Day 4. March 4, 1862.
4
we probably might have saved Virginia….
March Tuesday 4 1862
Quite cold this morning. I eat breakfast and get ready and went with DS. Hays* Surgeon of the 110th Regt. P.V. for Cumberland** got there at 10½ pm. I eat dinner at Mrs. Blocker. Had a good dinner after dinner I went up town attended to several things and was coming I was left back to attend to the getting of medicine down I [illeg.] at Mrs. Blockers all night. It got quite cold this evening. I slept on the lounge. I did not sleep very well I had a pain in my breast.*** I heard that we was to leave this evenning but I heard that our Regiment had not left. There so many reports that a person can’t believe all that he hears. I hope that we may have good dry weather and not stormy
Note: Blankets would get frozen solid to the ground.
*Ephraim is just shy of four years older than Dr. Hays, who mustered into service December 4, 1861. For a (partial) transcript of Hays’ appearance before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (the 37th Congress) on June 20, 1862, see June 16 (detailed in this manuscript under June 16th to correspond to the first day the Joint Committee met). Dr. David Sterret Hays was a controversial 110th regimental surgeon Ephraim worked directly under. Hays was commissioned October 30th, 1861, by Governor Curtin of PA., at the rank of Major. 5’6, blue eyes, fair hair & complexion. See June 16 for Hays’ appearance before the 37th Congress. Edwin Stanton, Jonathan Letterman and other officials investigate Hays because he walked away from hundreds of injured soldiers laying in traincars in D.C. fresh off the Port Republic battlefield. Hays deserted the trainload to go drink champagne after midnight at the Willard Hotel (for more on the hotel, see various other points in the manuscript, incl. March 24, June 16), then sleep. Ephraim’s close hometown friend and Captain of Co. D, of the 110th Huyett (misspelled as “Hewitt “in the Report of the Joint Committee) will testify as Hays’ character witness (June 16). Hays’ case was big news in the 1st Brigade, Shields Division in the summer of 1862. On the eastern seaboard newspapers widely covered the event, & ongoing coverage circulated across the Midwest, drawing widespread condemnation of Hays. Lincoln temporarily boots him out of the army.
Note: The Hays Papers are here: https://arena.usahec.org/results?p_p_id=crDetailWicket_WAR_arenaportlet&p_r_p_arena_urn%3Aarena_search_item_id=128968
at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA. I hope that someday someone takes Hays’ case up further, finds the two missing telegrams Hays sent to D.C. (likely destroyed by the person who failed to inform authorities of the telegrams saying Hays was on the way). A work on surgeons’ hardships where the Joint Committee is concerned is due. Hays was far from the only doctor who faced malicious prosecution & censure. You never know, though. Those telegrams may be found in someone’s attic or stuffed in a Hollinger box somewhere in D.C. They could be in the wind still, in the ashes of the fireplace long carried winds out of that telegraph office. For a lot more on Hays, see June 16 in this manuscript.
Back to Hays: Surgeon General Hammond will write to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that Hays showed “total want of comprehension of his duties, if not the grossest inhumanity,” after which Stanton agreed Hays should be dismissed.
However, the regular superintendent of telegraphs was out sick the night Hays sent the telegrams stating he was inbound on the train, but the identity of the orderly who delivered Hays’ two telegrams to Hammond’s desk is, to this day, unknown. Telegrams were “supposed” to have been delivered to Hammond in anywhere from ten minutes to a half hour. And according to officials, this was the second time, of recent, that surgeons abandoned injured soldiers in D.C. It’s clear from this remove that despite having repeatedly telegraphed Washington that he was inbound with hundreds of wounded men, Hays got scapegoated by these powerful men, including even Lincoln.
Stanton, Letterman, Hammond & other officials interrogated Hays because on June 14, 1862, from their point of view, Hays abandoned men who needed medical care. After Hays sent two telegrams the train would be arriving, Hays did arrive, stayed with the men, asked his assistants if his presence was needed further; his assistants told him he could leave, so he did. Walked to the Willard Hotel, drank champagne, then slept a few hours. Besides Ephraim’s hometown friend Huyett who was called to the stand as Hays’ character witness, there were others, such as Henry H. Smith, Surgeon General of Pennsylvania., plus the surgeon out of the 1st Virginia. On August 16, 1862, Lincoln rescinds General Order No. 66 that had dismissed Hays from service because Hays “has previously enjoyed a good character as an efficient, energetic & kind hearted surgeon.” Other letters in support of Hays are in the Hays Papers in Carlisle, PA., cited above.
**Cumberland: The B&O has a Paw Paw Station in Maryland. Dr. Hays may have written in his diary his whereabouts on this day (his descendants didn’t transcribe his diary; instead, they put it up for auction– a listed offer of $6,602 as of 2015– “An absolute wealth of heretofore unknown information.” No longer listed in 2021, queries to the auction house went unanswered). It sounds like Ephraim & Hays stayed the night with someone one of them knew prior to today, and tomorrow Ephraim runs into someone he knows from home. This makes me wonder if he was in Cumberland, PA. But there is also a Paw Paw in VA. as well as a Cumberland in MD. In any event, the journey was long. Tomorrow Ephraim clocks the journey at 3¼ hours. (See June 16 for Hays’ diary auction listing.)
***Ephraim’s first mention of breast pain, which last night was so bad it prevented sleep. Likely he had rheumatism, but possibly also had costochronditis (painful inflammation of cartilage that connects sternum to ribs, the junction where the upper ribs join with the cartilage that holds them to the breastbone, or sternum). However, it will take until June 7 before he uses the word “rheumatism.” In his June 4 letter home, he writes,“when it is wet it pains me the most.” This line makes me think the rheumatism was definite, because humidity & wet weather worsen it, especially on winter days, because a drop in barometric pressure further inflames tissues. His occasional meat diet & alcohol also had a bad effect. Rheumatism is more bearable in the summer. Coffee would have been an antinflammatory. Obviously, the incredible taxing exercise he had to endure made it far worse, & sleeping on the cold ground.
Rheumatism was the #1 feigned illness during the war: “Complaints of rheumatism became so widespread in the Union army during the first two years that surgeons were ordered to ignore them. Even so, the medical service officially recorded nearly 287,000 cases.” Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War Michael C.C. Adams P. 51
Note: For this they were awarded opiates and quinine. Over 12k soldiers were discharged for chronic rheumatism. In 1862 the War Department ordered a stop to the discharge of men claiming rheumatism. Impossible to say whether Ephraim had rheumatism, but I don’t think he was faking a medical condition. That bird would have left feathers. For one thing, he is far too understated about the life-threatening conditions he’s facing as a soldier. Right now he’s actually looking forward to being in his first battle (see March 18), yet the pain shows up on day 4 of his diary. Sidenote: The Union army alone had 109,400 cases of gonorrhea: 1 in 11 to 12 men. The Clap was especially popular in Nashville, which legalized prostitution in an effort to clap back.
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War Michael C.C. Adams P. 51
“Soldiers commonly complained of rheumatism and rheumatic fever. A Union corporal visiting his men in field hospital in February 1862, found “There are many cases of suffering there. Some with the Rheumatism seem to be the worst off– for they are completely helpless and suffer great pain.” Without a cure, patients received opiates to relieve joint pain and quinine for general inflammation. Physicians blistered some on the pain spot, such as the knee, thereby only increasing their misery.”
Militaryimages.atavist.com/hospital-stewards-in-the-civil-war-autumn-2018
“Overworked, Undermanned and Indispensable: Hospital Stewards in the Civil War.” William T. Campbell, Ed.D, RN
“A range of medical staff and support workers performed a critical function on both sides of the American Civil War, servicing general hospitals and saving countless lives along the way.
Surgeons, assistant surgeons and/or acting (contract) surgeons occupied leadership positions. They were assisted by nurses, including many convalescent or invalid soldiers detailed from their regiments, and women who volunteered from civic life and religious orders or were recruited by Dorothea L. Dix and paid by the government. Medical attendants, ward masters, cooks, laundresses, and guards rounded out the group.
The final and often most valuable member of the medical staff was the hospital steward. These individuals were essentially pharmacists, a title the army adopted 40 years after the war.
Chronically undermanned and always overworked, regulations called for one steward per general hospital. A second man was assigned if there were more than 150 beds and a third if the hospital numbered 400 or more beds. They were also assigned to regiments in the field and ships at sea.
Qualified stewards did not come easy. Candidates were often found among the ranks of druggists who labored in civilian apothecary shops. They compounded prescriptions and even made drugs from raw materials using the iconic mortar and pestle. They were chemists rather than those who simply filled prescriptions from larger bottles of manufactured pills.
These men were in great demand in military and in civilian life. Case in point: the commonwealth of Virginia petitioned the Confederate Congress to not allow civilian druggists or chemists to volunteer or be drafted as they were needed in the community. There were only 45 pharmacists in the entire commonwealth, which had a population of 1.6 million white inhabitants and about a half million slaves according to the 1860 census. After the war began and the Union blockade went into effect, Virginia’s pharmacists were called upon to manufacture medicines.”
Note: The enslaved were not listed by name on censuses. Instead, they showed up as “Others not Christians in the Service of the English.” Christian in this instance refers to Christendom, or European, not the actual religion.
Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War U.S. Congress 1863 Part One: Army of the Potomac. P. 61 1/26/1863
“There was treason in the Executive mansion, treason in the cabinet, treason in the Senate and the House of Representatives, treason in the army and the navy, treason in every department, bureau and office connected with the government. When the new administration came into power it was necessarily obliged to adopt measures with the greatest caution, scarcely knowing friend from foe. An army and navy had to be created. There was scarcely a battalion of loyal national troops to protect the capital; and the first sense of security felt in the capital was when the volunteer troops entered it, summoned from their homes for its protection. At the same time it was with great difficulty that the loyal people could make themselves believe that any serious resistance to the authority of the government would be attempted. There was not wanting those who confidently asserted that it was but an outburst of disappointed partisan spirit, which they predicted would yield to an exhibition of force, and a determined and united spirit on the part of the people of the loyal States to suppress it. Instead of such an easy suppression, we have spent two years, almost, in warfare. We have thrown into the field a million of men. We have poured out our resources like water, and we find ourselves still engaged in the fearful struggle.
A speedy march upon the capital; a speedy overthrow of the legal government; a speedy submission of a people too pusillanimous to maintain their rights; and a speedy subjection of the whole country to the assumptions of the south, were the prominent features of their delusions.
The conspirators taught the people to believe that if war came it would not be on their soil. As yet, the hostile foot has scarcely trod the soil of a free State, and it is upon the soil of the States in open rebellion that the contest has mainly been waged.
The rebels found themselves, almost without resistance, in possession of every fort and harbor on the sea-coast of the revolted States, except Fort Pickens.”
Note: The truth is, upon reaching that small band of traitors, Union soldiers could have hung Jeff Davis & Co. at the first available light. Two points to keep in mind: Jefferson Davis created a four-year dictatorship, a pretend nation-state. He, by force, sicked the average southern citizen-farmers into becoming soldiers when the Union traveled down to ensure the democratically elected president & laws of the contiguous states remain in place. And the Civil War was the U.S. against the Confederacy, not “the South,” which is an easy point to lose track of. It was not a North versus South conflict because five southern states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri, Maryland) opted out of his dictatorship. As far as the actual South, most citizens did not want to secede, did not ask for Jeff Davis’ sandcastle Confederacy.
The Legislative Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics Gary P. Gershman P. 43-44
“As hostilities escalated, and without Congress in session, President Abraham Lincoln acted to counter Confederate hostilities. In addition to Congress’s subsequent authorization of Lincoln’s actions, as it had done for Jefferson, the Court also weighed in, and in a sharply divided decision in The Prize Cases (1863), it conceded that the president had acted properly and did not need congressional approval. However, the sharply worded dissent argued that Congress’s authorization, declaring the insurrection a war, had been needed to trigger the presidential power for Lincoln to act as he did.”
Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 43 Jacob D. Cox, Major-General, U.S.V. (U.S.V. Is United States Volunteers)
Ex-Governor of Ohio, Ex-Secretary of the Interior
“In those opening days of the war, the National Government seemed for the moment to be subordinated to the governments of the States. A revolution in the seceding South had half destroyed the national legislature, and the national executive was left without a treasury, without an army, and without laws adequate to create these at once. At no time since the thirteen colonies declared their independence have the State governors and the State legislators found so important a field of duty as then. A little hesitation, a little lukewarmness, would have ended all. Then it was that the intense zeal and high spirit of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts led all New England, and was ready to lead the nation, as the men of Concord and Lexington had led in 1775.”
Note: Today, a year ago, at Lincoln’s Inauguration:
Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War U.S. Congress 1863 Part One: Army of the Potomac. P. 207-208
12/31/1862 Testimony of General W.S. Rosecrans:
“I think our mistake in the beginning was in underestimating this rebellion. Most men seemed to think it was nothing. If it had been dealt with in the beginning as we now see we have to deal with it, we probably might have saved Virginia*** and the border States. We could have quenched it during the first three months as easily as a man can put out a little fire with a bucket of water. There were not many troops at Manassas, and only a little marauding band at Harper’s Ferry. We should have occupied Harper’s Ferry, and could have done it easily.”
Note: Baker was in Company G of the 110th. (Ephraim’s same Regiment, but a different company. Ephraim was in Co. D)
Camp Saw Mill, 1 mile from Paw Paw Morgan Co. (West) Virginia
March 4th 1862
“My dear Wife,
I received your letter on Saturday last and was glad to hear that you and the children were well. i am well at present. My finger is got well and i have but a slight cold. at the time i got your letter i was in the line of March and did not get a chance to read it till next morning. i should have answered it four days ago, but have not had a chance, as we started from here on last Saturday to go after the Rebels under General Jackson who was 12 miles from here with 12 thousand men. They got wind somehow that we were after them and left, so we had our march for nothing. We got back on Sunday night.
i suppose you will hear before this that we have lost our General Lander who died while he was on the march with us last Sunday. He had a sore throat called the Diphteria. The men feel sorry as he was a brave man and never asked them to go where he would not lead them. At the fight at Blomery gap 2 weeks ago he jumped off his horse and took the rebel colonel prisoner himself. Yesterday we marched down to the railroad with his body and put it in the car to go to his family.
This is the first chance i have had to write since i got your letter. i got the box you sent me. it came last Friday and everything in it was all right and well peppered. The lid had worked off the box of Blackpepper which was a good thing as it got all over the chickens and kept them as good as if i had got them the next day after they were cooked. Everything in it was very nice and in good order and i was glad to get them. But, my Dear, you had better not think of sending anymore, as it is so much trouble to get it and expensive besides. i had to pay 50 cents to get it from Cumberland here beside what you payed. There is no knowing how long we will be here nor who will be our general. We expect to move soon, but will have no troubles to get letters sent to us by the way of Cumberland. Till you hear different from me give my respects to all inquiring friends. My love to you my Dear wife. Take good care of yourself and the children. Answer this as soon as you can. i always answer your letters as soon as i get them with the exception of this, and i could not write any sooner.
If we get paid off next week i will write and let you know. Excuse this writing for there is about 20 jumping in and around the tent. They don’t care whether it is on your back or not; one has as much right there as another.
No more at present.
Once more, my love to you my Dear Wife from your Husband,
Enoch T. Baker”
Note: Ian Delahanty, in a fascinating look at “Soldiers’ Diaries and Letters,” at https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/soldiers-diaries-and-letters.html, writes that Bell Irvin Wiley (1906-1980, historian of the Civil War & author of numerous books) found that more than a million letters were written per month: “A fair assessment is that soldiers in the Civil War wrote several millions of letters and at the very least tens of thousands of diaries.” According to Andrew Waskie, Enoch T. Baker (who penned the above letter & others I include in this manuscript) was from Philadelphia, in Co. G. of the 110th, & wrote home 21 times from 1861-1862 before he disappeared.
Enoch Baker’s 21 letters to his wife Sarah, plus two to Baker’s wife from a friend, are currently housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. To read several more of Enoch’s letters, as well as Waskie’s commentary on them, see wesclark.com/jw/enoch_t_baker. By chance, Waskie discovered the existence of Baker’s letters in 1986; he dropped by Henry Hill Visitor Center at Manassas National Battlefield Park, & a ranger offhandedly mentioned he had letters by a 110th soldier on site. Waskie jumped at the chance to read them, then put them online, which is how I discovered them. It certainly wouldn’t have been by asking Waskie about it. Baker’s letters are housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania: https://www.portal.hsp.org/subject-guide-overflow-07 Baker, Enoch J. Letters, 10 November 1861 to 30 December 1862 (in Society Autograph Collection, Collection 22A). 110th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment.
Note, TLDR drama: All of Baker’s letters were discovered, then edited, by Andrew Waskie, a onetime 1980s 110th reenactor involved, so it would seem, in “arguments & tension,” a dark history of the denial of the 28th PA. Co. C Vol. co-reenactor membership in the National Regiment, as if the 28th were poaching the 110th on the field of pretend war itself; something-something “fear” & “break away and affect the 110th enrollments,” so then the NR “denied the 28th its membership, it seems, based on the recommendation of the 110th! There were, of course, several versions of the reasons for denial.”
Then we get to the bottom of it: “The creation of the new SVR unit (the 28th PVI) created tensions between the GAR men and the 110th PVI which feared that the new SVR unit would break away and affect the 110th enrollments.” But thankfully, the “12th NJ stepped up immediately” to overrule the 110th so the 28th got to carry on their activities out near where planes land “at Fort Mifflin near Philadelphia International Airport as a convenient site for their training of troops and public living histories.” Throw in the mix the 61st NY, & the 26th PA., & the 28th was back in business despite the 110th cock-block because, in true American fashion, the men were “….already a band of brothers,” so “a number of units within the NR protested the denial of membership claiming that the 28th PVI was a qualified unit, practiced exemplary field and camp discipline, and upheld the historical memory of Civil War veterans.” Brings a tear to the eye. (See https://www.28thpvi.net/history for the dull edge of White male mid-life-crisis shenanigans; their horses tied a ‘lil short but do click for the picture alone. The brave & sincere 28th…
I tell you all this because there is a small story about how I inadvertently struck fear in his heart, Andy Waskie, the reenactor-slash-Meade-mime (watch him talk about himself, then mime Meade): https://youtu.be/RTGFEiQ48cE, as Meade, he describes Fredericksburg as “a very disgusting & demoralizing situation.” Copy that. Waskie as Meade,“eager to educate students about history”: He tells the camera he’s “been doing this for 35 years” because “it sets up an atmosphere of credibility.”
In 2018, he (Waskie, not Meade!) emailed, “please let me know how I can help with your project” & assured me he’d been working on the 110th for over the past 30 years, a “work in progress” he “expended/given an immense amount of energy compiling a large number of first person accounts, memoirs, letters from and to veterans, as well as several manuscript recollections.” “Thanks to me,” he went on, “the V.P. of the Board of Directors,” the Philly GAR Museum “has a large collection of 110th P.V. materials,” & “I have over the years written some accounts and articles on various episodes and events in the course of the story of the regiment.” He then reminded me again that he’s a historian, & that no “formal” history has come out in print (this, of course, I knew). Last, he mentioned a Hamilton of the 110th. Intriguing.
Excited to hit pay dirt, I followed up, asked if he might pass along an anecdote or two, & offered a transcription of Ephraim’s diary, which I thought he’d be eager to see. Mentioned my grandfather may have shared a tent with the same Hamilton, even lent him cash at one point. Assured him I wasn’t writing a 110th history, & that he was the “expert.”(30 years, right?) And asked if he’d tracked down primary source documents in order to debunk Ecelbarger’s claims of the 110ths poor conduct at Kernstown (Surely he had? But we’ll never know.) (See Waskie on Ecelbarger, 3/23, good stuff.)
But nothing back. Crickets. Years later, no longer a newbie & more curious than ever about his now 35 year research odyssey, I sent a dispatch, asked after his writing, & reiterated a call for anything 110th –related. Please? Only to discover he’d blocked me. Recipient address rejected: Access denied. (30 years, no.) Copy that. He might be out reenacting.
Something tells me the actual men of the 110th would have cold-cocked this one before he got out the gates at Camp Tyler. Protip: Never ask someone about their reasons for reenacting; it gets weird fast. To get the gist of it, watch Conan O’Brien try reenacting instead. If anyone lives in Philly, drop by the address, see if it exists, & if so, please go inside & take pictures of 110th items, if any. Perhaps there’s something there with my Hospital Steward Grandfather’s name etched in it? (https://garmuslib.org) Thanks.
So here it is: Andy, hi, sorry if my questions bored you, especially the one about Kernstown that you’re so passionate about. If you end up reading this, do please drop a line! Let’s talk the 110th! Here’s mine, now show me yours.
Which brings up a larger question: Can’t two people work on the same Reg’t & share info? Can the 110th, at this late date, not get along with the 28th? Is the war not over? Is there a paranoid territoriality among amateur historians in general? Now I’m wondering if there’s even a museum. Was it all an elaborate hoax?
Strange enough, for a ghost regiment with no one having taken up its cause on paper all these centuries, the 110th is everywhere, even as a band of around 10 reenactors in the Netherlands and Germany. And yes, again, efforts to contact were unsuccessful (www.fsegames.eu/forum). “Why the 110th? We choose the 110th Pennsylvania for the very simply [sic] reason that it’s just one of the hundreds of plain simple infantry regiments in the civil war. They didn’t have a fancy uniform, a distinct (national) identity or a special story; they were just Americans from Philadelphia and central Pennsylvania who answered the call to serve their country. When looking for a regiment to re-enact, we came across a photograph of (a) small Union company; the men were wearing regular sack coats and forage caps, with only the corps badge as decoration. This photograph had been wrongly identified as being the 6th Maine. We did one event as the 6th Maine, but when realizing these men were actually of the 110th Pennsylvania, we changed our name accordingly.”
Not sure how the 6th Maine would feel, beyond the grave, running around shooting just one last time, then shunted aside on behalf of PA., but what’s not to love about this? Their hearts are in it for the right reasons. At any rate, I’m sure you’re familiar with Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz, & if you’re not, we’ll get to his incredible writing in the spring & summer months.
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 25-26
Note: One year ago today, 30,000 gather to hear Lincoln’s Inaugural Address under a “morning cloudy and raw.”
March 4, 1861: “Lincoln adjusts his glasses, unfolds manuscript, and reads: “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. . . . I take the official oath to-day, with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws, by any hypercritical rules. . . . I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. . . . It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,—that resolves and ordnances to that effect are legally void; . . . I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, . . . that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. . . . In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. . . . One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. . . . The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. . . . By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; . . . While the people retain their virtue, and vigilence [sic], no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years. . . . If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied, hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. . . . In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. . . . We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, streching [sic] from every battlefield, 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.”
“He finishes in half an hour. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administers oath of office. Marine band plays “God Save Our President,” and procession to White House begins. Later recalls: “The first thing that was handed to me after I entered this room, when I came from the inauguration was the letter from Maj. Anderson saying that their provisions would be exhausted before an expedition could be sent to their relief.’”
Note: In the 1860 election, turnout was 81.2%. Lincoln had less than 40% of the popular vote, & unlike all prior presidential elections, he did not win even one slave state, & how could he? That’s right, in ten southern slaveholding states (AL., AR., FL., GA., LA., MS., NC., SC., TN., TX.), Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot. Virginia went with Bell (74,481), Breckinridge (74,325), & Douglas (16,198).
Lincoln got a paltry 1,929 votes (mainly in future W.VA.). Lincoln wins 98% northern, Breckinridge 85% southern; Lincoln gets 76% of the votes in Vermont; Breckinridge 75% in TX.
a person can’t believe all that he hears….
After any war, facts change within stories, but this, this one was different: before the war, blank will blank, which causes blank, which may or may not lead to blank. During the war, blank ensues. After the war blank will blank then blank will blank because blank blanked and blank had been captured from the blank, which ensued in blankness about who got blank from blank & why. There it is, see? Nothing may override these basic blank facts or various variants. And blank has already been explained somewhere. The blank deserves an historical footnote about what could have been if– fill in the blank– & then blank would have had blank so blank that blank would have ensued, leading, of course, to blank blanking in a blanked-up way. That’s why blanks still fly the flag with the snake on it. Now the blanks are lighting torches in the same blank street they always have. There is a whole range of explanations for that. All blank. And there is another version of this story which contains no blank, no blank at all, in fact. See also –, –, –. There’s no sound built on blank, the blanking of blank, so why bother to use language. From the beginning to the end, blank blanks in a way that takes the language out, becomes a white chalk outline that led, in 1861, to this giant mystery explosion that can’t be named, but is the underlying ground of all being in the universe, this war like dark matter, the 85% blank that makes up the known universe.
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