Day 79. May 18, 1862.
79
to limn a paternalistic society of kindly slaveholders and contented slaves….
May Sunday 18, 1862
Quite a fine morning. The sun came up clear and the day looked as if it would be very warm. The day was very warm. The boys was drying their cloaths and blankets as they are quite wet and need drying very much. The sun is very warm today and the boys are all taking their rest. We have no Preaching to day as our chaplin has not been with the Regt for a mounth. We are camped near Warren Junction R Road that goes to Staunton & Gordonsville. Some appearance for rain this evening. We are far from home where our friends can go to hear the Gospel proclaimed to all dying sinners. Oh I wish I were there to hear the Gospel and his praises
Note: One of the many places in his diary I wish he’d included more thoughts, feelings, etc. He never mentions whether he brought a Bible, but there were probably at least a few in camp. Seems like he needs lifting up, & I wonder which praises exactly he’d like to hear outside himself today out of the mouth of his God.
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 58
“7a.m. 66; 2p.m. 83; 9p.m. 66. Occasional lightning 9p.m.”
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 353
THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
George B. McClellan, Major-General, U.S.A.
(Note: This is the caption under photograph “Section of the Encampment of the Army of the Potomac Near White House, VA.)
“We were now [middle of May] encamped [near White House] on the old Custis place, at present owned by General Fitzhugh Lee of the Rebel cavalry service. On every side of us were immense fields of wheat, which, but for the presence of armies, promised an abundant harvest…. It was marvelous that such quiet could exist where a hundred thousand men were crowded together, yet almost absolute stillness reigned throughout the vast camp during the whole of this pleasant Sabbath.” From George T. Stevens’s “Three Years in the Sixth Corps”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 30
(Today, McClellan will write to his wife)
“Those hounds in Washington are after me again. Stanton is without exception the vilest man I ever knew or heard of.”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 36
“MAY 18, SUNDAY.—How could any man have been so small in his views, as to exchange his birthright in such a nation for the pitiful pride of nativity in such a state as Virginia or South Carolina? I wonder how those men of intelligence who deliberately made a choice a year ago (of the Confederacy) feel now in view of the ignominious failure of the local cause and the magnificent vindication of the national power….
At headquarters found the General and Colonel Clark looking over the map and discussing the position of the troops before our retreat from New Market. The mistakes and confusion on this line are attributed to McDowell’s cowardice or jealousy. It has been through his representation that the authorities in Washington have been alarmed in regard to an advance on that city by the Confederates. He has kept forty thousand men idle near Fredericksburg, thwarting McClellan’s plans, weakening and discouraging the Government and its defenders. His conduct has been most contemptible and explains Bull Run.”
A YANKEE SOLDIER.
“As I turn’d off the Avenue one cool October evening into Thirteenth street, a soldier with a knapsack and overcoat stood at the corner inquiring his way.I found he wanted to go part of the road in my direction, so we walk’d on together. We soon fell into conversation. He was small and not very young, and a tough little fellow, as I judged in the evening light, catching glimpses by the lamps as we pass’d. His answers were short, but clear. His name was Charles Carroll; he belong’d to one of the Massachusetts regiments, and was born in or near Lynn. His parents were living, but were very old. There were four sons, and all had enlisted. Two had died of starvation and misery in the prison at Andersonville, and one had been kill’d in the west. He only was left. He was now going home, and by the way he talk’d I inferr’d that his time was nearly out. He made great calculations on being with his parents to comfort them the rest of their days.” Whitman Poetry and Prose Walt Whitman Penguin Putnam Inc. P. 746
Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War David Silkenat P. 187-188
“While Lincoln adopted a more conciliatory stance after Hampton Roads, Confederates concluded that the conference’s failure indicated that the only options available to them were fighting to the bitter end or surrendering unconditionally. At a rally in Richmond held upon the commissioners’ return, Jefferson Davis and Virginia governor William “Extra Billy” Smith told the assembled masses that the Confederacy would not accept anything short of full independence and slavery. Virginia, Governor Smith told them, “would sacrifice everything that remained to her, soon than surrender.” Following Smith at the podium, Davis said, “We had now learned the terms on which the enemy are willing to accord peace. We are required to make an unconditional surrender.” Such a surrender would be disastrous for the white people of the South, as a vindictive North would exact its retribution and Southerners would be forced to take “what a conqueror may choose to give the conquered.” Other Confederate leaders tended to follow Davis’s lead, even those who had fought with him in the past. “Having made…a fair and honest effort to obtain peace by negotiation [at Hampton Roads],” observed North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, “there is only one thing left for us to do. We must fight, my countrymen, to the last extremity, or submit voluntarily to our own degradation.’”
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 162
“Since the Jackson administration, a small but expanding group of southern leaders dreamed of a unified region. The moderation of the Upper South, the discipline of party, and the influence of southern politicians in the federal government muted nationalist movements in the South. John C. Calhoun* labored long and hard during the 1830s and 1840s to develop a regional unity that transcended party, to little avail. Occasionally, southerners came together in commercial conventions to lessen their dependence on northern trade, manufacturing, and finance. But concerted political efforts floundered. The flashpoints of the 1850s all seemed to break the South’s way– the Fugitive Slave Law, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and Dred Scott. Yet the region had little to show for these “triumphs.”
Brown’s Raid was another matter: a bold if farcical invasion of the South compounded by an outpouring of grief and invective from the North. Perhaps southerners could see now the true beliefs of their adversaries. A South Carolina editor enthused, “Never before, since the Declaration of Independence, has the South been more united in sentiment.” recent events have wrought almost a complete revolution in the sentiments, the thoughts, the hopes, of the oldest and steadiest conservatives in all the southern states,” the Richmond Whig rejoiced. The Whig counted “thousands upon… thousands of men in our midst who, a month ago, scoffed at the idea of a dissolution of the Union as a madman’s dream, but who now hold the opinion that its days are numbered, its glory perished.”
Southerners now had their own version of the Slave Power conspiracy. The Charleston Mercury, ever in the forefront of disunion sentiment, admitted that Brown’s insurrection “has been silly and abortive.” But, the editor claimed, the raid was a small part of a “wide-spread scheme… maturing at the North for insurrections throughout the South.” It was clear to the Mercury that “the great source of the evil is that we are under one government with these people.” John Brown’s Raid provided southern extremists with a patina of credibility. After more than a decade of preaching that the sky was falling, here was an overt act that seemed to corroborate their predictions.”
The fears themselves were all the more unsettling because they contradicted the basis of pro-slavery propaganda, that the institution was a positive good. Slavery rested on a tower of illogic that rendered the South increasingly defensive, for what is defended more fiercely than the indefensible: an institution of bondage in a land founded for freedom; evangelicals claimed slaves had souls, yet masters typically considered them property; slaveholders argued that the African possessed a limited intellect, yet slaves worked a variety of skilled occupations, and a few managed plantations; pro-slavery advocates maintained that the institution civilized the African, yet they emphasized the indelible primitive nature of his culture; and they asserted that the institution’s basic benevolence created happy workers, yet feared their homicidal retribution.
Such introspection did not characterize southern public discourse in the 1850s. Protecting the institution of slavery remained foremost on the agenda of southern leaders as the Congress gathered three days after John Brown’s execution. For the next two months, Republicans and Democrats hurled insults across the aisle until the Republicans, holding a scant majority of eight members, managed to elect the new Speaker of the House. South Carolina senator James H. Hammond commented wryly, “The only persons who do not have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers.” Reporters noted that even those in the gallery carried weapons.
Republicans stood little chance of passing their favorite bills with a slim majority in the House, a Democratic majority in the Senate, and a Democratic administration. Measures such as a western homestead bill to attract eastern workers and farmers to the territories, federal assistance to a transcontinental railroad, and a higher tariff to protect industries and their workers all went down to defeat, either by the Senate or with President Buchanan’s veto. Southern Democrats fought these proposals fiercely: 160-acre homesteads precluded plantation agriculture; a Republican-sponsored transcontinental railroad would invariably bypass the South; and the tariff threatened the South’s booming cotton economy – all good reasons for opposition. But without a countervailing program other than the slave code, Democratic opposition appeared obstructionist, a collection vote against progress, against the workingman, against the settling of the West; in short, against everything Americans had dreamed of, fought for, and uprooted their lives to achieve over the past generation.
Southerners had dreams, too. They resented the implication that the North was synonymous with America. They resented any intimation that they were retrograde and opposed to progress, technology, and innovation. They rejected any suggestion of inferiority – moral, political, or economic. The fight over the extension of slavery into the territories touched all three. The Republicans had made that extension a moral issue – Lincoln had stated as much during his debates with Douglas. The loss of access to the territories would seal the South’s position as a perpetual political minority. If the Republicans, an avowedly sectional party, attained power, the consequences for the South and slavery could be dire.”
Note: Here’s your John Brown (already have in March 7, but definitely bears a repeat):
December 16, 1859 The Liberator
A WOMAN’S LETTER TO JOHN BROWN.
“The following is a copy of a genuine letter received at our post-office. The letter is authentic beyond question, as the main facts can be corroborated by a number of persons now here. It will be read to John Brown this morning:—
To John Brown, Commander of the army at Harper’s Ferry, Charlestown, Jefferson Co., Va. Care of Jailor, Charlestown. (12/16/59 The Liberator. The letter was supposedly read to John Brown)
CHATTANOOGA, (Tennessee,) Nov. 20, 1859.
JOHN BROWN : Sir—Although vengeance is not mine, I confess that I do feel gratified to hear that you were stopped in your fiendish career at Harper’s Ferry with the loss of your two sons. You can now appreciate my distress in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight, and arrested my husband and two boys, and took them out of the yard, and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing. You can’t say you done it to free our slaves ; we had none, and never expected to have ; but it has only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children. While I feel for your folly, I hope and trust you will meet your just reward. Oh, how it pained my heart to hear the dying groans of my husband and children ! If this scrawl gives you any consolation, you are welcome to it.
MATILDA DOYLE
N. B.—My son, John Doyle, whose life I begged of you, is now grown up, and is very desirous to be at Charlestown on the day of your execution ; would certainly be there if his means would permit it, that he might adjust the rope around your neck, if Gov. Wise would permit.
M. D.”
Note: Lincoln in his Kansas Speech, 1859:
“Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against the state. We cannot object even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right.”
Note: Lincoln on John Brown, in his February, 1860 Cooper Union Speech;
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, “It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.”
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution – the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.
John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling – that sentiment – by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?”
Lincoln and Prevention of War: Which ‘Blundering Generation’? What ‘Irrespressible Conflict’? An Interpretation of the Lincolnian View 1953 Ralph G. Lindstrom P. 18
“We repeat, until 1848 (really 1847, when Calhoun in the Senate and Rhett in the House announced their doctrine of external sovereignty for South Carolina and its slave institution) the hazards of sectionalism were obviated. The Calhoun-Rhett speeches were more or less fantastic assertion until repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The ultimate result of that repeal, and of the Dred Scott decision, was to make territories before statehood the battleground, in an area of anarchy, for the conflicting moral views of free state people, who considered slavery an evil, and slave state people who had commenced to argue that it was divinely ordained and good. Again it must be said: This was not breakdown, but a failure to understand and use the federal democratic process.”
Ken Burns’s the Civil War: Historians Respond Robert Brent Toplin P. 114-115 “Ken Burns and the Romance of Reunion” Eric Foner
“Selective readings of the past, often institutionalized in rituals like veterans’ reunions and publicly constructed monuments, help give citizens a shared sense of national identity. In the case of the Civil War, reunion was predicated on a particular interpretation of the conflict’s causes and legacy. On the road to reunion, the war was “remembered” not as the crisis of a nation divided by antagonistic labor systems and political and social ideologies, but as a tragic conflict within the American family, whose great bloodshed was in many ways meaningless, but which accomplished the essential task of solidifying a united nation. Its purpose, in other words, was preservation, not transformation. Both sides, in this view, were composed of brave men fighting for noble principles (Union in the case of the North, self-determination on the part of the South) – a vision exemplified by the late nineteenth-century cults of Lincoln and Lee, each representing the noblest features of his society and each a figure on whom Americans of all regions could look back with pride. In this story, the war’s legacy lay essentially in the soldiers themselves, their valor and ultimate reconciliation, not in any ideological causes or purposes. The struggle against slavery was a minor feature of the war, and the abolition of slavery worthy of note essentially for removing a cause of dissension among white Americans.”
The Past is a Foreign Country David Lowenthal P. 343
“A past negatively portrayed can be stood on its head. The figures in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written to expose the oppressive cruelty of Southern slavery, were inverted in the late nineteenth-century novels of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page to limn a paternalistic society of kindly slaveholders and contented slaves. Abraham Lincoln’s frontier Illinois environment, previously seen as a handicap the young man had struggled to overcome, became more estimable from the 1890s thanks to Frederick Jackson Turner’s portrayal of the frontier as the seed-bed of democracy; once termed a ‘stagnant putrid pool’ and a ‘dung-hill’, New Salem became the ‘sacred spot’ that had shaped Lincoln’s character.
Retrospective needs for success shaped bicentennial reenactments of the American Revolution. In reality, while winning independence Americans had lost many of the battles along the way. But in the 1976 replays they emerged with glory almost every time. Defeats became draws, routs were termed tactical withdrawals. Reenacting Lafayette’s flight, Conshohocken dignitaries bleated that ‘we didn’t run like Lafayette’s men did’. And ‘to hear them talk about it now in Conshohocken’, commented a state official, ‘Lafayette’s decision to cross the river to escape from superior forces was the greatest victory in American history’. Nothing less than victory will do for some spectators. Turning her back on the reenactment of the Battle of Penobscot Bay, a woman grumbled, ‘Why couldn’t they at least do one that we win?’ To propitiate French visitors, organizers of a mock Battle of Waterloo at Brighton in 1983 allowed French to ‘win’ on one day of the battle.”
oh I wish I were there to hear the Gospel and his praises….
The unstanchable open wound they called Reconstruction, when we meant it for an instant, the North migrated back down, stepped on the remains, stuck snouts in the trough but when that didn’t pan out (same smoke & bones from before, sticks in the road to be burned but when you get up close, it’s not sticks is it), they left them to their own devices like a deadly retraction. A group of Vultures is called a Wake. It was to be a redistribution of lives but the South wanted no Federal authority there. Apportioning 40 acres then snatching it back, you can maybe keep half the mule you could lame or kill just to get a day’s rest. A brief refractory period where it’s still visible but time, time will come in, drain out, until the reason for the whole thing gets forgotten in sharecropping. President Hayes withdraws Federal troops, making the 14th & 15th Amendments vacated off the papers like cicada husks deserted when they pulled up stakes, ta-ta, toodleoo, I’ll be seeing you! But they really won’t.
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