davis left Washington to assume leadership of the Mississippi militia. Along his journey to Mississippi, he was met with both praise and protest, though praise predominated. His arrival prompted public jubilation in many locales, as he was widely viewed as the chief defender of Southern rights. In a letter to his wife Varina, Davis noted that ‘‘all along the [train] route, except in Tennessee, the people at every station manifested good-will and approbation by bonfires at night, firings by day, shouts and salutations both’’ (Strode 1966, p. 59). In Tennessee, Davis ran into trouble from Union sympathizers, who disapproved of his resignation. Several days after his farewell address, Davis gave a speech in Chattanooga, which called for the people of Tennessee to question their allegiance to the Union. One observer, in an uncharacteristic display of incivility, yelled to Davis that ‘‘we are not to be hoodwinked, bamboozled, and dragged into your Southern, codfish, aristocratic, tory-blooded South Carolina mobocracy’’ (Davis 1991, p. 293). Only a few weeks after Davis resigned from the Senate, he was appointed to the position of president of the confederacy. Although he was not eager to become the political leader of the unified seceded states, he assumed the position nonetheless, and was inaugurated on February 18, 1861. Despite having been a loyal Unionist for many years, and having taken to heart the Jacksonian ideal of ‘‘preserving the Union,’’ he now found himself at the helm of a new, Confederate nation that would soon be battling the Union he had formerly cherished. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session, January 21, 1861. Davis, Varina. Jefferson Davis: Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir by His Wife. New York: Belford, 1890. Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Dodd, William E. Jefferson Davis. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs, 1907. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. ‘‘Important Proceedings of Congress,’’New York Herald, Column E, January 25, 1861. Ross, Ishbel. First Lady of the South: The Life of Mrs. Jefferson Davis. New York: Harper, 1958.
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Davis’s and Lincoln’s Inaugural Addresses
‘‘Rejoicing at Montgomery,’’Savannah (GA) Daily Morning News, Issue 18, col. D, January 22, 1861. ‘‘South Carolina Convention,’’ Mobile (AL) Weekly Advertiser, Issue 2, col. A, January 12, 1861. ‘‘Southern Discontent,’’ Bangor (MN) Daily Whig and Courier, Issue 171, col. A, January 19, 1861. Strode, Hudson. Jefferson Davis, vol. 1: American Patriot, 1808–1861. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955. Strode, Hudson. Jefferson Davis: Private Letters, 1823–1889. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966. ‘‘Succession of Alabama,’’New Orleans Times Picayune, col. E, January 21, 1861. Tate, Allen. Jefferson Davis: His Rise and Fall: A Bibliographical Narrative. New York: Minton, Balch, 1929. ‘‘Thirty-Sixth Congress, Second Session,’’Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, Issue 15, 108, col. C, January 12, 1861. Woodworth, Steven E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1990.
The inaugural ceremonies for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, occurred at the Alabama State House in Montgomery on February 18, 1861. Before Howell Cobb, the president of the Montgomery secession convention, administered the oath of office, Davis delivered a brief speech in which he offered humble justification for the new nation. He envisaged successfully meeting the challenges of Confederate nationalism; a permanent, peaceful, and prosperous government would emerge, sustained by the ideological intervention of the Founding Fathers and the legacy of the American Revolution (Crist and Dix 1992, pp. 45–50).
such a solemn, impressive scene (Harper’s Weekly, March 9, 1861). Many Southern newspapers reproduced the entire speech; some, like the Charleston Mercury, noted that the speech ‘‘needed few comments’’: ‘‘Brief, clear, pointed, firm, explicit. It is all that could be desired by a bold and patriotic people, resolved upon their freedom and independence, under a new and permanent form of government’’ (February 22, 1861). Buoyed by the arithmetic of the founders, a Nashville paper reflected that the ceremonies were ‘‘the grandest pageant ever witnessed in the South. Davis’ inaugural address was chiefly based upon propositions contained in the Declaration of the American Independence’’ (Weekly Union and American, February 19, 1861). Union editors, despite their opposition to secession, often offered objective commentaries. ‘‘Mr. Davis’s Inaugural was a temperate and carefully studied document,’’ Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, later commented. Still, he found Davis’ expectation for peace to be less than genuine. ‘‘There was an undertone in this Inaugural . . . which plainly evinced that the author expected nothing of the sort’’ (Greeley 1866, pp. 415– 416). Other Northern papers found evidence of excitement, vindictiveness, and malevolence in Davis’s address. Maintaining that the Union was perpetual and secession illegal, one ridiculed the ‘‘harangue’’ of a ‘‘bogus President’’ (Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1861). In February 1862, following outright election by his Confederate constituents, Davis delivered a second inaugural address, furthering the themes of the previous year. As a result, responses were virtually identical. Most notably, Unionist editors parodied Davis’s desire for permanent government. ‘‘[It] reminds one very much of the sort of speech a desperate and hardened criminal of more than ordinary intelligence would get off while on the scaffold, and just about to swing off into a condition of ‘permanent’ elevation on a bottomless platform,’’ a San Francisco paper suggested (Daily Evening Bulletin, March 29, 1862).
Reaction to Davis’s Addresses
Reaction to Lincoln’s Addresses
Southerners responded with excited praise. ‘‘Your speech was telegraphed & gives general satisfaction,’’ Texas senator Louis T. Wigfall wrote to Davis. ‘‘It has the ring of the true metal’’ (Crist and Dix 1992, pp. 51– 52). ‘‘The Inaugural pleased everybody and the manner in which Davis took the oath of office was most impressive,’’ the outspoken Georgia secessionist Thomas R. R. Cobb reported (Southern History Association 1907, p. 182). One woman who attended the ceremonies wrote to a friend in Montgomery that ‘‘[Davis] read a very neat little speech, not making many promises, but hoping, by God’s help, to be able to fulfill all expectations.’’ She remarked that never before had she borne witness to
On March 4, 1861, just weeks after Davis’s first address in Montgomery, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, delivered his First Inaugural Address in a voice that ‘‘rang out over the acres of people before him with surprising distinctness, and was heard in the remotest parts of his audience’’ (Julian 1884, p. 187). Lincoln’s intent, especially in regard to the states in the Upper South that had not yet left the Union, was to dispel Southern apprehension about his administration. ‘‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,’’ he declared (Basler and Basler 1953, vol. 4, pp. 262–263). He appealed for careful
Matthew M. Mitchell
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reflection, assuring the South that ‘‘you can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.’’ The new president, in the language of conciliation, was determined to uphold the Fugitive Slave Law enacted with in the Compromise of 1850; he also referenced the ‘‘safeguards of liberty’’ in the U.S. Constitution. Yet concurrently, he maintained that the Union was perpetual and that secession was the ‘‘essence of anarchy.’’ Among Northern Republicans, the reaction to the speech was unsurprising. The Philadelphia North American wrote, ‘‘Its language is so direct, its tone so patriotic, its honesty so unmistakable, that all will feel the earnestness of its author and the significance of his words’’ (Philadelphia Inquirer, March 6, 1861). ‘‘I cannot let one day pass without expressing to you the satisfaction I have felt in reading and in considering the Inaugural address,’’ New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan penned to Lincoln. ‘‘Kind in spirit, firm in purpose, national in the highest degree, the points are all well made, and the call is fairly stated and most honorably met. It cannot fail to command the confidence of the North, and the respect of the South’’ (Morgan to Lincoln, March 5, 1861). From Wall Street, H. D. Faulkner noted that his ‘‘heart responded ‘amen’ to every patriotic sentiment’’ of the speech. After discussing the speech with Republicans and supporters of both the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party, he concluded, ‘‘I think the honest portion of the American people are with you, and will hold themselves subject to your direction whether it be storm or sunshine that may follow’’ (Faulkner to Lincoln, March 5, 1861). Indeed, after the speech, a Virginian in the audience told Lincoln, ‘‘God bless you, my dear sir; you will save us’’ (New York Times, March 5, 1861). African Americans sensed no such guarantee. Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), an escaped slave, leading black newspaper editor, abolitionist, and intellectual, wrote that his race ‘‘must declare the address to be but little better than our worst fears, and vastly below what we had fondly hoped it might be’’ (Foner 1952, vol. 3, p. 72). Citing Lincoln’s commitment to courting both the South and the slavecatcher, Douglass expressed disapproval; however, he also found ‘‘the presence or something like a heart as well as a head’’ in Lincoln’s suggestions for safeguarding liberty and humane jurisprudence (Foner 1952, vol. 3, p. 75). As an African American advocating a cleansing, apocalyptic civil war to purge the national sin of slavery, Lincoln’s address was certainly deemed inadequate by Douglass; however, the contours of an advance by the Lincoln administration to higher, more liberal ground could be vaguely distinguished. Ultimately, for Douglass, Lincoln’s First Inaugural was ‘‘a double-tongued document, capable of two constructions . . . . No man reading it could say whether Mr. Lincoln was for peace or war. . . .’’ (Foner 1952, vol. 3, p. 72).
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Electoral ticket for Davis and Stephens, 1861. A copy of an 1861 Confederate States of America electoral ticket, promoting presidential candidate Jefferson Davis. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Similarly, many Democratic mouthpieces were confused by a double-tongued document; these partisans dismissed Lincoln’s pledge to slavery noninterference, for again, it was coupled with clear condemnation of secession. ‘‘If the President selected his words with the view of making clear his views, he was, partially at least, unsuccessful,’’ the Providence Daily Post noted (Perkins 1942, vol. 2, p. 645). The Baltimore Sun called Lincoln’s argumentation ‘‘puerile . . . a shaky specimen of pleading’’ (March 5, 1861). The Philadelphia Evening Journal, perhaps hinting that Lincoln’s rural boyhood had not prepared him for the presidency, noted that the speech was, ‘‘one of the most awkwardly constructed official documents’’ it had ever examined (New York Tribune, March 7, 1861). Some Radical Republicans even espoused these arguments, arguing in the vein of Frederick Douglass that the speech did not accomplish enough. ‘‘Lincoln’s message good . . . but not conclusive; it is not positive; it discusses questions, but avoids
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The starting point of the great war between the states. During his inauguration speech after winning the presidency of the Confederacy, Davis emphasized the South’s desire to peacefully coexist with their Northern neighbors and be allowed the liberty to make decisions that reflect their beliefs. The Library of Congress.
to assert. May his mind not be altogether of the same kind,’’ reflected Polish immigrant Adam Gurowski (Gurowski 1968, p. 13). Despite the president’s rhetoric averring that the sections were ‘‘not enemies, but friends,’’ a line that the Indianapolis Daily Journal lauded as ‘‘singularly and almost poetically beautiful,’’ some editors predicted that Lincoln’s words would lead to war (New York Tribune, March 7, 1861). ‘‘Blood will stain the soil and color the waters of the entire continent,’’ an Ohio paper edito-
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rialized (Perkins 1942, vol. 2, p. 634). Edward Everett, the Massachusetts orator and Constitutional Unionist who would join Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, expected bloodshed, despite the president’s message being ‘‘as conciliatory as possible’’ (Frothingham 1925, pp. 414– 415). Gurowski was sure that a ‘‘great drama will be played’’ (1968, pp. 13–14). Southern newspapers were readying themselves for the drama; naturally, sharp censure was leveled at a speech they considered at best inconclusive and at worst
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provocative. ‘‘It is not a war message. It is not, strictly speaking, a Black Republican message,’’ noted a Raleigh newspaper, inviting its readership to make individual assessments (North Carolina Standard, March 9, 1861). But many Southern editors offered no such invitation. ‘‘The Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln inaugurates civil war . . . . The sword is drawn and the scabbard thrown away,’’ the Richmond Dispatch declared (March 5, 1861). According to the Richmond Enquirer, the lines of the message constituted the language of a fanatic (March 5, 1861). Editors and diarists would again consider an inaugural address on March 4, 1865, when Lincoln began his second term. In this considerably shorter address, Lincoln tendered an account of the war that refused to ascribe blame. The war to end slavery—slavery was ‘‘somehow the cause of the war’’—had persisted because God willed it to continue. Calling for ‘‘malice toward none’’ and ‘‘charity for all,’’ Lincoln endorsed a binding up of the nation’s wounds. Despite Lincoln’s admonishment, Southern newspapers responded sharply. A Petersburg, Virginia, newspaper charged Lincoln with ‘‘wholesale murder, robbery and arson’’ (Petersburg Daily Express, March 4, 1865). Even so, after four years of conflict, most Northerners were ready to ‘‘strive on and finish the work’’ they were in. Although some Democratic papers, such as the Chicago Times, deprecated the ‘‘slip shod’’ effort, most proffered favorable reviews (Mitgang 1989, pp. 440– 441). The Washington National Intelligencer noted that the words of Lincoln’s final sentence were ‘‘equally distinguished for patriotism, statesmanship, and benevolence, and deserve to be printed in gold’’ (March 6, 1865). The monumental diarist George Templeton Strong accurately predicted the speech’s historical acclaim. ‘‘It is certainly most unlike the inaugurals of Pierce, Polk, Buchanan, or any of their predecessors; unlike any American state paper of this century,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I would give a good deal to know what estimate will be put on it in ten or fifty years hence’’ (Strong 1952, vol. 3, pp. 560–561). Perhaps the most emblematic response to the speech emanated from Frederick Douglass. ‘‘The whole proceeding was wonderfully quiet, earnest, and solemn. . . . The address sounded more like a sermon than a state paper’’ (Douglass 1882, p. 801). Although substantial tests remained ahead, the Emancipation Proclamation and the enlistment of African American troops had instructed Douglass which construction of Lincoln’s first inaugural had been the most readable. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baltimore Sun, March 5, 1861. Basler, Roy P. and Christian O. Basler, eds. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953. Charleston Mercury, Charleston, SC, February 22, 1861. Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1861. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Cobb, Thomas Reade Rootes. The Correspondence of Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, 1860–1862. Washington, DC: Southern History Association, 1907. Crist, Lynda Lasswell, and Mary Seaton Dix, eds. The Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 7. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco, March 29, 1862. Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817–1882, written by himself, 1882. Faulkner, H. D. Letter to Abraham Lincoln. March 5, 1861. In Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Foner, Philip S., ed. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. 4 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1952. Frothingham, Paul Revere. Edward Everett, Orator and Statesman. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1925. Greeley, Horace. The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America. Chicago: George and C. W. Sherwood, 1866. Gurowski, Adam. Diary from March 4 1861 to November 12 1862. Reprint. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968. Harper’s Weekly, March 9, 1861. Julian, George W. Political Recollections, 1840 to 1872. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884. Mitgang, Herbert, ed. Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Morgan, Edwin D. Letter to Abraham Lincoln. March 5, 1861. In Papers of Abraham Lincoln. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. New York Times, March 5, 1861. New York Tribune, March 7, 1861. North Carolina Standard, Raleigh, NC, March 9, 1861. Perkins, Howard Cecil, ed. Northern Editorials on Secession. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1942. Petersburg Daily Express, Petersburg, VA, March 4, 1865. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 7, 1861. Richmond Dispatch, Richmond, VA, March 5, 1861. Richmond Enquirer, Richmond, VA, March 5, 1861. Southern History Association. Publications of the Southern History Association, vol. 11. Washington, DC: The Association, 1907. Strong, George Templeton. The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed., Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1952. Washington National Intelligencer, Washington, DC, March 6, 1865. Weekly Union and American, Nashville, TN, February 19, 1861. Brian M. Jordan
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The Emancipation Proclamation
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION One of the most noted accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States, was his Emancipation Proclamation, which led to the end of slavery and earned Lincoln the nickname ‘‘The Great Emancipator.’’ While federal forces initially fought the American Civil War as a means to preserve the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation, a part of Lincoln’s evolving wartime antislavery policy, redefined the war’s objective as ending slavery in order to defeat the Confederacy. The proclamation was a carefully phrased legal document recognizing the fact that attacking slavery would weaken the Confederate war effort. As slaves escaped from plantations and farms in the direction of Union lines, Lincoln’s policy offered a last chance for the Confederate states to rejoin the Union and keep the institution of slavery intact. The preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, announced on September 22, 1862, outlined the Union policy that would take effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation freed slaves in Confederateheld territory after that date—although from a practical standpoint, the Union armies actually had to advance into Confederate areas before the terms of the proclamation could be enforced. The Emancipation Proclamation accelerated the debate over slavery among Northerners, strengthened slaves’ hopes for freedom, and raised the stakes of the war for Southerners.
Northern Reactions The preliminary announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation drew public attention from both Lincoln’s supporters and his detractors. Citizens in the North pondered the significance and possible consequences of the proposed proclamation. Some citizens believed that the proclamation would simplify the issues of the war. In reference to conservative Northerners, the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel declared on September 26, 1862, that ‘‘the proclamation calls upon them to choose between the government and slavery, and the choice cannot be delayed.’’ Many citizens approved of emancipation as a war measure that would bring the conflict to a resolution but were not truly committed to racial equality. These reluctant proponents of freedom were willing to support any policy that would hurt the Southern slaveholders, whom many Unionists considered traitors. Northern abolitionists, however, supported the proclamation on moral grounds, and welcomed the president’s announcement. A Northern minister stated that it was the white race ‘‘whose emancipation this great act of the president announces,’’ because Northerners would no longer be forced to tolerate the existence of slavery (Furness 1862, p. 9). Black Unionists were also encouraged by the prospect of emancipation. The Daily Evening Bulletin
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reported on September 27, 1862, that the black citizens of San Francisco, California, were hopeful that all Unionists would embrace the policy. A black newspaper editor remarked of the preliminary Proclamation that ‘‘to our race it is the harbinger of so much gratifying.’’ He expressed the hope that it would ‘‘help immensely in crushing the rebellion, and saving the Union, and put the nation immeasurable forward of its former self’’ (Daily Evening Bulletin, September 27, 1862). Black communities throughout the North celebrated the news of the proclamation. The final version of the Emancipation Proclamation included a provision for enlisting black men into the Union Army, and black Unionists in turn showed their support by enlisting in large numbers. Some Unionists were not as enthusiastic about the president’s proposal. In the October 3, 1862, issue of the Newark Advocate, the editor proclaimed that ‘‘the vital interests of the country demand that the proclamation shall be revoked, the sooner the better, and, until it is revoked, every loyal man should unite in vigorously working for its revocation.’’ Protests about the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation often resulted from racist attitudes and the acceptance of stereotypes about blacks. Once the proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, opponents to emancipation continued to object to the measure. The Cincinnati Enquirer reacted to the official version of the proclamation on January 4, 1863, by claiming that the act encouraged slaves to ‘‘massacre white women and children.’’ Those who objected to the proclamation often resurrected the racist claim that African Americans were not able to function independently and would not be able to provide for themselves if freed.
Southern Reactions The news of the Emancipation Proclamation was met with scorn and resentment in the Confederacy. In Jackson, Mississippi, the Daily Southern Crisis remarked on January 24, 1863, that the proclamation ‘‘will be an enduring monument of the stupendous wickedness and folly of our enemies.’’ Southerners believed that the proclamation was an effort to incite violent insurrection in the Confederacy. In spite of slaveholders’ assertions that loyal slaves would not leave their masters, Southerners took measures to move slaves away from the paths of Union armies. Confederate troops took violent action against slaves who were caught trying to reach the Union lines. In Mississippi, a Confederate officer wrote to his superiors on January 8, 1863, regarding former slaves who had been captured while traveling from Union lines to spread news of the Emancipation Proclamation. The officer asked what to do with the captives, noting that ‘‘yesterday a negro was caught armed and killed two dogs in the attempt to catch him.’’ The officer was informed that any armed black men found coming from the Union camps should be hanged (Berlin 1997, pp. 96–97).
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The Emancipation Proclamation
Effective January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s memorable Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves living in Confederate states. The practice was not outlawed, however, in proslavery states that remained in the Union, such as Kentucky and Maryland. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Lithograph of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Slaves outside the Confederacy also responded to the proclamation. In the border slave state of Maryland, slaves believed that they would be freed by the procla-
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mation on January 1 and refused to work. The Lowell Daily Citizen and News, a Massachusetts newspaper, reported on the situation in Maryland on January 12,
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The Emancipation Proclamation
An artist’s imagining of Lincoln drafting version of the Emancipation Proclamation. Resistant to outlaw slavery early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln eventually used the Emancipation Proclamation to rally Northern support and give new incentive to persevere against the Confederacy. George Eastman House/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1863, by stating that ‘‘some of the slaveholders, in order to settle matters amicably and preserve peace in the family, have agreed to pay their slaves wages.’’ The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to slave states that had not seceded from the Union (such as Kentucky and Maryland), but these border states were affected nonetheless. In spite of their owners’ attempts to prevent it, Kentucky slaves began enlisting in the Union Army in 1864, wishing to take up arms and assist in securing their own freedom.
Emancipation and the Union Army Union soldiers had a variety of reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation. Some Union soldiers objected to emancipation because they believed that the war was about restoring the Union and maintaining the Constitution, not freeing slaves. An army surgeon from New York opposed the proclamation because in his opinion, ‘‘The negro, for whose emancipation this war is avowedly carried on, has proved itself but a poor auxiliary in its prosecution’’ (Ellis 1863, p. 11). Other soldiers were relieved that they would not have to return slaves to
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their disloyal masters. The proclamation promised to hasten the end of the war because it denied the Confederacy the use of slave labor, while allowing former slaves to be employed by the Union Army. A corporal in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia outlined the political opinions within his company of ninetyseven men. He remarked that out of the sixty-one Republicans in Company D, ‘‘sixty-one sustained the Emancipation Proclamation’’ (Corporal 1863, p. 26). While Lincoln’s proclamation was political in nature and controversial in its implications of freedom and citizenship for black Americans, it was indeed successful in aiding Union victory and redefining the Civil War as a crusade for freedom. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berlin, Ira, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, et al., eds. Free At Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. New York: New Press, 1992. Cincinnati Enquirer, January 4, 1863. Corporal [pseud.]. Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M.V.M.: A Record of the Experience of a GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Letters to the President
Celebration of freedom. Artist Thomas Nast presents a picture of an optimistic future for freed slaves, contrasting the evils of the past
with the hope for a better life. Illustration by Thomas Nast. The Library of Congress
Nine Months’ Regiment in the Department of North Carolina in 1862–3. Boston, 1863. Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), September 27, 1862. Daily Southern Crisis (Jackson, MS), January 24, 1863. Ellis, Thomas T. Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon, or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life. New York: J. Bradburn, 1863. Furness, William Henry. A Word of Consolation for the Kindred of Those Who Have Fallen in Battle: A Discourse Delivered September 28, 1862. Philadelphia: Crissey and Markley, 1862. Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Holzer, Harold, Edna Greene Medford, and Frank J. Williams. The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Lowell Daily Citizen and News (MA), January 12, 1863. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (WI), September 26, 1862. Newark Advocate (NJ), October 3, 1862. Striner, Richard. Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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Wood, Forrest. Black Scare: The Racial Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968. Stephen Rockenbach
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Letters to the President
During the Civil War, writing to the president was not as easy as it is today. The literacy rates in the United States were lower and postage rates were much higher, with delivery taking much longer. But during the Civil War, unlike today, correspondents would likely have received a handwritten reply, either from Lincoln or Davis himself, or from a member of their staffs. An examination of the content of the letters to the two presidents reflects the attitudes of citizens at the time of the Civil War, and demonstrates their attempts to communicate with their government officials.
Writing to Abraham Lincoln Many of the letters written by Northerners to President Lincoln are known as ‘‘open letters,’’ a common form of
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literature during the nineteenth century. These were published letters written to one or more people. Many unpublished letters are available at archives and libraries across the nation as well. In some cases, these letters reflected racial attitudes still present at the time of the war. Particularly, some writers expressed views sympathetic with the colonization movement to return African Americans to Africa and establish colonies for them there. One such letter, written by James Mitchell, encourages President Lincoln to influence the branches of government to speed up the process, ‘‘to produce the separation of those races, the removal of the colored race to a proper locality, and establishment in independence there’’ (Mitchell 1862, p. 3). Mitchell also expresses his fear of an eventual race war, especially if the Lincoln government does not adopt colonization, and notes the issues that will arise from the 4.5 million persons ‘‘who, whilst among us, cannot be of us,’’ reflecting the racism prevalent in the nation at the time (Mitchell 1862, p. 4). Joseph Scoville also wrote to Lincoln, among other prominent Union leaders, regarding the issue of colonization. In his letter he notes how Union forces began confiscating slaves of Confederates. In addition, Scoville expresses his hope that the Southern people will realize their error and rejoin the Union (Scoville 1862, p. 3). Scoville then launches into a long examination of the question of what ought to be done with confiscated slaves, proffering three possibilities: (1) that the slaves should be re-enslaved; (2) that they should be apprenticed; or (3) that they should all be freed at once. Scoville argues that re-enslavement is not an option because it would be a great mark of shame on the country, and that apprenticing confiscated slaves would maintain the slaves’ manhood and prepare them for freedom with education (Scoville 1862, p. 4). President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation prompted some soldiers to write to him, either expressing their opposition to it, or appealing to him to address their grievances over the Union army’s confiscation of their slaves. Those affected by the confiscation of slaves often were residents of the border states that had remained loyal to the Union, and in some cases, were themselves serving in the Union army. One such case was of Marcellus Mundy, who was both a Kentucky slaveholder and a commander of a Kentucky regiment of the Union army. Mundy wrote to Lincoln to inform him that he had not only suffered at the hands of the Confederates, but also that a Union regiment from Michigan had taken his slaves and those of his neighbors into their own lines, even while Mundy was in command of Union troops. In his letter Mundy details the personal sacrifices that he made to serve in the army, and declares that although he agrees with the confiscation of the slaves of Confederates, if he were pres-
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ident, he would make sure not to trample on the rights of those who remained loyal to the Union. Finally, Mundy expresses his faith in Lincoln and his willingness, as a soldier, to execute the orders of the president (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 82–83). African Americans also wrote letters to President Lincoln. Some were slaves’ requests to be freed; others were from black soldiers pressing for equal treatment with regard to pay and usage. Some were pleas from relatives of black Union soldiers over the issue of mistreatment of captured black soldiers by Confederates. For example, several letters were presented to Lincoln by Richard Boyle, a black schoolteacher, on behalf of blacks residing in a contraband camp on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The letters aired grievances about abuse in Union captivity and pressed for the soldiers’ rights. The letters express the willingness of the former slaves to serve the Union cause and work hard, but complain that they do not want to be trampled upon by Union officials (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 222–224).
President Lincoln’s Letters Lincoln occasionally wrote to Americans, usually about their losses in the war. The most famous example is his letter to Mrs. Bixby, who lost five sons in the war. President Lincoln’s letter is as follows: Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864. Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts: Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the AdjutantGeneral of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln. (1864)
Although this letter may have been of little comfort to Mrs. Bixby, it illustrates that the president cared enough about the people and the suffering of the nation to express his condolences for their sacrifice to the Union.
Writing to Jefferson Davis Southerners wrote to their leader as well. William Lee wrote to Jefferson Davis to express his concern about the
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Letters to the President
absence of the men in his area who had large families to support—these families would suffer if the men had to leave to serve in the Confederate army. He also expresses his fear about slaves revolting in his area, and requests that Davis either remove all black men over age seventeen to holding areas (he argues for forting them up), or press them into the army (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, p. 4). Lee’s second suggestion is particularly interesting, given the racist views prevalent in the nation and the hesitance to enlist blacks, even in the North. William Lee was not the only Southerner who argued for the enlistment of blacks into the Confederate army, though his was the earliest written account. Most calls for such measures came when Southerners realized that they were losing the war, and that black soldiers would be one last gamble at success. O. G. Eiland of Mississippi wrote to President Davis only weeks after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, arguing that the only chance for the Confederates to succeed was ‘‘to call out every able bodied Negro man from the age of sixteen to fifty years old.’’ He added, rather optimistically, that these men would gladly and willingly join the army, and that masters would gladly provide their slaves. Eiland even argued that the slaves would prefer the Confederate army to the Union army (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 132–133). Another letter that called for the enlistment of blacks when times became desperate for the Confederacy was written by a Mr. F. Kendall of Georgia. Kendall wrote the letter soon after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864. He wrote the Southern president, exclaiming, ‘‘Is it not time now to enlist the negroes?’’ He notes his support for the idea ever since the Union began the practice of enlisting blacks, arguing that it is the only sure way to augment the army, and warns that many in his area have become so disillusioned with the Confederacy that they would likely vote to return to the Union, even with emancipation of the slaves. Kendall cautions that if blacks are not enlisted in the Confederate army, they will surely join Sherman’s force, especially with the promise of freedom and a bounty. Kendall implores Davis to call the Confederate Congress into this issue, and believes that the South could raise a large army of perhaps 100,000 blacks, which, Kendall notes, could affect the Northern election (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 151–152). In some cases, when locals formed slave patrols to prevent slaves from escaping to Union lines, the patrols would be drafted into the army, prompting letters to Davis from concerned citizens. Jere Pearsall of North Carolina wrote to his president to request that the local slave patrol in his county, which he helped to oversee, not be conscripted because they had prevented slaves from escaping even as Union forces neared. He expresses his concern that the disbandment of the patrol would cause many of the local slaves to escape, and asks Davis
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to keep the patrol in the area even if they are conscripted into the army so that they can continue to perform their vital function (Berlin, Fields, Miller et al. 1992, pp. 142–143). Other Southerners wrote to President Davis to protest Southern governmental officials’ impressment of slaves that seemed to benefit planter-heavy counties and neglect the poorer areas. For instance, several citizens from Randolph County, Alabama, signed a letter to Davis appealing to him to review the policy of impressing blacks. They argue that the local officials were taking too many blacks away, leading to food shortages and other negative effects on the agriculture of the county (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 148–151). Several residents in Sussex County, Virginia, wrote to Davis around the time of the siege of Petersburg, Virginia (June 1864 to March 1865), asking for the suspension of impressments. They argued that for every slave called up by the government, the Union would gain several more by way of escape. In addition, like the correspondents from of Randolph County, Alabama, they note the possibility of agricultural hardships should slaves be impressed into military service (Berlin, Fields, Miller, et al. 1992, pp. 153–154). Overall, these letters illustrate the willingness of Confederate citizens to call on their leader for assistance, as well as the dire situation in the South in the later stages of the war.
President Davis’s Letters Jefferson Davis also occasionally wrote to citizens regarding losses sustained in the war. For instance, in a letter written to James Howry, Davis expresses his appreciation for the sacrifices made by the Howry family in the war. Davis specifically asks that his compliments be presented to Howry’s wife ‘‘for her patriotic devotion’’ (Davis 1863). However, it seems that Davis did not write to his people as often as Lincoln did. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berlin, Ira, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, et al., eds. Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. New York: New Press, 1992. Davis, Jefferson. ‘‘Letter to James M. Howry, 27 August 27, 1863.’’ Available from http:// jeffersondavis.rice.edu/. Lincoln, Abraham. ‘‘Letter to Mrs. Bixby, 1864.’’ Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University. Available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/. Mitchell, James. ‘‘Letter on the Relation of the White and African Races in the United States: Showing the Necessity of the Colonization of the Latter.’’ Washington, DC, 1862. Scoville, Joseph Alfred. ‘‘What Shall Be Done with the Confiscated Negroes?: The Question Discussed and
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Support for the War: An Overview
a Policy Proposed in a Letter to Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Gen.’’ United States, 1862. Daniel Sauerwein
n
Support for the War SUPPORT FOR THE WAR : AN OVERVIEW
David F. Herr PROSECESSIONISTS / SOUTHERN NATIONALISTS
Michael Kelly Beauchamp PROSLAVERY ADVOCATES
Michael Kelly Beauchamp NORTHERN SUPPORT FOR THE WAR
Donald Roe
SUPPORT FOR THE WAR: AN OVERVIEW The view from Northern states was alarming in the winter of 1860 to 1861: following South Carolina into secession was Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas. Congress, now with a Northern Republican majority, moved frenetically to find a political solution. The result was a proposed amendment to the Constitution forbidding the federal government from ending slavery. The senators and representatives hoped their proposed measure would provide security for Southerners who saw Abraham Lincoln’s recent election as the beginning of the end for their way of life. But far from assuaging Southern anger over the threat to their rights, the measure generated a rejoinder demanding the permanent legal extension of slavery throughout the American West. This struck at a fundamental plank of the Republican Party, which had consistently advocated the end to slavery’s expansion outside the South. There was no compromise, and hostilities commenced.
The Lead-Up to the War Support for the war on both sides was presaged for more than a decade by political wrangling over the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, and the KansasNebraska Act. Positions sharpened further through fear given life by fiery Southern rhetoric and the action of the zealous abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859). In the North, citizens rightly understood the image drawn in February 1890 by presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln when he spoke of Southern threats upon the possible election of a Republican president. ‘‘In that supposed event,’’ he said to the Southern antagonists, ‘‘you say you will destroy the Union; and then you say the great crime of destroying it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’’’ (Basler and Basler 1953–1955, vol. 3, pp. 546–547). In the South,
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Mississippi governor John J. Pettus (1813–1867) offered his own metaphor after the election of Lincoln when he claimed, ‘‘It would be as reasonable to expect the steamship to make a successful voyage across the Atlantic with crazy men for engineers, as to hope for a prosperous future for the South under Black Republican rule’’ (Dew 2001, p. 22). Secession commissioner Stephen Hale on his December 1860 mission to bring Kentucky to the Confederacy was direct arguing for support: Lincoln as president was a war declaration. The new president would destroy the South, ‘‘consigning her citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans’’ (Dew 2001, p. 54). The antagonistic spirit of the 1850s sectional crises convinced many their political opponents were unrecognizable, disfigured by evil intent and blind ambition. Unsurprisingly, eager, zealous support for war grew rapidly in the North and South during the secession period. The siege at Fort Sumter ended in April 1861 with the surrender of the Union troops, but the effort was more a political show for both sides than a strategic military effort. The result was a war fever silencing almost all outward expression for caution. Unionists understood their cause as the preservation of the country—a fight for the flag. They assured themselves it was an effort not to subjugate the South, but to preserve the Constitution. Lincoln, demonstrating his strength as a leader, put the conflict into an easily grasped context: ‘‘Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled—the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it . . . . This issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy . . . can or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 309)
Southerners believed their cause was equally righteous and legitimate. They began their fight over issues of racial purity, black subjugation, state sovereignty, and their belief in a Constitution supportive of secession. Confederate leaders encouraged citizens to consider the new nation as the true heir to the Revolutionary generation. This was a fight for the right of self-government.
Support in the South The need to maintain a defensive posture added further clear ideological goals for Southerners. Whatever one’s view on self-government, Southerners knew the war would be an invasion. Home defense proved a powerful incentive early on. Images of marauding Yankees intent on plunder came easily to mind for slaveholders and
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non-slaveholders alike. Indeed, for many Southerners, their initial support for the war was not in defense of slavery or its expansion, but in anticipation of their community being overrun by Union troops. Slavery nevertheless presented non-slaveholding Southerners with an inescapable paradox. Potential invasion existed because the political disagreement over slavery remained. The historian Armstead Robinson has argued that the South faced a more significant paradox that explains both its early support and later defeat. ‘‘Insurrection anxiety helped create the Confederacy as surely as this same anxiety played a major role in bringing the Southern Republic to its knees’’ (Robinson 1980, p. 279). The potential for slave rebellion generated by abolitionists and realized in John Brown’s insurrection attempt at Harpers Ferry required a martial response, but without a quick resolution, the war would make provisions against insurrection increasingly difficult. The beginning of the war made this apparent as Confederate enlistments drained the South of the white males whose absence allowed slave resistance to grow in new, more threatening directions. Initial enthusiasm for the war crumbled within two years as the social contradictions mounted. Robinson remarked, ‘‘the South’s ruling elites proved incapable of sustaining their hegemony amidst the radically altered conditions imposed by the War for Southern Independence’’ (Robinson 1980, p. 280). Two failures in particular set in motion changes that dampened Southerners’ support. Initial military success failed to attract European recognition of the Confederacy, and a cotton embargo to Britain and France also did not compel either nation to alter their positions. The inability to provision a fighting force capable of capturing poorly defended Washington, DC, early in the war meant an increasing drain on limited supplies and personnel that would reach deep into the Southern countryside. The costs of pursuing the fight with the Union was ultimately too high because it required destroying the very social structure Southerners defended. Robinson and other historians point to the Confederate Congress for supportive evidence. Two pieces of legislation stand out as having directly caused open hostility by Southerners against the Confederate government. During April 1862 the Confederate Congress passed a draft law requiring most white men to enlist, but also providing an exception for those who could afford to hire a substitute. The substitute provision generated sharp recriminations among regular Southerners who immediately revived latent class and wealth antagonisms. Lincoln’s preliminary issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, spurred Confederate leaders to bolster their home guard in an effort to prevent insurrection efforts that might arise from the U.S. president’s declaration. The notorious ‘‘Twenty Nigger Law,’’ as it was called, passed on October 11, 1862, provided draft exemptions of
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one overseer for every twenty slaves. Clearly designed to benefit large plantations, the law once again laid bare stark class, economic, and wealth disparities. The war, interpreted through the implications of the law, was about preserving slavery by using the poor white non-slaveholding majority in the fight. Support for the war withered in the face of such unapologetic privilege. The consequences of the two laws emerged most obviously in the form of desertions and draft resistance. The six months of protest and wrangling between the two acts proved the undoing of Southern support. Desertion rates jumped after the October law. One Confederate colonel reported that half his troops had deserted by December (Robinson 1980, p. 294). The Confederate leadership knew the measure would be unpopular, but they believed that the dire circumstances required it. Reports came in across the South about the unsettled state of slaves and their increasing potential for violence. Evidence from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi indicate plots were uncovered and others suspected after the news of the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfair draft laws were not the sole factor in destroying the South’s support for the war. Deprivation among the civilian population came quickly and hurt common whites substantially worse than the upper classes. Food shortages were exacerbated by rampant inflation and poor crop yields. Conditions in many areas grew so bad that civilians turned to banditry, violence, and riots. North Carolinians were perhaps the most willing to strike against the conditions under the Confederacy. The governor had to dispatch troops to the Piedmont region on several occasions to manage draft dodgers, deserters, and violent Unionists. Food riots occurred in both ends of the state in 1863. Increasingly, the populace sanctioned illegal activities and ceased viewing perpetrators as criminals. The historians Jeffery Crow and Paul Escott have noted that women began to use their culturally defined roles as caregivers to justify illegal actions: In January 1865 in Yadkin County ‘‘A Band of women, armed with axes [made] a raid . . . on Jonesville.’’ They ‘‘came down on the place to press [seize] the tithe corn etc [the government’s tax-in-kind] brought wagons along to carry it off.’’ Despite initial failure, these female bandits soon succeeded at Hamptonville, taking ‘‘as much as they wanted without meeting any resistance’’ (Escott and Crow 1986, p. 395).
Northern Support While worsening conditions eroded Southern support for the war until lawlessness gained social sanction, conditions in the North followed a similar pattern. Northerners entered the war with gusto under the impression the fighting would be brief and the Union easily preserved. The Lincoln administration and Congress maintained a neutral stance toward slavery in 1861. Even abolitionists restrained themselves. William Lloyd Garrison
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(1805–1879) cautioned his peers to ‘‘‘stand still, and see the salvation of God’ rather than attempt to add anything to the general commotion’’ (McPherson 1988, p. 312). The first indication the conflict might run a different course occurred on July 21, 1861, with a humiliating rout of Union troops at Bull Run. Shocked by their army’s failure, Northerners received torrents of bad news in the coming months. The army was plagued with crippling problems. Many officers were elected to their posts not by a measure of military experience, but for political reasons or in recognition of their local status. They immediately proved highly ineffective. The Northern press called for the military to launch an immediate campaign to take the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, but supply and manpower shortages stalled efforts throughout the summer of 1861. Matters grew grave as thousands of enlisted men who had signed up for the standard ninety-day term walked away at the end of their short service. Lincoln revised Union strategy immediately after Bull Run, encouraging the navy to redouble their efforts to create an effective blockade, ordering the army to properly train its troops while preparing to move against Richmond, and pressing the Confederacy on the western front under the command of the newly appointed commander, General John C. Fre´mont (1813–1890). Although Lincoln believed Fre´mont’s reputation as a solidly experienced officer, the general mired himself in controversy. After losses in Missouri, Fre´mont shocked the North with his August 1861 Missouri proclamation declaring martial law, the death penalty for guerillas, and the freeing of all slaves belonging to Missouri Confederate sympathizers. With a show of gigantic restraint, Lincoln asked Fre´mont to revise the orders, and the general, with remarkable hubris, refused, sealing his fate. Lincoln removed Fre´mont from command, but the damage was done. The general had placed slavery back into public view, and antislavery Republicans began to press for shifting war aims to the emancipation of the slaves. Fre´mont had given them the new argument that such action was a military need. Slaves were aiding the Confederacy with their labor, and Congress responded to the argument by passing the Confiscation Act on August 6, 1861. The legislation made slaves who had been working for the Confederacy and taken into Union lines ‘‘contraband,’’ or confiscated property. The question of their freedom was unanswered, but the law opened a breach in what had been a bipartisan war effort. Northern Democrats found themselves in an increasingly difficult position during the opening years of the war. If they expressed support for their former allies in the South, Republicans branded them ‘‘Copperheads’’—those who would lead the Union to defeat through disloyalty. Most Northern states had two Democratic factions: those who advocated a negotiated peace with the Confederacy and those who viewed the Confederacy as the enemy, but also opposed Lincoln’s poli-
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cies. Although the positions did not allow much cooperation, the Confederate sympathizers were generally too few in any state to wield power. Connecticut was the exception. There the two groups were of similar size, and the conflict was serious. After the Union defeat at Bull Run, Democratic Confederate supporters in Connecticut celebrated and were met with violent attacks by war supporters (Cowden 1983, p. 543). Protests and violence continued throughout the war, but were most acute when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. Democrats of both stripes throughout the North were enraged by this shift in war aims. War support was not an issue only for the Democratic Party. Northerners’ support for the war, like civilian Southerners’, was built around social and economic interests. The low point came during 1862 and 1863. Protests against Secretary of State William H. Seward’s overzealous efforts to jail anyone suspected of aiding the Confederacy marked the closing months of 1861. Lincoln shifted internal security to the War Department in February, and the trampling of constitutional rights eased. The spring appeared to offer an end to the war with the taking of Richmond, but Union efforts went terribly wrong. The Seven Days Battles (June 25 to July 1, 1862) cost the Confederate army dearly, but its effect on Northern morale was devastating. The Army of the Potomac’s failure and lucky escape convinced many that the tide had turned for the Confederacy. Only the incentive of bounties—paid in part immediately after enlistment—helped maintain Northern fighting strength. Lincoln, recognizing the need for total war and the impossibility of gaining support for gradually ending slavery in the border states, began preparations in summer 1862 for the Emancipation Proclamation. The public debate about freeing the slaves was hot during the summer, and it was clear that many Northerners were not supportive. The initial announcement in September of the abolition of slavery and the subsequent official proclamation in January generated significant resistance. Issues of race focused the debate for those who believed that blacks belonged permanently on the mudsill. Working-class whites in major cities believed freed slaves would soon arrive to take their jobs, and they showed their discontent with protests and riots. The efforts of Peace Democrats—those who favored negotiating with the Confederacy—were gaining traction in the spring of 1863, and Clement Vallandigham (1820–1871) had positioned himself as the leader of their efforts. Raising the temperature of his rhetoric, Vallandigham castigated the administration and called the war an act of despotism. He drew the ire of General Ambrose Burnside (1824–1881), who, without the knowledge of the president, had him arrested for treason. The case drew national attention and laid bare the growing loss of support for the war. A military
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Fremont Proclamation. Satirical cartoon criticizing President Abraham Lincoln for nullifying the Fremont Proclamation, an edict from Union General John C. Fre´mont that emancipated slaves held in Missouri during the Civil War. Many felt the president had given unintentional ‘‘aid and comfort’’ to the enemy and hindered the movement to crush the rebellion by nullifying the unauthorized proclamation, printed October 1861. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
commission sentenced Vallandigham to prison for the war’s duration, immediately making him a martyr for antiwar supporters. Lincoln commuted the sentence to banishment. Although they had averted further disturbance from Peace Democrats for the time being, Lincoln and Congress would face more protests against the war when the Enrollment Act of March 1863 passed. The new draft was unnecessarily complex and open to fraud. Two exceptions existed to avoid the draft: One could hire a substitute, or pay a $300 commutation fee. Democrats railed against the effort, but they were not alone. The Northern lower class, immediately recognizing that the wealthy could avoid service, mounted strong resistance, and nowhere was this more evident than in New York City. Irish Catholics living in squalor and working for low pay feared job competition from blacks.
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When enlistment officers entered their neighborhoods it proved enough to start a conflagration. During summer 1863 four days of mob violence gripped the city and left hundreds dead as draft dodgers launched mayhem. The racial implications of the resistance did not pass unnoticed by the administration, but the Union war effort remained a total effort, including the destruction of slavery. Matters might have escalated further had the military not had some significant successes. The early spring was grim with defeat at Chancellorsville, but pressures on the Lincoln administration eased and support for the war rebounded in July with almost simultaneous victories by General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg and General George Meade at Gettysburg. The war had turned in favor of the Union, and although it would grind on for another two years, it was increasingly clear that the Confederacy was broken.
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Prosecessionists/Southern Nationalists BIBLIOGRAPHY
Basler, Roy P., and Christian O. Basler, eds. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955. Cowden, Joanna D. ‘‘The Politics of Dissent: Civil War Democrats in Connecticut.’’ New England Quarterly 56, no. 4 (December 1983): 538–554. Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. Dupree, A. Hunter, and Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. ‘‘An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots, July, 1863.’’ Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 3 (December 1960): 472–479. Escott, Paul D., and Jeffrey J. Crow. ‘‘The Social Order and Violent Disorder: An Analysis of North Carolina in the Revolution and the Civil War.’’ The Journal of Southern History 52, no. 3 (August 1986): 373–402. Man, Albon P., Jr. ‘‘Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863.’’ Journal of Negro History 36, no. 4 (October 1951): 375–405. McPherson, James B. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Robinson, Armstead L. ‘‘In the Shadow of Old John Brown: Insurrection Anxiety and Confederate Mobilization, 1861–1863.’’ Journal of Negro History 65, no. 4 (Autumn 1980): 279–297. David F. Herr
PROSECESSIONISTS/SOUTHERN NATIONALISTS Prosecessionists or Southern nationalists were advocates for the secession of Southern states from the United States government based on the theory that, as the Southern states predated the formation of the union, they had the right to leave the union. Secessionists largely based their argument for secession on the need to protect the institution of slavery, which they felt was increasingly threatened by a free North that would move to stop slavery from expanding into the western territories and thereafter doom the institution to a gradual death in the South. Nonetheless, the constitutional thought they drew on to justify secession had a heritage that predated the crisis over the expansion of slavery.
States’ Rights Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and James Madison (1751–1836), as the authors of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions in 1798, laid the constitutional basis for the doctrine of secession by arguing that states could decide which acts were constitutional. States had the power to interpose themselves between the people and the federal government and argued in the Kentucky Resolution that states could nullify federal acts if they
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believed them to be unconstitutional. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions effectively outlined a compact theory of government, which argued that states had formed the national government and were the ultimate authority on what was constitutional and in the best interests of their people. Federalists in New England weighed the option of secession numerous times under the same compact theory after the election of Republican presidents, most notably at the Hartford Convention in 1815. Thus secession as a constitutional option had a history that predated the Southern concerns. John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), as a senator from South Carolina and vice president to Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) would, in order to combat the Tariff of 1828, use these precedents to argue that nullification was a state’s constitutional right. Calhoun argued that a state convention could be called to nullify a law, at which point the law could remain void or a constitutional amendment could be passed to enact it. South Carolina nullified the federal tariff in 1832, which it felt gave advantages to the industrial North while causing higher prices for consumers in the South. Nullification placed South Carolina at odds with federal law and authority under President Andrew Jackson. Ultimately violence failed to break out as Senator Henry Clay (1777–1852) engineered a compromise that lowered the tariff and gave Jackson the power to use force; South Carolina in turn rescinded its nullification of the tariff. The failure to secede despite calls from many leaders in South Carolina was also in part due to the failure of other states to join South Carolina in its protests over the tariff. As a practical matter South Carolinians realized that they could not accomplish secession alone. Still, South Carolina continued to be a nursery for secessionist thought and established a political movement and an intellectual tradition that persevered in ensuing years.
New Territories, Heightened Tensions The series of political battles that erupted over the territories taken from the Mexican War (1846–1848) transformed secession from a largely elite and theoretical argument into a mass movement in the South. The efforts of Northerners to bar slavery from the territories taken from the Mexican War further exacerbated tensions and calls for secession in the South. The Compromise of 1850 failed to settle the issues at play as rabid secessionists called ‘‘fire-eaters’’ continued to promote the idea. A prominent fire-eater was Robert Barnwell Rhett (1800–1876), a senator from South Carolina and one of the early advocates for Southern secession. Rhett had advocated secession over the tariff and was a delegate to the Nashville Convention in 1850, which contemplated secession if Congress passed legislation barring slavery from the territories, though the convention ultimately failed to support such a course. William Lowndes Yancey (1814–1863) of Alabama and Virginian
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Prominent ‘‘fire-eater’’ Robert Barnwell Rhett (1800–1876). Robert Barnwell Rhett was a senator from South Carolina and an early advocate of Southern secession. He was considered a prominent ‘‘fireeater,’’ or a rabid secessionist who continued to champion this cause after the Compromise of 1850 was established. The Library of Congress
Edmund Ruffin (1794–1865) similarly were early advocates of secession, opposing attempts by any level of government to limit slavery and supporting Southern cooperation to expand slavery and to protect it where it already existed. Ruffin actually moved to South Carolina given his own state’s failure to take the lead among Southern states in the protection of slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 further heightened sectional tensions by overturning the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had barred slavery from territories North of the 36 300 parallel. Instead slavery in the territories would now be decided by popular sovereignty, the choice of the majority of the voters in a territory. As a result the North and South now competed to spread their systems to the western territories, resulting in vigilante violence throughout Kansas as Northern and Southern
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immigrants fought one another. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision (Dred Scott v. Sanford), which ruled that Congress could not bar slavery from the territories, resulted in Northern fears of an aggressive Southern policy that seemed to have captured the federal government with the intention of spreading slavery. As a result the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories, was in an excellent position to play on these Northern concerns and, with the decline of the Whigs, rise to become one of the two dominant political parties. The Republican Party, given its membership and opposition to the expansion of slavery, raised concerns throughout the South, which resulted in significant gains for secessionists throughout the region as the population turned against Republican Party policies.
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The Breaking Point With the election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) in the election of 1860 a series of Southern states began to hold secession conventions, as South Carolina had in 1832. In 1860 South Carolina was the first state to secede in response to Lincoln’s election. Southern states in the Lower South were the first to hold secession conventions, and Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas all seceded from the United States. Majorities had voted within these states to nominate the delegates that led them out of the convention. Native-born Americans who were slave-owners were far more likely to support secession, while those from areas of the South that had less of a connection to the institution were more likely to oppose secession, as were first and second generation immigrants in the South. The Upper South similarly appeared far less likely to support secession than its Gulf Coast cousins. The Lower South formed a government and adopted a constitution on February 7, 1861. Once hostilities broke out with the firing on Fort Sumter the Upper South moved to join its Southern brethren. Virginia seceded on April 17 and Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina then followed, joining the Confederate States of America, the capital of which was transferred to Richmond shortly after Virginia left the Union. The Southern state conventions argued that the election of the Republican Party endangered their constitutional rights. The Convention in South Carolina in its Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union wrote of the Republican victory in 1860: This party will take possession of the Government. It has announced, that the South shall be excluded from the common Territory; that the Judicial Tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. The Guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. (p. 10)
In attempting to persuade Virginia to secede and combine with the Lower South, C. G. Memminger, acting as the commissioner from South Carolina to the authorities of the state of Virginia, noted in his 1860 address the common bonds of the South and the failure of the North to respect Virginia pointing to John Brown’s raid into Virginia at Harper’s Ferry: ‘‘That very North, to whom she had surrendered a territorial empire—who had grown great through her generous confidence—sent forth the assassins, furnished them with arms and money, and would fain rescue them from the infamy and punishment due to crimes so atrocious’’ (p. 7). Secession commissioners would focus on the
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aggressions of the North and a common Southern heritage, but slavery remained at the heart of their arguments. As Charles B. Dew points out in his 1861 book Apostles of Disunion: The commissioners sent out to spread the secessionist gospel in late 1860 and early 1861 clearly believed that the racial fate of their region was hanging in the balance in the wake of Lincoln’s election. Only through disunion could the South be saved from the disastrous effects of Republican principles and Republican malevolence. Hesitation, submission—any course other than immediate secession—would place both slavery and white supremacy on the road to certain extinction. (p. 80)
Thus, slavery lay at the heart of the Southern secessionist movement. Despite the long history of the compact theory of government, it was unlikely that without the slavery issue the South would have chosen the course of secession. Many Southern nationalists and secessionists took up their course reluctantly and saw the Confederacy as far more in line with the original Constitution of the United States than the course they feared the Republicans would pursue once in power. Thomas Ruffin of North Carolina, as a member of the House of Representatives, addressed this point, arguing in an 1861 speech that the issue at hand was whether Southern states and Southern institutions were to be treated as equals: They are to decide whether they will tamely and quietly submit to the arrogance, the tyranny, the usurpation of a hostile, unprincipled, and reckless majority, fatally bent on the destruction of their institutions, or whether they will assert their rights, and maintain them by all the means in their power. Devotedly attached to the Constitution and the Union, as the people of the South have ever been, and ardently hoping that a change in the public sentiment of the North would prevent a further persistence in the wrongs practiced upon the minority section, they have exercised the most extraordinary forbearance. (p. 1)
With Lincoln’s election many Southerners felt that the rights of individuals were about to be violated— specifically the rights to take their property into the western territories—but more importantly Southern citizens saw the election of Lincoln as leading to their region’s movement into a permanent minority status within the nation, a nation that, in Ruffin’s view, would be increasingly willing to violate the rights of the minority party.
Contributing Factors There were other motives for secession. In the 1861 publication The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, and upon Each GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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ern fears over how the Northern majority endangered the practice of slavery in the South. Michelbacher expressed the Southern feelings of inequality for their region within the union and how that necessitated secession and the war: We have fought, and are now fighting, by reason of a virtuous resolution to live apart from those, who for many years marred our peace and increased our anxiety for the preservation of our institutions and our safety, and, who down to the moment of our separation, derided our solemn protests against their repeated violations of our sovereign rights, and have converted a Federal government into a central one, for the purpose of founding a despotism, that we may more speedily receive the lash of a tyrant. (p. 8)
Virginia planter and ‘‘fire-eater,’’ Edmund Ruffin (1794– 1865). Known as a ‘‘fire-eater’’ for his outspoken attitudes
advocating slavery and secession, Virginia planter Edmund Ruffin became well known for his research to improve Southern agriculture as well as his claim to have fired the opening shot of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter. The Library of Congress.
Section, issued shortly before the start of the war, a motive for secession explored the federal government’s use of the tariff, which appeared to benefit the North at the expense of the South: For nearly half a century South Carolina, the author of the movement, has been dissatisfied with the policy of the General Government as to the mode of raising its revenue. In 1832, this dissatisfaction very nearly broke out in open rebellion, but was awed into submission by the determined attitude of General Jackson then President of the United States; but, the question was not settled—only postponed by the adoption of the compromise of Mr. Clay. (pp. 3–4)
While the issue of expansion of slavery into the territories was the primary issue of the day, the work raises an important point: that the secession movement in the South began not over slavery, but rather the issue of the tariff. As an issue it continued to be of importance for the Southern economy and conceivably to the advantage of Southern consumers if secession could be accomplished. During the war M. J. Michelbacher’s 1863 work A Sermon Delivered on the Day of Prayer reiterated SouthGALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
This Southern impression of the North as an overreaching entity was at the center of secessionism and the increasing sense of Southern nationalism. Given the feared violation of Southern institutions the Southern states believed they could withdraw from the union and have authority devolve to the state governments, which predated the union. The governor of South Carolina, F. W. Pickens in his 1861 statement The Governor’s Message and Correspondence with the Commissioners from Virginia wrote: ‘‘We have been forced to resume our original power of government, and to assert our separate sovereignty as a State, in order to seek that protection which we were compelled to believe would not be given to us and to our people, under the power of such a party and such a Chief Magistrate’’ (p. 4). Southern nationalism was at first largely state-centered rather than focused on the Southern region. The creation of the Confederate States of America and the war itself would create a stronger sense of Southern nationalism than had existed before the war. Secessionists and Southern nationalists drew on a rich intellectual tradition in the compact theory of government in order to justify secession. South Carolina’s earlier attempt at secession in 1832, in particular, was a turning point in that it created a radical minority that persevered in its calls for secession. It would not be until the series of crises between the North and the South arising out of the lands taken in the Mexican War, however, that secession became a live option for the majority of Southerners. The issue of slavery was the primary incentive for secession, and the Confederacy throughout the war struggled in its efforts to form a strong sense of Southern nationalism, as states’ rights doctrines continued to hamper the Southern war effort. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.
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The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, and upon Each Section. [1861] Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. Memminger, Christopher Gustavus. Address of the Hon. C.G. Memminger, Special Commissioner from the State of South Carolina: Before the Assembled Authorities of the State of Virginia, January 19, 1860. [U.S., s.n., 1860?] Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Michelbacher, Maximilian J. A Sermon Delivered on the Day of Prayer: Recommended by the President of the C.S. of A., the 27th of March, 1863, at the German Hebrew Synagogue, ‘‘Bayth Ahabah.’’ Richmond, VA: Macfarlane and Fergusson, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Pickens, F. W. The Governor’s Message and Correspondence with the Commissioners from Virginia. Charleston: Evans and Cogswell, 1861. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Ruffin, Thomas. State Rights and State Equality: Speech of Hon. Thomas Ruffin, of North Carolina, Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 20, 1861. [Washington, DC: H. Polkinhorn’s Steam Job Press, 1861.] Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. South Carolina. Convention. Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union: and the Ordinance of Secession. Charleston: Evans and Cogswell, 1860. Michael Kelly Beauchamp
PROSLAVERY ADVOCATES Proslavery advocates defended the institution of slavery from increasing attacks by Northern abolitionists. These advocates vigorously argued for slavery’s expansion into the western territories and also into the Caribbean and Latin America, while defending its preservation where it already existed. Proslavery arguments tended to take three different tacks. Some argued for the justness of the institution based on the racial inferiority of African Americans. Under this argument, slavery was justified as natural and a positive good for blacks that lifted them up from a degraded state. Other advocates of slavery chose to contrast the civilization of the South with the abuses of the increasingly industrialized North to illustrate the superiority of a patriarchal civilization based on slavery. Other advocates based their defense of the institution on Christian scripture and history.
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The revolutionary generation of the South felt that slavery was an evil that would be eliminated in time, though they themselves failed to deal with the issue. Founders such as Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and James Madison (1731–1826), while slaveholders themselves, had little problem acknowledging the detrimental effects of the institution, not just for the slaves but for whites as well. Many Southerners in the first decades after the American Revolution (1775–1783) hoped to gradually abolish the institution in the South and to resettle the former slaves elsewhere, with Africa or Latin America as the most popular choices. This commitment to ending slavery was demonstrated in many members of the elites’ decisions to free their slaves either late in life or upon their death. This active antislavery movement in the South in the early nineteenth century began to decline after 1832, when Virginia’s state legislature failed to pass a law that would have led to the gradual emancipation of slavery in the state, similar to legislation that had occurred in New York and other states. Over the course of the 1830s and 1840s, Southern opposition to slavery or even to criticism of the institution began to disappear. This Southern attitude mirrored and was in part a response to a more vigorous abolitionist critique from groups in Northern states. The large corpus of abolitionist literature elicited a response from numerous Southern authors. For instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, resulted in responses from numerous Southern writers, most notably, novelist William Gilmore Simms (1806–1870) and his novel The Sword and the Distaff. Proslavery advocates across the South made it increasingly difficult for those Southerners who were abolitionists to remain in the South if they expressed their views publicly. Some proslavery advocates defended the institution as beneficial for the slaves themselves. This argument was based on the supposed inferiority of African Americans. William Henry Holcombe argued that the natural inferiority of African Americans made it acceptable for whites to put them in a state of slavery in order to improve their lot in life. He believed this to be the natural order ordained by providence itself, as he argued in his 1860 book The Alternative: A Separate Nationality or the Africanization of the South. In reference to the slave trade, Holcombe wrote: ‘‘It was permitted by God in order to teach us the way in which the dark races are to be elevated and civilized. Jamaica and Hayti [sic] have also been permitted, as timely and salutary warnings, not to desert the path which was marked out by Providence’’ (p. 6). Holcombe viewed the inferiority of blacks as a result of natural differences, but differences ordained by God. He illustrates his point by pointing to the failure of black nations such as Haiti to achieve a semblance of
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stability. Advocates of this view argued that blacks were incapable of taking care of themselves and needed the guidance of their white masters. Thus, slavery not only provided whites with economic benefits but also, in the view of many Southern proslavery advocates, helped to advance the black race. Holcombe, like many other slavery advocates, became as a matter of course a secessionist. Holcombe in the same work wrote that the Republican Party was intent on freeing slaves of the South and thereby allowing them to Africanize the region through natural propagation. The idea of a biracial society based on equality was absurd to Holcombe, as he believed it would degenerate into violence. Earlier Southern leaders had also pointed to this problem, such as Thomas Jefferson, who argued that should the slaves be freed, whites and blacks would be incapable of living peacefully with one another. Other proslavery advocates defended the institution by contrasting it with what they viewed as the industrial abuses of the North. Lawyer and plantation owner George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) argued that slavery was a far more humane institution than wage labor in factories in that slaves were cared for in their youth, in old age, in sickness, and in health, whereas the industrial workers of the North when elderly or unproductive would be unemployed with no one to care for them. Fitzhugh’s 1854 work Sociology for the South argued that free market capitalism as a system benefited the strong while degrading the weak. Slavery for Fitzhugh benefited blacks, who otherwise would be exploited by the industrial system, but also poor whites who thereby secured a higher social and economic status while avoiding the perils of an industrial work force. Fitzhugh’s second book, the 1857 Cannibals All, described Northern industrial society as ‘‘wage slavery.’’ Fitzhugh went beyond just a simple defense of the institution of slavery to a critique of the inequalities found in modern industrial society. He believed the South through slavery represented an older and more just agrarian form of civilization when compared to the harsh realities of the capitalistic industrial North. Many Southern advocates of slavery defended the institution through Christian doctrine. In order to justify the practice they tended to turn to biblical passages in both the Old and the New Testaments that emphasized obedience and respect to masters. In addition, Christian apologists for slavery noted the ancient Israelite patriarchs use of slavery. These Christian defenses of slavery ultimately led to the division of several denominations as abolitionist Christians in the North and proslavery Christians in the South disagreed as to the morality of the institution in the eyes of God. In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church split into Northern and Southern branches over slavery. Similarly, the Baptist church in the United States split over the issue of slavery, leading to the formation of the Southern Baptist Con-
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Southern author William Gilmore Simms (1806–1870). Many Southern authors, including William Gilmore Simms, penned novels glorifying the place of slavery in the South in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These proslavery works often featured benevolent white masters and gentle wives who cared for their grateful slaves, as a father cares for his young children. Public Domain
vention in 1845. Presbyterians bridged the divide until the onset of the Civil War. When the split did occur, however, Southern Presbyterians explicitly defended slavery. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, in its 1861 Address to all the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the Earth, rejected the notion that slavery could be a sin given the lack of a scriptural condemnation of it, a position its recently-connected Northern brethren had held to until the political separation: Shall our names be cast out as evil, and the finger of scorn pointed at us because we utterly refuse to break our communion with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with Moses, David and Isaiah, with Apostles, Prophets and Martyrs, with all the noble army of confessors who have gone to glory from slaveholding countries and from a slave-holding church, without ever having dreamed that they were living in mortal sin, by conniving at slavery in the midst of them. (p. 13)
The Southern Presbyterians made a historical argument that the church and scripture heretofore had not
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made a judgment as to the evils of slavery, and that for the North or other churches to do so at his moment was extravagantly overreaching, given the history of the church and the words of the scriptures on the issue. Protestant Southern ministers were among some of the most strident proslavery advocates. Presbyterian ministers such as Benjamin M. Palmer, James Henley Thornwell, and Robert Lewis Dabney, who was also an influential theologian, defended slavery. Benjamin M. Palmer, in an address to his congregation of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans entitled The South: Her Peril and her Duty on November 29, 1860, explicitly argued that secession was a necessity given the importance of slavery for Southern civilization, an arrangement justified in the Bible: ‘‘Need I pause to show how this system is interwoven with our social fabric? That these slaves form parts of our household, even as our children; and that, too, through a relationship recognized and sanctioned in the scriptures of God even as the other?’’ (p. 8). Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870) similarly defended slavery and the Southern cause as a Methodist minister, as did Baptist minister Thornton Stringfellow. Even Northern born Episcopalians such as Samuel Seabury would produce slavery apologias. British observers of the American Civil War discerned Southern motivations for the war and investigated Southern defenses of slavery. Sidney E. Morse, in his 1863 work A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View of the American Slaveholders’ Rebellion, gave the Southern defenders of slavery a sympathetic treatment, taking their religious arguments on slavery quite seriously: Not only Abraham and other Jewish patriarchs, but some of the men most distinguished for Christian virtues in the time of Christ and his Apostles, were slaveholders, none of whom were rebuked for holding their fellowmen in slavery, while on one of these slaveholders, who was also an officeholder in the army of an absolute military despot, Christ bestowed the highest eulogy, and that too immediately after this slaveholder had openly avowed that he held and exercised absolute power over his fellow-men in both of these relations. (p. 6)
Thus from a strictly scriptural point of view, outside observers acknowledged the Southern defense of slavery had some validity. Upon the end of hostilities, many Southern secessionist advocates began to subtly shift their position, attributing secession not to the issue of slavery but to states’ rights. Nevertheless, after the Civil War, Southern proslavery apologists in their histories, while concentrating on states’ rights far more than slavery, continued to point to slavery as a beneficial institution. Edward Alfred Pollard in one of the first such Southern histories on the war described slavery as a pretext seized on by the North to justify its sectional animosity against Southern civili-
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zation. Even so, Pollard in his 1866 work The Lost Cause still engaged the Northern argument against slavery on its own merits: That system of servitude in the South which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the Africans, and was in the interest of human improvement; and which by the law of the land, protected the negro in life and limb, and in many personal rights, and, by the practice of the system, bestowed upon him a sum of individual indulgences, which made him altogether the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and contentment. (p. 49)
Thus, even though Pollard contested that the morality question was really not what the war was about, he notes that it was a beneficial institution. Similarly, Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1812–1883), who at the beginning of the conflict had vociferously identified slavery with the Confederacy in speeches as the vice president of the Confederacy, focused on issues of state sovereignty rather than slavery in his treatment of the issue after the war. Stephens, in his 1868 A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, wrote how he thought Southerners who opposed Northern centralization were identified with proslavery forces: ‘‘By their acts, they did not identify themselves with the Pro-slavery Party (for in truth, no such Party had, at that time, or at any time in the History of the Country, any organized existence). They only identified themselves, or took position, with those who maintained the Federative character of the General Government’’ (p. 11). Stephens and other Southerners soon after the war’s conclusion began the process of revising the Southern cause not as a defense of slavery, but rather as a defense of states’ rights. Yet these first revisionists could not avoid making at least a theoretical defense of slavery that shares an intellectual history with the arguments made by earlier proslavery advocates. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Holcombe, William H. The Alternative: A Separate Nationality, or the Africanization of the South. New Orleans: Delta Mammoth, 1860. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Morse, Sidney E. A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View of the American Slaveholders’ Rebellion. New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1863. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Palmer, Benjamin Morgan. The South: Her Peril, and Her Duty: A Discourse, Delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, on Thursday, November 29, 1860. New Orleans: True Witness and GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Sentinel, 1860. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Pollard, Edward Alfred. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates: Comprising a Full and Authentic Account of the Rise and Progress of The Late Southern Confederacy. New York: E. B. Treat and Co., 1866. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http:// galenet.galegroup.com/. Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. General Assembly. Address of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America to All the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the Earth. [Augusta, GA.]: By order of the Assembly, [1861]. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Stephens, Alexander Hamilton. A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States: Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results: Presented in a Series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall. Philadelphia, PA: National Pub. Co., 1868–1870. Sources in U.S. History Online: Civil War. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/. Michael Kelly Beauchamp
NORTHERN SUPPORT FOR THE WAR Few scholars would argue today that a moral objection to slavery was the direct cause of the American Civil War. There were those, however, including contemporary Northerners, who supported the war in belief that it amounted to a moral crusade to destroy slavery. In a speech on March 3, 1863, at the Statehouse in Albany, New York, George I. Post of Cayuga castigated those who insisted that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. Post explained, ‘‘Sir, the cause of this controversy [Civil War] is slavery. The cause of the disregard of the obligations of laws and Constitution is slavery. The cause of disrespect of constituted authority has grown out of slavery’’ (Post 1863, p. 2). Peter Cooper, a Christian patriot, was highly disturbed that conditions in the South would require the Federal Government to use its power and authority to maintain slavery. He believed that ‘‘. . . the enslavement of human beings has so far infused its insidious poison into the very hearts of the Southern people [and] that they have come to believe . . . the evil of slavery to be a good . . .’’ (Cooper 1863, p. 2). Some who supported the war on a moral basis were abolitionists who filtered their views through a prism of religion and righteous indignation. Other abolitionists in the North, black and white, viewed the war effort from a more practical basis. They noted the contradic-
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tion between the declaration of the equality of all men in the preamble to the United States Constitution and the nation’s toleration of the existence of a large slave population. In addition, these abolitionists believed that it was impossible for the United States to continue to exist as a half-slave and half-free polity. Their support in waging war against the South was both moral and pragmatic. While the moral legitimacy of slavery was not the direct cause of the Civil War, as Peter Cooper believed it was, slavery affected and poisoned the moral, economic, social, cultural, and political climate of the United States. Had slavery not existed, it is unlikely that there would have been an American Civil War.
Concept of the Union There were other issues of significance for some Northerners who had pragmatic reasons for supporting the war. Much of the white Northern population in general cared less about the abolishment of slavery than about the breakup of the federal union of the states. They were willing to compromise on the question of abolition provided that the South rejected secession as a political solution to the issue of slavery. Furthermore, many Northern industrialists and businessmen thought that slave labor was inefficient and hindered industrial development. They too would have preferred a compromise that involved monetary compensation for slaveholders in exchange for abolishing slavery. After all, a large pool of low-paid black industrial workers would have been profitable for Northern capitalists.
Slavery and Westward Expansion Slavery also became a highly charged political issue relating to sectional development as immigrants crossed the Mississippi River and settled in the Western Territories. Neither the North nor the South wanted the other to gain a political advantage in Congress. Therefore, the question of the extension of slavery into the West became a political issue of the highest order. To a number of both antislavery and proslavery politicians in the North, the issues related to slavery in the Western Territories were as much about political power as they were about the moral dimension of slavery. If Congress had allowed the unrestricted expansion of slavery into the Western lands, the balance of power would have favored the slaveholding Southern states and likely would have resulted in the establishment of a permanent slavocracy. The Western Territory remained important to Northerners after the beginning of hostilities due to the number of Southern sympathizers living there. An 1864 Army intelligence report noted that ‘‘. . . it has been generally known . . . that a secret treasonable organization affiliated with the Southern Rebellion, and chiefly
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military . . . has been rapidly extending itself throughout the West’’ (U.S. War Department 1864, p. 1). The political crises precipitated by the Missouri Compromise (1820), which allowed slavery in Missouri while Maine entered the Union as a free state; the Compromise of 1850, which permitted slavery in the New Mexico and Utah Territories while California became a free state; and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which based the existence of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska on popular sovereignty, were efforts to maintain political parity between the antislave North and the proslave South. However, the bloody internecine war in Kansas (‘‘Bleeding Kansas’’) in 1856 between proslave and antislave factions; the brutal beating that Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner (1811–1874) received in 1856 at the hands of a Southern representative, Preston Brooks (1819–1857), on the floor of the Senate; and the decision in the Dred Scott case (1857), declaring slaves chattel, exacerbated fears in the North of a Southern conspiracy to make slavery legal supported by then-President James Buchanan (1791–1868). Northern papers and other publications frequently published what they purported to be Southern outrages against antislavery Northerners in the South and West. Conversely, John Brown’s antislavery activities in Kansas and ultimate raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (1859), and abolitionist fervor in the North made Southerners fear a pro-black Republican conspiracy to abolish slavery and subjugate Southern whites. In fact, William H. Holcombe, a Southern physician, went so far as to accuse the North of purposely Africanizing the South. Holcombe contended that ‘‘If the Republican Party is permitted to get into power, the Africanization of the South will be gradual, but it will be sure’’ (1860, p. 9).
Harriet Tubman (1820–1913), escaped slave and liberator. A slave who escaped from bondage, Harriet Tubman
made numerous return trips to the South, helping nearly seventy slaves escape, including members of her own family. Unlike other Northern Civil War supporters who fought the South to preserve the Union, Tubman believed the primary focus of the war should be the abolition of slavery. The Library of Congress.
Northern Attitudes toward Abolition Abraham Lincoln, who came to national prominence in 1858 after the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates with Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861), was not a fervent abolitionist bent on destroying the ‘‘evil’’ system. Lincoln was a pragmatist whose first priority as president was to find common ground between the North and the South to prevent fragmentation of the Union. When castigated by the journalist and abolitionist Horace Greeley (1811–1872) for his timidity in denouncing slavery, Lincoln replied in a public letter to Greeley that ‘‘My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery’’ (Rhodes 1907, p. 74). After the Civil War began in April 1861, abolitionists continued to press Lincoln to abolish slavery but he refused to do so. Furthermore, most Northern Democrats did not support war with the South for any reason. These so-called Copperheads accused President Lincoln of violating the Constitution and claimed, with some justification, that the Civil War
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was a poor man’s war. Others were against secession. For example, a Northern Democrat, in a letter to W. G. Brownlow, the Whig editor of a Knoxville newspaper, praised Brownlow’s proslavery but antisecessionist views by saying that ‘‘The classes of Northern people have no feelings but the most friendly toward their brethren of the South and are ready to concede to them all their rights’’ (Ash 1999, p. 56). There were in fact many Northerners who had little sympathy with or interest in abolitionism and the problems of either slaves or free blacks. A Democratic Pennsylvania state senator, Hiester Clymer (1827–1884), for example, adamantly opposed a bill in Congress during the Civil War to emancipate slaves in the District of Columbia. Clymer insisted that its passage would ‘‘. . . afford a place for harboring and concealing free Negroes and runaway slaves [and] . . . where arms can be put into the hands of slaves . . . from which tumult, rebellions and
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insurrections may be—and will be—incited in the State of Maryland’’ (Clymer 1862, p. 4). One popular slogan of the time was ‘‘We Won’t Fight to Free the Nigger.’’ Recent immigrants in particular tended to support the views of antiwar Copperheads. Northern Democrats who supported Lincoln were interested in restoring the Union and were adamantly against emancipating the slaves. They petitioned Lincoln often in an attempt to obtain equal consideration of their views as an alternative to those of the Radical Republicans and free blacks who urged the President to abolish slavery outright. Quite simply, many white Northerners did not want to wage a war for the benefit of African Americans. Northern and Southern racists fueled the flames of Negrophobia in the North with wild stories about hordes of emancipated slaves arriving in the North and posing a threat to the safety of white women. Moreover, many Northern Democrats feared that emancipation would result in competition for jobs, housing, and other resources at the expense of whites. Like Democrats, Northern Republicans were not unified on the issue of emancipation. Conservative Republicans did not favor the emancipation of slaves or providing assistance for their welfare. In addition, they were against arming blacks and recruiting them into the Northern army. The Radical Republicans, on the other hand, advocated the confiscation of Southern land for the use of freed slaves and supported their participation in the military in defense of the nation. In the end, President Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, applicable to those Southern states in rebellion against the Union, occurred when the war was not going well for the North.
Costs of the War As is the case for any war, the longer it lasts the more support for it dwindles. The Civil War proved to be a hardship for Northern soldiers and civilians alike. It was the most costly war in terms of lost lives in the nation’s history. The North suffered 140,414 battle deaths; 224,097 deaths as a result of disease, poor medical care, accidents, and other causes; and 281,881 nonfatal casualties out of a total population of only 22 million in 1861 (World Almanac, 1996, p. 166). Understandably, the high casualty rate caused disenchantment with the war. Further, the 1863 draft in the North was not applied equally; the law allowed some men to hire substitutes, including mercenaries, for the draft. Wealthy Northerners could pay a $300 exemption fee and skip military service. These practices further eroded support for the war in the North and led to violent antidraft riots in New York in the summer of 1863. In addition, as a result of increased resentment of blacks, the rioters, primarily Irish immigrants, assaulted, burned and even lynched a number of black New Yorkers.
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African Americans in the North came closest to giving President Abraham Lincoln’s policies unconditional support and backing. However, while Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and other black abolitionists supported war against the South, their emphasis was on destroying the institution of slavery. They were less concerned about the criticism of Lincoln as a tyrant for suspending civil liberties in violation of the Constitution. They understood that Lincoln’s critics were not talking about the rights of African Americans. Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777–1864) had articulated the majority view about blacks in the Dred Scott decision when he said that blacks had no rights that whites are bound to respect. Furthermore, Douglass himself on many occasions had referred to the Constitution as a proslavery document. Senator James A. Bayard, Jr. (1799–1880) of Delaware, a border state, apparently agreed with Douglass. In protest against the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia, Bayard reminded his Senate colleagues of the Fifth Amendment, which states in part that no person should ‘‘. . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property [slaves] without due process of law; nor shall private property [slaves] be taken for public use without just compensation’’ (Bayard 1862, p. 9). In light of such views, black support for Lincoln and waging war against the secessionist states was predicated on the abolition of slavery. African Americans in general wanted to participate in the war to abolish slavery. There was, however, widespread resistance in the North relating to the recruitment of socalled colored troops. While much of this resistance was based on pure racism—the belief that blacks were inferior, undisciplined, and prone to running in the face of danger, there was also alarm and fear in the North about arming large numbers of African Americans. Nonetheless, the political reality of the North’s tenuous military position was apparent by the late summer of 1862, and the military began to recruit colored soldiers. Following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, Lincoln authorized the recruitment of colored troops with white leadership in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was among the first black regiments to be formed in the North. In July 1863, the regiment launched a courageous but ultimately ill-fated attack against Confederate forces at Fort Wagner in South Carolina. Nevertheless, even in defeat the black soldiers achieved a victory in demonstrating their courage, effectiveness, and patriotism. The support in the North for war against the Confederate States reflected the bitter divisiveness of the Civil War. While a majority of the Northern populace approved of the war to save the Union, a significant number were ambivalent about the abolition of slavery and the cause of African Americans. Nonetheless, the support of blacks was a crucial factor in the ultimate
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victory of the North. Ironically, participation in a largely segregated Northern military did not bode well for African Americans in achieving full equality in either military or civilian life. Some 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army during the Civil War but still faced pervasive racism (World Almanac, 1996, p. 162). Black soldiers were most critical about receiving less pay than white soldiers. A soldier from Pennsylvania expressed black sentiment on the issue eloquently in a letter to the Christian Recorder in February 1864. He stated, ‘‘I am a soldier, or at least that is what I was drafted for in the 6th USCT . . . and it made me feel proud to fight for Uncle Sam . . . our officers tell me now that we are not soldiers . . . that the government just called us out to dig and drudge, that we are to get but $7.00 per month’’ (The Christian Recorder, 1864). Nonetheless, African American soldiers supported the North during the Civil War and would continue to fight in the nation’s wars. They served primarily in racially segregated units until President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) signed an Executive Order in 1948 outlawing racial discrimination in the military.
Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South in 1877. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907. United States Army, Judge Advocate General’s Department. Report of the Judge General on the ‘‘Order of American Knights’’ or ‘‘Sons of Liberty:’’ A Western Conspiracy in Aid of the Southern Rebellion. Washington, DC: War Department, 1864. Yetman, Norman R., ed. Voices From Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970. The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1996. Mahwah, New Jersey: World Almanac Books, 1996. Donald Roe
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Opposition to the War OPPOSITION TO THE WAR : AN OVERVIEW
Raymond Pierre Hylton NORTHERN COPPERHEADS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Anti-Slavery Society. A Fresh Catalogue of Southern Outrages upon Northern Citizens. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860. Ash, Stephen V., ed. Secessionists and Other Scoundrels: Selections from Parson Brownlow’s Book. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Bayard, James A. Abolition and the Relations of Races: Speech of Hon. James A. Bayard: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 8, 1862. Washington, DC: 1862. The Christian Recorder. Philadelphia: February 20, 1864. Clymer, Hiester. ‘‘Is Emancipation the Object of the Present War, or Is It to Sustain the Constitution as It Is, and Restore the Union as It Was?’’ Speech of Hon. Hiester Clymer of Berks County. Philadelphia: Statehouse, March 11, 1862. Cooper, Peter. Letter of Peter Cooper on Slave Emancipation in Loyal Publication Society, No. 23. New York: William C. Bryant & Co., Printers, 1863. Holcombe, William H., M. D. The Alternative: A Separate Nationality or the Africanization of the South. New Orleans, LA: Delta Mammoth Job Office, 1860. Johnson, Michael. P. Reading the American Past, Selected Historical Documents: Volume I: To 1877. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. Post, George I. Cause of the War-Proclamation-Arbitrary Arrests: Speech of Honorable George I. Post of Cayuga, In the House of Assembly. Documents from the New York State Union Central Committee, No. 14, March 3, 1863.
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Stephen Rockenbach SOUTHERN UNION LOYALISTS
William H. Brown PACIFISM AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS
Michael Kelly Beauchamp DRAFT RIOTS AND DRAFT RESISTERS
William H. Brown
OPPOSITION TO THE WAR: AN OVERVIEW As in all armed conflicts—and particularly in regards internal national conflicts—public opinion on both sides of the Civil War was acutely divided on how the war should be conducted and even over whether it should be waged at all. Opposition existed at all strata of society and at all levels of intensity, passive and active, and would manifest itself in a variety of ways. It may be fair to say that the actual combat was waged by a relative few and, though almost everyone would have been at least indirectly affected, the vast majority of individuals wished to avoid being in harm’s way, to cope and survive, and to continue with their lives. The rationale that drove individuals or groups into opposition were varied and complex. To many, the outcome of the war was a matter of indifference; others openly or secretly sympathized with the other side, but chose not to make the trip—either north or south—to enlist. For many, it was personal. Some opposed war on principle or religious conviction; others were scared of dying or saw no compelling reason to risk themselves for emancipation, states’ rights, slavery, sectional particularism, or the concept of an ‘‘indivisible’’ Union. The ways in which they
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expressed their dissent could be as divergent as their motives for opposition. Some deserted, some protested, others sympathized with the other side or expressed their opposition in the political arena.
Pockets of Resistance Within the Confederacy there were large areas where the majority of the population was pro–Union: eastern Tennessee; western North Carolina; half of Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas; and most of the counties of western Virginia (which branched off to form the separate Loyalist state of Kanawa and in 1863 evolved into West Virginia). In those regions plantation slavery had not established and indeed could not have established, a dominant economic profile; the quality of the agricultural land simply did not allow it. Consequently, most of the population had little or no stake in preserving the Southern way of life. Though most resisted passively, some did supply intelligence and support to occupying Union troops when the situation allowed, and a much smaller minority engaged in sporadic guerrilla raids. Within the United States the most tender spots also lay along the border regions: eastern (Tidewater) Maryland was a hotbed for Confederate sympathizers, espionage, and smuggling. It was this network of Southern sympathy that John Wilkes Booth (1839–1865) tried to capitalize on to make his escape into Virginia after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln (1809– 1865). New York City, whose mayor Fernando Woods (1812–1881), had tried to have it declared a neutral area, and the Midwestern border region around the Ohio River also functioned as cradles for antiwar advocacy. The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), a secretive fraternal organization with trappings and rituals reminiscent of Freemasonry, had been in existence since 1854, but after 1861 its membership was widely feared as a Southern ‘‘fifth column’’ bent on undermining the Union war effort. Though branches were rumored to exist in every state from the Eastern Seaboard to the California coast, most of its lodges were located provocatively close to the border in southern Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. The nature and extent of the Knights’ activities remain obscure. Allegedly they were involved in sending money and supplies to the Confederacy, in stoking sentiment for peace and resistance to the draft and war taxation, and (much less substantiated) in espionage and sabotage in various parts of the country. More substantial was the threat posed by the Copperheads, because it was through them that the antiwar threat was translated into its most effective political terms. The Democratic Party had split into pro- and anti- war factions, and the peace advocates were pejoratively labeled ‘‘Copperheads.’’ Congressman Clement Laird Vallandigham (1820–1871) of Ohio was certainly the loudest and most visible of this group. His outspokenness led General Ambrose Burnside (1824–1881) to
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order his arrest on May 5, 1863, imprisonment, and subsequent exile to the Confederacy. Though the Copperhead ‘‘Heartland’’ at first approximated that of the Knights of the Golden Circle, primarily in the regions in which it operated, sentiment for the movement gained strength in the East, particularly in New York City and other major urban hubs. Continuing Union defeats and mounting casualty rolls fueled the tide of discontent, which came to a climax in the 1864 elections with the defeat of Copperhead-supported presidential candidate George B. McClellan (1826–1885) at the hands of Lincoln’s Republican Party.
Pacifism and the Draft Some opposers of the war were forced to assume combat roles. George Hylton, a farmer from southwestern Virginia, was a member of the pacifist Dunker faith who could not pay the necessary $500 tax required for draft exemption on religious grounds. He was compelled by a Southern press gang to join the Confederate cavalry on pain of imprisonment and dispossession of his family’s house and land. Hylton was pressed into the cavalry as a teamster and on the occasions that he was caught up in combat, he simply fired his gun into the air and managed to avoid direct confrontation with Federal soldiers. Conscription had not been in the American military tradition; it was identified with Napoleonic Europe, and with despotism rather than democracy. Yet the length, intensity, and cost in manpower of the conflict were such that both sides felt compelled to initiate conscription in the face of sometimes fierce opposition. Draft resistance in the South, though it manifested itself less often in violence, was nevertheless widespread and pervasive, and in the end the conscription laws were irregularly enforced and became ineffectual. What was seen as innate unfairness in the exemption clauses that advantaged the wealthier echelons of society contributed to a passive resistance that proved to be extremely effective simply because it was quiet and non-confrontational. In the United States, as it became more obvious that volunteer enlistments were inadequate to cope with the demands of a war that had no end in sight, the president and congress resorted, in August 1862, to a draft law that proved only minimally effective but which aroused a great deal of resentment over its exemption clauses and over the fact that draftees who had money could hire ‘‘substitutes’’ to serve in their stead. Corrupt manipulation of the system by doctors who provided untruthful medical certificates, draft officials who could be bribed, and by ‘‘professional substitutes’’ who would sell themselves as draft substitutes several times, employing fake names and deserting, only to later reenlist, were widespread.
Slavery and Emancipation The issue of emancipation proved very divisive in the North. The Emancipation Proclamation, limited though
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Riot in Baltimore, Maryland, April 19, 1861. Secessionists in Baltimore, Maryland, fired upon troops from the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during a prosecession riot on April 19, 1861. ª Corbis
it was to freeing only those slaves located in areas still under Confederate control as of January 1, 1863, engendered resentment. This was in part for fear of excessively alienating slave owners and slavery supporters in the border states and in regions of the Confederacy recently—and in some cases only tentatively—under Federal occupation. Northern majority sentiment certainly adhered to the idea that African Americans were inferior to whites, and many considered the conflict to be a white man’s war to be waged for the primary goal of preserving the Union rather than for abolishing slavery. Racism and war opposition could combine, with disastrous results, as witnessed during the New York Draft Riots of July 13–16, 1863, when African Americans were prime targets for the insurgents. In the Confederacy race and slavery were also issues among many lower class whites, particularly among what was termed the yeoman farmer class. Many knew, slave holding being the expensive proposition that it was, that they would never own slaves and that they would never be of the planter class that many of them thus came to despise. Though most did not oppose the institution, they saw themselves as having a limited or even no stake in a war they considered was being waged to preserve the planter interests that dominated both the state and Confederate governments.
The Civil Liberties Issue Infringements on civil liberties were put into effect in both the United States and the Confederacy, with the
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governments invoking necessity and the risk of threats to the national security. In each case the right of habeas corpus was suspended, and printing presses and newspaper offices were shut down or were subject to government censorship—editors and reporters were liable to be arrested and/or indefinitely detained. The first of these incidents occurred in the initial weeks of the conflict as a result of the Baltimore Riot of April 19, 1861, and the uncertainty of the state of Maryland’s adherence to the Union—which threatened to cut off the Federal capital at Washington, DC. These events motivated Lincoln’s government to suspend the right of habeas corpus and to shut down the entire Maryland state legislature. In certain instances, notably in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, there were claims that Union troops patrolled the voting precincts in order to intimidate, arrest, or turn away known dissidents. On September 24, 1862, only one day after signing the preliminary emancipation proclamation, Lincoln mandated the suspension of habeas corpus throughout all the United States and all areas under the control of the United States (Neely 1991, pp. 51–53, 56–57, 72–74). Official handling of security matters was at first placed under the jurisdiction of the State Department (this occasioned Secretary of State William Henry Seward’s (1801– 1872) remark to the effect that he could arrest anyone in the nation by simply pushing the button to the bell on his desk. In February 1862 these tasks were transferred
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to the War Department. Although of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (1814–1869) operated in a more restrained style, arrests, detentions, and interrogations continued. The majority of these covert activities were carried out by the National Detective Police (NDP) under Colonel Lafayette Baker, who was accountable only to Secretary Stanton.
Privation and Desertion Some opposition to the war developed over time, fueled by hardship and privations which pushed resentment to the limit, sometimes with violent results, as in the Richmond Bread Riots of April 2, 1863. This was particularly true for the South, where the Union blockade, exactions from the Confederate government, a scarcity of younger, able-bodied men at work on the farms, and Union commanders’ destructive policies had appreciably sapped the South’s will to resist by late 1864. This proved decisive throughout the winter of 1864–1865. Desertion is the most pervasive form of antiwar protest, and though the consequences for being caught were severe, it remained endemic at all phases of the war in both sides’ armies. After July 1863, and particularly during the declining months of the Confederacy, the specters of starvation and military defeat created such an atmosphere of despair that desertion rates soared. Communities of deserters, clustering in remote, usually mountainous regions, defied all attempts at retrieving them. During 1864–1865, with hopes fading for the Confederacy, desertion proved so horrendous in the trenches around Petersburg for the Army of Northern Virginia that it weaken General Robert E. Lee’s (1807–1870) already overextended lines to such an extent that Union general Ulysses S. Grant’s (1822–1885) forces were able to force the final breach on April 2, 1865. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lesser, W. Hunter. Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided. Naperville, IL; Sourcebooks, 2004. Marvel, William. Mr. Lincoln Goes to War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. New York; Oxford University Press, 1991. Palludan, Philip. A People’s Conflict. 2nd ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Steele, Philip W., and Steve Cottrell. Civil War in the Ozarks. Gretna, LA; Pelican Publishing Co., 2003. Raymond Pierre Hylton
decision of President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, to go to war to preserve the Union. Whereas other Democrats, who became known as War Democrats, united with Republicans to support the war, these so-called Peace Democrats criticized Lincoln’s policies and the conduct of the war. Republicans reacted to the Peace Democrats’ antiwar agitation by calling them Copperheads, after the poisonous snake. This name stuck, and the Peace Democrats, who preferred to be called Conservatives, eventually embraced the title—but insisted that it was a reference to the U.S. penny (also known as a copperhead), which then depicted Lady Liberty. Although Republican critics often bitterly claimed that the Copperheads were disloyal to the point of conspiring to aid the Confederacy, these Democratic political dissenters actually opposed the war itself and simply disagreed with Republican objectives. Peace Democrats gained political power as the war dragged on, even gaining influence over the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 1864 presidential election. Union military successes and Republican efforts to silence the Copperheads, however, eventually ended significant political opposition.
Political Beliefs The Copperheads’ political viewpoint was based on opposition to the war and a belief that the country could be united peacefully. These peace advocates urged compromise during the secession crisis; however, their efforts were fruitless. After Lincoln called for volunteer troops to put down the rebellion, the Copperheads insisted that Lincoln had overstepped his authority by pursuing the war without allowing Congress to vote on the matter. Antiwar Democrats considered themselves strict constructionists and believed that the president’s powers were limited to those actions expressly indicated in the Constitution. Peace Democrats were not pacifists; rather, they claimed that they were upholding the principles of America’s third president (1801–1809), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). Jefferson favored a relatively weak central government that relied on the states for support over a strongly centralized political structure. As conservative theorists, some Copperheads supported secession. Others, however, simply opposed the expansion of federal authority to wage a war against disunion. Copperheads considered Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, which allowed federal authorities to seize and hold citizens without a hearing, to be unconstitutional. This conviction led to the adoption of their motto, ‘‘The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.’’ The nature of Lincoln’s exercise of presidential authority was a matter of perspective, but most avid Copperhead leaders believed that Lincoln’s interpretation of the Constitution was too loose and therefore a threat to liberty.
NORTHERN COPPERHEADS The American Civil War divided the nation, but it also split communities in the North along political lines. At the beginning of the war, some Democrats opposed the
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Regionalism The peace movement involved more than simply displeasure with the war. Peace Democrats believed that a
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Copperhead menace. Said to be named after the poisonous snake, Copperheads believed that President Abraham Lincoln had neither the Constitutional right to declare war nor the right to prevent Southern states from seceding from the Union. Copperhead ideas were strong among poor whites who feared that newly-freed African Americans would flood the labor force, depressing wages in the North. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
small minority of abolitionists and industrialists in the East had an unfair degree of influence on national politics. Copperhead activity in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio was an outgrowth of Western sectionalism and reflected
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resentment of an administration that some thought too beholden to East Coast capitalists and manufacturers (Klement 1960, p. 6). Many Western Peace Democrats lived in rural areas, and some were either Southern-born
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or had parents who had migrated from the South. Consequently, Republicans dubbed these Western Democrats Butternuts. Although the nickname was originally used derogatorily to describe the poorer residents of the lower Northwest who used butternuts to dye their clothing a light brown color, Western Copperheads eventually embraced this term too. In Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, some rural folk wore butternut pins to express their opposition to the war.
Politics and Race The peace faction of the Democratic Party was popular in border regions, where citizens sympathized with, did business with, or were related to their slave-state neighbors. Border cities like Cincinnati, Ohio, were known for having significant Copperhead populations, and these Peace Democrats had considerable social and political influence. Some white working-class citizens feared that former slaves would move to their communities and compete for jobs. This tension resulted in several riots throughout the Ohio Valley during the summer of 1862, including two riots in Ohio by white workers in Toledo and Cincinnati, and another in New Albany, Indiana. A letter printed in an Ohio newspaper, The Defiance Democrat, on July 26, 1862, attributed the actions of white rioters in Toledo to ‘‘the tide and flood of Negroes poured on this city for the last six months’’ (Dee 2007, p. 80). The editors of the New Albany Daily Ledger published an editorial on July 22, 1862, that blamed the violence in their community on Republicans in Congress who initiated debates over issues that instilled in African Americans an ‘‘exalted idea of their own importance’’ (p. 2). The fear of job competition and black migration caused a surge of support for the Peace Democrats, who declared that President Lincoln was controlled by abolitionists who wanted to use the war to end slavery and elevate the status of African Americans. The peace faction gained further attention after Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. In a December 12, 1862, editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer, James J. Faran, the paper’s editor and a former congressman, encouraged readers to oppose President Lincoln’s wartime policies. Faran claimed that abolitionists were behind the measure, and were obviously influencing a president who had previously taken a conservative stance on emancipation. Faran’s editorial relied heavily on racial stereotypes and promised that ‘‘butchery and rapine upon women and children would be the fell work of the degraded and brutal African, whose instincts are even lower and more bestial than those of the Indian’’ (p. 2).
Arrest of Clement L. Vallandigham Public outcry against the Emancipation Proclamation, combined with a year of military disappointments for
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Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham (1820–1871).
Vallandigham was a congressman and leader of the Copperheads during the Civil War. Public Domain.
the Union Army, caused the peace supporters within the Democratic Party to gain power via state elections in the late fall of 1862. Critics of Lincoln and the Republican Party grew bolder in their attacks on the war effort and the Lincoln administration. One of the most ardent Copperhead politicians was Clement L. Vallandigham (1825–1879), who served as an Ohio congressman from 1858 to 1862. Vallandigham made a bid for the state’s governorship in 1863 but did not have the support of the Ohio War Democrats. On May 1, 1863, he gave a speech in Columbus criticizing the president and testing a previously announced order by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, Commander of the Department of the Ohio, which allowed for the arrest of anyone who expressed sympathy for the Confederacy. Burnside’s men burst into Vallandigham’s home in the middle of the night on May 5 and arrested him. A military commission tried Vallandigham, who stated during the proceedings that he believed the war was ‘‘for the liberation of blacks, and for the enslavement of the whites’’ (Dee 2007, p. 136). Vallandigham contended that it was his constitutional right to speak out against the war, regardless of ‘‘civil or military authority’’ (Dee 2007, p. 137). The
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military commission banished the Ohio politician to territory held by the Confederacy, but Confederate military authorities did not officially accept him. Union troops then escorted Vallandigham through the lines of the warring armies to Tennessee and left him there in February 1864. Vallandigham subsequently traveled by blockade runner to Bermuda and then to Canada. Democrats were appalled at the use of military authority against an American citizen, and this act not only strengthened opposition to the war, it also won Vallandigham the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio. This was a bittersweet accomplishment, because Vallandigham was in exile and unable to personally campaign for office; he conducted his campaign from a hotel in Windsor, Ontario. Although the Confederacy did not officially recognize Vallandigham, some Confederate officers did extend their hospitality to him. A British observer visiting the Confederate Army, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, noted that Confederates expressed to Vallandigham their belief that reunion was no longer possible. Yet Vallandigham responded that a ‘‘scheme of a suspension of hostilities is the only one that has any prospect of ultimate success’’ (Fremantle 1863, p. 207). The Copperheads’ goal to end the war and reunite the states was not compatible with the Confederate goal of independence.
Union Soldiers’ Reactions Vallandigham lost the Ohio gubernatorial election to a War Democrat, John Brough, by more than 100,000 votes. Ohio soldiers were almost unanimous in their opposition to the Copperhead candidate, as they were very concerned that their fellow Buckeyes at home did not support their efforts. In a letter to his sister in Marietta, John Chase lamented, ‘‘I understand that my father is a Copperhead, a Butternut, a Traitor, a Vallandigham Peace-Maker’’ (Dee 2007, p. 159). A petition by members of the Forty-fourth Ohio Infantry summed up the political opinions of the men by stating that ‘‘no better evidence do we want of disloyalty than to hear a man speak in favor of Vallandigham’’ (Dee 2007, p. 152). Ohio soldiers, like many others, longed to return home and likely agreed with Chase, who declared, ‘‘I want peace as much as anyone, but I want it brought about by the rebels laying down their arms and returning to allegiance’’ (Dee 2007, p. 159). The character of Philip Nolan, the protagonist of Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 short story, ‘‘The Man without a Country,’’ is based on Vallandigham.
Copperhead Conspiracies The Republican response to the expansion of Copperhead influence included accusations of disloyalty. Some Republican politicians and military officials advanced theories about widespread Copperhead support for the Confederacy. Most Peace Democrats believed in using
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political means to bring the war to an end and reunite the Union. The activities of a few militant Copperheads, however, added to the spread of Republican conspiracy theories. Evidence of such secret societies as the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Sons of Liberty led Union officials to suspect that there was a widespread organization planning to form a Northwest confederacy and ally with the Southern Confederacy. When Indiana authorities uncovered a plot to free and arm Confederate prisoners, military men overestimated the threat. Official Union documents reported that in Indiana the organization consisted of 75,000 to 125,000 members who were ‘‘well-armed men, constantly drilled and exercised as soldiers’’ (United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Department 1864, p. 5). In reality, Indiana Copperheads did not have a large disciplined army; at most they could muster a few thousand draft resisters and agitators who demonstrated, sometimes violently, in their communities.
Opposition to the Draft On a local basis, Copperheads were civilians who felt the economic burden of war and refused to support or participate in the war. The draft riot in New York City in July, 1863, was the most infamous example of violent resistance to the war effort in the North. White workingclass rioters, many of them Irish, lashed out at wealthy whites who could afford to avoid military service, and at black residents, whom the rioters considered competitors for jobs. Resistance to the draft was widespread on the Union side; provost marshals in the Midwest had difficulty enforcing the draft. Enforcement led to violence, including an incident in Van Wert County, Ohio, in which protestors fired on two deputy provost marshals. The July 11, 1864, edition of the New Albany Daily Ledger reported that a man in Harrison County, Indiana, shot and killed a former lieutenant colonel of the Eighty-first Indiana Regiment after an argument among several women devolved into a frenzied shouting match. The Republican women noticed a woman wearing a butternut emblem in church and tried to take it from her. Passionate disagreements about the war were not confined to the political arena. Instead, war-weary citizens throughout the North took out their anger on one another.
Presidential Election of 1864 Copperhead political influence reached its peak during the presidential election of 1864. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, delegates agreed to nominate a former Union general, George B. McClellan, for president, but also chose George Pendleton as the vice-presidential candidate. Pendleton was a notorious Copperhead politician from Ohio who had voted against every major bill supporting the war effort. Consequently, the Democratic ticket running against Lincoln attempted to unite both
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Peace Democrats and War Democrats. Hard-line Copperheads resisted this compromise because they believed that War Democrats would not work for an immediate peace. Even the Copperheads who supported McClellan later regretted it. Union victories during the summer of 1864 increased public support for Lincoln and rekindled many people’s hopes that the war would soon end. McClellan distanced himself from the Peace Democrats, unwilling to advocate peace when the Union appeared to be winning the war. In October 1864, stalwart peace advocates met in Cincinnati to organize the last-minute creation of a Peace Party. Delegates from Northern states, including Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, decreed that ‘‘the Chicago Convention has distinctly repudiated Democratic principles, and nominated General McClellan, who has responded to the platform by his war record, but the Peace and State Rights Democracy scouting the whole proceedings, have no idea of surrendering their doctrines’’ (Peace Convention 1864, p. 2). Regardless of several staunch declarations against McClellan, the Cincinnati convention failed to produce any nominations. Peace Democrats had to settle for voting for McClellan, who lost the election to Lincoln in November 1864. Politically, the Copperheads were unable to steer the nation toward a peaceful path to reunion. In part their inability resulted from their failure to articulate a clear plan for ending the fighting and reuniting the country. At the local level, Copperheads voiced their concern for their future livelihoods, occasionally resorting to violent protest. The career of the Northern Copperheads demonstrates that the war was fought not only on the battlefield but also within communities back home. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernstein, Iver. The New York Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Dee, Christine, ed. Ohio’s War: The Civil War in Documents. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Fremantle, Arthur James Lyon, Sir. Three Months in the Southern States, April–June, 1863. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1863. Klement, Frank L. The Copperheads in the Middle West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Klement, Frank L. Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Klement, Frank L. The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970. Lincoln, Abraham. President Lincoln’s Views: An Important Letter on the Principles Involved in the GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Vallandigham Case: Correspondence in Relation to the Democratic Meeting at Albany, N.Y. Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1863. Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Divided Union: Party Conflict in the Civil War North. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Peace Convention. Cincinnati Convention, October 18, 1864: For the Organization of a Peace Party upon State-Rights, Jeffersonian, Democratic Principles and for the Promotion of Peace and Independent Nominations for President and Vice-President of the United States. Cincinnati, OH: 1864. Rosecrans, William S. Letters from General Rosecrans: To the Democracy of Indiana: Action of the Ohio Regiments at Murfreesboro, Regarding the Copperheads. Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1863. United States Army. Judge Advocate General’s Department. Report of the Judge Advocate General on the ‘‘Order of American Knights,’’ or ‘‘Sons of Liberty:’’ A Western Conspiracy in Aid of the Southern Rebellion. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1864. Weber, Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Stephen Rockenbach
SOUTHERN UNION LOYALISTS The secession movement that preceded the Civil War was not completely supported by the population of the Confederacy. There remained a sizable portion of the citizenry that continued to support the ‘‘old flag,’’ as they called the flag of the United States. On many occasions, their support went beyond just moral support, but also translated into material aid to the Union war effort. In many instances, Southern Union loyalists aided the Federal war effort by providing comfort to Union prisoners of war, giving military information to Union regiments, and disrupting Confederate authority within their communities.
Beginning of Union Loyalist Opposition After reaching a low point during the secession crisis, the strength of Unionists began to re-emerge as the weaknesses of the Confederacy began to come to the surface in 1862. The first of several Confederate conscription acts brought the class divisions of the war effort out into the open. Unionists had been a part of the initial wave of volunteers for the state regiments; however, the reality of the costs of the war and the conscription of large numbers of the Southern yeomanry revealed the failure of the new republic. Long causality lists affected the makeup of local communities that had a large number of white males fighting in the war. Conscription efforts to bring the remaining white male population into the
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enlisting in Confederate service or to resist calls to report to the county courthouse for enrollment for conscription. They also wrote to relatives and friends to encourage them to desert by giving information about the destitute condition of their families and friends.
Unionist Secret Societies
William G. Brownlow (1805–1877). The South was not unanimous in their support of secession. Southern Unionists, such as William G. Brownlow of Tennessee, advocated slavery but fought against Confederate rule once his home state joined the war against the North. The Library of Congress.
conflict brought the Unionists out to resist the Confederate government. In 1863, another Confederate conscription act dealt the outlying communities another blow with the introduction of the twenty-slave rule, which now exempted owners of farms that employed twenty or more slaves. This exemption further intensified the class divisions of Southern society. Unionists and other segments of Southern society now saw the war as an instrument of the rich. The Confederacy also instituted a new tax known as the tax-in-kind to generate funds for the war by taxing crop production at a rate of ten percent and taxing such other valuables as watches and slaves. Many Unionists began to resist the Confederate government by hiding men from the conscription officers. They hid draft-age men in woods and caves and provided food for them. A number of farmers refused to turn over ten percent of their crops to the Confederacy, choosing instead to hide their harvests from local justices of the peace and Confederate commissary officers. They encouraged their family members and friends to avoid
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In addition to this resistance, Unionists began forming secret societies to communicate with one another without attracting the attention of Confederate authorities. Organizations like the Heroes of America were formed in small communities to communicate information to fight against the Confederate government. The Heroes were also known as the Red Strings because the members wore red strings on their lapels to denote their membership. They conducted secret meetings in locations away from attention in their towns. Entry to the meetings was governed by secret handshakes and passwords that were very similar to Masonic rituals. Through this type of organization, the resistance of Unionists began to grow in various parts of the Confederacy. In addition to these Unionist societies, a number of individuals began to emerge as leaders of Union loyalist activities within the Confederacy. William G. Brownlow (1805–1877), the editor of a newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee, and later governor of the state, promoted the ideals of Unionism through his editorial columns as his son served as an officer of a loyal Tennessee regiment (Coutler 1937, pp. 262, 402–403; Evans 1996, pp. 17– 18). William Woods Holden (1818–1892) led the development of the peace movement in the Old North State as editor of a Raleigh newspaper, the North Carolina Standard. Holden promoted Zebulon Vance as the antiConfederate government candidate in the gubernatorial election of 1862. Despite threats to his editorial business, Holden became the candidate of the Peace Party in North Carolina and challenged Governor Vance in the statewide elections in 1864 (Harris 1987, pp. 12–18, 116–121, 127–155). Senator Andrew Johnson (1808– 1875) remained as U.S. Senator from Tennessee despite his state’s seceding from the Union, and did return as military governor of the Volunteer State in 1862. Johnson was inaugurated as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president in March 1865 and succeeded to the presidency little more than a month later following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 (Trefousse 1989, pp. 143–151, 152– 175, 189, 194–195).
Armed Resistance Early on in the war, gangs composed of draft dodgers and conscript age men armed themselves and fought against the abuses committed by conscription officers and Confederate regiments on detached service. Many communities became armed camps with men providing security and supported by their family and relatives. The increase of violence against wives and daughters of
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conscript age men forced the communities to react violently against the Confederacy. In the mountain regions, much of the violence followed family lines, with Unionist families fighting pro-Confederate families. Abuses were committed by both sides, with the taking of no prisoners and the abuse of women.
Helping the Union Army Southern Unionists also took their support to the war through enlistment in the Union Army. A number of Unionist regiments were formed in the South in 1862 to help stop the rebellion. In Virginia, the First Virginia Volunteers were formed by Unionists from all parts of the state; the unit was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. Other Southern states had such Unionist regiments formed for service as the First Tennessee Volunteers, the First Alabama Cavalry, and the First and Second Texas Cavalry, United States Army. In addition, a number of Unionists traveled to areas under federal control to enlist in Union regiments. A number of Northern regiments contained a sizable contingent of Southerners within their ranks. One Federal prisoner of war noted the discovery of an Alabamian as a member of the Sixteenth Illinois Volunteers at the Confederate prison near Andersonville, Georgia. The Twenty-first Indiana Volunteers contained a number of North Carolinians and Virginians within its companies. One North Carolinian became a recruitment officer for a Michigan regiment serving in Tennessee. Unionists began to recruit and form military units within the Confederacy for serving in the Union Army. Wilkes County, North Carolina, was a county that had voted overwhelmingly for William W. Holden for governor in 1864. Unionists began to gather men for the beginning steps of forming companies for regiments. Once enough men had volunteered to form a company, a Union officer would swear them into service, and then the men marched westward to Tennessee to receive equipment. Through this method, the majority of the Third North Carolina Mounted Infantry was formed for service in the mountains. The Thirteen Tennessee Cavalry, U.S.A., also included within its troops a large number of Unionist North Carolinians who had traveled through the Great Smokey Mountains to enlist in the Union Army. Besides these overt methods of serving the Union, Southern Unionists also worked as spies and scouts for the ‘‘old flag.’’ During the Carolinas Campaign of 1865, Southern Unionists served as scouts for the Union Army because they could blend in with the local communities and obtain information on Confederate movements. Loyal Southerners also provided food and clothing to Union prisoners, and if able, guided escaped prisoners back to Union lines. Unionists were also able to pass along information to advancing Federal armies through slaves or direct contact with the U.S. Army’s Bureau of
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Military Intelligence. An example was Elizabeth Van Lew (1818–1900), who passed along information to the Federal forces surrounding Richmond through a complex network of spies (Varon 2003, pp. 77–106). Major General William T. Sherman’s Union armies benefited by intelligence passed via slaves from Union spies within the defenses of Atlanta. After the capture of Atlanta, Sherman planned to evacuate the city and issued Special Order No. 67 to remove the civilian population. A number of Unionists in the city took steps to find a way for them to remain with their homes and businesses. Several of these families approached three Union army surgeons who had been imprisoned in the city. They asked these surgeons to write General Sherman for an exception to their expulsion, due to their assistance of food and medicine to Union prisoners. Sherman granted an exception for fifty families to stay in the city based on the testimony of the former Federal prisoners, but warned the families that their homes might still be destroyed due to the building of new entrenchments. The Unionist families that actually did leave Atlanta numbered around 1,500 persons. The majority of these families traveled northward to such states as Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Some families also traveled to Washington, DC, and New York City to join a number of other exiled families from Georgia (Dyer 1999, pp. 202–212). After the end of the war, many Southern Unionists became the base of support for the Republican Party in the South. Along with former slaves, the Unionists constituted the base of a new political party that was nearly destroyed by President Rutherford B. Hayes’s abandonment of this wing of the Republican Party in 1876. Other Unionists returned home from either being exiled or serving in the Union Army. Jesse Dobbins returned home to Yadkin County, North Carolina, after serving for three years in an Indiana regiment. He was immediately arrested for murdering a conscription officer in 1863. He beat up the deputy sheriff and escaped to the woods. He contacted the closest United States Army detachment for protection, and after a lengthy court case, he was eventually acquitted of the crime (Casstevens 1997, pp. 86–96, 107, 117–118). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Bynum, Victoria. The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Casstevens, Frances. The Civil War and Yadkin County, North Carolina. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997. Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
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Coutler, E. Merton. William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highland. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937. Dyer, Thomas G. Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1999. Evans, David. Sherman’s Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign. Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press, 1996. Fishel, Edwin. The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War. Boston: Hougton Miffin Co., 1996. Freehling, William A. The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Harris, William C. William Woods Holden: Firebrand of North Carolina Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Moore, Albert L. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. New York: Macmillan, 1924. Paludan, Phillip S. Victims: A True Story of the Civil War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981. Ryan, David D. A Yankee Spy in Richmond: The Civil War Diary of ‘‘Crazy Bet’’ Van Lew. Mechanicsburg, PA.: Stackpole, 1996. Sarris, Jonathan Dean. A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Sutherland, Daniel E., ed. Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999. Tatum, George L. Disloyalty in the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1934. Trefousse, Hans Louis. Andrew Johnson: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1989. Varon, Elizabeth. Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Wiley, Bill I. The Plain People of the Confederacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943. William H. Brown
PACIFISM AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS Pacifists and conscientious objectors refused to serve in the military or engage in combat during the Civil War for a variety of reasons. While pacifism was not new within America, the Civil War was the first time that
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the federal government had to deal actively with the issue because of the innovation of the military draft. The Confederacy first adopted conscription on April 16, 1862. This legislation required all able-bodied white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five to enter the Confederate Army. Later acts expanded the age range to seventeen years at the lower end and fifty at the upper. In addition, those already serving had their contracts extended for another three years. Many Southerners were angered by exceptions for those who could pay five hundred dollars or provide a substitute, as well as a series of exemptions for certain offices and professions— including an exemption for owners of plantations with twenty slaves or more. The Union followed suit, adopting a conscription law in 1863 that called up able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five. Similar to Southern practice, exemptions were given to men in specific offices or jobs or men who were only sons. Exemption from the draft could also be purchased for three hundred dollars.
Religious Pacifists Several small religious sects in the United States in both North and South subscribed to pacifism as part of their understanding of Christianity. The Society of Friends (Quakers) and such Anabaptist groups as the Mennonites had significant populations in some Northern states, particularly Pennsylvania and Indiana. There were also smaller groups like the Amanists (members of the Amana Society, who purchased land in Iowa and formed six communal villages in 1859), Dunkards, and Schwenkfelders, who also maintained a pacifist stance. Both the Confederacy and the Union had pacifist religious sects, though the Union had a far larger population of religious pacifists. In October 1862 the Confederacy adopted another draft act that exempted members of pacifist sects from service but still required them to furnish a substitute or pay the five-hundred-dollar fee. Because the South was gradually worn down by the war, however, it became nearly impossible for pacifists to avoid military service, given the decline in both Southern manpower and money. The Confederacy could ill afford to take action against pacifists that could be better directed toward the war effort, however. Consequently, as the situation worsened pacifists were left to their own devices. Any action to enforce conscription against Southern pacifists was left to the discretion of local officials and the Confederate Army. Some states mandated exemptions but required pacifists to work in other fields. North Carolina, for instance, used pacifists as workers in salt mines and in hospitals. Nevertheless, pacifists living near combat areas were subject to abuse and the seizure of their property, particularly in the South. The North, which never faced the same crisis in manpower, tended to grant better treatment to members
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of pacifist sects, though the Union never formally exempted them from service by a formal act of Congress. There was no clear policy within the North for dealing with those who refused to serve. Generally, pacifists who could not afford to pay the exemption fee would report for duty, express their religious opposition to war, and then request assignment to hospitals or service in logistical fields. These exemptions were generally granted by the Union and supported by Lincoln, who wished to avoid formal Congressional legislation on pacifist sects. Most mainstream Protestant and Catholic bodies embraced the war effort, justifying both the Union and the Confederate causes with religious arguments. Indeed, the Christian churches before the war counted as members the some of the most vociferous critics and defenders of the institution of slavery. An Episcopalian priest, Noah Hunt Schenck (1825–1885), who ministered in the border state of Maryland, was one of the few church leaders who called for reason and moderation at the beginning of the conflict rather than encouraging volunteers. He counseled patience and understanding rather than describing the Civil War as a moral crusade. Schenck clearly chose to separate the kingdom of God from the kingdom of man in his arguments: The servant of Christ has an office in an hour like this when the elements of storm have combined, as in days when the skies above him are clear and clean. He lies under special obligation as a follower of ‘‘the Prince of Peace’’ to avert by ‘‘the soft answer’’ and the life of ‘‘moderation’’ the threatened disasters which the madness of his brethren have invited. (Schenck 1861, p. 20)
For Schenck, despite his colleagues’ bromides on the subject, war was out of line with the message of the Gospel. Regardless of the sins of the Confederacy, Schenck believed that punishment was best left to God, while political problems could be resolved through the exercise of reason and moderation.
Constitutional Objections to Conscription In contrast to previous wars involving the United States, the Civil War depended on armies formed through conscription. To many Americans, however, the military draft violated traditional constitutional rights at the heart of the American republic, for which both Northerners and Southerners believed they were fighting. As a consequence, many who chose not to fight gave conscription as a violation of individual rights as their objection to the war effort. Southerners who had opposed secession and felt that the chances of a Confederate victory were unlikely were especially opposed to the war on these grounds. George Adams Fisher, who considered himself a Union man, was a citizen of Texas that was conscripted into the Confederate Army. Fisher thought that there was no legal basis for secession, and was particularly outraged by the Confederate government’s
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use of force against its own troops in the cases of Southerners who chose to leave the army or who refused to have their contracts extended after the conscription act of 1862. After describing an incident in which a Confederate officer threatened his own men with grapeshot after they decided that they had fulfilled their contract and chose not to reenlist, Fisher wrote: ‘‘This is a specimen of the devotion of the Southern soldiers to the cause in which they are engaged, and of the means made use of to keep their armies together. These statements produced a wonderful excitement among the Union citizens of Texas. Many solemnly vowed they would never submit to the conscription law’’ (Fisher 1864, p. 61). Josephine Clare, a woman from Natchitoches, similarly opposed secession. The Confederacy’s use of conscription motivated her husband to flee with his family to the North, given the undemocratic methods used to support the Southern war effort. Clare wrote, ‘‘In the Spring of 1862, the rebel authorities conscripted every man between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Their opinions were not consulted, but at the point of the bayonet they were compelled to obey the tyrannical orders of their oppressors’’ (Clare 1865, p. 3). Conscription produced significant opposition within the Confederacy, even among Southerners who in principle supported secession. Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia (1821–1894) wrote in his message to the state’s legislature on the subject of conscription, ‘‘Not only the rights and the sovereignty of the States have been disregarded, but the individual rights of the citizen have been trampled under foot, and we have by this policy been reduced, for a time at least, to a state bordering upon military despotism’’ (Brown 1862, p. 4). Conscription in both the North and South was widely viewed as unconstitutional and out of keeping with the tradition of a voluntary military in United States history that dated back to the American Revolution. Many Northerners also objected to conscription, most spectacularly in the draft riots that took place in New York City from July 13 to July 16, 1863. The riots were a direct response to conscription on the part of Irish and German Americans, who targeted the wealthy and African Americans. Ultimately, federal troops had to be called in to end the violence. The New York City draft riots resulted in the deaths of 119 people, serious injury to another 300, and significant property damage (Paludan 1988, pp. 190–191). The riots indicated that the North too had significant opposition to conscription. Many Democrats, even some who supported the war effort, considered the draft to be unconstitutional. Border state populations and recent immigrants like the Irish and the Germans were also more likely to oppose the draft as a violation of their civil rights; these groups also objected to the war effort on these constitutional grounds. In sum, pacifists and conscientious objectors in the North and the South opposed the Civil War for both
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religious and constitutional reasons. Because of the scope of the conflict and the resort to a military draft, the Confederacy and the Union had to deal with the problem that pacifists and conscientious objectors pose in a war between two mobilized societies for the first time in American history. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Joseph E. Special Message of his Excellency Joseph E. Brown, to the Legislature. Milledgeville, GA: Boughton, Nisbet & Barnes, 1862. Clare, Josephine. Narrative of the Adventures and Experiences of Mrs. Josephine Clare. Lancaster, PA: Pearson & Geist, 1865. Fisher, George Adams. The Yankee Conscript, or, Eighteen Months in Dixie. Philadelphia: J. W. Daughaday, 1864. Paludan, Phillip. A People’s Contest: The Union and the Civil War, 1861–1865. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988. Schenck, Noah Hunt. Christian Moderation, the Word in Season, to the Church and the Country, 2nd ed. Baltimore: Entz & Bash, 1861. Michael Kelly Beauchamp
DRAFT RIOTS AND DRAFT RESISTERS Resistance to conscription acts in both the Union and the Confederacy was the strongest and most violent form of activism on the home front to the national policies of the respective combatants. Draft resistance showed the rising level of discontent with losses on the battlefields, food shortages at home, and racial tensions in local communities. In the North, draft resistance showed that federal policies were not completely supported by the country and that the President’s conduct of the war was seriously questioned in some quarters. In the Confederacy, draft resistance revealed the open wounds of class divisions. In addition, the resistance forced the Confederacy to pull badly needed troops from the various theaters of war to enforce its conscription acts within its states. To enforce those acts, Confederate troops committed war crimes against the civilian population to enforce the authority of the national government. Both sides of the conflict realized by 1862 that there would not be enough volunteers to sustain their armies in the field. As a result, both governments turned to conscription to maintain and strengthen their armies. In April 1862 the Confederacy passed the first of three conscription acts to bring more men into its armies and to prevent the massive mustering-out of twelve-month volunteers. The South concentrated on men who fell within the militia age of eighteen to thirty-five with exceptions for those in business and government jobs. As expected, battlefield losses forced the Confederacy to
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institute additional conscription acts in 1863 and 1864. The last act was the most severe; it called up all ablebodied men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five with only a few exemptions.
Draft Resistance in the North By 1862, the federal government began to look for new ways to increase enlistments in the Union Army. The Militia Act of 1862 was expected to provide roughly 300,000 men for military service; however, widespread opposition prevented the federal government from fully implementing its provisions. The Northern states used a bounty system to increase recruiting to fulfill their quota of state regiments for military service. By March 1863, the Enrollment Act was signed. This act provided for the enrollment of all households within a congressional district by government agents. A lottery was held to see which men would be called up for military service. If enough men to meet the quota volunteered in a district, then the lottery was not held. Drafted men could obtain the services of a substitute to go in their place or pay $300 to exempt themselves from military service. Northern citizens did not respond positively to President Lincoln’s initial call for recruits in 1862. Local opposition to the Militia Act grew into violence in several states. In many cases, the citizens’ outrage was not directed toward the state governments but rather toward the national government that had forced the issue on the states. A month after the Union victory at Sharpsburg (Antietam), Maryland, in September 1862, a massive riot occurred in Port Washington, Wisconsin, in October. A crowd marched through the streets of the town under a banner protesting the draft. They proceeded to attack the courthouse and destroyed the local enrollment papers for the county. A battalion of infantry had to be deployed to restore order in the town.
New York City Draft Riots These disturbances were minor skirmishes compared to the major protests that occurred over the Enrollment Act of 1863. The potential conscription of poor whites who did not have the financial means to hire substitutes for the draft became a major point of contention. In addition, the anger over the conscription lottery became tied to labor issues in Northern cities. African Americans were beginning to compete with immigrants for lowerwage work, thereby destroying the labor monopoly of German and Irish workers. By the spring of 1863, violence was erupting throughout the North over the Enrollment Act. Violence occurred in places as distant from each other as Detroit, Michigan, and Rutland, Vermont. The draft lottery was disrupted in Chicago and local police were attacked when they attempted to stop the crowd. On July 11, 1863, the first names of the lottery were drawn in New York City without incident. At the same
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New York City draft riots, 1863. On July 13, 1863, riots broke out in New York City over the second lottery drawing and the opening of the draft office. The mob mostly consisted of poor immigrants who sought those they felt were taking their jobs. Soon, African Americans became the target, resulting in lynching and fires. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
time, nearly all of the New York State Militia had been deployed to Pennsylvania to cover portions of that state during the Gettysburg campaign. On July 13, riots broke out in response to the second drawing of lottery numbers and the opening of the draft office. A large mob burned the office and looted stores and the homes of the wealthy on Lexington Avenue. The bottom floor of the office of the New York Tribune was burned, and Brooks Brothers’ store was attacked and looted by the crowd. Up to that point, the mob consisted of the poor of the city, mainly German and Irish. On the following day, the mob was primarily composed of Irish immigrants. The rioters quickly focused on those minorities who they believed were taking their jobs and were the cause of the war itself. In short order, African Americans were being targeted within the city. Soon, individual African Americans were being attacked and lynched on the street. Businesses that employed African Americans were also attacked and burned by the mob. The Colored Orphan Asylum was also burned; however, all the children except one were able to escape. The New York City police, seriously outnumbered, attempted to control the crowds, but they were also
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attacked by mobs of men and women. Republicans, policemen, wealthy individuals, and African Americans were assaulted on the streets by the mobs. The crowd overran one armory and gained weapons to fight police barricades and assault additional blocks of the city. In Pennsylvania, the deployed militia regiments were ordered back to the city. U.S. Army regulars from Governor’s Island were set over to clear the streets with muskets with fixed bayonets. The provost marshal even requested the U.S. Navy to station an armed steamer near the business district and send ashore a contingent of U.S. Marines to assist the police. The arrival of the militia regiments, as well as volunteer Union regiments from Michigan and Indiana, soon spelled the end of rioting in the city. The regiments were sent into the street to clear away barricades and return law and order. As a measure to calm the crowds, the draft lottery was ordered suspended within the city. By July 17, 1863, law and order was completely restored. The next day, regiments from the Union Army of the Potomac arrived to help patrol the city. Over 1,000 fatalities occurred during the period of July 12 through July 17, 1863, along with $2 million dollars of property damage. It was later determined that the actual
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toll was 105 killed and 193 seriously wounded (Cook 1974, pp. 194–195). During this period, other Northern cities experienced rioting over the proposed lottery for the Enrollment Act of 1863. A Federal armory was attacked in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 14, 1863. Other disturbances erupted throughout the mid-Atlantic states, and in Ohio and Wisconsin in the Midwest. Despite the fears over another riot, conscription officials made plans to hold another draft lottery for New York City in mid-August 1863. On August 17, the mayor and police commissioner requested that thirteen militia regiments be deployed to protect the draft locations and parts of the city. No violence occurred during this draft, and the regiments remained until mid-September 1863.
Draft Resistance in the Confederacy Within the Confederacy, resistance to the draft grew as a response to class discrimination in the conscription acts and the growing burden imposed on the poor by the Confederate government. Initially, the First Conscription Act of 1862 was passed in order to deal with the potential mustering-out of twelve-month volunteers just before the season of active campaigning in the spring and summer of 1862. The act specified a large number of exemptions for a number of jobs and government positions. The burden fell upon the small farmers and mechanics to fulfill the manpower quotas of the act. Throughout May 1862, large numbers of men volunteered to prevent having to be conscripted by the government. After this initial wave of volunteers, however, the enrollment of additional conscripts began to fall off in the South. Many communities had sent large numbers of their white male population off to war, and they were soon greeted with long casualty lists from the battles of late 1862, including Antietam and Stones River. To fill the ranks, Confederate conscription officers became more ruthless in ferreting out men who had not been exempted from service. Abuses were committed against families by Confederate troops looking for draft evaders and private property was destroyed. Conscription officers and their troops kicked in doors of private dwellings and ransacked houses, barns, and storage bins. Soldiers tied up women to force them to reveal the locations of their male relatives. (Barrett 1963, pp. 188–189, 193–194) Beginning in late 1862, resistance grew into violence in a number of counties toward conscription officers and their military companies. Officers were beaten up by gangs of men or shot during roadside ambushes. Justices of the peace, who were required to compile lists of men to be drafted, were threatened by citizens in their counties of residence. By 1863 violence was regularly occurring in a number of locales in the South. Randolph County, North Carolina, home to a number of Quakers and Unionists, was considered to be in open rebellion by
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the governor of North Carolina. In mountain regions, the draft was seen as the tyrannical reach of a government founded by large plantation owners. Draft resisters and deployed state regiments murdered citizens on a regular basis in Southern mountain counties.
Second Conscription Act The Confederate Congress passed the Second Conscription Act in the spring of 1863. This act was notable for the inclusion of the so-called twenty-slave rule. According to this provision, masters of twenty slaves or more were now exempted from military service. This exemption drove an even greater division between the rich and poor in Southern society. Many saw this exemption as a way to ensure that poor Southerners would fight the war while the rich would be unaffected. In addition, the number of exemptions was increased for those individuals working in government and higher levels of businesses. Not surprisingly, draft resistance grew in the South. The desertion rate rose in frontline regiments, and deserters from those regiments joined up with draft resisters to form gangs to fight against Confederate troops. In Yadkin County, North Carolina, a number of local men fought a pitched battle and succeeded in driving off a conscription officer and his detachment. Men also avoided military service by hiding in the woods and the mountains, which forced the Confederacy to send troops needed at the front to search for these men in the backwoods. Women related to the draft resisters often left food for them at certain locations. Consequently, conscription officers began to target and follow the women as they traveled through the countryside to locate groups of deserters. State governors were pleading with the national government in Richmond to send regular troops to deal with the growing threat within the mountain counties. Increasingly, the Confederate government was forced to deploy regiments and brigades to bring these regions back under central authority. General Robert E. Lee had to send regiments back to their native states to assist in reestablishing Confederate authority in a number of counties. In several cases, battle-weary and numerically reduced regiments were sent back to assist conscription officers and to recruit additional soldiers to bring their units back up to full strength. These troops would bring a local area under control and bring in conscripts to send to camps of instruction. As soon as the regiment was sent back to its parent army, the local population would rise back up again to fight the conscription officers and their detachments. In several cases, men of conscript age and deserters formed improvised groups to protect their communities from the intrusion of Confederate soldiers. Toward the end of the conflict, many local communities were not under Confederate control, and only the arrival of Union soldiers ensured the return of law and order.
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Propaganda: An Overview
In summary, attempts to raise recruits for both the Union and Confederate Armies were met with violence and social unrest. In Northern states, mob violence affected the entire system of using a lottery to pick men for military service. The increase of bounties offered by the states and the timely deployment of military troops enabled the system to function despite the lowered quality of men being brought into the armies. In the Confederacy, draft resistance played a major role in the breakdown of the government’s influence in outlying communities. In addition, the nature of conscription itself divided the Confederacy along class lines, and damaged the nation internally. This breakdown in authority coupled with losses on the battlefield served to doom the Confederacy in short order. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barrett, John G. The Civil War in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War. New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1990. Coakley, Robert W. The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1789–1878. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988. Cook, Adrian. The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1974. Gallman, J. Matthew. The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front. Chicago: I.R. Doe, 1994. Geary, James W. We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991. Leach, Jack. Conscription in the United States: Historical Background. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1952. Moore, Albert L. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. New York: Macmillan, 1924. Murdock, Eugene C. One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971. Paludan, Phillip S. Victims: A True Story of the Civil War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981. William H. Brown
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Propaganda PROPAGANDA : AN OVERVIEW
David F. Herr RALLIES , LECTURES , AND SPEECHES
Carol Brennan GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
POLITICAL HUMOR AND CARTOONS
Carol Brennan BIASED NEWSPAPER REPORTING
Stephen Rockenbach PARTY POLITICS
George A. Milite
PROPAGANDA: AN OVERVIEW The American Civil War gave rise to rich and diverse propaganda, although in neither the Union nor the Confederacy was much of this propaganda generated by the government directly, aside from speeches by their respective presidents. Unlike governments in subsequent wars, both sides dedicated the bulk of their attempts at persuasion to international lobbying, rather than focusing on the home front. There was, however, no shortage of propagandistic rhetoric from politicians seeking election, newspaper editors and reporters, and assorted public speakers. The South’s changing fortunes during the war limited the amount of propaganda it produced. Whereas there were close to 800 daily papers published in the South in 1860, there were at best twenty by the end of the war. The influence of nongovernmental propaganda was complex and significant. During the 1863 New York City draft riots, for example, Republican newspapers played a pivotal role when they fixed blame for the riots on New York Governor Horatio Seymour, who had delivered a series of speeches attacking emancipation and conscription. In the South during the closing years of the war, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, increasingly became a reviled figure once Southern editors turned their vitriol against him. They repeatedly accused him of choosing poor generals and meddling in military affairs. Newspaper editorialists both North and South were perhaps the most significant contributors to wartime propagandizing. At the same time, they also criticized the practice: ‘‘It is impossible to condemn too strongly,’’ the Newark, New Jersey, Daily Advertiser exclaimed in January 1861, ‘‘the pestiferous inventions and exaggerations of reckless political gossips and paid letter-writers, whom the times have hatched into being.’’ The problem was not merely the dishonesty of the propaganda, but its results. The stories had, the Advertiser asserted, ‘‘a tendency to take the bread out of the mouths of thousands, and in the end to endanger the Union everywhere and bring anarchy itself in their train’’ (Smith 1948, p. 1,043). The Daily Picayune of New Orleans spoke in equally harsh terms against anti-Confederate propaganda, labeling some newspapers, ‘‘atrabilious sheets, whose columns are blackened by detraction and scandal—whose mission is to misrepresent and slander’’ (Dumond 1964 [1931], p. 487).
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Propaganda: An Overview
Broadside from the Charleston Mercury, December 20, 1860. Technological advances in printing presses allowed for an
inexpensive way to quickly spread ideology to the reading public. Much of the propaganda disseminated throughout the Civil War came not from Union or Confederate governments but rather through the efforts of newspapers, by way of editorial essays and political cartoons. ª The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY
Diverse Expression The unexpected ferocity of the fighting during the war’s early stages and the conflict’s profound implications quickly gave rise to an abundance of varied propaganda. Newspapers were by far the most common medium. Nineteenth-century papers were overtly political and built their readership through allegiance to specific party politics. Their appeal to the masses was limited until the 1830s. Reliable steam-powered cylinder presses helped
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create the era of the ‘‘penny press’’ by the late 1830s. The inexpensive papers’ new audience was less interested in political diatribe, and newspapers, including the New York Herald, responded by beginning to publish sensational stories about crimes and scandals. The Civil War proved a desirable topic and the papers provided coverage of the fighting, as well as editorials on the actions of both governments. Many papers also included poetry from poets and amateurs alike, as well as directly propagandistic political cartoons. Readership was large in urban regions. Hundreds of thousands of Americans subscribed to Harper’s Weekly, for example. Although Southern subscriptions rates are more difficult to determine, many Confederates regularly read Southern Illustrated News and the Magnolia Weekly. One reason the warring governments may not have felt compelled to produce their own domestic propaganda was the effort of private citizens. Historian George Winston Smith (1948) argues that the various clubs and organizations in New England that reproduced editorials for wide dissemination as broadsides played a significant role shaping public opinion. Boston businessman John Murray Forbes, for example, began in 1862 to have newspapers reprint editorials at his expense for distribution to Massachusetts troops and residents. Northern pamphleteering was also significant. Union Leagues and pamphlet societies distributed millions of propaganda pamphlets throughout the war. The South had a tradition of outspoken public speakers, and many of these men employed their rhetoric skills during the sectional conflict. These ‘‘fire eaters’’ were wealthy, powerful men who took every opportunity to disseminate their propaganda. They included large planters like Robert Barnwell Rhett and Edmund Ruffin, and the newspaper editor and lawyer William Lowndes Yancey. Literature was another popular form of war propaganda. New fiction genres focused on the war included stories of women defending the home front, tales of boy’s adventures supporting the war, and stories about the opposing side. Harriet Beecher Stowe introduced what proved to be the most enduring of the fictional works used propagandistically almost a decade before the fighting: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. Stowe effectively captured the inhumanity of slavery, and her book became wildly popular; more than three hundred thousand copies were printed between 1852 and 1853 alone. Almost 8,000 more were printed during the war. Poetry and music were also effective media for propaganda and may have surpassed newspapers and broadsides in their reach. Easily learned and passed on orally, songs and poetry about the war were enormously popular on both sides. The message was rarely subtle, as reflected in the opening lines of a poem by George H. Miles: God save the South! God save the South!
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Propaganda: An Overview Her altars and firesides— God save the South! Now that the war is nigh— Now that we arm to die— Chanting—our battle-cry, Freedom or Death! (Miles 1866)
Northern poetry was similarly direct, as evidenced by these lines from Caroline A. Mason’s poem, ‘‘God Bless Abraham Lincoln’’: God bless him—with a large increase, With righteousness that shall not cease, With wisdom and His ‘‘perfect peace.’’ (Mason 1864)
While much of the most famous poetry and song from the Civil War years may not be overtly propagandistic, authors nonetheless frequently tried to convey that the cause they championed was great and its heroes admirable. Sidney Lanier’s poem ‘‘The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson’’ paints a heroic image, as does Walt Whitman’s homage to Abraham Lincoln, ‘‘O Captain! My Captain!’’ John Savage’s ‘‘Dixie’’ takes the Confederate song and makes it a Union cheer, with such lines as, ‘‘Oh, the Starry flag is the flag for me; ’Tis the flag of life, ’tis the flag of the free’’ (Hill 1990, p. 222). People on both sides drew from a wealth of similar material as they sought to apprehend their place in the conflict.
The Meaning of Propaganda Propagandists of all stripes invoked a wide range of emotionally charged topics in their attempts to incite or persuade, including nationalism, nation-making, the Constitution, the fighting, race, gender, and patriotism. While almost every aspect of the war was the subject of propaganda, the most popular forms were driven in part by the desires of the audience and the context of the moment. Shortly after Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter, the focus of propaganda shifted to addressing the implications of war. Following the Union retreat at Shiloh, Confederate propagandists began to crow about imminent victory. Each battle or political move generated the next wave of propagandistic material. Studies of newspaper editorials during the period leading to war reveal that the most divisive issue was slavery. Slavery was either seen as a challenge to the notion of liberty, or as an institution that needed to be protected if the rights of individuals (individual property owners, that is) were to be affirmed. On both sides of the argument, propagandists placed the survival of the country in the balance. Both sides turned to the Revolutionary generation for inspiration. Increasingly, propagandists claimed that their side was the true inheritor of the American Revolution, whereas their opponents desired a society antithetical to the values the Revolution embodied. During the war, both sides experienced a shift away from blind public support. New debates arose as a result
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of wartime deprivation and, for the South, the increasing uncertainty of victory. Peace movements launched their own propagandistic efforts and the press in North and South freely criticized the policies of their respective governments. While there was some government censorship, the trend was more toward restraint. War correspondents were a new type of journalist, and enjoyed almost unlimited access to the military. In fact, correspondents were often present when commanders discussed strategy. Some reporters were even used by the military to communicate orders. Despite this unfettered access, the quality of war reporting was often poor. The style of reporting was propagandistic, not objective. Southern reporters tended to exaggerate the size of the enemy forces, whereas Northern reporters sometimes claimed victory even when the Union lost. The press on both sides was fond of evaluating the performance of prominent generals. Reporters praised their victories or castigated them for losses. One of the Confederacy’s most unpopular generals, Braxton Bragg, was notorious for his dislike of war reporters. The absence of extensive government propaganda efforts and the proliferation of organized civilian efforts make Civil War propaganda quite different from that seen in later conflicts. Rather than centralized control aimed at shaping ideas about a conflict, the Civil War period featured many voices and little repression of critical views. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cullop, Charles P. Confederate Propaganda in Europe, 1861–1865. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969. Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Southern Editorials on Secession. New York and London: Century Company, 1931. Reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964. Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Freidel, Frank, ed. Union Pamphlets of the Civil War, 1861–1865. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Hill, Lois, ed. Poems and Songs of the Civil War. New York: Gramercy Books, 1990. Mason, Caroline A. ‘‘God Bless Abraham Lincoln.’’ In Personal and Political Ballads, ed. Frank A. Moore. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864. Available on-line from http://hdl.loc.gov/umich.dli.moa/. Miles, George H. ‘‘God Save the South.’’ In War Poetry of the South, ed. William Gilmore Simms. New York: Richardson & Company, 1866. Available online from http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/.
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Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Perkins, Howard Cecil. Northern Editorials on Secession, vol. 2. New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1942. Reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964. Smith, George Winston. ‘‘Broadsides for Freedom: Civil War Propaganda in New England.’’ New England Quarterly 21, no. 3. (1948): 291–312. Stevenson, Louise L. ‘‘Virtue Displayed: The Tie-Ins of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’’ In Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. Available from http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/. Winship, Michael. ‘‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin: History of the Book in the Nineteenth-Century United States.’’ In Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive. Available from http:// www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/. David F. Herr
RALLIES, LECTURES, AND SPEECHES During the American Civil War, both the Union and Confederate sides actively marshaled support for their respective cases through rallies, lectures, and speeches. At these frequently well-attended events, impassioned orators either condemned slavery and the treasonous secession of the Confederate states, or affirmed the South’s moral justifications for slavery and its right to secede in order to continue its way of life. Celebrated orators such as Edward Everett and Frederick Douglass drew large crowds, but so too did various politicians, ministers, and other notables.
Edward Everett In the cities and towns of the Union side, mass meetings were frequently held to rally patriotic support for the war. The famed orator Edward Everett—a former governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard College, and one of the most respected Whig Party politicians of his era—was the most sought-after speaker at such events. In November 1863, Everett spoke at the dedication of a Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of terrible Union losses earlier that year: And now, friends, fellow-citizens, as we stand among these honored graves, the momentous question presents itself, Which of the two parties to the war is responsible for all this suffering, for this dreadful sacrifice of life, —the lawful and constituted government of the United States, or the ambitious men who have rebelled against it? . . . I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a ‘‘rebellion,’’ because it is one, and in grave matters it is best to call things by their
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right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts ‘‘rebellion’’ on a par with ‘‘invasion.’’ The constitution and law, not only of England, but of every civilized country, regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is by every civilized government regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. (Everett 1864, p. 61)
His speech was two hours in length, but was followed by President Abraham Lincoln’s far briefer, yet also eloquent, the Gettysburg Address. Everett’s words, however, were characteristically forceful and stirring, and widely reprinted in Union newspapers of the day.
Frederick Douglass One of the most popular figures on the Northern lecture circuit was Frederick Douglass, a former slave and America’s most famous abolitionist in the years leading up to the war. Douglass published a series of newspapers and journals, and during the war his editorial writings took up the Union cause and advocated for the abolition of slavery. These writings also shaped his lectures, including one event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May 1863, titled ‘‘What Shall Be Done with the Negro?’’ This speech gives a sense of Douglass’s stirring oratorical powers: Our answer [to the question of what should be done with the slaves] is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. . . . Let us stand upon our own legs, work with our own hands, and eat bread in the sweat of our own brows. When you, our white fellow-countrymen, have attempted to do anything for us, it has generally been to deprive us of some right, power or privilege which you yourself would die before you would submit to have taken from you. (Douglass 1975, p. 164)
Following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the authorization of new Union Army regiments for black soldiers, Douglass became an ardent recruiter of blacks for the Union side.
Recruitment Rallies Recruitment rallies in general—such as those occurring during a massive recruitment drive in Boston, Massachusetts, during the spring and summer of 1862—were a commonplace event in many cities during the first years of the war (O’Connor 1997, p. 101). The Boston effort, a response to President Lincoln’s call for 600,000 more troops, kicked off in August with a major rally at Faneuil
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the war, these speeches increased in number as local officials and church pastors sought to bolster the spirits of an increasingly hard-pressed civilian population. Often, the ideals of the American Revolution were invoked, because patriotic sentiment in the Confederacy rallied around the belief that the secessionist states were battling the tyranny of a larger power, much as the original thirteen colonies had fought for their independence from England. In a somewhat ironic twist, some members of the British aristocracy supported the Confederate cause. Sermons were also an occasion to provide justification for the preservation of slavery. In Savannah, Georgia, a minister named Stephen Elliott delivered a sermon on September 18, 1862, which Jefferson Davis had proclaimed as a day of thanksgiving throughout the Confederacy for battlefield victories at Manassas, Virginia, and Richmond, Kentucky. He was the Episcopal bishop of Florida and subsequently, during the war, the first and only presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. ‘‘It is very curious and very striking, in this connexion, to trace out the history of slavery in this country, and to observe God’s providential care over it ever since its introduction,’’ Elliott noted in his sermon. ‘‘Strange to say, African slavery, upon this Continent, had its origin in an act of mercy. The negro was first brought across the ocean to save the Indian from a toil which was destroying him, but while the Indian has perished, the substitute who was brought to die in his place, has lived, prospered and multiplied’’ (Elliott 1862, pp. 11–12). Frederick Douglass (1817–1895), escaped slave and author. Born a slave in Maryland, Frederick Douglass escaped to
the North in 1838 and wrote of his experiences in bondage in his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. On account of his public speaking talents, he became well regarded as an abolitionist orator, relating his story to audiences throughout the United States. The Library of Congress.
Hall, during which a brass band playing military marches and hymns. This was followed by a weeklong drive in which recruiters canvassed the city and set up recruiting tents on busy street corners. During the final week of the August drive, all stores and businesses closed at 2 p.m. and a festive atmosphere overtook the city. Large crowds turned out for the daily rallies in which local politicians and military officials urged the men of Massachusetts to join the Union fight. The jubilant mood of the city got a bit out of control at times, as when crowds pumped up with patriotic fervor tossed bricks through the windows of businesses that had not closed promptly at 2 p.m.
Southern Ministers In the Confederate states, lectures were a popular draw in cities, many of which were suffering severe economic hardships, including a lack of food. In the final year of
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boston Daily Advertiser, August 28, 1862. Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers Company, Inc., 1975. Elliott, Stephen. Our Cause in Harmony with the Purposes of God in Christ Jesus. Savannah, GA: Power Press of John M. Cooper, 1862. Everett, Edward, and Abraham Lincoln. Address of Hon. Edward Everett, at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19th November 1863. Boston: Little, Brown, 1864. Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. New York Times, May 16, 1863. O’Connor, Thomas H. Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Carol Brennan
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Political Humor and Cartoons
POLITICAL HUMOR AND CARTOONS The American Civil War witnessed the rise of searing political humor featured on the pages of scores of new newspapers founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Much of the humor took the form of cartoons, which merged opinion with visual artistry and, in the North, helped shape public opinion against the war. In an era entirely devoid of electronic media, such propagandatinged images were crucial to marshalling public sentiment.
Thomas Nast In 1857 the New York publishing house Harper and Brothers launched a new illustrated publication called Harper’s Weekly, which was modeled after the highly successful British publication, the Illustrated London News. Though Harper’s Weekly was focused on New York City, it was also widely read in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington; and in the first months of the war it experienced circulation peaks as high as 115,000 copies per issue (Fahs 2003, p. 42). In 1862 Harper’s Weekly rehired a young German-born illustrator named Thomas Nast (1840–1902), who had spent the past three years working for other publications. Considered the father of American political cartooning, Nast produced scores of images for Harper’s Weekly, many of which appeared on its cover. Just twenty-two years old in 1862, Nast, as an immigrant, had experienced difficulties in school during his early teen years. He was believed to be functionally illiterate, at least in English, his second language. He was, however, a talented artist, and his pictorial illustrations of Civil War battles and the evils of slavery spoke to a nation of new immigrants like himself, many of whom possessed the same limited English-language skills. Nast was an ardent supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, and was committed to the Union cause—personal beliefs that were reflected in his illustrations. These often delivered scathing indictments of Confederate policies, as with two multi-image prints from 1863: ‘‘The War in the West,’’ which depicted the suffering of civilians in border states, including starving women and children, and ‘‘Southern Chivalry Dedicated to Jefferson Davis,’’ which showed a Confederate soldier holding the severed head of a Union soldier and Confederate wagons tossing wounded soldiers out onto the roadside to die. Nast was also known for producing battlefield scenes that were epic in scope and rich in detail, such as ‘‘Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac’’ from 1863, in which the line of soldiers appears to stretch on into infinity. Such images stirred patriotic sentiment and helped boost public support for the war, despite the terrible death toll that was rising daily by that time, and they thus became invaluable tools of wartime propaganda.
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Famous political cartoonist, Thomas Nast (1840–1902).
Perhaps the best known political cartoonist of the Civil War era, Thomas Nast encouraged support for the Union cause through his unsympathetic illustrations of antiwar Copperheads, Southern slave holders, and Confederate soldiers. The Library of Congress.
Railing against Copperhead Perfidy Nast produced scathing satirical images critiquing Northern opponents of the war, who were known as Copperheads, and also as Peace Democrats. This faction—considered somewhat allied with their Democratic Party brethren in the South—advocated an immediate end to the war. One famous image by Nast was used for a much-circulated anti-Copperhead leaflet called A Traitor’s Peace. Published by the Congressional Union Committee of Washington, DC, its front page featured Nast’s illustration of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis standing triumphant on a Union grave, accepting the bowing gratitude of a Union Army soldier who was missing part of his lower leg. Underneath Nast’s image were conditions for peace taken directly from a Richmond newspaper, which called for the withdrawal of all troops from Confederate states, and the warning, ‘‘so surely shall we make [the North] pay our war debt, though we wring it out of their hearts’’ (Wagner 2006, page for April 20). The Union General Ulysses S. Grant, who in later years would become a close personal friend of Nast, once famously described him as the one person most
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Political Humor and Cartoons
Political cartoons enjoyed enormous popularity during the Civil War as competing factions in the North and South attempted to garner public support for their cause by mocking the beliefs of their opponents. The Library of Congress. Hercules of the Union.
responsible for the preservation of the Union. President Lincoln also spoke highly of Nast and his work, once calling him ‘‘our best recruiting sergeant. His emblematic cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism, and have always seemed to come just when these articles were getting scarce’’ (Heidler 2002, p.
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1,390). During Lincoln’s 1864 bid for reelection, Nast’s pen produced several images for Harper’s Weekly that derided the Copperheads, who were Lincoln’s most important political opponents, and who were exerting their influence on the presidential campaign of Lincoln’s Democratic Party challenger, a Union Army general
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named George McClellan. In one of Nast’s most famous cartoons of the era, ‘‘How Copperheads Obtain Their Votes,’’ Nast depicted Copperheads in a cemetery at night copying names from the headstones onto voting ballots. The Copperhead peace movement in the North incited such forceful public opposition that McClellan was eventually forced to recant his position on the matter of ending the war before a Union victory.
Union Abolitionist Sentiment Another well-known work of Nast’s was ‘‘Emancipation,’’ from 1865. In this multi-image piece, vignettes juxtapose African American life in the slave-owning Confederate South with hopes for a life of freedom and dignity in the North. The anchor image is a multigenerational family scene in which several blacks gather around a woodburning stove marked Union. A portrait of Lincoln is visible in the home, and is repeated elsewhere on the page. Scenes depicting the barbarity of bondage, such as fugitive slave hunts and slave auctions, contrast with images of a former slave in the North being paid wages and a black mother sending her children to school. Nast was not the only political cartoonist who gained prominence during the war years, though he remains the best known. Besides Harper’s Weekly, another publication that published strong pro-Union cartoons was the New York Illustrated News. The New York City printing house of Nathanial Currier and James Merritt Ives also produced scores of propagandistic images. Currier and Ives’s immense factory turned out hundreds of hand-colored lithographs that were the mid-nineteenth-century version of poster art for the home. During the war years these lithographs often contained strongly pro-Union imagery, as with one from 1861, The Dis-United States, Or the Southern Confederacy, which shows prominent figures from the first six states to secede from the Union. The figures representing Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia are seated on bales of cotton, while the one representing Louisiana sits astride a barrel of liquor, the one representing Florida sits in a canoe, and, most prominently, Francis Pickens, representing South Carolina, the initiator of secession, is seated atop the back of a kneeling slave (Wagner 2006, page for January 19).
Southern Political Humor Political humor was far less developed in the Confederate states than in the North. Wartime shortages meant a drastically reduced stock of ink and newsprint, and many publications struggled to stay afloat. Because of this scarcity, few publishers had funds to pay established professional writers and artists. Many publications, such as the Southern Illustrated News and Magnolia Weekly, relied on reader submissions to fill their pages, and, indeed, in the first half of the war thousands of war poems and hymns to Dixie were sent in every week.
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The only Confederate artist to equal Nast’s success was Adalbert J. Volck (1828–1912), who like Nast was a German immigrant. Volck, a dentist in Baltimore, produced artwork that was intensely critical of antislavery advocates and of Lincoln. Many of these images were reproduced under Volck’s pen name, ‘‘V. Blada.’’ One example of Volck’s work is Under the Veil—Mokana (1863), which caricatures Lincoln as a female dancer in an Arab harem, and gives him obviously African facial features. This image reflected a belief found in the South that Lincoln was of mixed ancestry. Another of Volck’s works was copied from a widely circulated Northern print of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation, but in Volck’s version allegorical details reveal the president to be doing the work of the devil. Volck’s Worship of the North (1863) shows Lincoln and several other figures, including a young man who is a sacrificial victim, surrounded by such phrases as ‘‘free love,’’ ‘‘negro worship,’’ and ‘‘socialism.’’ Volck’s works, many of which were published via subscription series throughout the South, also included less ferocious, but nevertheless patriotic images. These include Offer of Bells to Be Cast into Cannon (1863), which showed Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy bringing their dismantled church bells to the local forge so that the metal could be used for Confederate Army field weapons. During the war years, the Atlanta Constitution published regular letters that were the work of the journalist Charles Henry Smith (1826–1903), writing under the pen name ‘‘Bill Arp.’’ This weekly feature, which allowed Smith to poke fun at the North using the voice of a typical Confederate, was written in a common Southern vernacular form. The first of these appeared quite early in the war as a letter to ‘‘Abe Linkhorn’’ written by the fictional Arp in response to Lincoln’s order for the Southern rebels to disperse. From Rome, Georgia, Arp writes: Mr. Linkhorn: Sur: These are to inform you that we are all well, and hope these lines may find you in statue ko. We received your proklamation, and as you have put us on very short notis, a few of us have conkluded to write you, and ax for a little more time. The fact is, we are most obleeged to have a few more days, for the way things are happening, it is utterly onpossible for us to disperse in twenty days. Old Virginny, Tennessee, and North Callina, are continually aggravatin us into tumults and carousements, and a body can’t disperse until you put a stop to sich onruly condukt on their part. (Smith 1903, p. 7)
Smith continued to write a regular feature as Bill Arp even after the war, which permitted him to voice opinions he might not have otherwise been able to express in his position as the mayor of Rome, Georgia.
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Biased Newspaper Reporting
In New York City, Nast went on to further distinguish himself with cartoons that called attention to the rampant municipal corruption in the city under a notorious figure, William Marcy ‘‘Boss’’ Tweed. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fahs, Alice. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Heidler, David Stephen, Jeanne T. Heidler, and David J. Coles. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Smith, Charles Henry. Bill Arp from the Uncivil War to Date, 1861–1903. 2nd ed. Atlanta, GA: Hudgins Publishing Company, 1903. Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History. Jackson, TN: Westview Press, 1997. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Wagner, Margaret E. The American Civil War: 365 Days. New York: Harry N. Abrams/Library of Congress, 2006. Carol Brennan
BIASED NEWSPAPER REPORTING Newspapers performed the vital task of providing civilians and soldiers with information about military events, politics, and the home front. Most small rural communities had at least one newspaper, and large cities, such as New York, had several. Civil War-era newspapers, however, were quite forthright about their biases. Many editors were politicians or had political aspirations. Editors usually supported a particular political party, resulting in the reporting of most news from a single political view. A few editors considered their newspapers to be neutral, but the common practice of the day was to editorialize on recent events instead of simply conveying the facts. The political impact of newspapers was most evident during the secession crisis, but throughout the Civil War editors fought their own rhetorical battles over the war’s conduct. Although there were fewer newspapers in the South, newspapers both North and South fueled political debates and offered social commentary. During the war people in the Union and the Confederacy read newspapers not only to become informed, but also to form their own opinions on controversial topics such as emancipation, military strategies, and political leadership. The bias in newspaper reporting often resulted from editors establishing newspapers with the purpose of representing a particular political or social perspective. There were abolitionist newspapers, such as William
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Lloyd Garrison’s (1805–1879) Liberator, foreign language newspapers, including German newspapers in most Northern cities, and papers that supported various political parties. During the war most Northern newspapers aligned with either the Republican and Democratic parties. With their particular points of view, newspapers served as a forum for political debate. Many editors were more concerned about shaping public opinion than on reporting what happened. Newspapers varied in size and circulation. Horace Greely’s (1877–1970) New York Tribune boasted a circulation of 55,000, whereas a typical rural newspaper would have only a few hundred. All newspaper editors, however, read and printed news from other papers, often responding to other editorials. They would also sometimes print unsubstantiated information or rumor, correcting any errors later, if at all.
Wartime Correspondents The desire for information led larger newspapers to hire correspondents to travel in search of newsworthy information. Some of these men followed the armies, and on several occasions these reporters, or ‘‘specials’’ as they were called, witnessed battles firsthand and wrote reports. Correspondents, however, could only report on what they witnessed or were told, which often caused the newspapers to print misinformation. A reporter who witnessed the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861 (also known as First Manassas) returned to Washington, DC, before the battle had ended, mistakenly spreading the news of a Union victory. Based on these early reports, New York newspapers announced the ‘‘glorious Union victory’’ the day after the battle. As J. Cutler Andrews relays in his 1955 work The North Reports the Civil War, other newspapers were able catch the error before they went to press and were then able to print the correct account of the disastrous Union defeat. Even correspondents who took the time to check their facts often gave overly optimistic and ingratiating accounts of the Union army and its officers. Because reporters relied on officers as a source of information, some newsmen found that they could gain access to the armies if they frequently spoke well of military men in their articles.
Union Newspapers In addition to providing the public with information, newspapers could also affect shape public opinion and affect politics. Horace Greely, editor of the New York Tribune, initially supported President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), but as the war continued Greely went on to criticize Lincoln’s leadership and the military situation. He condemned Lincoln for taking so long to develop an emancipation policy, but also rebuked Lincoln for not seeking a peace treaty with the Confederacy.
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Masthead of The Liberator. The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison, was a paper that called for the abolition of slavery as an institution. Its slogan was ‘‘Our Country Is the World—Our Countrymen Are Mankind.’’ The Library of Congress.
Greely’s criticism was not consistent or along party lines, but may be attributed to the Lincoln’s decision to appoint one of Greely’s political enemies, William H. Seward, as Secretary of State. Lincoln understood that editors played an important role in politics and public opinion. He made a concerted effort to correspond with James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872), the editor of the New York Herald. Bennett’s newspaper had a wide circulation, including overseas subscriptions, and its large professional staff meant that the Herald often had better intelligence than the Union Army. On one occasion the newspaper printed the Confederate Army’s muster roll, which the staff meticulously gathered from Confederate newspapers. Unlike Greely, however, Bennett resisted infusing the news with his own political agenda. Bias was most evident among those editors who opposed the war, known collectively as the Copperhead press. Copperheads were members of the peace faction of the Democratic Party, which opposed Lincoln’s wartime policy, especially emancipation, and called for a peaceful restoration of the Union. Some of these editors were simply opposed to the president’s decisions, but a few editors made unsubstantiated claims to turn public opinion against the Republican Party. The best example of this political bias occurred after Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. On October 10, 1862, the Cincinnati Enquirer, considered a Copperhead newspaper by local Republicans, declared that ‘‘the President’s Negro Proclamation, if it can be enforced, will bring hundreds and thousands of negroes into Ohio to compete with the white laboring men.’’ This was a scare tactic aimed at convincing readers to vote for Democrats in upcoming state elections. A New York Copperhead newspaper, the Weekly Caucasian, also used race as a way to sway opinion against emancipation. On October 11, 1862, as Andrew S. Coopersmith recounts in his 2004
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work Fighting Words: An Illustrated History of Newspaper Accounts of the Civil War the paper warned readers that if the defenders of slavery were defeated ‘‘and the negro distorted into the status of the white man, then liberty and Republican institutions, and civilization itself, will be overthrown’’ (pp. 106–108). Editors eager to criticize Lincoln also allowed false information to be printed. In 1864 the New York World ran a phony proclamation that indicated President Lincoln was calling for four hundred thousand additional volunteers. The announcement implied that the war was not going well and, in response, military officials temporarily stopped publication of the newspaper.
Newspapers and Secession Southern newspapers played an important role in the establishment of the Confederacy. During the winter of 1860–1861, southern newspapers provided a forum for the debate over secession. After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election, prosecession editors published heated editorials warning that Lincoln’s presidency would result in abolition and violence against white southerners. These editors used fear to convince undecided southerners that secession was the only viable course of action. On October 30, 1860, South Carolina’s Charleston Daily Courier declared that ‘‘if Lincoln is elected there is an end to cotton and all the various advantages that result from it.’’ The editor based his conclusion on the assumption that Lincoln would end slavery and because no free black farmer had been known to grow cotton, the crop would perish. Secessionist editors openly criticized southern editors who believed that the Union could be preserved or that secession should be organized and gradual. In several cases secessionist editors called for Unionist papers in the south to be banned. South Carolina secessionist William Lowndes Yancey (1814–1863) sent a threatening
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letter to Unionist editor William G. Brownlow, which Brownlow printed in his paper, the Knoxville Whig. The letter indicated that Yancey believed someone would hang Brownlow in 1861. Brownlow’s reply, reprinted by Donald E. Reynolds in his 2006 book Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis, says ‘‘come what may, through weal or woe, in peace or war, no earthly power shall keep me from denouncing the enemies of my country’’ (p. 172). Confederate authorities did eventually capture Brownlow, but he was released and did not return to Knoxville until Union forces occupied the city in 1863.
Confederate Newspapers In the Confederacy, newspapers reported the progress of the war to people on the home front who were desperate to hear news of Confederate victories. As with Union correspondents, Southern journalists tended to write what they believed people wanted to hear or, rather, what would sell papers. Confederate newspapers often printed stories about how Union soldiers abused southern civilians, although reporters witnessed few of these accounts. Printing stories about the greed or incompetence of ‘‘Yankees’’ helped build morale, so editors freely printed rumors and second-hand stories for the good of the war effort. After the Confederate victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862, the Knoxville Daily Register exaggerated the odds against the Confederate troops by claiming, as J. Cutler Andrews reprints in 1970’s The South Reports the Civil War, that the Union ‘‘had 200,000 soldiers participating in the battle while the Confederates had only 20,000’’ (p. 230). In fact, during the battle an estimated 78,000 Confederate soldiers faced approximately 120,000 Union troops, a much smaller disparity than the Register’s ten to one odds. Over-exaggerating reports of victories and downplaying defeats did raise morale in the Confederacy, but it also meant that citizens were often misinformed about the prospects for ultimate victory. The Southern press could also be critical of Confederate political and military leaders. Editors freely commented on the character and performance of generals, especially when these commanders restricted reporters’ access to the news. In early 1862 Confederate general Braxton Bragg issued an order excluding correspondents from accompanying his army after he read newspaper accounts that he believed depicted him in a negative way. Bragg’s unsuccessful invasion of Kentucky in September 1862 only drew additional criticism from the press. Editor John M. Daniel of the Richmond Examiner wrote about Bragg on November 19, 1862. Andrews reproduces Daniel’s words in The South Reports the Civil War: ‘‘with an iron heart, and iron hand, and a wooden head, his failure in a position where the highest intellectual facilities were demanded was predestined’’ (p. 253). The negative press coverage drew the attention of Con-
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federate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), who took action to reduce the extent of Bragg’s command. Confederacy newspapers also scrutinized Davis’s actions. Although there were no competing political parties in the Confederacy, some editors blamed Davis for military losses by claiming that Davis made poor choices when appointing generals. The Civil War-era press held a substantial amount of influence, but publishing standards of the time also allowed editors to take liberty with the facts. In spite of some efforts by both Union and Confederate governments to censure newspapers, editors openly voiced their opinions about the war. This allowed people access to a wide range of perspectives and created a national forum for discussion of major issues. The extent of bias in Civil War newspaper reporting, however, often contributed to controversy and political division. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, J. Cutler. The North Reports the Civil War. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955, reprinted 1985. Andrews, J. Cutler. The South Reports the Civil War. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970, reprinted 1985. Coopersmith, Andrew S. Fighting Words: An Illustrated History of Newspaper Accounts of the Civil War. New York: New Press, 2004. Douglas, George H. The Golden Age of the Newspaper. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Harris, Brayton. Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999. Ratner, Lorman A., and Dwight L. Teeter Jr. Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Reynolds, Donald E. Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. Stephen Rockenbach
PARTY POLITICS By the election of 1860, the wheels of secession had been set in motion, and the disputes and rivalries among the major political parties reflected this starkly. The Democratic and Republican parties represented camps that seemed diametrically opposed (with the Republicans opposing slavery and the Democrats accepting it), but within each party were rifts that would grow as the Civil War progressed. Lincoln, the presidential victor, represented the conservative (moderate) Republicans, who wanted to end slavery but favored a gradual end as a means of preserving the Union. The radical Republicans,
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who counted staunch Northern abolitionists among their ranks, wanted an immediate end to slavery across the nation. The Democrats were split into Northern and Southern factions, with the Southern faction more steadfastly opposed to any government action that could curtail the rights of white citizens to hold slaves as personal property.
Southern and Northern Politics For the duration of the war the Southern Democrats remained fairly unified, with their key focus on maintaining the Confederacy and the slave economy. The states that made up the Confederacy were not a monolithic entity, however; indeed, little unified them but their commitment to maintaining slavery. President Jefferson Davis led the new government with a strong hand and helped create a centralized government to hold the seceded states together (Catton 1971, pp. 220–221). Moreover, because the Confederate constitution called for the president to serve a single six-year term, Davis had no need to worry about running for reelection. In the North, politics were different. The Republican National Convention of 1860 in Chicago made the party’s position on slavery quite clear: ‘‘[W]e brand the recent re-opening of the African Slave Trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age’’ (Halstead 1860, p. 139). The radical Republicans saw Lincoln as ineffective and they made their disapproval quite plain. Led by politicians, including Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Ohio’s James A. Garfield (later President in his own right), they worked both openly and behind the scenes to push their agenda. Aided by prominent individuals such as the abolitionist Wendell Phillips and New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, the radical Republicans sought to exert their influence on the president. Lincoln, however, was not about to allow the radicals to dictate policy. A practical man who looked toward the longer term, he allied himself with other conservative Republicans, most notably William Seward, who served as his secretary of state. The president wisely chose both radical Republicans and Northern Democrats to fill various cabinet and other government positions. Salmon P. Chase, a radical Republican and self-avowed rival of Lincoln’s, was named treasury secretary and later chief justice of the United States. George B. McClellan, a young and brilliant general, was named commander of the Union Army. Edward M. Stanton, who had served in James Buchanan’s cabinet, was named Lincoln’s secretary of war in 1862.
Pro- and Anti-War Forces Clash The tensions between pro- and anti-war politicians continued to grow throughout the war. Many political lead-
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ers were opposed to slavery, but equally opposed to the bloodshed that seemed to be increasing daily. Moreover, while among the general public the sentiment was decidedly antislavery, many Northerners viewed blacks as an inferior race nonetheless, just as their Southern counterparts did. As the war continued, many white Northerners began to question whether freedom for the slaves was worth the destruction of so many lives. The sentiments expressed by Maine legislator Moses Page in a speech before the state’s house of representatives in 1863 were not uncommon: ‘‘I think this country was destined for one people, and would have remained ok, had not the fell spirit of abolition crept in and overturned the work of our fathers’’ (Stout 2006, pp. 279–280). Democrats split into two factions: the ‘‘War Democrats,’’ who supported Lincoln’s aims of reunifying the nation, and the ‘‘Peace Democrats’’ (called Copperheads because they wore copper Indian Head pennies on their lapels), who wanted an immediate end to the war—at any price. The Copperheads produced anti-Lincoln propaganda in the form of pamphlets, articles, newspaper advertisements—even songs. One example was a booklet titled The Lincoln Catechism, Wherein the Eccentricities and Beauties of Despotism Are Fully Set Forth, printed in time for the 1864 election. It offered such question-and-answer couplets as, ‘‘What did the Constitution mean by freedom of the press? / Throwing Democratic newspapers out of the mails. . . . What is the meaning of the word ‘traitor’? / One who is a stickler for the Constitution and the laws’’ (pp. 4–5). The 1864 presidential election was viewed as a critical juncture for a country that was war-weary and cynical. Abraham Lincoln was chosen as the candidate for what was dubbed the ‘‘Union Party’’—made up primarily of Republicans and War Democrats. (Andrew Johnson, his running mate, was a Democrat from Tennessee.) The Copperheads chose General McClellan as their candidate. McClellan, despite his brilliance, had failed to live up to his reputation while on the battlefield and Lincoln had removed him from his command in 1862.
Partisan Activity and the Public Both sides printed massive quantities of posters, pamphlets, and other documents stating their case and asking the public for support. In Pennsylvania, an estimated 280,000 pieces of political literature were printed (Neely 2006, p. 74). People from all walks of life had strong political opinions and had no trouble making them known. Poet Walt Whitman wrote about visiting a Brooklyn pub in 1864 and seeing a barmaid wearing a McClellan pin. He ‘‘called her and asked if the other girls there were for McClellan too—she said yes every one of them, and that they wouldn’t tolerate a girl in the place who was not, and the fellows were too’’ (Neely 2006, p. 1).
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‘‘Great Copperhead Jubilee!’’ Anti-Democratic Party political cartoon. During the presidential election of 1864, Republican supporters often lampooned the views of anti-war Copperheads and their candidate, the demoted General George B. McClellan. ª Corbis
In addition to posters, pamphlets, and buttons, Americans could purchase a variety of political memorabilia, either to show support for a particular group or to build up collections. The printing industry was more than accommodating when it came to meeting this need; for example, copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were produced for display in homes. Cartes de visite (small collectible cards not unlike today’s baseball cards or postcards) depicting various political figures proved popular collectors’ items as well. People purchased cards with portraits of Lincoln, his cabinet, members of Congress, and other leading figures of the war years (Neely 2006, p. 27). After the election, conservative and radical Republicans continued to attack each other, but the business at hand was now bringing the war to a conclusion and political intrigue was largely kept behind the scenes. When the war ended in April 1865, the radical Republicans wanted strong punitive action taken against the Confederacy, but Lincoln planned for a more moderate approach. His assassination on April 14 made the question moot. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catton, Bruce. The Civil War. New York: American Heritage Press, 1971.
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Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan, eds. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Halstead, Murat. Caucuses of 1860: A History of the National Political Conventions of the Current Presidential Campaign. Columbus, OH: Follett, Foster & Company, 1860. The Lincoln Catechism, Wherein the Eccentricities and Beauties of Despotism Are Fully Set Forth: A Guide to the Presidential Election of 1864. New York: J. F. Feeks, 1864. Neely, Mark E, Jr. The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Schouler, James. Eighty Years of Union, Being a Short History of the United States, 1783–1865. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903. Stout, Harry S. Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. New York: Viking, 2006. Williams, T. Harry. Lincoln and the Radicals. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1941. Reprint, 1969. George A. Milite
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Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople n
Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople Overview
In no respect was the complexity of the Civil War more apparent than in the experiences of African Americans. Their status as slaves was the war’s only significant cause, but their welfare was far from being the chief concern of the majority in either North or South. Nor was it clear what their status would or should be if they were no longer to be slaves. In a complex interplay of their own actions with the actions of whites who supported their rights, opposed them, or just did not care, the war brought about their freedom but did not finally secure for them the full rights of citizenship. The stage was set for the complexity of the Civil War’s effects on African Americans by the multiplicity of attitudes toward them among whites in both sections of the country. In the South, about one-fourth of white families owned slaves at any given time, and about half of southern heads of household would do so at some time during their lives. Those who owned slaves and those who had an expectation of doing so obviously wished to preserve the institution of slavery because of the economics benefits they gained or hoped to gain by it. The vast majority of the South’s capital was invested in human chattels and would be lost if slavery were ended. Southern whites with no direct economic interest in slavery might have been expected to oppose the institution, since it constituted economic competition for their own labors. This was the argument of Hinton Rowan Helper, a North Carolinian who in 1857 published The Impending Crisis of the South, in which he urged his fellow non-slaveholding white Southerners to oppose slavery for just that reason. Unfortunately, Helper’s own racism was as virulent as that of any slaveholding planter, and his concern was solely for the good of his fellow non-slaveholding Southern whites. They shared his racism but not the conclusion he drew from it. For them, slavery was to be preserved as the best way to
maintain white supremacy. It was an attitude the planters assiduously cultivated: the curious belief that all whites were elevated to a level of equality by the fact that most blacks were held in slavery. Northern whites were even more divided in their views about African Americans. Abolitionists generally favored full civil rights for the newly freed or soon-tobe-freed slaves and substantial racial equality, but abolitionists did not comprise a majority in most parts of the North. Moderate antislavery men like Abraham Lincoln were still contemplating colonization of the freedpeople to Central America or the Caribbean as late as 1863 and were moving only slowly toward positions such as advocacy of voting rights for the former slaves. Some of the ‘‘Free Soil’’ support for the Republican Party before the war had come from Northerners who were as committed to racism as any of their Southern brethren and simply wanted the western territories reserved for white settlers with no blacks present. And of course a large minority of the Northern electorate was comprised of Democrats, who had voted against even the limitation of slavery’s spread. Many of them had as their wartime slogan: ‘‘The Union as it was. The Constitution as it is. The Slaves where they are’’—in which they often substituted a racial epithet for the word ‘‘Slaves.’’ The war itself transformed some Northerners’ attitudes about slavery and race. Even Democrats or racist-minded Republicans might come to the view that if slavery was trying to destroy the Union, then the institution of slavery must die. What status that meant for those who had once been slaves, was a very confused question. Beyond all this, African Americans in a number of ways were participants in the struggle that brought such momentous change to their role in American society. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, more than almost any other single element, helped turn Northerners against slavery, and it was the persistence of a small minority of slaves in escaping and seeking refuge in the North (or passage across the North to ultimate safety in Canada) that kept bringing the act’s onerous provisions before
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Effects of the War on Slaves and Freedpeople Overview
the eyes of Northerners, making slavery real to them in all of its ugliness. Once the war started, slaves were not slow to seize the chances for escape presented to them by the presence of Union armies. Their appearance in Federal camps forced Northern soldiers to make decisions that many of them would rather have avoided. Official Union policy early in the war, driven by the desire to maintain the allegiance of proslavery Northerners or citizens of such Union-loyal slave states as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, was that runaways who entered Union lines should be returned to their owners. Regiments with abolitionist leanings frequently defied such orders, harbored escaped slaves, and forwarded them to freedom farther north. Even Federals of a more racist bent often found that an escaped slave made a handy personal servant to cook, wash clothes, or perform other menial functions that helped make soldiering tedious. The slaves, for their part, seemed eager to help the cause that they correctly sensed was ultimately fighting for their freedom. It was Union Major General Benjamin Butler, a pre-war Massachusetts lawyer and politician, who found a legal solution to the demands of proslavery persons, even those loyal to the enemy, that the U.S. forces were bound by the Fugitive Slave Law to return escaping slaves to Rebel owners. When a pro-Confederate slaveholder came to his headquarters demanding the return of escapees believed to have entered Butler’s lines, the general replied that the slaves had no doubt previously been used for the benefit of the Confederacy and were therefore, like any property in the use of the enemy, subject to military confiscation as contraband of war. Thereafter few slaves were ever returned to Rebel masters, and all escaped slaves within Union lines came to be referred to as contrabands. With the issuance of the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the Union army became explicitly the force for liberating the slaves, but the name ‘‘contraband’’ stuck throughout the rest of the war. The life of the contrabands varied a great deal. In a Union-controlled enclave on the South Carolina coast and in the Federal-held Mississippi Delta country below Memphis, Union commanders set up various arrangements for the former slaves to work abandoned plantations for wages, but these success stories came to an end when the war ended and the absconded erstwhile Rebel owners of the lands returned and were permitted by federal authorities to reclaim their acres. In many cases, former slaves who fled to Union lines had nowhere to go but the squalid contraband camps set up behind the lines by a Union army that was much at a loss to know how to handle its new charges. Life could be hard in the contraband camps, disease rampant and deaths frequent. This situation was ameliorated somewhat when Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau for the care and supervision of the former slaves.
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Sometimes the army’s need to fight the war and inability to serve as a refugee-aid organization was brought into conflict with blacks’ desire to escape from slavery as soon as possible at almost any price. Fastmoving Union expeditions that penetrated deep into Southern territory quickly gained long tails of escaping slaves—thousands of men, women, and children that might string out for miles behind the Federal rearguard. They included both the very young and the very old, and they came on foot and on every kind of beast or conveyance they could lay hold of on the plantations from which they were fleeing. Their presence could be a nuisance to Union commanders, who often lacked the means of feeding their new followers or of protecting them from re-capture by marauding Confederate cavalry. Yet the blacks could not be dissuaded from following the army, despite the Union officers’ advice that they would be better off patiently awaiting their liberation on their plantations. Conditions for the freedpeople in the wake of the army could be very hard; they lacked adequate food and shelter and were sometimes left entirely behind by troop columns who could not afford to wait for them. By the end of the war it was clear that slavery was finished in the states that had comprised the Confederacy. A few months later the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the remaining slave states. The status of the former slaves remained to be fought out in the long, twilight conflict of the Reconstruction Era, however. White Southerners were united in their continued determination to maintain white supremacy in the South, despite their defeat on the battlefield. A U.S. Congress dominated by Republicans, and especially those of a fairly radical stripe, desired to see the freedpeople accorded substantial civil rights and full citizenship. They worked toward that end, despite an uncooperative President Andrew Johnson and, later, with the aid of a like-minded President Ulysses S. Grant. Ultimately they fell short. America has never excelled at waging low-intensity wars or at persevering in conflicts that last more than four or five years. More than eleven years after Appomattox—and more than fifteen years after Fort Sumter—the remaining pro-civil rights contingent in the North had grown weary of the long battle, while white Southerners, increasingly seconded by the more racist elements in the North, stood as staunchly as ever for white supremacy. The result was that when Reconstruction ended in 1877, African Americans were left in a sort of limbo. The war had brought them freedom, which was an accomplishment that would have seemed almost impossible a quartercentury before, yet they were consigned for the most part to a status of peonage that would continue for another threequarters of a century. Steven E. Woodworth
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Slave Markets
Perhaps nothing symbolized the dehumanizing effects of slavery more than slave markets. Abolitionists saw them as the evil apotheosis of the Southern economic system where human beings literally became livestock to be prodded and inspected like prized cows and bulls on the eve of a sale. For the enslaved, the markets raised a legion of uncertainties, fears, and terrors; something to avoid at all costs. To many Southerners, the marts were necessary evils—unpleasant, but vital for the production of cotton. Finally, for the merchants, the sales served as placed where one, if savvy, could make a fortune. The quintessential image of the slave market shows a bewildered, shivering, and nearly nude slave on an auction block, humiliated before a host of broad-brim-hatted, silver-caned planters. And while that scene certainly played out at various slave markets in the United States, it was not the only method for selling slaves. Natchez, Mississippi, home of the Forks of the Road slave mart (the second largest in the South) on the outskirts of the town, consisted of a series of shops and corrals—much like a modern strip mall—where planters went to view the various slave merchants’s offerings (Barnett and Burkett 2001, pp. 169–187). New Orleans slave traders operated in a similar manner. A British traveler to the Crescent City in the 1850s recorded how the well-dressed slaves loitered in courtyards ‘‘not doing any work’’ like so many manne-
quins, awaiting potential buyers. The dealer, thinking her a potential customer, lined the slaves up in two rows ‘‘and began to describe and extol his wares’’ (Pfeiffer 1856, pp. 403–404). In some communities, the slave depots became so squalid and disease ridden that city officials forbade them from conducting business within the city limits. In Natchez the final straw came when a dealer got caught dumping the bodies of cholera-infected slaves in a ravine. Rather than give them proper burials, he treated them in death like he did in life—as livestock (Deyle 2005, p. 326). Prior to the sales, the traders housed the slaves in anything from small tents, to barns, to large pens. Sometimes they languished for months on end, waiting for a buyer to take them. To make them more attractive the traders tried to make them as youthful and healthy looking as possible. William Wells Brown (d. 1884), a former slave, recalled his chore of making older slaves look younger prior to a sale: I was ordered to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the grey hairs plucked out where they were not too numerous, in which case he had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking brush we would put it on. These slaves were also taught how old they were by Mr. Walker, and after going through the blacking process they looked ten or fifteen years younger. (Brown 1849, p. 39)
Slave block at the St. Louis Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, 1906. Much like animals at a livestock auction, slaves were put on display for a degrading examination and inspection prior to their purchase. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc.
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Slaveholders gave little concern to keeping slave families intact at auctions. Slaves were frequently separated from their children and spouses, as buyers had little regard for purchasing and preserving entire families. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/The Picture Desk, Inc. An illustration of a slave auction.
A Yankee clergyman, Joseph Holt Ingraham (1809– 1860), described a similar scene where slaves were ‘‘made to shave and wash in greasy pot liquor to make them look sleek and nice; their heads combed and their best clothes put on.’’ Next, the dealer ordered the slaves to stand in a double line, segregated by sex, after which the customers were taken into a private room for a more thorough examination, which disgusted the transplanted Yankee (Ingraham 1835, pp. 234–241). ‘‘See a large, rough slaveholder, take a poor female slave into a room, make her strip, then feel of and examine her, as though she were a pig, or a hen, or merchandise. O, how can a poor slave husband or father stand and see his wife, daughters and sons thus treated’’ (Anderson 1857, p. 14). Such were the humiliations experienced daily in the slave markets. Of the stories that emerged from the slave marts, the separation of loved ones are among the most heartrending. In another scene at another auction, Brown recalled the selling of a husband and wife—separately. The auctioneer sold the husband first, who immediately began lobbying his new owner to purchase his wife, pleading, ‘‘Master, if you will only buy Fanny, I know you will get the worth of your money. She is a good cook, a good washer, and her last mistress liked her very much. If you will only buy her how happy I shall be.’’ Although the new owner did not want her, he relented, and began bidding on her. The couple’s hearts rose and sank with each bid until, finally, the hammer dropped
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and someone else purchased her. They both broke down into tears and the husband bade farewell, ‘‘Well, Fanny, we are to part forever, on earth; you have been a good wife to me . . . I hope you will try to meet me in heaven. I shall try to meet you there’’ (Brown 1849, pp. 39, 127–128). In addition to trying to get potential masters to purchase family members, the enslaved, at times, actively tried to influence a sale to their own advantage. During the inspection process, slaves often faced untenable situations. If they were sick, had runaway in the past, or in some manner could not work efficiently, they ran the risk of beatings if they did not tell their potential owner. On the other side, if they revealed too much information, they risked the ire of the slave trader. In some cases, the slaves could not resist gaming the system, especially if they could gain significant advantage or avoid greater hardship by marketing themselves to a planter or shop owner. If they knew a potential buyer liked to beat his slaves, work them too hard, or abuse them in other ways, then they would often influence the sell. If the master lived in a location where the potential for escape was good, that too could influence the slave’s behavior during the inspection. But such gaming only worked in the marts where individual masters shopped for new slaves. In auctions, unless the enslaved had opportunity to talk with a potential buyer beforehand, gaming was much more difficult. As a symbol of the evils of slavery, auctions served as an effective propaganda tool for the abolitionists. In the
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years leading up to the war, abolitionists published reams of first-person accounts describing humiliation and heartbreak on the auction blocks of the South. But it was a white female abolitionist from the North who made the greatest impact among Northern readers. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) fictional composite account of the auctions in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which she based on stories she had read in the abolitionist press and through her encounters with runaway slaves, reached people who normally did not read abolitionist literature. Only the coldest of hearts remained unmoved after reading of Tom’s sale at an auction, followed by his humiliation at the hands of Simon Legree. Such was the power of slave market imagery that near the conclusion of the war, the sign and steps of the slave auction block in Charleston, South Carolina, were sent to the Eleventh Ward Freedman’s Aid Society of Boston, Massachusetts, as a trophy of war. There, William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), and others, gave triumphant speeches. One speaker called ‘‘the relics of the Great Barbarism’’ a symbol ‘‘of the worship of the Anti Christ’’ and requested that it be preserved alongside the ‘‘racks of the Inquisition and the keys of the Bastille,’’ as symbols of oppression. The highlight of the evening, however, came when Garrison climbed the steps to put ‘‘the accursed thing under his feet’’ as a symbol of abolitionism victory over slavery (The Liberator, March 17, 1865). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, William J. Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, Twenty-four Years a Slave. Chicago: Daily Tribune Book and Job Printing Office, 1857.
Barnett, Jim, and H. Clark Burkett. ‘‘The Forks of the Road Slave Market at Natchez.’’ The Journal of Mississippi History 63, no. 3 (2001): 169–187. Brown, William W. Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave. London: Charles Gilpin, 1849. Deyle, Steven. Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Ingraham, Joseph Holt. The South-West, by a Yankee. Two vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1835. The Liberator (Boston, MA), ‘‘An Immense Meeting in Music Hall (The Charleston Slave Auction–Block)’’ March 17, 1865, issue 11, col. B. Pfieffer, Ida. A Lady’s Second Journey Around the World. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856. David H. Slay
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According to Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, slavery and the inequality of the races were the cornerstones of the new republic known as the Confederate States of America. The desire to preserve slavery was the singular reason for the creation of the Confederacy and the eruption of the American Civil War. Other complex reasons for regional secession were only an extension of the public effort to protect the institution of slavery, which drove the economic engine of Southern states. Upon secession, Southern political leaders were committed to preserving the full array of legal and social controls that had underpinned slavery. Despite their
Lynching in 19th-century literature. An illustration from The White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive, by Richard Hildreth. The picture depicts an African American man standing atop a barrel with a noose around his neck, while a Caucasian man below him starts to kick the barrel. The Library of Congress.
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efforts, the conservative rebellion to protect slavery began to change the institution into a form that would be unrecognizable by 1865.
Slavery and the Confederate Government The primary focus of the new Confederate constitution was protecting the institution of slavery. The document the delegates produced contained a defense of slavery, and recognition of its value to the new nation. In other respects, the Confederate constitution closely mirrored the U.S. one. For example, the three-fifths clause was retained. Originally added to the U.S. Constitution as a compromise between the North—which did not want slaves counted at all when determining state representation in the House of Representatives—and the South, which wanted each slave to be counted, this stated that each slave would be counted as three-fifths of a white or freed black person. The importation of slaves from foreign countries remained illegal, as it had been in the U.S. Constitution, but the expansion of slavery either south or west was now justified by the formation of a new nation, and thereby protected as a point of national policy. Finally, the U.S. Constitution’s fugitive-slave provision was also adopted into the Confederate constitution. Unlike the United States’ version of the law, however, responsibility for the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law was now established on the state level, rather than the national level. On the surface, the life of free blacks and slaves did not initially change with the creation of the Confederate States of America. They remained the property of their white owners, legally considered no different than livestock or tools. Their value was found in their role as laborers for the South’s cash agricultural system, and they were bought and sold as major tools of that economy. Slaves were often bred like livestock to produce stronger and more valuable workers. Older slaves were allowed to live out their days on farms, or in some cases, they were simply abandoned in local towns. The latter practice forced the care of elderly slaves on county and state governments, and caused state legislatures to pass legislation outlawing slave abandonment. Slaves continued to live under oppressive restrictions within their local communities, as the fear of slave rebellions was ever-present. African Americans’ religious and social relationships were monitored. On farms, the overseer regulated their work habits, and adjusted their schedules based on the season and crop production goals. In urban areas, slaves were hired out to generate income for their masters, but were still restricted in their movements. The large number of slave insurrections, such as those led by Denmark Vesey in Charleston, South Carolina (1822), and by Nat Turner in Courtland, Virginia (1832), increased white fears over possible violence by their slaves. Each unsuccessful rebellion prompted the white community to introduce further
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restrictions on their slave population. John Brown’s 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, convinced many Southern citizens that their slaves needed to be controlled and monitored daily. In the new Confederacy, many preexisting laws designed to safeguard white citizens from slaves and freedpeople were left in place. Various laws limited the ability of African Americans to travel, as a way to stop the spread of insurrection. Other laws prevented slaves from learning basic literacy skills, as an additional hedge against possible violence. At the county level, the superior court became the main regulatory force used to control African Americans, coupled with the use of armed slave patrols. Before slaves could carry out some of the basic functions of life and enterprise, these courts had to grant their approval. For example, slave masters had to petition the superior court to allow their slaves to travel across county lines or to other cities and towns to conduct business. In rural areas, slaves needed approval from the court to carry firearms or to carry weapons to protect livestock. These laws were passed to restrict movement, prevent assemblies of individuals, and to monitor the presence of possible abolitionists in slave communities. Slave patrols were created out of local militia units and patrolled both urban and rural areas, looking for signs of possible rebellions. Many patrols were under the authority of the local sheriff, who in turn acted under orders issued by either the county superior court or the local justices of the peace. Membership was drawn from the population of white male property owners within a particular township. These patrols looked for slaves or freedpeople moving about individually or in groups, seeing such activity as a possible indication of a slave insurrection. If rumor identified an individual or a group of slaves as a threat, the local reaction was to quell the potential revolt swiftly and cruelly. Many whites believed that a firm hand was needed to keep their African American communities in check.
Slaves and Southern Communities As the war progressed, Southern communities and the life of the South’s slave population began to change due to the conflict’s effect on the civilian population’s social composition. Starting in 1862, the Confederacy passed three conscription acts designed to bring additional men into the army. These concentrated on white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. The drafting of these men removed the main controlling influence on Southern farms. Slaves found themselves being directed by new overseers, who were not of conscript age. Some of these overseers turned to increased levels of violence to control slaves on farms. Southern wives also found themselves in the new role of having to enforce the obedience of slaves. Some used merciless beatings to enforce order. In other cases, wives and new overseers
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alike had difficulty imposing their authority, and their orders were not followed. In the latter circumstance, many slaves took the opportunity to escape, particularly with the approach of Union armies. Conscription also caused the effectiveness of slave patrols to wane. The mass conscription of white males gutted local militia companies, particularly as many previously exempted older males were pressed into service. As a result, patrols were not able to completely maintain order in many communities. This lack of control enabled slaves to begin moving freely between farms and towns. In North Carolina, Governor Zebulon Vance created the ‘‘Home Guard’’ in 1863 to increase the military presence in counties and thus control the movement of slaves. Toward the end of the war, runaway slaves joined with deserters to form criminal gangs roaming through Southern communities. The Fayetteville Observer reported on March 6, 1865 that gangs were robbing farms along the North Carolina-South Carolina border. Union prisoners liberated from camps in South Carolina, the Observer claimed, had formed gangs, and had been joined by a number of runaway slaves, after the disappearance of Confederate authority before the advance of Major General William T. Sherman’s Union armies. During the war, Southern cities and towns experienced a great surge in population. Businesses sprung up to meet the military production needs of the Confederate government. Military supply depots and hospitals were set up in towns connected by rail to the major urban centers of the Confederacy. Along with workers for these businesses, refugee families also moved into cities and towns. These families brought their slaves with them, and soon those slaves were being incorporated into the urban workforce. Large numbers of freemen and slaves moved about cities like Atlanta and Richmond, working in government departments, tending wounded in hospitals, and assisting in the movement of supplies. Their presence in the workforce was viewed as competition by poor whites and immigrants, who had historically comprised the urban labor force. When white workers went on strike for better wages, they often found themselves replaced by either slaves or freedpeople. White workers frequently attacked these African Americans workers, in an effort to drive them off and regain their jobs. As the war progressed, and the Southern economy rapidly collapsed, blacks and working class whites found themselves increasingly in competition for scarce jobs.
Slavery and Confederate Conduct of the War Slave communities were subjected to the harsh realities of the war more severely than were white communities. Unfortunately, both sides of the conflict committed abuses against African Americans. The Confederate army committed numerous crimes against blacks in the midst of military operations. Farm hands or traveling craftsmen
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were shot by roving bands of Confederate cavalry and partisans. It was not uncommon for local militia companies to hang randomly selected African Americans as a lesson to runaway slaves in a community. During the Carolinas Campaign of 1865, one Confederate cavalry brigade shot slaves working in the field while patrolling the flanks of the army in North Carolina. Soldiers raped African American women while on the march or after deserting their units in the field. Most often, soldiers were not prosecuted for committing these rapes, even though crimes against white women were usually met with severe punishment. Roughly 180,000 Southern blacks enlisted in the U.S. Army (Thomas 1979, p. 237). If an African American soldier was taken captive on the battlefield, death was the probable outcome. Many black soldiers, along with their white officers, were shot during the process of surrendering, or while lying wounded in field stations behind the lines. If a soldier were lucky enough to survive his initial capture, he might be sent to a Confederate military prison like the one in Andersonville, Georgia. Once there, he would become a laborer for the Confederates, tasked with the construction of military projects and with burying the numerous dead. The Confederate army was based on the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, which was created from the gathering together of state militia units on the South’s initial separation from the United States. In most states, African Americans could not serve as members of a county militia unit, in part because militia privates were generally required to be tax-paying property owners. One exception was the Louisiana Native Guards, a militia unit of color that offered its services to the Confederacy. This unit was similar to African American and Creole militia units that had protected Louisiana before the territory was sold to the United States. The Native Guards’ offer to be absorbed into the Confederate Army was rejected by Louisiana, however. Nonetheless, there were cases in which African Americans served as soldiers in Confederate units. Most of these men were light-skinned, and were thus not perceived as being ‘‘black’’ at the time of their enlistment. In several cases, African Americans who had successfully enlisted were eventually discovered and discharged from military service. Others managed to escape notice throughout the course of their service. The greatest contribution slaves made to the Confederate war effort was as laborers for the Confederate army. President Jefferson Davis and other politicians saw slave labor as a valuable resource that could free up significant numbers of white soldiers for combat duty. The practice of impressing slaves for manual labor first developed during 1861 and 1862, when large numbers of slaves were impressed from their masters to help build fortifications to protect the Confederate capital. Slave owners were always compensated for the time spent by
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their slaves in performing military labor, and if a slave were killed, his master would receive restitution from the government based on the slave’s market value. This ready source of labor soon became widely used in those localities where trenches and fortifications were needed to impede possible Federal advances. In addition, President Davis persuaded the Confederate Congress to authorize the use of freemen and slaves for noncombatant military duties then performed by soldiers, such as transporting supplies, cooking, and serving as hospital assistants. As a result, additional white soldiers were freed up to reinforce battered Confederate regiments in the field. Beginning in 1862, Confederate armies began to employ large numbers of African Americans as support personnel. With the failure of the first conscription act to provide a steady supply of manpower for the Confederate armies, the idea of impressing more slaves began to be discussed in the Confederate Congress. Several states were opposed to the idea because impressments would pull slaves from crop production and harvesting. In addition, many members of Congress were opposed to impressments of what was still considered private property. By the time of the third Confederate conscription act of February 1864, the Confederate Congress had agreed to set the number of impressed freemen and slaves at 20,000. By December 6, 1864, the Confederate Congress was ready to double the number of impressed slave laborers. The February 28, 1865, law left the final number of slaves that could be impressed up to the War Department, which could raise or lower totals depending on the need at hand. The failure of the conscription acts to provide enough soldiers for regiments in the field convinced several officers that African Americans were a ready source of men for the front. On January 2, 1864, one officer in the Army of Tennessee saw that it was time to tap into this potential manpower source. Major General Patrick Cleburne proposed to a group of fellow officers of his division that slaves be asked to enlist as soldiers in exchange for the promise of freedom for them and their families upon victory. Several of the other officers were shocked by the Irish-born Cleburne’s idea, and the army’s commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, decided to ignore the suggestion. In an effort to discredit Cleburne, Major General William H. T. Walker sent a copy of Cleburne’s proposal to President Davis. No action was taken against Cleburne, but he was never elevated beyond division commander throughout the remainder of the war. On November 7, 1864, President Davis asked the Confederate Congress to authorize the purchase of 40,000 slaves for use by the Confederacy. He did not specify how these slaves would be used, but the stage was set for the beginning of African American enlistment. On February 10, 1865, legislation was introduced that called for the arming of slaves as Confederate soldiers. Several days later, in his new role as the command-
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ing general of all Confederate armies in the field, General Robert E. Lee endorsed the idea of African American enlistment. The support of General Lee provided enough political capital for the legislation to pass. Several weeks later, General Order Number Fourteen was issued, to authorize the recruitment of African American soldiers by the Confederate War Department. On March 25, 1865, the Richmond Enquirer reported the appearance of an African American infantry company drilling in the Confederate capitol. That same day, General Lee launched his final attempt to break the Union lines at Fort Stedman. This attempt failed, and several weeks later the Union’s spring offensive forced the evacuation of the Confederate capitol. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brewer, James H. The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861–1865. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969. Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Franklin, John Hope, and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974. Halasz, Nicholas. The Rattling Chains: Slave Unrest and Revolt in the Antebellum South. New York: D. McKay, 1966. Johnson, Guion G. Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937. Levine, Bruce. Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Roark, James L. Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Norton, 1977. Robinson, Armstead L. Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Wiley, Bell Irvin. Southern Negroes, 1861–1865. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1938. Yearns, Wilfred Buck. The Confederate Congress. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960. William H. Brown
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The Union army went to war with no real plan for dealing with slaves that entered their lines. Often, the fate of slaves who had escaped from their masters depended on the political leanings of the commander of whichever Union regiment they happened to encounter first. It finally took the lawyer-general, Benjamin Butler (1818–1893), to solve the problem. In May 1861 three slaves escaped to the Unionheld Fortress Monroe at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where they encountered Butler’s men. Rather than return them to their masters and work on the Confederate fortifications, Butler declared them contraband of war. The definition held, for it enabled Union authorities to deny slave labor to the Confederacy while simultaneously keeping the faith with more radical Northerners who wanted slavery abolished. With the battle of Antietam, Lincoln had a victory that permitted him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength. When it took effect on January 1, 1863, the term contraband no longer applied to black refugees in the South; they became freedpeople and they became a top priority for the Lincoln administration. Given the progress of Union forces up to 1863, the issue of caring for the freedpeople became an all-important problem. The Army and Navy had liberated tens of thousands of people of African descent along the coasts and waterways of the south, but only in central Tennessee had Union forces advanced very deep into Confederate territory east of the Mississippi River. With no place to put the refugees, the army established freedmen camps along the southern coast and waterways—and the call went out for help. In the West, along the Mississippi River, General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) assigned army chaplain, John Eaton Jr. (1829–1906) as Commissioner of Contrabands (a title that did not reflect the changed status of freedpeople) in his department. Eaton’s duties consisted of seeing to it that the freedpeople received food, health care, religious instruction, education, and work. Toward that end, Northern church organizations aided him tremendously, sending missionaries and other necessities. The obstacles they faced were daunting, for the hundreds of thousands of freedpeople huddled in camps around the country often left the plantation with the clothes on their back, with no provision for the future. In cases where they did bring possessions with them, it was often completely useless items pilfered from their former masters’s abandoned homes. Colonel Herman Lieb of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) recalled the procession of freedpeople who followed General William T. Sherman’s (1820– 1891) column to Vicksburg at the conclusion of the Meridian raid in early 1864: Their arrival caused a general turnout of citizens and garrison which through the endless cortege passed. Such a sight was never seen since the exodus of the Jew from Egypt. Hundreds of vehicles of the most varied description, from the
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mule cart to the family equipage of their former masters, loaded promiscuously with women and children, household and kitchen furniture, while their male protectors, not so naked as you saw them in Omdurman, but just as dirty and uncivilized, marched in file on both sides of the caravan. In apparel they presented a most laughable spectacle, the majority in bedraggled plantation clothing, some with boots, some in shoes, most barefoot, in parts of Confederate and Union uniforms, a few here and there with stovepipe hats, caps or colored handkerchiefs on their heads.’’ (Johns 1912, pp. 138–139)
The periodic deluges of freedpeople taxed the resources of both government and private charities. Elkanah Beard (1833–1905), a missionary working among the freedpeople at various islands and landings on the Mississippi wrote to his supporters that ‘‘several in the week past have frozen to death, and others were so chilled that they are not likely to survive long. Hundreds of women and children are barefoot, and have nothing but cotton clothing, which has been worn for months.’’ Beard’s supporters responded with books, seeds, and other sundries (Association of Friends of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity, for the Relief of Colored Freedmen 1864, p. 10). The camps existed as a temporary measure, for the government ultimately wanted the freedpeople to become Christian, hardworking, self-reliant, citizen farmers. As one missionary summarized, their mission was to make sure ‘‘that the freed people are treated as free, and encouraged to respect and observe the institutions of religion, marriage, and all the customs of virtuous and civilized society, and to become worthy of the blessings of a Christian civilization’’ (Forman 1864, p. 120). While the missionaries saw to it that the freedpeople kept their spiritual houses in order, the government looked to finding them physical shelter. The task was daunting, for by the spring of 1864 some 20,000 freedpeople lived in the vicinity of Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia; 10,000 at Fortress Monroe; and 8,000 at Yorktown. Across the country, in the Mississippi Valley, the government seized Jefferson Davis’s (1808–1889) plantation and deposited up to 5,000 freedpeople on the property, while Memphis, Tennessee; Natchez, Mississippi; and New Orleans, Louisiana, took in 5,000 to 6,000 each (Association of Friends of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity, for the Relief of Colored Freedmen 1864, pp. 7–9). The Treasury Department attempted to relieve the pressure on the cities and towns by leasing abandoned plantations. Ideally, the plan provided incomes for the former slaves, put them in healthier environments, and settled them in communities where they learned how to become good citizens; but it did not always work out. Rebel raiders often struck the plantations and camps, taking both livestock and freedpeople to resell in the interior of the Confederacy. Unscrupulous opportunists leased plantations,
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Civil War ‘‘contrabands.’’ In the opening months of the Civil War, the North lacked procedures to deal with Southern slaves escaping to Union camps; they were afraid of upsetting proslavery states still in the Union by granting the runaways freedom and of angering abolitionists by returning slaves to their owners. A lawyer in civilian life, General Benjamin Butler decided to consider the escaped slaves ‘‘contraband,’’ thereby keeping them in the possession of the Union army and paying them for their labor. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
harvested a crop, then left without paying their workers. The government had to come up with a better plan by the time the war ended or it would have faced hundreds of thousands more freedpeople to care for in addition to the ones already liberated by advancing armies. In March 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands which oper-
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ated until December 1868 under the leadership of General Oliver O. Howard (1830–1909). The Freedmen’s Bureau, as the agency was commonly known, brought all of the government’s efforts on behalf of freedpeople under one umbrella organization. It supervised humanitarian efforts by feeding and clothing destitute blacks, establishing schools, and founding hospitals. In the legal realm it
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Operations of the Executive Board of the Friends’ Association of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity, for the Relief of Colored Freedmen. Philadelphia: Inquirer Printing Office, 1864. Bentley, George R. A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955. Forman, Jacob Gilbert. The Western Sanitary Commission; A Sketch of Its Origin, History, Labors for the Sick and Wounded of the Western Armies, and Aid Given to Freedmen and Union Refugees, with Incidents of Hospital Life. St. Louis, MO: R. P. Studley, 1864. Johns, Jane Martin. Personal Recollections of Early Decatur, Abraham Lincoln, Richard J. Oglesby and the Civil War. Decatur, IL: Decatur Chapter, D.A.R., 1912. David H. Slay
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Poster exhorting blacks to arms. Black abolitionists
encouraged free black men to volunteer for military service, suggesting that they should prove their bravery on the battlefield and fight to ensure that their freedom remains permanent. ª Louie Psihoyos/Corbis
established courts to mediate disputes between black laborers and white planters, while in the financial realm it established banks to teach frugality to newly liberated African Americans. The Bureau had its detractors. Many white Southerners, ever sensitive about their own personal freedom, felt that the Bureau violated their rights, as it established its own courts and legal framework. In 1872 the Bureau passed out of existence. Within five years the Bourbon Redeemers had retaken control of the Southern governments, virtually ending government efforts on behalf of freedpeople. Nevertheless, in the short time between the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of Reconstruction, the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution changed the status of blacks once again, that from freedpeople to American citizens (Bentley 1955). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Association of Friends of Philadelphia and Its Vicinity, for the Relief of Colored Freedmen. Statistics of the GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Family
In a world filled with uncertainty, many slaves and freedpeople placed a high value on family. For slaves, having families provided a sense of normalcy and the illusion of control over their own lives. For freedpeople, emancipation became a time to reestablish contact with lost loved ones, start new families, or pilot their existing families into a safe harbor. Both groups met with soul-wearying obstacles. Slaves faced the ever-present threat of separation, while freedpeople found that liberty created new challenges for which they were unprepared. Ultimately, many affirmed the place of family in African American life by either bringing their families through the transition from slave to citizen intact, or picking up the pieces and creating new families. For many slaves, forming a family provided them with a connection to the past as well as provided them roots in the present. The new families created in slavery replaced the old kinship networks of Africa, while the slave quarters on the larger plantations simulated villages. Within these villages hierarchies developed as individual slaves exercised their talents in medicine, preaching, and hunting. Depending on the plantation owner’s wishes, slaves could court one another in the quarters or visit with members of the opposite sex from other plantations, with the view of marriage as the ultimate goal. On some plantations marriage simply consisted of the planter telling a couple that they were married, sometimes whether they wanted to be or not. On others, the male slave had to ask the master’s permission. In cases of interplantation courtship, the individual masters had to work out agreements—if they were inclined to do so. Depending on the wealth of the master, his affection for the couple, or his religiosity, the wedding ceremony could range from the very simple to the more elaborate,
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complete with music and feasting (The Daily National Intelligencer, February 15, 1858). With marital bliss often followed by the birth of children, relationships on the plantations became complex. Unlike most of white America in 1861, where the father headed the household, slave families answered to the white masters and overseers. This proved emasculating for many black men, for their owners could punish the slave’s children, abuse his wife, or humiliate the slave by punishing him in front of his family. J. T. Tims, who was just ten years old when Union forces entered his area of Mississippi, recalled the train of events that led his family to flee the plantation. Upon getting into trouble for a wrong he did not commit, J. T. bit his mistress on the thigh when she scissored his head between her legs to hold him still and get better aim at his backside. That only enraged her further, and she ordered another slave to beat J. T., at which time his mother intervened when ‘‘she come out with a big carving knife and told him, ‘That’s my child and if you hit him, I’ll kill you.’’’ The mistress then ordered her son to whip J. T.’s mother, which he did lightly for show. The next day the master asked J. T.’s father, Daniel, why he was appeared so upset. To which he replied, ‘‘You’d be lookin’ glum too if your wife and chile had done been beat up for nothin’’ (Tims 1941). Infuriated, the master smacked Daniel on the head with a cobbler’s hammer. Humiliated at seeing his wife and child beaten by whites, and brutalized himself for standing up for his family, Daniel took his family and fled to Natchez, Mississippi. There, he joined the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Even if slave families managed to carve out some kind of stability, a bad crop, poor management, or the death of the owner could change everything and force them onto the auction block. If fortunate, the family remained together, but as often as not they ended up among different owners where, if the distance was great, they started over and formed new families. Even the mere threat of Union invasion of a region could force the dissolution of families, which is precisely what happened to many in the Mississippi Valley when General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) began his campaigns for Vicksburg. Many planters, not wishing to see their slaves liberated, sent them hundreds of miles away from their homes. In the case of one slave family, it was a matter of discipline that separated them. ‘‘The father (Daniel) left home in a fit of anger because one of his children had been whipped.’’ The master, knowing how much Daniel loved his family, put the man’s wife and infant child in jail as bait. The authorities allowed him to visit his family, but on his final visit they locked him in a cell. ‘‘The next day, he and his son Johnny were sold to some speculators who promised to carry them so far away that they could not return’’ (Huff 1941, p. 239). As Daniel left he promised his wife Harriet that he would return one day. Although she despaired, Harriet remained
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committed to Daniel’s promise, which he kept, returning several months after the war’s end. After liberation, many freedpeople could not go looking for their evacuated family members, for to pass out of Union-held territory ensured death or re-enslavement. In many cases all they had to go on were rumors of where their family members ended up. Therefore, when the end of the war came, hundreds of miles separated families, distances the freedpeople did not have the time or resources to cross. Men looked for their wives, wives looked for their husbands, and children looked for their parents. Many freedpeople, therefore, chose to re-family, or start over afresh. They found new spouses, got legally married by Union officials, and established new communities in the freedmen’s camps and plantations that dotted the South. Others chose the less moral route of living with members of the opposite sex outside of marriage. Orphaned children, either through the death of their parents, abandonment, or having gotten separated from them, ended up in orphanages. If too young to remember their given names, the staffers gave them new ones; the names were primarily generic, but in some cases cruel, as in the cases of Mary Lincoln, Wade Hampton, and Major Kirby Smith, all black children who passed through the Vicksburg orphanage (Vicksburg Orphans Report, June 30, 1865). Families that survived slavery, too, faced perils. In the confusion of the passage or because of armies, they often became separated and unable to find one another later on. Work oftentimes took them away from one another, especially if the father signed on as a laborer with the army. If a father or brother enlisted in the USCT, then the family may have lived on the borders of the camp in a nearby freedmen’s colony, or have never seen them again if the regiment received orders to go on a campaign. The families that did survive the transition to freedom found advantages in their new status. They sometimes pooled their resources to purchase property or a mule, took care of one another during sickness, and, in the still dangerous days after the war ended, provided safety in numbers. Thus, in the end, the family enabled the former slaves to enter freedom with many advantages. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), ‘‘Plantation Wedding,’’ February 15, 1858, col. B. Huff, Bryant. Georgia Narratives. In Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, vol. 4, part 2, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1941. Tims, J. T. Arkansas Narratives. In Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, vol. 2, part 6, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1941.
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‘‘Vicksburg Orphans Report.’’ In Records of the Mississippi Freedmen’s Department (‘‘Pre-Bureau Records’’), Office of the Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1863–1865: Roll 4, Miscellaneous Records 1863–1865. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, June 30, 1865. David H. Slay
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Life on an American antebellum plantation was framed by social forces such as one’s race and social caste; by environmental forces such as the plantation’s region, the season of the year, the plantation owner’s choice of crop or dominant economic activity; and by the nature of the interaction between the owners, managers, and laborers. Winthrop Jordan offers sound footing for understanding the national context of plantation slavery: ‘‘The major factor making for sectional division in the U.S. was the proportion of Negroes in the population’’ (1968, p. 315). As Jordan points out, the ‘‘very tone of society’’ on plantations differed between the Upper South and the Lower South, based upon the proportion of enslaved Africans and the profitability of slave-based agriculture in the regions (1968, p. 316).
The Owners The etiology of American antebellum plantation life lies within a western European worldview framed and informed by a mercantilist economic vision. John Locke’s ideas on labor, liberty, and natural rights provide a context for understanding the structure of plantation culture—a way of life informed by the dialectic between the owners and enslaved, yet overdetermined by the ideological superstructure of Enlightenment-era political economy. One of the rights that Locke prefigured was the right to own enslaved Africans. Antebellum South Carolina benefited greatly from Locke’s involvement in the slave trade. In Charleston Harbor are two rivers, the Ashley and Cooper, which take their names from Locke’s employer—the Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621–1683). The Earl of Shaftesbury and Locke were among nineteen founding stockholders in the Royal Africa Company. Locke’s ideas about the suitability of enslaving Africans are described in his Second Treatise on Government: ‘‘A king of a large and fruitful (non-European) territory . . . feeds, lodges, and Is clad worse than a day-laborer in England’’ (Carruthers 1999, p. 49). Locke held that Africans were primitive men who did not deserve ‘‘unrestrain’d Liberty, before [they] had Reason to guide them. . .’’ (Blackburn 1997, p. 263). As Carruthers clarifies, Locke’s ideas about Liberty are grounded in his notion of the work ethic (the management of labor), its con-
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nection to wealth, and the notion of noblesse oblige and virtue: ‘‘The labor of (a man’s) body and the work of his hands . . . are properly his. Whatsoever . . . he removes out of . . . nature . . . is his own . . . it is his Property’’ (Carruthers 1999, p. 47). Locke declared that the English alone were possessed of true freedom, based on the Protestant ideal rather than Catholicism, which he deemed a form of religious slavery. And in effect, English values were the values of antebellum plantation owners. The most important aspect of the planter’s life on the plantation was his—or more seldom, her—relationship with employees and property. The overwhelming sense of paternalism described by Eugene Genovese (1974) connects Locke’s Enlightenment ideas on labor and liberty to the plantation life experienced by the planter. Paternalism required that order be maintained from the upper echelon of the plantation through three functions: meting out basic provisions, directing labor in a sensible manner, and punishing infractions of the order. The ability to operate as a local autocrat was supported by prohibitions against educating the enslaved, and by the Southern state legislatures, which by the antebellum period had developed a web of laws pioneered by Virginia and South Carolina to secure the dominance of white over black. The lives of the owners were determined by a number of factors, including the primary crop under cultivation and the requisite labor system, what may be described as the management style of the owner, the relationship with the enslaved Africans and the white drivers, and the season of the year. Mark Smith (1997) provides an interesting discussion of the slave owner’s plantation life relative to the concept of clock time, which he and his class copied from their Northern capitalist peers. Smith quotes a writer in the Southern Agriculturalist describing the habits of a Southern plantation owner in 1832 who drew up a schedule and strictly enjoined its observance upon his people. He ordained that the cook should have breakfast at a suitable hour to which the people were to be punctual in attendance . . . . The hour of attendance was to be declared by the sound of the horn, and the time for taking their last meal, was so regulated, that the workers always had ample space for completing their tasks before the call. If any one had not finished at the appointed hour, he was disgraced and went without his dinner for that day. (Smith 1997, p. 93)
Of course, this schedule was determined by the labor system forced upon the enslaved, which was either gang-based (for tobacco and cotton) or task-based (for rice). In both labor systems, most planters hired poor whites and forced some enslaved Africans to encourage efficiency amongst the enslaved. The manufactured distance provided by these managers allowed the planter to direct his attention to a social life for his family or to the pursuit of more gain.
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Five slave generations. Entire families generally lived in slave quarters: small, one room houses with a minimal amount of furniture and necessities for everyday life. The Library of Congress
The Enslaved Plantation life for the enslaved was shaped by several factors, including their birthplace, living conditions, and work regimen. Although Michael Conniff and Thomas Davis are correct in their assertion that ‘‘by 1720 more blacks were being born in the colonies than were being imported there, and by 1740 most blacks there were American-born,’’ there is no direct correlation between the percentage of the enslaved population born in America and either the strength of resistance to oppression or the Africanity of the cultures practiced in those regions (Conniff and Davis 1994, pp. 132–133). This assertion, held aloft by Frazierians old and new, has contributed to
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great distortions and omissions in African American historiography (Frazier 1930; Park 1918; Mintz 1992; Sidbury 2007). In fact, newly imported Africans often were viewed as links to an ancestral heritage offering a way of life and set of values different from the antebellum American South (Stuckey 1987; Gomez 1998). At least one observer of the day noted that enslaved Africans were advocates of an animistic type of religion that included goblins, godlings, witches, and ‘‘supernatural agencies generally’’ (Boston Emancipator and Republican, December 5, 1850). This description was stereotypical, of course, but plantation life for slaves was dominated by the effort to
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create a meaningful culture despite the duress of the world of work. In cotton- and tobacco-growing regions, the gang-labor system dictated a community unified in its drudgery, sharing the burden of the collective rising upon the sounding of the conch or bell. The primacy of the enslaved community was the result of this forced unity. Although being sold ‘‘down the river’’ in the internal slave trade has been discussed in terms of its effect on the slave family, the enslaved African community was affected significantly as well. The laboring class that an enslaved person was assigned or born into dictated the course of his or her day. John Blassingame’s account of the daily routine of the enslaved is instructive. He maintains that field laborers ‘‘rose before dawn, prepared their meals, fed the livestock, and then rushed to the fields before sunrise’’ (Blassingame 1972, p. 155). Often, those who were late would be whipped. After working in the fields, the slaves performed other tasks to support the cultivation of the crop and maintain the plantation, such as building fences, cutting down trees, constructing dikes, and clearing new land. In the evening enslaved Africans had to care for ‘‘the livestock, put away tools, and cook their meals before the horn sounded bedtime in the quarters’’ (Blassingame 1972, p. 155). One correspondent for the Boston Emancipator and Republican in 1850 described the yearly ration of clothing for the enslaved African as consisting of a pair of shoes, two shirts, a pair of pantaloons, and one jacket. The lives of house slaves were little better. House slaves ‘‘ate better food and wore better clothes than the field slaves,’’ but were completely at the beck and call of the slave master and his family. They rose before the slavemasters and went to bed after them (Blassingame 1972, pp. 155–156).
White Managers and Drivers The class of white overseers was primarily comprised of poor whites, some mulattos, and very few middle-class whites. The role of these whites was prescribed by the laws of the Old South. For example, A. Leon Higginbotham discusses a 1705 amendment to the Virginia House of Burgesses 1669 Slave Act that created clear racial lines by deputizing all Christians (i.e., whites) to police and intimidate the servile African population (Higginbotham 1996, pp. 30–31). This was the legal and social context for poor whites in the antebellum South: They were dragged along into a political economy that devalued labor through the very nature of slavery, and they could not expect to share in the planter class’s bountiful profits derived from plantation agriculture. Blassingame records that poor whites who made up the overseer class were in a degraded state: ‘‘Better fed, housed, and clothed than the poor whites, the slaves considered them far from superior beings. Instead, [the whites] were the objects of ridicule, pity, and scorn in the quarters’’ (1972, p. 202). Blassingame also quotes
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Henry Bibb, a former slave who became an eloquent and effective abolitionist and who viewed poor whites as ‘‘generally ignorant, intemperate, licentious, and profane’’ (1972, p. 202). One news correspondent of the day concurred, describing ‘‘the uneducated lower class of whites’’ as ‘‘the most indolent, ignorant, and degraded class of beings I have ever seen. They lead a kind of Gipsy (sic) life; here to-day and gone to-morrow’’ (Boston Emancipator and Republican, December 5, 1850). The relationship between the poor whites and enslaved Africans is observable in the commerce they pursue: ‘‘The negroes steal from their masters and traffic with (the poor whites), and are not a whit beneath them in their condition or sphere of life. This miserable and degraded people form no inconsiderable part of the population of Carolina, and this state’’ (Boston Emancipator and Republican, December 5, 1850). Antebellum plantation life represented a give-andtake relationship between African slaves, the degraded class of poor whites, and the white planter class. Although this relationship largely depended upon a form of patriarchy described aptly by Genovese, it was hardly a peaceful hegemony. Violence was encoded in the slave law of the antebellum South, and periodic rumors and actual outbursts of rebellious violence bloodied the scene of slavery. The warped social fabric of antebellum plantation life provided the backdrop for both the defenders and detractors of slavery. Both groups saw in it the root cause of their complaint and the catalyst of their convictions. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London: Verso, 1997. Blassingame, John. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Boston Emancipator and Republican, December 5, 1850. Carruthers, Jacob H. Intellectual Warfare. Chicago: Third World Press, 1999. Conniff, Michael L., and Thomas J. Davis. Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Frazier, E. Franklin. ‘‘The Negro Slave Family.’’ Journal of Negro History 15, no. 2 (1930): 62. Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Gomez, Michael. Exchanging Our Countrymarks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Higginbotham, A. Leon. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal
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Process. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Jordan, Winthrop. White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968. Mintz, Sidney, and Richard Price. The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. Park, Robert E. ‘‘The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures with Special Reference to the Negro.’’ Journal of Negro History 4, no. 2 (1918): 23. Sidbury, James. Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Smith, Mark M. Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Kwasi Densu Samuel Livingston
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At the outbreak of the Civil War, there were about four million enslaved African American people in the United States. Cut off from the wider American society by ideological constructions of racial inferiority and the legal constraints of perpetual bondage, the slave population developed a distinct culture and a counter-ideology that supported their communities in brutal oppression. Slave culture finds its roots both in the ideas, beliefs, and customs brought from Africa, and in the European milieu in which enslaved Africans found themselves in the New World (with Native American influences that should not be overlooked). The mix that resulted affected white American culture as well as black, but gave rise to a distinctive slave culture that included a deep sense of solidarity and community. Slave culture emerged at a time when the assumption of white supremacy was ubiquitous. Every leader of thought and every institution in American society—laws, governments, courts, churches, clerics, universities, books, newspapers, academies of science, and so forth—were unanimous in the assertion that black people were not, and could never be, full members of the human family. Slaves, therefore, were regarded as inferior persons to whom ordinary moral considerations did not apply. This attack on black humanity left slaves profoundly isolated existentially, socially, economically, politically, and ideologically.
Culture of Defiance Under such circumstances, the fundamental project of slave culture was to resist dehumanization, assert black
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humanity, and convince enslaved people of their own self-worth. Historian Cornel West suggests that the primary challenge of the culture was ‘‘to ward off madness and discredit suicide as a desirable option’’ (West 1996, p. 81). The slave culture that developed in response to this challenge was intense and compelling, characterized by an animated orality, tense physicality, covert intellectual musing, nimble improvisation, deep secrecy, coded communication, and defiant spirituality. Slave culture, by the time of the Civil War, was in all its aspects focused on the problem of black suffering and the appropriate response to it. West suggests that ‘‘the ‘ur-text’ of black culture is neither a word nor a book, not an architectural monument or a legal brief. Instead, it is a guttural cry and a wrenching moan . . .’’ (West 1996, p. 81). Such shouts and moans were found omnipresent in slave song and religious practice, in musical performance, and in folktales—even in everyday speech. The slave response to suffering and injustice was not to deny it, but rather to defy it. That is, slave culture consistently demanded that suffering be acknowledged and that life be celebrated in all its aspects in spite of such suffering. The words of one slave spiritual illustrate such defiance: ‘‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. / Nobody knows but Jesus. / Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. / Glory, hallelujah!’’ The shift of mood in the last line of the lyric from mournful grief to joyful exultation is typical of the sudden mood shifts found in black cultural performance. Another slave spiritual, cited by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, illustrates this same defiance: ‘‘You may bury me in the East, / You may bury me in the West, / But I’ll hear the trumpet sound in the morning . . .’’ (‘‘You May Bury Me in the East,’’ or ‘‘I’ll Hear the Trumpet Sound,’’ Du Bois [1903] 2005, p. 180). Such defiance is masked and coded, however. As much as slave culture was universally a culture of resistance to the dehumanization that lay at the foundation of slavery, it had to accommodate itself to the realities of bondage and white domination. The culture recognized the need for slaves to masquerade in the presence of masters as dull, crude, foolish, childlike, or jovial. Nonetheless, the study of slave life has revealed a culture of great subtlety, strength, and introspection. The African American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872–1906) acknowledged this painful masking in the poem ‘‘We Wear the Mask,’’ published in 1896, well after the end of slavery: We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask . . . . (Dunbar 1997, p. 896)
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Culture and Leisure
Leisure Time Slave life was dominated by long hours of toil and unpaid labor. But slaves were given some time for leisure and recreation, and their culture could be expressed most fully during these periods. Almost all masters observed Sunday as a day of rest, because it was a religious obligation, and slaves were left to themselves. Saturday was often only a partial work day, with Saturday evening a time for gathering and partying. The Christmas holiday, the week from December 25 to January 1, was usually observed as period of no work, for field workers at least. Other holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Easter Monday, and the Fourth of July, might also be given to slaves as holidays, depending on the practice of each master. Work was usually suspended on rainy days, when fieldwork became impossible. Impromptu holidays might also be declared by masters after planting was done, during slow periods of the agricultural cycle, and in association with weddings, birthdays, and funerals of the master’s family. Naturally, slaves might create other opportunities for recreation. Illicit nighttime gatherings, for worship and for socializing, were a regular part of slave life. Though they might be broken up by slave patrols, they usually went undetected. More risky options for taking leisure were pretending to be sick or simple truancy— leaving the plantation without permission. During such periods of rest, slaves spent most of their time in parties with music and dancing, in worship services, hunting and fishing, lounging, storytelling, drinking, or visiting wives, girlfriends, and family on other plantations. Slave codes in the South usually outlawed certain other leisure activities, such as cards or dice, gambling, or playing any game of chance for money—indicating that such games were popular pastimes among slaves.
Religious Worship Sunday was a day of worship, of course, at least for enslaved Christians. However, most African Americans slaves resisted conversion right up until the Civil War. Michael A. Gomez suggests that by 1860, only 22 percent of slaves may have been converted to Christianity (1998, pp. 260–261). John Blassingame supports this estimate, suggesting that about one million slaves—a quarter of the slave population—were Christians by 1860 (Blassingame 1979, pp. 97–98). The former slave Charles Ball claimed that his African-born grandfather ‘‘never went to church or meeting, and held that the religion of this country was altogether fake, and indeed, no religion at all; being the mere invention of priests and crafty men, who hoped thereby to profit through the ignorance and credulity of the multitude’’ (Ball 1837, p. 21). So, contrary to popular belief, Christian slaves probably remained in the minority until the end of the war.
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Christians might hold secret prayer meetings at night in secluded areas they called ‘‘hush harbors.’’ Clandestine night gatherings were a regular feature of slave life, in any case. Mary Reynolds recalled one of these meetings many years later: Once my maw and paw taken me and Katherine [her sister] after night to slip to ‘nother place to a prayin’ and singin’. A nigger man with white beard told us a day am comin’ when niggers only be slaves of God . . . . We prays for the end of Trib’lation and the end of beatin’s and for shoes that fit our feet. We prayed that us niggers could have all we wanted to eat and special for fresh meat. Some the old ones say we have to bear all, cause that all we can do. Some say they was glad to the time they’s dead, cause they’d rather rot in the ground than have the beatin’s. (Rawick 1972– 1979, pp. 240–241)
Slave Christian gatherings consisted of singing, praying, and preaching; they lacked formal services, rituals, or sacred objects. In the ring shout, a form of Christian worship, believers formed a circle and shuffled counterclockwise while singing, shouting, dancing, and praying. Others stood outside the circle and sang and clapped. Eventually, some dancers would become possessed by the spirit and fall. The ring shout probably combines African forms of worship with Christian practice. The slave’s theology rejected the slaveholders’ Bible teachings that supported slavery and justified their mistreatment. Enslaved Christians believed that they were the people of God. Slaves were convinced that they were going to heaven and that their masters were not. Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) remembered that crowds watched his master’s dramatic conversion to Methodism. The white congregants celebrated, saying: ‘‘Capt. Auld had come through.’’ But the slaves secretly believed otherwise, according to Douglass: ‘‘ . . . The slaves seldom have confidence in the piety of their masters. ‘He cant go to heaven with our blood in his skirts,’ is a settled point in the creed of every slave; rising superior to all teaching to the contrary and standing forever as a fixed fact’’ (Douglass [1855] 1969, pp. 195–196). Slave Christianity also included a covert theology of liberation, at least by the antebellum period. In June 1850 a white slaveholder in South Carolina accidentally overheard a slave named George sharing a Christian message with other slaves, that they: . . . ought not to be discouraged on account of their difficulties. There was no reason why they were in the situation they were, only that God permitted it to be so. That God was working for their deliverance. He was working by secret means, and would deliver them from their bondage as sure as the children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptian bondage . . . . [They] did not know exactly how long it would be before they
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Culture and Leisure would be set free. There was no doubt that it would be soon. That they ought to pray for [it], and their prayer would go up before God and be answered. (Harris 1985, p. 41)
George was arrested, charged with sedition, tried, and sentenced to thirty-nine lashes plus deportation from the state. It is clear that, as with other aspects of slave culture, slave theology had to be kept strictly secret. Nonetheless, cultural attitudes and beliefs can be discerned in slave music, and especially in spirituals and other slave songs. The Bible story most often found in spirituals is that of God delivering the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Moses is one of the most often mentioned figures in these songs. Others include Noah, Daniel, and Jonah—all rescued from tribulations by God. Jesus appears as the innocent child, the victim of whipping, and the powerful King Jesus, who cannot be defeated. Bible stories are conflated, with episodes from the Old and New Testaments lumped together. Salvation was universal for slaves; God would save anyone who believed in him. Slaves spent little time singing about hell or damnation. Whites seldom appear in these spirituals, as the songs invoke the autonomous world of African American cultural imagination. Besides Christianity, enslaved Africans preserved their ancestors’ beliefs as ‘‘conjure’’ or ‘‘hoodoo.’’ This was a rich mixture of European and African magical practices that included herbal medicine, love potions, ghost lore, witchcraft spells, protection from evil, and divination. Such practices remained important in the slave community even after conversion to Christianity.
Storytelling The cultural values of the slave community were also embodied in storytelling, which was an important part of slave life. African American folktales were widely known before the Civil War. They amused and entertained generations of Americans—white and black. But one of the of the persistent misunderstandings of these stories is that they were told as mere foolishness—that they are light and nonsensical stories that slaves told one another just to pass the time, or to provide a source of amusement. On the contrary, contemporary scholars have argued that this folklore represents the serious oral literature of slave culture. Charles Joyner has suggested, for example, that the same role that the novel played in twentieth-century European culture was carried by the folktales in slave culture (Joyner 1984, p. 172). Although the tales can be quite humorous, enslaved African Americans used folktales to explore the most central and urgent issues that their culture faced. They used folktales to inspire and educate others, to socialize children to the norms and realities of slavery, to maintain solidarity within their communities, to rebuke and satirize their masters, to protest their condition of bondage, to resist the dehumanization of the slave system, to
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accommodate to the injustices of slavery and make them bearable, to communicate encoded messages to one another, to suggest solutions to common dilemmas, to explain how things came to be as they are, and so forth. It is one of the most profound achievements of African American culture that the animal tales, at least—the stories about Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, Br’er Bear,and so on—could achieve all of these purposes with such perfect subtlety and ambiguity that they could be told openly and freely—in full view of white society, without attracting suspicion or condemnation. This in itself gives insight into the nature of slave culture and black consciousness in the antebellum South. Although it pretended to be clumsy and foolish, slave culture was consistently subtle and indirect. It was a culture that was extremely careful with words, and it crafted its literature with delicate nuance and shrewd complexity. It was also a secretive culture, but one that tended to hide its secrets in plain sight. Most of the animal stories are trickster tales. These are consistently the stories of how a small, weak, but cunning creature (such as a rabbit) outsmarts a much larger, more powerful, but actually rather stupid animal (a fox, perhaps) who in the natural course of things should be eating the smaller creature. The little trickster animal is marked by his capacity for bragging, lying, and trickery, and by his strutting, egotistical, and self-assured personality. The larger animal is portrayed in these stories as dull, slow, rather unsure of himself, and easily tricked. The identification of the smaller animals with the slave and the larger ones with the slave master must have been obvious to the black community, but it seems not to have occurred to slave-owning whites. The cultural productions of African American people during the centuries of slavery in the United States are indeed remarkable. Their creativity seems to have reached its peak during the years just before the Civil War. By then, the culture included a rich musical tradition, a new form of Christianity, a remarkable dance tradition, a vast and subtle oral literature, and a counter-ideology to prevailing attitudes of white supremacy. In addition, the slave community developed unique patterns of extended family relationships, styles of dress, and styles of work that both resisted and accepted the limitations and intrusions of slavery. They developed a full and expressive language that, although it was regarded as an ignorant and broken form of English at the time, is now recognized by scholars as a full and legitimate language system that is, in some ways, more expressive than Standard English. The culture also provided slaves with amusements, games, and pastimes for leisure hours. Slave culture was a fully developed system that provided its people with tools with which they could protect themselves, especially psychologically, from the brutal ravages of racial oppression. Beyond that, it has had a profound influence on all aspects of American life and has influenced white society and culture in every aspect.
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Spirituals BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States: A Narration of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball. New York: John S. Taylor, 1837. Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. [1855]. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Du Bois, W. E. B. ‘‘The Sorrow Songs.’’ In The Souls of Black Folk. [1903]. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005. Dunbar, Paul Lawrence. ‘‘We Wear the Mask.’’ In The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Harris, J. William. Plain Folk and Gentry in a Slave Society: White Liberty and Black Slavery in Augusta’s Hinterlands. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985. Joyner, Charles. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, vol. 5. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972–1979. West, Cornel. ‘‘Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization.’’ In The Future of the Race, eds. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Anthony A. Lee
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Many of the West Africans who were forced into slavery in America came from cultures in which music played an important role in everyday life. Thus it is not surprising that the slaves continued to make music in their new surroundings. At work, at play, and at worship they sang, often mixing sacred with secular songs. While settlers of European origin were accustomed to singing hymns during worship as written in hymnals, the slaves were much more flexible in their use of music, singing hymns whenever they pleased. Some plantation owners did not want their slaves to sing songs—religious or secular—while they worked because they believed that the slaves might be communicating secret messages via the songs. In this regard, the owners were correct. Former slave Wash Wilson once commented, ‘‘When de niggers go round singin’ ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ dat mean dere gwine be a ’ligious
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meetin’ dat night’’ (Rawick 1977–1979, p. 198). Such songs as ‘‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot,’’ ‘‘Canaan, Sweet Canaan,’’ and ‘‘Ride on King Jesus, No Man Can Hinder Thee’’ depict a future in which God would deliver them from slavery and thus were thought to promote efforts at escape. Although some plantation owners forbid singing by their slaves, others were either unconcerned or found that when slaves were allowed to sing, they worked more productively and were generally more accepting of their lot. Repetitive and rhythmic tasks especially lent themselves to singing, and the bulk of slave work was just this kind. Where permitted, some slaves attended religious services at their owner’s place of worship, where their boisterous singing was not always appreciated. Some religious leaders objected to what they called the nonsensical lyrics the slaves created for their songs, which were often improvised. The slaves readily mixed secular and sacred lyrics and more often than not found inspiration in stories from the Old Testament, which they would have heard in oral readings from scripture or in sermons, since they were forbidden to learn to read. The runaway slave and author, William Brown, described a black woman selling strawberries in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1855. She sang: I live fore miles out of town, I am gwine to glory. My strawberries are sweet an’ soun’, I am gwine to glory. I fotch ’em fore miles on my head, I am gwine to glory. My chile is sick, and’ husban’ dead, I am gwine to glory. Now’s de time to get em cheap, I am gwine to glory. (Brown 1880, p. 211)
Another observer of slave spiritual singing, writing in the November 23, 1867 issue of the Daily Evening Bulletin, found this mixture of sacred and secular imagery startling: King Jesus, he was so strong (er,) my Lord, That he jarred down the walls of hell. Don’t you hear what de chariot say? (bis,) De fore wheels run by de grace of God, An’ de hind wheels dey run by faith.
Rather than conform to white notions of propriety during worship, some groups of slaves held their own services on the plantation. The freedom to worship varied from plantation to plantation. Some sympathetic owners built special buildings, called praise houses, in which the slaves might worship, while at other locations, slaves had to meet in the woods on a Sunday or at 2 or 3 a.m. another night in order to worship. As the unnamed author of the 1859 article ‘‘Songs of the Blacks’’ commented, ‘‘[It] is in religion that the African pours out his whole voice and soul. . . . All the revelations of the Bible
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have to him a startling vividness, and he will sing of the Judgment and the Resurrection with a terror or a triumph which cannot be concealed’’ (September 9, 1859). This type of emotive display certainly ran counter to white Protestant notions of worship. Many whites did not understand so could not appreciate the complexities of slave singing, which incorporated African rhythms, tonalities, and vocal embellishments. Rhythms were often syncopated and set against each other in complicated patterns. The tonality, or scale on which the music was based, might only include five notes (pentatonic) or microtones (half or quarter steps between pitches). The vocal embellishments might include yodeling, bending a pitch up or down, and singing several notes to one syllable of lyrics. In addition, grunts, yells, cries, or moans were common forms of musical expression. It is no small wonder that nonAfricans were baffled by such original musical displays. Although African music was incomprehensible to many, some whites were impressed by slave singing. Describing slaves at a camp meeting in 1856, a correspondent for Dwight’s Journal of Music wrote that when hundreds of blacks ‘‘join[ed] in the chorus of such a hymn as ‘When I can read my title clear, / To mansions in the skies,’ the unimpassioned hearer is almost lifted from his feet by the volume and majesty of the sound’’ (p. 178–180). A Liberator writer thought that freemen could learn from this music, particularly to praise the Creator. ‘‘Americans are the most favored people on earth, and yet they are the least expressive of their joy. . . . Let us not be ashamed to learn the art of happiness from the poor bondmen of the South. If slaves can pour out their hearts in melody, how ought freemen to sing!’’ Over time, the African songs did become an integral part of American society, developing into such popular styles of music as blues, jazz, and pop. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston, MA), September 14, 1864, issue 63, col. B. Brown, William Wells. My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People. Boston: A.G. Brown, 1880. Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), November 23, 1867, issue 41, col. H. Dwight’s Journal of Music 15, (1859): 178–80. Fayetteville (NC) Observer, January 20, 1862, issue 2329, col. F. Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave Series 1 and 2, vol. 5, Texas Narratives, part 4. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977–1979. ‘‘Songs of the Blacks.’’ The Liberator (Boston, MA), September 9, 1859, issue 36, col. D. ‘‘War Songs of the South’’ The Charleston Courier Tri-Weekly, May 31, 1862, col. C.
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White, Shane and Graham White. The Sounds of Slavery. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Jeanne M. Lesinski
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The religious life of slaves in antebellum America was shaped by and varied according to a number of factors. These included, but were not limited to, slaves’ African region of origin, the section of the United States slaves lived in, the predominant local plantation labor system, the European American and Native American religious cultures slaves were exposed to, and the historical moment under consideration. Three significant regions will be considered in this brief discussion of religion and slavery: the Carolina-Georgia Low Country, the Chesapeake, and the Gulf Coast. Each is considered in terms of its African-influenced religious life and in terms of the form of Christianity that took hold. Understanding the religious life of the enslaved requires that clear distinctions be made between the way the sacred and secular were experienced in European American and African Diasporic societies and cultures. By the antebellum period, both the sacred and secular realms of Euro-American society were increasingly subject to church dictates concerning the daily life of congregants. Despite the vibrant culture of worship brought about by the Second Great Awakening, Christian churches failed to completely control the daily lives of whites, and exerted even less control over the spiritual life of enslaved African Americans. This latter population (a majority in some locations), harboring resentment toward the master population, possessed of a completely different cultural worldview, and retaining their own spiritual values resisted the reality of white control through an alternate religious culture (Gomez 1998, pp. 247–248). The great majority of the African captives imported into America came directly from Africa or with only transitory stops in the Caribbean. These people— primarily the Bakongo, Ovimbundu, Igbo, Ibibio, Akan, Mandinka, and Bambara—faced with the social death of slavery, chose to create a cohesive unified religious community in which ethnic differences enriched the collective religious experience, but were subsumed by central religious institutions: the ring shout, baptism, root-work, hoodoo, funeral rites, and the exhortative priest (Patterson 1982). Each of these institutions was drawn from the African cultural imagination and then integrated into African American religious culture (Gomez 1998, pp. 12–16; Stuckey 1987, ch. 1; Thompson 1984). Scholars disagree on the impact American religious movements had on slave worship practices during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Some, such as Sterling Stuckey (1987), maintain that even if reform
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Religion Practiced by Slaves
HOODOO: AFRICAN FOLK MAGIC AMONG SOUTHERN SLAVES Hoodoo is a term that refers to a collection of folk magical practices used in the South before the Civil War and still practiced today. The English word hoodoo is derived from the Ewe word hudu; hoodoo is also known as conjuration, conjure, or rootwork (from the practice of chewing and spitting out plant roots as part of some hoodoo rituals). Hoodoo is not a separate religion; it was practiced by slaves who had become Christian as well as by those who had not. Hoodoo in the nineteenth-century rural South was primarily West or Central African in origin, though some spells or rituals were borrowed from Native American peoples such as the Chickasaw and Cherokee. Slaves practiced hoodoo in order to gain some control over their lives—to avoid being whipped, to attract love, to cure disease, to foretell the future, or to contact the spirits of their ancestors. Henry Bibb (1815–1854) was a former slave from Kentucky who obtained his freedom by fleeing northward, first to Detroit and later to Canada. In 1849–1850 he published an autobiography in which, among many other things, he described hoodoo spells and rituals. Although Bibb discusses his early use of hoodoo in order to inform the reader that he has outgrown ‘‘superstition,’’ his autobiography is considered an accurate source of information about Southern folk magic. Below are some excerpts: There is much superstition among the slaves. Many of them believe in what they call ‘‘conjuration,’’ tricking, and witchcraft; and some of them . . . say that by it they can prevent their masters from exercising their will over their slaves. . . . The remedy [to prevent a flogging] is most generally some kind of bitter root; they are directed to chew it and spit towards their masters when they are angry with their slaves. (Bibb 1849, p. 25)
After I had paid him his charge, he told me to go to the cow-pen after night, and get some fresh cow manure, and mix it with red pepper and white people’s hair, all to be put into a pot over the fire, and scorched until it could be ground into snuff. I was then to sprinkle it about my master’s bedroom, in his hat and boots, and it would prevent him from ever abusing me in any way. After I got it all ready prepared, the smallest pinch of if scattered over a room, was enough to make a horse sneeze from the strength of it; but it did no good. (Bibb 1849, p. 27) Later on, Bibb paid another ‘‘conjurer’’ for a love charm, which also failed: After I had paid him, he told me to get a bull frog, and take a certain bone out of the frog, dry it, and when I got a chance I must step up to any girl whom I wished to make love me, and scratch her somewhere on her naked skin with this bone, and she would be certain to love me and would follow me in spite of herself. . . . So I got me a bone for a certain girl, whom I knew to be under the influence of another young man . . . [and] when I got a chance, I fetched her a tremendous rasp across the neck with this bone, which made her jump. But in place of making her love me, it only made her angry with me. She felt more like running after me to retaliate on me for thus abusing her, than she felt like loving me. (Bibb 1849, pp. 30–31) REBECCA J. FREY
Bibb describes an instance in which he paid another slave for a hoodoo recipe to keep his master from beating him:
SOURCE: Bibb, Henry. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: Author, 1849.
movements initiated a gradual transition from the ‘‘Africanized’’ Christianity of the slave quarters and the ‘‘hush harbor’’ to more Western conventions of worship within churches, most slaves still favored the more lively and outdoor settings of the ring shout and John Kunering ceremonies (Stuckey 1987, p. 167). Others argue that the impact of Euro-American culture, society, and worship practices was much more fundamental. In Roll Jordan Roll (1976), for example, Eugene Genovese claims that by the nineteenth century Afro-Caribbean religious practices had almost completely given away to the religion of the master class. According to Lawrence Levine (1977), while enslaved Africans brought no unified ‘‘African’’ culture with them, they did create a new and unique African American religious culture (pp. 3–5). Likewise, Stuckey and Michael Gomez (1998) argue that Africans developed a religious life of their own, largely independently of whites, by developing (1) religious institutions based
on African patterns; (2) an Africanized version of Christianity; and (3) a quasi-Islamic religious life.
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Spirituality in the Low Country The Low Country is a coastal region of Southeastern North America stretching from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Northern Florida, and including South Carolina and Georgia. Its original inhabitants—the Chicora, Cherokee, Creek, and other Native American cultural groups— were displaced by the Spanish, French, and British and the enslaved Africans they brought to the region. By 1830 in South Carolina as a whole, Africans (slave and free) outnumbered whites 323,000 to 258,000 (Gomez 1998, p. 295), with the greatest concentration being along the Atlantic coast. Having a numerical advantage—annually reinforced by ‘‘fresh saltwater’’ captives who brought with them their own religious ideas from West Central Africa, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Senegambia—enslaved African Americans developed a new spiritual gestalt that
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focused on two major religious institutions: root-work and the ring shout. Both of these practices were most likely first introduced during the colonial period by Bakongo and other Congo-Angolans practicing close variations of Western Bantu traditions (Gomez 1998, p. 250; Stuckey 1987; Thompson 1984, p. 107). Root-work, a spiritual practice that originated out of the Bakongo reverence for minkisi—the sacred medicines embodied in certain roots, herbs, and minerals—functioned as an amalgam of medical and spiritual practices (Thompson 1987, p. 108). The ring shout simultaneously expressed Bakongo reverence for the quartered circle as a symbol of the totality of life, various complicated intersections, particularly of the living with the ancestral realm (Pemba/ Mpemba), and the motion of the sun, as recorded in the counterclockwise dance of its practitioners. By 1810, the ranks of ring shouters had been strengthened by captive men and women from Sierra Leone, organized into variants of Poro (male) and Sande (female) initiation societies, allowing the enslaved African American community to preserve spiritual agency in a rich cultural context. These institutions were most clearly preserved by the Gullah culture, from Georgetown to Hilton Head, South Carolina, and to a lesser extent by the Geechee culture of the Ogeechee River area in Georgia and North Florida; they were also found in the Congaree Swamp area outside of Columbia, South Carolina.
The Chesapeake of Virginia and Maryland Virginia had a history of close cross-cultural contacts between African Americans, Native Americans, and Euro-Americans during the early colonial period, as evidenced by the records of the House of Burgesses. Africans and Scottish bondsmen ran away together, Africans and Native Americans rose up in revolt together, and Africans and Englishmen joined forces to suppress these uprisings. The result was a division during the antebellum period between the religious culture of slaves and the religious culture of free African Americans, the latter being much more patterned on Eurocentric Christianity. The slave culture that developed in the Tidelands was, however, weakened by an internal slave trade that arose to meet a demand for labor caused by the spread of cotton culture into the Louisiana Territory. The Great Awakening brought about by the missionary efforts of George Whitfield, among others, from 1740 to 1790 led to the freeing of hundreds of enslaved Africans, largely by white converts (Gomez 1998, p. 251). Still, during this period no more than 4 percent of the African American population (slave and free) converted to Christianity (Gomez 1998, p. 254). By 1830, one in every seventeen Africans had converted, bringing the percentage to six. From 1790 to 1830 black church life in Virginia developed along lines that mirrored class distinctions within the black community. Field slaves were largely excluded from proselytizing efforts, while
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free blacks organized their own churches largely along white Christian lines. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, poor whites were showing the influence of African American forms of worship during revival meetings that featured outdoor worship, shouting, dancing, and other ‘‘ecstatic’’ manifestations. During the antebellum period, the predominant African ethnicities found in the Chesapeake region were the Igbo and Ibibio (Bight of Biafra), followed by the Asante and Fante (Gold Coast/Akan), and Mandinka and Bambara of Senegambia. Gomez and other scholars suggest that slaves of Igbo origin had an unusually strong connection to their homeland that led to heightened psychological stress and despair, manifested at times in suicidal behavior (Gomez 1998, pp. 250– 251). Slaves of Igbo origin resided primarily in the Tidewater region, where tobacco cultivation employing the gang labor system predominated. Although the region had a large concentration of black labor, the gang system mitigated the development of a strong cultural community comparable to that of the Gullahs or Geechees in the Low Country. Nonetheless, a local religious community did develop among slaves. This was weakened, however, when many slaves from the Tidewater region were sold ‘‘down the river’’ during the spread of cotton into the Louisiana Territory. Forced into the Gulf region and other parts of the Louisiana Territory, Chesapeake slaves, unable to take much of their material culture with them, held onto their beliefs and crossed their Igbo-Akan-Mande religion with their new region’s Fon-Ewe-Yoruba-Bakongo traditions to create a new religious subculture. After the Bakongo, the Bambara were the most dominant cultural presence among slaves in the Gulf region. Their Africaninfluenced spiritual worldview is indicated by their prominent use of amulets. With the importation of increased numbers of captives from Congo-Angolan and Fon-Ewe Yoruba regions, a synthesis of African religious culture known popularly as voodoo—or vodun in its Haitian variant—developed in the region.
Christianity and the Pursuit of Freedom In the antebellum period, the free black population developed an emancipatory form of Christianity most strikingly proclaimed by David Walker (1785–1830), advocated by Maria Stewart (1803–1879) and Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882), and practiced by Denmark Vesey (1767–1822). In his 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, Walker, an African American abolitionist from Wilmington who made Boston his base, argued that slavery and true Christianity were incompatible: I ask O ye Christians !!! who hold us and our children, in the most abject ignorance and degradation. . . . If you will allow that we are MEN . . . does not the blood of our fathers and of us their
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Dance among Slaves children, cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth [sic] against you, for the cruelties and murders with which you have, and do continue to afflict us? (Walker 1994 [1829], p. 16)
Walker’s Appeal is significant, as it signaled a reaction against biblically based claims of African inferiority. Walker identified historical events as the cause of enslaved African Americans’ debasement. He wrote of ‘‘Our Wretchedness in consequence of Slavery’’ (p. 17), ‘‘Our Wretchedness in consequence of Ignorance’’ (p. 29), and ‘‘Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ’’ (p. 46). Many blacks demanding immediate freedom based their appeal in part on Christianity. In 1857 two black Christians from Cleveland, John Malvin and the Reverend Robert Johnson, writing in The Liberator, condemned a biracial man who supported slavery and black inferiority. Malvin and Johnson wrote that ‘‘we do not love him, but hate him as an apostate from the religion of Jesus Christ, and a traitor and disgrace to his people’’ (Aptheker 1971, vol. 1, p. 391). Christianity, thus, had been transformed from solely being the belief system of the slave master into a part of the insurgent culture of those seeking freedom. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert. A Documentary History of the Negro Peoples in the United States, vol. 1. New York: Citadel Press, 1951. Berry, Mary Frances, and John W. Blassingame. Long Memory: The Black Experience in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books, 1976. Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Walker, David, and Henry H. Garnet. David Walker’s Appeal and Henry Highland Garnet’s Address. 1848. Reprint, Nashville, TN: James C. Winston, 1994.
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Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. Kwasi Densu
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Dance was an integral part of daily life among African American slaves. Observations of slave culture, particularly on the Southern plantation, yield evidence of a layering of traditional African tribal dance practices shared, blended, and reinvented in the New World. For this reason, dance practices among African American slaves represent a narrative of resistance and survival. In Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970 (1972), Lynne Fauley Emery discusses the slave owners’ practice of what they called ‘‘dancing the slaves.’’ This activity occurred on board the ships transporting the slaves from Africa to America, the voyage American history records as the Middle Passage. She notes, ‘‘Dancing was encouraged for economic reasons; slaves who had been exercised looked better and brought a higher price’’ (Emery 1972, p. 6). Noting the physiological benefits of exercise, slave owners forced slaves to exercise to maintain their health. Alexander Falconridge, a white surgeon on board one of the slave ships, recalled ‘‘Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of [the slaves’ health], they are sometime obliged to dance, when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly, they are flogged’’ (Emery 1972, p. 8). ‘‘Dancing the slaves’’ continued beyond the slave ships, permeating America’s Southern plantation culture. On the plantations, slave owners forced slaves to dance ‘‘under the lash,’’ both for economic reasons and for entertainment. Slaves were danced to maintain a healthy appearance, though, given the often-meager conditions in which they lived, they appeared anything but. Emery concludes, ‘‘[The African slave] danced not for love, nor for joy, nor religious celebration [as he had done in his native African home]; he danced in answer to the whip. He danced for survival’’ (1972, p. 12). Dancing provided a mask for what were sad, dismal living conditions, despite the slaves’ happy and healthy fac¸ades. The process of ‘‘dancing the slaves’’ demonstrates the way slave owners made negative a practice that, for many African slaves, had been culturally redeeming. But many slaves were able to recast many of these same movements in a positive light simply by using similar movements and gestures to create a common language and use it for the good of community and culture-building. Dance was an integral part of slave plantation culture. Some of the more popular dances involved types of animal mimicry. A common form mentioned was the
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Buzzard Lope. In Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (1942), the song collector, Lydia Parrish, described this dance as she witnessed it in the Georgia Sea Islands: ‘‘March aroun’ / Jump across! / Get the eye! . . . . /
Get the guts! / Go to eatin’! . . . . / Look aroun’ for mo meat’’ (1942, p. 111). Other animal mimicry dances included the Fish Tail, Pigeon Wing, Snake Hip, and Turkey Trot. Dances such as these were similar to the
An example of the Cakewalk, 1903. In some areas of Africa, heavy loads were often carried on one’s
head, inspiring American slaves to dance while balancing a bucket of water. Couples who spilled the least amount of water earned a cake for a prize, hence the dance, minus the bucket of water, became known as the Cake-Walk. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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African tribal dances celebrating a successful hunt. As such, these slave dances represented a survival of African tribal culture on the plantation in the American South. Other dances containing elements of African tribal culture were ring dances. In Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (1986), the Savannah Unit of the Georgia Writers’ Project of the Works Project Administration cites Hettie Campbell of St. Mary’s Island, Georgia, who described these ring dances: ‘‘We does plenty uh dances in those days. Dance roun’ in a ring. We has a big time long bout wen crops come in an everybody bring sumpm tuh eat wut they makes an we all gives praise fuh the good crop an then we shouts an sings all night. An wen the sun rise, we stahts tuh dance’’ (pp. 186–187). Ring dances provided a form of communal fellowship in which slaves recalled their tribal customs of praising the gods for a successful crop. The Ring-Shout was a type of ring dance marking sacred occasions. This dance was particularly observed among the Mohammedans of West Africa. On the slave plantations, the ring-shout offered a means for African slaves to maintain their fervent religious customs while adhering to the American Protestant church’s ban on dancing of any kind. In the Slave Narratives of the Federal Writers’ Project, Louisiana slave Wash Wilson explained, ‘‘Us longed to de church, all right, but dancin’ ain’t sinful iffen de foots ain’t crossed. Us danced at de arbor meetin’s but us sho’ didn’t have us foots crossed’’ (1941, p. 198). One of the earliest accounts of the ringshout comes from Laura Towne, a Northern teacher sent by the Freedman’s Bureau to teach the Negroes in the Sea Islands. In her book, Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, a letter to her family describes: Tonight I have been to a ‘‘shout,’’ which seems to me certainly the remains of some old idol worship. The Negroes sing a kind of chorus,—three standing apart to lead and clap,—and then all the others go shuffling around in a circle following one another with not much regularity, turning round stamping so that the whole floor swings. I never saw anything so savage. (1969, p. 20)
To the outside observer, such dancing appeared savage, but in fact it represented retention of African cultural practices in America. In his book Slave Culture (1987), Sterling Stuckey notes this very distinction between African slave and European cultures. He states, ‘‘The division between the sacred and the secular, so prominent a feature of modern Western culture, did not exist in black Africa in the years of the slave trade, before Christianity made real inroads on the continent’’ (1987, p. 24). This type of dancing was a concept foreign to the European powers, in whose culture existed a distinct boundary between sacred and secular. Whereas such dancing perpetuated a conception of savagery in the minds of Euro-
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pean Americans viewing these acts, it sustained a central element of African tribal culture among the slaves. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Emery, Lynne Fauley. Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books, 1972. Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration. ‘‘Wash Wilson.’’ In Slave Narratives, vol. 14, part 4: Louisiana Narratives. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1941. Georgia Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration. Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Parrish, Lydia. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Towne, Laura M. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Ondra Krouse Dismukes
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After Nat Turner’s (1800–1831) rebellion in 1831, Southern fears of servile insurrections increased exponentially. Southern legislatures passed laws further prohibiting the already limited movement of slaves, slave patrols became more serious in the exertions, and the slightest hint of servile plotting brought swift and brutal retribution. Free blacks found themselves subjected to deeper scrutiny, while some states debated whether to allow blacks—free or enslaved—within their borders. Events of the 1850s did nothing to lesson Southern concerns of a race war. In early 1855 several counties in Maryland experienced a scare, while later that year rumors of a Christmas insurrection stoked fears in a number of Southern states. The following year slaves rebelled in New Iberia, Louisiana; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; and Columbus, Texas (Wish 1937, pp. 314– 320). Moreover, events in Bleeding Kansas threatened to spill over into the rest of the country. The BrooksSumner Affair; the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas; and John Brown’s Pottawatomie Massacre—all occurring within a seven-day period—increased tensions to a fever pitch. The guerilla war in Kansas threatened to spread into other states. Southerners suspected abolitionist plots everywhere; and in the North, the concept of Slave Power as a malevolent force began to take hold. Already strained race relations in the South reached their breaking point on the night of October 16, 1859, when John Brown (1800–1859), along with a small party of white men and five free blacks, seized the
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United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Intent on leading a servile insurrection, Brown had exhibited a penchant for murder at Pottawatomie Creek that horrified Southerners. His sudden violent appearance in Virginia terrified the South. Captured, and sentenced to die, Brown wrote on the day of his execution that he had become ‘‘quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged but with blood,’’ which many Southerners took as a prediction of a race war (Bancroft 1900, p. 497). In attempt to forestall such a future, many Southern states, believing free blacks were an unholy influence on otherwise content slaves, debated the idea of expelling free blacks from their boundaries. Rumors of insurrections persisted well into the Civil War. In the spring of 1861 several black coach drivers in Adams County, Mississippi, concocted a plan to murder their white masters and rape their female kin. Whites discovered the plan and executed an untold number of slaves suspected of participating in it. A year later the provost marshal of Natchez, Mississippi, wrote, ‘‘within the last 12 months we have had to hang some 40 for plotting an insurrection, and there has been about that number put in irons’’ (Farrar 1862). Indeed the war placed a new set of strains on race relations. In the Black Belt region of the South, mobilization further changed an already dangerously skewed ratio of blacks to whites. In the North, white troops began marching south, encountering people of African descent in significant numbers for the first time. The troops’s attitudes varied according to their political stripes and ethnicity. Hardened Democrats, as a general rule, did not care for blacks, considered the war a contest for the Union, and wanted no part of abolition. Rank and file Republicans, for the most part, remained ambivalent about slavery during the first half of the war, but gradually swung toward the radical position of abolitionism as they advanced farther into the South and saw the evil side of slavery for themselves. Irish soldiers—and civilians for that matter—had little love for blacks, free or slave. They considered them economic competition and at times lashed out violently, most notably during July 1863 when Irish civilians rioted in New York City, murdering blacks as they encountered them. About that same time, at freedmen camps and leased plantations along the Mississippi River, abuse in the shape of rape, murder, and robbery became so prevalent that General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) had to issue orders promising the summary dismissal of any officers who tolerated such behavior in their commands (U.S. War Department Series I, vol. 24, part, p. 571). The year 1863 also saw the widespread recruitment of black soldiers into the Union army—which was abhorred by men in both armies. The average Union soldier was rather ambivalent about it, so long as they did not have to serve side by side with a black regiment. They believed a black soldier could stop a bullet as well
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as a white, and that blacks should fight for their freedom. Not all Union officers agreed. General Andrew Jackson Smith (1815–1897) expressed his disgust with Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas’s (1804–1875) recruitment of black soldiers, claiming he would hang old Thomas if he comes into his camp making such a speech. Says he hates abolitionists worse than he does the Devil. If Jesus Christ was to come down and ask him if he would be an abolitionist if he would have him to heave, he answers that ‘‘I would say NO! Mr. Christ, I beg to be excused. I would rather go to hell than be an abolitionist.’’ (Hass 1961, p. 71)
Later, in 1864, General William T. Sherman (1820– 1891), wrote that in response to the question of ‘Is a negro as good as a white man to stop a bullet?’ Yes, and a sand-bag is better; but can a negro do our skirmishing and picket duty? Can they improvise roads, bridges, sorties, flank movements, &c., like the white man? I say no. Soldiers must and do many things without orders from their own sense, as in sentinels. Negroes are not equal to this. (U.S. War Department series 1, vol. 38, part 5, p. 793)
Questions of racism in the Union high command again came to the fore in December 1864 when Major General Jefferson C. Davis (1828–1879) ordered his men to remove a pontoon bridge over Ebenezer Creek in Georgia. The small army of freedpeople trailing Davis’s corps fond themselves trapped between Confederate cavalry and the stream. Many desperate blacks, terrified at being captured or killed by the Rebels, drowned trying to swim the creek (Grimsley 1995, p. 199). The recruitment of black troops by Union forces posed a major policy question for the Confederacy— should they be treated as prisoners of war, escaped slaves, or insurrectionists? Initially the Davis and the Confederate high command proscribed execution as the penalty for any Union officers caught in command of black troops. For black enlisted men captured under arms, it depended on who captured them. In some cases Confederates murdered captured black troops, but most ended up sold back into slavery. The most blatant example of Confederate disgust of black troops came in April 1864, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s (1821– 1877) troops overran Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River forty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. In the melee that followed the attack, Forrest’s men killed nearly 300 Union soldiers, many of whom were trying to surrender. A year later, at Fort Blakely near Mobile, Alabama, the Confederates found themselves in an earthen fortification with their backs to a major waterway, outnumbered by a mixed force of white Union regiments and United States Colored Troops (USCT)—Fort Pillow in reverse. Like Fort Pillow, the attackers worked themselves into a rage
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Race and Racial Tensions
Church scene, Nashville, Tennessee. Instilling fear and intimidating were ways to maintain control over both slaves and free blacks throughout the South. Whites fearful of slave rebellions looked to eliminate any opportunity African Americans had to organize acts of resistance, including disrupting church services where people of color worshipped. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
before the final assault. Walter A. Chapman, a newly commissioned white officer in the USCT wrote ‘‘As soon as our niggers caught sight of the retreating figures of the rebs the very devil could not hold them, their eyes glittered like serpents and with yells & howls like hungry wolves, they rushed for the rebel works.’’ The sight of the howling, charging black troops struck fear into the white Mississippians in the Confederate line. Some threw down their arms and made for the river in their rear, hoping to swim their way out of the fight. Chapman wrote that the ‘‘others threw down their arms and ran for their lives over to the white troops on our left, to give themselves up to save being butchered by our niggers. The niggers did not take a prisoner. They killed all they took to a man’’ (April 11, 1865). While most historians believe that Chapman exaggerated to a certain extent, other Union accounts support the belief that the black soldiers at Blakely raised the cry of Fort Pillow, and came very close to visiting their wrath on the Confederates but for the efforts of a few brave Union officers (Fitzgerald 2001, pp. 248–251). As the last major action of the Civil War, the battles around Mobile, Alabama, marked the end of organized combat. But the conflict between the races did not end. Confederate soldiers, who had spent most of the war
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campaigning, came home to a transformed society that afforded as much legal protection to a black laborer as it did to a white planter. Many Confederates found the situation intolerable and immediately set about to change things; if not to the way they were before the war, then at the very least, to something similar. White-led race riots broke out in Memphis, Tennessee in 1866; Colfax, Louisiana in 1873; and in a host of other Southern towns between 1874 and 1876, when whites finally restored their control over the former Confederate states. Thus, while the Civil War changed the legal status of race in America, it did not change people’s hearts. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bancroft, Frederic. The Life of William H. Seward. Two vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900. Chapman, Walter A. Walter A. Chapman Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Farrar, A. K. ‘‘Provost Marshal A. K. Farrar to Governor John J. Pettus, Natchez, July 17, 1862.’’ Records of the Office of the Governor. Jackson: Mississippi, Department of Archives and History, 1862. Fitzgerald, Michael W. ‘‘Another Kind of Glory: Black Participation and Its Consequences in the
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Campaign for Confederate Mobile.’’ Alabama Review 54 (2001): 243–275. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Hass, Paul H., ed. The Diary of Henry Clay Warmouth, 1861–1867. Master’s Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961. U. S. War Department. The War of Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC, 1880–1901. Wish, Harvey. ‘‘American Slave Insurrections before 1861.’’ Journal of Negro History 22, no. 3 (1937): 299–320. David H. Slay
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Free Blacks
Free blacks occupied a precarious position in American society on the eve of the Civil War. Southerners, for the most part, distrusted them; and in the North, many states refused to recognize their civil rights. While considered free, they were free in name only in most regions of the country, for one misstep and they could find themselves enslaved, exiled, or imprisoned. Yet despite those handicaps, some free blacks found prosperity within the limbo, acquiring land, businesses, and, ironically enough, slaves of their own. In 1846, the Jackson Mississippian complained that free blacks ‘‘continued to saunter about the streets of our cities, engaging in acts of petty larceny, gambling in secret, and lounging about as fops and dandies, corrupting the slaves and rendering them disobedient and discontented with their lots in life’’ (September 3, 1846). In neighboring Louisiana, a state with a population of nearly nineteen thousand free blacks in 1860, the distrust of free blacks was so great after John Brown’s (1800–1859) raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, that the state legislature passed a law in 1859 prohibiting them from entering the state (The Weekly Mississippian, September 7, 1859). That same year, a New York newspaper noted that since John Brown’s raid, many Southern states sought to restrict the travel of free blacks on Southern railroads (New York Herald, November 3, 1859). In St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, whites passed a resolution calling for the enslavement of any free black ‘‘convicted of any offence against the laws’’ (The Liberator, March 18, 1859, p. 43). So great was Southern paranoia over Brown’s raid that three states legislatures passed measures expelling free blacks, and nine others seriously considered it (Atkins 2005). Yet some free blacks managed to find prosperity between slavery and complete freedom. William Johnson, a free black barber in Natchez, Mississippi, amassed enough wealth to build a three story brick home and purchase several slaves (Davis and Hogan 1954, pp. 1–24). In New Orleans, which had a long tradition of civicallyactive free blacks, over 900 free black members of the Loui-
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siana Native Guard volunteered their services to the Confederacy in the fall of 1861—though not out of any great love for the Confederacy, but rather for the protection of their livelihoods and families. They never saw active duty on behalf of the Confederacy and were disbanded until Union forces captured the Crescent City in early 1862 (Hollandsworth 1995, pp. 1–12). Free black women, too, could attain some financial standing in the community, for in Natchez a significant number of free black and mulatto women acquired slaves of their own (Ribianszky 2005, pp. 217–245). Nevertheless, the vast majority of free blacks in the south eked out a living on the peripheries of society, working as woodchoppers, domestics, and other menial tasks—their freedom dependent solely on the goodwill and honesty of local whites. Free blacks in the North often faced similar obstacles as their Southern counterparts, for many Northerners feared competition between black and white labor. In 1858 in Baltimore, Maryland, conflict broke out when white workers attempted to break the monopoly free black caulkers held in the shipyards—the very same yards where Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), America’s most prominent free black man, worked during his younger days (Douglass 1845, p. 118). The perception of unfair competition between the races came to a head in July 1863 during the New York City Draft Riots, in which a mob consisting predominantly of Irish immigrants rampaged through sections of the city, torturing and murdering any black men, women, and children they encountered. Despite such difficulties, many free blacks worked tirelessly to abolish slavery. A number of escaped slaves living in the North and in Canada published narratives of the captivity, often providing lurid and sensational details of their lives in bondage. For those escaped slaves, however, freedom was fleeting because the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it the duty of all law officials to arrest escaped slaves. The law also established a low threshold for proof of ownership—a claimant’s word. Since the legislation prohibited accused runaway slaves from testifying on their own behalf, a number of free blacks had no recourse after they were arrested and were sold into slavery. Others fell prey to criminal whites, as in the case of Solomon Northup (b. 1808), a free black man from Saratoga, New York, who fell in with a couple of smooth-talking criminals who promised him high wages to play his violin on tour with them. It took him twelve years to recover his freedom. Once the war began, the status of free blacks changed on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. In the South, the position of free blacks eroded even more, with frequent calls to enslave them all. Many, however, rather than becoming legally enslaved, became de facto slaves through impressment as laborers in support of Confederate arms, usually felling trees, digging ditches, and building fortifications. In the North, new opportunities arose for free blacks. The army and navy opened their ranks to free blacks, and perhaps just as importantly, the masses of freed
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Free Blacks
Black dock workers in a federally occupied port. Many free blacks were distrusted in the South, and some Northerners refused to acknowledge their civil rights. Yet some free blacks managed to do well by buying land, starting businesses, and even owning slaves. National Archives/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
slaves in the South needed their assistance. Once the Union army began to organize its policies for the care of freedpeople, as the former slaves were called, many free blacks went South to teach and provide political leadership for their kin. Indeed many of the black political figures elected to state and national officer after the Civil War, were free blacks who established themselves in areas occupied by the Union army during the conflict. Moreover, as some of the more affluent free blacks had received quality education at some point in their lives, they were equipped to take on administrative positions during Reconstruction. By the time the firing stopped, they had built up enough of a constituency to make the leap to elected office. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atkins, Jonathan M. ‘‘Party Politics and the Debate over the Tennessee Free Negro Bill, 1859–1860.’’ Journal of Southern History 71, no. 2 (2005): 245–278. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Davis, Edwin Adams and William Ransom Hogan. The Barber of Natchez. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. Hollandsworth, James G., Jr. The Louisiana Native Guard. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. The Liberator (Boston, MA), March 18, 1859, issue 11, col. G. Mississippian, ‘‘Free Negroes—Outrage,’’ September 23, 1846, issue 39, col. B. The New York Herald, ‘‘Free Negroes on Railroads,’’ November 3, 1859, col. F. Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York. Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller, 1853.
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Ribianszky, Nikki. ‘‘‘She Appeared to be Mistress of Her Own Actions, Free From the Control of Anyone:’ Property Holding Free Women of Color in Natchez, Mississippi, 1779–1865.’’ Journal of Mississippi History 48, no. 3 (2005): 217–245. The Weekly Mississippian, ‘‘The Law in Louisiana on Free Negroes,’’ September 07, 1859, issue 38, col. C. David H. Slay
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Emancipation
The arrival of 1863 changed the legal status of people whom the U.S. government had previously labeled as contraband: subject to seizure like any other Confederate property such as horses, mules, and cows. Their long journey to freedom suffered from many fits and starts. When General John C. Fre´mont liberated the slaves of disloyal owners in Missouri in August 1861, Lincoln, recognizing the country was not quite ready for emancipation, ordered him to retract the order. In April 1862, slavery was abolished in Washington, DC, with money set aside to reimburse loyal owners and remove any slaves who wished to leave the United States. Finally, in September 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure to go into effect on New Years Day, 1863. In the North and occupied regions of the South, January 1, 1863, arrived with fanfare beyond the usual
New Year celebrations. Abolitionists, free blacks, and freedpeople around the country rejoiced. Slaves in Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia had to wait, for the document did not apply to them, but only covered the states in rebellion. Furthermore, it only had teeth in areas occupied by Union forces, otherwise the Confederates thumbed their noses it at. In Union occupied Hilton Head, South Carolina, thousands of freedpeople journeyed to the camp of the First South Carolina Regiment of African Descent to listen to speeches, give speeches, and otherwise have a good time. One eyewitness said the crowd ‘‘constituted one of the most motley assemblages of which it is possible to conceive.’’ Present, eager for a speech, and some barbecue from the ten oxen roasting over a fire, the crowd consisted of ‘‘young and old, of all shades, sizes, and costumes; ancient domestics . . . antiquated aunties, done up in turbans, tickled and curtseying to everyone they met; gay and gaudy yellow girls, decorated with superabundant jewelry, smiling profusely at the gay and gallant youths around them.’’ Also present were ‘‘toothless crones, sucking on black pipes, and young mothers violently hushing their babies, while here and there gleamed the red bayonet and glowed the red breeches of a South Carolina volunteer’’ (New York Herald, January 7, 1863). Others had to wait on the Union army to liberate them before they could celebrate, and even then concern for the future tempered some of their celebrations. Booker T. Washington, who at the close of the war lived
Freed African Americans crossing Union Line after the Emancipation Proclamation. In September of 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederate states, effective on New Years Day, 1863. The proclamation covered only the areas occupied by the Union in states that were part of the Confederacy. Those who could rejoiced. ª North Wind Picture Archives
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on a tobacco farm near Roanoke, Virginia, recalled how a Union officer rode up, read the Emancipation Proclamation, and told the assembled slaves that they were free. His mother broke into joyful tears and kissed her children, explaining to them what it meant. After a short celebration, the weight of responsibility sank in. ‘‘The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself.’’ Washington explained that to dream of freedom was one thing, but to actually have ‘‘freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected’’ (Washington 1901, p. 21–22). Former slave Caroline Richardson stated that they had ‘‘been teached dat de Yankees will kill us, men women an’ chillun.’’ So, when the Union army came, ‘‘de drums wus beatin’, de flags a wavin’ an de hosses prancing’ high. De whole hundret of us runs an’ hides.’’ They eventually came out of hiding to hear what the Union soldiers had to say. Many freedpeople left the plantation, but Caroline’s family stayed on and worked for wages which was quite common at war’s end (Born in Slavery, Richardson, p. 201). Mattie Gilmore recalled a similar experience in Athens, Texas, when after the announcement sunk in, her master invited her family to stay on and work for wages (Born in Slavery, Gilmore, p. 73). Some heard the news of emancipation from their masters, without ever had come into contact with Union soldiers. G. W. Pattillo a former slave who lived on a plantation near Griffin, Georgia, heard the news from his master. The master, having called the slaves together, told them that ‘‘Mr. Lincoln whipped the South and we are going back to the Union. You are as free as I am and if you want to remain here you may. I am not rich but we can work together here for both our families, sharing everything we raise equally,’’ which Pattillo’s family did for five years after the conclusion of the war (Born in Slavery, Pattillo, p. 170). William Black of Hannibal, Missouri, recalled that ‘‘when we was freed our master didn’t give us nothing, but some clothes and five dollars. He told us we could stay if we wanted to, but we was so glad to be free dat we all left him. He was a good man though’’ (Born in Slavery, Black, p. 33). In her interview with the Works Progress Administration writer during the 1930s, Mattie Gilmore, commented on how unprepared the freedpeople were for liberty, recalling that they ‘‘never done no managin’ and didn’t know how.’’ Some, in the rush to get away from their masters, or preserve their freedom by following the Union army, did not fully understand the dangers that faced them. Along the Mississippi River they fled from plantations in the interior by the thousands, overwhelming the infrastructure of the river towns. Union Brigadier General Joseph Stockton, upon observing the cavalcade of freedpeople that followed William T. Sherman’s army into Vicksburg after the raid on Meridian, felt pity for the freedpeople. He wrote that ‘‘the men were held at the Big Black River and recruited into regiments while the
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women and children were permitted to come into Vicksburg where they were furnished such quarters as could be found. Most of them had to take the open air for their cover and take such food as they could get. Poor things, they will die off rapidly’’ (Stockton Diary, March 4, 1864). Unable to feed themselves or even find shelter, they languished until the U.S. organized relief efforts and set up a bureaucracy to address their needs. For those who remained on the plantations far removed from the Union army’s line of march, and unwilling to flee, emancipation came later rather than sooner. For black in Galveston, Texas, freedom came when Union General Gordon Granger’s troops landed on June 19, 1865. Today it is celebrated around the country as Juneteenth. Some Confederates resisted emancipation as late as July 1865. Samuel Glyde Swain, a Union officer who served in Mississippi during the latter half of the war, wrote to his brother the summer after the war ended, remarking that ‘‘it will require the presence of troops through the country for some time yet to make the citizens through the country respect the Emancipation Proclamation.’’ He based his opinion on the fact some Southerners were engaging in violence against freedpeople, ‘‘trying to keep up slavery by force, practicing greater cruelties upon the negroes than ever before the war’’ (July 26, 1865). BIBLIOGRAPHY
General Joseph Stockton Diary, Chicago Historical Society. Library of Congress, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, Georgia Narratives, vol. 4, part 3, ‘‘A Talk with G. W. Pattillo, Ex-Slave.’’ Available from http:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html. Library of Congress, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, Missouri Narratives, vol. 10, William Black. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ snhtml/snhome.html. Library of Congress, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, North Carolina Narratives, vol. 11, part 2, Caroline Richardson. Available from http://memory.loc. gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html. Library of Congress, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, Texas Narratives, vol. 16, part 2, Mattie Gilmore. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ snhtml/snhome.html. New York Herald, January 7, 1863. Samuel Glyde Swain Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1901. David H. Slay
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Reconciliation and Remembrance n
Reconciliation and Remembrance Overview
By the early twentieth century, the United States had experienced a significant degree of sectional reconciliation. The scenes of aged veterans of the opposing sides greeting one another amicably on the battlefields over which they had once fought were touching, and the nation reveled in its burgeoning strength and returning unity of spirit. Yet the reunion was gained at the price of granting the South a negotiated half-victory despite its complete defeat on the battlefields of the Civil War. White Southerners had launched their bid for independence in 1861 with the goal of preserving slavery. Though only about 25 percent of white Southern families owned slaves at any one time, far more than that percentage had actively and enthusiastically supported the Confederacy and the cause of slavery because the slave system offered more than mere economic benefits for those wealthy enough to own slaves. Its added dividend for white Southerners, frequently touted in political speeches throughout the prewar era, was that it kept blacks in an inferior position and assured a status of social superiority for whites, along with an imaginary equality among all whites. Many a non-slaveholding white farmer soldiered four long years in the Confederate army at least in part because he feared that Union victory and emancipation would bring him into a position of social equality with an ethnic group he feared and despised. Union victory did indeed bring emancipation, finally cemented and made national by the Thirteenth Amendment, but the white Southerners who had just surrendered on the battlefield set out immediately afterward to insure that the demise of their slaveholders’ republic did not bring about the black social and civil equality they had feared. The conventional war that had just ended now was re-born as a low-intensity conflict, with nightriding groups such as the Ku Klux Klan waging a long,
wearying terrorist campaign against blacks and their white allies. The struggle, known as Reconstruction, dragged on for three times as long as the conventional war had lasted. The Northern populace grew tired of political conflict. First there had been the long decades of strife over slavery that had led to the Civil War, then the blood-drenched years of the war itself, and finally this twelve-year twilight struggle waged against foes who went about wearing the cloak of state-rights, local control, and self-determination by day—and sheets by night. Meanwhile, Southern writers, beginning with Richmond newspaper editor Edward A. Pollard, started building the mythology of what Pollard was first to call ‘‘the Lost Cause.’’ Within the Lost Cause myth, the Confederacy, though defeated, had fought for truth, justice, and righteousness—the cause of God and of Robert E. Lee, if the latter two were to be differentiated at all. Slavery had been a benevolent institution, according to the myth, but the Confederacy had not fought for slavery but rather for state-rights, or agrarian virtues, or, most vaguely of all, for the Southern ‘‘way of life.’’ The North, in contrast, was the lair of low-flung, money-grubbing oppressors who lusted for the economic destruction of their virtuous and genteel betters in the South. For its part, the North had never been politically unified and now found itself much more divided than the South. Some Northerners had been opposed even to waging a war to preserve the Union, and a still larger Northern minority had dissented from emancipation. Such consensus as there had ever been in favor of full civil rights for the newly freed slaves was even more fragile. During the years of Reconstruction, Southern resistance finally overcame the North’s tenuous commitment to racial equality. In 1877 Reconstruction formally ended with the withdrawal of the last federal troops from the Southern states. During the decade that followed, blacks disappeared from government in the Southern states as well as from the congressional delegations of those states. Black
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voting rights and civil rights winked out, and by the 1890s the former slaves and their descendents faced a system of second-class citizenship known as ‘‘Jim Crow.’’ Southern whites had regained uncontested supremacy within their states, and the threat of black social equality was safely banished for the foreseeable future. It was no coincidence that the 1890s was also the decade that saw the great surge of sectional reconciliation. The movement was based on the tacit willingness of Northerners, who had already, as a group, abandoned the political fortunes of African Americans, to accept key elements of the Lost Cause Myth. In the new Reconciliationist version of the Civil War, both sides had fought nobly for their own equally noble causes; Southern troops had, perhaps, been somewhat braver and more heroic than their Northern conquerors; Robert E. Lee was a great American; and slavery had had nothing whatever to do with the war. White Southerners, for their part, would allow that it was for the best, all things considered, that the United States had remained united. It was on these terms that veterans in the 1890s began to hold joint reunions and other graphic expressions of sectional reconciliation. With the causes of the war forgotten, its bitterness could fade as well. There were additional reasons for the upsurge of reconciliation and remembrance during the 1890s. Many of the war’s senior participants were coming to the end of their lives. Jefferson Davis died in 1889, and his funeral and celebrated re-interment several years later were the occasions of massive outpourings of Southern devotion to the memory of the Confederacy. General Philip H. Sheridan had died in 1888, his fellow general William Tecumseh Sherman in 1891, Joseph E. Johnston a few weeks later, and Pierre G. T. Beauregard in 1893. The deaths reminded veterans of the great events they had been through and of their own mortality. More of them became interested in marking and preserving the battlefields where they had fought a quarter of a century before. In a country in which fewer and fewer people could remember the momentous events of the 1860s, men who had been soldiers in those years found that they had strong bonds in common with others who had marched in the ranks during the war, even if they had fought for the other side. Still more reasons for reconciliation were provided by the Spanish-American War. The country pulled together to defeat a foreign foe. Evidence of the new unity could be found among the generals of the volunteer troops who went to fight in Cuba in 1898, two of whom had previously been generals in the Confederate army. One of them, the dashing cavalry leader Joseph Wheeler, on seeing Spanish troops falling back before his advancing soldiers momentarily so far forgot himself as to shout to his men, ‘‘Come on, boys! We’ve got the d——- Yankees on the run!’’ Even after the SpanishAmerican War a ripening popular awareness of America’s
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growing power and prominence in a world that seemed both exciting and dangerous encouraged Americans to embrace nationalism, even at the expense of forgetting what their fathers had fought for in the Civil War. Steven E. Woodworth
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The Lost Cause
While the Civil War occupies a central place in U.S. history and culture, the legacies of the war have been the subject of considerable debate. The cultural memory of the war, or the ways in which people collectively have understood and represented the Civil War, have never been homogenous, static, or inextricable from the politics of the present (Blight 2002, p. 1). Over the years, multiple and often conflicting interpretations of the war have battled to dominate Americans’ understanding of the ultimate meaning of this climactic event in their nation’s past (Blight 2001, p. 2).
Confederate Mythology In an atmosphere of demoralization in the years immediately following the war, former Confederates sought to justify the South’s secession and defeat in a catastrophic war. Nearly every aspect of this so-called Lost Cause account of the war has been refuted by contemporary scholars, with the exception of the fact that the Union fielded a higher number of soldiers than the Confederacy (Waugh 2004, p. 17; McPherson 2004, p. 73; Gallagher 2004, p. 58). Yet with its white supremacist underpinnings, the myth of the Lost Cause thrived in the era of Jim Crow. And well into the twentieth century, the myth eclipsed the emancipationist interpretation of the war, which can be defined as understanding the conflict as the reestablishment of the American republic and the admission of black people to citizenship and political equality (Blight 2001, p. 2). Adherents of the Lost Cause hold that the Southern states seceded and waged war in defense of states’ rights, not slavery; that despite being vastly outnumbered and undersupplied, the Confederate Army fought heroically in the face of overwhelming odds and inevitable defeat; that despite the loss, the integrity of the struggle is preserved through the veneration of military leaders, especially Robert E. Lee. Variants of the Lost Cause myth also recycled antebellum defenses of slavery. While maintaining that slavery was neither the cause nor the central political issue of the war, Lost Cause ideologues insisted that slavery had been a benevolent institution (Nolan 2000, pp. 11–31; Waugh 2004, pp. 15–16). The latter item of propaganda was and remains impossible to reconcile with the personal testimonies of former slaves and the well-documented history of slave rebellions, fugitive escapes, and smaller-scale forms of
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The Lost Cause
to take shape. Several multivolume war histories sold on subscription during the 1860s were marketed as keepsakes that provided a more ‘‘permanent’’ history than newspapers. The first of these was written by John S. C. Abbott (1805–1877), a Congregationalist minister and historian. It was distributed in April 1863, roughly halfway through the war it purported to commemorate (Fahs 1998, p. 118). The editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley (1811–1872), followed Abbott’s work with his own history in 1864. Both Abbott and Greeley understood the Civil War to be about slavery, but their histories, particularly the second volumes published soon after the war’s end, offer a preview of the way in which the Lost Cause interpretation would ultimately combine with other forces to stake its claims to the memory of the war. In the first volume of his History of the Civil War in America, John Abbott writes:
Horace Greeley (1811–1872), editor of The New York Tribune and author of The American Conflict. As later
generations revisited Civil War history, many Southerners tried to explain their defeat by refocusing the purpose of the war. Perhaps the primary reason for the conflict, the abolition of slavery, was downplayed in favor of remembering the Civil War as a battle over states’ rights. AP Images.
day-to-day resistance by enslaved people before the Civil War. It likewise fails to account for the masses of bondspeople who freed themselves during the war by fleeing to Union lines and joining the service of the army that fought their enslavers. According to the historian Alan Nolan, the Lost Cause version of the war is a caricature largely made possible by its misleading picture of slavery and of African Americans. This caricature, he continues, removes African Americans from their central role in the war and makes them historically irrelevant (Nolan 2000, p. 27). Nolan highlighted three issues that he considered the ultimate stakes of the Civil War: the nation’s territorial and political integrity; the ‘‘survival of the democratic process’’; and human freedom (p. 27).
Northern Histories of the War The third point is what emancipationist interpreters understood to be the most important result of the war, the most significant memory of the war, and the central subject of African American celebrations of Emancipation Day after the war. But by that time, however, the contest over the meaning of the war had already begun
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From the commencement of our government there have been two antagonistic principles contending for the mastery—Slavery and Freedom . . . But freedom has outstripped slavery in this race. And consequently, the slaveholders, unreconciled to the loss of supremacy, strive to destroy the temple of liberty . . . This conflict in which our nation is now involved, is simply a desperate struggle, on the part of the slaveholders, to retain by force of arms that domination in the government of the Republic, which they had so long held, and which, by natural operation of the ballot box, they were slowly but surely losing . . . This slaveholding rebellion is the greatest crime on earth. (Abbott 1863, pp. iii–iv)
Personally, Abbott rejected biological arguments about racial difference, which placed him toward the radical end of the era’s racial thought (Fahs 1998, p. 116). And Abbott’s introduction casts the war in terms that would resonate in the emancipationist memory of the war. Indeed he cited emancipation as the most important outcome of the war. But Abbott largely relegated the history of slavery, emancipation, and black military service to the end of his text. The literary historian Alice Fahs suggests that Abbott curbed his own radicalism in order to sell more books to a wider audience (Fahs 1998, p. 116). These same market imperatives may have led Abbott to apply his characteristically florid language to describe Lee’s surrender as a sentimental reunion of the opposing sides. A scene of Union troops saluting passing Confederate soldiers as they stacked arms concludes with the assurance that former animosities would be set aside and that ‘‘the Union was secured for ages to come . . . we had emerged from the conflict with an established nationality . . . ’’ (p. 593). Already in Abbott’s work emancipationist themes receive less emphasis, with greater evidence of a reconciliation theme that would grow in Civil War memory of the war. But exactly who was included in this reunion and national identity that Abbott praised would become another contested aspect of Civil War memory.
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Like Abbott, Horace Greeley understood slavery as the cause of the conflict. Unlike Abbott, however, Greeley made the history of slavery in the United States the focus of the first volume of his Civil War history. Greeley’s text argues that the Civil War was the inevitable result of slavery and emancipation the inevitable result of the war. Arguments of inevitability are poor substitutes for attention to historical process and should almost always be regarded with suspicion. But even more curious is Greeley’s treatment of Lee’s surrender. Though more matter-of-fact about the event than Abbott, Greeley writes, ‘‘The Rebel Army of Virginia had not failed.’’ They had rather, fought ‘‘sternly against the Inevitable’’ and ‘‘proved unable to succeed where success would have been a calamity. . .’’ (Greeley 1867, p. 745). That Greeley tempers the defeat with a valorization of Confederate soldiers anticipates a trend in war remembrance literature that acquired new prominence in the 1880s. In The American Conflict (1864–1867), Greeley may have been motivated by the philosophy of reunification that he espoused at the end of the war, which he summarized as ‘‘magnanimity in triumph’’ (Fahs 1998, p. 119). According to Greeley, ‘‘What we ask is that the President say, in effect, ‘Slavery having, through rebellion, committed suicide, let the North and the South unite to bury its carcass and then clasp hands across the grave.’’’ (Fahs 1998, p. 119). Greeley might also have had in mind the farewell speech Lee gave his troops in General Order No. 9, which begins, ‘‘After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources’’ (Gallagher 2005, p. 40). In the years that followed, purveyors of the Lost Cause would seize upon arguments based on ‘‘overwhelming numbers and resources’’ and inevitability to justify their defeat, just as they would fetishize the Southern soldiers’ valor to mitigate their loss.
Southern Histories of the War While Abbott’s and Greeley’s histories showed signs of reconciliationist impulses, the Southern journalist Edward A. Pollard (1832–1872) urged the necessity of Southerners writing their own histories of the conflict. Pollard, who published his own multivolume series during the war, wrote in his fourth volume of the Southern History of the War that ‘‘the very fact that the war has gone against them makes it more important that [the South’s] records should not fall entirely to the pens of [its] enemies’’ (Pollard 1866, p. 4). Later the same year, Pollard published Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War. Part popular history, part manifesto, the book comprehensively stated the Confederate perspectives of the war. David Blight has argued that the Lost Cause was initially a byproduct of grief but that the ideology soon sought to gain control of the nation’s collective memory (Blight 2002, p. 261).
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As Pollard’s writings illustrate, that desire to control the historical memory of the Civil War was inextricably bound to the politics of race and Reconstruction. Pollard conceded that the war decided emancipation and restoration of the Union but also insisted that the war did not decide issues of racial equality or African American suffrage. In the supplement to the second edition of The Lost Cause, Pollard seethed against the extension of full citizenship rights to African Americans, which occurred at the same time that Reconstruction policies banned former Confederates from voting. In his 1868 political tract The Lost Cause Regained, Pollard prescribed limited reconciliation with Northerners but on the condition of ‘‘securing the supremacy of the white man’’ (Blight 2001, p. 260).
Search for Historical Neutrality While Lost Cause spokespersons espoused their ideology in a bid to control cultural memory, white Northerners grew increasingly weary of the war and the political battles of Reconstruction. By 1881, when the federal government published the first installment of Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, the series was notable not only for its sheer volume but also for the official editorial policy that aimed for a balanced nonpolitical representation (Waugh 2004, pp. 21–22). This decision by the War Records Office to include the offical records of both Union and Confederate armies and to employ veterans from both sides in the compilation signaled a growing tendency to interpret the war in the least controversial way (Waugh 2004, p. 22). More and more, the idea that Confederates went to war in defense of slavery and that the Union army was an instrument of liberation for four million slaves became an embarrassment to white Southerners and thus a hindrance to sectional reconciliation. Consequently, the presence and the roles of African Americans were minimized or ignored entirely in cultural representations of the war (Waugh 2004, p. 22). As popular remembrance increasingly stripped the Civil War of its ideological contexts, the focus shifted to celebrations of the heroic soldier. In 1884 Century, a general-interest magazine of the period, launched its ‘‘Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,’’ an enormously popular series of battle narratives submitted by veterans of the conflict. The announcement of the series, which appeared in the October 1884 issue, pledged that most articles would be written by the generals who had commanded troops in the featured battles. The publishers expected that the series would ‘‘prove of lasting value to the history of the most eventful period of our national life.’’ But to avert the appearance of sectional partisanship and avoid offending subscribers, the Century’s readers were assured that ‘‘it is not a part of the plan of the series to go over the ground of the official reports and campaign controversies, but . . . to clear up cloudy
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questions with new knowledge and the wisdom of cool reflection’’ (October 1884, p. 943). For such a publication, declared the editors’ announcement of the series, ‘‘No time could be fitter . . . than the present . . . when the passions and prejudices of the Civil War have nearly faded out of politics, and its heroic events are passing into our common history where motives will be weighed without malice, and valor praised without distinction of uniform’’ (October 1884, p. 943). David Blight maintains that the Century editors had structured the series as a celebration of the valor of soldiers on both sides in order to further reconciliation; the articles were silent on the causes and consequences of the war or the subjects of race and slavery (Blight 2001, p. 175). If the ‘‘passions and prejudices,’’ which the editors had implicitly defined in sectional terms, had faded, it was due to a growing tendency to remember the Civil War apart from its ideological context and to put aside the still-divisive issues of race, slavery, emancipation, and African American civil rights. All in all, the Century series indicated that the ‘‘common history’’ was increasingly interpreted from the perspective of white males—not an inclusive interpretation but it was becoming increasingly masculine and increasingly white (Fahs 2004, pp. 84–85).
Alternative Views The abolitionist orator and newspaper editor Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), who had escaped from slavery in Maryland, had always conceived the Civil War to be a war of emancipation, and what he recognized as a dismissal of the emancipationist view of the war deeply offended his sense of justice, as it threatened the fruits of his life’s work. Douglass noted the national tendency to forget slavery and secession as well as the side effects of devotion to the Lost Cause, which prompted him to declare, ‘‘It may be said that Americans have no memories . . . We look over to the House of Representatives and see the Solid South enthroned there; we listen with calmness to eulogies of the South and of traitors and forget Andersonville . . . We see colored citizens shot down and driven from the ballot box, and forget the services rendered by the colored troops in the late war for the Union’’ (Blight 1989, p. 232). There were exceptions to the trends that so incensed Douglass regarding the cultural memory of the Civil War— notably in the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, published in two volumes in 1885 and 1886. Not surprisingly, Grant devoted much of the work to his military experience, and he did conclude with a prophecy of sectional reunion. But he also stated unequivocally in his conclusion to the second volume, ‘‘The cause of the great War of the Rebellion will have to be attributed to slavery’’ (Grant 1886, p. 539). Rejecting the popular narrative that depicted the motivations of both sides as equally honorable, Grant insisted on the rightness of Northern action against slavery. He described the Fugitive Slave law, which required the
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return of fugitives to their former bondage, as a ‘‘degradation,’’ and maintained that ‘‘the National government . . . had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution’’ (Grant 1886, p. 544; Waugh 2004, p. 27).
Writing History in the 1880s But the most widespread depictions of the war in the 1880s borrowed from the mythology of the Lost Cause. The strategy of sectional reconciliation through mutual acknowledgment of the soldiers’ valor echoed the South’s esteem of the soldier. And the growing willingness to forget emancipationist politics reflected the Lost Cause’s denial of the evils of slavery and the reality of African Americans’ roles in the war. These tendencies were not the natural effects of passing time, as the Century editors suggested, tempered by the ‘‘cool wisdom of reflection.’’ Rather, as the purveyors of the Lost Cause expressed their own version of the Civil War through literature, public monuments, Memorial Day ceremonies and the like, they also attempted to influence the production and adoption of school textbooks. Letter-writing campaigns persuaded Northern publishers to excise content objectionable to Southerners (McPherson 2005, pp. 64–78). The criteria for what these activists found acceptable is reflected in a guide to textbook adoption committees that advised the rejection of any book that ‘‘says the South fought to hold her slaves,’’ ‘‘speaks of the slaveholder of the South as cruel and unjust,’’ ‘‘glorifies Abraham Lincoln and vilifies Jefferson Davis,’’ or ‘‘omits to tell of the South’s heroes and their deeds’’ (McPherson 2005, p. 72). The long reach of the Lost Cause narrative is evidenced in an 1896 article in Century that departed from the editorial policy reflected in the ‘‘Battles and Leaders of the Civil War’’ series. The piece, which was written by the son of a Confederate veteran, attempts to answer the question posed by its title: ‘‘Why the Confederacy Failed.’’ The apparently novel answer posed by the author was the ‘‘excessive issue of paper money’’ and misuse of the Confederate cavalry. But having been schooled in the romance of the Lost Cause, the author felt compelled to acknowledge the widely held answer he was attempting to revise. The probable response to the question he had undertaken was either that ‘‘America was designed by almighty Providence for one great nation’’ or ‘‘if he is a Southerner, that the South was overpowered by the superior numbers and resources of the North’’ (November 1896, p. 33). The effect of the Lost Cause on family experience was recalled by a Southern writer, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin (1897–1988), whose father had served in the Confederate army at the age of 15 and indoctrinated his children in the mythology of the Lost Cause. He often invoked a popular phrase that suggested the Lost Cause was a kind of secular religion. According to Lumpkin, ‘‘his wife taught the children prayers, he taught them to revere the Lost Cause. . . we were certainly reared, each of us in turn, to revere the veterans of that period and to do everything we could to help them’’ (Lumpkin 1975, pp. 3–4).
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But Lumpkin’s early education later affected her study of Southern social history, particularly the history of slavery, which had been ‘‘unknown’’ to her. ‘‘I had to—by reason of my upbringing . . . really go back and re-do, for myself,’’ she recalled. ‘‘I had to relearn from the sources, because my picture is the one . . . that I was reared in’’ (Lumpkin 1974, p. 66). When asked to characterize her father in a 1974 interview, Lumpkin replied, ‘‘I would say he was a man torn between the past and the present, perhaps. Never having given up the past’’ (Lumpkin 1974, p. 3). For Lumpkin’s father, as with many others of its devotees, the Lost Cause was a refuge from the stresses of military defeat and social change (Blight 2001, p. 266). But at the same time the Lost Cause also provided ammunition for those determined to prevent black people from obtaining equality (Blight 2002, p. 266). In Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy, first published in 1945, eighty years after the war, the author recalled his grandfather, who escaped from a slaveholder during the Civil War, then joined the Union Army, and stood military guard as the newly enfranchased freedmen cast their first ballots during Reconstruction. According to Wright, when radical Reconstruction ended and the freedpeople were ‘‘driven from political power’’ by the efforts of white supremacists, ‘‘his [grandfather’s] spirit had been crushed’’ (Wright 1993 [1945], p. 40). Wright also suggested a link between the politics of white supremacy and the memory of the Civil War. The litany of tabooed subjects that Southern white men did not like to discuss with African Americans, according to Wright, included ‘‘the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman . . . the Republican party; slavery; social equality.. . .the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro’’ (p. 231). As the United States commemorated the war’s centennial in the 1960s, the writer Robert Penn Warren observed, ‘‘The Civil War is, for the American imagination, the greatest single event of our history (Grow 2003, p. 77). But even as he wrote, the observances assumed the character of a racially divided country in the midst of another political revolution. And though the discredited Lost Cause has lost much of its former influence, it still persists, along with disputes over the memory of the war. Not the least of these battles concerned the display of Confederate flags, many of which were raised over Southern capitols during the centennial observances but not lowered afterward (Wiener 2004, pp. 237–253). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, John S.C. History of the Civil War in America, 2 vols. Springfield, MA: G. Bill, 1863–1866.
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‘‘Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.’’ Century: A Popular Monthly. October 1884, 943–944. Blight, David W. Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in Cultural Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Fahs, Alice. ‘‘The Market Value of Memory: Popular War Histories and the Northern Literary Marketplace, 1861–1868.’’ Book History 1, no. 1 (1998): 107–139. Fahs, Alice. ‘‘Remembering the Civil War in Children’s Literature of the 1880s and 1890s.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Gallagher, Gary W. ‘‘Shaping Public Memory of the Civil War: Robert E. Lee, Jubal A. Early, and Douglas Southall Freeman.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoir of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. New York: C. L. Webster & Company, 1885–1886. Greeley, Horace. The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65, 2 vols. Hartford, CT: O.D. Case & Company, 1864–1867. Grow, Matthew. ‘‘The Shadow of the Civil War: A Historiography of Civil War Memory.’’ Nineteenth Century History [Great Britain] 4, no. 2 (2003): 77–103. Lumpkin, Katharine Du Pre. Interview conducted by Jacquelyn Hall, August 4, 1974. Documenting the American South, University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0034/. McConnell, Stuart. ‘‘Epilogue: The Geography of Memory.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. McPherson, James M. ‘‘Long-Legged Yankee Lies: The Southern Textbook Crusade.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Nolan, Alan T. ‘‘The Anatomy of a Myth.’’ In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, eds. Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
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Pollard, Edward A. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. New York: E. B. Treat and Company, 1866. Pollard, Edward A. Southern History of the War: Last Year of the War, 4 vols. New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1863–1866. Waugh, Joan. ‘‘Ulysses S. Grant, Historian.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ‘‘Why the Confederacy Failed.’’ The Century: A Popular Quarterly, November 1896, 33–38. Wiener, Jon. ‘‘The Civil War Centennial in Context, 1960–1965.’’ In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, eds. Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Wright, Richard. Black Boy: (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993 [1945]. Christina Adkins
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The Reconciliation Movement
The American Civil War ended in April 1865, but the debate over the political, social, and economic repercussions of the war continued well into the next century. The devastating effects of the war and questions regarding the status of former slaves divided Northerners and Southerners, often resulting in further bloodshed. Even during Reconstruction, white Americans began to seek common ground on which they could unite and forget the pain and loss of war. The reconciliation movement was an effort to obscure the legacy of emancipation and black participation in the war in favor of remembering the conflict as a fight between white Americans, Northern and Southern, which ultimately proved the honor and dignity of both sides. Reconciliation downplayed the violence of battle, the failure to secure civil rights for former slaves, the centrality of slavery to the conflict, and the opposition to the war in both the Union and the Confederacy. White veterans of both sides embraced this movement in the 1880s and 1890s, after the responsibility of enforcing Reconstruction had been turned over to the Southern state governments. Reconciliation hid the true nature and meaning of the war for many Americans for decades to come, at the cost of creating a narrative of the war that almost eliminated the emancipationist legacy that African American citizens valued.
The Lost Cause Reuniting the nation was a difficult task, hampered by the changes to Southern society caused by emancipation and by continued white Southern resentment of Northern
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influence and the imposition of federal authority. The popular postwar song, ‘‘Oh, I’m a Good Ole Rebel,’’ epitomizes the bitter feelings of some defeated Confederates. In the song, the former Confederate soldier laments that he can no longer fight, but proclaims, ‘‘I don’t want no pardon for what I was and am, I won’t be reconstructed and I don’t care a damn!’’ (Silber 1995, pp. 256–257). The process of crafting an acceptable Southern version of the war’s meaning began the moment the conflict ended. In 1866, Edward Alfred Pollard wrote an account of the Civil War that emphasized the Southern perspective and coined the term ‘‘The Lost Cause.’’ Pollard described North and South as being separate ‘‘civilizations’’ and downplayed the issue of slavery by describing it as ‘‘a convenient line of battle between the two sections’’ (Pollard 1866, p. 46). His argument avoided questions regarding the immorality of slavery and the legality of secession. Pollard’s book was mainly a narrative of military events, in which he underscored the bravery and chivalry of the Confederates, especially Virginians. The Lost Cause myth was solidified in 1873, when former Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early (1816–1894) became president of the Southern Historical Society. Early wrote several articles that attributed Confederate defeat to the numerical superiority and industrial might of the North instead of the waning support for war among Confederate civilians or the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation. Both Pollard and Early were advocates of forgetting the war’s unpleasantness and reuniting as a nation—provided white Northerners accepted the Southern version of the war.
Published Reminiscences The process of reconciliation was greatly accelerated by a wave of publications on the Civil War in the 1880s and 1890s. The war was far enough in the past by that time that Americans became interested in reading about the conflict. Union and Confederate veterans wrote about their experiences, often filtering their memories through the lens of time and popular concepts of war. Some of the first widely read accounts appeared in newspapers, but were later compiled into such volumes as the Philadelphia Weekly Times’s 800-page collection of articles by soldiers and civilians titled Annals of the War, which was published in 1879. Century Magazine also compiled articles into a volume of reminiscences published in 1887 called Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. A leading historian of the reconciliation movement observed that the authors of these accounts ‘‘unabashedly declared their own pursuit of impartial ‘truth’ and ‘facts’’’ (Blight 2001, p. 164). White Northerners and Southerners were equally complicit in rewriting the history of the war in such a way that African Americans were included in only the most peripheral roles. This literature began a national healing process but also perpetuated the myth of the loyal slave and the Lost Cause’s
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Many white Americans preferred to focus on the battlefield exploits of both Union and Confederate troops and ignore the eventual end result of the conflict, abolition of slavery. President of the Southern Historical Society and a Lieutenant General for the South, Jubal Anderson Early promoted the practical reasons for Northern success, including greater manpower and manufacturing capabilities, over moral ones, such as the concept that all people should be free. The Jubal Anderson Early (1816–1894).
Library of Congress.
insistence that the war was not about the continuation or abolition of slavery. The rise in public interest in the war caused some veterans to write regimental histories that emphasized bravery, heroics, and adventure, often leaving out the grim and gory details of battle. Oliver Christian Bosbyshell (b. 1839) documented his recollection of the war in his regimental history of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Infantry. Bosbyshell admitted that his memories ‘‘may be somewhat twinged with partiality . . . , but remember, it is the way that it came under my own observation’’ (Bosbyshell 1895, p. 14). R. M. Collins, a lieutenant in the Fifteenth Texas Infantry, recorded his wartime experience in 1893. The Confederate veteran’s reminiscence featured a description of a singing contest between Union and Confederate soldiers, commenting that, ‘‘for the time Federals and Confederates were all one’’ (Collins 1893, p. 72). Like
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many veterans, Collins described white soldiers, Northern and Southern, as a brotherhood who would pass away and ‘‘answer to roll-call with Lee, Johnston, Bragg, Hood, Grant, Meade, Hancock, and the long unnumbered list of soldiers brave, who quit this life’’ (Collins 1893, p. 93). Collins’s list of famous Union and Confederate generals indicates his belief that all soldiers had a common bond regardless of the side for which they had fought. This simplified understanding of soldiers’ motivations glossed over the fact that resentment, condescension, and hatred often fueled the violence that had occurred on the battlefield. Civilians also recounted their experiences and often used their stories to romanticize the war without placing any blame or fostering antagonism. Adelaide Smith (b. 1831) volunteered as a nurse during the war and published her story in 1911. Smith’s first chapter, ‘‘A View of the Situation,’’ contained the same simplistic explanation of the war’s causes as many other Northern reminiscences. The former nurse began her narrative with the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter, without mentioning the events leading up to that day. To Smith the war was a tragic accident, which ‘‘caused the separation of hitherto devoted families’’ (Smith 1911, p. 11). The portrayal of the war as a family squabble, intense yet easily patched up, became popular in the writings of the reconciliation movement. Just like the war veterans who had seen battle, Smith was proud of the part she played in the conflict and declared, ‘‘I had done at least what I could in that fearful struggle to save our Union and glorious country’’ (Smith 1911, p. 263).
White Veterans’ Reunions Veterans played an essential role in reconciliation in the 1880s and 1890s, when white Union and Confederate veterans began to talk about forgiveness and unity. These veterans recognized one another’s bravery and devotion, while conveniently forgetting the actual causes of the war. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union veterans, held meetings featuring speakers who promoted reconciliation. In Chicago, Illinois, the Daily Inter Ocean printed a summary of a GAR meeting on January 29, 1880. A GAR official summed up the reconciliationist sentiment growing within white veterans by stating that ‘‘long before the northern troops had marched back over the imaginary Mason and Dixon’s Line, they had forgiven the soldiers of the South.’’ The speaker continued by telling his fellow Union veterans that politicians were slow to forgive, but soldiers ‘‘did not wish to shake hands over a bloody chasm, but over a saved country’’ (January 29, 1880). During the reconciliation movement, white Union and Confederate veterans gathered in major cities to remember past battles and celebrate the role they played in the fighting. In Atlanta, Georgia, exposition organizers invited 300 Union veterans to attend a reunion of the blue and gray on Kennesaw Mountain in 1887. The GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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ing citizens of the results of these events. The Wisconsin State Register printed an article on September 24, 1887, that declared a blue and gray reunion in Evansville, Indiana, to be a huge success, with 10,000 Union and 3,000 Confederate veterans in attendance. Indiana’s governor was present and expressed his feelings about the reunion’s significance, stating that ‘‘the issues upon which that unfortunate struggle were based are buried’’ (September 24, 1887). As the news spread about veterans forgiving their former enemies, some Americans began to look at the war differently. White Americans could conveniently forget the causes of the war and the continuation of inequality in the South, but other Americans could not.
Black Veterans’ Reunions Black veterans also gathered in 1887, but their assemblies did not share the laudatory tone of the blue and gray reunions. In Boston, black veterans gathered and drafted statements declaring it ‘‘to be the duty of the government to remedy the evils, until the colored man shall have equal protection under the law.’’ These statements were printed in The Daily Inter Ocean on August 3, 1887, shortly before the paper ran the article about the white veterans’ reunion in Atlanta (August 3, 1887). Black Union veterans didn’t ignore the efforts in the 1880s to rekindle the memories of the war, but they organized separate reunions that advanced their own understanding of the war’s legacy. On June 18, 1887, the New York Freeman announced the meeting of black veterans and declared that, ‘‘it will do these noble survivors of the tremendous conflict which brought the race freedom and citizenship a vast deal of good to meet again in precious times of peace’’ (June 18, 1887). In spite of African American efforts to draw attention to black participation in the war, however, the reconciliation movement eventually rewrote the history of the war, omitting the centrality of slavery to the conflict and neglecting to mention the sacrifices of black soldiers. As the events of the Civil War became more distant, Confederate and Union veterans looked to remember the common experiences all soldiers shared during the war. Veterans’ organizations hosted many such reunions at the end of the nineteenth century, inviting soldiers both Blue and Gray to celebrate their bravery on the battlefield. Advertisement for a Civil War reunion, 1888.
ª Corbis.
Daily Inter Ocean informed its readers on August 28, 1887, of the event, pointing out that the day would include barbecues, fireworks, and tributes to both Union and Confederate generals (August 28, 1887). Many of the white veterans in Chicago who listened to the call for reconciliation from their brothers-in-arms found their former adversaries willing to return the sentiment. The news of these reunions spread across the nation, inform-
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Reconciliation and Segregation As the movement for reconciliation strengthened among white veterans, black veterans were excluded from reunions and commemorations. The most prominent example is the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Battle of Gettysburg, which organizers named the ‘‘Peace Jubilee.’’ In 1913, around 53,000 white veterans attended this function, which celebrated the bravery of both Union and Confederate soldiers while ignoring the causes or consequences of the conflict. Although some participants claimed that there were black veterans present, there is no evidence of black GAR members in attendance. Instead, the event, like the nation at the time, was segregated. The only documented black participation was that of the hired laborers who distributed blankets and erected tents for the white veterans. On
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July 3, 1913, Union and Confederate veterans of Pickett’s charge reenacted the pivotal moment on the thirdday of the Battle of Gettysburg by meeting at the infamous stone wall and shaking hands. This commemoration of the anniversary of the unsuccessful Confederate charge that ended the battle signaled the success of reconciliation and the establishment of the war as an apolitical moment in American history of which Southerners and Northerners could both be proud. Reconciliation dictated that white Americans selectively remember the war, leaving out the aspects that contradicted the myth of the Lost Cause or invoked the legacy of emancipation and the struggle for civil rights. During the Peace Jubilee at Gettysburg, thenPresident Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) gave a speech to the assembled veterans and spectators that reiterated the meaning of reconciliation. Wilson praised the healing brought about by peace, and proclaimed that ‘‘We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valour, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping hands and smiling into each others eyes’’ (Brown 2004, p. 21). Wilson was quick to proclaim an end to the feelings of hostility, but the event did not properly reflect the feelings of African Americans who had experienced the war. It was no coincidence that so many white veterans embraced Gettysburg as a symbol of reconciliation. The battle was a Union victory but was also considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy because it was the most ambitious of the few Confederate offensives into Union territory. Moreover, the recently raised black Union regiments played no role in the fighting, enabling Southerners to emphasis the struggle between white Northerners and white Southerners, thereby conveniently forgetting that emancipation had been a major objective of the war. The agreement to celebrate Gettysburg as the ultimate battle of the war has led to the conclusion that the battle was the turning point upon which the war’s conclusion ultimately hinged. The war continued for almost two years after Gettysburg; however, and the lengthy sieges of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1863 and Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864 and 1865 were arguably more decisive in bringing the war to a close. Nonetheless, Confederate veterans commemorated Gettysburg as the crucial moment of the war when rebel troops advanced against overwhelming odds and courageously stood their ground against a larger force.
Monuments and Memorials Reconciliation was also a visible process that changed the American landscape, often paying homage to famous generals and important battles while glossing over the war’s devastation and the lack of equality and freedoms for black Southerners. Monuments were initially placed
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on battlefields by veterans and community groups to commemorate the participation of soldiers from a particular state or locality. As the reconciliation movement grew, state and local governments also built monuments to commemorate the soldiers. On April 7, 1898, the Milwaukee Sentinel announced the completion of a bronze monument depicting Wisconsin soldiers charging into battle, with one soldier taking up the regimental colors from a fallen comrade. Like most monuments, this show of pride in the soldiers who fought and died was not a threat to reconciliation but rather a depiction of the shared glorification of the war. The newspaper article noted that in order to raise the $30,000 needed to pay for the monument, a collection of autographs, sketches, and quotes would be available for purchase. This commemorative album included comments from Southern officials, and the Milwaukee Sentinel’s editor commented that ‘‘It is certainly a sign of the times when ex-Confederates are contributing to the success of a monument to Union soldiers.’’ A Virginia congressman wrote in that album that ‘‘a soldier of the Old Dominion in the war between the states, a representative of the suffering and heroic people of Richmond, Va., wishes you success in commemorating your heroic slain.’’ When Northerners celebrated battlefield heroics, they were acknowledging the Southern contention that the war was primarily a military event without any political or social dimensions. The Virginia veteran asserted the legitimacy of the Confederacy by referring to the conflict as ‘‘the War between the States’’ instead of using the name Northerners preferred—‘‘the War of Rebellion.’’ As white Northerners and Southerners reconciled by remembering the war as a disagreement between Northern and Southern states, the debate over the roles of slavery and secession was effectively silenced. White Southerners made a conscious effort to recast the meaning of the war by celebrating Confederate military leadership as the embodiment of Southern honor and sense of duty. Proponents of reconciliation chose General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) as the representative of the Confederacy instead of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), whose prewar career as a planter and slave owner undermined the Lost Cause interpretation of the war’s origins. Although some white Northerners scorned Confederate commemorations as romanticizing treason, many white Northerners accepted and admired commemorations of Lee. When the city of Richmond, Virginia, unveiled a prominent equestrian statue of Lee, Northern newspapers commented on the significance of the event. The New York Times reported that although Lee chose loyalty to his state over loyalty to his country, ‘‘There is no question at all that his conduct throughout the war, and after it, was that of a brave and honorable man’’ (Brown 2004, p. 98). The Minneapolis Tribune used the opportunity to criticize Lee because ‘‘at the time when his services were most needed he deserted his post and took up arms against his country.’’ The
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editors of the Tribune, however, admitted that ‘‘the Lee cult is much in vogue, even in the North, in these days’’ (Brown 2004, p. 97). The movement for reconciliation met resistance, but those who sought to romanticize and depoliticize the Civil War eventually won the battle for the war’s meaning. Most of the nation forgot the sacrifices of black soldiers and the efforts of slaves to realize their freedom. For white Northerners, the failures of Reconstruction faded away and the Civil War became a renewed source of pride. Meanwhile, white Southerners took satisfaction in the fact that despite technical defeat, the reconciliationist history of the war and its causes had been written by the Confederacy. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Bosbyshell, Oliver Christian. The 48th in the War: Being a Narrative of the Campaigns of the 48th Regiment, Infantry, Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, during the War of the Rebellion. Philadelphia: Avil Printing Company, 1895. Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Collins, R. M., Lieut. 15th Texas Infantry. Chapters from the Unwritten History of the War between the States, or, the Incidents in the Life of a Confederate Soldier. St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1893. ‘‘Colored Veterans The Boston Convention—Southern Outrages on Negro Citizens Deplored’’ in The Daily Inter-Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Wednesday, August 3, 1887, pg. 7, Issue 132, col. C. ‘‘The Colored Veterans’ Reunion’’ in The New York Freeman, Saturday, June 18, 1887, issue 31, col A. Fahs, Alice, and Joan Waugh, eds. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ‘‘Feds and Bonfeds Fraternizing: Great Success of the Evansville Blue and Gray Reunion’’ in The Wisconsin State Register, (Portage, WI) Saturday, September 24, 1887, issue 32, col. E. Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ‘‘Milwaukee’s Monument to be Erected in Memory of her Sons Fallen in the Civil War’’ in The Milwaukee Sentinel, Thursday, April 7, 1898, issue 9, col. A. Pollard, Edward Alfred. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. New York: E. B. Treat & Co., 1866.
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Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ‘‘Reunited Veterans Annual Encampment of the Illinois Department of the Grand Army of the Republic’’ in The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Thursday, January 29, 1880, pg. 3, issue 257, col. A. Shackel, Paul A. Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003. Silber, Irwin, ed. Songs of the Civil War. New York: Dover, 1995. Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse during the Civil War. New York: Greaves Publishing Company, 1911. ‘‘The South to the North: Piedmont Exposition Directors Invite Old Soldiers to a Reunion of Blue and Gray’’ in The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Sunday, August 28, 1887, issue 157, col. E. Stephen Rockenbach
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Fighting in the U.S. Civil War drew to a close during the spring and early summer months of 1865. By June 1865 all Confederate armies had surrendered. General Ulysses S. Grant wrote, ‘‘The surrender of the rebel armies and the collapse of the rebellion rendered a large part of our military force unnecessary’’ (Simon 1967, vol. 15, p. 357). Hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers and their Confederate counterparts were demobilized and disbanded in a matter of months. Never before in U.S. history had an army been comprised of so many volunteers; at the end of hostilities, troops needed immediate, efficient release and safe transport home. As one Union soldier wrote in a May 1865 diary entry, ‘‘the dismantling of this mighty engine of war; of returning this ‘citizen army’ to its legitimate and proper field of action . . . is an Herculean task’’ (Lane 1905, p. 264).
Establishment of Veterans’ Organizations Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all U.S. armies, reported to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in October 1865 that an impressive 800,000 Union troops transitioned ‘‘from the army to civil life so quietly that it was scarcely known, save by the welcomes to their homes, received by them’’ (Simon 1967, vol. 15, pp. 357–358). One officer’s wife observed that ‘‘in a few brief weeks the thousands who had followed the life of soldiers laid aside their accoutrements of war and took up the implements of peace, dissolving into citizens as rapidly as they had become soldiers’’ (Logan 1913, p. 200). ‘‘It became necessary to dissolve all organization in a few days,’’ a Confederate surrendering at Appomattox remarked, and although his brigade ‘‘kept somewhat together, for a day or two, we
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Citizens of the North honored their veterans at the end of the Civil War by organizing parades and homecoming celebrations. The Art Archive/Culver Pictures/ A Civil War veterans parade, Washington, DC. The Picture Desk, Inc.
soon broke apart, each brigade taking the nearest route towards home’’ (Caldwell 1866, p. 244). As former soldiers transitioned into civilian life, many encountered financial hardships. The average Union soldier returned from the war was in his mid-twenties, and most likely had lacked a steady occupation before the war. Many Confederate veterans returned to their farms only to find them ruined by warfare. One Southerner wrote that her ‘‘part of the country has suffered more heavily than any other from the war,’’ and veterans went to great lengths ‘‘in order to keep themselves and their families from starvation’’ (Leigh 1883, p. 119). Confederate and Union veterans alike sought to recapture that sense of military camaraderie in the postwar years. Early Confederate groups were organized primarily on the local or county-wide level; the Confederate veterans’ movement proved ‘‘sketchy and poorly coordinated,’’ but ‘‘its course of organization was logically adapted to the environment and the troubled times’’ (White 1962, p. 25). Still, these organizations laid the groundwork for the rejuvenation that forged the largest Confederate veterans’ group, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). The UCV, formed in Louisiana in 1889, was ‘‘designed as an association of all bodies of ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors throughout the Union’’ (News and Observer, September 6, 1889). It was organized in the military tradition. The UCV elected Confederate general John B. Gordon as its first leader. In an address to the veterans, Gordon addressed its purposes, to ‘‘succor the
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disabled, help the needy, strengthen the weak and cheer the discontent’’ (Milwaukee Sentinel, September 8, 1889). At its height, the UCV boasted over 150,000 members. The UCV’s federal counterpart was the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). Dr. Benjamin Stephenson, veteran surgeon of the Fourteenth Illinois Infantry, saw the daily ‘‘neglect of the solider and the soldier’s widow and orphans’’ at his medical practice, and quickly became ‘‘convinced that something must be done’’ (Stephenson 1894, p. 41). After various discussions with Union generals John A. Logan and Richard Oglesby, Stephenson devised the outline and regulations for the GAR; the organization extended membership to ‘‘all those who served under the federal flag and who received an honorable discharge,’’ and held as its main objectives to ‘‘perpetuate those ties of friendship which had been formed in the smoke of battle and to secure the interests of those who had suffered for the Union’’ (Macmillan’s Magazine, November 1891). April 6, 1866, saw the establishment of ‘‘the first encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, Post No. 1, of Decatur, District of Macon, Department of Illinois’’ (Stephenson 1894, p. 43). The Indianapolis Journal deemed the new organization ‘‘full of spirit’’ and ‘‘destined to become immensely popular’’ (Harper’s Weekly, December 29, 1866). The GAR called upon ‘‘every honorably discharged soldier and seaman of the Union army and navy, whose heart yet stirs with
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the fraternal feeling which scenes of death and danger inspired’’ to ‘‘rally once again . . . for peaceful communion and pleasant intercourses’’ (Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1871). Upon the conclusion of wartime activities, ‘‘it was natural . . . that while such citizens ceased to be soldiers they should still seek to cherish the feeling of old comradeship and the memories of a common cause and a common peril’’ (Harper’s Weekly, August 10, 1889). The GAR adopted, appropriately, an organizational system in the military tradition. Local units were divided into various ‘‘posts,’’ the state levels into ‘‘departments,’’ and a ‘‘commander-in-chief’’ was in charge of the entire operation. Its primary objectives involved promoting camaraderie, providing for disabled veterans and their dependants, and fighting the pension battle. ‘‘If the majority is ready to make the Grand Army a pensionreform organization, well and good; it can be a very powerful one, and can do much to purify the pension list’’ (Harper’s Weekly, June 10, 1893). The GAR spanned the entire breadth of the United States. On a trip to the George H. Thomas Post in San Francisco, California, GAR commander-in-chief John Kountz called it ‘‘the grandest army of the grandest Republic the world has ever seen’’ (Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1885). Harper’s Weekly acknowledged that ‘‘the Grand Army of the Republic stands practically without parallel in this country’’ (August 31, 1889). Determining the actual membership numbers proved almost impossible, yet most estimates placed membership around 500,000 Union veterans by 1891 (Blight 2001, p. 171). ‘‘The idea of the G.A.R. seemed to take right hold of the hearts of the soldiers,’’ and as an immediate consequence, ‘‘posts sprang up rapidly’’ (Stephenson 1894, p. 45). The GAR officially endorsed egalitarianism, unlike many other nineteenth-century fraternal organizations. Some 178,000 African American troops had served during the Civil War (Schaffer 2003, p. 11). Although the national level of the GAR boasted a color-blind membership, individual posts had notorious reputations of discrimination. GAR members accepted new members to a post based on a vote. In 1870, a Worcester, Massachusetts GAR post rejected the membership of an African American veteran on three consecutive ballots, even after the post leaders reemphasized the GAR’s nondiscriminatory policies (Shaffer 2004, p. 144). In the lower South, GAR posts were often segregated. As a result of such prejudice, many African Americans opted to create their own veterans’ organizations, such as the Colored Soldiers’ and Sailors’ League and the Colored Veterans Association, to celebrate the contributions of African American soldiers.
Wielding Political Power As the GAR reached its pinnacle in the late 1880s and early 1890s, no one could deny the veteran organization’s sheer
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force in the world of politics. Members firmly believed the GAR could ‘‘create a public sentiment in this country. . . . The Grand Army can force Congress to pass such laws’’ (Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1885). The staunchly Republican organization played a pivotal role in presidential elections for more than thirty years, until the turn of the twentieth century. No president could secure an election without first receiving GAR support. Union veterans wielded political power unmatched by any other veterans’ organization. Some viewed the GAR’s vast political influence as a severe abuse of power and misappropriation of trust. One writer to Harper’s Weekly raved that ‘‘nothing could be more unworthy and illegitimate than to convert such an association into a political society,’’ and that the Grand Army of the Republic had transformed into ‘‘a machine to extort advantages of every kind for themselves and their kind by promising their continued political support.’’ Rather than the fraternal organization in its original form, the GAR had taken ‘‘a course which necessarily covers the association with discredit, and alienates the sympathy of patriotic and intelligent citizens everywhere. . . . It disgraces the name of Union soldier’’ (August 10, 1889). President Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected since the Civil War, personally witnessed the GAR’s partisan potential. Cleveland was scheduled to attend the annual GAR encampment in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. Upset by his consistent vetoes of pension legislation, and further angered by his suggestion to return captured Confederate flags, livid members of the GAR sent hostile mail and ‘‘threats of personal violence and harm’’ to Cleveland. The attitude of many GAR members, according to Cleveland, indicated ‘‘such prevalence of unfriendly feeling and such menace . . . that they cannot be ignored’’ (News and Observer [Raleigh, NC], July 8, 1887). Cleveland cancelled his planned visit to the GAR National Encampment for fear of personal harm.
Veterans Pensions Such incidents underscored the highly charged issue of veteran pension legislation. Veterans of the Civil War witnessed, and in most cases caused, massive changes in the federal pension system. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had signed into law a pension act that provided payment to all disabled veterans of the war. After the war, the definition of pension eligibility grew even broader. The Dependent Pension Act of 1890, which extracted the wartime service disability qualification, allowed eligibility for any disabled veteran who served at least ninety days in uniform; nevertheless, the burden of demonstrating pension eligibility rested with the veteran. As a result, many veterans enlisted the aid of newspaper editorials, veterans’ organizations, and lobbyists. Cognizant of the challenges of establishing entitlement, the clerk Thomas J. Brown made repeated pleas to the
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pensions’ bureau to tabulate veterans’ vital statistics. Frustrated by the government’s lack of fervor for veterans but its pronounced intervention on behalf of mortgage debtors, Brown noted that ‘‘it is supremely sad to reflect that the worthy desire to know the average life of a mortgage . . . is tenfold more potent to put the wheels of government into rapid and beneficial revolution than the equally worthy, if not worthier, desire to know the number and age-expectations of veterans of the Civil War’’ (p. 8). Pension laws did not overtly discriminate. Many African American veterans applied for and received benefits from the U.S. government. Still, former slaves had a particularly difficult time providing proof of service, often were illiterate, and sometimes did not know their birthplaces and birthdates. Difficult as it was for white soldiers to prove eligibility, African Americans faced even tougher circumstances. Confederate veterans, in contrast, had no such pension system. Due largely to the distressed conditions and ‘‘wide-spread ruin’’ of the individual Southern states at the war’s end, and the political turbulence and military occupation of Reconstruction (1865–1877), Confederate veterans would not see a pension system in effect until the late 1880s. They relied on a less satisfactory system of pensions managed by the state. Southern pension eligibility was limited solely to disabled veterans and widows. Pension legislation did have its share of opponents. Criticism of the pension system often emanated from the higher economic strata of society. The veteran Benjamin F. Scribner wrote that ‘‘the laws granting pensions to soldiers have undergone much hostile criticism from those whose lines were cast in pleasant places during the war’’ (Scribner 1887, p. 307). When both armies instituted drafts, wealthy citizens were able to pay for men to replace them on the battlefield. As a result, many members of the more affluent classes never saw a day in uniform, and therefore were ineligible for pensions. Some were unwilling to spend tax dollars on benefits for others. Scribner continued, ‘‘if these objectors would reflect a moment and try to estimate the sum of money that would induce them to stand up within a range of a line of muskets and take the chances of one volley therefrom, I do not think they would consider the pittance so enormous which has been granted’’ to veterans (Scribner 1887, p. 307). In addition to such complaints, the pension system was steeped in fraud. News pieces such as the Cleveland Herald’s ‘‘Audacious Forgeries,’’ which claimed fraud in the pension claims offices, appeared frequently (November 29, 1882).
Disabled Veterans Not only did veterans face pecuniary, political, and pension battles, but thousands suffered permanent battle scars and disabilities. Ever-present reminders of the carn-
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age of war caused them daily pain and difficulty. As the war came to a close, local populations began ‘‘turning their attention to the question of how best to provide permanently for those soldiers who have been disabled in the service’’ (New York Times, May 9, 1865). Concern for disabled veterans frequently made its way into national discussion. In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln made clear his desire ‘‘to care for him who has borne the battle.’’ On March 21, 1866, Congress passed legislation chartering the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteers, later renamed the National Home for Disabled Volunteers. These ‘‘Soldiers’ Homes,’’ as they were commonly known, provided ‘‘the care and protection of the . . . maimed veterans of the late bloody strife’’ (Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, June 8, 1874). General Benjamin F. Butler filled the role of president of the organization, and immediately began scouting cities and towns across the country for potential Soldiers’ Home branch locations. Butler and various board members did ‘‘invite proposals for sites by donation or sale,’’ the stipulations being that sites ‘‘must be situated in loyal States; they must contain not less than two hundred acres, must be in healthy locations and easily accessible by railroad or otherwise’’ (Lowell Daily Citizen and News, May 19, 1866). Over the next forty years, Soldiers’ Home branches appeared all across the country, from Maine to California. As with pension laws, the Soldiers’ Homes had no explicit racial restrictions, yet, African American veterans comprised only an average of 1 percent of the Soldiers’ Home population (Shaffer 2003, p. 137). These institutions received funding via military fines and forfeitures, rather than by direct taxation. As one resident of the National Military Asylum in Dayton, Ohio, explained, ‘‘it is not a ‘charity,’ but a contribution of soldiers to soldiers; nor is it an almshouse, but a home in every sense of the word’’ (Vermont Watchman and State Journal, July 20, 1870). The Daily Arkansas Gazette reported that in 1875 alone, ‘‘reports from the several homes showed 6,651 disabled soldiers were cared for’’ (December 18, 1875). The National Home for Disabled Soldiers provided care solely for Union army veterans. The postwar devastatation of the Southern states and tumultuous years of Reconstruction prevented any such organization from developing in the former Confederate states. Upon a visit to a hospital in 1874, ex-Confederate president Jefferson Davis wrote to his wife, Varina, ‘‘the veterans in many stages of decay and disability came in, each bearing a smart tricolor and many with military orders on their breasts. . . . It was a spectacle which could but painfully remind me of our neglected braves and their unprovided orphans. It is well that virtue is its own reward, for sometimes it would otherwise be without compensation’’ (Hudson 1966, p. 393). Institutions similar to Soldiers’ Homes for Confederate veterans finally came to fruition in the 1880s and 1890s, but remained the responsibility of organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and United Confederate Veterans.
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Veterans’ Publications Contending with these problems and maintaining contact with comrades became easier with the publication of veterans’ newspapers. William O. Bourne’s The Soldier’s Friend and the GAR–endorsed The Great Republic hit the presses in 1864 and 1866, respectively. Confederate Veteran magazine became the official organ of the United Confederate Veterans, and remained in publication until 1932. Sometimes, publications were intended to settle old scores from the battlefield. The Southern Historical Society Papers aimed to promote a strictly Confederate version of the history of the war; under the tutelage of Jubal Early, president of the Southern Historical Society, many of the papers contributed to the canonization of Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) at the expense of Richard S. Ewell (1817–1872), James Longstreet (1821–1904), and other subordinates. Other publications simply strove to help their readers, promoting events and holding contests: Left-handed penmanship contests for veterans who had lost a right arm proved particularly popular. The wounded veteran Seth Sutherland, a yearly contestant, wrote to the Soldier’s Friend editor that the contest ‘‘will infuse new life and vigor into the heart of many a wounded soldier, and be another evidence to him that his services . . . are not forgotten’’ (Sutherland to Bourne, July 22, 1865). The Soldier’s Friend attracted loyal readers such as veteran George N. Dale: ‘‘I think every true American ought to patronize the Soldier’s Friend’’ (Dale to Bourne, March 18, 1868). The most influential and lasting newspaper, however, was the National Tribune. Founded by George B. Lemon, a Washington, DC, pension claims agent and veteran of the One Hundred Twenty-fifth New York Volunteer Infantry, the National Tribune featured articles written by veterans describing their wartime experiences. The paper provided veterans an ideal forum for debate, and an opportunity to reminisce. In 1884, Lemon hired veteran John McElroy as another editor for the Tribune. Until the turn of the twentieth century, articles written by veterans describing their wartime experiences appeared regularly; Lemon and McElroy devoted large amounts of space in the paper to various news pieces from veterans’ organizations (e.g., the GAR, the Women’s Relief Corps, etc.). The paper provided veterans an ideal forum for debate and opportunity to reminisce. As time progressed, the Tribune attempted to appeal to a wider audience, and it grew popular with veterans of the Spanish-American War. The GAR stopped publication around the outbreak of World War I, but a private corporation continued the paper, changing its title to Stars and Stripes.
yearly national encampments, drawing thousands of veterans from across the country. Reunions involving both Union and Confederate veterans gained popularity, becoming ‘‘not only a pleasant custom, but a gratifying indication of the gradual passing away of the passions and prejudices of the war’’ (Harper’s Weekly, July 19, 1884). A culture of romantic reunion had emerged. Chicago Daily Tribune coverage of one early Union Army of the Potomac banquet indicated ‘‘the greetings were hearty and affectionate, for there were vacant chairs, and the members . . . knew not if they would meet again,’’ a sentiment commonly shared in veterans’ reunions (January 7, 1891). These reunions were often accompanied by the erection of monuments on the battlefields. One of the most famous of these episodes occurred on July 2, 1887, when members of the Philadelphia Brigade invited former Confederates of General George Pickett’s division to attend a monument dedication at Gettysburg. What once had been the site of fierce combat, death, and destruction became a place of reunion where former enemies shook hands and celebrated a common, united future. For the rest of their lives, veterans ‘‘continued to set themselves above ‘civilians’ as a class by virtue of their military service’’ (McConnell 1992, p. 34). These battlehardened veterans, by recalling and celebrating the conflict, encouraged the late-nineteenth-century emergence of the vigorous manhood and athleticism movements. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, these concepts were coupled with a new, virile patriotism. Often, these sensibilities encouraged the idea that veterans were of a higher caliber. According to one colonel, although most assumed that a veteran’s lifespan would be less than those ‘‘who have not been exposed to the shock of battle and the hardship and privation of field, camp, and prison . . . by the operation of the law of the survival of the fittest . . . the survivors have become a selected class, where average duration of life is likely to be greater than that of an equal number of nonveterans’’ (memorandum quoted in Brown Papers). The New York Times wrote that veterans, ‘‘the defenders of their country in time of war, are its best citizens in every walk of life now that the war is over’’ (August 12, 1872). Veterans placed themselves on a different, and higher, level of society due to their wartime experiences. As Oliver Wendell Holmes orated in a speech delivered before a New Hampshire GAR post in May 1884, ‘‘the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire’’ (Holmes 1884).
Veterans Reunions These papers also announced hundreds of reunions beginning in the 1880s and continuing until the final meeting of the Blue and Gray at Gettysburg in 1938. Large organizations such as the GAR and the UCV held
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.
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Brown, Thomas J. ‘‘The Census and the Soldier and the Census and the Mortgage: A Parallel.’’ Papers of Thomas J. Brown. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Caldwell, J. F. J. The History of the Brigade of South Carolinians. Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1866. Chicago Daily Tribune, September 3, 1871; January 7, 1891; December 7, 1892. Cleveland Herald, Cleveland, OH, November 29, 1882. Daily Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, AR, December 18, 1875. Dale, George N. Letter to William O. Bourne, March 18, 1868. Papers of William O. Bourne. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Davies, Wallace Evan. Patriotism on Parade: The Story of Veterans and Hereditary Organizations in America, 1793–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955. Dearing, Mary R. Veterans in Politics: The Story of the G.A.R. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952. Harper’s Weekly, December 29, 1866; August 10, 1889; August 31, 1889; June 10, 1893; July 19, 1884. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. ‘‘Dead Yet Living,’’ address delivered May 30, 1884. Boston: Ginn, Heath, & Company, 1884. Hudson, Strode, ed. Jefferson Davis: Private Letters, 1823–1889. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966. Lane, David. A Soldier’s Diary: The Story of a Volunteer, 1862–1865. Jackson, MI: 1905. Leigh, Frances Ann Butler. Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the War. London: Bentley and Son, 1883. Logan, Mary Simmerson. Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife: An Autobiography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913. Logue, Larry M., and Michael Barton, eds. The Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1885; April 24, 1885. Lowell Daily Citizen and News, Lowell, MA, May 19, 1866. Macmillan’s Magazine 65 (November 1891–April 1892). Marten, James. Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. McConnell, Stuart. Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Milwaukee Sentinel, June 8, 1874; September 8, 1889. New York Times, May 9, 1865; August 12, 1872. News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, July 8, 1887; September 6, 1889.
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Rosenburg, R. B. Living Monuments: Confederate Soldiers’ Homes in the New South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Scribner, Benjamin F. How Soldiers Were Made; Or, The War as I Saw it Under Buell, Rosecrans, Thomas, Grant, and Sherman. New Albany, IN: George S. MacManus, 1887. Shaffer, Donald R. After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Simon, John. Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. Stephenson, Mary Harriet. Dr. B. F. Stephenson. Springfield, IL: H.W. Rokker Printing House, 1894. Sutherland, Seth. Letter to William O. Bourne, July 22, 1865. Papers of William O. Bourne, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Vermont Watchman and State Journal, Montpelier, VT, July 20, 1870. Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman, eds. Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. White, William W. The Confederate Veteran. Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing Company, 1962. Allison E. Herrmann
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Memorial Day is a special time for Americans. Few patriotic events conjure up the emotion, commemoration, and gratitude of the nation like the remembrance events on the last Monday of May each year, when all across the United States, and even abroad, Americans set aside time to remember those who have fallen in defense of our nation. But few citizens stop to think of the history of the day, which appeared shortly after the Civil War as an effort to remember the dead of that conflict. One newspaper summed up the historic role of Memorial Day in 1869 as ‘‘a memorial day as useful and suggestive to the living as it is significant and grateful to the dead,’’ and went on to describe the effort: ‘‘To strew flowers on the graves of the heroes is at once a pious and patriotic tribute, done in the simplest and most touching way. This right of affection, not too public for the most modest and retiring woman in her own secluded way to celebrate, yet not too lowly for the loftiest citizen to disdain, is one of those very few customs which a nation may be proud to have originated and maintained’’ (‘‘Decoration Day,’’ p. 4). Moreover, this decoration activity at cemeteries across the United States, both North and South, played a major role in the eventual reconciling of the two sections after the war. Historians are hard pressed to pinpoint the exact date of the first Memorial Day. Some argue that it began haphazardly even during the war, while others point to a period
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Veterans on parade at war’s end. In the late 1860s, veterans’ organizations pressed for the observation of a holiday to honor the nation’s fallen soldiers. Americans celebrated with solemn parades and floral wreaths not only for the troops who perished in the Civil War, but also those who died serving the United States in previous conflicts. The Library of Congress.
immediately after the conflict ended (Blight 2001, pp. 65– 70; Neff 2005, 136–137). One of the earliest mentions of an actual day termed ‘‘Memorial Day’’ came in 1868, when on May 30 the town of Lafayette, Indiana, decorated the graves of its Civil War dead. Even this early, however, there was some crossing of the sectional lines and a desire to reconcile the North and South. The New York Times reported that the decorators of the Indiana cemetery received a wreath and a note from a little girl which read, ‘‘Will you please put this wreath upon some rebel soldier’s grave? My dear papa is buried at Andersonville, and perhaps some little girl will be kind enough to put a few flowers upon his grave’’ (‘‘An Incident of Memorial Day,’’ p. 3).
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The officials did so, laying the wreath on the only Confederate grave in the cemetery. Most sources point to 1868 as the actual birth of the yearly Memorial or Decoration Day tradition, however. The Grand Army of the Republic was a leader in the effort, one story saying its commander was given the idea by a Philadelphia woman who had traveled around the South and ‘‘had noticed the Southern women decorating the graves of their dead, fallen in battle’’ (‘‘Memorial Day,’’ p. 4). Another story stated that an anonymous member recommended the idea (Neff 2005, p. 137). By 1869, however, numerous events were held across the nation, in both North and South, and in that year the
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tradition was referred to by the New York Times as being ‘‘introduced into the national calendar’’ (‘‘Decoration Day,’’ p. 4). The paper described the 1869 event in New York: ‘‘there was no lack of attendance at the cemeteries, where thousands participated in the beautiful and appropriate ceremony of decorating our heroes[’] graves with flowers’’ (‘‘Decoration Day,’’ p. 4). Throughout the Reconstruction era as well as the 1880s, most Memorial Day observances were localized efforts to decorate soldiers’ graves in local cemeteries, and not just the Civil War dead. William T. Sherman gave an address at a St. Louis Memorial Day event in 1875 and also mentioned other veterans buried in that particular cemetery: ‘‘men who fought for the honor of our common country against the foreign foe before most of us were born; others who brought from Mexico and our Indian borders seeds of disease which caused their death’’ (‘‘Gen. Sherman on Memorial Day,’’ p. 2). There was also an effort by the Grand Army of the Republic to make this effort both national and permanent in scope, and success would ultimately come when Congress made the day an official holiday for both sides in 1889. To be sure, the effort to memorialize the dead had crossed the sectional lines by that time. ‘‘Both Union and Confederate graves decorated in Maryland,’’ read the Washington Post in 1879, with the practice becoming more common as the years passed (‘‘A Day of Remembrance,’’ p. 1). ‘‘Speeches were delivered and the graves of the Confederate and Union dead were decorated,’’ read another newspaper in reference to ceremonies in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1888 (‘‘Memorial Day in the South,’’ p. 1). Not surprisingly, the national cemeteries across the land were special favorites for Memorial Day observances, especially those that sat on or near the developing national military parks in the 1890s and beyond. Special observances were held each year at places such as Shiloh, Tennessee, Vicksburg, Mississippi, Antietam, Maryland, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. At Shiloh each year in the 1890s and early 1900s, the local Grand Army of the Republic post placed flags on the Union and Confederate graves, despite several years of rain on the specific day, prompting park officials to refer to their ‘‘customary rain’’ (Smith 2004, pp. 14, 102). Each year at Gettysburg, one newspaper reported, ‘‘the children of the public schools covered with flowers the thousands of graves’’ (‘‘Triumphant March of G.A.R.,’’ p. 10). Since the official holiday was declared, Memorial Day has become a part of almost every American’s yearly remembrance, and today is no different. Whether Americans watch on television the elaborate ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery where the President of the United States lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns or attend the local ceremonies at one of the many national cemeteries across America, they do so for the same purpose: to remember, honor, and commem-
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orate, just like those first pioneers of the Memorial Day tradition did immediately after the Civil War. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘A Day of Remembrance.’’ Washington Post, May 31, 1879, p. 1. ‘‘An Incident of Memorial Day.’’ New York Times, June 7, 1868, p. 3. Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in Memory and Reunion. Cambridge, MA, 2001. ‘‘Decoration Day.’’ New York Times, May 31, 1869, p. 4. ‘‘Gen. Sherman on Memorial Day.’’ New York Times, June 4, 1875, p. 2. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville, TN, 2008. Holt, Dean W. American Military Cemeteries: A Comprehensive Illustrated Guide to the Hollowed Grounds of the United States, Including Cemeteries Overseas. Jefferson, NC, 1992. ‘‘Memorial Day.’’ Washington Post, August 27, 1889, p. 4. ‘‘Memorial Day in the South.’’ New York Times, May 12, 1888, p. 1. Neff, John R. Honoring The Civil War Dead: Commemoration And The Problem Of Reconciliation. Lawrence, KS, 2005. Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington DC, 1995. Smith, Timothy B. This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. Knoxville, TN, 2004. ‘‘Triumphant March of G.A.R.’’ New York Times, May 31, 1894, p. 10. Timothy B. Smith
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Battlefield Sites BATTLEFIELD SITES : AN OVERVIEW
Timothy B. Smith WARTIME COMMEMORATION AND MONUMENTS
Timothy B. Smith CHICKAMAUGA
William H. Brown SHILOH
Timothy B. Smith VICKSBURG
Robbie C. Smith GETTYSBURG
Jeffrey William Hunt ANTIETAM
Timothy B. Smith GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Battlefield Sites: An Overview
BATTLEFIELD SITES: AN OVERVIEW The battle sites of the Civil War are some of the most hallowed pieces of ground in the United States. Shiloh National Military Park’s first historian, the Iowa veteran David W. Reed, remarked, ‘‘There is nothing in this broad land of ours more sacred than the soil which has been wet with the blood of its patriotic sons’’ (Reed 1898, p. 374). In the early twenty-first century literally millions of visitors to the various military parks tramp along trails and roads and drive along tour routes in search of information on what happened at the various sites or the places where their ancestors once stood. Books, maps, Internet sites, and photographs can aid a visitor and inform them about what happened at specific sites, but none of those media are equal to walking on a Civil War battlefield and feeling a connection to what happened there. Fortunately, throughout our history Civil War veterans and others have worked to preserve some of these historic sites for visitors, allowing us of later generations the opportunity to connect to a former time. Civil War battlefield preservation has gone through four stages since the Civil War. The first was a disjointed early attempt at erecting monuments and preserving individual areas, with a few monuments going up during the war itself and more built immediately after the conflict ended. The vast majority of the preservation that was achieved was inadvertently realized through the medium of national cemeteries, which were normally located on historic ground. The second phase, the golden age of Civil War battlefield preservation, took place in the 1890s, when the biggest and best-preserved battlefields were placed under protection. Unfortunately, the next wave of protection did not occur until the late 1920s and 1930s, when it was already too late to properly save many fields of conflict. Nevertheless, these parks of the New Deal era saved what could be preserved at the time. The most recent phase is a century later than the golden age; nonetheless a new generation of preservationists is doing what it can to protect the sites. Recently, efforts have gathered more momentum, with the Civil War Preservation Trust leading the way.
Early Battlefield-Preservation Efforts: The Veteran Generation During the Civil War and up until 1890, veterans and local citizens marked several important sites. During the war itself, several soldiers and units marked such famous places as the Round Forest at Stones River, the Vicksburg surrender site, and the Henry House Hill at Manassas. The oldest extant example of these monuments is the Hazen Brigade monument at Stones River, which called the nation ‘‘to greater deeds’’ (Brown 1985, pp. 5–8). These commemorative features were individually and independently erected by sponsors with no Federal
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government involvement beyond the fact that those performing the work were primarily soldiers. Although not specifically built for preservation purposes in most cases, silent national cemeteries established during the war—‘‘for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country,’’ in the words of the enabling legislation— also marked the sites of many battlefields, such as Chattanooga, Antietam, and Gettysburg (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3). For example, Major General George Thomas, commander of the Union Army of the Cumberland, ordered the establishment of the cemetery at Chattanooga ‘‘in commemoration of the Battles of Chattanooga, November 23–27, 1863’’ (Holt 1992, p. 65). Many other national cemeteries also marked the locations of hospitals, prison camps, and camping areas. After the war, preservation activity began to increase. In the period up until 1889, several veterans placed monuments and markers at such various sites as Antietam and Pea Ridge, but these were likewise privately funded with no government subsidization. The Federal government did, however, continue the building of national cemeteries on historic land. Desiring to build these cemeteries with the least amount of trouble, the government often took the nearest possible land to where the soldiers had been buried, which inadvertently was battlefield land in most cases. Among the resulting cemeteries were the national cemetery at Pittsburg Landing on the battlefield of Shiloh, the national cemetery on the banks of the Mississippi River on the Vicksburg battlefield, and the national cemetery within the confines of the Fort Donelson defense area. These refuges were established primarily to allow a place of decent and honorable individual burial for U.S. soldiers. One builder commented that such individual recognition ‘‘accords with our intense individualism as a people, and with the value we attach to individual life; and it is demanded by the eminent worth of those for whom historic notice would thus be secured’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, p. 12). These national cemeteries also inadvertently yet opportunely preserved crucial areas of each battlefield site. Not surprisingly, in the pre-1890 period by far the most significant battlefield preservation activity was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association emerged to provide oversight. The state of Pennsylvania appropriated money for the use of the association, the legislature directing that the money ‘‘be applied to the purchase of portions of the battle-grounds’’ (Vanderslice 1899, p. 360). Made up of prominent Northern officials and Gettysburg citizens, the association was nevertheless underfunded despite several infusions of money from other Northern states. Observing the apparent inactivity of association officials, the Grand Army of the Republic took over the association by garnering sufficient stock to attain a controlling interest. Thereafter the association was on better footing and oversaw a myriad of such preservation attempts as buying key areas of the battlefield, marking troop positions, and
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working with individual states to erect monuments on the site. Nevertheless, there never seemed to be enough money and the work was somewhat disorganized and irregular. Most importantly, the activity at Gettysburg was primarily non-Federal, non-Confederate, and non-reconciliatory. It was a Union venture through and through.
Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation America turned a major corner in its preservation activity in 1890. This shift from the Gettysburg style of commemoration, which was neo-Union, non-reconciliatory, and haphazard to say the least, ushered in the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Civil War battlefield preservation (Smith, in press). During the 1890s, several factors came together to generate a strong impetus to save the battlefields. One was that veterans who could return to the fields to document what had happened there were rapidly aging. David W. Reed, the first historian at Shiloh, remarked, ‘‘The work of restoring these battlefields has not been undertaken too soon. Those who have personal knowledge of positions and movements are rapidly passing off the stage’’ (Reed 1898, p. 373). To mark specific sites, the veterans building these parks often relied not only on official records and papers but also on the testimony and memories of other veterans. Such testimonies were a very important component of the process; while there were some areas of disagreement, for the most part the veterans were amazingly consistent in their memories.
One factor that made the 1890s the golden age of preservation activities was the ability to preserve almost pristine battlefields. Reed observed that soon veterans would ‘‘find it difficult to visit these old fields, or when there to fully comprehend the changes that have been made’’ (Reed 1898, p. 373). While there had been some change at the sites, they had not yet undergone the rapid development brought on by the second industrial revolution, during which massive industrialization, urbanization, and mobilization forever altered the face of American culture and society. It would be only a little over a decade after the 1890s before the Chickamauga commission would complain that ‘‘the roads [passing through the Chickamauga Battlefield] are in a section of country . . . [experiencing] rapid increase of populations and development of varied industries, and extensive use is made of them by farmers, merchants, contractors, and others, who haul material or merchandise over them’’ (Annual Report of the Secretary of War: 1907, p. 316). Urbanization and industrialization brought the loss of battlefields. Yet, in the 1890s most sites were still primarily pristine, and thus the veterans’ generation was able to preserve some important battlefields. Another factor making the 1890s the optimal time to preserve Civil War battlefields was the participation in politics of large numbers of veterans, which translated into strong support for preservation in Congress and in state legislatures dominated by veterans. At the same time, the presence of veterans in government went into a steady decline after 1890. Researching the members of
Marker at the site of the Vicksburg surrender. The Vicksburg surrender site was marked while the war was still raging. The monument on this site and others were sponsored without any aid from the Federal government. The Library of Congress
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Battlefield Sites: An Overview
Congress in the years between 1890 and 1899, in fact, shows a decline of some 20 percent in the percentage of members who were veterans—from around 50 percent in 1890 to around only 30 percent in 1899. Thus the best opportunity to fund military parks was the 1890s, when veterans who were interested in their old battlefields were there to pass the needed legislation. These factors all worked together within the context of a reconciliation process that took place in the 1890s. After a war fueled by decades of heated debate over slavery and states’ rights, the nation had again been divided by years of animosity-ridden reconstruction. Lasting in many cases into the 1880s, this anger was primarily related to racial issues. In the 1890s, however, whites in both the North and South began to move away from the conflict over racial issues that had so divided them in the past. This change, of course, meant less commitment to supporting the gains made by African Americans in the Civil War and during Reconstruction. As a result, segregation and Jim Crowism developed in the 1890s as whites in the North and South turned away from the divisive issues of race to issues on which both sides could agree. One of the major ways this reconciliation was achieved was through a focus on the bravery, courage, and honor of the aging Civil War generation, both North and South. The battlefield preservationist Henry Boynton remarked that a ‘‘quarter of a century has brought this [reconciliation] about, a period which is but a day in the life of a nation. He would indeed be impatient who looked for more speedy progress’’ (‘‘Camping on Chickamauga,’’ Washington Post, September 16, 1892; Blight 2001). The four battlefields set aside as parks during the 1890s—Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Antietam, Shiloh, and Vicksburg—are, together with Gettysburg, the largest and best preserved. Unlike the one-sided effort at Gettysburg, the 1890s parks were created with Federal monies for both sides, with Confederate battle lines receiving just as much attention as the Union positions, and with legislation even mandating that some of the commissioners be former Confederate soldiers. Two distinct styles of parks developed during this golden age of preservation. One reflected the ideas espoused by Henry Boynton, the founder of the first national military park at Chickamauga. His aim was to preserve entire battlefields, even those that covered thousands of acres, as was done at Chickamauga and Shiloh. A second style of preservation sought to preserve key features of a battlefield rather than the entire acreage. Where it was not possible to set aside large tracts of land, roadways and prominent points could be secured, as at the urbanized battlefield at Chattanooga, the first to be preserved in this manner. This second style of preservation, however, was also used for battlefields away from urbanized areas, most famously at Antietam. The Antietam Board President George B. Davis espoused the idea of buying small sections of battlefields and
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interpreting the action from those points. The ‘‘Antietam Plan’’ was thus much cheaper and would actually be used for the next several decades on other battlefields (Lee 1973, p. 40). The physical construction of the five parks (including Gettysburg) was only half the work, however. As each of the parks was being established through land purchases, monument and tablet placements, and artillery positioning, a historiographical account of each battle was also being constructed. The commissions published books and generally promoted what they believed to be the correct history of their respective sites through drawing attention to key locales and such events as the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh, Snodgrass Hill at Chickamauga, and Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg (Reed 1902 passim). Their version of events largely became the accepted history of each battle, and has remained dominant even until the early twenty-first century although some scholars are beginning to dispute the older accounts. Yet, just as many had feared, Civil War veterans did begin to pass away in large numbers soon after the turn of the twentieth century. There were so many deaths, in fact, that Congress revised its method of appointing individual commissioners for each battlefield park. In 1912 Congress passed a law that gradually discontinued the commission system. No commissioners would be put out of a job, but when they died or resigned, their position would not be filled (Lee 1973, p. 45). The five flagship parks were thus soon turned over to civilian superintendents who were not veterans and who operated within the War Department. A few old veteran commissioners lived into the 1920s, but by 1930 none of the original parks had a veteran commissioner. Although only five battlefields had been preserved by the end of the 1890s, the Federal government had nevertheless laid the groundwork for future battlefield preservation work. Unfortunately, it would be several decades before any more battlefields were preserved (Lee 1973, p. 51).
Parks of the 1930s and the Modern Period The next wave of preservation did not occur until the late 1920s and 1930s, when it was already too late to fully save the fields of conflict. The result was a series of much smaller, less well marked, and highly urbanized parks such as Fort Pulaski, Petersburg, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, Kennesaw Mountain, Stones River, Fort Donelson, Tupelo, and Brices Crossroads (Lee 1973, pp. 51–52). Each of these parks, being patterned after the Antietam Plan, was not nearly as extravagantly constructed as most of the original parks preserved during the 1890s. Whereas most of the earlier parks were thousands of acres in size, the 1920s-era parks were at most only hundreds of acres large. Brices Crossroads and Tupelo, for example, were about an acre each, whereas Stones River and Fort Donelson were in the five hundred-acre
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range. This relatively small size reflected not only the methodology of the Antietam Plan but was also a result of the fact that the battlefields were no longer pristine and whole, due to urbanization and the industrialization of the World War I (1914–1918) era. Preservation of the land that was left cost large amounts of money, and a Congress no longer dominated by Civil War veterans would not appropriate the sums necessary to buy expensive urban tracts. Furthermore, the parks that were created in the 1920s were not marked with the detail of the 1890s parks, as most Civil War veterans had died by that time or were aged men with fading memories. A major change came in 1933, however, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred all the War Department parks from that entity to the National Park Service. The system also gained new parks during the New Deal era, when a significant amount of federal funding was put into the park system, as part of the government’s public works approach to lowering Depression-era unemployment. The parks at Appomattox, Richmond, and Manassas were established in the years prior to World War II, though these were on the minimal scale of the 1920s-era parks. The post–World War II era saw the further development of Civil War parks; however, in this period the initiative for preservation largely shifted from the federal to the state and private level. Around the time of the war’s centennial, Congress did establish several new parks, such as those at Fort Sumter, Harpers Ferry, Wilson Creek, Pea Ridge, Arkansas Post, and Andersonville, some of which were transferred from other government agencies. On the other hand, numerous other battlefields that could have been preserved—such as those at Franklin, Nashville, Perryville, Mansfield, and Champion Hill—were not. The Federal preservation effort reached its nadir in the 1970s and 1980s, which saw very little activity. Fortunately, the various states assumed responsibility for preservation and created state parks out of battlefields ignored by the federal government, such as the parks at Perryville, Sailors Creek, Bentonville, Olustee, Fort Blakely, Mansfield, Fort Pillow, and Pickett’s Mill. During the 1990s, however, the national battlefield preservation effort was suddenly revived with the establishment of several preservation entities, most notably the mammoth Civil War Preservation Trust. And even the Federal government became involved again through the American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) within the National Park Service. The ABPP has saved thousands of acres of battlefield land since its establishment in 1996. In the early twenty-first century, there are still hundreds of unpreserved battlefields, most admittedly small, though a few large battle sites have seen very little preservation work. Many groups are attempting to preserve these battlefields, from small local commissions struggling
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to purchase land to large national organizations that lend considerable weight to the preservation effort. None of these contemporary efforts, however, can ever equal what was done in the 1890s, when all the factors lined up to produce a ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Civil War battlefield preservation. BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Battlefield Protection Program Web site. Available from http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Brown, Daniel A. Marked for Future Generations: The Hazen Brigade Monument, 1863–1929. Murfreesboro, TN: National Park Service, 1985. Civil War Preservation Trust Web site. Available from http://www.civilwar.org. Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993. Friends of the Mansfield Battlefield Web site. Available from http://www.mansfieldbattlefield.org/. Holt, Dean W. American Military Cemeteries: A Comprehensive Illustrated Guide to the Hallowed Grounds of the United States, Including Cemeteries Overseas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. House Committee on Military Affairs, House Report No. 1139. ‘‘National Military Park at the Battlefield of Shiloh.’’ In House Reports, 53rd Congress, 2nd Session, June 22, 1894. Washington, DC: House of Representatives, 1893–1895. Lee, Ronald F. The Origin and Evolution of the National Military Park Idea. Washington DC: National Park Service, 1973. ‘‘Pickett’s Mill History.’’ Available from http://gastate parks.org/net/content/. ‘‘Preservation at Bentonville.’’ Available from http:// www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/bentonvi/. Reed, David Wilson. ‘‘National Cemeteries and National Military Parks.’’ In War Sketches and Incidents: As Related by the Companions of the Iowa Commandery Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, ed. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Iowa Commandery. 2 vols. Des Moines, IA: Kenyon, 1893–1898. Reed, David Wilson, ed. The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902. Sellars, Richard West. Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863–1900. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2005.
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Wartime Commemoration and Monuments
Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville, TN, in press. United States Army Quartermasters Corps. Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defence of the American Union, Interred in the National [and Other] Cemeteries. 27 nos. in 9 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865–1871. Unrau, Harlan D. Administrative History: Gettysburg National Military Park and Gettysburg National Cemetery, Pennsylvania. Denver, CO: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1991. Vanderslice, John M. Gettysburg, Then and Now: The Field of American Valor: Where and How the Regiments Fought, and the Troops They Encountered; An Account of the Battle, Giving Movements, Positions, and Losses of the Commands Engaged. New York: G. W. Dillingham Company, 1899. Timothy B. Smith
WARTIME COMMEMORATION AND MONUMENTS Civil War battlefield preservation is a popular effort today, but the foundations of this phenomenon stretch back almost a century and a half. Indeed, the very first monumentation and commemoration of Civil War events occurred as early as 1861, the year the war began. Today, these initial efforts, some of which no longer exist in full form, are among the most distinguished commemorative features on any battlefield and serve as the foundations of present Civil War preservation and commemoration initiatives.
Early Civil War Monuments During the course of the Civil War, soldiers placed monuments on several fields to commemorate what had taken place and to eulogize the dead. In September 1861, Confederate soldiers in Colonel Francis Bartow’s brigade placed a monument on the Bull Run battlefield to mark the site of Bartow’s death on July 21, 1861. Soldiers of the 8th Georgia erected a white marble slab shaped in the form of an obelisk to commemorate their leader. Over one thousand people attended the dedication. Unfortunately, the monument is no longer in existence; it disappeared after the Confederates left the area and its fate was never determined. Hundreds of miles to the west, soldiers of Colonel William B. Hazen’s Union brigade erected a monument on the battlefield of Stone’s River, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in the spring and early summer of 1863. Hazen’s brigade had repelled numerous assaults by the
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Confederates in the Round Forest and had buried their dead where they had fallen. As the Army of the Cumberland moved southward, Hazen’s men remained to garrison the Murfreesboro area. That summer, they built a memorial to their dead on the spot where they had been buried. A burial vault patterned after an Egyptian mastaba, the monument has the following inscription: ‘‘The blood of one third of its soldiers twice spilled in Tennessee crimsons the battle flag of the brigade and inspires to greater deeds’’ (Brown 1985, pp. 5–8; Abroe 1996, p. 90). The oldest surviving Civil War monument, it still stands at Stone’s River National Battlefield. Also during the summer of 1863, Federals in Vicksburg, Mississippi, marked the ‘‘surrender interview’’ site at which Grant and Pemberton had met to discuss terms of Confederate surrender (Abroe 1996, p. 92). The Federals took from a local stonecutter’s shop a marble shaft that had originally been intended to memorialize Vicksburg’s Mexican War dead. The monument’s hurriedly carved inscription read: ‘‘The Site of Interview between Major General U. S. Grant USA & Lieut. General Pemberton July 4, 1863.’’ Unfortunately, the date given for the meeting was incorrect; it had actually occurred on July 3. Nevertheless, this monument was somewhat different than earlier memorials: It marked the site of a significant event only; there was no memorialization of the dead. Though put up as the war was ending, the two stillintact monuments at Manassas, erected in June 1865, must be mentioned in relation to wartime commemorative efforts. Federal veterans placed two sandstone obelisks to commemorate the two battles fought on that ground. One placed on Henry House Hill commemorated the first battle, while another placed near the famous railroad cut memorialized the second and larger engagement. Each honored fallen soldiers, and marked the most significant points on the respective battlefields (Abroe 1996, pp. 92–93).
National Cemeteries The major act of preservation and remembrance during the Civil War was the establishment of national cemeteries. The War Department began the process of burying the dead and enumerating burial plots when the war began. Department and army commanders simply buried the dead, particularly battle casualties, on the ground where they had fought or had been stationed in camps or hospitals. Primarily located on private land, these burial grounds had to be bought or condemned. The 37th Congress of the United States passed legislation that allowed for national cemeteries as deemed necessary by the president, and Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on July 17, 1862. Section 18 gave him the ‘‘power, whenever in his opinion it is expedient, to purchase cemetery grounds and cause them to be securely enclosed, to be used as a
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national cemetery for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country’’ (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3). As a result of this legislation, the Lincoln administration created fourteen national cemeteries in 1862, and many others followed throughout the war. Most were set up around Washington, DC, and other troop induction and care centers. Alexandria and Soldiers’ Home near the capital, and cemeteries at Annapolis, Maryland; Camp Butler, Illinois; and Philadelphia held more soldiers who died of disease and accident than of battle wounds. Perhaps the most famous cemetery in the United States, Arlington National Cemetery, was also a product of the war. Established by Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs on the estate of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Arlington became the site of burial for thousands of soldiers over the years (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3; Piehler 1995, p. 52). Several of the fourteen original cemeteries, as well as many of the later burial areas, were on battlefields, marking the first time actual sites of conflict were preserved to commemorate the fallen. Although intended primarily to honor and commemorate the dead, they inadvertently preserved some of the core areas of battlefields for posterity. Still in embryonic form in the 1860s, these cemeteries would eventually form the backbone of the park system established by a national military park movement during the 1890s, when massive tracts of land were preserved to commemorate what had happened at various sites. The early national cemeteries also at times made larger statements about the war itself. When asked if he wanted soldiers buried by state at the Chattanooga National Cemetery, Major General George H. Thomas was reported to have replied, ‘‘No, no. Mix them up; mix them up. I am tired of state-rights’’ (Van Horne 1882, p. 213). The War Department erected a small cemetery at the site of the January 1862 battle of Mill Springs in eastern Kentucky, and other national cemeteries were created at Chattanooga, Tennessee; Sharpsburg, Maryland; Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. These cemeteries were established primarily to honor the dead, but also to preserve a portion of the historic landscape. There was also new attention to honoring soldiers as individuals. For example, Thomas B. Van Horne, the chaplain in charge of the Chattanooga National Cemetery, noted that extreme care would be taken to: secure a short military history of every officer and soldier interred in the cemetery whose remains have been identified. . . . It seems eminently fitting that this should be done. It accords with our intense individualism as a people, and with the value we attach to individual life; and it is demanded by the eminent worth of those for whom historic notice would thus be secured.
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(U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, p. 12)
The war’s most celebrated remarks on the commemoration of the dead, however, came from President Abraham Lincoln during the establishment of the Gettysburg cemetery in 1863. ‘‘We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives,’’ Lincoln proclaimed, before calling on the nation to continue the fight, so that ‘‘these dead shall not have died in vain’’ (Wills 1992, p. 21). Even if honoring the dead was their primary focus, the original cemetery builders also had preservation and commemoration of the historic landscape in mind as well. The War Department report on Gettysburg noted that the cemetery ‘‘embraces that portion of the ground occupied by the center of the Union line of battle on the 2d and 3d of July, 1863,’’ and called this position ‘‘one of the most prominent and important . . . on the field’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 16, p. 76). In establishing the Chattanooga National Cemetery in 1863, Major General George H. Thomas ordered that the memorial cemetery be established ‘‘in commemoration of the Battles of Chattanooga, November 23–27, 1863’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, pp. 11–13). There was one great distinction made in the building of these wartime sites, however. By and large, only Union dead were reinterred in the cemeteries; the Confederate dead were left on battlefields or moved to local cemeteries. Regulations required that only U.S. military personnel could be buried in national cemeteries, and Confederates were technically not U.S. personnel. Some exceptions occurred, however, such as at Arlington National Cemetery and Shiloh National Cemetery. Following the war, one Confederate veteran wrote bitterly of this one-sided policy: We admit that we fought to destroy the old Union, and to establish a new government for ourselves, but you refused to let us go. You said you forgave us and would take us back into full fellowship, with all our former rights and privileges. We accept in good faith your offer and are willing at all times to prove our loyalty to our country, but we feel that if we have been restored to our places in the Union on equal terms with you, that it is hardly just that the bones of these, our brothers who wore the gray, should be left scattered upon the fields, while those who wore the blue are cared for and honored. (Reed 1893–1898, pp. 369–370)
Whereas the federal government made little effort to memorialize or honor Confederate dead during the war, viewing Confederates as traitors, revolutionaries, and enemies, African American soldiers were increasingly commemorated. This wartime commemoration at national cemeteries evidenced the growing standing of African
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Wartime Commemoration and Monuments
A dedication of the battle monument at Bull Run, VA, June 10, 1865. Before the end of the Civil War, Federal veterans installed an obelisk honoring the fallen soldiers of the First Battle of Bull Run. The Library of Congress.
Americans in the United States, particularly in the armed forces. Many national cemeteries that would not allow the burial of white Confederates contained United States Colored Troops. Although segregation was the norm even in burial, United States Colored Troops nonetheless received the same recognition that white soldiers gained by being buried in a national cemetery. In addition Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs remarked that the ‘‘colored soldiers buried now together give evidence of the death of many of their race in the struggle for their freedom’’ (Neff 2005, pp. 197–198). That African Americans, considered property by both governments at the beginning of the war, were being buried in national cemeteries by the end of the war reveals just how much the nation had changed. While the vast majority of the commemoration and monumentation did not begin until after the war ended, there were some early efforts at marking positions, commemorating actions, and memorializing those who had given their lives. And these early efforts can mostly still be seen today, giving a critical glimpse into the war years and showing that those who fought it were already thinking about the legacy of their actions.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abroe, Mary Munsell. ‘‘ ‘All the Profound Scenes:’ Federal Preservation of Civil War Battlefields, 1861–1990.’’ Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, Chicago, 1996. Brown, Daniel A. Marked for Future Generations: The Hazen Brigade Monument, 1863–1929. Murfreesboro, TN: National Park Service, 1985. Holt, Dean W. American Military Cemeteries: A Comprehensive Illustrated Guide to the Hallowed Grounds of the United States, Including Cemeteries Overseas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. Krick, Robert E. L. ‘‘The Civil War’s First Monument: Bartow’s Marker at Manassas.’’ Blue and Gray 8, no. 4 (1991): 32–34. Neff, John R. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Reed, David Wilson. ‘‘National Cemeteries and National Military Parks.’’ In War Sketches and Incidents: As Related by the Companions of the Iowa Commandery
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Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, ed. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Iowa Commandery. 2 vols. Des Moines, IA: Kenyon, 1893–1898. Sellars, Richard West. Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863–1900. Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2005. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville, TN: in press. United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defence of the American Union, Interred in the National [and Other] Cemeteries 27. 9 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865–1871. Van Horne, Thomas B. The Life of Major-General George H. Thomas. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1882. Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Timothy B. Smith
CHICKAMAUGA Roughly twenty years after the end of the American Civil War, veterans and citizenry began to focus on memorializing the events of the late war to commemorate the soldiers’ bravery and the lives lost. These efforts also focused on attempts to heal the wounds from the conflict and the political crisis that caused the bloodshed. In doing so, these veterans and citizens laid the foundation of historical preservation in the United States. In 1880 the United States Congress passed legislation to allocate funds to preserve an American battlefield to commemorate past conflicts. $50,000 was disbursed to survey and develop maps detailing troop movements at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Once that mapping was completed, additional funds were set aside to mark the positions of the Army of the Potomac on the battlefield. While this work was being done, historical patrons from the South were requesting that a battlefield in the Southern United States be similarly marked.
Society of the Army of the Cumberland After the late conflict of 1861 to 1865, various veterans’ organizations were formed to remember comrades past and present. Organizations were created that focused on the victorious Federal armies that had existed during much of the war. One example was the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, an organization made up of veteran officers of the Army of the Cumberland, which had served in the Western Theater of the American Civil
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War, primarily in Tennessee and Georgia. In 1881, the organization held its annual reunion in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Many of the veterans were concerned that their old battlefields might be become unrecognizable over time without the placement of markers at key locations. Upon arrival at the old Chickamauga battlefield, a number of the older veterans were unable to pinpoint the locations of their regiments and brigades. In May 1888, two former officers of the Army of the Cumberland visited the old battlefield. While examining the terrain, the two former officers developed the notion of turning the old Chickamauga battlefield in Georgia into a military park. The two officers were both brigadier generals, Henry Van Ness Boynton (1835– 1905) and Ferdinand Van Derveer (1823–1892). Both Boynton and Van Derveer had served together in the Thirty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Van Derveer, a lawyer in civilian life, had commanded a brigade in the engagement at Chickamauga, while Boynton had been rewarded the Congressional Medal of Honor at Missionary Ridge during the Battle of Chattanooga in November 1863. Boynton used his position as a reporter with the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette to write columns to promote the idea of a military park in Chickamauga. In those columns, Boynton advocated a need for a ‘‘Western Gettysburg’’ for the veterans of the Western battles. Initially, he directed his editorial focus to the members of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland. Unlike the plans for the military park at Gettysburg, however, Boynton proposed that both Confederate and Union veterans participate in the establishment of the Chickamauga site: The survivors of the Army of the Cumberland should awake to great pride in this notable field of Chickamauga. Why should it not, as well as eastern fields, be marked by monuments, and its lines be accurately preserved for history? There was no more magnificent fighting during the war than both armies did there. Both sides might well unite in preserving the field where both, in a military sense, won such renown. (Boynton 1895, p. 219)
During the early development of the Gettysburg battlefield, only monuments to the regiments of the Union Army of the Potomac had been erected and not to the men of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. During the society’s reunion in September 1888, in Chicago, the organization adapted a resolution to appoint a committee to develop a plan for purchasing land encompassing the Chickamauga battlefield site. The society chose its former commander, Major General William S. Rosecrans (1819–1898), to appoint the members of the committee. The committee was named the Chickamauga Memorial Association and was made up of former officers who had served in the engagement in September 1863. Invitations were sent to the governors of the states that had had troops serving in the battle to be members of the committee.
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Chickamauga
Battle of Chickamauga. Nearly two decades after the end of the Civil War, veterans laid out plans to commemorate soldiers who fought in the West by establishing a military park on the grounds of the Battle of Chickamauga. Unlike the early parks in the East, the one at Chickamauga honored the efforts of Union and Confederate troops alike. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
The War Department and Congressional Approval While this initial planning was being done, the U.S. War Department also became involved in the early planning stages at Chickamauga. Captain Sanford C. Kellogg, a veteran of the battle, was assigned to research troop positions for maps to be included in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Kellogg conducted interviews of veterans and became a part of the research efforts to establish this new military park. On February 13, 1889, the Chickamauga Memorial Association met in Washington, DC, with five members of the U.S. Congress who were from the South and had served as Confederate generals during the Battle of Chickamauga. These former generals agreed to cooperate with the Association and to assist with the formation of a joint memorial battlefield association. At the same time, Captain Kellogg agreed to assist the association by contacting additional parties who might be interested in serving as incorporators of a joint association. The organizational meeting of the joint memorial association occurred during the annual reunion of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga in September 1889. The reunion, which was a festive occasion, also hosted an assembly of Confederate veterans to participate in the creation of the memorial organization as well as local representatives from Georgia and Tennessee. The members of the Association proposed purchasing a tract of land that would encompass the battlefield from Rossville Gap to Crawfish Springs. It was hoped that the city of Chattanooga would also participate so that the future visitors would be able to examine the battlefields from Georgia to the northernmost points of Missionary Ridge in Tennessee. Twenty-eight former officers from both the Union and Confederate armies were selected to serve as a board of directors for the Chickamauga Memo-
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rial Association, with John T. Wilder as president and Joseph Wheeler as vice president. The charter of the Chickamauga Memorial Association was registered with the Superior Court of Walker County, Georgia on December 4, 1890, and the incorporation was to last for twenty years until 1910. The organization consisted of the general membership, incorporators, the governors of various states, president and secretary of the Southern Historical Society, and the Secretary of War. General membership was open to all veterans for a lifetime membership fee of $5.00. Congressmen Charles H. Grosvenor (1833–1917), who had served as a colonel of the Eighteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Chickamauga, introduced H.R. 6454, ‘‘An Act to Establish a National Military Park at the battle-field of Chickamauga’’ on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in May 1890. The legislation served quick approval in the House Committee, and passed both houses of the U.S. Congress. President Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), himself a Union veteran, signed the bill into law on August 19, 1890. The federal government would obtain roughly 7,600 acres through condemnation, while roads to the park would be ceded to the federal government by the states of Georgia and Tennessee. Soon after the incorporation of the Association, the Secretary of War appointed a national commission to oversee the work at the site of the military park. Joseph S. Fullerton was to serve as chairman, Alexander P. Stewart was placed in charge of construction, and Captain Kellogg would serve as secretary of the commission.
Construction of the Park Work began on converting the property into a military park with markers and a museum. Underbrush was cleared away, roads were built to connect various portions of the site, and research was done to pinpoint the
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locations of regiments and batteries during the engagement. In some cases, Boynton and Kellogg worked together to gather information on troop positions and compose maps to aid in construction. Veterans were also interviewed to help locate landmarks that indicated where a particular unit fought during the battle. In 1890, the United Confederate Veterans held an encampment at the battlefield site and helped to locate Confederate regimental positions for Boynton and Kellogg. The members attempted to work through controversies dealing with these fighting positions between veterans of companion units. In addition to setting up memorials to the volunteer units, Boynton made an effort to place markers to commemorate the United States Army Regulars, which had also fought at Chickamauga in September 1863. As the work continued on the site, the grounds of the park itself became training grounds for local militia and regular troops. In 1890, the Georgia State Guard used the old battlefield for encampments and training. With the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States Army created Camp George H. Thomas, named for Rosecrans’s successor as the commander of the Army of the Cumberland, on the grounds of the military park. This site continued to be used by the U.S. War Department and became the town of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. The military use of this portion of the park continued throughout the turn of the twentieth century and up through World War I (1914–1918). The site was beneficial because the location of the battlefield was near the major north and south railroad lines running through Chattanooga. It was an ideal location for troops to be encamped during their training and possible deployment overseas. In addition, the park commission saw the military as an excellent way to increase use of the park and to justify its continued funding as an educational tool to citizens and the military. The role of the commission in a leadership role with the park continued until 1921. By this date, the various commissioners who had taken an active role in the development of the site began to pass away. Joseph Fullerton died in 1897, and his chairmanship was passed down to Boynton. Boynton himself died on June 3, 1905, and his successor was Ezra Carman, who had commanded a New Jersey regiment during the Civil War. Former Confederate general Alexander P. Stewart passed away in 1908, and another former Confederate general, Joseph B. Cumming, replaced him. Captain Kellogg was reassigned from the park commission because of friction between himself and the civilian commission members. Much of the controversy came from the fact that a U.S. Army captain was trying to tell former generals what to do, which was not very conducive to career advancement. The park continued with its construction plans, and the hiring of staff to maintain and interpret portions of the military park.
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In 1912, legislation was passed to allow the Secretary of War to assume the duties of commission members upon their deaths or resignations. By May 1922, Joseph B. Cumming passed away; with his death, the sole commission member remaining was the Secretary of War, at that time John W. Weeks of Massachusetts. By 1930, the staff of the National Military Park fluctuated with the additions and removals of permanent staff and the introduction of numbers of temporary personnel. At the same time, discussions were afoot to transfer jurisdiction over the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park and the other national military parks to the U.S. Department of the Interior. Many persons were opposed to the transfer due to the belief that Fort Oglethorpe would remain open, and the U.S. military and National Guard units would need the park property for conducting military education and training. Despite these objections, the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park was transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior in August 1933. As of the early twenty-first century, the Chickamauga battle site is under the care of the National Park Service. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boynton, Henry V. The National Military Park, Chickamauga-Chattanooga: A Historical Guide, With Maps and Illustrations. Cincinnati, OH: Robert Clarke, 1895. Kaser, James A. At the Bivouac of Memory: History, Politics, and the Battle of Chickamauga. New York: P. Lang, 1996. Paige, John C., and Jerome A. Greene. Administrative History of Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park. Denver, CO: National Park Service, 1983. Robertson, William Glenn [et al.]. Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Chickamauga, 18–20 September 1863. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1982. Sauers, Richard A. ‘‘From Hallowed Ground to Training Ground: Chickamauga’s Camp Thomas, 1898.’’ Civil War Regiments, vol. 7, no. 1, (2000): 129–143. Sullivan, James R. Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Georgia–Tennessee. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961. United States Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park Committee. Legislation, Congressional and State, Pertaining to Establishment of the Park, Regulations Original and Amended, Governing the Erection of Monuments, Markers and Other Memorials. Washington, DC Government Printing Office, 1897. United States Congress. Joint Committee to Represent the Congress at the Dedication of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Dedication of GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, September 18–20, 1895. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896. William H. Brown
SHILOH Shiloh National Military Park, established by Congress in 1894, preserves one of the most crucial battlefields of the Civil War. Containing some 96 percent of the actual fighting area, the Tennessee park is the best-preserved major battlefield of the war. It allows visitors and historians alike to glimpse what a Civil War battlefield looked like and to follow the movements of troops throughout the battle. More profoundly, it offers visitors a chance to connect with the traumatic events that occurred there.
National Context The original establishment of the park was a product of several factors that came together in the 1890s to create a national preservation movement. In that decade, white Northerners and Southerners began to reconcile with each other after decades of grueling animosity, war, and reconstruction. In 1892 battlefield preservationist Henry
Boynton wrote of the reconciliation, ‘‘[a] quarter of a century has brought this about, a period which is but a day in the life of a nation. He would indeed be impatient who looked for more speedy progress’’ (Boynton 1892, p. 4). Backing away from divisive racial issues, the veterans of the Civil War began to find common ground by focusing instead on the bravery, courage, and honor shown by Civil War soldiers on both sides during the 1860s. Thus, America began a process of reconciliation through memorialization, commemoration, and preservation. Statues went up all over the nation during this time—on almost every courthouse lawn, and in the two capitals that had once directed war against each other. No more vivid example of this reconciliation through commemoration is available than Shiloh National Military Park. In the 1890s, the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Civil War battlefield preservation, the federal government began a process of saving battlefields, and secured five of the war’s major sites to varying degrees. Shiloh National Military Park was the third of the five battlefields preserved, following the Chickamauga and Chattanooga site and Antietam, and preceding Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
Establishment The impetus for preserving Shiloh dated back to 1893, and can be traced to several sources. Veterans of the Army
Encompassing almost the entire site of the actual battlefield, the Shiloh National Military Park commemorates the early Union victory in this Tennessee city which helped secure Northern control of the Mississippi. ª Corbis. ‘‘Last Line’’ at Pittsburg Landing.
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of the Tennessee, who felt their army needed to be memorialized as others had been, began to lobby for Shiloh’s establishment and passed a resolution ‘‘heartily favor[ing]’’ making Shiloh a park (Society of the Army of the Tennessee 1894, pp. 124–126). One of the author’s of this resolution, Representative David Henderson, addressed fellow members of Congress on the subject, stressing that the creation of a park at Shiloh would ‘‘meet the wishes of the Western armies’’ (Congressional Record, p. 21). On a more personal level, veterans who returned to the battlefield were appalled to hear local farmers tell of unearthing battlefield graves while plowing or digging ditches or roadways. As late as 1893, one veteran remarked, farmers were ‘‘ploughing up . . . [soldiers’] bones all over the field’’ (Society of the Army of the Tennessee 1893, pp. 8, 60–61). These veterans wanted their former comrades to rest in peace, and the way to do that was to preserve the entire battlefield. These men soon established the Shiloh Battlefield Association, out of which came the idea of lobbying Congress to create the park. Congress did agree to do so in 1894, with the president signing the bill into law on December 27, 1894. The act declared the importance of having ‘‘the history of . . . memorable battles [fought by the Army of the Tennessee] preserved on the ground where they fought’’ (Congressional Record, p. 19). The founding legislation stipulated that ‘‘the affairs of the Shiloh National Military Park shall, subject to the supervision and direction of the Secretary of War, be in charge of three commissioners, . . . each of whom shall have served at the time of the battle in one of the armies engaged therein’’ (Congressional Record, p. 19). Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont appointed Colonel Cornelius Cadle, a veteran of the 11th Iowa Infantry of the Army of the Tennessee, as chairman of the commission. To represent the Army of the Ohio, Lamont chose that army’s commander at Shiloh, Major General Don Carlos Buell. Former Confederates were also included in the process, befitting the era’s move toward reconciliation; the secretary appointed Colonel Robert F. Looney of the 38th Tennessee Infantry as the Confederate representative. These men, along with such figures as Josiah Patterson, Basil Duke, David W. Reed, and James H. Ashcraft, who gradually replaced the original commissioners as deaths and resignations occurred, were the primary people responsible for what is today America’s best-preserved Civil War battlefield. Reed, in addition to later becoming a full commissioner, served as the park’s historian from its inception and has gained the title ‘‘Father of Shiloh National Military Park’’ for the work he did physically on the ground, as well as historiographically in print (Smith 2006, pp. 139–155).
Building the Park The commission began its work early in 1895. Engineer Atwell Thompson and his crew surveyed the battlefield
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and mapped the area and its plots of land in what veterans described as an effort to convert ‘‘mere land into a park’’ (Smith 2004, p. 45). Only after this process was completed could the commission begin to buy the property. Land agent James W. Irwin found it difficult to sort out land titles in the rural area, and the commission was further hampered by a rogue veteran who obtained options on some of the land in hopes of blackmailing the government into giving him an appointment as a commissioner. The commission reported to the secretary of war in 1897 that ‘‘[m]uch difficulty has been experienced in obtaining sufficient titles to the land negotiated for, but this is gradually being overcome’’ (United States War Department 1897, p. 59). Eventually, the commission purchased some 3,600 acres of land; only about 500 acres have been added since, illustrating the comprehensiveness of their original work. With the land purchase, the history of the battle could be, in the words of the enabling legislation, ‘‘preserved on the ground’’ (Congressional Record, p. 19). Once the land purchases went into effect, the commission was able to begin the process of marking the history of the battle’’ (Smith 2004, p. 62). The commission itself paid for the hundreds of iron tablets marking troop positions and campsites and giving direction that went up over the next few years, and also paid for replica iron cannon carriages on which they placed several hundred original Civil War cannon tubes that had been donated by the War Department. The commission also erected headquarters and monuments marking specific locations where general officers camped or were killed. These markings allowed, in the words of the park’s superintendent DeLong Rice, ‘‘the seeker after history . . . [to] start at the tablet where the first volley was fired and follow every movement of the divisions, brigades, and regiments through all the evolutions of the battle’’ (United States War Department 1915, p. 885). The major monumentation, however, was paid for by other entities. Congress appropriated money to erect monuments to several regular army units that had fought at Shiloh. Most notably, the various states that had troops at Shiloh began to erect monuments all over the battlefield. The enabling legislation stated that ‘‘it shall be lawful for any State that had troops engaged in the battle of Shiloh to enter upon the lands of the Shiloh National Military Park for the purpose of ascertaining and marking the lines of battle of its troops engaged there’’ (Congressional Record, pp. 19–20). The various states went about monumentation in different ways. Some erected one monument to all their units, whereas others placed different monuments dedicated to each of the units. Some erected both types of monuments. No matter the process, however, each state shared the same goal, stated succinctly by Ohio’s legislature: ‘‘ascertaining and marking the positions occupied . . . by each regiment, battery, and independent organization . . . which were
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Shiloh
engaged there’’ (Lindsey 1903, p. 152). By no means the most heavily monumented park of the 1890s, Shiloh National Military Park is nevertheless beautiful in its simplicity (Smith 2004, pp. 137–138). By 1908 the park was relatively complete—just in time for a thrashing in 1909 when, in the words of the commission chairman Cornelius Cadle, ‘‘a cyclone visited the Park’’ (Shiloh National Military Park Daily Events, October 14, 1909, pp. 274–277). The damage caused by the cyclone necessitated extensive repair and reconstruction. Following this, the physical building of the park was complete. It would not be until the 1930s that major work at the park began again. Just as important as the physical building of the site was the development of an accepted historiographical analysis of the battle. As Ulysses S. Grant, the Army of the Tennessee commander at Shiloh, remarked, the ‘‘Battle of Shiloh . . . has been perhaps less understood, or, to state the case more accurately, more persistently misunderstood, than any other engagement’’ (Grant 1884–1888, p. 465). Careful examination of all available written records was an important first step, as the recollections of elderly veterans were often unreliable and contradictory. As Reed remarked, ‘‘occasionally . . . some one thinks that his unaided memory of the events of 50 years ago is superior to the official reports of officers which were made at [the] time of the battle. It seems hard for them to realize that oft-repeated campfire stories, added to and enlarged, become impressed on the memory as real facts’’ (United States War Department 1912, pp. 195–196). One of the park sponsors in Congress had promised that the park itself would ‘‘put at rest once and for all time to come the uncertainties and misrepresentations surrounding the battle,’’ but that turn of events of course failed to materialize (House Reports, pp. 1–5). The park commission disseminated its own version of the battle, however, through the marking of the battlefield and in its official history, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged (1902). The commissioners themselves soon died away, leaving the park in the hands of non-veterans such as DeLong Rice and Robert A. Livingston. Rice, who was very much attuned to what the veterans had done, took over in the 1920s. Unfortunately, he died as a result of an explosion on the park in 1929. Park clerk Robert A. Livingston then became superintendent. Life at Shiloh was relatively quiet in the 1920s and early 1930s (Smith 2006, pp. 157–170).
The Modern Era President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred Shiloh, and the other parks, from the War Department to the National Park Service in 1933, the same year he began implementing the New Deal, which sent many workers to
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Shiloh. In the 1940s, however, much of this labor force went off to war, leaving Shiloh with an almost perpetual shortage of funds and workers (Smith 2004, p. 127). The late 1990s and early twenty-first century saw an upswing in activity at the park, with a new unit opening twenty miles to the south at Corinth, Mississippi. Its state-of-theart visitor center focuses not only on Corinth’s relevance to Shiloh, but also on the siege of Corinth and the subsequent battle there (Special Resource Study: Corinth Mississippi 2003). As of 2007, several entities are continuing efforts to preserve more battlefield ground at Shiloh, as well as at Corinth. Their efforts will continue to carry out the desires of its founders: to commemorate and memorialize those who fought on those hallowed fields of combat. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Boynton, Henry. ‘‘Camping on Chickamauga.’’ Washington Post, September 16, 1892. Congressional Record, 53rd Congress, 3rd Session, 27, 1 Eisenschiml, Otto. The Story of Shiloh. Chicago: Civil War Round Table, 1946. Grant, Ulysses S. ‘‘The Battle of Shiloh.’’ In Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel. 4 vols. New York: The Century, 1884–1888. House Reports, 53rd Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 1139. Lee, Ronald F. The Origin and Evolution of the National Military Park Idea. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1973. Lindsey, T. J. Ohio at Shiloh: Report of the Commission. Cincinnati, OH: C. J. Krehbiel, 1903. Reed, David Wilson, ed. The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902. Shiloh National Military Park Daily Events. Shiloh National Military Park Archives, October 14, 1909. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville, TN: in press. Smith, Timothy B. This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. Smith, Timothy B. The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Society of the Army of the Tennessee. Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at the Twenty-Fifth Meeting Held at Chicago, Ills. September 12th and 13th, 1893. Cincinnati, OH: Author, 1893.
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Society of the Army of the Tennessee. Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at the Twenty-Sixth Meeting Held at Council Bluffs, Iowa. October 3rd and 4th, 1894. Cincinnati, OH: Author, 1895. Special Resource Study: Corinth, Mississippi. National Park Service: Washington, DC, 2003. United States War Department. Annual Report of the Secretary of War—1897. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897. United States War Department. Annual Report of the Secretary of War—1912. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912. United States War Department. Annual Report of the Secretary of War—1915. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915. Timothy B. Smith
VICKSBURG The first efforts by Civil War soldiers to mark sites where blood was spilled, comrades fell, and lives were sacrificed began before the reverberations of fire faded from the scene of the conflict’s battlefields. The earliest known monument on a Civil War battlefield was erected within the first four months of the war. Confederate soldiers of the Eighth Georgia infantry erected a monument on the battlefield of first Manassas to their brigade commander, Col. Francis Stebbins Bartow, who was killed during that engagement. Private William H. Maxey, of the Eighth Georgia described the occasion in a September 5, 1861, letter to his father: ‘‘I will now tell you of our yestodays work. Our whole brigade went to the Battlefield to place a stone for signal whare Bartow fell. We had prare and then had a speech from Mr. Striklin. On the stone it had the words that Bartow spoke it was on the stone ‘they have killed me boys but never give up the fight’’’(September 5, 1861). In 1863, surviving troops of Col. William B. Hazen’s brigade placed a memorial in the Round Forest to commemorate comrades who fell on the battlefield at Stone’s River. Similarly, in July, 1864, Federal soldiers marked the site on the Vicksburg battlefield where barely
a year before, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant met Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton to discuss surrender terms for the Southern forces. Attempts to set aside battlefield lands as a remembrance of those who struggled and died over them were made on a provincial level even before the conclusion of hostilities. The most well known instance is that of Gettysburg where local citizens formed the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. In 1864, the association was given the authority, by the Pennsylvania legislature, ‘‘to hold and preserve, the battle-grounds of Gettysburg . . . and by such perpetuation, and such memorial structures as a generous and patriotic people may aid to erect, to commemorate the heroic deeds, the struggles, and the triumphs of their brave defenders’’ (Unrau 1991, pp. v–vi). Although the prosecution of the war prevented much progress until after the end of the hostilities, what was accomplished at Gettysburg served as the example for what were to become the first five Civil War battlefields preserved as National Parks. Localized and parochial efforts to commemorate specific contributions made during the Civil War continued after the conflict ended. The final three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the gathering of Civil War veterans at numerous reunions across the United States. The earliest of these were partisan, based strictly on previous Union or Confederate affiliation. In 1875, Confederate veterans journeyed to Boston to join with their Union counterparts for the 100th anniversary celebration of Bunker Hill. It was not until then that the past adversaries came together publicly. As reunions increased they became more frequent and widespread. The former opponents began to interact on an increasingly regular basis. As years passed and interaction between the one-time combatants grew the hostilities and passions of the conflict faded. This is reflected in the comments of Confederate General William B. Bate: ‘‘I note with inexpressible pleasure that the lapse of more than thirty years has mitigated the passions, allayed the excitement, and disposed the minds of all surviving contestants of these great battles to look back at the past with those moderated convictions which are due to a contest in which each party held principles and convictions to justify
As wounds of war slowly healed, Civil War veterans from both sides reunited in 1890 at the site of the Battle of Vicksburg. Disappointed with the battlefield’s lack of preservation, the veterans formed a campaign to construct Vicksburg National Military Park at the turn of the twentieth century. The Library of Congress. View of the Vicksburg battlefield.
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the contention’’ (Boynton 1896, pp. 45–46). A similar comment was expressed by Union veteran. J. S. Fullerton, ‘‘Never before has such harmonious work been possible’’ (Boynton 1896, p. 25). The fiery sentiments and hostilities of the past were replaced by the soldiers’ recognition of their shared experiences. Whether North or South, the aging warriors realized a common bond of sacrifice, suffering, struggle and loss as veterans of the Civil War. ‘‘We meet today upon this sacred spot to celebrate the heroism of the American soldier, the great results of battles, and the greater victories of peace. We do not come with words of crimination or with memories charged with bitterness or envy’’ (Boynton 1896, pp. 68– 69). Bate aptly expressed the soldiers’ experience: Here, within sight of this stand, we and they—the living and the dead, Confederate and Federal— fought for the right as each understood it, for the Constitution as each construed it, and for liberty as each interpreted it. With sheathless swords in sinewy hands we, Confederate and Federal, fought that great battle of duty, and now, thirty-two years after, we again obey the assemble call, we respond to the long roll and fall in line, not to renew the battle nor to rekindle the strife, nor even to argue as to which won the victory, but to gather up the rich fruits of both the victory and defeat as treasures of inestimable value to our common country.’’(Boynton 1896, pp. 45–46)
Out of that common knowledge grew a desire to commemorate their service. Nationwide interest was generated among the aging veterans to set aside battlefield lands as a remembrance of the common struggle they endured and sacrifices they gave. Bate continues to define the reason of being for the first National Military Park: ‘‘We have assembled on these glorious battlefields for the preservation and perpetuation of sacred memories; to treasure the recollections of heroic deeds; to compare in friendly criticism our past action; and to advance by lessons to be learned here the common glory of our common country’’ (Boynton 1896, pp. 45–46). Union General J. S. Fullerton reiterated the sentiments: ‘‘But little over thirty years have passed since this most desperate of battles was fought, and now survivors of both sides harmoniously and lovingly come together to fix their battle lines and mark the places now and forever to remain famous as monuments to the valor of the American soldier’’ (Boynton 1896, p. 25). What began as individual attempts in small pockets across the country to commemorate on the local level became a cohesive coordinated effort supported on a national scale. Those efforts to preserve Civil War battlefields as a memorial to the soldiers who fought over their grounds in turn fostered reconciliation. Union General John M. Palmer conveyed the understanding that exists between the former combatants who shared the common experiences of the battlefield: We are here today ‘with malice toward none and charity for all;’ we meet as citizens of a common
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country, devoted to its interests and alike ready to maintain its honor, wherever or however assailed. To my comrades, you who were Confederate soldiers during all the weary struggle of the civil war, I beg to say I was proud of your gallantry and courage. I never allowed myself to forget that you were Americans, freely offering your lives in the defense of what you believed to be your rights and in vindication of your manhood. You are now satisfied that the result of the civil war established the unity of the powerful American Republic; you submitted your controversies with your fellow-citizens to the arbitrament of the battlefield, and you accepted the result with a sublime fortitude worthy of all praise; and your reward is that peace and order are restored, and ‘the South’ which you loved so well and for which you fought so bravely now blossoms with abundant blessings. (Boynton 1896, p. 37)
‘‘Indeed,’’ remarked General Fullerton, ‘‘this celebration—the inauguration of this park and commemoration of the grand and noble idea—marks the beginning of a regenerated national life’’ (Boynton 1896, p. 25). These efforts calumniated in the establishment of the first Civil War battlefield set aside as a National Park. Chickamauga and Chattanooga were preserved as a National Park by an act of Congress in 1890. Evidence that battlefield preservation was national in scope is exhibited by the addition of Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg as national battlefields in 1894, 1895, and 1899, respectively. The establishment of grounds at Vicksburg, Mississippi as a National Military Park perhaps best exemplifies the strides taken toward national reconciliation by the widespread support that effort garnered. Veterans from across the country gathered at Vicksburg in the late spring of 1890, to attend a grand reunion held May 25–30. An association of veterans was formed to prepare for the expected magnitude of the event. The Blue and Gray Association was organized by charter in November, 1889, complete with a board of directors. The scale of the expected event is indicated by the approval to raise $100,000 in capital stock. Attendees of the reunion participated in a parade, field trips to outlying battlefields and visits to the interment sites of both Union and Confederate dead. The reunion was considered a success. Many veterans, however, noticed that the grounds over which they fought, bled and many had died, were ignored. The battlefield was virtually devoid of markings indicating the struggle that occurred there. Veterans left the reunion feeling that the grounds ‘‘deserved more and must be properly marked and preserved by our government’’ (Bearss, p. 3). Over the course of the next five years veterans returned sporadically to Vicksburg for a number of events. The desire for good will and reconciliation that existed and motivated the interactions between the former combatants is aptly expressed by Union veteran Charles Longley. In a February, 1895, letter to fellow Iowa veteran William T. Rigby, Longley notes,
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Vicksburg I appreciate fully your kindness in telling me of Gen Lees good opinion and for two reasons. 1st I like to have friends. 2d I wanted to make a lasting good impression as a soldier on our friends in the South. You and I were representing the Federal Army and preaching a gospel of Peace and Goodwill to representatives of the Confederate Army their wives and children—increasing or decreasing their heart loyalty to the United States. It is not a small thing that we succeeded and it is not a small thing to have the assurance of the fact from such as Gen Lee and Colonel Floweree. (Files VNMP, Longley letter, February 19, 1895, p. 1)
In the fall of 1895, many of the aged soldiers who participated in the Blue and Gray Association again joined forces to form the Vicksburg National Military Park Association. It was organized at a veterans’ meeting on October 22 and 23. According to the Iowa department of the Grand Army of the Republic, ‘‘The object of this organization, as indicated by its title, is to secure as a National Park the site of the siege and defense of Vicksburg.’’ (Files VNMP, Department of Iowa Circular, p. 1). The Vicksburg National Military Park Association was chartered as a corporation by the State of Mississippi on November 19, 1895, and conferred with the authority to . . . purchase, acquire by donation or otherwise, and to hold and dispose of real and personal property, and also to raise a fund either by subscriptions to the capital stock of this association, or by voluntary donation for the purpose of establishing a national military park in and around Vicksburg and to perpetually mark and designate the battlefields and other places of historic interest around said city. (Files VNMP, Charter of Incorporation, p. 1)
Former high ranking officers of both the Union and Confederate armies were represented among the officers, executive committee, and board of directors of the newly formed organization. Union Generals Moritmer Leggett, George McGinnis, and Lucius Fairchild joined Confederate Generals Stephen D. Lee, John B. Gordon, and Thomas Waul among the membership, which was indicative of the reconciliatory nature and work of the organization. The work of the association progressed rapidly. The first meeting of the Board of Directors produced an outline of grounds for inclusion in the park. According to Rigby, who was secretary of the association, ‘‘On motion of General Fairchild it was decided that ‘the proposed Park should include the lines of the earthworks of the opposing armies and the land included within these lines, with such additions as are necessary to include the Headquarters of Generals Grant and Pemberton. Such of the water batteries as it may be desirable to designate, and other historical spots, the whole not to exceed four thousand acres’’’ (Files VNMP, Rigby, Brief History of Vicksburg National Military Park Association, p. 4). The board’s executive members appointed a committee charged with framing and presenting a bill for the establishment of a National Military Park at Vicksburg to
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Congress. The proposal of General Fairchild was incorporated into the bill with a modification to the recommended acreage. Based on an estimated cost of thirty-five dollars an acre, land acquisition of twelve hundred acres as opposed to the desired four thousand was suggested. The bill garnered the support of thirteen different states. By joint resolutions of their legislatures, Mississippi, Iowa, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Tennessee all endorsed passage of the bill. Numerous veterans’ organizations including Department Encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic and Commanderys of the Loyal Legion encouraged passage of the bill. After three successive years in which members of the association traveled to Washington to urge passage of the bill, success was achieved early in 1899. The bill was passed by the Houses of Representatives on February 6, followed the Senate on the tenth, and became law with the signature of President McKinley on the twenty-first. Many aging warriors passed from this world to the next before realizing their dream of establishing a park over the siege and defense lines at Vicksburg. During the early years of the twentieth century, many of those veterans that remained returned to the scene of battle to mark their positions. Union Major D. W. Reed, a veteran of the Vicksburg campaign, stated the purpose behind the tireless efforts of the old soldiers: It is not intended that these parks will be ornamental pleasure grounds. The real object is to restore these historic fields to substantially the conditions they were in at the time of the battles; and, in harmony with that idea, these parks will be devoted strictly to the illustration of the great struggles which rendered them famous. In these parks every incident of the battle will be treated from an impartial standpoint of history, without sectional animosity or bias, and in all markings or monuments justice will be shown alike to vanquished and victors. On one or the other of these fields the most distinguished generals of North and South have commanded, and troops from nearly every state and section fought; so that by securing and preserving these fields intact as representative examples of the war, the Government will be able to perpetuate their history, so that they may serve as permanent object lessons of American courage and valor, and each constructed on a grand scale not to be found elsewhere in the world. (Iowa Commandery 1898, pp. 372–373)
The desires for commemoration, preservation and reconciliation among Civil War veterans were inextricably intertwined and naturally evolved from one another. The gathering of veterans in reunions across the country sowed the seeds of reconciliation and resulted in the desire to commemorate and memorialize common experiences. The desire for and accomplishment of preservation on a national level followed. Reconciliation was thus achieved in a communal sense and reunion came full circle. It was the veterans themselves, those who fought and bled over the grounds of numberless Civil War battlefields across the country that worked tirelessly to see that the park was
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established, marked their lines and positions, and provided for the erection of monuments for the purpose of honoring the sacrifices made over those grounds. Vicksburg National Military Park is a memorial that tells of the devotion of soldiers and their shared experiences of sacrifice that transcended the boundaries of North and South. It also tells us of the commitment of a grateful citizenry in their efforts to honor unto posterity those sacrifices, and finally the park tells us of a deeply wounded nation and its desire for reconciliation. Vicksburg National Military Park tells the story of the Vicksburg Campaign and a shared experience. It commemorates the devotion of soldiers and their common experience of sacrifice, the commitment of a grateful citizenry, and the desire for reconciliation of a deeply wounded nation. In this one succinct inscription, ‘‘Here brothers fought for their principles, here heroes died for their country and a united people will forever cherish the precious legacy of their noble manhood’’ (Programme Pennsylvania Day, p. 1). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bearss, Edwin C., Administrative History. Unpublished Manuscript. Files of Vicksburg National Military Park Archives, Vicksburg, Mississippi. Boynton, H. V., compiler. Joint Committee to represent the Congress. Dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, September 18–20, 1895. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896. Files of Vicksburg National Military Park Archives. Administrative Series, box 7, folder 158, Vicksburg, MS. Iowa Commandery Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. War Sketches and Incidents. vol. 2. 1898. Reprint, Wilmington: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1994. Longley, Charles. Letter to William T. Rigby. February 19, 1895. Files of Vicksburg National Military Park Archives, Vicksburg, Mississippi. Maxey, William H. Letter to Father. September 5, 1861. Files of Manassas National Battlefield Park Archives, Manassas, Virginia. Programme Pennsylvania Day, 1906. Irving Press, New York. Files of Vicksburg National Military Park Archives, Monumentation Series, box 3, folder 94. Vicksburg, MS. Rigby, William, T. Brief History of Vicksburg National Military Park Association. December 7, 1899. Files of Vicksburg National Military Park Archives, Vicksburg, Mississippi. Unrau, Harlan D. Administrative History: Gettysburg National Military Park and National Cemetery. Washington: National Park Service, 1991. Robbie C. Smith
GETTYSBURG The battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863, fought in Adams County, Pennsylvania, was the largest and blood-
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iest military engagement of the Civil War. Over 160,000 men from the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), and the Federal Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George Gordon Meade (1815–1872), had struggled over the hills, woods, ridges, and fields around the small town. The fighting was as fierce as any that took place during the war, and on several occasions, the outcome of the conflict hung narrowly in balance. When the battle ended, however, the Union army still held its position, and the Rebels were forced to admit defeat. According to Stephen Sears in his 2003 book Gettysburg, Lee lost 22,625 men over the course of the battle, while Meade’s losses were 23,049 men. Combined casualties for the two armies over the course of the campaign equaled 50,674 men, including 7,691 dead (Sears 2003, p. 498). Almost from the moment the last weapon was fired, Northern troops and civilians sensed that Gettysburg was uniquely important. This feeling grew in part from the staggering scale as well as the death toll of the battle. But in large measure, it came about because the battle was an unquestioned victory for the Army of the Potomac, ending a string of embarrassing defeats dealt it by Lee’s Rebels. Initially, many Northerners thought the victory at Gettysburg, combined with Union triumphs in the West, might herald the end of the war. It did not. Two more years of bloody fighting remained before the conflict would close. Regardless of the disappointing aftermath of the campaign, however, the feeling that this battle was special prevailed. Northerners felt compelled to memorialize the battle, even while the outcome of the war remained uncertain.
Commemorating a Fallen Leader In the summer of 1863, Major General John F. Reynolds (1820–1863) was one of the most capable officers in the Army of the Potomac. Offered command of the army in the days leading up to the battle of Gettysburg, Reynolds, disdainful of meddling by politicians in the army’s management, refused the job. The post went instead to Meade. Thus it was Reynolds who rode into Gettysburg at midmorning of July 1, 1863, at the head of the Union I and XI Corps. Approving the decision of Brigadier General John Buford (1826–1863) to provoke a fight at Gettysburg, Reynolds ordered his troops into the battle, determined to buy time for the rest of the army to reach the field and occupy the high ground south of town. This quick-thinking decision was critical to the outcome of the contest. Even though the Federal I and XI Corps were eventually routed by attacking Confederates, their resistance bought Meade time to get most of his army onto the heights it would successfully defend on July 2 and 3. John Reynolds did not live to see the fruits of his decisiveness. As Federal infantry rushed forward to meet attacking Confederates, Reynolds was killed instantly when a Rebel bullet struck him in the back of the neck.
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Gettysburg
The extreme left flank of the Union army was positioned on Little Round Top, whose elevation afforded the army a strategic advantage. Confederate troops attempted to overrun Little Round Top and split the Union defense, but could not defeat Colonel Strong Vincent’s brigade. The Library of Congress The Federal position in Gettysburg.
He was the first Union general lost in the battle and one of the most talented (Sears 2003, p. 170). The death of their commander was a painful blow to the men of the I Corps. Shortly after the battle, the idea of building a memorial to the fallen general surfaced. Colonel Charles Wainwright (1826–1907) was the commanding officer of the I Corps’s artillery. He noted in his diary, edited by Allan Nevins and reprinted in 1998 under the title, A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865, that it was Major J. M. ‘‘Ben’’ Sanderson, who initially proposed the erection of a monument to Reynolds. ‘‘At the time we were on the march and could do nothing in the matter,’’ Wainwright recorded on August 29, 1863. But once the rival armies paused along the
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Rappahannock River in Virginia, the opportunity arose for Reynolds’s former staff to discuss the issue. Several of them agreed upon a plan, and Wainwright went to the camp of the Pennsylvania Reserves, whom Reynolds had once led, and proposed an effort to raise money for constructing a proper monument. ‘‘All seem anxious to carry out the matter,’’ the colonel happily informed his journal (Nevins 1998, p. 278). The enthusiasm was real and the intent sincere. Officers and men contributed the first funding for the proposed monument. But the effort quickly slipped into the background as the immediate realities of an unfinished war took precedence. Many of those who subscribed to the cause would join Reynolds in death before the first anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.
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Despite the hopes and plans of Wainwright, Sanderson, and others, the conflict would have to end and time would need to pass before the memorial they envisioned could be funded, designed, and built. Not until 1871 would the idea born in July 1863 see fruition. Nonetheless, the statue of John Reynolds would be the first monument raised on the battlefield to a specific individual.
Dedicating a Cemetery Even as civilian volunteers and medical personnel strove to deal with the tens of thousands of wounded scattered in temporary hospitals all around Gettysburg, the first steps were taken to preserve the scene of action as a monument. Learning that weather was exposing the bodies of soldiers buried in temporary graves immediately after the fighting, the governor of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894), authorized David Wills (1831–1894), a Gettysburg lawyer, to purchase land for the construction of a permanent soldiers’ cemetery. The site selected by Wills was adjacent to the existing Evergreen Cemetery, which gave Cemetery Hill, a key geographic feature of the battle, its name. Now it would become the final resting place for more than 3,600 Union troops killed in the battle (Davis 2002, p. 12). The landscape architect William Saunders (1822– 1900) of the Department of Agriculture was given the mission of designing the cemetery. Saunders produced a simple but elegant plan for the 17-acre site. A ‘‘soldiers’ monument’’ would form the center of the cemetery, with graves extending from it in semicircular rows. The dead would be grouped together by state; the size of each state’s ‘‘lot’’ in proportion to the number of its fallen. No Confederate dead would be included. Saunders’s design was quickly approved by a hastily appointed board of commissioners (Davis 2002, p. 12). Work on the cemetery began promptly, spurred by the necessity of retrieving already decaying bodies from shallow graves. Even as this task was carried on, however, the commissioners decided to hold an official dedication ceremony for the site. The event took place on November 19, 1863—a mere 139 days after the end of the battle. Some 15,000 people watched as a military procession escorted dignitaries from Gettysburg to the as-yet unfinished cemetery. In his beautifully illustrated 2003 work, Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History, David Eicher notes that the honored guests included President Abraham Lincoln, Governor Curtin, three members of Lincoln’s cabinet, and the French ambassador to the United States. Also included was David Wills, in whose home the president stayed the night before the ceremony (2003, pp. 256, 264). Several thousand spectators followed the procession to the cemetery. Here they heard the famous orator Edward Everett (1794–1865) give a flowery 117minute-long speech recounting the history of the battle
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and the campaign that led to it. Following Everett, Lincoln was given an opportunity to make a few remarks. The president spoke for only two minutes. In that brief span, Lincoln uttered his most famous words—the Gettysburg Address (Eicher 2003, p. 262). The ceremony over, the work of reinterment continued. Ultimately, 3,629 Federal dead were laid to rest within the cemetery boundaries. Names could be attached to only 1,965 of the men whose remains reside there— 1,664 headstones merely read ‘‘unknown’’ (Eicher 2003, p. 262; Davis 2002, p. 16). Work on the cemetery continued into 1864. The last bodies were buried, the grounds beautifully landscaped, and a stone wall erected around the site. On July 4, 1865, amid another ceremony, the cornerstone of the envisioned Soldiers’ Monument was laid in the cemetery grounds. This final piece of Saunders’s original plan was finished four years later and dedicated in 1869 (Davis 2002, p. 16; Eicher 2003, p. 271).
Saving the Battlefield While Governor Curtin and David Wills worked to build the soldiers’ cemetery, others conceived additional means to commemorate the battle. As William C. Davis explains in the 2002 edition of Gettysburg: The Story behind the Scenery, David McConaughy (1823–1902) was the prime mover in the effort to preserve the battlefield. On August 14, 1863, in an address to Gettysburg’s leading citizens, he proposed the town acquire as much of the battleground as possible, and that the field along with its breastworks, fences, and buildings, be ‘‘preserved and perpetuated in the exact form and condition they presented during the battle.’’ The good people of Gettysburg concurred. The battlefield, they felt, should become a lasting monument to ‘‘perpetuate the great principles of human liberty and just government.’’ Union soldiers had fought to preserve and would help instill those virtues to ‘‘all men who in all time’’ should visit the battleground (Davis 2002, p. 12). McConaughy was pleased with the response but disinclined to wait for community action. Before the war was over, he had purchased Culp’s Hill and the eastern slope of Cemetery Hill—both anchors for Meade’s right flank during the battle—as well as parts of Big Round Top and Little Round Top, scenes of heavy fighting on the Union left flank. McConaughy paid for these properties out of his own pocket, anticipating reimbursement by the government of Pennsylvania when the battlefield became an official monument (Davis 2002, p. 12). On April 30, 1864, the state of Pennsylvania formally chartered the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA). Its purpose was to ‘‘hold and preserve the battlegrounds of Gettysburg,’’ and care for ‘‘such memorial structures as a generous and patriotic people may aid to erect to commemorate the heroic deeds, the struggles and the triumphs of their brave
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Little and Big Round Top in Gettysburg, scenes of heavy battle. The battle of Gettysburg was fought in Adams County, PA, July 1–3, 1863. It was the largest and most gruesome battle of the Civil War, where 22,625 Confederate soldiers and 23,049 Union soldiers perished. The Library of Congress.
defenders.’’ Membership required a ten-dollar donation and bestowed the right to vote in annual elections for the association’s president and twenty-one-member board of directors. In 1866 Pennsylvania’s legislature gave the association power to buy land relevant to the battle, build roads, construct monuments, and seize land when owners would not sell. Association property was declared tax-exempt in perpetuity (Davis 2002, p.16). David McConaughy became the association’s legal counsel and was tasked with raising money for the project, hopefully from the legislatures of Northern states whose men had fought at Gettysburg. As an inducement, the governor of any state whose legislature donated funds to the association automatically became a member of the board of directors. Pennsylvania was the first to contribute, granting $4,000 to the association in 1864. To the disappointment of McConaughy and the GBMA, however, other states failed to follow suit. The war would be long over before the vision of the association and the foresight of David McConaughy would truly bear fruit (Davis 2002, p. 17).
Temporary Failure, Ultimate Triumph Beyond the creation of the soldiers’ cemetery, little was done to physically commemorate the battle during and immediately after the war. Although Northerners, particularly those in the Northeastern states, continued to perceive Gettysburg as an important victory, two more horrible years of war remained after July 1863. The necessity of carrying on the conflict, the growing unpopularity of the war, the divisiveness it entailed, the real possibility of Northern defeat, and the seemingly endless flood of casualties produced by the final campaigns shoved Gettysburg into the background. During the remaining years of the war, there were more important things to do. After the war, the rancor of Reconstruction and the settlement of the West captured the public’s attention. The nation’s wounds remained raw as the enormous cost of the war was digested. Most people wanted to forget the recent horror and get on with their lives.
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By the late 1870s the worst aftereffects of the war were wearing off. The dormant impulse to honor fallen leaders and their troops began to reemerge. As the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle neared, there was an outburst of activity. Time had begun to heal the conflict’s wounds; aging veterans were eager to preserve the scene and the story of what they had done; and the nation as a whole had started to come to grips not only with the cost of the war but also its meaning. Gettysburg would ultimately become the symbol of the entire conflict. As the site of the largest and bloodiest battle of the war, it seemed the natural place for the principal memorial to the struggle. Lincoln’s famous speech on the battlefield, which so concisely encapsulated what Northerners believed the war and the battle were about, added weight to this point of view. Even the South, initially barred from commemorating the service and loss of its sons, was invited and willing to tell its side of the battle at Gettysburg. When the nation was finally ready to use the battlefield to remember and teach what had happened there, to honor those who had fallen and participated in the titanic struggle, the ground was found well prepared by the wartime efforts of Gettysburg’s citizens. Their foresight in preserving the physical battleground and providing a final resting place for some of its victims proved the foundation for what is today the nation’s most famous and most frequently visited national battlefield park. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, William C. Gettysburg: The Story behind the Scenery. Las Vegas, NV: KC Publications, 2002. Eicher, David J. Gettysburg Battlefield: The Definitive Illustrated History. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003. Nevins, Allan, ed. A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Sears, Stephen. Gettysburg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Jeffrey William Hunt
ANTIETAM Antietam National Battlefield, first preserved by Congress in 1890, is one of the most pristine battlefields in the United States. Situated in rural western Maryland near the small town of Sharpsburg, the battlefield has not been subject to the same urbanization and industrialization that have compromised so many other Civil War fields of conflict. As a result, Antietam is unspoiled, giving visitors a glimpse back in time at famous sites such as Bloody Lane, Burnside Bridge, and Miller’s Cornfield, where many historians say the fate of the United States hung in the balance and was decided in favor of unity (Trail 2005).
National Context Antietam’s establishment in 1890 was part of a national movement to preserve battlefields. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the U.S. government preserved five battlefields in varying degrees: Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was established first; Antietam second, in the same year; then Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg in later years. Thirty years after the war, when tempers had cooled and old age had mellowed many of the veterans, white Northerners and Southerners began to reconcile through memorialization, commemoration, and preservation at, among other places, their old battlefields. Antietam did not fit the national mold, however. The four other battlefields established during the 1890s were much larger parks, run by permanent commissions made up of veterans. Moreover, the intent, particularly at Chickamauga and Shiloh, and to a lesser degree at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, was to preserve entire fields of conflict, or at least the most important parts of them. This view of preservation was promoted by the United States’s chief preservationist of the time, Henry V. Boynton (1835–1905), who served first as the historian and then as the commission chairman at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (Smith 2008). An alternate plan of preservation was adopted for Antietam, promoted by the other major preservationist of the day, Major George B. Davis of the U.S. Army. Davis believed preserving entire battlefields was unnecessary, and that limited purchase of land along roads and lines of battle would suffice, leaving the bulk of the battlefields, particularly those in rural areas, in private farmers’ hands. Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont (1851–1905) agreed, arguing that buying the entire battlefield would necessitate ‘‘operations of agriculture,’’ which would be costly and was ‘‘outside the ordinary and usual scope of governmental endeavor’’ (Annual Report of the Secretary GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
of War—1894, pp. 29, 255–256). Davis led major effort at Antietam in the 1890s, and that battlefield therefore was much smaller and less monumented than the others. Moreover, Davis’s ‘‘Antietam Plan,’’ as it was called, was the model for more battlefields throughout the twentieth century as the United States tried to save money and balance the competing effects of preservation and urbanization (Lee 1973).
Establishment Veterans had placed monuments at Antietam as early as 1887, but the major effort to create a park did not develop until 1890, when a veterans’ association and local congressman, Louis E. McComas (1846–1907), proffered a bill to establish a major park like that being contemplated at Chickamauga. McComas was never able to get his bill passed, but according to the local Keedysville Antietam Wavelet, he was able to get, ‘‘by a short cut,’’ a limited appropriation rider for a board of veterans to mark lines of battle at Antietam (Antietam Wavelet, June 21, 1890). In 1891, the secretary of war appointed this board, which consisted of Union colonel John C. Stearns of the Ninth Vermont Infantry and Confederate major general Henry Heth (1825–1899). Right away, all could see that the Antietam project was not as well supported as the other parks then under development. Rather than a three-man commission like the others, Antietam battlefield was governed by a two-man board that did not have nearly the authority or the resources the other commissions had. Likewise, Antietam was not established as a park like the others, but was left simply as an agricultural area with battle lines marked thereon. ‘‘Had we been placed on the same footing with the Chickamauga Commission,’’ Stearns and Heth wrote on January 13, 1894, ‘‘we would have been able to report greater progress’’ (Antietam Board to R. N. Bachelder, RG 92, E 707, box 1).
Building the Park Stearns and Heth began their work in August 1891, but made little progress for the next three years. They managed to locate the lines of battle for the armies and began to mark some of them, but old age, sickness, and limited governmental support caused delay after delay. Heth wrote on August 1, 1894, that ‘‘it is hardly necessary to add that in consequence of Col. Stearns’ bad health, the work has not progressed as rapidly as it would otherwise have done’’ (Henry Heth to R. N. Bachelder, RG 92, E 707, box 1). Thus, little was accomplished in the first years of the board’s existence. Secretary of War Lamont soon tired of the lack of progress at Antietam: While fully aware of the difficulties that attend upon undertakings of this kind, at Antietam and elsewhere, I cannot resist the conclusion that the Board as organized under the order of June 17, 1891, is less expeditious in its operations than Congress and the
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Antietam Department have a reasonable right to expect . . . . Over three years have passed since the scheme was undertaken, and the Board has so little to show in the way of accomplished results as to lead to the belief that difficulties have been encountered which are either insurmountable, or cannot be overcome by the Board as at present constituted. (Daniel S. Lamont to Quartermaster General, July 14, 1894, RG 92, E 707, box 1)
In summer 1894 Lamont thus called Stearns and Heth to account for their work. Stearns immediately resigned, whereupon Lamont sent George B. Davis to take over the effort. Davis was then head of the board publishing the Official Records, and would later become the army’s judge advocate general. As president of the Antietam board, Davis oversaw the effort, constantly pushing to get the work done. ‘‘It is only by constantly pushing in these small ways that we can keep the whole project in motion,’’ Davis wrote (George B. Davis to E.A. Carman, November 27, 1894, RG 92, E 707, box 1). In addition to Davis, a board was still needed to actually do the work. The secretary of war appointed Ezra Carman of the Thirteenth New Jersey Infantry to be the Union representative on site at Antietam, and reappointed Heth to the Confederate side. Lamont also appointed Jed Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson’s famous cartographer during the war, as the engineer tasked with making maps of the battle and battlefield.
Heth, Hotchkiss, Davis, and particularly Carman then went to work with a vengeance, producing in eleven months more results than Stearns and Heth had produced in three years. The board first began to create maps of the battlefield, but this task was plagued with problems, and even led to Hotchkiss’s eventual removal from the project. Davis wrote that Hotchkiss’s work ‘‘well nigh proved a failure’’ (George B. Davis Memorandum, August 2, 1895, RG 92, E 707, box 2). Gettysburg National Military Park’s engineer, Emmor B. Cope, assisted the board thereafter. More tangibly, Davis, Heth, and Carman began working on the battlefield itself. They bought a few acres of land, mostly where roads needed to be opened to allow access to the entire battlefield, but endured some opposition from landowners. At one point, Davis told Carman that he would come to Antietam ‘‘chiefly to have a showdown about land’’ (George B. Davis to E. A. Carman, November 6, 1894, RG 92, E 707, box 1). The veterans also began writing text for the several hundred tablets that would be placed along the roadways the government had bought. A few artillery pieces went up, as did fencing and a few monuments to mark where general officers had been killed. The board also built an observation tower at the Bloody Lane, and individual states erected monuments to their troops. The majority of the work was completed by August 1895, when Davis resigned as president of the board to
Antietam National Battlefield in rural western Maryland. Antietam National Battlefield was first preserved by Congress in 1890. Due to the lack of urbanization at the location of the battlefield, it is left unblemished. This is a photograph of deceased Confederate soldiers by a fence on Hagerstown Road at this site. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. The Library of Congress.
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become a professor at West Point. He argued he would be ‘‘too great a distance to direct the work to advantage’’ (George B. Davis memorandum, August 1, 1895, RG 92, E 707, box 2). In his place, to tie up the loose ends, was army officer George W. Davis (no relation to George B. Davis). He managed to finish a majority of the work before he, too, left to lead troops during the Spanish-American War. Heth and Carman worked periodically on the site for a few years; with Heth’s death in 1899, Carman became the chief historian of the battle and battlefield. With the board’s demise and Carman’s eventual appointment as chairman of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park Commission, the government property at Antietam fell solely to the local cemetery superintendent, but it proved to be far too much work for him. The quartermaster general even told the secretary of war that ‘‘complaint is made that there is no supervision and no responsible authority who may guard the tablets erected by the government and the monuments erected by states and regimental organizations’’ (J. M. Ludington, May 3, 1900, RG 92, E 89, file 109863). The War Department then appointed a series of superintendents, but had bad luck with a few of them. One was murdered, and one was fired for drunkenness when a War Department inspector reported he was ‘‘whiskey crazy and that he is a dangerous man to have as superintendent of the Battlefield (C. P. Spence to Depot Quartermaster, April 14, 1913, RG 92, E 89, file 371906). By the mid-1910s, however, Antietam came under the care of a series of superintendents with little fanfare, and this governance lasted until 1933.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Annual Report of the Secretary of War—1894. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. Antietam Wavelet, Keedysville, Maryland, June 21, 1890. Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in Memory and Reunion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ‘‘General Correspondence, 1890–1914.’’ E 89, RG 92, Records of the Quartermaster General. National Archives, Washington, DC. Lee, Ronald F. The Origin and Evolution of the National Military Park Idea. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1973. ‘‘Records of Cemeterial Commissions, 1893–1916, Antietam Battlefield Commission, Letters and Reports to Secretary, 1894–1898.’’ E 707, RG 92, Records of the Quartermaster General. National Archives, Washington, DC. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. Snell, Charles W., and Sharon A. Brown. Antietam National Battlefield and National Cemetery. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1986. Trail, Susan W. ‘‘Remembering Antietam: Commemoration and Preservation of a Civil War Battlefield.’’ Ph. D. diss. University of Maryland, 2005. Timothy B. Smith
Modern Era Antietam became part of the National Park Service in 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred the battlefields from the War Department to the Department of the Interior. Thereafter, Antietam became a fullfledged park, a status it had never been given under the War Department. A major change has come to Antietam in recent years that is as ironic as it is appropriate. Since the 1980s, the National Park Service has begun to acquire large amounts of land at Antietam—land purposefully left in private ownership in the 1890s to save the government money. The so-called ‘‘Antietam Plan,’’ has been thrown on the scrap heap of history in favor of total preservation. In the years after the 1890s, most Civil War parks such as Petersburg, Stones River, Kennesaw Mountain, Manassas, and Richmond had been developed along this ‘‘Antietam Plan.’’ Now, entities such as the National Park Service, the Conservation Fund, and particularly the Civil War Preservation Trust have swung the pendulum of preservation theory back to Boynton’s idea of total preservation. Of course, the results have been beneficial to the park that is considered one of the most beautiful sites in America’s historic landscape (Smith 2008).
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National Cemeteries
There are perhaps no more hallowed locations in the United States than the various national cemeteries. These quiet reserves are the final resting places of thousands and thousands of soldiers who served in the U.S. military. While to be sure many soldiers died in America’s wars prior to the 1860s, it was not until the Civil War that the United States set aside specific places to bury and honor its military heroes.
Wartime Cemeteries The burial of the Civil War dead began as soon as the conflict erupted. With more pressing matters to attend to, army units normally buried their dead, particularly battle casualties, on the ground where they had fought. In addition to battlefields, there were other locations where large numbers of soldiers died, such as hospitals and prisons, and in these places too soldiers were buried nearby. The sites where mass burials took place were normally on private land that had to be bought or condemned by the government. In order to legitimize national burial sites on private land, the 37th Congress
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passed legislation allowing for the establishment of national cemeteries as deemed necessary by the president. Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on July 17, 1862. Section 18 gave him the ‘‘power, whenever in his opinion it is expedient, to purchase cemetery grounds and cause them to be securely enclosed, to be used as a national cemetery for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country’’ (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3). With the power granted by this legislation, the Lincoln administration created fourteen national cemeteries in 1862. Many were near the Northern capital, such as the one at Soldiers’ Home, but other troop induction and care centers also gained national cemeteries, such as those at Annapolis, Maryland; Camp Butler, Illinois; and Philadelphia. In the early days of the war, these cemeteries held more soldiers who had died of disease than of battle wounds (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3). A few of the fourteen original 1862 cemeteries were located on battlefields. One was on the small battleground of Mill Springs in eastern Kentucky, the site of a January 1862 battle. More famous cemeteries at Chattanooga, Tennessee; Sharpsburg, Maryland; and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, soon developed as well, as did a cemetery just outside Washington, DC, destined to become America’s most enduring symbol of valor: Arlington National Cemetery (Holt 1992, pp. 2–3, Piehler 1995, p. 52). One of the most famous national cemeteries was begun at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of a titanic battle
in July 1863. According to the War Department report Roll of Honor, the cemetery ‘‘embraces that portion of the ground occupied by the center of the Union line of battle on the 2d and 3d of July, 1863, . . . [this being] one of the most prominent and important positions on the field’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 16, p. 76). Following the battle, a corporation charged with honoring its dead was formed, led by a local Gettysburg attorney, David Wills. Its board of directors, made up of representatives from every state who had dead interred there, bought some seventeen acres in August 1863 and began the reburial of Union soldiers. This new cemetery commanded ‘‘an extensive view of the surrounding country, which is highly picturesque’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 16, p. 76). By November 1863, some 3,512 Union soldiers from seventeen states had been laid to rest in a semicircular pattern around a central hub. On November 19, 1863, luminaries assembled for the ‘‘appropriate and imposing ceremonies’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 16, p. 76). President Abraham Lincoln made ‘‘a few appropriate remarks,’’ and in doing so defined for the nation not only why they were fighting, but also why this certain section of land on Cemetery Hill had been preserved and why it was so important. ‘‘We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives,’’ Lincoln said, calling on the nation to continue the fight ‘‘that these dead shall not have died in vain’’ (Wills 1992).
Alexandria, Virginia, Soldiers’ Cemetery. The Civil War marked the first time in the United States that specific cemeteries were constructed to honor fallen soldiers. Planners built many of these early national cemeteries on actual battlegrounds and allowed for individual burial sites instead of common graves. The Library of Congress.
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In the years after the dedication, the cemetery took on the form of many national cemeteries. It was ‘‘enclosed by a well-built stone wall, surmounted with heavy dressed capping stone, with a gateway of ornamental iron-work’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 16, p. 76). In 1869 the corporation marked the site of Lincoln’s speech. In 1872, following claims that the corporation was not providing proper oversight for the venture, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania transferred the cemetery grounds to the Federal government (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865– 1871, no. 16, p. 76). Another early burial site was the Chattanooga National Cemetery, established by general order of Major General George H. Thomas on December 25, 1863. Demonstrating the era’s desire to simultaneously preserve and honor, Thomas wrote that the memorial cemetery was be established ‘‘in commemoration of the Battles of Chattanooga, November 23–27, 1863’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, pp. 11–13). In his effort to preserve part of the Chattanooga battlefield, Thomas directed that a small knoll near Orchard Knob be used as the burial ground. The knoll, rising a few feet above the plain of Chattanooga, was ‘‘the most suitable ground for the purpose contemplated that I have ever seen’’ and offered ‘‘a view of unsurpassed loveliness,’’ testified the chaplain in charge of the cemetery (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, pp. 11– 13). The grounds would eventually receive the standard stone wall, lodge, avenues, and decorations of most national cemeteries. Comprising some seventy-five acres originally, the cemetery received the dead not only from Chattanooga, but also from Chickamauga, numerous local burial sites in the vicinity, and even the Atlanta Campaign. By 1870, more than 12,000 Union soldiers were interred at Chattanooga National Cemetery (Holt 1992, p. 65; U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865– 1871, no. 11, pp. 11–13). The Antietam National Cemetery also began as a nongovernmental effort. Established by the Antietam National Cemetery Association, which was organized under the laws of the state of Maryland in March 1865, it was ‘‘composed of members from the different loyal States whose dead are represented in the Cemetery’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 15, p. 2). The association bought land, built an encircling wall, and erected a lodge. The corporation soon found itself in debt, however, and ‘‘a large share of this work was undertaken by the General Government’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 15, p. 2). Soon, the buried numbered 4,695, from nineteen different states. A third of the dead were disinterred from the Antietam battlefield, but others came from the battlefields at Monocacy, South Mountain, and Harpers Ferry, and also from several hospital sites in the area. The War Department completed the burial of bodies at Antietam National Cemetery on
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September 4, 1867, and a dedication was held later that month. The cemetery itself was a beautiful 9.5 acres situated inside what had been Confederate lines on a tall hill just east of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Its grounds are ‘‘handsomely laid off, partly in a semicircular form, with a twenty-foot avenue surrounding the whole, and numerous smaller paths intersecting the graves’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 15, p. 2). Because the Antietam National Cemetery Association was unable to remain free of debt even with federal money infused into the project, Congress directed the Secretary of War to take control of the cemetery in 1870, although it was not until 1877, when Congress appropriated money to pay the debt of the original commission, that the cemetery became a completely federal project (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 15, p. 2). These wartime national cemeteries, and many others located primarily on battlefields, inadvertently preserved a portion of these fields during the war itself. They also reflected a transition in the American mindset regarding the dead, particularly Union military dead. For decades prior, military dead from a battlefield were normally buried as a group with one large central monument or memorial to mark the location. Occurring simultaneously with the development of manicured, park-like civilian cemeteries emphasizing individual gravesites, the national cemetery phenomenon brought a new focus on commemorating individual soldiers (Piehler 1995, p. 51). Perhaps Thomas B. Van Horne, the chaplain in charge of the Chattanooga National Cemetery, best summed up this developing attitude. Van Horne noted that extreme care would be taken at Chattanooga to secure a short military history of every officer and soldier interred in the cemetery whose remains have been identified. . . . It seems eminently fitting that this should be done. . . . It accords with our intense individualism as a people, and with the value we attach to individual life; and it is demanded by the eminent worth of those for whom historic notice would thus be secured. (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 11, p. 12)
Postwar Cemeteries These patterns of individual memorialization and inadvertent preservation of Civil War battlefields spread to other cemeteries after the war ended. Many battlefields were in the Deep South, where the war had precluded any burial work at such places as Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, and Andersonville, Georgia. Some areas under secure Federal control, such as Chattanooga, received national cemeteries during the war, but it was not until after the war that many other burial grounds on Southern battlefields were established (Smith 2004, p. 10). For example, the cemetery at Vicksburg, Mississippi, was established in 1866. Vicksburg National Cemetery originally comprised some forty acres and was terraced and landscaped on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi
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River, the same bluffs ‘‘upon which stood the rebel batteries that offered most effective resistance to the passage of our gunboats past the city’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 24, p. 7). By 1869, over fifteen thousand Union dead had been removed to the cemetery from such nearby battle sites as Champion Hill and Port Gibson, as well as from far away places such as Meridian and even sites across the river in Louisiana. The identity of many of the bodies was impossible to determine, however, and the problem of identifying bodies after five years soon became increasingly obvious. As the Roll of Honor observed, ‘‘it must soon become impossible, if it is not already so, to distinguish the remains of a soldier from those of a citizen’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 24, p. 7). Nevertheless, the cemetery received the customary lodge and encircling wall, as well as walks and avenues to allow easy access to each grave (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 24, p. 7). The ten-acre cemetery at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, was also established in 1866. It came to contain more than 3,500 dead from that battlefield as well as from other areas along the Tennessee River, such as Fort Henry. The unique Pittsburg Landing National Cemetery contains ‘‘numerous Regimental Groups, of which there are no less than twenty-nine’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 20, p. 119). These groupings were facilitated by the soldiers’ previous burial together in ‘‘scattered graves through that wild and desolate country’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 20, p. 119). ‘‘On no other battle-field through the entire South and Southwest,’’ the Roll of Honor observed, ‘‘does there seem to have been so great care and pains taken in the burial of the dead and in providing for their future identification’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 20, p. 119). The grounds of the cemetery contained ‘‘a rough stone wall of the most substantial character’’ and a ‘‘flag-staff . . . overlooking the river, from which the Union flag is kept constantly floating’’ (U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps 1865–1871, no. 20, p. 119). One 1867 visitor described the cemetery as ‘‘the handsomest cemetery in the South’’ (Smith 2004, p. 11). With the war ended and the need for hasty burial removed, and as other cemeteries were established, it soon became apparent that new legislation to legitimize what had already been done would be required. In many cases, such as Shiloh and Chattanooga, the dead had been placed on private land. As a result, in 1867 Congress passed an act to establish and protect national cemeteries (Meyers 1968, pp. 200–201). The act took the 1862 enabling legislation one step further by allowing and mandating certain measures. Specifically, the bill required that each cemetery be enclosed by a wall and have a lodge. Additionally, the legislation required each cemetery to have ‘‘a meritorious and trustworthy superintendent, who shall be selected from enlisted men of
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the army disabled in service,’’ and that each be inspected annually. The bill also required each cemetery to keep rolls of the dead with military information. Perhaps most importantly, the act allowed the Secretary of War to ‘‘enter upon and appropriate’’ needed land if the owners were not willing to sell (Meyers 1968, pp. 200–201). These measures thus insured that each cemetery would be protected and that each deceased soldier would be honored and remembered. Practically, the bill also took care of the growing problem of private ownership of cemeteries and legitimized condemnation, which would be a major stepping-stone toward future federal control of battlefields. Because of this act, the tracts of land on which the Shiloh and Chattanooga cemeteries stood were condemned, allowing for complete federalization. As time passed, more and more national cemeteries were established as more veterans died. With the more recent wars of the twentieth century, national cemetery populations have mushroomed, with new cemeteries being developed even in the twenty-first century. These recent wars have added the new phenomenon of national cemeteries being established abroad, such as the American Cemetery in Normandy, France. Still, as the system has grown and developed, it has kept its roots firmly planted in the Civil War era. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Holt, Dean W. American Military Cemeteries: A Comprehensive Illustrated Guide to the Hallowed Grounds of the United States, Including Cemeteries Overseas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. Meyers, Richard. The Vicksburg National Cemetery: An Administrative History. Washington DC: National Park Service, 1968. Neff, John R. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Smith, Timothy B. This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defence of the American Union, Interred in the National [and Other] Cemeteries. 27 nos. in 9 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865–1871. Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Timothy B. Smith
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The American Civil War, like many other wars, created a bond of brotherhood between the men who fought it. Comradery formed from shared privation, fear of battle, and the boredom of camp life helped soldiers cope with the war. Understandably, when the conflict ended former soldiers formed veterans’ organizations to remember the fallen, record their history, and support one another during the peace. Eventually two levels of organizations were formed: local groups that usually focused on participation in a local regiment during the war, and national organizations. Veterans began to establish regimental associations for the purpose of ‘‘strengthening and preserving those kind and fraternal feelings which bound soldiers together’’ (Wittenberg 2007, pp. 238–239). These associations also were intended to help former comrades-inarms who needed ‘‘help and protection, and to extend needful aid to the widows and orphans of our comrades who have fallen in the discharge of our duties’’ (Wittenberg 2007, pp. 238–239). In addition to these local organizations, a national, centralized organization was needed to bring veterans together and serve as a political tool for veterans’ benefits. The largest and best-known Union veterans’ organization was the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1866, the former army surgeons Benjamin Franklin Stephenson and
Veterans in the National Soldiers’ Home dining room. Local and national veterans’ organizations raised funds to
care for former soldiers unable to provide for themselves due to advanced age or injury. ª Corbis.
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William Rutledge founded Post 1 of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in Decatur, Illinois, to reunite men who formed the ‘‘greatest comradeship that ever knit men together’’ (Wilson 1905, pp. 9–15). Unlike regimental associations, which tended to be in a particular city or county, chapters of the GAR could be found coast to coast, allowing veterans who had relocated since the end of the war to join a veterans’ organization. The GAR quickly became the largest veterans’ group in the country, necessitating the formation of state departments and a national head (a structure similar to the Union army’s). The large influx of members was due to the GAR’s role in veterans’ affairs. Since its formation, the GAR had kept tabs on state and national legislation affecting veterans’ pensions. Its large membership commanded the attention of savvy politicians, and as a result GAR proposals were ‘‘adopted by Congress to a very great extent’’ (Miller 1911, pp. 294–296). In addition to the GAR, there was a national veterans’ organization made up of former Union officers. Like the Order of Cincinnati, which was formed by American officers immediately after the Revolution, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) was formed just days after the assassination of President Lincoln, amid rumors of conspiracies to destroy the federal government. The original purpose of MOLLUS was to thwart any attempts to overturn the government, but over time, the organization evolved to promote the same objectives advanced by the regimental associations and the GAR. Membership was restricted to commissioned officers who had served honorably in the war, their sons or heirs, and ‘‘gentlemen who, in civil life, during the Rebellion, were specially distinguished for conspicuous and constant loyalty to the National Government’’ (Military Order of the Loyal Legion 1909, p. 11). There was no national organization for former Confederate soldiers until 1889. Confederate veterans in some states, most notably Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, had formed state-level organizations but like their regimental counterparts, these organizations had little influence except in particular geographic areas. In addition to state organizations, Confederate veterans had created associations based on the regiments in which they had served. In order to meld all these local units into a national organization, Colonel J. F. Shipp proposed ‘‘a general organization of Confederates on the order of the Grand Army of the Republic’’ (Miller 1911, p. 296). Shipp’s proposal circulated all over the South, and at a meeting in New Orleans on June 10, 1889, it was agreed to create the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). All pre-existing organizations were folded into the UCV, which was modeled after the GAR and had the same organizational objectives—fraternity and help with veterans’ benefits. The first national encampment of Civil War veterans occurred July 3–5 in Chattanooga,
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As the early twentieth century progressed there were fewer and fewer Civil War veterans left. The GAR, which had more than 400,000 members at its height in the decade 1880–1890, by 1910 had been reduced to just over 200,000 members. It finally faded out of existence in 1956. Sensitive to their own mortality, GAR members believed that someone should continue to honor Civil War soldiers after they had passed on, so in 1881 the GAR had established the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, which evolved into the present-day Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW). Likewise, the UCV, which faded into history in 1951, had created in 1896 an organization similar to the SUVCW to carry on their memory, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). Both the SUVCW and SCV are the direct descendents of the Civil War veteran organizations. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The three cardinal principles of the Grand Army of the Republic. After the end of the Civil War, surviving solders
organized to preserve the memories of their lost comrades. Inspired by the principles of fraternity, loyalty, and charity emblazoned on its seal, the Grand Army of the Republic quickly became one of the preeminent national veterans’ organizations. The Library of Congress
with ‘‘reunion invitations extended ‘to veterans of both armies and to citizens of the Republic,’ and the dates purposely included Independence Day (Miller 1911, p. 298). The UCV’s constitution forbade ‘‘discussion of political or religious subjects nor any political action shall be permitted in the organization, and that any association violating that provision shall forfeit its membership’’ (Miller 1911, p. 298). Aside from the UCV, another, informal, national Confederate organization existed. In 1893 Sumner A. Cunningham established the Confederate Veteran, a monthly journal that was ‘‘intended as an organ of communication between Confederate soldiers and those who are interested in them and their affairs’’ (Confederate Veteran Magazine 1988, p. 1). The journal provided a forum in which Confederate veterans could relate stories from the war and also read about the successes and failures of other Confederate veteran groups across the South. Publication of the Confederate Veteran was discontinued after 1932 because there were few veterans still living.
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Beath, Robert B. History of the Grand Army of the Republic. New York: Bryan, Taylor, 1889. The Confederate Veteran Magazine: Volume I, January 1893–December 1893. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot, 1988. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Constitution and By-laws. Philadelphia: Author, 1909. Miller, Francis Trevelyan, ed. The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volume, vol. 10. New York: Review of Reviews, 1911. Phillips, Sydney A. Patriotic Societies of the United States and their Lapel Insignia. New York: Broadway, 1914. Wilson, Oliver M. The Grand Army of the Republic under its First Constitution and Ritual: Its Birth and Organization. Kansas City, MO: Franklin Hudson, 1905. Wittenburg, Eric J. Rush’s Lancers: The Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry in the Civil War. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007. William Backus
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Blue-Gray Reunions
The Civil War caused a deep and wide chasm of animosity between the people of the North and the South. Years of Reconstruction widened that gap even farther as the two regions recovered from war and vied for power over the future of the former slaves. As a result, not surprisingly, it took the United States many years to recover from the war, and the united nation only began to rise from the ashes in the mid- to late-1870s. As noted by one Civil War veteran, however, reconciliation took time: ‘‘He would indeed be impatient who looked for more speedy progress’’ (‘‘Camping on Chickamauga,’’ September 16, 1892). But by the 1880s and on into the
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1890s, when the federal government turned its back on racial issues and the gains made in the Reconstruction years, mollifying the South through segregation, Northerners and Southerners were growing friendlier toward one another. Evidence of this reconciliation can be seen best in the Blue-Gray reunions that brought veterans of the North and South together to remember and commemorate their war (Blight 2001). Despite the popularity of Decoration Day in both regions, few if any joint veterans’ reunions took place in the early and middle Reconstruction years. By the mid1870s, however, there were some joint observances, but these were few and far between. One of the earliest was in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1874, when veterans of both sides, the New York Times reported, formed ‘‘an association known as ‘The Order of Blues and Grays,’ its avowed purpose being the encouragement of kindly and frank relations between the survivors of both armies’’ (‘‘Editorial Article No. 5,’’ September 12, 1874). With the official end of Reconstruction in 1877, the proverbial chains of animosity were removed, allowing the two sides to begin reconciling. The 1876 national centennial
celebration helped foster this common feeling of oneness (Piehler 1995, pp. 75–76). By the late-1870s and certainly in the 1880s, joint reunions had become fairly common. Many were on the small scale of local reunions, but there were an impressive number of national joint reunions held as well. One took place at Atlanta in 1880; a headline in the Washington Post read, ‘‘Opening Day of the Reunion of the Boys in Blue and Gray’’ (‘‘The Atlanta Celebration,’’ October 19, 1880). Another was at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, in 1883: ‘‘Throughout the reunion the most cordial feeling has existed between the old Union and Confederate soldiers,’’ the Washington Post reported, ‘‘and the most courteous and generous sentiments have been expressed. Not a single unpleasant word has been uttered to mar the general harmony and enthusiasm. The men have camped together as though there had never been a difference between them’’ (‘‘Blended Blue and Gray,’’ August 12, 1883). An event at Gettysburg— virtually the only marked battlefield park in the 1880s— received a lot of attention because it was ‘‘the occasion of a reunion both of Northern and Southern veterans’’ (‘‘The Blue and the Gray,’’ August 12, 1883).
Gettysburg reunion. After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, relations warmed between former soldiers in the North and South, and joint reunions began to be held in the 1880s. Many of these early gatherings took place at Gettysburg, one of the first national military parks commemorating Civil War soldiers. The Library of Congress.
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African American Commemorations
By the 1890s, these reunions were fairly commonplace. With the establishment of the national military parks, numerous gatherings were held in connection with the famous sites. A joint reunion took place in 1889 to promote the idea of a national park at Chickamauga, and a similar joint veterans’ reunion of Shiloh soldiers was held at that battlefield on April 6 and 7, 1894. One participant, George W. McBride, remembered the Shiloh reunion and the park were ‘‘the offering of those who fought, of a fraternal brotherhood to the future’’ (McBride [1896] 2003, p. 227). The dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1895 brought as many as 75,000 attendees, many of them veterans from North and South. Vice President Adlai Stevenson I (1835–1914) spoke to the 1895 Chickamauga crowd about the veterans: ‘‘They meet, not in deadly conflict, but as brothers, under one flag—fellow citizens of a common country’’ (‘‘Cementing the Union,’’ September 20, 1895). In later years, the battlefields also served as gathering places for the dwindling number of Civil War veterans. Anniversaries were special times of joint commemoration, such as the fiftieth anniversaries of Gettysburg and Chickamauga in 1913. Both those battlefields observed special ceremonies attended by both sides, with President Woodrow Wilson speaking to the Gettysburg veterans, saying: ‘‘We have found one another again as brothers and comrades, in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten— except we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping hands and smiling into each other’s eyes’’ (Pennsylvania at Gettysburg 1914, vol. 3, p. 174). A similar joint reunion took place in Vicksburg in 1917. Even as late as the 1930s, veterans were still returning to their fields of conflict to commemorate their deeds. At the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1938, some of the few remaining veterans of both sides reenacted Pickett’s Charge and shook hands across the famous stone wall. With the passing of the veteran generation, so also passed the joint reunions, but for a brief few decades the veterans had come together and remembered their old times. Certainly, the veterans themselves gained a lot of satisfaction from these reunions, but the service they provided to their united nation in fostering reconciliation and promoting reunion between the sections was also extremely important. Although not all the old soldiers were reconciled, it is fitting that significant reconciliation started with the veterans, for it was their generation that was at the helm when the nation split apart. BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘‘The Atlanta Celebration.’’ Washington Post, October 19, 1880.
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‘‘Blended Blue and Gray.’’ Washington Post, August 12, 1883. Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in Memory and Reunion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ‘‘The Blue and the Gray.’’ New York Times, July 2, 1888. ‘‘Camping on Chickamauga.’’ Washington Post, September 16, 1892. ‘‘Cementing the Union.’’ Washington Post, September 20, 1895. ‘‘Editorial Article No. 5.’’ New York Times, September 12, 1874. McBride, George W. ‘‘Shiloh, after Thirty-Two Years.’’ Under Both Flags: A Panorama of the Great Civil War as Represented in Story, Anecdote, Adventure, and the Romance of Reality [1896]. New York: Lyons Press, 2003. Neff, John R. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. Pennsylvania at Gettysburg: Ceremonies at the Dedication of the Monuments Erected by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to Major-General George G. Meade, Major General Winfield S. Hancock, Major General John F. Reynolds, and to Mark the Positions of the Pennsylvania Commands Engaged in the Battle. 3 vols. Harrisburg, PA: W. S. Ray, 1914. Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. Timothy B. Smith
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African American Commemorations
During the Civil War much occurred that gave African Americans cause for excitement. In April 1862 Congress passed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, which was celebrated as far away as San Francisco by August of that year. African Americans also honored the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation and the date it became official in 1863; and in 1865 they commemorated the effective date of freedom in Texas, Juneteenth. They remembered comrades lost in individual battles, such as Milliken’s Bend; celebrated electoral victories when Lincoln won another term as president; and in the final tragedy of the war, commemorated Lincoln’s death. Some commemorations dropped by the wayside over the years, while others such
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African American Commemorations
Civil War banner. African American soldiers serving in the United States Colored Troops took pride in their accomplishments on the battlefront when the Union government finally granted them permission to fight in 1863. ª North Wind Picture Archives
as Decoration Day, which eventually became Memorial Day, have endured. Commemorated on the anniversary of its passage, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act became the first of many milestones that African Americans would eventually celebrate. African American society attended that first celebration, which was held at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. Elizabeth Keckly (1818– 1907), Mary Todd Lincoln’s (1818–1882) seamstress, showed up in her capacity as president of the Ladies’ Contraband Relief Association, while African Methodist Episcopal minister Thomas H. C. Hinton delivered the first speech of the evening, declaring that ‘‘slavery which had been maintained by a legion of political devils . . . has been partially done away with’’ (The Liberator, May 8, 1863). The final speaker of the evening, William E. Matthews, however, captured the spirit of the future of African American commemoration when he noted that ‘‘Jews celebrate Passover; England the birthday of her
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Queen. All the great powers of the earth, including Hayti and Liberia, (applause) have a day of their own. The white Americans celebrate the Fourth of July. But it is an unhappy fact that the colored people of the United States have no day of their own.’’ He ‘‘hope[d] the 16th of April [would] ever be a day of rejoicing in the District’’ and ‘‘likes these anniversaries. They inspire me with a manhood I do not feel on other occasions.’’ He did not have to wait long for the next one, for a series of events during 1863 provided a number of red-letter days (The Liberator, May 8, 1863). After the Emancipation Proclamation became official, New Year’s Day held special meaning for African Americans. On the third day of 1865, Benjamin Marshall Mills, an officer in the Forty-ninth United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiment stationed in Vicksburg, Mississippi, wrote, ‘‘yesterday the black people of this place had a grand time celebrating the anniversary of their Freedom. They marched through town in a long procession and then proceeded to a place a little way out
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of the city and then they had a glorious old time’’ (Mills, January 3, 1865). A chaplain in the Fifty-first USCT stationed in another part of town recalled a more serene scene: ‘‘At two o’clock went with my regiment to the court house where the Division was assembled to listen to some remarks from Maj. Gen. Washburn in commemoration of this the Anniversary of their Freedom. In the evening held a service in my regiment in the barracks which I enjoyed very much’’ (Carruthers, January 1, 1865). The initial battles of the USCT, all within two months in 1863, provided even more days of commemoration. Black troops saw real combat for the first time at Port Hudson on May 27, 1863; Milliken’s Bend on June 6; and Fort Wagner on July 18. A year later, in Natchez, Mississippi, Colonel Herman Lieb, who was wounded in the battle of Milliken’s Bend, memorialized their baptism of fire with a special supper and a dance (June 7, 1864). April 1865, brought on a series of short-lived celebrations. With the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, African Americans had another reason to celebrate, but within a week John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865) changed it to despair. Across the nation, blacks went into mourning. At Jefferson Davis’s former plantation on the Mississippi River, Major Samuel Denham Barnes of the Fiftieth USCT observed ‘‘All the colored people, men women and children have crape and black string as mourning of some kind for as the Uncle Sam, Marse Lincoln is dead’’ (Barnes, April 23, 1865). A year later—and a sign of the future for African Americans—blacks celebrating in Richmond felt compelled to parse their reason for celebrating in a handbill that they circulated among whites in the city. It read, ‘‘that they do not intend to celebrate the failure of the Southern Confederacy, as it has been stated in the papers of this city, but simply as the day on which God was pleased to liberate their long oppressed race.’’ During the parade, a white man opened fire with a pistol but did not hit anyone, while blacks who participated in the celebration were informed that blacks ‘‘who left their work to engage in the jubilee will not be employed again by their old masters’’ (The Boston Daily Advertiser, April 7, 1866). By the 1890s African Americans had to be even more cautious with how they chose to remember the Civil War. In 1889 a letter to The Daily Picayune, a New Orleans newspaper, outlined that the citizens of Vicksburg, Mississippi, would welcome members of the Grand Army of the Republic on Decoration Day, so long as they were white Union veterans, ‘‘but that they did not care to aid in an affair with great masses of negroes’’ (April 10, 1889). In 1897 a concerned white citizen in Henderson, North Carolina, pointed out that ‘‘April 9th, the anniversary of Lee’s surrender, was observed by the negroes of Henderson . . . as a day of rejoicing’’ and ‘‘if the negro persists in this he is no true
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North Carolinian; but an alien. And as an alien let him be treated’’ (The Daily Picayune, April 18, 1897). Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, African Americans found themselves on the defensive when it came to commemorating their participation in the Civil War. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, Samuel Denham. Papers of Samuel Denham Barnes, (1839–1916), The Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston, MA). ‘‘The Civil Rights Bill,’’ April 7, 1866, issue 83, col. C. Carruthers, George North. Papers of George North Carruthers, 1863–1969, The Library of Congress, Washington, DC. The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA). ‘‘Decoration Day at Vicksburg,’’ April 10, 1889, issue 76, col. G. The Liberator (Boston, MA).’’ Grand Emancipation-Celebration.’’ May 8, 1863, p. 75, issue 19, col. C. Mills, Caleb. Caleb Mills Family Papers, 1834–1880, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC). ‘‘Negro Celebration of the Anniversary of Appomatox,’’ April 18, 1897, issue 40, col. D. David H. Slay
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Souvenirs and Relics
When any major event, like a war, involves large numbers of soldiers, they are bound to lose or throw away various items. Whether in the heat of battle or on the march, items related to Civil War soldiers were left on battlefields and roads, waiting for someone else to take them or for an archaeologist to find them years later. Many people may be aware of the growing trade in Civil War era items in countless stores and on the auction circuit as well as online, but fewer are aware of the practice of scouring the battlefield shortly afterward for relics, or the ways in which items were lost or left behind by soldiers. It is through these practices that many items relating to daily life of soldiers and battle began their journey from the soldiers’ hands to museum collections, private family holdings, stores, and the auction circuit. The first leg of the journey is the soldier receiving his equipment, usually in camp. Leander Stillwell (1843– 1934), a Union soldier who served as a lawyer, judge, and member of the Kansas legislature after the war, described receiving his clothing when he enlisted: The clothing outfit consisted of a pair of light-blue pantaloons, similar colored overcoat with a cape to it, dark blue jacket, heavy shoes and woolen socks, an ugly, abominable cocky little cap patterned after the then French army style, gray woolen shirt, and other ordinary under-clothing. Was also given a knapsack, but I think I didn’t get a haversack and canteen until later. (Stillwell 1920, p. 15)
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Souvenirs and Relics
The above picture details objects President Abraham Lincoln carried on his person the evening he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theater. MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. ‘‘The Things He Carried.’’
As the soldiers ventured into the field, they often lost equipment on the march or purposely discarded it prior to a battle. Edmund Stedman (1833–1908), a poet and essayist who was one of the first seven members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, remarked that ‘‘Coats and knapsacks were thrown to either side, that nothing might impede their work . . .’’ in his account of the Battle of Bull Run (Stedman 1861, p. 26). Other soldiers described similar incidents. For instance, Robert Newell, a Massachusetts soldier, wrote to his brother that, ‘‘Before we reached the battlefield, there was not a knapsack left, the men threw away everything to lighten themselves and I finally followed their example . . .’’ (Newell 1864). The purposeful abandonment of items to lighten a soldier’s load before battle and the possible loss of items while in the field presented an opportunity for other persons to obtain a souvenir of the war. In addition, soldiers often sent home letters to loved ones to serve as souvenirs. A Confederate soldier named John Street sent his wife a letter that he had written before the Battle of Shiloh and asked her ‘‘to keep it as a sacred relic’’ (Street 1862). These letters and many others have ended up in manuscript collections in various libraries and archives across the nation. While many items from soldiers reside in museum collections, many have also been sold through various antique stores and other shops around the country. They have also appeared in auctions, both traditional and online. The sale of such relics presents issues of preser-
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vation and ethics, as while most people would cherish such items, the prospect for making money from a dead soldier’s property presents an ethical dilemma. Such materials belong in museums for everyone’s benefit, or in the possession of the descendants of the soldier who owned the item. Overall, the issue of souvenirs and relics is one of mystery. It is true that soldiers lost or dropped equipment over the course of their service, which presented opportunities for persons to obtain souvenirs of the war. What is less certain, however, is whether people scoured the battlefield soon after the event looking for items or stole from the dead. Rules at some historic sites that prohibit the use of metal detectors as well as recent incidents involving persons being arrested for digging up artifacts on battlefield sites suggest that the hunt for souvenirs and relics is alive today. An effort must be made to safeguard these treasures of our past for archaeologists and other qualified individuals to find and study so that everyone will benefit. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newell, Robert R. Letter to his brother Will, March 9, 1864. Available online at http://www. soldierstudies.org/. Stedman, Edmund Clarence. The Battle of Bull Run. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1861. Stillwell, Leander. The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861–1865, 2nd ed. Erie, KS: Franklin Hudson Publishing Co., 1920.
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Personal effects of soldier J. E. B. Stuart. In the heat of battle, many soldiers’ personal effects
became lost or misplaced. After fighting concluded, civilian men and women would frequently scavenge the battlefield, searching for souvenirs or other objects of value. William F. Campbell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Street, John. Letter to his wife, April 12, 1862. Available online at http://www.soldierstudies.org/. Daniel Sauerwein
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Unit and Regimental Histories
After the end of the American Civil War, a time of healing occurred for former combatants scattered across the Southern United States. The wounds from which these men suffered were both physical and mental. Soldiers reflected on the losses they had witnessed, or attempted to forget the pain. After a period of roughly ten to twenty years, soldiers began to record their wartime experiences. Soldiers wanted to create a record of their experiences for their families, and also hoped to reconnect with fellow veterans. For some officers, writing a memoir was a way to question war decisions or to defend a brother officer who might have been slighted during the war. Collectively, this recording of wartime experiences comprised a historical record of the regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies of the war. One type of reminiscence was a presentation of the experiences of an individual soldier. Such recollections provided the first glimpse into the workings of a regiment. As these memoirs were often intended for family members, some of the horrors of war might be edited out. An example of this type of memoir is the one by
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Leander Stillwell, a Union soldier in the Sixty-First Illinois. Stillwell’s memoir conveys both the terror of battle and the humor of everyday soldiering. Another example is a memoir by Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee Volunteers. He recalls a visit from General Robert E. Lee to his camp, writing that ‘‘He was a fine looking gentleman, and wore a moustache. He was dressed in blue cottonade and looked like some good boy’s grandpa. I felt like going up to him and saying, good evening Uncle Bob! I am not certain at this late date that I did not do so’’ (Watkins 2003 [1865], p. 11). As reminiscences began to grow in number, groups of veterans formed organizations to compile and publish histories of their unit, regiment, or brigade. Veterans gathered letters, wrote down stories of their own soldiering, and collected photographs of their particular military unit. Veterans’ organizations generally chose an admired officer to produce the history. This person would compile the information into book form, and the veterans would then pool their monies to have the work printed. Such works ranged from detailed histories to mere annotated rosters of soldiers with photographs. One example of a carefully assembled regimental history is History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers (1876), by Lyman G. Bennett and William M. Haigh. A classical example of a memoir from the Confederate perspective is D. Augustus Dickert’s History of Kershaw’s Brigade (1866). Unfortunately, there were also GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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cases in which diaries, letters, and photographs were gathered, but no memoir was ever created, as happened with the 154th New York Volunteers. Today, histories of regiments and units continue to be popular; one notable twentiethcentury example is John J. Pullen’s The Twentieth Maine (1957). Reminiscences were sometimes written to defend the actions of an officer or his command. Thomas Van Horne’s History of the Army of the Cumberland (1875), for example, was more than a memoir of the Army of the Cumberland; it was also an attempt to defend the record of Major General George H. Thomas, who had been slighted by other general officers toward the end of the conflict. States also contracted with individuals to produce a record of the contribution made by their regiments. Such histories generally include rosters and brief histories of regiments formed in the 1860s. In addition, they could be drawn into the competition between states to prove which had provided the greatest number of men and officers to their side of the war. For example, Walter Clark’s Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina (1901) sought to substantiate North Carolina’s claim that it had provided the most troops to the Confederacy. Clark renumbered several regiments, giving them high numbers, and thereby increased the apparent number of North Carolina regiments. Early unit and regimental histories played a role in the creation of the postwar historiography of the American Civil War. They provide valuable insight into the thoughts of soldiers, both right after the conflict and some twenty years afterward. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennett, Lyman G., and William M. Haigh. History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers during the War of the Rebellion. Aurora, IL: Knickerbocker & Hodder, 1876. Catton, Bruce. Mr. Lincoln’s Army. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951. Clark, Walter, ed. Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, in the Great War 1861–65. Raleigh, NC: E. M. Uzzell, 1901. Connelly, Thomas L. Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Dickert, D. Augustus. History of Kershaw’s Brigade. Newberry, SC: E. H. Aull, 1899. Dunkelman, Mark H. Brothers One and All: Espirit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2004. Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1942–1944.
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Pullen, John J. The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1957. Stillwell, Leander. The Story of the Common Soldier in the Civil War, 1861–1865. Erie, KS: Franklin Hudson Publishing Company, 1920. Van Horne, Thomas B. History of the Army of the Cumberland: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles. Cincinnati, OH: Robert Clarke, 1875. Watkins, Samuel R. ‘‘Co. Aytch:’’ A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953. Worsham, John H. One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry: His Experience and What He Saw During the War, 1861–1865. New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1912. William H. Brown
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Obituaries and Local Memorials to the Dead
Most of the monuments to the dead constructed during the Civil War appeared in the Northeast, with considerably fewer in the Midwest and the South. The monuments generally adhered to two styles: a statue of a uniformed soldier standing at parade rest (holding the barrel of a rifle that rests upright on the ground in front of him) or an obelisk. In the years after the Civil War, the soldier replaced the obelisk as the dominant type of monument. Americans only began to commission statues of common soldiers during the Civil War. Public notions about death and the dead changed during the Civil War. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rise of evangelicalism led to a softer, sentimentalized imagination and religious sensibility (Hume 2000, p. 36). Concern over the fate of the soul helped give sentimental memories of the deceased a place in the collective memory of early-nineteenth-century Americans. Obituaries in mass-circulation newspapers in the early years of the war provide evidence of the sentimental and religious aura surrounding death. The February 19, 1862, New York Times obituary of Joseph Vignier de Monteil, lieutenant colonel of the Fifty-third New York State Volunteers (d’Epineuil Zoaves) noted: There is something truly touching in the manner of his death. When the order to charge was given, he ran at the head of the column until the fatal bullet came which instantly deprived him of life. Even in this dying moment, amid the triumphant
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CIVIL WAR OBITUARIES The obituary for Samuel Marcy (1820–1862), which appeared in the February 23, 1862, New York Times, is typical of the flowery tributes of the Victorian era, particularly those written for deceased members of prominent families. According to official Navy records, Marcy, the son of a former Secretary of State, had been successful in pursuing and seizing several blockade runners in the summer of 1861. At this early point in the Civil War, Americans had not become matter-of-fact about the deaths of their men. DEATH OF SAMUEL MARCY, U.S.N., LATE LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER UNITED STATES SHIP VINCENNES The costly tribute which the country is daily rendering to the National cause cannot be counted in contributions to the Treasury. Thousands of loyal lives must be added to make up the fearful aggregate. We read of brilliant victories and the National heart is made glad. Rejoicings pervade the land. With our tears we express sympathy in the sad loss of human life, and we place the names of the dead, and dying, and suffering heroes, one the records of the National gratitude. Having done this, we turn our thoughts to new fields, which victory gives an added luster to the National Party. It is only when some isolated case is presented to our notice that we can appreciate the sacrifices of loyal blood, and the unspeakable sorrow of bereaved hearts, which are the consequences of this disastrous war.... Samuel Marcy [commanded] the sloop-of-war Vincennes, one of the blockading squadron off the mouths of the Mississippi. To his zealous devotion and earnest sense of duty in this responsible situation, his life became the sacrifice. He was determined that, so far as his ship could maintain the blockade, no vessel should escape. He had already made several captures, when, on the morning of the 23rd of January last, two vessels were seen apparently on fire, having grounded near the outlet after vainly attempting to run the blockade. With the view to secure possession of the vessels and cargos, Lieut. Marcy instantly dispatched two boats from his ship, in one of which was placed a heavy pivot gun. While, with characteristic energy and activity, he had entered personally upon this duty, and was engaged in directing the operations of firing, the gun recoiled, fell upon, and fatally crushed his body and limbs. Words of condolence are vainly uttered to soften such bereavements; but sorrow for the dead should find alleviation in the respect and affection which follows the good and true to their last resting-place. CARYN E. NEUMANN
shouts and steady rush of the charge, his soldier’s instinct, we gladly believe, told him that victory was assured. (New York Times, February 19, 1862)
A December 1861 resolution passed by the commissioned officers of the Illinois First Regiment Douglas Brigade in commemoration of the death of Colonel
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W. A. Webb resolved ‘‘that to his relatives and friends we tender our sincere sympathy and crave of them the sad privilege of mingling with their sorrow a soldier’s tear’’ (‘‘Death of Col. William A. Webb,’’ December 26, 1861, p. 4). Newspapers, in a time before death became routine, often provided considerable detail about the manner of death. When Charles E. Zellar, the foreman of the job press rooms of the Chicago Tribune died in an accident at work, the newspaper reported that ‘‘in some way his hand became entangled between the belt and the drum, and he was drawn up in an instant, his head striking the ceiling with fearful force and dashed down to the floor again, falling upon his face.’’ The obituary further revealed that the coroner found that Zellar’s spinal column had been dislocated between the second and third vertebrae (‘‘A Melancholy Accident,’’ January 3, 1862, p. 4). Throughout the Civil War era, far more men than women were mentioned in obituaries. Because women’s lives generally were centered on the home, they were not public figures. Mrs. Isaac Funk was mentioned in an obituary in the February 5, 1865, edition of the Chicago Tribune only because she died within hours of her husband, a hog farmer who during his life had risen to considerable wealth and prominence. An obituary for Mrs. H. C. Conant concludes with, ‘‘The literary and religious public loses in Mrs. Conant one of its brightest ornaments, but her death falls as a heavy and almost unsupportable blow upon the home where she was conspicuous for feminine virtues, and is mourned as a wife and mother’’ (New York Times, February 20, 1865). Women were noted for their religious faith, fortitude in the face of death, sweet character, and dedication to their families. During the war, however, the style of obituaries shifted from sentimental tributes to matter-of-fact accounts of a notable life, and by the war’s end, they reflected a near indifference toward dying. The obituary for Episcopal Reverend Thomas Brownell of Connecticut, presumed to be the oldest Protestant bishop in the world, might be expected to have included religious rhetoric, but it did not. Instead, Brownell’s life is sketched straightforwardly from his education to his public achievements (New York Times, January 16, 1865). Men generally were noted for their bravery, patriotism, and public-spiritedness. The obituary of composer and journalist W. H. Fry notes that ‘‘it was his privilege and pride to lend a helping hand to younger men who were striving in the cause of art. No one, with a good purpose, sought Mr. Fry in vain’’ (New York Times, January 19, 1865). Death notices were less likely to list specific causes of death, instead mentioning ‘‘lingering illness’’ or sudden death. Obituaries of African Americans were rare in masscirculation newspapers. Other forms of commemoration of the dead in black communities also received little public notice, but freed slaves did uniquely remember the deceased. One of the more unusual remembrances of the dead occurred on February 23, 1865, when Union
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marble mausoleum, opened the caskets, and threw the ‘‘decayed remnants of humanity outside’’ (Brown 2004, p. 75). By 1865, the war had diminished the shock value of death. The tremendous numbers of dead, missing, and maimed soldiers accelerated the turn to a greater admiration for emotional and intellectual detachment from the body. Over the course of the fighting, the adoption of a remote attitude toward the physical remains of the dead became a reasonable sensibility. Though Americans honored the memory of their dead after the war, they no longer focused on the corpse or the act of dying. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Massachusetts State Memorial in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1963, monuments dedicated to those who died
in the Civil War started to appear. These monuments and local obituaries were demonstrations of heroic lives and heroic deaths. Those commemorated were to be examples for the living. The Library of Congress.
troops arrived at Middleton Place Plantation outside of Charleston, South Carolina. As the Union soldier Henry Orlando Marcy reported in his diary, while the Union officers burned the main house and numerous outbuildings, the newly freed slaves ransacked the Middleton
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Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2004. Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1865. ‘‘Death of Col. William A. Webb,’’ Chicago Tribune, December 26, 1861. Fowler, Bridget. The Obituary as Collective Memory. New York: Routledge, 2007. Hume, Janice. Obituaries in American Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Hunt, Judith Lee. ‘‘‘High with Courage and Hope’: The Middleton Family’s Civil War.’’ In Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South, ed. Catherine Clinton. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ‘‘A Melancholy Accident,’’ Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1862. New York Times, February 19, 1862. New York Times, January 16, 1865. New York Times, January 19, 1865 New York Times, February 20, 1865. Caryn E. Neumann
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Annotated Bibliography The following resources, which provide overviews of the American Civil War, are recommended for their broad scope and availability.
GENERAL READING Ash, Stephen. When the Yankees Came: Conflict and Chaos in the Occupied South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. A comprehensive and thoughtful account of life in areas of the South that experienced Union military occupation. Davis, William C. A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and Gray. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. Gallman, J. Matthew. The North Fights the Civil War: The Home Front. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1994. A useful overview of the Northern home front during the Civil War. Gallman, J. Matthew, ed. The Civil War Chronicle: The Only Day-by-Day Portrait of America’s Tragic Conflict as Told by Soldiers, Journalists, Politicians, Farmers, Nurses, Slaves, and Other Eyewitnesses. New York: Crown Publishers, 2000. Marten, James. Civil War America: Voices from the Home Front. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Paludan, Phillip Shaw. A People’s Contest: The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. An examination of the impact of the Civil War on Northern society, especially in connection with the growth of industrialization. Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Selby, John G. Virginians at War: The Civil War Experiences of Seven Young Confederates. Wilmington,
DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002. A study of four Virginia soldiers and three women on the home front (who nevertheless sometimes experienced the passing of armies), this fascinating work seeks the reasons that a generation of Virginians supported the Confederacy and the war. Sutherland, Daniel E. The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860–1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. A popularly written overview of daily life in America during the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, built on the testimony of those who lived through the period and emphasizing the quest for middle-class status. Volo, Dorothy Denneen, and James M. Volo. Daily Life in Civil War America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Williams, David. Rich Man’s War: Class, Cast, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. An examination of the impact of the Civil War in southwestern Georgia and southeastern Alabama, with particular emphasis on class divisions. Woodworth, Steven E., ed. Cultures in Conflict: The American Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. A collection of first-person accounts of Civil War life in both the North and the South.
A SOLDIER’S LIFE Barton, Michael. Goodmen: The Character of Civil War Soldiers. University Park: Pennsylvania State 285
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University Press, 1981. A quantitative analysis of the collective personality of Civil War soldiers on the basis of their writings. Barton, Michael, and Larry M. Logue. eds. The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Excerpts from some of the memoirs of the Civil War soldiers. Billings, John D. Hardtack and Coffee; or, The Unwritten Story of Army Life. Boston: G. M. Smith, 1887. Reprint, Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982. A description of the soldier’s life written by a soldier. Davis, William C. Rebels and Yankees: The Fighting Men of the Civil War. New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1991. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1860–1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. An excellent account and analysis of the behavior of Union troops toward Confederate civilians. Kennett, Lee B. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. A good account of the worst prison camp of the Civil War. McPherson, James M. What They Fought For, 1861–1865. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. A preliminary to McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades, this book is nevertheless eminently readable and useful. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. The definitive examination of the motivations of Civil War soldiers. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences. New York: Viking, 1988. A study of the thought and motivations of the Civil War soldiers. Mitchell, Reid. The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A discussion of the emotional and psychological effects of the separation entailed by the war, both for Civil War soldiers and their families. Informed by modern scholarly ideas of gender. Moore, Albert Burton. Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy. New York: Macmillan, 1924. Reprint, New York: Hillary House, 1963. 286
Murdock, Eugene C. One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971. An investigation of how the Civil War draft worked—or failed to work—and why. Power, J. Tracy. Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. An outstanding analysis of the devolution of morale within the Army of Northern Virginia during its last year of existence. Robertson, James I., Jr. Soldiers Blue and Gray. New York: Warner Books, 1991. Silber, Nina, and Mary Beth Sievens, eds. Yankee Correspondence: Civil War Letters between New England Soldiers and the Home Front. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. A selection of interesting letters between New England soldiers and their families back home. Wert, Jeffry D. A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Indianapolis, IN: BobbsMerrill, 1943. By making extensive use of soldiers’ diaries and letters, this book pioneered the modern literature of the Civil War’s common soldier. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Indianapolis, IN: BobbsMerrill, 1952. A highly successful sequel to Wiley’s groundbreaking The Life of Johnny Reb. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Common Soldier in the Civil War. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1958. Williams, David. Johnny Reb’s War: Battlefield and Homefront. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2000. A brief but helpful overview of the common Confederate soldier. Woodworth, Steven E., ed. The Loyal, True, and Brave: America’s Civil War Soldiers. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. A collection of writings by and about soldiers.
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY Attie, Jeanie. Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the Civil War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. A study that shows how localism and individualism continued to be characteristic of relief work for the soldiers, despite the efforts of the leadership of the United States Sanitary Commission to impose order and central control. Campbell, Edward D. C., Jr., and Kym S. Rice, eds. A Woman’s War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Confederate Legacy. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996. A collection of six essays examining the wartime experiences of Southern black women as well as white women of various social classes. Cashin, Joan E., ed. The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. A collection of essays dealing with the interconnections between the war and the home front in the North, the South, and on the western frontier. Clinton, Catherine, ed. Southern Families at War: Loyalty and Conflict in the Civil War South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A collection of twelve essays dealing with Southern families and family ties during the Civil War. Clinton, Catherine, and Nina Silber, eds. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. A collection of eighteen essays by different authors examining various aspects of the Civil War from the perspective of modern scholarly ideas of gender. DeCredico, Mary A. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. Madison, WI: Madison House, 1996. A biography of the highly perceptive diarist whose husband was a Southern planter, U.S. senator, and Confederate staff officer. Edwards, Laura F. Scarlet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Faust, Drew Gilpin. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. A highly acclaimed account of how upper-class Southern women tried to hold their world together in the midst of the upheavals and dislocations brought on by war and emancipation. Gallman, J. Matthew. Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia during the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A study of how the war affected Philadelphia socially, economically, and psychologically. Inscoe, John C., and Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Karamanski, Theodore J. Rally ’Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006. A wide-ranging narrative examining the impact Chicagoans had on the war and how the war affected Chicago. Leonard, Elizabeth D. Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. A study focusing on three Northern women and GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
their roles within the Union war effort. Leonard argues that the war was a major watershed that changed ideas about women’s role in society. Marten, James. The Children’s Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Marten, James. Lessons of War: The Civil War in Children’s Magazines. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1999. Marten, James. Children for the Union: The War Spirit on the Northern Home Front. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. An account of how the war was presented to children in literature and popular culture and of how children reacted and remembered the war. McCaslin, Richard B. Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. An excellent account of the hanging of a number of Texas Unionists in one North Texas town. Moore, Frank. Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice. Chicago: R. C. Treat, 1866. Reprint, Alexander, NC: Blue Gray Books, 1997. One of the first books to be written about the role of women in the Civil War. Moore stresses women’s roles in caring for suffering soldiers. Noe, Kenneth W., and Shannon H. Wilson, eds. The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. A comprehensive account of the impact of the Civil War on Southern women, showing how traditional roles quickly reestablished themselves after the upheaval of war. Rose, Anne C. Victorian America and the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Looking at seventy-five upper-middle-class Victorians in America, this study examines their attitudes on an array of subjects and argues that the war changed them little but did enhance their self-confidence. Rosen, Robert H. Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the City and People during the Civil War. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. A brief but profusely illustrated account of wartime life in the city where the Civil War began. Silber, Nina. Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Spann, Edward K. Gotham at War: New York City, 1860–1865. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. This excellent examination of many facets of wartime New York provides a case study in the impact of wartime pressures on civilian society. 287
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Sutherland, Daniel E. Seasons of War: The Ordeal of a Confederate Community, 1861–1865. New York: Free Press, 1995. A highly readable account of the impact of the Civil War in Culpeper County, Virginia, told from the viewpoint of and based on the accounts of the many soldiers and civilians who either lived in the county or passed through it during the war. Taylor, Amy Murrell. The Divided Family in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Werner, Emmy E. Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.
RELIGION Bailey, David T. Shadow on the Church: Southwestern Evangelical Religion and the Issue of Slavery, 1783– 1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Bennett, William W. A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies during the Late Civil War between the States of the Federal Union. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1877. A Southern minister draws on the reports of his fellow ministers to describe the upsurge in piety that occurred in the Confederate armies. Along with Jones’s Christ in the Camp (below), this is a favorite of Lost Cause apologists seeking to present the Confederacy as morally superior to the Union. Blied, Benjamin J. Catholics and the Civil War. Milwaukee, WI: Author, 1945. Boles, John B. The Irony of Southern Religion. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1994. A brief but fascinating exploration of the multiple ironies involved in the way in which Christianity was adapted to the purposes of antebellum Southern society and, along with this, used to defend slavery. Brinsfield, John W., William C. Davis, Benedict Maryniak, and James I. Robertson Jr., eds. Faith in the Fight: Civil War Chaplains. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. Brown, William Young. The Army Chaplain: His Office, Duties, and Responsibilities, and the Means of Aiding Him. Philadelphia: Martien, 1863. Farmer, James O., Jr. The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999. A discussion of the shift in religious philosophy behind secession and the Confederacy. Jones, Rev. J. William. Christ in the Camp or Religion in Lee’s Army. Richmond, VA: B. F. Johnson, 288
1888. An account of religious revivals in the Army of Northern Virginia. Along with Bennett’s Great Revival (above), this is a favorite of Lost Cause apologists seeking to present the Confederacy as morally superior to the Union. Miller, Randall M., Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. Religion and the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A collection of essays exploring various aspects of American religion during the Civil War. Moorhead, James H. American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978. Moorhead uses pamphlet sermons and nineteenth-century religious periodicals to argue that Northern Protestant denominations too readily identified the Union war effort with the Christian apocalypse and the ushering in of the millennium—leading to a religious crisis after the war. Moss, Rev. Lemuel. Annals of the United States Christian Commission. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868. An early history of this organization, which was founded as an offshoot of the YMCA for the purpose of bringing both Christian witness and material comfort to the Union soldiers in the field. Owen, Christopher H. The Sacred Flame of Love: Methodism and Society in Nineteenth-Century Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. An interesting account of the growth of Methodism in Georgia and of the efforts of Georgia Methodists to reconcile their religion with slavery. Rhodes, Elisha Hunt. All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes. Ed. Robert Hunt Rhodes. New York: Orion Books, 1985. Made famous by the 1990 Ken Burns PBS Civil War series, Rhodes was a devout Christian who had much to say on the subject of religion in the Civil War armies. Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr. A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. A brief comparative study of religion in the Union and Confederate armies, which suggests that the individualistic nature of Southern religion made it less able to sustain the South in war. Smith, Edward Parmelee. Incidents of the United States Christian Commission. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1869. Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. An account of the revival of 1857, with a focus on its contribution to reform movements. GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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Trumbull, Henry Clay. The Sunday-School: Its Origins, Mission, Methods, and Auxiliaries. Philadelphia: John D. Wattles, 1888. An account by the chaplain of the 10th Connecticut, discussing the birth and growth of a popular nineteenth-century religious institution. Trumbull, Henry Clay. War Memories of an Army Chaplain. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898. Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. A broad examination of civil religion in the post–Civil War South. Woodworth, Steven E. While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. An account of religion within the Civil War armies, focusing on what soldiers thought, said, and did.
POPULAR CULTURE Abel, E. Lawrence. Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999. A popularly written account of music as it was performed, published, and composed in the Confederacy, along with an examination of the experiences of bandsmen in the Confederate army. Bernard, Kenneth A. Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1966. An account of the music of wartime Washington, DC, focusing on songs related to Lincoln— songs Lincoln heard, songs about Lincoln, songs he liked—including his favorites, ‘‘Dixie’’ and ‘‘La Marseillaise.’’ Bode, Carl. The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Burnham, John C. Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History. New York and London: New York University Press, 1993. This excellent and thought-provoking study of ‘‘minor vices’’ in American history places such activities in the Civil War era within a broader context. Cornelius, Steven H. Music of the Civil War Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Documents period accounts of African American music and its development before and during the Civil War. Gac, Scott. Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
2007. Tells the story of the Hutchinson Family, America’s most popular singing group of the era leading up to the Civil War. Rooted in revival meetings, the Hutchinsons specialized in songs promoting temperance and abolition. Kirsch, George B. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. A brief, popular account of how baseball, already the national pastime, survived and developed during the Civil War. Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A history of blackface minstrelsy from its beginnings around 1830 through the Civil War. Mead, David C. Yankee Eloquence in the Middle West: The Ohio Lyceum, 1850–1870. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951. A detailed study of the lyceum movement in Ohio, focusing on the fifteen most popular lecturers in the state. Meer, Sarah. Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s. Athens: University of Georgia, 2005. An analysis of the intersections among minstrelsy, abolitionism, American literature, and British-American relations in the nineteenth century. Morgan, Jo-Ann. Uncle Tom’s Cabin As Visual Culture. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. A study of how the various illustrations associated with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous abolitionist novel influenced popular conceptions. Ray, Angela G. The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005. Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Silverman, Jerry. Songs and Stories of the Civil War. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2002. Sullivan, George. In the Wake of Battle: The Civil War Images of Mathew Brady. Munich and New York: Prestel Verlag, 2004. A collection of Brady’s photographs, along with helpful explanations. Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Relates minstrelsy, the most popular entertainment form of the midnineteenth century, to American society. Zeller, Bob. The Blue and Gray in Black and White: A History of Civil War Photography. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005.
HEALTH AND MEDICINE Adams, George Worthington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil 289
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War. New York: Henry Schuman, 1952. Reprint, Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside, 1985. One of the early pioneering studies of Civil War surgeons, Adams’s book is still a classic. Alcott, Louisa May. Hospital Sketches. Boston: J. Redpath, 1863. Published in a local newspaper during the war, these accounts, which originated as letters home, describe the future author of Little Women’s service as a volunteer nurse in the District of Columbia’s Union Hotel Hospital. Apperson, John Samuel. Repairing the ‘‘March of Mars’’: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861– 1865. Ed. John Herbert Roper. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001. Bollet, Alfred Jay. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press, 2002. A lengthy (475-page), highly documented study encompassing all aspects of Civil War medical practice. Brinton, John H. Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon U.S.V., 1861–1865. New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1914. Cumming, Kate. ‘‘A Nurse’s Diary.’’ In A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, from the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War: With Sketches of Life and Character, and Brief Notices of Current Events during That Period. Louisville, KY: John P. Morgan, 1866. Cunningham, H. H. Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958. Along with Adams’s Doctors in Blue, this was one of the early pioneering studies of Civil War surgeons. Denney, R. E. Civil War Medicine: Care and Comfort of the Wounded. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1994. A compilation of first-person observations of Civil War medical care, arranged in an almost day-by-day chronological order. Dyer, J. Franklin. The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon. Ed. Michael B. Chesson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Dyer, who served from 1861 to 1864, started the war as surgeon of the 19th Massachusetts and rose to be chief medical officer of the Second Division, Second Corps. Ellis, Thomas T. Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon; or, Incidents of Field, Camp, and Hospital Life. New York: J. Bradburn, 1863. Flannery, Michael A. Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy. New York: Pharmaceutical Products Press, 2004. A comprehensive history of pharmaceuticals and the practice of pharmacy in both the Union and Confederate armies. 290
Freemon, Frank R. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. This lavishly illustrated book is organized into twenty-four brief chapters, each dealing with a particular aspect of Civil War medical care. Giesberg, Judith Ann. Civil War Sisterhood: The United States Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006. Giesberg argues that women took an active role in directing the activities of the U.S.S.C. and thus advanced the cause of women fulfilling previously male roles during the years that followed. Hart, Albert G. The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War. Palmyra, VA: Old Soldier Books, 1987. Parsons, Emily Elizabeth. Civil War Nursing: Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons. Boston: Little, Brown, 1880. Reprint, New York: Garland, 1984. Powers, Elvira J. Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary While in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron and Visitor. Boston: Edward L. Mitchel, 1866. Reed, William Howell. Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1866. Rutkow, I. M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005. A comprehensive history of Civil War medical care, focusing on the progress made during the course of the war. Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2008. A comprehensive reference guide to all aspects of Civil War medicine. Smith, Adelaide W. Reminiscences of an Army Nurse during the Civil War. New York: Greaves Publishing Company, 1911. Straubing, Harold Elk, ed. In Hospital and Camp: The Civil War through the Eyes of Its Doctors and Nurses. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1993. A compilation of eyewitness accounts of medical care during the Civil War. Woolsey, Jane Stuart. Hospital Days: Reminiscences of a Civil War Nurse. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1870.
WORK AND ECONOMY Ball, Douglas B. Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Ball suggests that the Confederacy suffered from an unwillingness to face financial reality, in GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
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particular an unwillingness to raise taxes to a level sufficient to finance the war. Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1966. An examination of the business career of the director of the Confederacy’s largest and most important industrial concern, showing how Anderson favored the Confederacy but favored his own profits even more. Dew, Charles B. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. A study of a small iron-making establishment near Lexington, Virginia, demonstrating that although slaves could be used successfully in such industrial work, the system of slavery inhibited technological innovation and placed limits on productivity. Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. A study of the social origins and motivations of the young women who made up the work force of one of America’s first textile mills during the decades leading up to the Civil War. Fite, Emerson David. Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. While the war stimulated rapid growth in agricultural mechanization in the North, in the South government policies led to a decline in agricultural production, handicapping the Confederate war effort. Hareven, Tamara K., and Randolph Langenbach. Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. A history of the workers in the Manchester, New Hampshire, textile mills. Johnson, Russell L. Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City. New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. A study of the culture and society of Dubuque, Iowa, during the Civil War. Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1952. Massey discusses not only the shortages, which were severe and endemic within the Confederacy, but also analyzes their causes, of which Confederate government policies such as impressment and the tax-in-kind were chief. Otto, John Solomon. Southern Agriculture during the Civil War Era, 1860–1880. Westport, CT: GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994. A brief overview of Southern agricultural developments during the Civil War era. Palladino, Grace. Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840–1868. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Thornton, Mark, and Robert B. Ekelund Jr. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2004. An examination of government fiscal policy during the Civil War, showing that the Confederate government pursued policies that ultimate hurt its cause. Wilson, Mark R. The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
POLITICS Abrahamson, James L. The Men of Secession and Civil War, 1859–1861. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000. A brief narrative and analysis of the secession crisis, emphasizing that it was not a spontaneous popular outburst but rather a carefully engineered revolution for which secessionist leaders had worked long and hard. Bernstein, Iver. The New York Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Cooper, William J. Jr. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Davis, William C. A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy. New York: Free Press, 1994. Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001. This study of the rhetoric of commissioners sent by seceding states to other wavering slave states reveals that the overriding motive for secession was the preservation of slavery. Guelzo, Allen C. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1999. This award-winning book looks at Lincoln’s thought and sees him as an heir to the classical liberalism of John Locke. 291
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Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. Harris, Brayton. Blue and Gray in Black and White: Newspapers in the Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999. An overview of how Civil War newspapers reported and often attempted to influence the course of events. Holzer, Harold. Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. A fascinating account of one of Lincoln’s greatest speeches. Holzer describes the circumstances leading up to the speech, its delivery, and its reception, and also provides a profound discussion of its meaning, showing Lincoln’s eagerness to ‘‘think as the Founders thought, and act as the Founders acted.’’ Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000. A challenging and profoundly thought-provoking meditation on Lincoln’s commitment to the truth that ‘‘all men are created equal.’’ Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. New York; Oxford University Press, 1991. Dispels the myth that the Lincoln administration was unduly harsh or unmindful of the importance of civil liberties. Neely, Mark E., Jr. Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil Liberties. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1993. Dispels the myth that the Confederate government strictly respected civil liberties. Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Divided Union: Party Conflict in the Civil War North. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Rable, George C. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. An exploration of Confederate politics. It points up the irony that while many Southerners expressed a desire to get away from politics as they had known it in the old Union, they nonetheless recreated it in a more corrosive form in their new republic. Walther, Eric H. The Fire-Eaters. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Walther, Eric H. The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2004. An account of the political struggles of the 1850s that lead the country to the brink of secession and Civil War. 292
Walther, Eric H. William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Waugh, John C. Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency. New York: Crown Publishers, 1997. Waugh, John C. On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003. A fascinating and thoughtful narrative of the struggle for passage of the Compromise of 1850, which may have delayed the Civil War by a decade. Weber, Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. An account of Northerners who opposed the Union war effort. White, Ronald C., Jr. The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln through His Words. New York: Random House, 2005. A discussion of Lincoln as one of history’s most skillful practitioners of the art of using the English language to communicate with and motivate the American people. Yearns, Wilfred Buck. The Confederate Congress. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960.
EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON SLAVES AND FREEDPEOPLE Bentley, George R. A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955. Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. A collection of documents relating to the service of black troops in the Union army. Includes a collection of photographs and a lengthy introductory essay. Berlin, Ira, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of AfricanAmerican Kinship in the Civil War Era. New York: New Press, 1997. Cornish, Dudley Taylor. The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865. New York: Longmans, Green, 1956. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. The classic account of black troops in the Union army. Cornish discusses the policy debates leading to black enlistment, the raising and equipping of black units, and their impressive operational performance, including in combat. Durden, Robert F. The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Annotated Bibliography
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. An account of one of the most curious incidents of the war, the tentative (and ultimately stillborn) decision by the Davis administration to attempt to induce slaves to fight for the Confederacy. Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. A discussion of emancipation and its effects. Forbes, Ella. African American Women during the Civil War. New York: Garland, 1998. Frankel, Noralee. Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965. A discussion of the purposes and impact of the Emancipation Proclamation. Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: Free Press, 1990. Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. A study of Lincoln’s cautious progress toward emancipation, which balanced his desire to free the slaves with his respect for constitutional limitations. Hansen, Joyce. Between Two Fires: Black Soldiers in the Civil War. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993. Hargrove, Hondon B. Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988. Levine, Bruce. Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965. An early but classic work on the subject by one of the most respected Civil War historians. Robinson, Armstead L. Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. This long-awaited book, published posthumously from the notes and manuscripts of the late University of Virginia professor, argues that ‘‘class conflict based on defense of slavery eroded the Southern will to national independence’’ (p. 10). Smith, John David, ed. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. A collection of fourteen essays exploring various GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
aspects of the African American military experience during the Civil War. Taylor, Susie King. A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs. Ed. by Patricia W. Romero and Willie Lee Rose. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1988. Wiley, Bell Irvin. Southern Negroes, 1861–1865. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938. Wilson, Keith P. Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002. Wilson not only relates the experiences of black soldiers in military camps, but also places those experiences within the broader setting of the political and social transformation that took place during the Civil War years.
RECONCILIATION AND REMEMBRANCE Adams, Jessica. Wounds of Returning: Race, Memory, and Property on the Postslavery Plantation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Blight, David W. Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Both this book and the one above discuss shifting memories of the war along with ways in which the late-nineteenthcentury movement toward reunion had an impact on issues of race. Brown, Thomas J. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Fahs, Alice, and Joan Waugh, eds. The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. A thought-provoking study of Confederate veterans groups and memorial associations. McConnell, Stuart. Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. A social history of the great Union veterans’ organization. Neff, John R. Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. A thoughtful discussion of the commemoration of war dead and how it reflected the difficulties of reconciliation. Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 293
Annotated Bibliography
1997. An examination of how one of the most famous incidents of the Civil War has evolved in popular memory. Shaffer, Donald R. After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Smith, Timothy B. This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. A history of the Shiloh
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battlefield, showing its significance to public memory of the war. Smith, Timothy B. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America’s First Five Military Parks. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008. A fascinating account of the process that led to the creation of the first and most important National Military Parks at battlefields, including Chickamauga, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Antietam.
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Index This index is sorted word-by-word. Bold page locators indicate main essays. Italic page locators indicate images. Page locators with a t indicate tabular material.
A AASS (American Anti-Slavery Society), 1:204, 2:118 Abbott, Frank, 2:231–232 ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions), 1:188 Abel, Frank, 1:59 Abolitionism, 1:201–205 abolitionists, 2:116–120 American Revolution, 1775–1783, 1:201, 203 Antebellum period, 1820–1861 and, 1:204, 2:118–120 army officers and, 1:71 colonization movement and, 1:204, 226, 2:152, 197 draft of blacks and, 1:70 history of, 1:184, 202 Judaism and, 1:226–227 literature, 1:202, 2:117 Methodists and, 1:184, 205 nonviolence and, 2:119 Northern states and, 1:202, 204, 2:118, 166–167 political humor and cartoons, 2:190 Presbyterians and, 1:184, 205 propaganda, 2:200–201 Quakers and, 1:202, 2:116–117 racial violence and, 1:204 racism and, 1:204 raid by John Brown at Harpers Ferry (VA), 1:204, 226, 2:128, 222 religion and, 1:184, 196–199, 2:218–219 sermons and, 1:196–197
songs, 1:245–246, 248–249 violence and, 2:118–119 women and, 1:204, 255 See also specific abolitionists Abolitionists, 2:116–120 ABPP (American Battlefield Protection Program), 2:250 Academies, military, 1:68, 69, 126–127, 128 Academy of Fine Arts, 1:160 ADA (American Dental Association), 2:59 Address to all the Churches, 2:163 Adger, John, 1:207 Advances in medicine, 2:31, 42, 44–45, 45, 46, 58–60 ‘‘Advice to Young Women’’ (Atwood), 1:98 Aerial reconnaissance, 1:23, 23 African American commemorations, 2:276–278 African American soldiers, 1:69–75 battles, 1:73–74, 2:222, 278 burials of, 2:252–253 celebrations over 1865 surrender, 2:278 child labor and, 2:107 Confederate Army, 1:1, 74 daily lives of, 1:71–73 disease and, 1:73 drill training, 1:70, 71 Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, 1:70, 2:277–278 equality and, 2:168 impact of service, 1:74
Louisiana Native Guards, 1:71, 2:203 motivations of, 1:70–71, 2:167 parity for, 1:72, 137, 2:168 pastimes of, 1:72–73 prisoner exchanges, 1:55 prisoners of war, 1:52–54, 53, 2:203, 222 recruitment, 1:1, 5, 147, 2:207, 208, 224 reminiscences, 2:205 reunions and, 1:132, 2:237 slaves’ work for, 1:136–137 statistics, 1:1, 73, 2:168 U.S. Army, 2:224 U.S. Navy, 1:69, 2:224 veterans, 2:237–238, 241, 242, 249 widows of, 1:156 wives and children of, 1:136, 137 See also specific military units African American women educators, 1:117 free blacks, 2:224 prostitutes, 1:66 rape of, 2:203, 222 slave labor, 2:110 spies, 1:82 war widows, 1:156, 157 See also Women African Americans, 1:119, 187 attitudes of Northerners, 2:197 attitudes of Southerners, 2:197 children of, 1:136, 157–158 civil rights and, 2:230 colonization movement and, 1:204, 226, 2:152, 197
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Index lynching of, 2:167, 181, 201 obituaries and memorials, 2:282–283 suffrage, 1:74, 122, 2:131, 230 See also Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople; specific churches; specific organizations African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, 1:106, 119, 187 African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion (AME Zion), 1:187 Agricultural fairs, 1:264–266 Agriculture, 2:85–88 child labor, 2:106–107 effects of War on, 2:86–87, 96 history of, 2:86 Northern states, 1:99–100, 2:86 sharecroppers, 2:87, 109 Southern states, 1:87, 110, 299, 2:86–87, 110 technological advances in, 2:61, 112–114 tobacco industry, 1:110, 2:71, 88, 98 women laborers, 1:99–100, 2:110, 132 See also Cotton industry; Slave labor; Tobacco industry Agriculture and the Civil War (Gates), 2:87 Alabama agriculture, 2:86 battles, 2:97, 222, 223 black market, 2:91–92 Confederate state capitol, 1:7 desertion in, 2:155 election of 1860 and, 2:129 food riots, 2:90–91 impressment of blacks, 2:153 inauguration of Jefferson Davis, 2:134–135, 144 manufacturing, 2:62 secession, 2:130, 143, 154, 160, 190 sermons supporting slavery, 1:199 shipbuilding, 2:79, 80 Alabama (ship), 2:79 Alcott, Louisa May Hospital Sketches, 1:159, 171, 235, 2:41 Little Women, 1:26, 171, 235, 269, 2:33, 41 nursing and, 1:26, 159, 171, 2:33, 35, 40–41 photograph of, 1:26 religion and, 1:224, 225 Alexander, Edward Porter, 2:3, 72 Alexandria (VA) Soldiers’ Cemetery, 2:270 Alger, Horatio, Jr., 1:273, 274
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‘‘All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates’’ (Lay), 2:117 Allan, William, 2:72 The Alternative: A Separate Nationality (Holcombe), 2:162 Ambulance corps, 2:9, 11, 12–15, 30–31, 31 AME (African Methodist Episcopal Methodist Church), 1:106, 119, 187 AME Zion (African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion), 1:187 American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1:204, 2:118 American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP), 2:250 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 1:188 American Cemetery (Normandy, France), 2:272 American Civil War (1861–1865) alternative names for, 2:238 declaration of war by Confederacy, 2:134 historical neutrality, 2:232–233 history in 1880s, 2:233–234 inevitability of, 2:130 lost cause myth, 2:229, 230–234, 235 peace negotiations, 1:79, 2:115 start of war, 1:80, 121, 2:93 surrender document, 1:79 The American Conflict (Greeley), 1:124, 2:231, 232 American Dental Association (ADA), 2:59 American Dictionary of the English Language (Webster), 1:124 American Freedmen’s Aid Union, 1:120 American Indians. See Native Americans American Jews, 1:183, 184, 226–227, 230 American Party, 1:183, 220, 2:126 American Phrenological Journal, 1:97, 149, 151 American Psychiatric Association, 2:43 American Red Cross, 2:37, 38, 60 American Revolution (1775–1783) abolitionism during, 1:201, 203 chaplains, 1:227 civil rights and, 1:203 religion and, 1:185, 192 Southern states’ ties to, 1:115, 207, 208, 2:187
American soldiers. See African American soldiers; Child soldiers; Native American soldiers; Soldiers’ lives American Spelling Book (Webster), 1:114, 124 American Sunday School Union (ASSU), 1:195, 196 American Tract Society, 1:32, 211, 212 American Unitarian Association (AUA), 1:225 American West Mexican-American War (1846–1848), 1:128, 280, 2:58, 158 Northwest, 1:154, 2:173, 174 revivals, 1:183 See also Southwest Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, 2:65–66, 68–69 Anabaptists, 1:183 Ancient Order of United Workmen, 1:258 Anderson, Joseph Reid, 1:152 Anderson, L. Merrit, 1:170 Anderson, Robert, 1:128, 200, 251 Andersonville (GA), 2:233, 245, 250, 271 Andersonville Prison, 1:45, 46, 47, 51–52, 54, 56–57, 282 Andrew, John, 1:5–6 Andrews, J. Cutler, 2:191, 193 Annals of the U.S. Christian Commission, 1:212 Annals of the War, 2:235 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864, 1:157 Antebellum period (1820–1861) abolitionism during, 1:204, 2:118–120 African ethnology of slaves and, 2:216, 217–218 education and, 1:204 freedpeople, 2:218–219 labor activism and, 2:108 lyceum lectures and, 1:236 master-slave/parent-child relation and, 2:209 minstrelsy and, 1:241 nursing and, 2:32–33 paid labor and, 2:108 political parties and, 2:126 race relationships and, 2:211 religion and, 2:216, 218 slave worship and, 2:213–214, 216 slaveholders’ rights and, 2:209 Anthony, Susan B., 1:256, 2:130–131, 131 Anti-Masonic movement, 1:258
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Index Anti-Masonic Party, 1:256, 258 Antietam Exhibit, 1862, 1:278–279, 280–281 Antietam National Battlefield, 2:249, 267–269 See also Battle of Antietam, 1862 Antietam National Cemetery, 2:271 Antietam Plan, 2:249, 250, 267, 269 Antietam Wavelet, 2:267 Antislavery movement. See Abolitionism Apostles of Disunion (Dew), 2:160 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Walker), 2:218–219 Appomattox Campaign, 1865, 1:48, 112, 251, 2:239 Arkansas Arkansas Post National Memorial (national park), 2:250 black churches, 1:120 contraband and, 2:92 military units, 1:247, 299 pro-Unionists, 2:169 secession, 2:160 Arlington National Cemetery, 2:246, 252, 270 Armies. See Confederate States of America Army; United States Army; specific military units Arminian doctrine, 1:191 Armory Square Hospital, Washington, DC, 2:20 Arms manufacturing, 2:75–78, 77 Colt revolvers, 2:67, 68, 100 Northern states, 2:65–66, 67, 68 war profiteers, 2:100 See also Military weapons Armstrong, Hallock, 1:218–219 Army Act, 1869, 1:252 Army bands, 1:35–36, 243–244, 250–252, 252 The Army Chaplain (Brown), 1:229 Army Chaplain’s Manual (Hammond), 1:267 Army Corps of Engineers, 1:126, 129 ‘‘Army Hymn’’ (Holmes), 1:209 Army life. See Soldiers’ lives Army Life in a Black Regiment (Wentworth), 1:196, 245 Army missionaries, 1:232–234 Army of the Cumberland, 2:247, 254–255, 256 Army of the Ohio, 2:258 Army of the Potomac army bands and, 1:35 health of soldiers and, 2:26 Hooker, Joe and, 1:62 McClellan, George B. and, 1:77, 2:14
Mead, G. G. and, 2:263 medical reforms and, 2:9, 11, 14, 31, 59 military chaplains and, 1:218–219, 233, 234 remembrances and memorials, 2:243, 254 Reynolds, J. F. and, 2:263 Seven Days Battles, 1862 and, 2:156 Sheridan, William T. and, 1:85 The Army of the Potomac (Castleman), 2:26 Army officers abolitionists, 1:71 black units, 1:45, 52, 69–70, 71, 72, 73 desertion, 1:28, 31 draft, 1:10 drill and training, 1:13 election of, 1:7 foraging and looting, 1:83, 84, 87 furloughs, 1:44 headquarters, 1:19 military prisons, 1:45, 46, 47 prisoner exchanges, 1:45 soldiers’ relationships with, 1:33, 41–42 vices, 1:37, 66 West Point, 1:126–129 wives of, 1:62–63 Arnold, Isaac Newton, 1:153–154 Arp, Bill, 1:289, 2:190 ‘‘The Arsenal at Springfield’’ (Longfellow), 2:76 Arthur, T. S., 1:97, 288, 294 Artillery, 1:58, 251, 282, 2:3–5 An Artilleryman’s Diary (Jones), 2:27 Asbury, Francis, 1:194, 194–195 Ashcraft, James A., 2:258 Ashes to Ashes (Kluger), 1:299 Asian Exclusion Act, 1875, 1:173 ASSU (American Sunday School Union), 1:195, 196 Atlanta Constitution, 2:190 Atlantic Coast. See Blockades and blockade running Atlantic Monthly, 1:119, 280 Atlantic States, 2:70, 86 See also specific states Atwood, J., ‘‘Advice to Young Women,’’ 1:98 AUA (American Unitarian Association), 1:225 Augusta Factory, 2:105 Augusta Powder Works, 2:63, 64 Augusta Purveying Association, 2:105 Autenrieth wagon, 2:9 Awakening of 1858, 1:192–193
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B Backus, Isaac, 1:203 Bacon, Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey, 2:34, 35 Bacon, Leonard, 2:28 Bacot, Ada W., 1:138 Baker, Lafayette, 2:171 Ball, Charles, 1:129, 2:213 Ball, Hannah, 1:194 Ballads, 1:165–166, 247 Ballou’s Dollar Magazine, 1:97 Baltimore Riot, 1861, 2:170, 170 Baltimore Sun, 1:267, 2:145 Bandits and bummers looting, 1:87 Bands. See Army bands Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War (Wise and Lord), 1:243, 244 Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, 1:217, 2:143 Banking industry, 2:101, 102–103, 109 Baptist Teacher, 1:195 Baptists dance and, 1:253 history of, 1:192 slavery and, 1:184, 2:163 Barnard, George, 1:278 Barnard, John Gross, 2:94 Barnes, David M., 1:157 Barnes, Samuel Denham, 2:278 Barnum, P. T., 1:237, 241 Barrett, Harris, 1:201 Barrett, James, 2:75 Barton, Clara, 1:59, 137, 2:37–38, 38, 132 Barton, William E., 2:138–139 Bartow, Francis Stebbins, 2:260 Baseball, 1:2, 236, 260, 262–263 Bate, William B., 2:260–261 Battery Wagner, 1:73 Battle casualties. See War casualties ‘‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’’ (Howe), 1:209, 209–210 Battle of Antietam, 1862, 1:278–279, 280–281, 2:268 ambulance corps and, 2:31 commemoration, 2:247 effects of, 2:205 first aid stations and, 2:14 Northern Virginia Confederate States of America Army, 2:96 victor of, 1:7 women and, 1:58 See also Antietam National Battlefield Battle of Cedar Mountain, 1862, 1:59
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Index Battle of Chancellorsville, 1863, 1:41, 222, 2:157 Battle of Chattanooga, 1863, 2:247, 252, 254, 271 See also Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, GA Battle of Chickamauga, 1863, 2:6, 29, 255, 255, 352 See also Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, GA Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs, 1862, 2:124 Battle of Corinth, 1862, 2:259 Battle of the Crater, 1:77 Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, 1:165 ‘‘The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern,’’ (song) 1:165 Battle of First Winchester, 1:7 Battle of Fort Donelson, 1862, 1:59 Battle of Fort Pillow, 1864, 2:222–223, 250 Battle of Fort Sumter, 1861 effects of, 1:11 national park, 2:250 siege, 2:93, 154 slave labor and, 1:70 start of war and, 1:80, 121, 2:93 surrender, 1:158, 251, 2:93 Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863, 1:59 Battle of Franklin, 1864, 2:5 Battle of Frayser’s Farm, 1862, 2:3 Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862, 1:7, 251, 2:14, 37–38 Battle of Gaines Mill, 1862, 1:7, 2:6, 13 Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 commemorations of, 2:237–238, 247, 254, 276 described, 2:263–264, 264 effects of, 2:238, 266 evacuation of wounded and, 2:15 first aid stations and, 2:14 mascots, 1:24 Meade, George and, 2:157 musicians at, 1:35 Peace Jubilee, 2:237–238 Pickett’s charge, 1:168, 2:238, 249, 276 reconciliation and, 2:238 reenactment, 2:238, 276 scene of, 1:186, 286, 2:266 statistics, 2:263, 266 war casualties, 1:279, 286, 2:230, 263 See also Gettysburg National Military Park, PA Battle of Hatcher’s Run, 1865, 1:24 Battle of Iuka, 1862, 2:17 Battle of Malvern Hill, 1862, 1:222
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Battle of Manassas, 1861, 1:166, 216, 231, 277–278, 2:12, 191 Battle of McDowell, 1:7 Battle of Mill Springs, 1862, 2:252 Battle of Milliken’s Bend, 1863, 1:73, 2:278 Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864, 2:97, 222, 223 Battle of Murfreesboro, 1862, 2:251 Battle of Nashville, 1864, 1:57, 74 Battle of Pea Ridge, 1862, 1:165 Battle of Perryville, 1:7 Battle of Pine Mountain, 1864, 1:127 Battle of Pittsburgh Landing, 1:143 Battle of Port Hudson, 1862, 1:58, 2:8, 278 Battle of Port Republic, 1862, 1:7 Battle of Shiloh, 1862, 1:3, 20, 2:15, 51, 124, 258 See also Shiloh National Military Park, TN The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Engaged, 2:259 Battle of Stones River, 1:61 Battle of Trevilian Station, 1864, 1:129 Battle of Vicksburg, 1862–1863, 2:37, 157, 260, 260–263 Battle of the Wilderness, 1864, 2:58 See also Vicksburg National Military Park, MS Battlefield sites, 2:246–269 overview, 2:247–251 Antietam National Battlefield, 2:249, 267–269 Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, GA, 2:248–249, 254–257, 261, 267, 269, 276 commission system and, 2:249, 256, 258, 259 Gettysburg National Military Park, PA, 1:24, 2:246, 261, 263–266, 264, 275 at home front, 1:59 monuments and memorials, 2:238, 251–254 Shiloh National Military Park, TN, 2:246, 249, 257, 257–259, 261 souvenirs and relics, 2:278–279 veterans and, 2:247–249 Vicksburg National Military Park, MS, 2:248, 249, 260–263 See also National cemeteries; specific battlefield sites Battlefield wounds, 2:2–7 effect of wounds on morale, 2:3, 5 infections and, 2:1, 8–9, 17, 44, 46
Native American soldiers and, 1:78 sanitation and, 1:26–27 treatment, 2:25 weapons and, 2:1, 3–5, 28, 29 See also Field hospitals Battles. See specific battles Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 2:235 Battleships. See Naval vessels Bayard, James A. , Jr., 2:167 Beard, Elkanah, 2:205 Beauregard, P. G. T., 1:127–128, 2:230 Beecher, Catherine, 1:109, 109 Beecher, Henry Ward, 1:227 Beecher, Lyman, 1:188, 294 Beers, Fannie, 1:138 Bell, John, 2:126 Belle Isle Prison, 1:54, 55, 56 A Belle of the Fifties, (Clay-Copton), 1:162–163 Bellows, Henry W., 2:48, 49, 49 Belmonte, Laura A., Speaking of America, 2:130, 132 Be´ne´zet, Anthony, 1:202 Bennett, Lyman G., History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, 2:280 Bennett, William W., 1:213, 233 Benson, Berry, 1:54, 55, 56 Beringer, Richard, Why the South Lost the Civil War, 2:63–64 Bermuda (ship), 2:97 Berry, Carrie, 1:136 Between Two Fires (Hauptman), 1:77 Bibb, Henry, 2:211, 217 Bible Society of the Confederate States, 1:32 Bickerdyke, Mary Ann Ball, 1:58, 59, 138, 2:37 Bierce, Ambrose, 1:189, 271, 2:6 Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (Jefferson), 1:124 Birth of a Nation (film), 1:258 The Bivouac and the Battlefield (Noyes), 1:288 Black, William, 2:227 Black Boy (Wright), 2:234 Black Brigade of Cincinnati, 1:239 Black Dance in the United States (Emery), 2:219 Black market, 2:91–93 Black-white relations, 2:163, 221–224 Blacks. See African American soldiers; African American women; African Americans; Free blacks; Freedpeople
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Index Blanton, DeAnne They Fought Like Demons, 1:60 Blassingame, John, 2:211, 213 Bleeding Blue and Gray (Rutkow), 2:38 Bleeding Kansas, 2:166, 221 Blight, David, 2:232 Bliss, Philip Paul, ‘‘Hold the Fort,’’ 1:210 A Blockaded Family (Hague), 2:56 Blockades and blockade running, 2:93–99 blockade runners, 2:95, 96–97 circumvention of blockade, 2:98–99 effects of blockade, 2:87, 96 exports from Southern states and, 2:65 railroad destruction, 2:41, 65, 88 Scott’s Great Snake strategy, 2:98 ship seizures, 2:95, 97 Bloom, Robert, 2:141 Blue & Gray in Black & White (Harris), 1:266 Blue and Gray Association, 2:243, 261, 262 Blue-Back Speller (Webster), 1:114, 124 Blue-gray reunions, 2:274–276, 275 Boate, Edward Wellington, 1:56–57 Bokum, Hermann, The Testimony of a Refugee from East Tennessee, 1:164–165 Bollet, Alfred Jay, 2:4, 12, 17 Booth, Edwin, 1:235, 237 Booth, John Wilkes, 1:211, 235, 241, 242, 2:169 Booth, Junius Brutus, 1:235, 241–242, 242 Border states allegiance to Union, 1:70, 127 battlefields in, 1:143 foraging and looting in, 1:86 guerrilla warfare and, 1:68 refugees, 1:162, 164–165 smuggling and, 2:169 See also specific states Bosbyshell, Oliver Christian, 2:236 Boston Commonwealth, 1:159 Boston Daily Advertiser, 1:198, 299 Boston Emancipator and Republican, 2:211 Boston Herald, 1:237, 2:139 Boston Investigator, 1:116, 215, 293 Boston attack on armory in, 2:182 black education, 1:119, 120 hospitals, 2:32 immigrants and, 2:63, 68
prostitution and, 1:39 recruitment, 1:186 revivals, 1:190 sanitary fairs, 2:52, 54 shipbuilding, 2:79, 80 sports and, 1:259, 260, 262 Sunday school movement, 1:195 Unitarianism and, 1:224, 225 YMCA and, 1:214, 215 Bourne, William O., 2:243 Bourns, Dr. John Francis, 1:277, 285–286 Bowden, Ann, 1:155 Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll, 2:31, 58 Bowling, 1:215, 258, 260 Bowman, Rachel, 1:169 Boyd, Maria Belle, 1:81, 167, 167 Boynton, Henry, 2:249, 254, 256, 257, 267 The Boys in Blue (Hoge), 2:51 Bradley, Milton, 1:261 Brady, Mathew, 1:275–279, 278, 281, 2:114 Bragg, Braxton, 2:193 Branson, Levi, First Book in Composition, 1:114–115 Bread riots, 1:96, 111, 177, 2:89–91, 170–171, 171 Breckinridge, John C., 2:129 Brinkley, Garland, 2:87 Brinton, J. H., 2:42 British immigrants, 1:76, 172 Brockenbrough, Judith White, 2:33 Brooks, Jerome E., The Mighty Leaf, 1:299 Brooks Brothers Clothing Store, 2:100, 100, 108 A Brotherhood of Valor (Wert), 1:20 Brown, Antoinette Louise, 1:188–189 Brown, John, 1:204, 226, 2:119, 119, 128, 154, 221–222 Brown, Joseph E., 1:8, 2:179 Brown, Thomas J., 2:241–242 Brown, W. Y., The Army Chaplain, 1:229 Brown, William Wells, 2:199, 215 Browne, Charles Farrar, 1:254 Brownell, Thomas, 2:282 Brownlow, William Gannaway, 1:255, 288, 2:166, 176, 176, 193 Buchanan, James, 2:126, 128, 147, 166 Buck, Lucy Rebecca, 1:59 Buckley, Mary, 1:155 Buell, Don Carlos, 2:258 The Bugle Call (Root), 1:246–247
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Bugle Resounding (Cucia), 1:244 Bullwhip Days (Wilson), 1:118 Bunting, Robert Franklin, 1:212 Burden, Mrs. Wade H., 1:156–157 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. See Freedmen’s Bureau Burials African American soldiers and, 2:252–253 Catholic clergy and, 1:222 Confederate Army, 2:252, 271–272 postwar, 2:271–272 U.S. Army, 2:252, 269–271 wartime, 2:251–253 See also National cemeteries Burnside, Ambrose, 1:129, 165, 267, 2:156, 169, 173 Burton, Vernon, 1:193 Businessmen’s Revival, 1:184, 192–193 Butler, Benjamin F., 1:147, 267, 2:198, 205, 206, 242 Butler, Ovid, 1:62 Butternuts, 2:173, 174
C Cadle, Cornelius, 2:258, 259 Cairo (IL), 1:93, 2:37 Cakewalk dance, 2:220 Calhoun, John C., 1:298, 2:158 Calvinism, 1:191 Camden Confederate, 1:292 Camp Elmira, 1:47–48, 51, 56 Camp followers black reminiscences, 2:205 freedpeople, 1:67, 2:205, 227 slaves, 1:67, 136–137, 2:198 women, 1:38–39, 65, 65–67, 136–137 Camp Randall, 1:47 Campaigns, military. See specific military campaigns Campaigns, political, 2:115, 129, 166, 188–191, 193–195 Campbell, Alexander, 1:195 Campbell, Hettie, 2:221 Camps. See Military camps Camps and Prisons (Duganne), 1:288 Cane Ridge camp meeting, 1:183, 184, 190–191 Cannibals All (Fitzhugh), 2:163 Cannons, 1:282, 2:65, 97 Capital punishment, 1:30 Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops (Fabian), 1:290
299
Index Carman, Ezra, 2:256, 268 Carolina-Georgia Low Country, 2:216, 217–218 Carolinas Campaign, 1865, 2:177, 203 Carr, Clark, 2:141 Carr, Hattie, L., 1:170 Carroll, Alfred L., 1:253 Carson, William J., 1:251 Carter, James G., 1:125 Cartes de visite, 1:276–277, 284, 285, 286, 2:195 Cartoons. See Political humor and cartoons Cartwright, Peter, 1:183, 186–187 Cashier, Albert D. J., 1:60, 2:131 Cassville Standard, 2:129 Castel, Albert, Tom Taylor’s Civil War, 1:181 Castleman, Alfred Lewis, The Army of the Potomac, 2:26 Catholicism, 1:220–224 fear of, 1:223 home front and, 1:222–223 hospital volunteers and, 1:222 immigration and, 1:223 military chaplains and, 1:184, 220–222, 221 orphans and, 1:222 soldiers’ pastimes and, 1:222 U.S. history and, 1:183 Catton, Bruce, 1:49, 2:136 Cavalry. See specific military units Cavalry of Confederate Army, 1:53, 87, 152, 247 See also specific cavalry units Cavalry of U. S. Army, 1:81, 88, 135 See also specific cavalry units Cemeteries. See Burials; National cemeteries Censorship. See Civil liberties and censorship Century, 2:232–233, 235 Chambersburg, 1:89, 171, 284–285 Chandler, Elizabeth, 1:204 Channing, William Ellery, 1:225 Chaplains. See Clergy; Military chaplains Chappellsmith, Margaret, 1:198 The Character, Claims and Practical Workings of Freemasonry (Finney), 1:258 Charity activities, 1:215, 222, 225, 2:50, 52–53, 105, 205 See also specific organizations Charleston Courier, 1:64 Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, 1:172, 247, 2:129
300
Charleston Daily Courier, 2:192 Charleston Mercury, 1:111, 2:96, 125, 184 Charleston (SC), 1:111, 195, 207, 2:201, 202, 246 Chase, Salmon P., 2:92, 92, 102, 194 Chattahoochee (ship), 2:79 Chattanooga National Cemetery, 2:252, 270, 271, 272 Cheney State College, 1:114 Cherokees, 1:77, 78–79 Chesapeake of Virginia and Maryland region, 2:216, 218 Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller on clothes, 1:105, 160–161 on food shortages, 1:110, 112, 2:110 on holidays, 1:263 on photo albums, 1:285 on separations and reunions, 1:133 on slave labor, 2:110 on slave worship, 1:200–201 on uniforms, 1:105 Chicago Daily Tribune, 2:243 Chicago Times, 2:125, 140 Chicago Tribune, 1:62, 2:65, 139, 140, 282 ‘‘Chickamauga’’ (Bierce), 2:6 Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, GA, 2:248–249, 254–257, 261, 267, 269, 276 See also Battle of Chattanooga, 1863; Battle of Chickamauga, 1863 Chickamauga Memorial Association, 2:254, 255 Childrearing. See Parenting and childrearing Child soldiers, 1:2, 67, 67–69, 2:107 Children black, 1:136, 157–158 child death, 1:131, 138, 142, 143, 211 child labor, 2:105, 106–108 concepts on childhood, 2:106, 107 crimes committed by, 1:175 diseases and, 1:26, 103, 2:1, 23–24 education, 1:114–115 family life and, 1:144–145 food and nutrition, 1:110 Northern states and, 1:143 in nursing, 2:107 powder monkey nickname, 2:107, 107 of slaves, 1:144–145, 154–155, 194 Southern states and, 1:102–103, 143–144 See also Parenting and childrearing The Children’s Civil War (Marten), 1:103
Children’s literature, 1:114, 272–275 Chimborazo Hospital, Richmond (VA), 2:2, 19–20, 30, 132 Chinese immigrants, 1:172, 173, 173 Chisholm, J. Julius, Manual of Military Surgery, 2:29 ‘‘Choosing a Wife’’ (Hopkins), 1:149–150 Christian Advocate and Journal, 1:98, 151 The Christian Baptist, 1:195 Christian Inquirer, 2:89 Christian literature, 1:196, 211–214 Christian organizations. See specific organizations Christian Reconstruction (Richardson), 1:120 Christian Recorder, 1:73, 119, 120, 2:168 Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner (Northrop), 2:25 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1:187–188, 255 Churches. See specific churches; specific religions Cincinnati Enquirer, 2:125, 148, 173, 192 Cincinnati Gazette, 1:178 City Point Hospital, 2:20 Civil liberties and censorship, 2:120–125 definition and history of, 2:120 Ex parte Merryman (1861), 2:122 Ex parte Milligan (1866), 2:122–123 press censorship, 1:267, 2:123–125, 170 suspension of habeas corpus, 2:120–123, 170–171 Civil-military relations. See Civilians; Home front Civil rights African American soldiers and, 1:69, 71, 72 American Revolution (1775–1783) and, 1:203 antidiscriminatory laws, 1:74 equality of whites, 2:197 free blacks and, 1:119, 120, 2:230 Grant, Ulysses S. and, 2:198 Native Americans and, 1:79 New York Draft Riots, 1863, 1:154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 racial violence and, 1:118 slaves and, 1:199, 207 voting rights, 1:74, 122, 2:131 women and, 1:204, 2:48, 130–131, 132
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Index Civil War (1861–1865). See American Civil War (1861–1865) The Civil War (Sears), 1:272 Civil War America (Marten), 1:152 The Civil War and Reconstruction (Gienapp), 2:131 The Civil War Archive (Commanger), 1:152 Civil War Medicine (Bollet), 2:4, 12 Civil War Preservation Trust, 2:250, 269 Civil War Richmond, 1:152 Civilian health care, 2:56–58 Civilians attitudes on home front, 1:88–89, 91, 102, 103 clothing, 1:101, 104–106, 105, 2:83, 84–85 crime, 1:174–175 dancing, 1:252–254, 253 disease, 2:56–57 draft riots, 1:10, 154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 fraternizing with enemy, 1:167 guerrilla warfare and, 1:92–93 letters to soldiers from, 1:43, 151, 168–171, 169, 170 looting, 1:87 men on home front, 1:152–153 photographs of, 1:284–287 pro-Unionists, 1:164, 165, 2:169, 175–178, 176–177, 198 published reminiscences, 2:236 rape of, 1:84, 2:203, 222 resistance by, 1:91–93 soldiers’ interactions with, 1:88–91 volunteer work, 1:158–162, 160, 161, 2:106 See also Domestic life; Family and community life Clap, Thomas, 1:185 Clare, Josephine, 1:177, 2:179 Clark, James H., 1:15 Clark, Walter, Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, 2:281 Class tensions, 1:175–179, 2:197 Clay, Brutus J., 1:142 Clay, Henry, 2:126, 158 Clay-Copton, Virginia, 1:162–163 Cleburne, Patrick, 2:204 Clem, Johnny, 1:67 Clemens, Samuel, 1:253–254, 274 Clemson, Floride, 1:181 Clergy attitudes of Southerners, 1:206, 2:187 burials and, 1:222 education requirements, 1:185–186
itinerant preachers, 1:183 master-slave/parent-child relation and, 1:207–208 obituaries and, 2:282 slave preachers, 1:200 women’s ministries, 1:188–189 See also Military chaplains; Sermons; specific churches; specific religions Cleveland, Grover, 2:241 Cleveland Herald, 1:192, 2:242 Clothing, 1:101, 104–106, 105, 2:83, 84–85 See also Uniforms Clymer, Hiester, 2:166–167 Coastal defense, 2:63, 70, 93–95 Coddington, Edwin B., The Gettysburg Campaign, 1:84 Coffin, Charles Carlton, 1:245, 255 Coins, 1:167, 2:101 Collins, R. M., 2:236 The Colonel’s Diary (Jackson), 2:25 Colonization movement, 1:204, 226, 2:152, 197 Colored Orphan Asylum, 2:181 Colored Soldiers’ and Sailors’ League, 2:241 Colored Veterans Association, 2:241 Colt, Samuel, 2:67, 100 Colt Manufacturing Company, 2:68, 100 Columbia (SC), 1:86, 91, 159, 263 Comedy acts, 1:235 Commanger, Henry Steele, The Civil War Archive, 1:152 Commercial Gazette, 2:254 Commission system, 2:249, 265 Common School Journal, 1:125 Common school movement, 1:123–126 A Complete Account of the John Morgan Raid (Simmons), 1:152 Compromise of 1850, 2:145, 154, 159 Comstock, Elizabeth, 2:35 Comte de Paris, Louis Philippe Albert d’Orleans, 2:68, 69 Conant, Mrs. H. C., 2:282 The Confederate First Reader (Smith), 1:123 Confederate Ordnance Department, 1:152, 2:72, 77 Confederate Speller and Reader (Neely), 1:123 Confederate States of America (CSA) national debt, 2:103, 188 piracy and, 2:95, 97 politics vs. principle and, 2:116
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war finance and, 1:96, 2:101–102, 103 See also Southern states; specific states Confederate States of America Army army bands, 1:251 burials, 2:252, 271–272 cavalry, 1:53, 87, 152, 247 chaplains, 1:184, 230–232 child labor and, 2:107 companies and regiments, 1:6–7 demobilization of, 2:239–240 draft and, 1:7–8, 11, 11–13, 12, 2:182–183 food and nutrition, 1:17, 17–18, 83–84 foraging and looting, 1:83–84, 89 formation of, 2:203 fraternizing with enemy, 1:166–167 freedpeople and, 2:203 headquarters, 1:19 immigrant soldiers, 1:1 impressment and, 1:87 Jews and, 1:227 Native American soldiers, 1:77, 78, 79 Northern civilian resistance against, 1:89 slave labor and, 1:70 spies and, 1:80, 80–81, 2:76 surgeons and, 2:28 uniforms, 1:19, 21, 21–22, 104, 105 war casualties, 1:7–8, 2:17, 60 See also specific military units; specific prisons Confederate States of America Congress agricultural crops and, 1:299 conscription and, 1:11–12, 29, 2:155, 182 establishment of, 2:134 impressment of blacks and, 2:204 war finance and, 2:101–102 Confederate States of America Constitution, 2:116, 202 Confederate States of America Navy, 2:78–79, 80, 95, 95–96, 96–97 See also Blockades and blockade running Confederate States of America Treasury Department, 1:175, 2:101–102, 103 Confederate States of America War Department evacuation of wounded and, 2:14–15 food distribution, 1:15 General Order Number Fourteen, 2:204 small arms and, 1:24 uniforms, 1:21
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Index Confederate Veteran, 2:243, 274 The Confederate War (Gallagher), 1:5 Confiscation Act, 1861, 2:156 Confiscations, 2:152, 156, 167, 198 Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 1:230 The Congregationalist, 1:217 Congregationalists, 1:185, 192 Congressional representatives. See specific representatives Connecticut education system, 1:115 game hunting, 1:258 missionary activities, 1:188 pro-Union refugees in, 2:177 religion and, 1:185 Sunday school movement, 1:195 temperance movement, 1:294 tobacco use in, 1:299 YMCA, 1:215 See also New England Conniff, Michael, 2:210 Conscientious objectors, 2:178–180 See also Copperheads; Peace movement Conscription. See Draft; Opposition to the War; Recruitment Conscription acts, 1:8, 10, 11–12, 29, 2:182 Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (Moore), 1:11–12 Conservation Fund, 2:269 Constitutional amendments. See United States Constitution Constitutional Union Party, 2:126 A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (Stephens), 2:164 Contraband of war, 1:147, 162, 2:198, 205, 206, 226 Contraband trade, 2:56, 92, 98–99 Conventions, political, 2:128, 158, 160, 175, 194 See also specific political parties Conyngham, David Power, 1:222 Cook, Lauren M., They Fought Like Demons, 1:60 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 2:209 Cooper, Peter, 2:165 Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, 1:159 ‘‘Cooper Union Speech’’ (Lincoln), 2:126 Coopersmith, Andrew S., Fighting Words, 2:192 Cope, Emmor B., 2:268 Copperheads Butternuts and, 2:173, 174 described, 1:41, 167, 2:166
302
draft opposition, 2:174 election of 1864, 2:174–175 McClellan, George Brinton and, 2:169 political beliefs of, 2:171–172, 192 political humor and cartoons, 2:172, 188–190, 189, 189–190 propaganda and, 2:192, 194, 195 race and, 2:173 regionalism and, 2:171–173 Republican Party conspiracy theories about, 2:174 songs and, 1:247, 2:194 Vallandigham, Clement L. and, 2:156–157, 169, 173, 173–174 Corinth (MS), 2:259 Cormany, Rachel, 1:146–147, 148, 171 Cornish, Samuel, 1:204 Coston, Martha, 2:114 Cotton industry burning cotton, 2:96 cotton gin, 1:124 England and, 2:81–83, 84, 96, 112, 155 homespun cloth and, 2:82, 83, 84 markets and, 1:164, 2:64, 87, 92, 93 Northern states, 1:164, 2:81 slave labor and, 2:61, 82–83, 83, 110, 112 smuggling and, 2:83 Counterfeit money, 1:175 Courage, 1:151, 211, 279 Court martial, 2:125 Courtship and marriage, 1:149–152 in camps, 1:150 courtships, 1:149–150 effect of War on, 1:151 engagements, 1:150–151 family and community life, 1:149–152 free blacks, 1:132, 137, 148, 156, 2:208 husbands and wives as soldiers, 1:58, 60–61 letters from soldiers, 1:40 letters from wives, 1:151 slaves, 2:207–208 visiting husbands and relatives on battlefield, 1:61–65, 131–132 women’s role, 1:98, 188 ‘‘Courtship As It Should Be’’ (Wyllys), 1:151 Crawford, Alan Pell, 2:89, 90 Creed, Cortlandt van Rensselaer, 2:28 Cre`vecoeur, J. Hector St. John de, Letter from an American Farmer, 1:130 Cricket, 1:27, 260, 263, 273
Crime, 1:174–175 Crimean War (1853–1856) British Sanitary Commission and, 2:49, 53 mortality rates and, 2:58 nursing and, 2:32–33, 38 press effects during, 2:123 smoking and tobacco use during, 1:291 war photography and, 1:280 Crow, Jeffery, 2:155 Crowder, W. J. W., 1:213 CSA (Confederate States of America). See Confederate States of America (CSA); Southern states C.S.S. Virginia (ship), 2:77, 96 Cuccia, Lenora, Bugle Resounding, 1:244 ‘‘The Cult of True Womanhood’’ (Welter), 2:130 Culture and leisure of slaves, 2:212–215 Cumming, Joseph B., 2:256 Cumming, Kate, 1:159–160, 2:34, 35, 41 Cunningham, Sumner A., 2:274 Currency, 1:167, 175, 2:100–104 Curtin, Andrew Gregg, 2:265 Curtis, George William, 1:255 Cushman, Pauline, 1:81, 82, 82 Custer, George Armstrong, 1:129
D Da Costa, Jacob, 2:60 Dabney, Robert Lewis, 1:231, 2:164 Daguerre, Louis, 1:275 Daily Advertiser, 2:183 Daily Citizen and News, 2:149 Daily Cleveland Herald, 1:175, 215, 274, 299, 2:44 Daily Evening Bulletin on crime, 1:174–175 on Emancipation Proclamation, 2:148 on gambling, 1:292–293 on immigrants, 1:173 lyceum lectures, 1:215 on portraits, 1:284 on slave children, 1:144 on spirituals, 2:215 temperance movement, 1:198 USCC, 1:217 on women laborers, 2:110 Daily Inter Ocean, 1:248, 2:236–237 Daily Miners’ Register, 1:292, 2:106 Daily Morning News, 2:34, 72, 78, 143
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Index Daily National Intelligencer charity, 1:215, 222 on Fort Sumter, 2:143 literary criticism, 1:270 on Sunday School movement, 1:195 on war photography, 1:282, 285 Daily News and Herald, 1:144 The Daily Picayune, 1:236, 264, 2:183, 278 Daily Register, 2:71, 72 Daily Richmond Examiner, 2:105 Daily Southern Crisis, 2:148 Daily Tribune, 1:237 Dale, George N., 2:243 Dana, Charles, 1:73 Dance among slaves, 1:255, 2:219–221, 220 Dancing, 1:252–254, 253 Daniel, John M. , 2:193 Daughter of the Union (Silber), 1:61 David Walker’s Appeal (Walker), 2:117–118 Davis, George B., 2:249, 267–269 Davis, George W., 2:269 Davis, Jefferson appointment as president of Confederacy, 2:143 biased newspapers and, 2:193 biography of, 2:133, 142 on bread riots, 2:90 on chaplaincy, 1:230–231 death of, 2:230 on disabled veterans, 2:242 electoral ticket, 2:145 inauguration and inaugural address of, 2:134–135, 135, 143, 144, 146 letters from, 2:153 memorials and, 2:238 open letters to, 1:176–177, 2:152–153 political humor and cartoons on, 2:188 politics vs. Confederate principle and, 2:116 racism and, 2:222 resignation speech from U.S. Senate, 2:133–134, 142–144 on slave labor, 2:203 term limits and, 2:194 West Point, 1:126, 128, 231 Davis, Rebecca Harding, Life in the Iron Mills, 1:270 Davis, Samuel, 1:203 Davis, Thomas, 2:210 Davis, William C., Gettysburg, 2:265 The Days of Shoddy (Morford), 2:100 Dayton Journal, 1:254 Death and dying, 2:281–283
The Declaration of Sentiments (Stanton), 2:130 Declaration of the Immediate Causes, 2:160 Declaration of war, 2:134 Decoration Day, 2:227, 233, 244–246, 245 The Defiance Democrat, 2:173 DeGrey, James, 1:148 Delany, Martin Robinson, 1:204 Delaware, 1:54, 294, 2:226 Delaware Indians, 1:77 Democracy in America (de Tocqueville), 1:129–130 Democratic Party overview, 2:115–116 candidates and, 2:126–129 class tensions exploitation, 1:178 conventions and, 2:128, 175 Copperheads and, 1:167, 2:166, 171, 172, 192 election of 1860, 1:220, 2:126, 128–129, 194 opposition to emancipation, 1:178, 2:167 peace movement and, 2:115, 156, 171, 173, 192, 194 political humor and cartoons, 2:195 pro- and anti-war factions, 2:115, 169 reaction to first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:145 slavery and, 2:193–194 War Democrats, 2:115, 156, 171, 173, 194 De la de´mocratie en Ame´rique (de Tocqueville), 1:129–130 Denison, Charles, Wheeler, The Tanner-Boy, 1:125 Dentistry, 2:59 Dependent Pension Act, 1890, 2:241 Desertion, military, 1:28–31, 29, 2:171 Detroit Free Press, 1:215, 2:140 The Devil’s Dictionary (Bierce), 1:271 Devotional literature, 1:212, 233 Dew, Charles B., Apostles of Disunion, 2:160 Diaries and letters from home, 1:168–171 Diaries and letters from soldiers, 1:2, 39–44, 40, 42, 2:152, 279, 280–281, 283 A Diary of Battle (Nevins), 2:264 Dickens, Charles, 1:242, 288, 289 Dickert, D. Augustus, History of Kershaw’s Brigade, 2:280 Dickinson, A. E., 1:212
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Diet, 1:106, 107–108, 109–110, 2:25, 44 See also Food and nutrition Disease, 2:23–27 overview, 2:23 African American soldiers and, 1:73 blacks and, 1:73, 144, 148 childhood, 1:26, 103, 2:1, 23–24 civilians and, 2:47, 56–57 drug addiction, 2:25–26, 26–27 epidemics, 1:108, 163, 2:1, 23, 25–26, 42 field hospitals and, 1:27, 2:1–2, 8 home remedies and, 1:110, 2:44, 56 hospitals and, 2:18, 22 medical treatments and, 2:45–46 military camps and, 1:2, 3, 24–26, 2:18, 24–25 military prisons and, 1:45–48, 50 statistics, 2:23 surgeons and, 2:8, 17, 21 urban centers and, 1:163, 2:47 USSC and, 1:159 venereal diseases, 1:39, 66, 2:22, 26 See also Public health and sanitation Dispatch, 1:174 District of Columbia Emancipation Act, 1862, 2:119–120, 276, 277 See also Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 The Divided Family in Civil War America (Taylor), 1:140–141 Dix, Dorothea, 1:224, 224, 2:34, 36, 39–40, 54 Dix, Jno. A., 1:55 ‘‘Dixie’’ (Savage), 2:185 Dobbins, Jesse, 2:177 Doctors in Blue (Keen), 2:16 Dodge, Greenville M., 1:82 Dollar Monthly Magazine, 1:98 Domestic life, 1:96–104 overview, 1:96–99 economics and, 1:97–98 freedpeople, 1:96, 142 literature for young girls about, 1:273–274 Northern states, 1:95, 96, 99–100 Southern states, 1:95–96, 96, 101–104 women’s role, 1:96–98, 101–103, 139 See also Children; Civilians; Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople; Family and community life; Food and nutrition; Home front; Parenting and childrearing
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Index Donaldson, Francis, 2:7 Dooley, John, 1:54, 55, 56 Doubleday, Abner, 1:2, 236 Douglas, Stephen Arnold abolitionism and, 2:166 congressional elections of 1858, 2:126 elections of 1860, 2:128, 129 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858, 2:115, 127, 166 relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, 1:131 Douglass, Frederick abolitionism and, 1:118, 202, 203, 204, 2:118, 167 on African American soldiers, 1:69 on Constitution as proslavery, 2:167 education of, 1:118 on first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:145 lyceum lectures, 1:255, 256, 2:186 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 2:187 North Star, 2:118 ‘‘Old Kentucky Home,’’ 1:249 photograph of 2:187 on remembrances of War, 2:233 on second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:147 on slave worship, 2:213 on Stephen Foster tunes, 1:249 Dover Gazette, 2:107 Downey, Susan, house of, 1:179 Draft abolitionism and, 1:70 army officers, 1:10 bounty jumpers, 1:9, 178 class tensions and, 1:176–177 Confederate Army, 1:7–8, 11, 11–13, 12, 2:182–183 Conscription Acts, 1:8, 10, 11–12, 29, 2:182 Constitutional rights and, 2:179–180 Copperheads’ opposition to, 2:174 defined, 1:3, 8 Enrollment Act, 1863, 1:176, 177, 2:157, 180, 182 exemptions, 1:9, 12, 152, 155, 157, 176, 2:167 pacifism and, 2:169, 178–179 riots and resisters, 1:3, 10, 154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–183, 181 state quotas, 1:5–6, 7 substitutes, 1:9–10, 12, 153, 155, 176, 176–177, 2:169 Twenty Negro Law, 1862 and, 1:12, 103, 2:155 See also Recruitment
304
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 2:119, 128, 159, 166, 167 Drill training, 1:13–14 academies, 1:126–129, 128 African American soldiers, 1:70, 71 area for, 1:14, 21 army officers and, 1:13 bands, 1:35, 243–244 cadets, 1:68 daily life, 1:2, 38 health of soldiers and, 1:27 Drum Taps (Whitman), 1:272 Drums and Shadows, 2:221 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk, 2:212 Duganne, Augustine Joseph Hickey, Camps and Prisons, 1:288 Duke, Basil Wilson, 2:258 Duke Tobacco Company, 1:298 Dunkards, 2:169, 178 DuPont Company, 2:68 Dupre´, Louis J., Fagots from the Campfire, 1:288 Dwight’s Journal of Music, 2:216 Dyer, J. Franklin, 2:29 ‘‘The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson’’ (Lanier), 2:185
E Early, Jubal Anderson, 2:235, 236, 243 Earnest Worker, 1:195 Eaton, John, Jr., 2:205 Economics and finance banking industry, 2:101, 102–103, 109 Confederacy war finances, 1:96, 2:101–102, 103 domestic life, 1:97–98 international economic relations, 1:84, 2:83, 96, 98, 155 manufacturing, 2:69 money, 1:167, 175, 2:100–104 national debt, 2:103, 188 taxes, 1:296 U.S. war finances, 1:296, 2:100 See also Work and economy Editors Make War (Reynolds), 2:193 Edmonds, Sarah Emma, 1:58, 60, 60, 61, 2:35, 58, 131 Education, 1:113–129 overview, 1:113 Antebellum period (1820–1861), 1:204 children and, 1:114–115, 145 clergy and, 1:185–186 college, 1:115–116 common school movement, 1:123–126
elementary , 1:114–115 freedman school riots, 1:118 freedpeople and, 1:114, 115, 118–121, 137, 144, 145 Morrill Act, 1:116, 121–122 Northern states, 1:113, 115, 119–120 Sea Island experiment, 1:117, 137, 245 slaves and, 1:113, 118, 136–137, 194–195, 202 Southern states, 1:113–114, 115, 122–123 West Point, 1:126–129 women and, 1:116–118 Edwards, Jonathan, 1:188 Edwards, Mary, 2:26 The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, 2:160–161 Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople overview, 2:197–199 culture and leisure, 2:212–215 dance among slaves, 2:219–221 emancipation, 2:226–227 family, 2:207–209 free blacks, 2:205–207, 224–226 freedpeople, 2:205–207 plantation life, 2:209–212, 210 race and racial tensions, 2:221–224 religion practiced by slaves, 2:216–219 slave markets, 2:199, 199–201, 200 slaves, 2:201–204 spirituals, 2:215–216 Eicher, David, 2:265 8th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, 1:217, 288 8th Georgia Infantry Regiment, 2:260 8th Maine Infantry Regiment, 1:244 8th Michigan Infantry Regiment, Company H, 1:76 8th Missouri Infantry Regiment, 1:77 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment, 1:212 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 1:25 18th Amendment, 1:291, 296 18th Ohio Infantry Regiment, 2:255 81st Indiana Infantry Regiment, 2:174 81st Ohio Infantry Regiment, 1:58, 61 83rd Pennsylvania Regiment, 1:42 84th United States Colored Troops (USCT) flag, 1:72 Eiland, O. G., 2:153 Einhorn, David, 1:227, 227
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Election of 1840, 1:249 Election of 1860, 2:125–130 campaign and, 2:129, 166 Democratic Party, 1:220, 2:126, 128–129, 194 federal slave code and, 2:127–128 party politics and, 1:220, 2:126–129 propaganda, 2:127 results of, 2:129–130 secession and, 2:160, 193 Election of 1864, 1:249–250, 2:174–175, 194–195 Elementary Arithmetic, 1:122 11th Iowa Infantry Regiment, 2:258 11th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:24 11th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 2:92 Eleventh Ward Freedman’s Aid Society, 2:201 Elliott, Stephen, 2:187 Ellis, Thomas T., 1:100, 2:17, 58 Elmira Cornet Band, 1:252 Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (Hummel), 1:30 Emancipation, 2:226–227 Democratic Party opposition to, 1:178, 2:167 music and, 1:247–248 Southern states and, 2:235, 238, 270, 276 Emancipation Day celebrations, 2:231, 277–278 ‘‘Emancipation’’ (Nast), 2:190 Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 overview, 2:135, 148, 149, 226–227 African American soldiers, 1:70, 2:277–278 effects of, 1:137, 2:135, 136, 148–150, 155 election of 1864 propaganda and, 2:195 lithograph of, 2:149 Nast, Thomas illustration of freedpeople’s lives after, 2:151 Northern reaction to, 2:136, 148, 156 redefinition of War and, 2:150 signing of, 2:120 Southern reaction to, 2:136, 148–150 U.S. Army and, 2:150 Emancipator, 1:299 Emancipator and Free American, 1:248 Embattled Courage (Linderman), 2:26 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1:236, 269 Emery, Lynne Fauley, 2:219
Enemy property. See Foraging and looting ‘‘Engagements’’ (Hopkins), 1:150–151 Engerman, Stanely, Time on the Cross, 2:71 England blockade runners and, 2:96, 97 cotton market and, 2:81–83, 84, 96, 112, 155 literature, 1:235 neutrality and, 2:96 photographs of royalty, 1:277 Southern states’ cause and, 2:83, 84, 96 Sunday school movement, 1:194 theater, 1:235 Enrollment Act, 1863, 1:176, 177, 2:157, 180, 182 Entertainment. See Culture and leisure of slaves; Performing arts; Popular culture Epidemic diseases, 1:108, 163, 2:1, 23, 25–26, 42 Episcopalians, 1:184, 185, 233 See also specific churches Equal rights. See Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 Equality. See Civil rights Equipment, 1:22–24, 2:279, 279 Escott, Paul, 2:155 Espionage. See Spies Eulogies, 2:251 Eustis, Frederick A., 1:166 Evacuation of wounded, 2:12–15, 13, 18–23 Evangelical Tract Society, 1:212, 233 Evarts, Jeremiah, 1:188 Evening Post, 2:32 Everett, Edward Gettysburg cemetery dedication speech, 2:136, 138, 140, 146, 186, 265 on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, 2:142 on paid women laborers, 2:110 Ewell, Richard S., 2:243 Ex parte Merryman (1861), 2:122 Ex parte Milligan (1866), 2:122–123 Executive power, 2:121 Executive powers, 2:120–122, 171
F Fabian, Ann, Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops, 1:290 Factory system, 2:61–62, 73–75, 112 See also Manufacturing
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Fagots from the Campfire (Dupre´), 1:288 Fahs, Alice, 2:231 Fairbanks, Charles, 1:55 Fairchild, Lucius, 2:262 Fall of New Orleans, 1862, 2:86, 99 False imprisonment, 2:120, 121 Families and Freedom, 1:148 Family and community life overview, 1:95–96 class tensions, 1:175–179 clothing, 1:104–106, 105 courtship and marriage, 1:149–152 crime, 1:174–175 extended families, 1:146–149 fraternizing with enemy, 1:166–168 freedpeople and, 1:96, 142 games, 1:261–262 gender norms, 1:138–140 housing, 1:179–181 immigration, 1:172–174 impact of military service on, 1:146–147 letters from home front, 1:43, 145, 148–149, 151, 168–171, 169, 170 lost cause myth and, 2:233–234 orphans, 1:136, 153–158, 156–158, 222, 2:208 reading, 1:289 refugees, 1:162–166, 163 separations and reunions, 1:129–135, 132, 134, 141, 142, 170 sewing homespun cloth and, 2:82, 84 slaves, 1:141, 142, 144–145, 147–148, 2:207–209 volunteer work, 1:158–162, 160, 161, 2:106 war widows, 1:153–158 See also Children; Civilians; Domestic life; Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople; Food and nutrition; Home front; Parenting and childrearing Family life of slaves, 1:141, 142, 144–145, 2:207–209 Farmer’s Cabinet, 2:139 Farragut, David G., 2:97 Fashion trends, 1:101, 104, 105, 105, 2:83, 84–85 Fatherhood, 1:140–143 Fayetteville (NC) Observer, 1:263, 270, 297, 2:203 Feminism, 2:130–133 Ferguson, Joseph, Life-struggles in Rebel Prisons, 1:47
305
Index Field hospitals, 2:7–23 overview, 2:7–12, 28–29, 59 amputations and, 2:1, 16–17, 29 anesthesia and, 2:1, 2, 17, 42–44 Autenrieth wagon and, 2:9 disease and, 1:27, 2:1–2, 8 distributing supplies, 2:42 evacuation of wounded and, 2:12–15, 13, 18–23 first aid stations and, 2:14 food and nutrition and, 2:44, 45–46 hospital ships and, 2:11 infections and, 1:26–27, 2:1, 8–9, 17, 44, 46 Letterman system and, 2:9, 11–12, 14–15 letters from soldiers about, 1:41 medical personnel and, 2:9–10 medical procedures and, 2:44–45, 45 military chaplains, 1:222 military personnel and, 2:9–10 missionary activities, 1:233 mortality rates and, 2:45 organization and, 2:9–10 perceptions vs. reality in, 2:7, 8–9 railway cars and, 2:4, 8, 28 sanitation and, 1:26–27, 2:10, 12, 17 supplies and, 2:9, 28–29, 42 surgeons and surgery, 2:15–18, 25, 27–32, 30 tents and, 2:10 triage and, 2:14, 15–16 See also Hospitals Field manuals, military, 2:29 Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, 2:277 Fighting for the Confederacy (Alexander), 2:3 Fighting sports, 1:33, 34, 36, 37, 258, 259, 290 Fighting Words (Coopersmith), 2:192 Fillmore, A. D., 1:295 Fillmore, Millard, 2:126 Finnern, Elizabeth, 1:58 Finney, Charles Gradison, 1:184, 191, 192, 258 First Annual Report of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, 1:157 First Book in Composition (Branson), 1:114–115 The First Dixie Reader (Moore), 1:115, 123 First Presbyterian Church (New Orleans, LA), 1:207 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, 1:87, 2:177
306
1st Arkansas United States Colored Troops (USCT), 1:247 1st Iowa Infantry Regiment, 1:169 1st Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, 2:59 1st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:243 1st Michigan Sharpshooters, Company K, 1:77 1st New Jersey Cavalry Regiment, 2:25 1st Regiment of Artillery Band, 1:251 1st Rhode Island Militia Regiment, 1:244 1st South Carolina Infantry Regiment, 1:73, 137 1st South Carolina Regiment (African Descent), 2:226 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment, 2:177, 280 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment, 2:177 1st Wisconsin Infantry Regiment of Heavy Artillery, 1:58 First Battle of Bull Run, 1861 accounts of, 2:279 dedication ceremonies, 2:253 early battles and, 1:277 effects of, 2:123, 156 effects on draft, 1:7 Jackson, Thomas ‘‘Stonewall’’ and, 1:129 journalists and, 2:191 monuments and memorials, 2:251 Fischel, Arnold, 1:230 Fisher, George Adams, 2:179 Fisher, Sidney George, 1:146 Fiske, Asa, 1:148 Fitzhugh, George, 2:163 Fitzpatrick, Sarah, 1:200 5th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:228 15th Amendment, 2:207, 234 15th Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 2:236 50th United States Colored Troops (USCT), 2:278 51st United States Colored Troops (USCT), 2:278 53rd New York State Infantry Regiment, 2:281 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 2:167 54th Massachusetts United States Colored Troops (USCT), 1:70, 71, 73 54th New York Infantry Regiment, 1:230 56th Virginia Infantry Regiment, 1:168
Flag of Our Union, 1:98 Florence Military Prison, 1:50 Florence Stockade, 1:50 Florida, 2:78, 143, 154, 160 Florida (ship), 2:79 Food and nutrition, 1:2, 15–18, 17, 106–113 overview, 1:106–109 children and, 1:110 Confederate Army, 1:17, 17–18, 83–84 diet, 1:106, 107–108, 109–110, 2:25, 44 equipment for preparation by soldiers, 1:22 field hospitals and, 2:44, 45–46 health of soldiers, 1:18, 27, 50, 66, 2:25 military prisons, 1:49, 50, 50–51, 53, 54, 56 preparation of food, 1:65, 66 riots over food, 1:17, 96, 111, 177, 2:88–91, 170–171 sanitation in camps, 1:26, 2:25 shortages of food, 1:107, 108, 110–113, 111, 177, 2:88–91, 171 Foote, Shelby, 2:133 Foraging and looting, 1:83–88, 90, 2:61 Forged in Battle (Glatthaar), 1:73 Forrest, Edwin, 1:242 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 1:53, 53, 2:222 Fort Delaware, 1:54 Fort Pillow, 1:53 Fort Schuyler Hospital, 2:20 Fort Sumter (SC). See Battle of Fort Sumter, 1861 Forten, Charlotte, The Journal of Charlotte Forten, 1:117 Forten, James, 1:204 Fortifications artillery and, 2:4 coastal, 2:70, 80 slave labor and, 1:74, 2:203, 204, 205 spies and, 1:57, 80 Foster, Stephen, 1:248–249, 249 4th Arkansas Infantry Regiment, 1:299 14th Amendment, 2:103, 120, 207, 234 14th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 2:240 14th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1:244 44th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1:2
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index 44th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:246, 299 44th Ohio Infantry Regiment, 2:174 48th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 2:236 49th United States Colored Troops (USCT), 2:277 Fourth of July, 1:260, 2:213, 277 Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army (Heartsill), 1:268 Fox, Gustavus Vasa, 2:94 France American Cemetery, 2:272 Confederacy and, 1:48, 74, 76, 2:79, 155 immigrants from, 1:130 imports and, 1:104, 2:83, 98 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1:32, 273, 277, 2:34 Frankel, Jacob, 1:230 Franklin, Benjamin, 1:202 Franklin County Court House, 1:90 Frank’s Campaign (Alger), 1:273 Fransioli, Joseph, 1:223 Fraternal organizations, 1:32, 256–258 See also specific organizations Fraternizing with enemy, 1:32–33, 42, 166–168 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1:242 Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Rable), 2:25 Free blacks, 2:224–226 antidiscriminatory laws, 1:74 civil rights and, 1:69, 71, 72, 119, 120, 2:198, 230 clothing, 1:105–106 Confederate Army and, 2:203, 204 domestic life, 1:96 education and, 1:114, 115, 118–121, 137, 144, 145 educators for, 1:117, 117 extended families, 1:147–148 home front and, 1:153 labor and, 2:105–106, 224, 225 marriage, 1:132, 137, 148, 156, 2:208 military chaplains, 1:229, 229 New York City Draft Riots, 1863, 1:154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 open letters to Abraham Lincoln, 2:152 paid labor and, 2:104 politics and, 2:225 reactions to first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:145 after Reconstruction era and, 2:229–230 religion and, 1:106, 119, 187, 2:218–219
separations and reunions, 2:208 sharecroppers and, 2:109 Southern states and, 2:224–226 support for Northern states, 2:167 violence against, 1:10–11 women, 1:82, 2:224 See also Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople; specific organizations Free Church, 1:183 Free Methodist Church, 1:192 Free Soil Party, 2:197 Freedman’s Aid Society, 2:201 Freedmen. See Freedpeople Freedmen’s Bureau black refugee camps, 1:96 directors of, 1:166 education of blacks, 1:114,144, 2:221 history of, 1:166, 2:205 orphans, 1:156, 158 role of, 1:120, 2:198, 206–207 staff of, 1:148 Freedom songs, 1:247–248 Freedom’s Champion, 2:129 Freedpeople, 2:205–207,226 Antebellum period (1820–1861), 2:218–219 camp followers, 1:67, 2:205, 227 Confederate Army and, 2:203 education and, 1:114, 115, 118–121, 137, 144, 145 family life of, 1:96, 142 marriage, 1:132, 137, 148, 156, 2:208 Nast, Thomas illustration of lives after emancipation, 2:151 Northern states and, 1:119–120, 2:167 religion and, 1:106, 119, 187, 2:218–219 shelter for, 2:204, 205 Southern states and, 1:118–120, 2:205, 224–226 See also Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople Freemasons, 1:32, 167, 256, 258 Freemon, Frank, 2:11, 12 Fremantle, Arthur James Lyon, 2:99, 174 Fre´mont, John Charles, 2:126, 156, 157, 226 Fremont Proclamation, 1861, 2:157, 226 French foreign relations. See France Friends’ Intelligencer, 1:97 From the Uncivil War to Date (Arp), 1:289 Fry, Speed S., 1:165 Fry, W. H., 2:282
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Fugitive Slave Act, 1850, 1:255, 2:197 Fugitive-slave law (Confederacy), 2:202 Fugitive slaves, 1:82, 204, 255 Fullerton, Joseph S., 2:255, 256, 261 Funk, Mrs. Isaac, 2:282 Furloughs, 1:44 Furness, William Henry, 2:119
G Gallagher, Gary, The Confederate War, 1:5 The Galveston Daily News, 2:131 Gambling home front, 1:236, 259, 260, 261, 290 soldiers’ pastimes, 1:31, 36, 37, 72, 211–213, 216, 221 Game hunting, 1:258–259 Games, 1:261–263 baseball, 1:2, 236, 260, 262–263 home front, 1:139, 144, 145, 180, 236 playing cards, 1:261, 262 soldiers’ pastimes, 1:33, 36, 261 See also Sports Games for Soldiers (Bradley), 1:261 Gammage, Washington Lafayette, 1:299 Gangrene and Glory (Freemon), 2:11, 12 GAR. See Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Gardner, Alexander, 1:275, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 283–284 Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War (Gardner), 1:283–284 Garfield, James A., 2:28, 122, 194 Garnet, Henry Highland, 1:204, 2:218 Garrison, William Lloyd abolitionism and, 1:224, 2:118, 155–156, 201 biography of, 1:226 Liberator and, 1:210, 226, 2:118 lyceum lectures and, 1:255 Gates, Paul, Agriculture and the Civil War, 2:87 The Gates Ajar (Phelps), 1:133 GBMA (Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association), 2:247, 260, 265–266 Gender norms, 1:101–103, 138–140, 2:40, 131–132 General Directions for Collecting and Drying Medicinal Substances, 2:29–30
307
Index Generals. See specific generals Genius of Universal Emancipation, 1:204, 225, 226 Genovese, Eugene, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 1:298, 2:217 A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View (Morse), 2:164 Georgia agriculture and, 2:86 black market and, 2:91 Carolina-Georgia Low Country, 2:216, 217–218 manufacturing, 2:63, 64, 71 religion and, 1:185 secession, 2:143, 154, 160, 190 shipbuilding and, 2:79 Georgia State Guard, 2:256 German immigrants, 1:1, 66, 76, 77, 172, 2:179 Gettysburg Address, 2:136–137, 138–142, 139, 141, 270 Gettysburg Battlefield (Eicher), 2:265 Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA), 2:247, 260, 265–266 Gettysburg Campaign, 1863. See Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 The Gettysburg Campaign (Coddington), 1:84 Gettysburg (Davis), 2:265 Gettysburg National Cemetery, 2:136–137, 138–142, 252, 265, 270–271 Gettysburg National Military Park, PA, 1:24, 2:246, 261, 263–266, 264,275 See also Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 Gettysburg (Sears), 2:263 GHI (Government Hospital for the Insane), 2:43 Gibbon, John, 1:20 Gibbons, Abby Hopper, 2:35 Gibson, James F., 1:275, 278 Gienapp, William E., 2:131, 132 Gilbert, Joseph, 2:141 Gillen, Paul E., 1:233 Gilmore, Mattie, 2:227 Gilmore, Patrick, 1:134, 251 Girardeau, John Lafayette, 1:207 Gitelman, H. M., 2:111 Glatthaar, Joseph T., Forged in Battle, 1:73 Gloucester Journal, 1:194 Goblin Market (Rossetti), 1:274 Godey’s Lady’s Book courtship and marriage, 1:149 dance instructions, 1:253 domestic life, 1:97 fashion trends, 1:104, 105, 2:84
308
food and nutrition, 1:106–110 hair jewelry keepsakes, 1:151 marriage advice, 1:97, 98 women’s role in war, 1:100 Gold black market and, 2:92 currency, 1:171, 2:101, 102, 103 dentistry, 2:59 rush of 1849, 1:173, 235, 290, 2:83 Gomez, Michael, 2:217 Gone With the Wind (Mitchell), 2:24, 84 ‘‘Goober Peas,’’ 1:133 Goodrich, Frank B., 1:152, 162 Gordon, John B., 2:262 Gordon, John Steele, 2:100 Gorgas, Josiah, 2:77 Government Hospital for the Insane (GHI), 2:43 The Governor’s Message and Correspondence (Pickens), 2:161 Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) etching of birthplace of, 1:257 Gettysburg battlefield memorial, 2:247–248 Memorial Day and, 2:245 politics and, 2:241 poster of cardinal principles of, 2:274 publications, 2:243 racism and, 2:237, 278 reunions, 2:243 rituals and, 1:258 role of, 1:257, 2:52, 236, 240–241, 273 statistics, 2:274 SUVCW, 2:274 Grand Review of the Armies, 1:135 Grange, 1:257–258 Grant, Julia, 1:131 Grant, Ulysses S. Battle of Vicksburg and, 2:157, 260 biography of, 1:125 civil rights and, 2:198 Civil War Memoirs, 1:129 marriage of, 1:131 Mexican-American War, (1846–1848), 1:128 on Nast, Thomas, 2:188–189 Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 1:267, 2:233 prisoner-exchange programs, 1:46, 55 race relations and, 2:222 spies and, 1:82 West Point, 1:129, 131 Grappling with the Monster (Arthur), 1:294 Great Awakening, 1:183, 203
The Great Republic, 2:243 Greeley, Horace, 1:124, 237, 2:166, 191–192, 194, 231, 231–232 Greenback Party, 2:103 Greenbow, Rose O’Neal, 1:80, 80–81 Greenville Mountaineer, 1:269 Griffith, D. W., 1:258 Grossmeyer, Nathan, 1:227 Grosvenor, Charles H., 2:255 Group Graded Lessons, 1:195 Grundy, Felicia, 2:41 Guerrillas and guerrilla warfare, 1:68, 92–93, 93, 258 Gulf Squadron, 2:94 Gunpowder factories for, 2:63, 64, 68, 72, 78 imports and, 2:97 ingredients for, 2:64, 99 powder monkeys, 2:107, 107 Guthrie, Samuel, 2:2
H Habeas corpus, 2:120–123, 170–171 Hague, Parthenia Antoinette, A Blockaded Family, 2:56 Hahnemann, Samuel, 2:57 Haigh, William M., History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, 2:280 Haines, Zenas T., Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M. V. M., 1:15 Haiti, 1:204, 2:162 Hale, Edward Everett, 1:236, 274 Hale, Stephen, 2:154 Halleck, Henry W., 2:122, 124 Hamlin, Hannibal, 2:127, 127 Hammond, Jonathan Pinkney, Army Chaplain’s Manual, 1:267 Hammond, William Alexander, 1:217, 2:14, 29, 58 Hancock, Cornelia, 2:132 Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 1:255, 255 Harper’s Bazaar, 1:104 Harpers Ferry (VA) drill and training area, 1:14, 21 raid by John Brown at, 1:204, 226, 2:128, 221–222, 222 siege at, 1:222 Susan Downey house, 1:179 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1:253, 285 Harper’s Weekly on black orphans, 1:157 on censorship, 2:123
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index on execution of deserters, 1:30 on GAR, 2:241 on health, 1:27 history of, 2:188 illustration of Battle at Antietam, 1:279 literature for soldiers, 1:32 political humor and cartoons, 2:188, 189, 190 propaganda and, 2:184 on surgeons, 2:17 on telegraph system, 2:114 on uniforms, 1:20, 2:100 Harris, Brayton, Blue & Gray in Black & White, 1:266 Harris, J. Andrews, 1:155 Harris, William C., 1:51, 275 Harrison, Benjamin, 2:255 Harrison, Dabney, 1:231 Hart, Albert G., The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War, 2:3 Harvard Divinity School, 1:225 Harvard University, 1:185, 186 Haskell, John, 2:13–14 Hauptman, Laurence M., Between Two Fires, 1:77 Hayes, Rutherford B., 2:177 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, 1877, 1:122 Hays, Will S., 1:243 Hazen, William B., 2:260 Health and medicine overview, 2:1–2 advances in medicine, 2:31, 42, 44–45, 45, 46, 58–60 amputations, 2:1, 16–17, 29 anesthesia and, 2:1, 2, 17, 42–44 artificial limbs and, 2:16, 52 civilian health care, 2:56–58 dentistry, 2:59 epidemics and, 1:108, 163, 2:1, 23, 25–26, 42 excisions and, 2:17 food and nutrition, 1:18, 27, 50, 66, 2:25 home remedies, 1:110, 2:44 homeopathy and, 2:57 infections, 1:26–27, 2:1, 8–9, 10, 17, 25, 44, 46 manuals, 1:109, 2:43 medicines and, 2:1–2, 42–44, 58 military prisons, 1:47, 50, 50–52, 2:25 PTSD and, 2:43, 60 recovery of health, 2:42–46 slaves, 2:56 surgeons, 2:8, 17, 21, 27–32 USSC, 2:48–52 venereal disease and, 1:39, 66, 2:22, 26 war photography and, 1:282–283
See also Battlefield wounds; Disease; Field hospitals; Food and nutrition; Nursing; Public health and sanitation Heartsill, William Williston, 1:268 He´bert, Paul O., 2:129 Hedley, Fenwick Yellowley, 1:267 Helper, Hinton Rowan, The Impending Crisis of the South, 2:197 Henderson, David, 2:258 Heroes of America, 1:167, 2:176 Heth, Henry, 2:267, 268 Hickman, Lucretia S., 1:155 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1:73–74, 245 ‘‘High with Courage and Hope’’ (Hunt), 1:146 Hill, Daniel H., 1:44, 55 Hill, Sarah, 1:170–171 Hinton, Thomas H. C., 2:277 History of the Army of the Cumberland (Horne), 2:281 History of the Civil War (Abbott), 2:231 History of Kershaw’s Brigade (Dickert), 2:280 A History of the One Hundred and Seventeenth Regiment, N.Y. Volunteers (Mowris), 1:267–268 Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina (Clark), 2:281 History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers (Bennett and Haigh), 2:280 Hitchcock, Henry, 1:86 H.L. Hunley (ship), 2:79 Hodges, Jenny. See Cashier, Albert D. J. Hoffman, William, 1:51 Hoge, Jane, 2:50, 51, 52 Hoge, Moses Drury, 1:207, 212–213 Holbrook, Josiah, 1:236 Holcombe, William Henry, 2:162–163, 166 ‘‘Hold the Fort’’ (Bliss), 1:210 Holden, William Woods, 2:177 Holidays, 1:263–264 See also Memorial and Decoration Days Holmes, Frank, 1:142 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr., 1:209, 280–281, 287, 2:57, 243 Holstein, Anna Morris Ellis, 2:141 Home front, 1:152–153 army bands and, 1:244 attitudes of civilians, 1:88–89, 91, 102, 103
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
attitudes of Northerners, 1:88–89 attitudes of Southerners, 1:88–89, 103 battles on, 1:59 Catholicism and, 1:222–223 effects of recruitment on black wives and children, 1:136 free blacks on, 1:153 games, 1:139, 144, 145, 180, 236 holidays, 1:263–264 letters from, 1:43, 140, 145, 148–149, 151, 168–171, 169, 170 men on, 1:152–153 newspapers and magazines, 1:266 support from, 1:217–218, 2:62 writing letters and embroidering, 1:169 See also Civilians; Family and community life; Games; Sports; Vices on home front Homeopathy, 2:57 Homespun cloth, 2:82, 83, 84 Homestead Act, 1862, 1:121–122, 2:88 Hood, John Bell, 1:210 Hoodoo practices, 2:217 Hooker, Joseph, 1:66 Hooper, Samuel, 1:122 Hopkins, John Henry, 1:149–151 Horne, Thomas Van, History of the Army of the Cumberland, 2:281 Horrocks, William, 2:81 Hospital Days (Woolsey), 1:287–288, 2:22 Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac (Reed), 1:286, 2:51 Hospital Sketches (Alcott), 1:159, 171, 235, 2:41 Hospital volunteers, 1:69, 159, 171, 222, 272 See also Nursing Hospitals overview, 1:222, 230, 2:18–23, 19 Boston and, 2:32 design and building, 2:2, 20–21 disease and, 2:18, 22 hospital ships, 2:11, 51 military chaplains and, 1:222, 230 military hospitals, 2:60 Northern states, 2:2, 19–21, 30, 32, 59, 132 Philadelphia and, 1:165, 2:19, 20, 22, 32, 39, 60 Southern states, 2:19, 19, 20, 21, 59 Washington, DC, and, 2:21 women’s role in, 2:21–22, 33–37, 34, 40, 40, 60 See also Field hospitals
309
Index Hotchkiss, Jed, 2:268 ‘‘House Divided Speech’’ (Lincoln), 2:126 Housing, 1:179, 179–181, 180, 2:204, 205 See also Shelter (military camps) Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, 1:212 Howard, Oliver Otis, 1:166, 2:206 Howe, Elias, 2:81 Howe, Julia Ward, 1:209–210, 225 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 1:225 Howry, James, 2:153 Hudley, Daniel Robinson, Social Relations in Our Southern States, 1:248 Hughes, Louis, Thirty Years a Slave, 2:56 Humiston family, 1:277, 285–286, 286 Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, 1:30 Hunt, Judith Lee, ‘‘High with Courage and Hope,’’ 1:146 Hursey, Mose, 1:200 Hutchinson’s Republican Songster, 1:249 Hylton, George, 2:169 Hymns, 1:209–211, 209–211
I Ice skating, 1:259, 259 Illinois immigrants, 1:172 military units, 1:60, 2:177, 240, 280, 282 opposition to war, 2:173 religious activities in, 1:187 schools in, 1:122 Southern support and, 2:169 temperance movement, 1:294 Illinois First Regiment Douglas Brigade, 2:282 Imboden, John, 2:15 Immigrant soldiers, 1:1, 75–77 Immigration, 1:172–174,223 Boston, 2:63, 68 British immigrants, 1:76, 172 Catholicism and, 1:223 Chinese immigrants, 1:172, 173, 173 French immigrants, 1:130 German immigrants, 1:1, 66, 76, 77, 172, 2:179 Illinois, 1:172 Irish immigrants, 1:1, 37, 66, 75, 76, 172, 2:157, 179 Massachusetts, 1:172
310
New York (NY), 1:172, 2:63, 68 Northern states, 2:72 Ohio, 1:172 Pennsylvania, 1:172 Philadelphia, 2:63, 68 recruitment of, 1:75 Scottish immigrants, 1:76, 172 Southern states, 2:72 Wisconsin, 1:172 The Impending Crisis of the South (Helper), 2:197 Impressment, 1:17, 87, 88, 2:153, 204 See also Foraging and looting Imprisonment. See Prisoners of war; specific prisons Inaugural addresses first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:134, 144–147 inaugural address of Jefferson Davis, 2:134–135, 144, 146 second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 1:153, 2:137, 137–138, 147 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 1:120 Incidents of the United States Christian Commission (Smith), 1:285 Independent, 2:88 Indian Territory, 1:77–79 Indiana military units, 1:2, 59, 228, 2:37, 174, 177 opposition to war, 2:173 Southern support and, 2:169, 174 Indiana State Sentinel, 2:140 Indianapolis Daily Journal, 2:146 Indianapolis Journal, 2:240–241 Individual responsibility, 1:130 Industry, technological advances in, 2:112–114, 113, 113–114 See also specific industries Infantry regiments. See specific military units Ingham, Frederick. See Hale, Edward Everett Ingraham, Joseph Holt, 2:200 Inter Ocean. See Daily Inter Ocean Interactions between soldiers and civilians, 1:88–91 International economic relations, 1:84, 2:83, 96, 98, 155 See also specific countries International Graded Series, 1:195 International law, 2:94 International Uniform Lesson, 1:195 Iowa, 1:55, 169, 2:177, 178, 258 Irish immigrants, 1:1
The Iron Hearted Regiment (Clark), 1:15 Irwin, James W., 2:258
J The Jack Morgan Songster, 1:247 Jackson, Andrew, 1:188, 2:41, 101, 158 Jackson, Maria, 1:130 Jackson, Mary, 2:90 Jackson, Oscar Lawrence, The Colonel’s Diary, 2:25 Jackson, Thomas ‘‘Stonewall,’’ 1:128, 129, 231 Jackson Mississippian, 1:74, 2:224 Jacobs, Harriet, 1:120 James, Horace, 1:157 Jamieson, Frances, 1:59 Jefferson, Thomas, 1:124, 126, 2:158, 162, 163, 171 Jews, 1:183, 184, 226–227, 230 Jim Crow, 1:122, 240, 240, 241, 2:230 Johnson, Andrew, 2:99, 115, 122, 176, 194, 198 Johnson, Charles, 2:9 Johnson, Herschel, 2:129 Johnson, Maria Isabella, 1:171 Johnson, Robert, 2:219 Johnson, Samuel, 1:197 Johnson, William, 2:224 Johnson’s Island military prison, 1:54, 216 Johnston, Joseph E., 2:24, 24, 26, 204, 230, 236 Jones, Charles Colcock, 1:207 Jones, J. William, 1:212, 213 Jones, Jenkins Lloyd, An Artilleryman’s Diary, 2:27 Jones, John Beauchamp, 1:175 Jordan, Winthrop, 2:209 The Journal of Charlotte Forten (Forten), 1:117 A Journal of Hospital Life (Grundy), 2:41 The Journal of Julia LeGrand (Waitz), 2:26 Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom of America (Olmsted), 2:55 Joyner, Charles, 2:214 Judaism, 1:183, 184, 226–227, 230 Judgments, law. See Trials ‘‘Just before the Battle, Mother’’ (Root), 1:133
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index
K
L
Kansas Bleeding Kansas, 2:166, 221 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, 2:154, 159, 166 temperance movement, 1:296 The Kansas Herald of Freedom, 1:269 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, 2:154, 159, 166 Kaplan, Louis, 1:287 Kearney, Belle, A Slaveholder’s Daughter, 1:289 Keckly, Elizabeth, 2:277 Keen, William Williams, 2:16, 29, 44 Keene, Laura, 1:235 Keiley, Anthony M., 1:268 Kelley, Oliver Hudson, 1:256–257 Kelley, William Darrah, 1:196 Kellogg, Robert H., 2:256 Kellogg, Sanford C., 2:255 Kendall, F., 2:153 Kennedy, John Pendleton, 1:296 Kennett, Lee B., Marching through Georgia, 1:92 Kentucky Cane Ridge camp meeting, 1:183, 184, 190–191 pro-Unionists, 2:169, 198 refugees, 1:164 slaves, 2:104, 226 Kettell, Thomas Prentice, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, 2:81 A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 1:270 Keyes, Donald, 1:280 KGC (Knights of the Golden Circle), 1:256, 2:169, 174 King, Edward, 1:137 Kirby-Smith, Edmund, 2:208 Klein, D. J., 1:157 Kluger, Richard, Ashes to Ashes, 1:299 The Knickerbocker Monthly, 1:150 Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), 1:256, 2:169, 174 Know-Nothing Party, 1:183, 220, 2:126 Knox, Thomas, 2:124, 125 Knoxville Daily Register, 2:193 Knoxville Whig, 2:166, 193 Kountz, John, 2:241 Ku Klux Klan, 1:53, 53, 122, 256, 258 Kunering, John, 2:217
La Fantasie, Glenn, 2:142 Labor, 2:104–112 overview, 2:104–106 activism and, 2:108 Antebellum period (1820–1861), 2:108 child labor, 2:105, 106–108 class tensions, 1:178 free blacks and, 2:104, 105–106, 224, 225 gang-labor system, 2:209, 211, 218 labor activism, 2:108 manufacturing and, 2:104–105 Northern states, 2:105–106, 107, 110–111, 111 paid labor, 2:104, 108–110 shipbuilding and, 2:80 Southern states, 2:104–105, 105, 106–107, 108–109 strikes, 2:80, 108, 109 unpaid labor, 2:108–109 women laborers, 1:99–100, 2:110–112, 111, 132 See also Slave labor Ladies’ Aid Society, 1:159 Ladies’ Contraband Relief Association, 2:277 Ladies Havelock Association, 2:50 Lamont, Daniel S., 2:258, 267–268 Lancet, 2:17 Lander, Ernest M., Jr., A Rebel Came Home, 1:181 Lanier, Sidney, ‘‘The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson,’’ 2:185 Laura Keene Theater, 1:235, 237 Law judgments. See Trials Lawrence Massacre, 1863, 1:258 Lay, Benjamin, 1:202, 2:117 Lea, John, 1:129 Leaders, military. See specific leaders Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon (Ellis), 1:100, 2:17 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 1:270–271 Lectures and speeches, 2:133–154 overview, 2:133–138 campaign speeches, 2:115, 129 ‘‘Cooper Union Speech’’ (Lincoln), 2:126 farewell speech by Robert E. Lee, 2:232 first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:134, 144–147 Gettysburg Address, 2:136–137, 138–142, 139,141, 270 Gettysburg cemetery dedication speech by Edward Everett, 2:136, 138, 140, 146, 186, 265
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
‘‘House Divided Speech’’ (Lincoln), 2:126 inaugural address of Jefferson Davis, 2:134–135, 144, 146 Memorial Day and, 2:246 political campaigns, 2:115, 129 propaganda, 2:186 public attendance at, 2:115 recruitment rallies, 2:186–187 resignation speech of Jefferson Davis, 2:133–134, 142–144 second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 1:153, 2:137, 137–138, 147 YMCA and, 1:215 See also Emancipation Proclamation, 1863; Letters to presidents; specific orators Lee, Mary Anna, 1:131–132 Lee, Robert E. cult of, 2:238–239, 243 farewell speech to Northern Virginia Army, 2:263 foraging and looting policy, 1:89 impressment of slaves and, 2:204 invasion into PA, 1:83–84 Mexican-American War (1846–1848), 1:128 monument to, 2:238–239 on music, 1:243 national cemetery on estate of, 2:252 soldier’s description of, 2:280 West Point, 1:128 Lee, Samuel P., 1:154 Lee, Stephen D., 2:262 Lee, William, 2:152–153 Legal Tender Act, 1862, 2:102 Leggett, Mortimer, 2:262 Lemon, George B., 2:243 Leonard, Elizabeth D., Yankee Women, 2:132 Letcher, John, 2:89, 90 Letter from an American Farmer (Cre`vecoeur), 1:130 Letterman, Jonathan, 2:9, 11, 14, 31, 59 Letterman system, 2:9, 11–12, 14–15 Letters from home front, 1:43, 145, 148–149, 151, 168–171, 169, 170 from parents, 1:136–137, 145 on patriotism, 1:151 from soldiers, 1:2, 39–44, 40, 42, 2:152, 279, 280–281, 283 Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne (Towne), 2:221 Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M. V. M. (Haines), 1:15
311
Index Letters to presidents, 2:151–154 to Lincoln, Abraham 1:153–156, 170, 2:151–152 to Davis, Jefferson 1:176, 2:152–153 responses from Abraham Lincoln, 2:152 responses from Jefferson Davis, 2:153 Levine, Lawrence, 2:217 Lew, Elizabeth Van, 2:177 Libby Prison, 1:54, 56 Liberator abolitionism and, 1:226, 2:118, 191, 219 biased reporting and, 2:191 on education for free black children, 1:145 Garrison, William Lloyd and, 1:210, 226, 2:118 on hymns, 1:210 on labor, 1:100, 2:105 masthead, 2:192 on religion and reform, 1:196–197 slave music and, 2:216 on spirituals, 2:216 Liberty and Anti-Slavery Song Book, 1:248 Liberty Party, 1:249 Lieb, Herman, 2:205, 278 Life in army. See Soldiers’ lives Life in Southern Prisons (Smedley), 2:24 Life in the Iron Mills (Davis), 1:270 The Life of Billy Yank (Wiley), 1:75–76, 244, 281, 299 The Life of Johnny Reb (Wiley), 1:6–7, 31, 68, 2:6 Life-struggles in Rebel Prisons (Ferguson), 1:47 Liggon’s Tobacco Warehouse Prison, 1:51, 54 Lincoln, Abraham assassination of, 1:174, 175, 235 commutation of soldier’s punishment requests and, 1:155–156 Congressional divisions and, 2:116 congressional elections of 1858, 2:126 ‘‘Cooper Union Speech,’’ 2:126 election of 1864, 2:194 federal slave code and, 2:127 first inaugural address, 2:134, 144–147 Gettysburg Address, 2:136–137, 138–142, 139, 141, 270 ‘‘House Divided Speech,’’ 2:126 illustrations of, 2:127, 150 letters from, 2:152
312
letters to, 1:153–156, 170, 2:151–152 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858, 2:115, 127, 166 memorial to, 1:227 on military chaplains, 1:228, 230 moderation toward defeated Confederacy, 2:195 objects carried by, 2:279 photographs of, 1:19, 278 Republican Party and, 2:194 reward poster for assassins of, 1:174 second inaugural address, 1:153, 2:137, 137–138, 147 on slave children, 1:155 slavery and, 2:193 suspension of habeas corpus, 2:120–123 on Thomas Nast, 2:189 ‘‘To the Loyal Women of America,’’ 1:100 on USSC, 2:54 See also Election of 1860 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 1:131, 154, 189 Lincoln, William Wallace, 1:131, 189, 2:1, 23 Lincoln at Gettysburg (Barton), 2:138 The Lincoln Catechism, 2:194 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858, 2:115, 127, 166 Lincoln University, 1:114 Linderman, Gerald F., Embattled Courage, 2:26 Literature, 1:235, 269–272 abolitionist, 1:202, 2:117 campaign literature, 2:188–191, 193–195 children’s literature, 1:272–275 Christian literature, 1:196, 211–214 devotional literature, 1:212, 233 England and, 1:235 political campaigns, 2:188–191, 193–195 propaganda literature, 2:184, 188–191, 193–195 published reminiscences, 2:235–236 soldiers and, 1:32, 73, 233, 287–290 soldiers and, 1:32 travel literature, 1:273 See also specific authors The Little Mac Campaign Songster, 1:249 Little Rock Daily Gazette, 1:174 Little Women (Alcott), 1:26, 171, 235, 269, 2:33, 41 Livermore, Mary Ashton, 1:256, 2:48–49, 54
Livingston, Robert A., 2:259 Locke, John, 2:209 Lockett, Myrta, 2:110 Lodges, military, 1:256 Logan, John A., 2:240 Long, Crawford, 2:2 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, ‘‘The Arsenal at Springfield,’’ 2:76 Longley, Charles, 2:261–262 Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 2:164 Longstreet, James, 2:243 Looney, Robert F., 2:258 Looting. See Foraging and looting Lord, Francis A., Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War, 1:243, 244 Lost cause myth, 2:229, 230–234, 235 The Lost Cause (Pollard), 2:164, 232 The Lost Cause Regained (Pollard), 2:232 Louisiana desertion and, 2:155 manufacturing, 2:62 secession, 2:160 shelter for freedpeople, 2:205 shipbuilding and, 2:80 slave markets, 2:199, 199 Louisiana Native Guards, 1:71, 2:203, 224 Lovejoy, Elijah, 1:203 Low Country, 2:216, 217–218 Lowe, Thaddeus S. C., 1:23 Lowell Daily Citizen and News, 1:99, 143, 175, 234, 259 Lowry, Thomas, 1:39 Lumpkin, Katherine Du Pre, 2:233–234 Luraghi, Raimondo, 2:63, 87 Lutheran Theological Seminary, 1:186 Lyceum lectures, 1:215, 236, 254–256, 2:186 Lynching, 2:167, 181, 201 Lyon, Mary, 1:188 Lyrics. See Songs
M Macon Daily Telegraph, 2:99 Macready, William Charles, 1:242 Madison, James, 2:120, 158, 162 Magnolia Weekly, 2:184, 190 Mail services, 1:43, 100, 130, 168, 2:51–52
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Maine campaign of 1860, 2:166 military units, 1:58, 243, 244 shipbuilding, 2:79 temperance movement, 1:294, 296 Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Perman), 1:153 Mallory, Stephen R., 2:78, 79, 95–96 Malone, Bartlett Yancey, 1:54, 56 Malthus, Thomas, 1:194 Malvin, John, 2:119 ‘‘The Man Without a Country’’ (Hale), 1:274, 2:174 Manassas (ship), 2:79 Mann, Horace, 1:124–125 Mann, Mary, 1:154–155 Manning, Chandra Miller, 1:268 Manual of Military Surgery (Chisholm), 2:29 Manufacturing, 2:62–85 overview, 2:62–67 arms manufacturing, 2:65–66, 75–78, 77 child labor and, 2:107 differences between Northern and Southern, 2:70, 70t economics and, 2:69 factory system and, 2:61–62, 73–75, 112 financiers and, 2:69 labor force and, 2:104–105 Morrill tariff and, 2:84 Northern states, 2:62–63, 64–65, 67–69, 112 railroads and, 2:68, 76 shipbuilding, 2:78–81, 94 Southern states, 2:62–63, 63, 64, 70–72 steam engine and, 2:73–74, 74 technological advances, 2:112–114 textile industry, 2:61, 65–66, 67, 68–69, 81–85 U.S. War Department coordination of, 2:68 women laborers, 2:105 See also Cotton industry; specific cities; specific states Marching through Georgia (Kennett), 1:92 Marcy, Henry Orlando, 2:283 Marcy, Samuel, 2:282 Maritime law, 2:95 Markle, Donald, 1:80 Marriage. See Courtship and marriage Marshall, John, 2:122 Marten, James, 1:103, 152 Martial law, 2:156, 157, 226 Martin, Daniel, 1:165
Maryland Chesapeake of Virginia and Maryland region, 2:216, 218 pro-Unionists, 2:198 religion and, 1:185 secession riots, 2:170 slaves, 2:226 Southern support and, 2:169 Mascots, 1:24–25 Masonic Order, 1:32, 167, 256, 258 Massachusetts common school movement, 1:125 draft riots, 2:182 education system, 1:115 immigrants, 1:172 manufacturing, 2:62, 66, 74 recruitment rallies and, 2:186–187 religion and, 1:185 Springfield Armory, 2:68, 75–76 Sunday school movement, 1:195 temperance movement, 1:294, 296 See also New England; specific military units Massachusetts State Memorial (Vicksburg, MS), 2:283 Massacres, 1:53, 258, 2:221 Master-slave/parent-child relation and, 1:206, 207–208, 239, 2:209 Masters of the Big House (Scarborough), 1:12 Matthew, Theobald, 1:295–296 Matthews, William E., 2:277 Maxey, William H., 2:260 Mazeppa (play), 1:237, 238, 238 McBride, George W., 2:276 McClellan, George Brinton army command and, 2:194 Copperhead-supported presidential candidate, 2:169, 174–175, 190, 194 Letterman system and, 2:14 on liquor, 1:37 Native American river pilots and, 1:77 photographs of, 1:19, 278 West Point, 1:129 McComas, Louis E., 2:267 McConaughy, David, 2:265, 266 McCormick, Cyrus, 2:61, 113 McDowell, Irvin, 2:92, 93 McElroy, John, 2:243 McGee, Charles M., Jr., A Rebel Came Home, 1:181 McGinnis, George, 2:262 McGuffey, William Holmes, McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, 1:114, 185 McGuire, Judith White Brockenbrough, 2:33
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
McKee, Will, 1:142 McKinley, William, 2:262 McPherson, James M., 2:24, 62–63, 105 Mead, George Gordon, 2:157, 263 Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 2:3, 17, 42, 45, 58 Medical Corps’ Ambulance Service, 2:9, 11, 12–15, 30–31, 31, 58–59 Medical volunteers, 1:69, 159, 171, 272, 2:9–10, 38–42 See also Nursing Medicine. See Health and medicine Meigs, Montgomery Cunningham, 2:68, 252, 253 Melville, Herman, 1:235 Memminger, Christopher G., 2:101, 160 Memoirs, 2:235–236, 280–281 See also specific soldiers Memorial and Decoration Days, 2:227, 233, 244–246, 245 Memorials. See Monuments and memorials Men on home front, 1:152–153 Menken, Adah Isaacs, 1:237, 238, 238 Meridian Campaign, 1864, 2:205, 272 Merrell, William Howard, 1:54, 55 Merryman, John, 2:122 Methodist Episcopal Church, 1:199, 205, 223 Methodists overview, 1:184–187 abolitionism and, 1:184, 205 chaplains in Confederate Army and, 1:231 dance and, 1:253 history of, 1:192 missionary activities, 1:233 slavery and, 1:184, 2:163 See also specific churches Mexican-American War (1846–1848), 1:128, 280, 2:58, 158 Michelbacher, M. J., A Sermon Delivered on the Day of Prayer, 2:161 Michigan, 1:60, 76, 77, 172, 2:180 Michigan Soldiers’ Relief Society, 2:40 Middleton, Edward, 1:146 The Mighty Leaf (Brooks), 1:299 Miles, George H., 2:184–185 Military, Medical, and Surgical Essays (Hammond), 2:29, 30
313
Index Military academies, 1:68, 69, 126–127, 128 Military bands, 1:35–36, 244, 250–252, 252 Military campaigns. See specific campaigns Military camps diseases and, 1:2, 3, 25–26, 2:18, 24–25 hygiene inspections and, 2:50, 51 sanitation and, 1:26, 27, 2:24–25 shelter, 1:18–19, 19, 27 Military chaplains, 1:227–232 American Revolution (1775–1783), 1:227 Army of the Potomac and, 1:218–219, 233, 234 Catholicism and, 1:184, 220–222, 221 Confederate Army, 1:184, 230–232 field hospitals, 1:222 free blacks as, 1:229, 229 hospitals and, 1:222, 230 Judaism and, 1:184, 230 orphans and, 1:222 sermons and, 1:221, 228–229, 231 United States Congress and, 1:227–230 U.S. Army, 1:184, 227–230 U.S. Congress and, 1:227–230 USCC and, 1:184, 218–219 Military desertion. See Desertion, military Military health services. See Health and medicine Military hospitals. See Field hospitals; Hospitals Military leaders. See specific leaders Military life. See Soldiers’ lives Military lodges, 1:256 Military personnel, 1:58, 60–61, 66–67, 2:9–10 Military photographs. See War photography; specific photographers Military prisons, 1:45–57 overview, 1:45–49, 54–57 disease and, 1:45–48, 50 food and nutrition, 1:49, 50, 50–51, 53, 54, 56 health conditions, 1:47, 50, 50–52, 2:25 prayer meetings and, 1:216 thievery and assaults, 1:51 See also specific military prisons Military training. See Drill training Military unit histories, 2:280–281 See also specific military units Military weapons aerial reconnaissance balloons, 1:23, 23
314
artillery, 1:58, 251, 282, 2:3–5 battlefield wounds and, 2:2–7 cannons, 1:282, 2:65, 97 edged weapons, 2:5 projectiles and, 1:34, 2:3, 5 rifles, 1:22–24 small arms, 1:24, 2:3 See also Arms manufacturing; Gunpowder Militia Act, 1862, 2:180 Miller, Joseph, 1:165–166 Miller, William, 1:187, 192 Milligan, Lambdin P., 2:122–123 Mills, Benjamin Marshall, 2:277 Milwaukee Daily Sentinel on Abraham Lincoln, 1:175 on Emancipation Proclamation, 2:148 gambling, 1:293 home front support, 1:217–218 on labor, 1:178, 2:109 women laborers, 2:110 Milwaukee Sentinel, 1:124, 2:238 Mine Run Campaign, 1863, 2:5 Ministers. See Clergy; Military chaplains Minneapolis Tribune, 2:238–239, 239 Minstrel shows, 1:237–241 Mirror, 2:141 Missionary activities, 1:188 See also Army missionaries Mississippi desertion and, 2:155 manufacturing, 2:62 secession, 2:143, 154, 160, 190 shelter for freedpeople, 2:205 16th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, 2:18 slave markets, 2:199 Trans-Mississippi Department, 1:56 Trans-Mississippi West, 1:77–78 Mississippi River Valley African American troops in, 2:222–223 emancipation and, 2:227 gambling and, 1:292 shelter for freedpeople in, 2:205 shipbuilding and, 2:79–80 slaves lives in, 2:208 Missouri election of 1860, 2:129 military units, 1:37, 77, 2:92 Northern state sympathizers, 1:162, 165 pro-Unionists, 2:169, 198 slaves, 1:131, 2:226 Southern state sympathizers, 1:63, 64, 104, 162 tobacco use in, 1:299
Missouri Compromise, 1820, 2:119, 159, 166 Mitchell, James, 2:152 Mitchell, Julian, 1:111–112 Mitchell, Margaret, Gone With the Wind, 2:24, 84 Mitchell, Silas Weir, 2:60 Money, 1:167, 175, 2:100–104 Monteil, Joseph Vignier de, 2:281–282 Monuments and memorials Army of the Potomac, 2:243, 254 battlefield sites, 2:238 Chickamauga Memorial Association, 2:254, 255 Davis, Jefferson and, 2:238 First Battle of Bull Run, 1861, 2:251 GAR Gettysburg battlefield memorial, 2:247–248 GBMA, 2:247, 260, 265–266 Lincoln, Abraham, 1:227 Massachusetts State Memorial (Vicksburg, MS), 2:283 Northern Virginia Confederate States of America Army, 2:254 obituaries and local memorials to dead, 2:281–283 photographs of deceased, 1:286–287 soldiers’ lives, 2:238–239 Wisconsin and, 2:238 Wisconsin soldiers, 2:238 See also Battlefield sites Moody, Dwight L., 1:210, 218 Moore, Albert Burton, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy, 1:11–12 Moore, Marinda Branson, The First Dixie Reader, 1:115, 123 Morford, Henry, The Days of Shoddy, 2:100 Morgan, Chad, 2:71–72 Morgan, John Hunt, 1:62.1:64, 152 Morgan, John Pierpont, 2:69 Morgan’s Raid, 1863, 1:152 Mormonism, 1:187–188, 258 Morrill, Justin Smith, 1:121, 121 Morrill Acts, 1:116, 121–122, 2:84, 88 Morse, Samuel F. B., 1:275, 2:113, 123 Morse, Sidney E., A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View, 2:164 Morton, O. H. P. T., 1:152 Mosby, John Singleton, 1:59, 93 Mosby’s Rangers and Confederacy, 1:59, 93 Motherhood, 1:137–140 Mount Holyoke College, 1:188
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Mower U. S. General Hospital, 2:20 Mowris, James A., 1:267–268 Mundy, Marcellus, 2:152 Murfreesboro (TN), 2:251, 252 Murray, Robert, 2:33 Murrell, Amy E., ‘‘Of Necessity and Public Benefit,’’ 1:136 Music, 1:243–252 overview, 1:243–246 army bands, 1:35–36, 243–244, 250–252, 252 dance and, 1:252–254, 253 emancipation, 1:247–248 soldiers’ pastimes and, 1:2, 35–36, 68, 72–73, 132–133 war music, 1:243, 244, 246–248 See also Songs The Musick of the Mocking Birds (Winters), 2:37 My Diary North and South (Russell), 1:267 My Story of the War (Livermore), 2:49, 54
N A Narrative of the Great Revival (Bennett), 1:233 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 2:187 Nash, Herbert M., 2:30 Nast, Thomas, 2:151, 188, 188, 190 National Asylum for Disabled Volunteers, 2:242 National Banking Acts, 2:102–103 National cemeteries, 2:269–272 Alexandria (VA) Soldiers’ Cemetery, 2:270 American Cemetery (Normandy, France), 2:272 Antietam National Cemetery, 2:271 Arlington National Cemetery, 2:246, 252, 270 Chattanooga National Cemetery, 2:252 Gettysburg National Cemetery, 2:136–137, 138–142, 252, 265, 270–271 on Lee, Robert E. estate, 2:252 Philadelphia, 2:252, 270 Pittsburg Landing National Cemetery, 2:247 postwar, 2:271–272 racism and, 2:252–253 Shiloh National Cemetery, 2:252 U.S. Congress and, 2:251–252, 269–270 U.S. War Department and, 2:251
Vicksburg National Cemetery, 2:271–272 wartime, 2:251–253, 269–271 See also Battlefield sites; Burials National debt, 2:103, 188 National Detective Police (NDP), 2:170–171 National Era, 1:119 National parks. See Battlefield sites National Soldiers’ Home, 2:270 National Tribune, 2:243 Native American soldiers, 1:2, 77–80, 78, 162 Native Americans African American culture and, 2:216, 218 civil rights and, 1:79 diet, 1:106, 108 displacement of, 2:217 missionary activities and, 1:188 peace negotiations and, 1:79 rebellions and, 2:218 religion and, 2:218 remedies and, 2:57 river pilots, 1:77 tobacco and, 1:298 Trans-Mississippi West and, 1:77–78 treaties, 1:78 See also specific tribes Naval vessels Alabama, 2:79 Bermuda, 2:97 Chattahoochee, 2:79 C.S.S. Virginia, 2:77, 96 Florida, 2:79 H.L. Hunley, 2:79 Manassas, 2:79 Shenandoah, 2:79 Sultana, 2:64 Trent, 2:96 U.S.S. Hartford, 2:97 U.S.S. Housatonic, 2:79 U.S.S. Merrimack, 2:96 U.S.S. Minnesota, 1:154 U.S.S. Monitor, 2:80, 96 U.S.S. San Jacinto, 2:96 See also Blockades and blockade running; Confederate States of America Navy; Naval vessels; Shipbuilding; United States Naval Academy; United States Navy NDP (National Detective Police), 2:170–171 Neely, John, Confederate Speller and Reader, 1:123 Negro Life in the South (Weatherford), 1:181 Nell, William C., 1:119 Neutrality, historical, 2:232–233
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Nevins, Allan, A Diary of Battle, 2:264 New Albany Daily Ledger, 1:178, 2:173, 174 New Bedford Mercury, 1:71–72 New Covenant, 2:48, 49 New England abolitionists, 2:118 agriculture and, 2:86 broadside publications, 2:184 charity activities, 1:225 common school movement, 1:125 cotton traders, 1:164 Federalist secessionism, 2:158 food and nutrition, 1:106, 109 manufacturing, 2:70, 81, 83 religion and, 1:185, 224, 225 shipbuilding, 2:95 Sunday school movement, 1:194 See also specific states New England Farmer, 1:99, 100 New England Primer, 1:114 New Hampshire, 1:185, 244, 2:65–66 New Haven Arms Factory, 2:68 New Haven Daily Palladium, 1:292, 2:68 New Jersey election of 1860, 2:129 manufacturing, 2:83 military units, 1:150, 2:25, 107, 268 pro-Union refugees in, 2:177 religion and, 1:185 New Orleans Bee, 2:143 New York game hunting and, 1:258 manufacturing, 2:62, 83 pro-Union refugees in, 2:177 religion and, 1:185 revivals and, 1:191 Sunday school movement, 1:195 temperance movement, 1:294 See also specific military units New York Clipper (ship), 1:237, 260 New York Draft Riots, 1863, 1:154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 New York Evangelist, 1:96 New York Freeman, 2:237 New York Herald Bennett, James Gordon and, 2:192 on bread riots, 2:90 on cotton exports, 2:81 on food shortages, 1:111–112 on labor strikes, 2:108 on manufacturing in Southern states, 2:64 propaganda and, 2:184
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Index on resignation speech of Jefferson Davis, 2:143 revivals, 1:192 salaries and, 2:123 on sports, 1:259, 260 textile trade, 2:83, 84 on theater, 1:236, 242, 260 U.S. Army and, 2:124, 125 on war profiteers, 2:100 YMCA lectures, 1:215 New York Illustrated News, 2:190 New York Monthly Magazine, 1:151 New York (NY) Central Park, 1:259, 2:55 Department of Police, 1:10, 2:181, 182 Draft Riots of 1863, 1:154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 hospitals and, 2:20, 32 immigrants and, 1:172, 2:63, 68 manufacturing, 2:73 public health and sanitation, 2:47–48 sanitary fairs and, 2:52, 53, 54 shipbuilding and, 2:79 sports and, 1:262 New York Observer, 2:89 New York Observer and Chronicle, 2:90 New York Reader, 1:114 New York Times Antietam Exhibit, 1862, 1:279, 280 on blue-gray reunions, 2:275 eyewitness account of Gettysburg Address, 2:141–142 on food riots, 2:89, 90 gambling, 1:293 on hospitals, 2:19, 21 on Memorial Day celebration, 2:245 obituaries, 2:281–282 on photography, 1:277 on press censorship, 2:124 on Robert E. Lee monument, 2:238 on sanitary fairs, 2:54 sports, 1:260 status of veterans, 2:243 on USSC, 2:52 on visiting husbands and relatives on battlefield, 1:62–64 on women’s volunteer efforts, 2:49, 50, 51 New York Tribune, 2:124, 181, 191, 231 New York World, 1:281, 2:125, 140, 192 Newark Advocate, 2:148 Newell, Robert, 2:279 News and Observer, 1:300
316
Newspapers and magazines, 1:266–269, 273 biased reporting, 2:183–185, 191–193 neutrality and, 2:191 obituaries and local memorials to dead, 2:281–283 press censorship, 1:267, 2:123–125, 170 propaganda and, 2:183–185, 195 reactions to Gettysburg Address, 2:139–140 soldiers’ lives, 1:266, 267–268, 287 U.S. Army and, 2:124, 125 See also specific newspapers and magazines Nichols, Charles H., 2:43 Nightingale, Florence, 2:32–33, 35, 36, 38 9th Texas Regiment, 1:216 9th Vermont Infantry Regiment, 2:267 9th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 1:76 95th Illinois Infantry Regiment, 1:60 Nolan, Philip, 1:274 Nondenominational religious organizations, 1:32 Nordhoff, Charles, 1:200 Norris, William, 1:80 North American and United States Gazette, 1:215, 217, 218, 237–238 North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, 1:154, 2:94 North Carolina education system, 1:115 military units, 1:35, 2:177 pro-Unionists, 2:169 secession, 2:160 North Carolina Standard, 2:176 The North Reports the Civil War (Andrews), 2:191 North Star, 2:118 Northeastern United States. See New England; specific states Northern states abolitionism and, 1:202, 204, 2:118, 166–167 agriculture, 1:99–100, 2:86 arms manufacturing, 2:65–66, 68 attitudes about blacks in, 2:197 attitudes about slavery, 2:197–198 attitudes of Southerners about, 1:205–206, 2:163 attitudes on home front, 1:88–89, 91 biased newspapers and, 2:191–192 black market, 2:92–93
bounties for volunteers, 1:8, 9, 70, 152, 178 child labor and, 2:107 class tensions, 1:175, 177–178 common school movement, 1:123–126 concept of Union and, 2:165 currency, 2:100–101, 102–103 declaration of war, 2:134 domestic life, 1:95, 96, 99–100 draft riots and resistance, 1:10, 154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 effects of War, 2:229 emancipation of slaves and, 2:169–270 expansion of slavery to western territories and, 2:159, 165–166 freedpeople and, 1:119–120, 2:167 Grand Review of the Armies, 1:135 histories of War and, 2:231–232 hospitals, 2:2, 19–21, 30, 32, 59, 132 housing, 1:179, 179 immigrants and, 2:72 labor, 2:105–106 lost cause myth, 2:231–232 manufacturing and, 2:62–63, 64–65, 67–69, 70t, 112 motherhood, 1:139 pacifism and, 2:178–179, 178–180 party politics, 2:115 patriotism, 1:291 political humor and cartoons, 2:188–190 press censorship in, 2:123–125 pro-Union refugees in, 2:177, 198 propaganda and, 2:183–185 reactions to first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:144–146 reactions to inaugural address of Jefferson Davis, 2:144 reactions to inaugural addresses of Abraham Lincoln, 2:134, 138 religion and, 1:184 religious tracts and, 1:212 shipbuilding, 2:79–80 smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 291, 299 songs, 1:132–133, 247 support for the War, 2:154, 155–157, 165–168 textile manufacturing, 2:83–84 volunteer work, 1:158–159, 160, 162 women laborers, 1:99–100, 139, 2:110–111, 111 YMCA, 1:214–216 See also New England; specific states
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Northern Virginia Confederate States of America Army Battle of Antietam, 1862 and, 2:96 Battle of Gettysburg and, 2:96, 263 desertion and, 1:31, 2:171 evacuation of wounded and, 2:14–15 monuments and memorials, 2:254 religion and, 1:212, 213, 220, 231 Robert E. Lee farewell speech to, 2:232 role of, 1:84 shortages and, 1:21 surrender of, 1:211, 2:278 Northrop, John Worrell, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner, 2:25 Northup, Solomon, 2:224 Northwest, 1:154, 2:173, 174 Norton, Oliver Wilcox, 1:142 Notes on Nursing (Nightingale), 2:33, 35, 36, 38 Notes on Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (Powell), 2:112 Noyes, George Freeman, The Bivouac and the Battlefield, 1:288 Nugent, Robert, 1:76 Nursing, 2:32–42 overview, 2:32–36, 59–60 Antebellum period (1820–1861), 2:32 child labor and, 2:107 Crimean War (1853–1856), 2:32–33, 38 gender norms and, 2:40 male army nurses, 1:69, 272, 2:36–37, 40 manuals, 2:38 religious women and, 2:38–39, 59 Southern states and, 2:41 statistics, 2:33 women army nurses, 1:25–26, 58–59, 100, 138, 159–160, 2:34,40, 131–132 See also specific nurses Nutrition. See Food and nutrition
O ‘‘O Captain! My Captain!’’ (Whitman), 2:185 Oake, William Royal, 1:55 Oberlin Collegiate Institute, 1:191 Obituaries and local memorials to dead, 2:281–283 ‘‘Of Necessity and Public Benefit’’ (Murrell), 1:136
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, 2:4, 92, 232, 255 Oglesby, Richard, 2:240 ‘‘Oh, I’m a Good Ole Rebel,’’ 2:235 ‘‘Oh! Susanna’’ (Foster), 1:248–249 Ohio Confederate Army in, 1:152, 153 draft riots, 2:182 fraternal groups, 1:258 immigrants in, 1:172 lyceum movement, 1:254, 255 military prisons, 1:54, 216 military units, 1:58, 61, 251, 2:174, 254, 255, 258 opposition to war, 2:173 religious activities in, 1:191, 215 schools, 1:115, 125, 188 Southern support and, 2:169 temperance movement, 1:294 volunteer soldiers, 1:60 volunteer work, 1:158–159, 159 Ohio Cultivator, 1:97 Ohio Observer, 1:125 Ohio River valley, 2:80 ‘‘Old Kentucky Home’’ (Douglass), 1:249 Olmsted, Frederick Law on contraband black families, 1:147–148 designs for parks and, 2:55 Hospital Transports, 1:147–148 photograph of, 2:47 USSC and, 1:152, 2:47, 49 102nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:25 110th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:219 115th New York Infantry Regiment, 1:15 121st New York Infantry Regiment, 1:58 125th New York Voluntary Infantry Regiment, 2:243 125th Ohio Infantry Regimental Band, 1:251 133rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:219 141st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:58 154th New York Infantry Regiment, 1:277, 2:281 187th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1:68 Oneida Whig, 2:130 Opera, 1:237, 250 Opposition to the War, 2:168–183 overview, 2:168–171 civil liberties and, 2:170–171 conscientious objectors and, 2:178–180
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pacifism and, 2:169, 178–180 privation and desertion, 2:171 pro-Unionists in Confederacy, 1:164, 165, 2:169, 175–178, 198 Vallandigham, Clement L. and, 2:156–157, 169, 173, 173–174 See also Copperheads; Draft Ordeal by Fire (McPherson), 2:24 D’Orleans, Louis Philippe Albert, 2:68 Orphans, 1:136, 156–158, 222, 2:208 Orvell, Miles, 1:287 O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1:275, 278, 279, 281 Otis, George Alexander, 2:22 Otto, John, 2:87 Ould, Robert, 1:55 Our Mutual Friend (Dickens), 1:289 Owen, Robert Dale, 1:189
P Pacific Railway Acts, 1:121–122, 2:88, 114 Pacifism, 2:169, 178–180 See also Copperheads; Peace movement Page, Moses, 2:194 Palmer, Benjamin Morgan, 1:207, 208, 2:164 Palmer, John M., 2:261 Palmer, Phoebe, 1:192 Palmer, Sarah, The Story of Aunt Becky’s Army-life, 2:37 Paper currency, 1:175, 2:100–104 Pardons, 1:29 Parent-child/master-slave relation and, 1:206, 207–208, 239, 2:209 Parenting and childrearing, 1:135–149 overview, 1:135–137 children, 1:136, 143–146 extended family, 1:146–149 fatherhood, 1:140–143 letters from parents, 1:136–137, 145 motherhood, 1:137–140 parent-child relations, 1:138–142 parent’s death, 1:140 Southern states, 1:102–103, 139–140 Parker, Ely Samuel, 1:79 Parker, Theodore, 1:225 Parrish, Lydia, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, 2:220 Parsons, Emily Elizabeth, 1:138, 2:35
317
Index Party politics, 1:220, 2:115–116, 126–129, 193–195 See also specific political parties Passavant, William, 1:188 Patriot and Union, 2:140 Patriotism, 1:40–41, 80, 150, 151, 251, 291, 2:243 Patterson, Josiah, 2:258 Pattillo, G. W., 2:227 Peace Jubilee, 2:237–238 Peace movement Butternuts, 2:173, 174 Democratic Party and, 2:115, 156, 171, 173, 192, 194 racism and, 2:173 western territories and, 2:172–173 See also Copperheads Peace negotiations, 1:79, 2:115 Peace Party, 2:175, 176 Peake, Mary, 1:119, 120 Pember, Phoebe Yates, 2:132 Pemberton, John C., 2:251, 260, 262 Pendleton, George, 2:174 Pendleton, William N., 1:231 Penn, William, 1:202 Pennsylvania abolitionists, 1:202, 204 Confederate Army in, 1:143, 146, 171, 186, 284–285 draft riots, 1:10 immigrants and, 1:172 Lee, Robert E. invasion into, 1:83–84, 89 manufacturing, 2:62, 63, 83 Penn, William and, 1:202 schools in, 1:115, 125 Sunday school movement, 1:195 temperance movement, 1:294 volunteer work, 1:158–159 See also specific cities; specific military units Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, 1:290 Pensacola Gazette, 1:270 People’s History of the Civil War (Williams), 1:68 Performing arts, 1:236–242 overview, 1:236–238 audiences, 1:237 effects of Civil War, 1:236–237 minstrel shows, 1:237–241 opera, 1:237, 250 popular entertainment, 1:237–238 theater, 1:235, 237, 241–242 See also Popular culture
318
Perman, Michael, Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1:153 Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (Grant), 1:267, 2:233 Personnel, military, 1:58, 60–61, 66–67 Peterson, Virgil W., 1:294 Pettus, John J., 2:154 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, The Gates Ajar, 1:133 Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 2:140 Philadelphia Evening Journal, 2:145 Philadelphia Inquirer, 1:277, 2:125 Philadelphia North American, 2:145 Philadelphia draft and, 1:10 education, 1:202 homeopathy and, 2:57 hospitals and, 1:165, 2:19, 20, 22, 32, 39, 60 immigrants and, 2:63, 68 minstrelsy and, 1:237, 238 national cemeteries and, 2:252, 270 religion and, 1:187, 188, 190, 202, 230 sanitary fairs and, 2:54 shipbuilding and, 2:79 sports and, 1:33, 260, 262 Sunday school movement, 1:195 volunteer work by and, 1:158–159, 160 YMCA and, 1:215 Philadelphia Press, 2:141 Phillips, Wendell, 2:119, 194 Photography, 1:275–287 overview, 1:275–279 at battlefields, 1:277–279 Brady, Mathew and, 1:275–279 cartes de visite, 1:276–277, 286, 2:195 civilians, 1:284–287 photo albums, 1:284–285 portraits, 1:275, 276–277, 281–282 spirit photography, 1:287 stereographs, 1:277 See also War photography Pickens, F. W. The Governor’s Message and Correspondence, 2:161, 190 Pickett, George Edward, 1:168, 2:238, 243, 249, 276 Pickett’s charge, 1:168, 2:238, 243, 249, 276 Pinkerton, Allan, 1:81–82 Piracy, 2:95, 97 Pitman, Mary Ann, 1:57 Pittsburg Landing, TN, 2:257 Pittsburg Landing National Cemetery, 2:247, 271, 272
Plain Dealer, 1:254, 255 Plantation life, 2:209–212, 210 Poetry children and, 1:114, 273, 274 propaganda and, 2:184–185 religious poetry, 1:215 war poetry, 1:145, 209, 276, 285 See also specific poems; specific poets Point Lookout Prison, 1:54, 55, 56 Political conventions, 2:128, 158, 160, 175, 194 See also specific political parties The Political Economy of the Cotton South (Wright), 2:87 Political humor and cartoons abolitionism, 2:190 anti-Democratic Party, 2:195 Copperheads, 2:172, 188–190, 189, 189–190 Davis, Jefferson, 2:188 Fremont Proclamation, 1861, 2:157 Nast, Thomas, 2:151, 188, 188, 190 Northern states, 2:188–190 propaganda, 2:188–191 Southern states, 2:190–191 Politics overview, 2:115–116 abolitionists and, 2:116–120 campaigns and, 2:115, 129, 166, 188–191, 193–195 cartes de visite and, 2:195 class tensions and, 1:178 feminism, 2:130–133 free blacks and, 2:225 GAR and, 2:241 literature and, 2:184, 188–191, 193–195 lyceum lectures, 1:255 minstrel shows and, 1:239 Northern states and, 2:115 party politics, 1:220, 2:115–116, 126–129, 193–195 songs and, 1:165, 247, 249–250, 2:194 Southern states and, 2:115, 116 temperance movement, 1:295–296 See also Civil liberties and censorship; Lectures and speeches; Opposition to the War; Political humor and cartoons; Propaganda; Support for the War; specific elections; specific political parties Polk, Leonidas, 1:127 Pollard, Edward Alfred, 2:164, 229, 232, 235 Poor people, 1:97, 103, 112, 177, 225 Pope, John, 1:84
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Index Popular culture overview, 1:235–236, 243–252 agricultural fairs, 1:264–266 children’s literature, 1:272–275 comedy acts, 1:235, 254–255 dance and, 1:252–254, 253 entertainment, 1:237–238 fraternal organizations, 1:32, 256–258 holidays, 1:263–264 lyceum lectures, 1:215, 236, 254–256, 2:186 newspapers and magazines, 1:266, 266–269, 287 reading and reading groups, 1:214–215, 287–290 songs, 1:132–133, 241, 244, 2:235 See also Games; Literature; Music; Performing arts; Photography; Sports; Vices on home front Populists, 2:103 Porcher, Francis P., Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests, 2:56 Portraits, 1:275, 276–277, 281–282, 282, 284, 285, 286 Portsmouth Steam Factory, 2:107 Post, George H. Thomas, 2:241 Post, George I., 2:165 Postal services, 1:43, 100, 130, 168, 2:51–52 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 2:43, 60 The Potomac and the Rapidan and Army Notes (Quint), 1:288 Pottawatomie Massacre, 1856, 2:221 Poverty, 1:97, 103, 112, 177, 225 Powderly, Terence, Thirty Years of Labor, 2:108 Powell, John Wesley, 1:189 Powell, Samuel, Notes on Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, 2:112 Prayer meetings, 1:215, 216 Preliminary Report of the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 1:166 Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, 1:197 Presbyterians abolitionists, 1:184, 205 Address to all the Churches, 2:163 American Revolution (1775–1783), 1:192 chaplains, 1:231 missionary activities, 1:233 revivals, 1:184–185 slavery and, 1:207, 2:163–164 U.S. history and, 1:185 USCC and, 1:212 See also specific churches
Presidential elections. See specific elections Presidential messages. See Lectures and speeches; specific presidents Presidents executive powers and, 2:120–122, 171 Memorial Day ceremonies and, 2:246 photographs of, 1:275 term limits, 2:194 See also specific presidents Press. See Newspapers and magazines Primary readers, 1:272 Princeton University, 1:185–186 Prison-life in the Tobacco Warehouse at Richmond (Harris), 1:51 Prisoners of war overview, 1:45–49 abuse of, 1:52–53 African American soldiers, 1:52–54, 53, 2:203, 222 daily lives, 1:49–52, 50, 51 exchanges, 1:45–46, 48, 48–49, 54–57, 55–56, 74 reading publications, 1:289 relationships with enemy soldiers, 1:52 statistics, 1:46–47, 49 Trans-Mississippi Department and, 1:56 writings, 1:49 Prisons. See Military prisons Privateers and privateering, 2:95 Pro-Unionists in Confederacy, 1:164, 165, 2:175–178, 198 Projectiles, 1:34, 2:3, 5 Propaganda, 2:183–195 overview, 2:183–186 abolitionist, 2:200–201 Copperheads and, 2:192, 194, 195 Crimean War (1853–1856), 2:123 elections and, 2:127, 195 literature, 2:184, 188–191, 193–195 meaning of, 2:185 newspapers and magazines, 2:183–185, 191–193, 195 Northern states and, 2:183–185 party politics, 2:193–195 poetry and, 2:184–185 rallies and, 2:186–187 Southern states and, 2:183–185 speeches, 2:186 See also Political humor and cartoons; Sermons Propagation Society, 1:223 Property confiscation, 2:167, 198
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Prostitutes and prostitution, 1:38–39, 65–67, 66, 2:26 Protestant Christianity, 1:183, 184–190, 2:164 Providence Daily Post, 2:145 Providence Journal, 2:140 PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), 2:43, 60 Public health and sanitation, 1:25–28, 2:46–48 battlefield wounds and, 1:26–27 civilian health care, 2:56–58 civilian life and, 2:47–48 dentistry and, 2:59 field hospitals and, 1:26–27, 2:10, 12, 17 food and nutrition in camps, 1:26, 2:25 hygiene inspections and, 2:50, 51 military camps, 1:26, 27 sanitary fairs, 2:52–56 shelter, 1:26, 27 soldiers’ lives, 1:25–28 USSC and, 1:152, 218–219, 2:48–52 See also Health and medicine Pullen, John J., The Twentieth Maine, 2:281 Purvis, Robert, 1:204
Q Quakers, 1:115, 167, 202, 2:116–117 Quantrill, William Clarke, 1:258 Quint, Alonzo Hall, The Potomac and the Rapidan and Army Notes, 1:288
R Rable, George C., 2:25, 116 Race and racial tensions, 1:10–11, 118, 204, 2:163, 221–224 Racing sports, 1:258, 260, 290 Racism abolitionism and, 1:204 black-white relations, 2:163, 221–224 Davis, Jefferson and, 2:222 GAR and, 2:237, 241, 278 Jim Crow, 1:122, 240, 240, 241, 2:230 minstrel shows, 1:237–241 national cemeteries and, 2:252–253 peace movement and, 2:173 Republican Party and, 1:178, 2:167 Soldiers’ Homes and, 2:242 U. S. Army and, 1:69–70, 71–72, 2:167–168
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Index veteran reunions and, 2:236–237 veterans and, 2:237–238, 242, 249 volunteer military service and, 1:4–5, 6, 70–71 white supremacy beliefs, 1:4–5 Ragged Dick (Alger), 1:274 Raids. See specific raids Raikes, Robert, 1:194, 195 Railroads blockades and, 2:41, 65, 88 field hospitals and, 2:4, 8, 28 manufacturing and, 2:68, 76 Pacific Railway Acts, 1:121–122, 2:88, 114 Southern states and, 2:122, 224, 256 War and, 2:109, 114 westward expansion and, 1:173, 2:114 Raphall, Morris J., 1:226–227 Rawlins, John A., 1:63 Rayback, Joseph, A History of American Labor, 2:108 Reading and reading groups, 1:32, 73, 214–215, 233, 287–290 A Rebel Came Home (McGee and Lander), 1:181 Rebellions. See Riots and rebellions Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac (Wilkeson), 2:3 Reconciliation and remembrance fraternizing with enemy and, 1:168 souvenirs and relics, 2:278–280, 279 unit and regimental histories, 2:280–281 veterans’ organizations, 2:239–241, 273–274 Reconciliation movement, 2:235–239 See also Veterans Reconstruction Era (1865–1877), 2:85, 198, 225, 229, 242 See also Reconciliation and remembrance Recorder, 2:130 Recovery of health, 2:42–46 Recreation organizations, 1:214–216 Recruitment, 1:2–13 overview, 1:2–4 abolitionists and, 1:70 African American soldiers, 1:1, 5, 52, 70, 147, 2:207, 208, 224 Boston and, 1:186 bounties for volunteers, 1:8, 9, 70, 152, 178 effects on black wives and children, 1:136
320
furloughs, 1:44 of immigrants, 1:75 Northern states and, 1:186, 2:186–187 posters, 1:75, 2:207 rallies, 2:186–187 volunteer military service, 1:4–7, 3, 4–7, 5,6, 2:169, 207 volunteer military service vs., 1:4–7, 3, 5, 6, 2:207 See also Draft; Volunteer military service Red Cross, 2:37, 38, 60 Red Strings, 1:167, 2:176 Reed, David W., 2:248, 258, 259, 262 Reed, William Howell, Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac, 1:286, 2:51 Reflections on the Civil War (Catton), 1:10 Refugees, 1:96, 162–166,163, 2:177 Regimental histories, 2:280–281 See also specific military units Register, 2:140 Regulations for the Medical Department of the C.S. Army, 2:44 Reid, Robert, 2:140 Relics and souvenirs, 2:278–280, 279 Relief Association of Elmira, NY, 1:105 Religion overview, 1:183–184 abolitionism and, 1:184, 201–205, 2:218–219 Antebellum period (1820–1861) and, 2:216, 218 army missionaries, 1:232–234 Carolina-Georgia Low Country, 2:216, 217–218 Chesapeake of Virginia and Maryland region, 2:216, 218 denominational changes, 1:185–187 effects of War on beliefs, 1:189 freedpeople and, 1:106, 119, 187, 2:218–219 hoodoo practices, 2:217 hymns, 1:209–211 missionary activities, 1:188 pacifism and, 2:178–179 poetry and, 1:215 religious tracts, 1:211–214, 233 revivals, 1:183–188, 190, 190–194, 2:216 sectarianism, 1:187–188 sin of slavery, 1:193, 207, 226, 2:145 slaveholders and, 1:199–200 soldiers’ lives, 1:213, 220–222, 233, 234 Southern states and, 1:102, 184
Southern women’s beliefs, 1:102 spiritualism, 1:131, 133, 189 Sunday school movement, 1:194–196 U.S. history and, 1:185 USCC and, 1:216–220 women’s ministries, 1:188–189 YMCA and, 1:214–216 See also Clergy; Military chaplains; Sermons; specific churches; specific religions Religion and reform, 1:196–199 Religion and slavery, 1:184, 196–198, 199–201, 207, 2:163–164, 212–214 Religion practiced by slaves, 1:199–201, 2:210, 212–214, 216–219,223 Religious tracts, 1:211–214, 233 Remembrance and reconciliation. See Reconciliation and remembrance Reminiscences, 2:205, 235–236, 280–281 Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (Taylor), 1:136 Report of the Council of Hygiene (Smith), 2:48 Republican Party overview, 2:115 biased newspapers and, 2:192 class tensions exploitation, 1:178 conspiracy theories about Copperheads, 2:174 conventions and, 2:158, 160, 194 divisions within, 2:116 election of 1860, 2:126, 127, 194 pro-Unionists and, 2:177 punishments for defeated Confederacy and, 2:195 reaction to first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:145–146 slavery and, 2:159, 193–194 Republican Songster for the Campaign of 1864, 1:249 Resistance by civilians, 1:91–93 draft riots and resistance, 1:10, 154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–182, 181, 224 pro-Unionists in Southern states and, 2:176–177 See also Riots ‘‘Resolutions and Debate’’ (Anthony), 2:130–131 Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests (Porcher), 2:56 Reunions. See Separations and reunions Revival of 1857–1858, 1:192–193 Revivals, 1:183–188, 190, 190–194, 2:216
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Reynolds, Donald E., Editors Make War, 2:193 Reynolds, John F., 2:263, 264–265, 265 Reynolds, Mary, 2:106, 213 Rhett, Robert Barnwell, 2:158, 159, 184 Rhode Island, 1:185, 244, 294 Rice, DeLong, 2:258, 259 Rice, Thomas ‘‘T. D.’’, 1:240 Richardson, Caroline, 2:227 Richardson, Joe M., Christian Reconstruction, 1:120 Richmond Armory and Arsenal, 2:76–78 Richmond Dispatch, 1:63, 84, 2:78, 147 Richmond Enquirer, 2:147, 204 Richmond Examiner, 2:92, 193 Richmond (VA) black market, 2:91 bread riots, 1:96, 177, 2:89–90, 171 capitol of Confederacy, 2:28, 37, 160 Chimborazo Hospital, 2:2, 19–20, 30, 132 education and, 1:114 evacuation of, 1:246 hospitals, 2:21 manufacturing, 1:152, 298–299, 2:65, 71, 72, 75–76 photograph, 1:92 relocation of civilians to, 1:123, 163 Richmond Whig, 1:264, 2:77 Rifles, 1:22–24 Rigby, William T., 2:262 Ring-shout dance, 2:221 Riots and rebellions draft, 1:3, 10, 154, 157–158, 177, 2:170, 180–183, 181 freedman school riots, 1:118 Native Americans and, 2:218 over food, 1:17, 96, 111, 177, 2:88–91, 170–171 secession and, 2:170 slaves and, 1:199, 202, 2:221, 223 Southern states, 1:69, 70, 267 See also Resistance by civilians Ritner, Henry A., 1:169–170 Roberts, Della, 1:99, 100 Robertson, James, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 1:36, 2:12 Robinson, Armstead, 2:155 Rock Island prison hospital, 2:46 Roll, Jordan, Roll (Genovese), 1:298, 2:217 Roll of Honor, 2:270, 272
Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism Roosevelt, Franklin D., 2:250, 259, 269 Root, George F., 1:133, 246–247 Ropes, Hannah, 2:40 Rosecrans, William Starke, 2:254 Rosetti, Christina Georgina, 1:273, 273 Ross, John, 1:78 Rosser, Thomas Lafayette, 1:129 Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1:273, 273 Ruffin, Edmund, 1:265, 2:159, 161, 184 Ruffin, Thomas, 2:160 Rural housing, 1:180, 180–181 Russell, Andrew J., 1:282 Russell, William Howard, 1:267, 2:123 Rutkow, Ira M., 2:36, 38 Ryerson, Martin, 1:177
S Samer, Ferdinand Leopold, 1:230 San Francisco Examiner, 1:271 Sanders, Jared, 1:142 Sanderson, J. M., 2:264–265, 265 Sandford v. Dred Scott (1857), 2:119, 128, 159, 166, 167 Sanitary fairs, 2:52–56, 52–56 Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion (USSC), 2:18 Sanitation. See Public health and sanitation Saterlee U. S. General Hospital, 2:19, 20, 39 Saturday Evening Post, 1:99 Saunders, William, 2:265 Savage, John, ‘‘Dixie,’’ 2:185 Scarborough, William Kauffman, Masters of the Big House, 1:12 Schaff, Morris, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1:129 Schenck, Noah Hunt, 2:179 Schuyler, Louisa Lee, 2:49–50 Scioto Gazette, 1:215, 285–286 Scott, Sir Walter, 1:235, 288, 289 Scott, Winfield, 1:128, 267, 2:123 Scottish immigrants, 1:76, 172 Scouts. See Spies Scoville, Joseph Alfred, 2:152 Scribner, Benjamin Franklin, 2:242 SCV (Sons of Confederate Veterans), 2:274
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Sea Island experiment, 1:117, 137, 245 Seacole, Mary, 2:32–33 Sears, Stephen W., 1:272, 2:263 Secession, 2:158–162, 170, 192–193 See also specific states Second Great Awakening, 1:183–188, 190–192, 193, 2:216 Second Presbyterian Church (Charleston, SC), 1:207 Second Treatise on Government (Locke), 2:209 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment, 1:60 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 1:167 Second Battle of Bull Run, 1862, 1:7, 59, 166, 2:109 Sectarianism, 1:187–188 Seddon, James A., 2:88 Semi-Weekly Telegraph, 1:174 Senators in U.S. Congress. See specific senators Senecas, 1:77, 79 Separations and reunions, 1:129–135 African American soldiers, 1:132 family and, 1:129–135, 132, 134, 141, 142, 170 free blacks, 2:208 slaves, 2:200, 207, 208 veteran reunions, 2:236–237, 237, 237, 243, 274–276, 275 A Sermon Delivered on the Day of Prayer (Michelbacher), 2:161 Sermons abolitionist, 1:196–197 military chaplains and, 1:221, 228–229, 231 Moody, Dwight L. and, 1:218 revivals and, 1:188, 191, 195 slavery and, 1:197, 207–208, 225, 2:187 Union cause and, 1:223 Seton, Elizabeth Ann, 1:188 Seven Days Battles, 1862, 1:42, 54, 2:156 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment, 1:37 7th New Jersey Volunteer Army, 1:150 7th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 1:58 17th Alabama Infantry Regiment, 2:90 17th Maine Infantry Regiment, 1:243, 244 71st New York Infantry Regiment, 1:234
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Index 72nd New York Infantry Regiment, 1:217 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 1:168 79th New York Infantry Regiment, 1:76 Seward, William Henry, 2:94, 127, 156, 170 Sharpsburg (MD). See Antietam National Battlefield; Battle of Antietam, 1862 Shattuck, Gardiner, 1:218, 233–234 Shaw, Robert Gould, 1:69–70, 73 Shelter (military camps), 1:18–19, 19, 26, 27, 2:10 See also Housing Shenandoah (ship), 2:79 Shenandoah Valley, 1:17, 21, 86, 2:128 Sheridan, Philip Henry, 1:85–86, 90, 251, 2:230 Sherman, William Tecumseh on black market trade, 2:92–93 death of, 2:230 foraging and looting policy, 1:17, 86, 87, 90, 111 on holiday gift of Savannah to Lincoln, 1:264 Memorial Day address, 2:246 on press censorship, 1:267, 2:124 pro-Unionists and, 2:177 on race relations, 2:222 on war, 1:86 West Point, 1:129 Sherman’s March, 1864, 1:17, 86, 87, 92–93 Shiloh Battlefield Association, 2:258 Shiloh National Cemetery, 2:252, 272 Shiloh National Military Park, TN, 2:246, 249, 257, 257–259, 261 See also Battle of Shiloh, 1862 Shipbuilding, 2:78–81, 94 Ships, 1:6, 6, 93, 181, 2:11, 79 See also Naval vessels Shortages and smuggling goods, 1:82, 104–105, 192, 2:83, 117, 169 Shortages of food, 1:107, 108, 110–113, 111, 177, 2:88–91, 171 Sibley, John T., 2:7 Siege of Petersburg, 1864-1865, 1:152, 2:3, 153, 171, 238 Sieges. See specific sieges Silber, Nina, Daughter of the Union, 1:61 Silk fabric, 2:81, 83, 84, 98 Simmons, Flora E., A Complete Account of the John Morgan Raid, 1:152
322
Simms, William Gilmore, 1:235, 2:162, 163 Simpson, James Young, 2:2 Sin of slavery, 1:193, 207, 226, 2:145 Sinclair, Carrie Belle, 2:85 Singer, Isaac Merritt, 2:81 6th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, 2:92 6th USCT, 2:168 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 2:170 16th Illinois Infantry Regiment, 2:177 16th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, 2:18 61st Illinois, 2:280 67th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 2:37 Sizer, Sandra, 1:193 Slater, Samuel, 2:81 Slave-based economy, 2:197 Slave Culture (Stuckey), 2:221 Slave labor border states and, 2:104 Confederate Army and, 1:67, 70, 74, 2:203–204 cotton industry and, 2:61, 82–83, 83, 110, 112 effects of Emancipation Proclamation on, 2:148–150 factory system and, 2:75, 77, 104, 109, 165 fortifications and, 1:74, 2:203, 204, 205 Southern states, 2:61, 82–83, 83, 110, 112 white laborers vs., 2:203 women, 2:110 See also Labor Slave markets, 2:199,199–201, 200 Slave Narratives, 2:221 Slave songs, 1:245, 248 Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (Parrish), 2:220 Slave worship. See Religion practiced by slaves Slaveholders Antebellum period (1820–1861), 2:209 described, 2:211 effects of Emancipation Proclamation on, 2:149–150 master-slave/parent-child relation and, 1:206, 207–208, 239, 2:209 minstrel show support of, 1:239 Quakers and, 1:202 rationalization by, 1:206 religion and, 1:199–200, 226 secession and, 2:160
Twenty Negro Law, 1862, 1:12, 103, 2:155 women’s role, 1:101, 103, 2:202–203 A Slaveholder’s Daughter (Kearney), 1:289 Slavery Confederate government and, 2:202 Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 2:119, 128, 159, 166, 167 expansion to western territories, 2:154, 158–159, 165–166 federal government and, 2:155, 165, 197 lost cause myth and, 2:229, 230–234 Northern states and, 2:197–198 party politics and, 2:159, 193–194 religion and, 1:184, 196–198, 199–201, 207, 2:163–164, 212–214 sermons and, 1:197, 207–208, 225, 2:187 sin of, 1:193, 207, 2:145 Southern states and, 2:201–202 Southwest and, 1:199 support for the War and, 1:123, 184, 199, 2:162–165 U.S. Congress and, 2:118, 119, 127, 128, 154, 155 U.S. Constitution and, 2:167 Slavery apologists, 1:199, 205–209 Slaves, 2:201–205,207–209 African ethnology of, 2:216, 217–218 American-born, 2:210 attitudes of, 2:212 camp followers, 1:67, 136–137, 2:198 children of, 1:144–145, 154–155, 194 civil rights and, 1:199, 207 clothing, 2:83 colonization movement and, 1:204, 226, 2:152, 197 communities in South and, 2:202–203 confiscation of, 2:152, 156 contraband of war, 1:147, 162, 2:198, 205, 206, 226 culture and leisure of, 2:212–215 dance among, 1:255, 2:219–221, 220 education and, 1:113, 118, 136–137, 194–195, 202 effects of Emancipation Proclamation on, 2:148–150 effects of war on, 2:201–204 escape to Northern states, 2:198 families and community life, 1:141, 142, 144–145, 147–148, 2:207–209 fugitive, 1:82, 192, 204, 255
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Index health care and, 2:56 housing, 1:181 impressment and, 2:153, 204 letters to Abraham Lincoln, 2:152 marriage and, 2:207–208 music, 1:244–245, 2:215–216 photographs of, 1:281–282, 2:210 plantation life of, 2:209–212, 210 post-Emancipation Proclamation status of, 2:205 post-War status, 2:197 rebellion of, 1:199, 202, 2:221, 223 refugees, 1:165–166 religion practiced by, 1:199–201, 2:210, 212–214, 216–219, 223 separations and reunions, 2:200, 207, 208 slave patrols, 2:202, 203, 223 smoking and tobacco use, 1:298 Southern urban centers and, 2:203 storytelling, 2:214 See also Effects of war on slaves and freedpeople Smedley, Charles, Life in Southern Prisons, 2:24 Smith, Adam, 1:194 Smith, Adelaide W., 1:25, 2:107, 236 Smith, Andrew Jackson, 2:221 Smith, Charles Henry, 2:190–191 Smith, Edward Parmelee, 1:285 Smith, George Winston, 2:184 Smith, Gerrit, 2:131 Smith, John Hyatt, 1:233, 233 Smith, Joseph, 1:187 Smith, Mark, 2:209 Smith, Mrs. Joseph, 1:199–200 Smith, Richard McAllister, The Confederate First Reader, 1:123 Smith, Stephen, 2:47–48 Smith, Venture, 1:201–202 Smith College, 1:188 Smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 291, 296–300, 297 See also Tobacco industry Smuggling, 1:82, 104–105, 192, 2:83, 117, 169 Snow, John, 2:2 Social relations in Our Southern States (Hudley), 1:248 Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 1:223 Society of Friends, 1:115, 167, 202, 2:116–117 Society of the Army of the Cumberland, 2:254–255, 255 Sociology for the South (Fitzhugh), 2:163 Soewell, Sarah, 1:98
Soldiers’ Aid Society, 1:171 Soldiers Blue and Gray (Robertson), 1:36, 2:12 The Soldier’s Friend (newspaper), 2:243 The Soldier’s Friend (USSC booklet), 2:52 Soldiers’ Homes, 2:52, 242, 270, 273 Soldiers’ lives overview, 1:1–2 child soldiers, 1:2, 67, 67–69, 2:107 demobilization and, 2:239 demographic profile, 1:2 diaries and letters from soldiers, 1:2, 39–44, 40, 42 equipment, 1:22–24, 2:279, 279 foraging and looting, 1:83–88 furloughs, 1:44 husbands and wives as soldiers, 1:58, 60–61 immigrant soldiers, 1:1, 75–77 interactions with civilians, 1:88–91 mascots, 1:24–25 masculine qualities, 1:141, 142, 150, 151, 237 military desertion, 1:28–31 monuments and memorials, 2:238–239 motivations of, 1:3 Native American soldiers, 1:77–80 newspapers and magazines, 1:266, 267–268, 287 patriotism, 1:40–41 personal effects of soldiers, 2:280 portraits and, 1:276–277, 285, 286 published reminiscences, 2:236 rape of civilians and, 1:84, 2:203, 222 relationships among, 1:41–42 religion and, 1:213, 220–222, 233, 234 sanitation, 1:25–28 shelter, 1:18–19 statistics, 1:1, 2–3, 2:193 uniforms, 1:19–22 war casualties and, 1:2–3 war photography, 1:282 See also African American soldiers; Drill training; Food and nutrition; Military prisons; Soldiers’ pastimes; Spies; Women on battlefields Soldiers’ pastimes, 1:31–39 overview, 1:31–33 fraternizing with enemy, 1:32–33, 42, 166–168 games, 1:261 holidays, 1:264 music, 1:2, 35–36, 68, 72–73, 246
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pranks, 1:32 reading, 1:32, 73, 233, 287–290 religious activities and, 1:32, 73, 222, 288 show productions, 1:32 smoking and tobacco use, 1:298, 299 sports, 1:27, 33–35, 34, 36, 37 vices, 1:36–39, 37, 72 ‘‘Song of the Conscripts,’’ 1:9 Songs abolitionist, 1:245–246, 248–249 freedom songs, 1:247–248 political songs, 1:165, 247, 249–250, 2:194 popular songs, 1:132–133, 241, 244, 2:235 slave songs, 1:245, 248 song books, 1:240, 243, 245, 246–247, 248 spirituals, 2:215–216 spirituals and, 2:215–216 war songs, 1:9, 35 See also Music Songs and Ballads of Freedom, 1:247 Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), 2:274 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), 2:274 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 2:212 South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, 2:94 South Carolina agriculture and, 1:87, 110, 2:86 Carolina-Georgia Low Country, 2:216, 217–218 Declaration of the Immediate Causes, 2:160 gambling, 1:292–293 reactions to election of 1860, 2:129–130 secession, 2:130, 143, 158–159, 160, 161 Sunday school movement, 1:195 textile industry and, 2:84 South Carolinian, 1:63–64 The South (Palmer), 2:164 The South Reports the Civil War (Andrews), 2:193 Southern Agriculturalist, 2:209 Southern Claims Commission, 1:167–168 Southern Cultivator, 2:70, 86, 88 Southern Dental Association, 2:59 Southern Field and Fireside, 1:151 Southern Historical Society, 2:236, 243, 255 Southern History of the War (Pollard), 2:232
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Index Southern Illustrated News, 1:32, 2:184, 190 Southern Literary Messenger, 1:205 Southern states agriculture, 1:87, 110, 299, 2:86–87, 88, 110, 112 American Revolution (1775–1783) and, 1:115, 207, 208, 2:187 attitudes about Northerners in, 1:205–206, 2:163 attitudes of clergy, 1:206, 2:187 attitudes on home front, 1:88–89, 103 attitudes towards blacks in, 2:197 balance of power and, 2:165 black market, 2:91–92 centralized government and, 2:194 civilian life in, 1:205 class tensions, 1:175–177, 2:197 common school movement, 1:125 confiscations and, 2:152, 156, 167, 198 currency, 2:100–102, 103, 103 disabled veterans and, 2:242 domestic life, 1:95–96, 101–103, 101–104 draft and, 1:7–8, 11, 11–13, 12, 2:182–183 education, 1:122–123 effects of War, 2:229–230 emancipation and, 2:235, 238, 270, 276 food shortages, 1:107, 108, 110–113, 111, 2:88–91 foraging and looting, 1:87, 87–88, 2:61 freedpeople and, 1:118–120, 2:224–226 gender norms, 1:101–103 guerrilla warfare and, 1:92–93 historians’ view of life, 1:101 histories of War, 2:232 hospitals, 2:19, 20, 21, 59 housing, 1:179–180, 180 immigrants and, 2:72 labor, 2:104–105, 105, 106–107, 108–109, 110, 111 lost cause myth, 2:230–231, 232 manufacturing and, 2:62, 63, 63–64, 70t, 70–72 motherhood, 1:139–140 national identity and culture through education, 1:123 newspapers and, 2:192–193, 195 nursing and, 2:41 pacifism and, 2:178–180 parenting and childrearing, 1:102–103, 139–140 party politics and, 2:115, 116, 193–195 patriotism, 1:251 pensions for veterans and, 2:242 photographs, 1:279
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political humor and cartoons, 2:190–191 politics and, 2:115, 116 popular songs, 1:132–133, 2:235 poverty and, 1:97, 103, 112, 177 press censorship in, 2:123–124, 125 pro-Unionists, 1:164, 165, 2:169, 175–178, 198 propaganda and, 2:183–185 race relations and, 2:163, 221–222, 223 railroads and, 2:122, 224, 256 reactions to first inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, 2:134, 146–147 reactions to inaugural address of Jefferson Davis, 2:134, 144 reactions to resignation speech of Jefferson Davis, 2:143 Red Strings, 1:167 refugees, 1:162–166, 163 religion and, 1:184 religious tracts and, 1:212–213 shipbuilding, 2:78–79, 80 slave-based economy, 2:197 slave patrols and, 2:202, 203, 223 smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 299, 300 states rights, 2:116, 158, 230–231 support for the war, 2:154–155 textile manufacturing, 2:84–85 volunteer work, 1:159–161 white supremacy beliefs, 1:4–5 women’s lives, 1:102–103, 139–140 YMCA, 1:216 See also specific prisons; specific states Southern United States. See Southern states Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (Kettell), 2:81 Southwest history of, 1:274 Mexican-American War (1846–1848), 1:128, 280, 2:58, 158 religion and, 1:185 slavery and, 1:199 Souvenirs and relics, 2:278–280,279 Spanish-American War (1898), 1:23, 2:38, 230, 243, 269 Speaking of America (Belmonte), 2:130, 132 Spectator, 2:138 Spencer, Ambrose, 1:54, 56 Spencer, George E., 1:82 Spies, 1:80–83 Confederate Army and, 1:80, 80–81, 2:76
espionage, 1:80, 81, 167, 2:76 free black women, 1:82 journalists as, 1:267 male, 1:82 patriotism and, 1:80 slaves and, 2:177 smuggling and, 1:82, 2:169 U.S. Army and, 1:80–83, 82, 2:177 women, 1:57–58, 63–64, 80, 80–82, 82, 167, 167 The Spirit of Old West Point (Schaff), 1:129 Spirit photography, 1:287 Spiritualism, 1:131, 133, 189 Spirituals, 2:215–216 Sports, 1:258–261 baseball, 1:2, 236, 260, 262–263 cricket, 1:27, 260, 263, 273 fighting sports, 1:33, 34, 36, 37, 258, 259, 290 ice skating, 1:259, 259 racing sports, 1:258, 260, 290 soldiers’ pastimes, 1:27, 33–35, 34, 36, 37 water sports, 1:258, 259, 259–260 See also Games Springfield Armory, 2:68, 75–76 Springfield Republican, 2:139 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1:249 Stand Watie, 1:79 Stanton, Edwin McMasters, 2:21, 121, 122, 124, 171, 194 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1:225, 2:130, 131, 131 ‘‘Star Spangled Banner,’’ 1:209 Stars and Stripes, 2:243 States’ rights, 1:226, 298, 2:158, 230–231 Statesmen. See specific statesmen Steamboats, 1:6, 6, 93, 181 Stearns, Amanda Akin, 2:34–35 Stearnss, John C., 2:267, 268 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 2:279 Steedman, James B., 1:74 Stephens, Alexander Hamilton, 2:145, 164, 201 Stephenson, Benjamin, 2:240 Stevens, Thaddeus, 1:203, 2:194 Stevenson, Adlai, I, 2:276 Stevenson, William G., 1:38, 2:15–16, 17, 21 Stewart, Alexander P., 2:255, 256 Stewart, Maria W., 1:204, 2:218 Stillwell, Leander, 2:278, 280 Stockton, Joseph, 2:227 The Story of Aunt Becky’s Army-life (Palmer), 2:37
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Storytelling by slaves, 2:214 Stowe, Harriet Beecher A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1:270 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1:193, 235, 242, 269–270, 2:162, 184, 201 Street, James, 1:216 Street, John, 2:279 Stuart, George Hay, 1:215, 217–218 Stuart, J. E. B., 2:280 Stuckey, Sterling, 1:245, 2:216–217, 221 Submarines, 2:79 Suffrage, 1:74, 122, 2:131, 230 Sultana (ship), 2:64 Sumner, Charles, 1:196, 203, 255, 2:166, 194 Sunday School Helper, 1:195 Sunday School Journal, 1:195 Sunday school movement, 1:194–196 Sunday School Times, 1:195 Sunday School World, 1:195 Support for the War, 2:154–168 overview, 2:154–158 Northern states, 2:154, 155–157, 165–168 prosecessionists/Southern nationalists, 2:158–162 slavery and, 1:123, 184, 199, 2:162–165 Southern states, 2:154–155 The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War (Hart), 2:3 Surgeons, 2:8, 15–18, 21, 25, 27–32, 30 SUVCW (Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War), 2:274 Swain, Samuel Glyde, 2:227 Sweetland, Emory, 2:141 The Sword and the Distaff (Simms), 2:162
T Taney, Roger B., 2:119, 121–122, 128, 167 The Tanner-Boy (Denison), 1:125 Tariff of 1828, 2:158 Taylor, Amy E., The Divided Family in Civil War America, 1:140–141 Taylor, G. B., 1:213 Taylor, James E. foraging and looting print, 1:87 Taylor, Nikki, 1:119 Taylor, Susie King, 1:136–137
Technological advances in agriculture and industry, 2:112–114 Telegraph system, 1:130, 168, 266, 275, 2:113–114, 123 Temperance movement, 1:198–199, 213, 291, 294, 295, 295–296 Templeton, George, 2:147 10th Massachusetts, 2:69 Tennent, Gilbert, 1:203 Tennessee pro-Unionists, 2:169, 176 refugees, 1:164–165 secession, 1:165, 2:160 shelter for freedpeople, 2:205 slaves in, 1:136, 148 women in, 1:64 Tennessee Confederate States of America Army, 1:216, 2:26, 34, 41, 257, 258 Tepe, Mary, 1:65 Term limits, 2:194 The Testimony of a Refugee from East Tennessee (Bokum), 1:164–165 Texas cavalry, 1:212, 2:177 Juneteenth, 2:276 military units, 1:216, 2:236 secession, 2:154, 160 Texas Rangers, 1:212 Textile manufacturing, 2:61, 65–66, 67, 68–69, 81–85 Theater, 1:235, 237, 241–242 They Fought Like Demons (Blanton and Cook), 1:60 Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army (Stevenson), 1:38, 2:15–16 Thirty Years a Slave (Hughes), 2:56 Thirty Years of Labor (Powderly), 2:108 Thomas, George Henry, 2:247, 252, 271, 281 Thomas, Lorenzo, 2:221 Thompson, Atwell, 2:258 Thompson, Franklin. See Edmonds, Sarah Emma Thoreau, Henry David, 1:236 Thornwell, James Henley, 1:206–207, 231, 2:164 3rd Minnesota Infantry Regiment, 2:92 3rd North Carolina Cavalry Infantry Regiment, 2:177 3rd United States Colored Troops (USCT) banner, 2:277 13th Amendment, 1:226, 2:104, 120, 135, 198, 207, 229, 234 13th Arkansas Infantry Regiment, 1:299
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13th New Jersey Infantry Regiment, 2:268 13th Tennessee Infantry Regiment, 2:177 30th United States Colored Troops (USCT), 2:28 31st Maine Infantry Regiment, 1:58 33rd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:228 33rd South Carolina United States Colored Troops (USCT), 1:136 35th Ohio Infantry Regiment, 2:254 37th New Jersey Infantry Regiment, 2:107 Throgmorton, Isaac, 1:200 Time on the Cross (Fogel and Engerman), 2:71 Times (London), 2:82, 83, 84, 123 Tims, Daniel, 2:208 Tims, Harriet, 2:208 Tims, J. T., 2:208 ‘‘To the Loyal Women of America’’ (Lincoln), 1:100 Tobacco industry agriculture in Southern states and, 1:110, 2:71, 88, 98 gang-labor system, 2:209, 211, 218 history of, 2:86 markets and, 2:98 smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 291, 296–300, 297 warehouses, 1:46, 54–55, 299, 2:24 Tobacco Warehouse Prison, 1:51, 54 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1:129–130, 134 Tom Taylor’s Civil War (Castel), 1:181 Torrey, John, 1:158 Towne, Laura, Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 2:221 Training. See Drill training Trains. See Railroads A Traitor’s Peace, 2:188 Trans-Mississippi Department, 1:56 Trans-Mississippi West, 1:77–78 Travel literature, 1:273 Treatise on Domestic Economy (Beecher), 1:109 Tredegar Iron Works, 1:152, 2:61, 65, 71, 75, 77, 78 Trent Affair, 1861, 2:96 Trent (ship), 2:96
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Index Trials Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 2:119, 128, 159, 166, 167 Ex parte Merryman (1861), 2:122 Ex parte Milligan (1866), 2:122–123 The Tribute Book (Goodrich), 1:162 Truth, Sojourner, 2:167 ‘‘Truth About Civil War Surgery’’ (Bollet), 2:17 Tubman, Harriet, 2:166, 167 Tunnard, William H., 1:246 Turner, Henry McNeal, 1:204, 229 Turner, Nat, 1:204, 2:202, 221 Turner’s Lane Hospital, 1:165, 2:22, 60 Twain, Mark, 1:253–254, 274 The Twentieth Maine (Pullen), 2:281 Twenty Negro Law, 1862, 1:12, 103, 2:155 Twichell, Joseph Hopkins, 1:140 2nd Louisiana Native Guard, 1:71 2nd Texas Cavalry Regiment, 2:177 12th Alabama Infantry Regiment, 1:289 12th Indiana Cavalry Regiment, 1:59 12th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, 1:24 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:244 21st Indiana Infantry Regiment, 2:177 21st Virginia Infantry Regiment, 2:29 24th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:244, 251 26th Iowa Infantry Regiment, 1:55 26th North Carolina Infantry Regimental Band, 1:35 27th Indiana Infantry Regiment, 1:228 28th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 1:77
U UCV (United Confederate Veterans), 2:240, 242, 256, 273–274 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 1:193, 235, 242, 269–270, 2:162, 184, 201 Uniforms, 1:19–22, 104, 105, 2:100, 278 Union Army Balloon Corps, 1:23, 23 Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Washington, DC), 1:105–106 Union Party, 2:194
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Union Relief Association (Washington, DC), 1:105–106 Unionism, 2:176 Unit and regimental histories, 2:280–281 Unitarianism, 1:224–226, 224–226 United Confederate Veterans (UCV), 2:240, 242, 256, 273–274 United Daughters of the Confederacy, 2:242 United Kingdom. See England United States antidiscriminatory laws, 1:74 history of religion in, 1:185 immigration to, 1:172, 223 national debt, 2:103 sermons on Union cause, 1:223 taxes and, 1:296, 2:100 See also specific cities; specific regions; specific states United States Army aerial reconnaissance, 1:23, 23 African American soldiers and, 2:224 army bands, 1:250–251 burials, 2:252, 269–271 Camp Nelson black refugees, 1:165–166 care of freedpeople, 2:205 cavalry, 1:81, 88, 135 chaplains, 1:184, 227–230 child labor and, 2:107 civilian resistance, 1:89 companies and regiments, 1:6–7 confiscations and, 2:167, 198 demobilization of, 2:239–240 draft and, 1:7, 8, 8–11, 9, 2:180–182, 183 foraging and looting, 1:16–17, 17, 84–85, 85,87, 87–90, 92 fraternizing with enemy, 1:166–167 headquarters, 1:19 immigrant soldiers, 1:1, 75–76 impressment, 1:88 Jews and, 1:227 press censorship and, 2:124–125 prisoner abuse, 1:52–53 pro-Unionists support in Southern states, 1:164, 165, 2:169, 175–178, 198 race relations and, 2:221–223 spies, 1:80–83, 82 uniforms, 1:19–21, 20, 105 war casualties, 2:17–18, 46–47, 60, 167 war photography, 1:282, 282 See also specific military units; specific prisons United States Army Medical Bureau, 2:36 United States Army Medical Corps, 2:30–31
United States Army Nurses, 1:224 United States Brewers Association, 1:296 United States Chaplaincy Corps, 1:227, 228 United States Christian Commission (USCC), 1:215, 216–220 chaplains, 1:184 field headquarters, 1:219 missionary activities, 1:233–234 religious tracts and, 1:212 supplies deliveries, 1:159, 234 temperance movement and, 1:198 USSC relations with, 1:218, 219 United States Civil War (1861–1865). See American Civil War (1861–1865) United States Colored Cavalry (USCC), 1:73 United States Colored Troops (USCT). See African American soldiers; specific military units United States Congress army bands and, 1:251 battlefield commemorations and, 2:254, 255, 258, 261, 262 black education and, 1:119 black war widows and, 1:156 commission system and, 2:249 conscription acts, 1:8, 10, 11–12, 29 expansion of slavery to western territories and, 2:158, 165 Government Hospital for the Insane (GHI), 2:43 House of Representatives, 2:202, 233, 255, 262 Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 2:116 Letterman system and, 2:14 Medal of Honor, 1:230, 251, 2:231, 254 Medical Corps’ Ambulance Service, 2:11 military chaplains and, 1:227–230 national cemeteries and, 2:251–252, 269–270 National Home for Disabled Volunteers and, 2:242 pacifism and, 2:179 photographic documentation of prisons, 1:282 recruitment and, 1:52, 70, 75 Senate, 2:133, 142–143, 262 slavery and, 2:118, 119, 127, 128, 154, 155 Suspension Clause and, 2:122 Yosemite park and, 2:55 See also Freedmen’s Bureau; specific acts United States Constitution 13th Amendment, 1:226, 2:104, 120, 135, 198, 207, 229, 234
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index 14th Amendment, 2:103, 120, 207, 234 15th Amendment, 2:207, 234 18th Amendment, 1:291, 296 draft and, 2:179–180 three-fifths clause and, 2:202 United States Department of Agriculture, 2:88, 265 United States Department of the Interior, 2:256 United States Department of the Treasury currency and, 2:100–101, 101, 102–103 leasing land and, 2:205 Northern cotton manufacturing and, 2:81 secretary of, 2:50, 54, 92, 102, 194 women’s jobs in, 1:139 United States Department of War. See United States War Department United States Marine Corps, 2:181 United States Military Academy at West Point, 1:126–129, 128 United States National Park Service, 2:250, 256, 259, 269 United States Naval Academy, 1:126 United States Navy overview, 2:94–95 African American soldiers, 1:69, 2:224 Farragut, David G. and, 2:97 mascots, 1:25 shipbuilding and, 2:79–80, 94 signal flares and, 2:114 See also Blockades and blockade running; Naval vessels United States Ordnance Department, 2:68, 75–76 United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), 2:48–52 overview, 1:152, 2:46 goals and operations of, 2:21, 49–52, 50, 54 health of soldiers, 1:27, 34 Olmsted, Frederick Law and, 1:152, 2:47, 49, 55 opposition to, 2:53–54 sanitary fairs and, 2:52–53, 54–55 Sanitary Memoirs of the War of the Rebellion, 2:18 The Soldier’s Friend, 2:52 supplies deliveries, 1:159 USCC relations with, 1:218, 219 women volunteers, 1:100, 2:49–51, 50, 60 The United States Sanitary Commission (Wormeley), 2:48 United States Secret Service, 1:82 United States Supreme Court Chase, Salmon P., 2:102
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 2:119, 128, 159, 166, 167 habeas corpus and, 2:120–122 Taney, Roger B. and, 2:119, 121–122, 128, 167 United States Surgeon General’s Office, 1:282–283 United States War Department army bands and, 1:244 Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, GA and, 2:255 food distribution, 1:15 internal security and, 2:156, 170–171 Letterman system and, 2:14–15 manufacturing coordination and, 2:68 military officers for black troops, 1:71 national cemeteries, 2:251 parity for black soldiers, 1:72 small arms and, 1:24 uniforms, 1:20 war photography and, 1:279 See also United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) United States War Records Office, 2:232 Up From Slavery (Washington), 1:113–114 Urban centers, 1:163, 179, 179–180, 195, 2:47, 203 USCC. See United States Christian Commission (USCC) USCC (United States Colored Cavalry), 1:73 USCT (United States Colored Troops). See African American soldiers; specific military units U.S.S. Hartford (ship), 2:97 U.S.S. Housatonic (ship), 2:79 U.S.S. Merrimack (ship), 2:96 U.S.S. Minnesota (ship), 1:154 U.S.S. Monitor (ship), 2:80, 96 U.S.S. San Jacinto (ship), 2:96
V Vallandigham, Clement L., 2:156–157, 169, 173, 173–174 Van Buren, William H., 1:27 Van Derveer, Ferdinand, 2:254 Van Horne, Thomas B., 2:252, 271 Van Lew, Elizabeth, 1:82 Vance, Zebulon, 2:176, 203 Vanity Fair, 2:91 Vassar, John, 1:234 Vassar College, 1:115, 188
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Vermont, 2:180, 267 Vermont Chronicle, 1:198–199, 217, 255, 259, 293 Vesey, Denmark, 1:119, 204, 2:202, 218 Veterans, 2:239–244 battlefield-preservation and, 2:247–248, 248–249 battlefield sites and, 2:247–249 black reunions, 2:237 blue-gray reunions, 2:274–276, 275 disabled, 2:242 parades, 2:240 patriotism and, 2:243 pensions for, 2:241–242 poster for reunion, 2:237 publications for, 2:243 racism and, 2:237–238, 242, 249 reunions, 2:243 Soldiers’ Homes, 2:52, 242, 270, 273 status of, 2:243 USSC and, 2:52 white reunions, 2:236–237 Veterans’ organizations, 2:239–241, 273–274 See also specific organizations Vice-Presidential candidates. See specific vice presidential candidates Vice presidents of the United States. See specific vice presidents Vices on home front, 1:290–300 overview, 1:290–292 alcoholic beverages, 1:175, 291–292, 294–296 gambling, 1:236, 259, 260, 261, 290, 292–294 smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 296–300, 297 Vicksburg (MS), 2:275, 278, 283 Vicksburg National Cemetery, 2:271–272 Vicksburg National Military Park, MS, 2:248, 249, 260–263 See also Battle of Vicksburg, 18621863 Vicksburg Sun, 1:263 Virginia black market and, 2:91–92 looting in, 1:92 manufacturing, 2:62, 71 pro-Unionists, 2:169, 177 religion and, 1:185 secession, 2:96, 160 shelter for freedpeople, 2:205 shipbuilding and, 2:78, 96 Sunday school movement, 1:194 Wolfe Street Hospital (Alexandria, VA), 2:19 See also Richmond (VA)
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Index Virginia Military Institute (VMI), 1:68 Virginia Reel, 1:253 VMI (Virginia Military Institute), 1:68 Volck, Adalbert J., 2:190 Voltz, Felix, 1:68 Volunteer infantry regiments. See specific military units Volunteer military service bounties for volunteers, 1:8, 9, 70, 152, 178 Northern states, 1:60 racism, 1:4–5, 6, 70–71 recruitment vs., 1:4–7, 3, 5, 6, 2:207 See also Recruitment; specific military units Volunteer work to support troops, 1:158–162, 160, 161, 2:106 Volunteers, medical, 1:69, 159, 171, 272, 2:9–10, 38–42 See also Nursing Voting rights, 1:74, 122, 2:131
W Wainwright, Charles, 2:264–265, 265 Waitz, Julia Ellen LeGrand, The Journal of Julia LeGrand, 2:26 Walker, David, 1:119, 204, 2:117–119 Walker, Mary Edwards, 2:31, 132 Walker, William H. T., 2:204 War Between the States, 2:238 War casualties Antietam Exhibit, 1862, 1:278–279, 280–281 artillery shells and, 2:3–4 Battle of Gettysburg, 1863, 1:276, 277, 279, 286, 2:230, 263 photography and, 1:282, 283, 285–286, 287, 2:268 soldiers’ lives and, 1:2–3 statistics, 1:7–8, 2:17–18, 46–47, 60, 167 See also War photography War damage. See Foraging and looting War Democrats, 2:115, 156, 171, 173, 194 War finance, 1:96, 2:101–102, 103 War of 1812, 2:97 War of Rebellion, 2:238 War photography overview, 1:280 Antietam Exhibit, 1862, 1:278–279, 280–281 artillery, 1:282
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Battle of Gettysburg, 1863, 1:276, 277, 279, 286 at battlefields, 1:277–279 Brady, Mathew and, 1:275–279, 281 cartes de visite, 1:284, 285 casualties, 1:282, 283, 285–286, 286, 287, 2:268 Crimean War (1853–1856), 1:280 documentary value of, 1:282–283 medical, 1:282–283 memorial photos of deceased, 1:286–287 military photographers, 1:282 portraits, 1:282, 284 prison documentation, 1:282 Richmond (VA), 1:92 soldiers’ lives, 1:282 stereographs, 1:281 U.S. Army, 1:282, 282 See also Photography; War casualties War poetry, 1:145, 209, 276, 285 War profiteers, 2:99–100 War songs, 1:9, 35 War widows and orphans, 1:153–158 War wounds. See Battlefield wounds Ward, Geoffrey, 2:96 Ware, Henry, Jr., 1:225 Warren, Robert Penn, 2:234 Wars. See specific wars Washburn, Cadwallader C., 2:278 Washington, Booker T., 1:113–114, 181, 2:226–227 Washington, DC, 2:21, 22, 79, 119–120, 177 Washington National Intelligencer, 2:147 Washington Post, 2:275 Water sports, 1:258, 259, 259–260 Watkins, Sam, 2:280 Watt, James, 2:74 Waud, Alfred Rudolph, 1:30 Waul, Thomas, 2:262 WCRA (Women’s Central Relief Association), 2:39, 49, 50 WCTU (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union), 1:294 ‘‘We Are Coming Father Abraham,’’ 1:9 Weapons. See Gunpowder; Military weapons Weatherford, Willis D., 1:181 Webb, W. A., 2:282 Webster, Noah, 1:114, 124, 124 Weekly Anglo-African, 1:73 Weekly Caucasian, 2:192
The Weekly Mississippian, 2:129 Weekly Raleigh Register, 1:125, 215, 2:126 Weekly Times, 2:235 Weeks, John W., 2:256 Weld, Stephen Minot, 1:54, 55, 56 Welles, Gideon, 2:94 Wellesley College, 1:188 Welter, Barbara, ‘‘The Cult of True Womanhood,’’ 2:130 Wentworth, Thomas, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 1:196 Wert, Jeffrey, A Brotherhood of Valor, 1:20 Wesley, John, 1:192, 194 West Point, 1:126–129,128 West Virginia, 2:226 Western territories expansion of slavery to, 2:154, 158–159, 165–166 federal slave code and, 2:127–128 peace movement and, 2:172–173 railroads and, 1:173, 2:114 ‘‘What Shall Be Done with the Negro?’’ (Douglass), 2:186 Wheeler, Joseph, 1:87, 2:230, 255 ‘‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’’ (Gilmore), 1:134, 251 ‘‘When this Cruel War is Over’’ (Manning), 1:268 Whig Party, 2:126, 166, 186 Whipple, E. P., 1:269 White, Ellen H., 1:187 White supremacy beliefs, 1:4–5 Whitefield, George, 1:185, 190, 203 Whitman, Walt, 1:69, 235, 270–272, 2:39, 106, 185 Whitney, Eli, 1:124 Why the South Lost the Civil War (Beringer et al.), 2:63–64 Widows, war, 1:153–158 Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 1:130–131 Wilcox, Oliver, 1:142 Wilder, John T., 2:255 Wiley, Bell Irvin The Life of Billy Yank, 1:75–76, 244, 281, 299 The Life of Johnny Reb, 1:6–7, 31, 68, 2:6 Wiley, Calvin H., 1:115, 125 Wilkeson, Frank, 2:3, 5 Williams, David, 1:8–9, 68, 101 Williams, George, 1:214 Williamson, Alice, 1:136 Wills, David, 2:265, 270 Wilson, Jackie Napolean, 1:282 Wilson, Sarah, Bullwhip Days, 1:118
GALE LIBRARY OF DAILY LIFE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Index Wilson, Wash, 2:221 Wilson, Woodrow, 2:238, 276 Winder, John, 2:91 Winters, William, 2:37 Wirt, William, 1:256 Wirz, Henry, 1:47, 49, 56–57, 282 Wisconsin Camp Randall, 1:47 draft riots, 2:180, 182 election of 1860, 2:129 home front volunteers, 2:62 immigrants, 1:172 mascots and, 1:25 memorials for soldiers and, 2:238 Wisconsin State Register, 1:175, 2:237 Wise Arthur, Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War, 1:243, 244 Witchcraft, 2:2, 214, 217 WLNL (Woman’s Loyal National League), 2:131 Wolfe Street Hospital (Alexandria, VA), 2:19 Woman’s Central Association of Relief, 2:39 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 1:294 Woman’s Loyal National League (WLNL), 2:131 Women abolitionists, 1:204, 255 agriculture laborers, 1:99–100, 2:110, 132 civil rights and, 1:204, 2:48, 130–131, 132 domestic stories for girls, 1:273–274 education, 1:116–118 evangelists, 1:192 free blacks, 2:224 gender norms and, 1:101–103, 138–140, 2:40, 131–132 hospital organization and, 2:21 manufacturing laborers, 2:105 ministries led by, 1:188–189 missionary work to unmarried, 1:188 obituaries and, 2:282 paid labor, 1:100, 2:132 patriotism, 1:150, 151 prisoners, 1:66
rape of, 1:84, 2:203, 222 religion and, 1:102, 131, 133 riots over food and, 2:132 role in work and economy, 2:61–62 roles of, 1:99, 101, 141, 150, 151, 170–171, 2:111 slaveholders’ roles of, 1:101, 103, 2:202–203 slaves, 1:96, 132, 137, 148, 156 smoking and tobacco use, 1:291, 297, 299, 300 Southern lives of, 1:102–103, 139–140, 2:202 surgeons, 2:31 teachers, 1:116–118, 117 theater audiences, 1:237 visiting husbands and relatives at front, 1:61–65, 63 volunteer efforts, 2:50–51, 110 See also African American women; Nursing Women on battlefields, 1:57–67 overview, 1:57–60 army doctors, 2:31 camp followers, 1:38–39, 65, 65–67, 136–137 military personnel and, 1:58, 60–61, 66–67 prostitutes and prostitution, 1:38–39, 65–67, 2:26 spies, 1:57–58, 63–64, 80, 80–82, 82, 167, 167 women soldiers, 1:58, 60–61, 2:131–132 ‘‘The Women Who Went to the Field’’ (Barton), 2:132 Women’s associations. See specific associations Women’s Central Relief Association (WCRA), 2:39, 49, 50 Woods, Adam, 1:158 Woods, Fernando, 2:169 Woodworth, Steven, 1:232, 233 Wool industry, 2:81, 83, 112 Woolsey, Georgeanna Muirson, 2:34, 35 Woolsey, Jane Stuart, 1:287–288, 2:22, 50–51, 52
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Work and economy overview, 2:61–62 black market, 2:91–93 blockades and blockade running, 2:93–99 currency, 2:100–104 factory system and, 2:61–62, 73–75 free blacks and, 2:224, 225 shortages of food, 1:107, 108, 110–113, 111, 177, 2:88–91 slaves vs. whites and, 2:203 technological advances, 2:61, 112–114 war profiteers, 2:99–100 See also Agriculture; Economics and finance; Labor; Manufacturing Work of Teachers in America, 1:245 Wormeley, Katherine Prescott, 2:48 Wright, Gavin, The Political Economy of the Cotton South, 2:87 Wright, Richard, 2:234 Wyllys, Mrs. George Washington, ‘‘Courtship As It Should Be,’’ 1:151
Y Yale University, 1:185, 186 Yancey, William Lowndes, 2:128, 158–159, 184, 192–193 Yankee Women (Leonard), 2:132 Yateman, James E., 1:143 Yates, Richard, 1:7 ‘‘The Yellow Rose of Texas,’’ 1:244 ‘‘Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove’’ (Olmstead), 2:55 Young Ladies Hospital Association of Columbia, SC, 1:159 Young Men’s Christian Association, 1:214–216, 217 Young Men’s Lyceum, 1:255 ‘‘A Young Wife’s Sorrow’’ (Arthur), 1:97
Z Zellar, Charles E., 2:282
329
