Day 81. May 20, 1862.
81
Note: There is a May 20 letter posted today, too.
penalty of buying it is death by strangulation….
May Tuesday 20
Cool this morning. The sun made its appearance in the East and all appearance for a fine day. We are buissy this morning and things look as if we will stay here today. The boys are all washing up their cloaths to day and cleaning up again and I hope that we will have good weather. The roads are getting dusty and I hope we will have good weather. We are camped 10 to 12 miles from the Battle Ground of Bull Run. The Rail Road goes along there. The boys all getting along finely. Nothing new. The topic is that we are going to Frederickburg to join Gen McDowells forces. I hope this war may soon be over and we will return home to our familys again in Peace and harmony
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 58
“7a.m. 68; 2p.m. 74; 9p.m. 64. Rainlike at 10p.m.”
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 47
“Tuesday, May 20th, 1862. The enemy makes frequent dashes into Woodstock. A fine day.”
The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of the Civil War by Writers and Reporters of the New York Times Introduction and Notes by James McPherson P. x.
“By 1861 the whole country (including California) was connected by copper wires that could transmit news in minutes across thousands of miles. During the Civil War, New Yorkers could read of events that happened a day or two earlier in Virginia or Mississippi.
That is, they could read such telegraphed news if Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton allowed the messages to go through. In January 1862 Congress authorized the War Department to control the telegraph lines during the emergency. The ostensible purpose was to give priority to military communications, but Stanton also used the power to censor telegraphic dispatches by newspaper reporters. By 1862 a hundred or more such reporters were in the field with various Union armies scattered across a front of more than a thousand miles. The largest number were with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia, where most of the war’s major battles would be fought. On several occasions these enterprising journalists, when denied the use of the telegraph to send in their reports, traveled 24 hours or more by horseback, rail and/or boat to New York or another Northern city, going without sleep and writing their stories by candlelight to score a “beat” (scoop) over rival newspapers by getting their story of the battle into print first.”
Note: The farther South, the more Confederate-leaning the newspapers. The upper South tended toward preserving the Union, but the longer war lasted, the more Confederate they became. Newspapers were not delivered by postmasters – whether abolitionist or anti-secessionist– and writers were hanged, their offices burned or smashed, and papers became insolvent because no one could both afford to buy a copy, or afford to lose their life. Letter to editor writers were threatened, editors run completely out of business and then out of town, or editors simply shot themselves to death due to the pressure.
Note: In Australia, “Black Kites,” or “Fire Hawks,” are birds who carry burning twigs & sticks in beaks which spreads wildfires farther than they were, thus burning down their own nests they intended to build.
Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War U.S. Congress 1863 Part One: Army of the Potomac. P. 291
Washington. July 8, 1862 Testimony of General John Pope.
“General McClellan has issued several general orders cutting us off from all facilities for getting information that he possibly could. For instance, he would issue an order one day that no correspondent of a newspaper shall be allowed to talk to contrabands,*** or deserters, or prisoners, coming into camp; then he would issue an order that correspondents should be kept in rear of his headquarters.
Question: How far would his headquarters be back from the front of our lines?
Answer: From three to five or six miles; sometimes more than that.
Question: Out of reach of shot and shell?
Answer: Yes, sir.”
Note: Along the line of wires, the Utah monument:
Utah’s one & only Civil War monument. Utah sent just one volunteer off to war– Henry Wells Jackson– & he was on the Union side. Died while serving in the First Regiment, District of Columbia, Volunteer Cavalry, Battle of White Bridge, Virginia, infection of the wound in ’64.
But that’s not all. The monument lists the names of the 130 men who guarded the mail and telegraph lines along what they called “‘The Overland Trail—which carried people, mail, and telegraph lines—stretched from Atchison, Kansas, to Salt Lake City, Utah. General James H. Craig, brigadier general of volunteers, received orders on April 16, 1862….”
“In an April 26, 1862, letter, Latham proposed that Lincoln ask Brigham Young to provide soldiers to protect the Overland Trail.”
“…. it was practical to ask Brigham Young for recruits because there was no official governor in the Utah Territory at that time. Governor John W. Dawson had fled the state, and Lieutenant Governor Frank Fuller was serving as the acting governor. The new governor, Stephen Harding, did not arrive until July.”
“Brigham acted upon the message “within the hour.”
The message:
Washington, April 28, 1862
Mr. Brigham Young,
Salt Lake City, Utah:
By express direction of the President of the United States you are hereby authorized to raise, arm, and equip one company of cavalry for ninety days’ service. This company will be organized as follows:
One captain, 1 first lieutenant, 1 second lieutenant, 1 first sergeant, 1 quartermaster-sergeant, 4 sergeants, 8 corporals, 2 musicians, 2 farriers, 1 saddler, 1 wagoner, and from 56 to 72 privates. The company will be employed to protect the property of the telegraph and overland mail companies in or about Independence Rock, where depredations have been committed, and will be continued in service only till the U.S. troops can reach the point where they are so much needed. It may therefore be disbanded previous to the expiration of the ninety days. It will not be employed for any offensive operations other than may grow out of the duty hereinbefore assigned to it. The officers of the company will be mustered into the U.S. service by any civil officer of the United States Government at Salt Lake City competent to administer the oath. The men will then be enlisted by the company officers. The men employed in the service above named will be entitled to receive no other than the allowances authorized by law to soldiers in the service of the United States. Until the proper staff officer for subsisting these men arrive you will please furnish subsistence for them yourself, keeping an accurate account thereof for future settlement with the United States Government.
By order of the Secretary of War:
L. Thomas, Adjutant-General.”
“The message granted direct authority for President Young to recruit men for active duty military service. The soldiers called were to arm and equip themselves, as well as provide their own horses and firearms for the campaign. Perhaps such a small unit was mustered because General Thomas believed that “so large a force is [not] necessary” and raising a small force from Utah “offer[ed] the most expeditious and economical remedy to the obstructions to the mail route.”
“After General Wells and Captain Smith mustered local men into service (in less than two days) and borrowed animals, President Young sent the following telegram to General Thomas:”
Great Salt Lake City, April 30, 1862
Adjutant General Thomas, U.S.A. Washington, D.C.
Upon receipt of your telegram of April 27, I requested General Daniel H. Wells, of the Utah militia to proceed at once to raise a company of cavalry and equip and muster them into the service of the United States army for ninety days, as per your telegram. General Wells, forthwith issued the necessary orders and on the 29th day of April the commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers and privates, including teamsters, were sworn in by Chief Justice John F. Kinney, and the company went into camp adjacent to the city the same day.
Brigham Young”
“The same day that Brigham Young answered the government’s request, the First Presidency, in a letter dated April 30, 1862, clarified and outlined the duties of the Lot Smith Company. The First Presidency directed the men under Lot Smith to “recognize the hand of Providence in [the Saints’] behalf” and to place the wages from the army as secondary to their purpose. The men were to act as emissaries of the Church, to “establish the influence God has given us . . . be kind, forbearing, and righteous in all your acts and sayings in public and private . . . that we may greet you with pleasure as those who have faithfully performed a work worthy of great praise.” Doing so would enable the men to “again prove that noble hearted American citizens can don arms in the defense of right and justice, without descending one hair’s breadth below the high standard of American manhood.” Counsel was also given to abstain from “card playing, dicing, gambling, drinking intoxicating liquors, or swearing” and to “be kind to [their] animals.” Expectations were expressed that the company would “improve the road as you pass along, so much so as practicable diligence in reaching your destination will warrant, not only for your own convenience but more particularly for the accommodation of the Mail Company and general travel,” showing the First Presidency’s concern for continued cross-country communication and future Mormon immigration.”
“Ben Holladay, proprietor of the stage and U.S. mail line that extended from St. Joseph to San Francisco, sent a telegram to Brigham Young thanking him for the service that the Mormons would provide. Holladay promised that “just as soon as these Utah volunteers are located along the line, I will proceed to replace my coaches, horses and drivers and rebuild and man the destroyed mail stations from the North Platte River and Independence Rock to Salt Lake City.” The mail and telegraph would be fully operational, pending the arrival of soldiers on the plains. The ability to communicate between the East and West Coasts of the United States would not be seriously interrupted again during the Civil War—in part because of service rendered by the Lot Smith Company.
Mr. Holladay’s motives for keeping the telegraph open were not entirely patriotic. As owner of the Holladay Mail and Telegraph Company, Holladay’s financial losses could have been severe, even crippling. During the spring of 1862, for example, Indians were held responsible for more than $50,000 worth of damage and destruction to animals, supplies, and wagons equipment, as well as the deaths of several employees. Holladay had already been forced to alter his stagecoach route to accommodate the heavy losses he was incurring in Indian territory.
But protection of the trail and delivery of the mail were not the sole incentives for accepting the invitation to serve; many Latter-day Saints believed that the government’s call had a larger purpose. Less than two weeks after the Utah volunteers enlisted, President Wells publicly stated that the call of the Lot Smith Company was divinely inspired, and he reaffirmed that the Saints would continue to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States—despite the government’s past interactions with the Saints.
As they had been counseled, the Lot Smith Company improved the trail on their way to Independence Rock. One of their major contributions was bridge building: at one point they built three bridges in just four days. They traveled on many washed-out roads and had great difficulties in their travel to Independence Rock. As the group followed the Bear River, they found “many of the Mail stations were still smouldering when [they] came upon them. Wagon-loads of United States mail had been scattered and destroyed by the Indians.'”
Heber C. Kimball, Brigham Young’s first counselor, spoke to the men upon their return. President Kimball reportedly and tearfully told the men that the company had been a “ram in the thicket,” given as a sacrifice to prove the loyalty and love of the Latter-day Saints for the United States. Kimball told the company that they had “saved Israel” with their service. He added that the men were “entitled to all the blessings promised to the house of Israel, and that we should become rich if ew do not shave too close.'”
Right nearby this monument to the Overland Trail guards and Henry Wells Jackson is a slab dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, erected by Daughters of Utah Pioneers in 1976. So, a bit on the “Saints” regard for the Constitution:
“October 1861, President Brigham Young publicly declared that “Utah has not seceded [from the Union], but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country.” Church members often had mixed emotions regarding the war because they felt that the nation had denied them the protections of the Constitution, which the Saints considered to be divinely inspired.”
“Brigham Young agreed with President Wells, stating that he had agreed to send the men “to prove our loyalty to the Constitution and not to their infernal meanness . . . to fight the battles of a free country to give it power and influence, and to extend our happy institutions in other parts of this widely extended republic. In this way we have proved our loyalty. We have done everything that has been required of us.’”
Refs:
https://rsc.byu.edu/civil-war-saints/lot-smith-cavalry-company-utah-goes-war
Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864–May 1865 (1927) Major Henry Hitchcock P. 101
Note: Writing of the Chicago Times 11/9/64 publication of Sherman’s pending movement a week hence through Georgia:
HEADQUARTERS IN A FIELD
TENNILLE STATION (“No. 13”)
GEORGIA CENTRAL R.Rd
Twelfth Day Sunday Night, November 27/64
“I don’t wonder Sherman is “down on newspaper correspondents”: he is perfectly right. He was very angry at these publications and said last night he had a great mind to resign as soon as this campaign ended—“it’s impossible to carry on war with a free press.” Thats talk and only means how provoked he is. No wonder.”
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 217
“During the course of the war, military and political authorities arrested more than thirteen thousand individuals in the North, revoked their right of habeas corpus, and remanded them for military trial.”
Note: 18k citizens were arrested during the war, mainly in border states, for alleged disloyalty or draft dodging. Martial law was enacted, & citizens were held without trial. Both Lincoln & Davis suspended Habeas Corpus.
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 3-5
“Although the growth of Southern journalism was impressive, the circulation figures of Southern papers and periodicals scarcely compared with those in certain other sections of the nation. The newspaper and periodical circulation of the entire future Confederacy in 1860 was 103,041,436; that of the remainder of the nation 824,910,112. The eleven states which would soon fly the “stars and bars” thus produced about one out of every eight newspapers and periodicals sold in the country– not a very good record, considering that one of every three Americans lived in the same states. The greatest contrast was between the Southern states and the more urban states of the North. New York had a circulation of newspapers and periodicals which was more than three times as great as that of all the future Confederate states combined. Pennsylvania also boasted a circulation greater than that of all of the Confederate states in 1860. Massachusetts could make nearly the same claim: the Bay State’s newspapers and periodicals annually sold over 102,000,000 copies.
As the above figures suggest, the more successful Northern journals had much larger subscription lists than did their Southern counterparts. The New York Herald was the largest daily newspaper in the country in 1860; its circulation of 77,000 was about half that of all sixty-six dailies of the future Confederate states combined. Horace Greeley’s New York Weekly Tribune sold an average of 200,000 copies every week. In the South, where cities were fewer, population was less dense, and illiteracy rates higher, editors had to be satisfied with substantially fewer subscribers. The Richmond Dispatch, one of the most successful penny papers in the South, announced a circulation of about 8,000 for its daily, 2,000 for its semiweekly, and 5,500 for its weekly editions. Greeley would have found such figures far from impressive, but the Dispatch bragged that its “business results are not equalled by any paper in the Union, South of the Potomac, save the New Orleans Picayune and, perhaps, one other paper in that city.” The influential Charleston Courier had a circulation of only about 3,000, but, even more surprisingly, its widely quoted neighbor, the Mercury, boasted only about 550 paid subscriptions and, reportedly, cost the Rhett family $8,000 a year to keep it in business. Apparently no paper of the future Confederate states sold as many as 10,000 copies of any single edition. The great majority of Southern newspapers numbered their readers by the hundreds rather than thousands.
Greeley’s Tribune, with its combined daily and weekly circulation of 287,750 in early April of 1861, was possibly the most influential newspaper that America had ever produced. Not only did the Tribune have a circulation in New York of over 100,000, in each of eight other Northern states it had a distribution of over 10,000 copies. Its circulation figures for the South, however, show how far that section had isolated itself from such Northern publications. Greeley’s paper had 35 subscribers in Texas, 52 in North Carolina, 42 in Alabama, 35 in Georgia, 23 in South Carolina, 21 in Mississippi, and 310 in Florida.
P. 72
In early 1860 there were about 700 political newspapers in the eleven future Confederate states alone. Virginia led with 117; Alabama had 89, Georgia 75, Mississippi 70. There were 60 political journals in North Carolina, 68 in Louisiana, and 71 in the frontier state of Texas.”
Note: Imagine if they had Twitter then.
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 143-144
“Even as they advocated secession, some Southern-rights papers betrayed an ambivalence toward the Union. Many commonly substituted such euphemisms as “action” and “resistance” for the unsavory word “secession.” And some journals contrived ambiguous and contradictory arguments to prove that secession really was not disunion at all. The Union was dependent upon a strict adherence to the principles of the Constitution, contended a Virginia paper; therefore, since the seceding states were true to those original principles, they were more “Unionist” than the states which remained in the Union: “Is not Secession simply a withdrawing from an attempt to establish a sovereignty over the South? Secession is not disunion. It is no cause for disunion.” A Louisiana journal wrote: “Secession is not Disunion– without the first, we cannot meet our sister States in council; and without secession, the North could not be brought to the true understanding of her perilous position, nor be made to preserve the Union if she could.” Other papers contended that the Republicans had “virtually dissolved” the Union by their violations of the Constitution; therefore, the South was blameless for putting a formal end to a Union whose spirit the North already had slain.”
P. 215
“Since even the most conservative journals charged the Republicans with plotting to subvert the white race in the South, it is difficult to see how Southern readers could have maintained anything resembling an objective, balanced view of Lincoln and his party. Had a majority of the South’s newspapers maintained even a modicum of integrity in reporting Northern view in general, and the Republican party’s slavery intentions in particular, the South’s “Republicanphobia” almost certainly would have been less virulent than it was, although all symptoms of the disease probably would not have disappeared.”
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 595
“An Ohio editor branded Lincoln a “half-witted usurper” and his Emancipation Proclamation “monstrous, impudent, and heinous… insulting to God as to man, for it declares those ‘equal’ whom God created unequal.’”
Interlude: I said a hip hop the hippie to the hippie
To the hip hip hop and you don’t stop
The rock it to the bang bang the boogie
Say up jump the boogie, dig the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
(The Sugarhill Gang, Rapper’s Delight, 1979.)
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 276
“Both the Davis administration and the press attempted to counter the peace party with reminders of Yankee barbarity and the certainty of subjugation if peace were achieved on the North’s terms. The Emancipation Proclamation revived the martial spirit for many throughout the South. The Richmond Examiner called the document “the most startling political crime, the most stupid political blunder, yet known in American history…. Southern people have now only to choose between victory and death.’”
The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters James McPherson (2015) P. 102
“The Emancipation Proclamation officially made Union soldiers into an army of liberation. Northern troops carried copies of the Proclamation and distributed thousands of them as they penetrated into the heartland of the Confederacy. By the war’s last year, more than 10 percent of these soldiers of freedom were black, most of them former slaves. That army was chiefly responsible for the freedom of slaves who came within its purview. By the end of the war, David Blight estimates, “some 600,000 to 700,000 out of the nearly four million African American slaves had reached some form of emancipation” by this process. But most of them had done so by the Union army coming to them rather than by escaping to the Union army. The remaining 3.3 million slaves achieved freedom by the Thirteenth Amendment, whose adoption was possible only through Union military victory. And no one deserved more credit for that victory than Abraham Lincoln, commander in chief of an army of liberation.”
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the twentysecond day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, towit:
“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; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, towit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana , (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. Johns, St. Charles, St. James[,] Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New-Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South-Carolina, North-Carolina, and Virginia, (except the fortyeight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth-City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk & Portsmouth [)]; and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, 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; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
Note: For a picture of the proclamation, see https://catalog.archives.gov/id/299998 or https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years Carl Sandburg 1954 P. 320-321
“The Democratic party, already campaigning for the November elections, raised the issue that the war for the Union had been changed to a war for abolition. McClellan wrote his wife that the President’s proclamation, and other troubles, “render it almost impossible for me to retain my commission and self-respect at the same time.” Lincoln had now gone over to the radicals, the Louisville Democrat and other papers told readers. “The abolitionists have pressed him into their service.” John Hay wrote of editorials in the leading newspapers. The President said he had studied the matter so long that “he knew more about it than they did.”
The proclamation was aimed at Europe as well as North and South America. London Punch cartooned Lincoln with horns and a long tail. London, Henry Adams wrote, “…created a nightmare of its own and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln.” In England, because of the cotton famine, nearly 500,000 men were out of work. In a single textile district of France were 130,000 unemployed. Yet a definite mass opinion favored the North as against the South.”
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years Carl Sandburg 1954 P. 405
“When Mrs. Gideon Welles mentioned certain malignant reports in newspapers and someone present said, “The papers are not always reliable,” Lincoln interjected, “That is to say, Mrs. Welles, they lie and then they re-lie.” A woman who had asked the President to use his authority in her behalf at the War Department quoted him: “It’s of no use, madam, for me to go. They do things in their own way over there, and I don’t amount to pig tracks in the War Department.’”
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 216
“A few moderate editors deplored the failure of Southern newspapers to report sectional issues objectively. An Arkansas paper, for example, blamed the press in both sections of the country for the secession crisis. “How can two sections of our country ever hope to be at peace so long as the journals of the country continue to make such flings at them? We cannot censure the Northern press only, for we, unfortunately have many of the same factious spirit in the South. And it is from such sources we have most to fear.” A Tennessee journal showed exceptional insight when, at the height of the sectional crisis, it blamed the alienation of the sections upon newspapers. “There is not in the South one journalist in forty that knows any thing of the real state of society at the North, or of the ebb and flow of the currents of public opinion.” Nor did newspapers of the North have a better understanding of Southerners, the paper continued. “Yet, each indulges in constant crimination and labors incessantly to mislead and prejudice the people of the respective sections. And even now, when the country is trembling on the verge of dissolution, the warfare of misrepresentation and abuse is carried on with redoubled violence by the vultures who thrive and fatten on popular prejudice. We would rather be the lowest thing that crawls the earth than rear our children on bread obtained by such means.’”
The Real Lincoln Thomas DiLorenzo P. 145
“Lincoln saw enemies throughout the North, if by “enemy” is meant people who were not necessarily aiding the Confederates but who disagreed with his war policies. Lincoln saw anyone who disagreed with him as a possible “traitor.” This included dozens of prominent newspaper editors and owners who, while in favor of the Union, were critical of Lincoln and his policies. That, of course, is why they were imprisoned. Lincoln’s response to such dissent was to use military force to shut down dozens of newspapers and arrest and imprison their editors. On February 2, 1862, the Federal government began censoring all telegraph communication in the United States as well.
Lincoln’s suppression of the press began with the New York City newspapers, which dominated much of the nation’s news. Although such papers as Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune supported the war, others, such as the Journal of Commerce and the New York Daily News, did not. These two newspapers were the heart of the opposition press in the North, because their articles were reprinted in many other papers that were also critical of Lincoln’s war policies.
In May 1861 the Journal of Commerce published a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war. The Lincoln administration responded by ordering the Postmaster General to deny these papers mail delivery. At that time, nearly all newspaper deliveries were made by mail, so this action put every one of the papers out of circulation. Some of them resumed publication after promising not to criticize the Lincoln government.”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 230-232
“No one delivered the opposition critique of Lincoln with more fury than Ohio politician Clement Vallandingham. A representative of Congress from Ohio who had established himself on the national scene as a leading Copperhead by calling for an armistice and negotiated peace, Vallandingham lost a bid for reelection in October 1862 but used his lame-duck session in Congress to perfect his scorched-earth rhetorical tactics. He gave a series of speeches in the winter of 1863 that lambasted emancipation, martial law, and conscription as the tools of a military despotism and social radicalism. The “freedom of the negro is to be purchased,” he declared on February 23, 1863, “at the sacrifice of every right of the white men of the United States.” That argument gained credence for Democrats in March 1863 when Congress passed two far-reaching pieces of legislation. The Habeas Corpus Act gave legal authority to Lincoln’s practice of suspending the writ; military officers were not required to bring detainees before civil courts. The Enrollment Act (so called to avoid use of the word “conscription”) required all men ages twenty to forty-five to register their names with the authorities and constitute a pool from which they could be drafted to serve until the war’s end, or three years (whichever came first). This broke new ground by superceding the state-run militia system and pulling men directly into the Federal army; Congress invoked its constitutional mandate to “raise and support Armies” in defense of the measure’s legality.
When Vallandingham returned home to Ohio at the end of the congressional session, he was hailed as a hero by Peace Democrats and reviled by Republicans. Major General Ambrose Burnside, as commander of the Department of the Ohio, had Vallandingham in mind when he issued General Order No. 38 on April 13, 1863, specifying that “treason, expressed or implied, will not be tolerated in this department.” Vallandingham gleefully took the bait, daring the Republicans to abridge his freedom of speech. He delivered an inflammatory address in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on May 1, in which he denounced the war as cruel and unnecessary and called upon his fellow citizens to defy Burnside’s order. Two undercover army officers were present, and when they reported this to Burnside, he ordered Vallandingham’s arrest. On May 5, a detachment of 150 Union soldiers arrived at Vallandingham’s house in Dayton, taking him into custody and sending him to prison in Cincinnati. A military commission found Vallandingham guilty of disloyal sentiments and consigned him to a military prison for the war’s duration.
On the morning after Vallandingham’s arrest, the office of Dayton’s Republican newspaper, the Dayton Journal, was mobbed and set on fire. In the days that followed, the Democratic press lit into the Lincoln administration for its “high-handed assumption of despotic power.”
Loath to watch Vallandingham play the martyr and worried about how disaffection was spreading among war Democrats and even conservative Republicans, Lincoln revised Vallandingham’s sentence, setting him loose from federal prison and having him spirited under flag of truce into Confederate territory, to spend the remainder of the war there. Vallandingham found he was distinctly unwelcome in the rebel states: although Confederates welcomed his critiques of Lincoln, they rejected his goal of returning the Union to the way it was before the war. So Vallandingham tarried in the Southern states for less than a month before making his way to Bermuda, Canada, and eventually, violating the conditions of his sentence, back into the United States.”
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases Ida B. Wells, 1892 P. 20
“The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press. The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and they lack the means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts.”
Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac (1898) Frank Wilkeson, A Survivor of Grant’s Last Campaign P. 43-45
“In all our armies of the civil war there was among the enlisted men, the volunteers, a system of gathering and distributing news that beat the information we received from division and corps head-quarters both in time and accuracy. The system was paralleled by that of the slaves who walked the plantations lying within the Confederacy o’nights. These army news-reporters who walked through the camps at night to meet other soldiers and gather intelligence and discuss the campaign, were almost invariably Americans. I cannot recall ever having met, on these night ranges, men of other nationality. There was a burning desire among these men to know how other commands fared, and to gather accurate information, so as to correctly judge of the battle’s tide, the progress of the campaign, and the morale of the army. The enlisted men knew of defeats and successes long before they were published in general orders. The truth is that the privates of the army—the volunteers without bounty I mean—never believed a report that was published from head-quarters, unless it corresponded with the information the “camp-walkers” had gathered. It was surprising how quickly important news relative to a battle or the campaign spread throughout the army. The news was carried from camp-fire to camp-fire at night, and it was generally reliable and wonderfully full and accurate. Often as I sat by the camp-fire, talking with my comrades, I have seen shadowy forms hurrying rapidly through the woods, or along the roads, and I knew men who were hungry for authentic news were beating the camps and battleline to obtain it. Frequently these figures would halt, and then, seeing our fire with men around it, they would issue forth from the woods and join us. They would sit down, fill their pipes, light them with glowing coals, and then, with their rifles lying across their knees, ask for the Second Corps news, inquire as to our losses, and whether we had gained or lost ground, and what Confederate command was opposed to us. They would anxiously inquire as to the truth of rumours of disaster which they might have heard during the day. They would listen attentively to what we said, and it was a point of honour not to give false information to these men. And then they would briefly tell the Fifth, or Sixth, or Nonth Corps news, and quickly disappear in the darkness. I have often, after a day’s service at the guns, walked three miles in the dark to verify a rumour that affected our safety. With no disrespect to these natural born soldiers and most intelligent men do I record the seemingly incongruous truth, that it was necessary to closely watch army news-gatherers. One and all they would steal haversacks. They invariably combined predatory raids on other men’s portable property with news-gathering. To rob a soldier was to rob a man who might be killed next day, and would not need property.”
Note: Thematically its a scene in which all the story lines converge. A fireside disquisition. The forest’s shadow cast in the opposite direction at sundown & they’re looking at the shape dark, vertiginous dark like surrounded by giant thorns, trees. It looks like it takes shape as a human shape, a human face. Sometimes it hits the vein just right, playing a person playing another person. Raised the black flag on the way out leaving behind an empty knife sheath like a word you’ve never seen.
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 133
“Similar pressures were brought to bear against other Unionist editors. At the height of the abolitionist scare in Texas, two alleged abolitionists, named Bewley and Crawford, were hanged in Fort Worth. Shortly afterward, a grand jury in neighboring Parker County recommended that A.B. Norton, Unionist owner and corresponding editor of the Fort Worth Chief, be given a similar treatment. Norton took the hint and in September 1860 sold his paper to a secessionist. He later wrote that “the hostility of the people growing out of Secession views, compelled the Chief’s discontinuance after the hanging of Rev. Anthony Buley [sic] and [William] Crawford.” One pro-Bell editor in Florida, J.N. Bowen of the Lake City Independent Press, blew out his brains with a pistol on October 19. Although no reason was given for the suicide, Bowen may have been depressed by the torrent of ridicule which he had received from the Breckenridge press.
P. 134
“Greeley’s Tribune, the largest, most influential, and one of the most anti-Southern of all the Republican journals, was the favorite newspaper target of Southern-rightists. Perhaps the most sensational case involving the Tribune was that of a newspaper agent, Henry A. Marsh, of St. Louis. Marsh established news depots in Camden, Arkansas, and Memphis and made the mistake of accepting an order at Camden for fifty copies of the Tribune. The package arrived from New York while he was in Memphis on business. When the local vigilance committee heard of the arrival of Greeley’s paper, it dispatched men to Memphis to seize Marsh. At Memphis, the culprit was taken bodily off the steamer John Walsh, over the protests of the vessel’s captain, and was returned to Arkansas. At Camden he was arraigned before the vigilance committee, which determined to its satisfaction that he was an abolitionist and sentences him to hang. Small wonder that its subscription list for the Southern states was so small, snorted the Tribune, when the penalty of buying it is death by strangulation.
P. 145
Southern Unionist editors fought hard to resist the tide of emotionalism that followed Lincoln’s election. Secession, they reiterated, was unjustified because of the mere election of one whose principles Southerns despised. The South must hold calmly to the Union, resist the siren cry of the fire-eaters, and all might yet be well. Such papers usually showed great faith in the conservatism of the masses, both North and South. “Our people,” admitted a Virginia editor, “have already been carried to great lengths by hot-headed demagogical party leaders; but when the question of union or disunion comes to be bruited, those leaders will find the people will not go with them.” Observing that, “with few exceptions,” North Carolina’s newspapers were “eminently conservative” in the wake of Lincoln’s election, a paper in that state asserted: “In this the public press, instead of forming public opinion, reflects it, for nine out of ten of the voters of North Carolina are for the Union, and dead against the movements of South Carolina and Georgia.”
P. 148
Secessionist papers joyously reported the disunion developments in the Southern states. “Georgia Moving!” “Ten Thousand Cheers for Florida!” “Alabama All Right-Convention Called!” read typical headlines of the secessionist journals. Other news was crowded off the pages.
P. 151
In South Carolina, where every editor urged disunion, papers apparently were liable to criticism if they failed to show sufficient ardor for the cause. The Newberry Rising Sun was the subject of a condemnatory resolution passed in a town meeting, not because the paper opposed secession, but because one of its editors refused to join the radical secessionist organization, the Minute Men.
P. 157
Southern conservative papers were further disenthralled when some Northern newspapers, politicians, and preachers scorned the granting of concessions or guaranties to the South and derided the region’s threats of secession. The Southern reaction is somewhat difficult to understand, since in the first few weeks following the election relatively few Northerners advocated a policy of coercion. Thurlow Weed, editor of the Albany (New York) Evening Journal and Republican party “boss,” suggested a plan to reinstate the old Missouri Compromise with its 36°30′. Even Horace Greeley took a cautious position. “Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out,” wrote Greeley’s Tribune, “we shall resist all coercive measures to keep it in. we hope we never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.” Some Northern papers nevertheless expressed militant opposition to disunion. William Cullen Bryant’s New York Post, for example, branded all secessionists as traitors. The New York Times, Hartford Courant, and Chicago Tribune were among other journals which had similar views. Although such newspapers were in the minority of Northern sheets, the Southern press chose to accentuate the negative opinions, rather than the more numerous positive ones. “The tone of the Northern press, rostrum and pulpit,” said a formerly moderate Georgia paper, “should convince all southern men that the hour for dissolution is come and that it is as inevitable as the fulfillment of the decrees of God.” A New Orleans paper wrote: “It is almost impossible to believe that if the Northern press was actually aware of the imminent danger of secession, it would use the language of recklessness or defiance.”
P. 166
South Carolina was trying to drag the whole South “into the vortex of revolution,” asserted the consequences of their own act.”
P. 173
Small wonder that some Unionist editors gave up the fight. In a letter to Governor John Letcher of Virginia, written on February 18, 1861, A.B. Hendren of the Athens (Alabama) Union Banner explained his reasons for quitting the newspaper business: “Situated in the midst of a small community of Union loving men, to whom I flatter myself the ‘Banner’ has been mainly instrumental in giving tone and character, I would wish with pleasure be willing to continue an unrelenting warfare against the spirit of secession if my subsequent labors could promise the least encouragement to our cause, but being the only press now in Alabama that ‘shows its hand’ in that particular, I cannot of course expect to survive the mighty powers brought against me.”
P. 173-174
After the election of Lincoln many secessionist papers denied, as they had during the campaign, that war must necessarily follow secession. No administration, they contended, would be so foolhardy as to invade the South. The Northern people would not allow it; world opinion would discountenance it. “Everything considered, we cannot believe there will be much fighting,” said an Alabama paper. Declared a Georgia journal: ‘So far as civil war is concerned, we have no fears of that in Atlanta.” Nor did the Memphis Daily Appeal believe that there was a living Northerner who would be so bold “as to dare raise a mailed hand against the Mother of States [Virginia], against the land where Jackson lived [Tennessee], or on the State which contains the ashes of the glorious and beloved Henry Clay [Kentucky].” Georgia’s Albany Patriot promised to insure with a postage stamp the life of every Southern man killed in a war against the North. According to the same paper, the local women and children, using muskets loaded with “Connecticut wooden nutmegs,” could whip every abolitionist who would come to Albany in the next ten years.”
Note: Some southern Unionist newspapers held firm to the Union, such as the New Orleans Daily True Delta.
Note: On this day in 1856, at 1pm, after waiting two months to be able to speak here today, Charles Sumner, in 90 degrees in the Senate Chamber, spoke for five hours over two days a 112 page long address called “The Crime Against Kansas,” which had the line “the harlot, Slavery.” For this, two days later, he was bludgeoned with a cane, & nearly died.
The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat Gary W. Gallagher P. 148-149
“A series of fires in Texas attributed to abolitionists in the summer of 1860, together with that year’s highly charged presidential election, aggravated an already volatile climate within which rumors of slave revolts spread rapidly and triggered repressive measures. Based on a close investigation of reaction to the events in Texas, Donald Reynolds concluded that “Hangings and whippings that occurred during the summer of 1860 make it clear that in the aftermath of the Texas fires the South experienced one of the greatest witch hunts in American history.’”
Note: Some say Texas more than anything brought on the war:
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 97
“Southern newspapers neglected Republican activities in the North, but they more than compensated for the oversight by disclosing allegations of a vast, insidious abolitionist plot to burn many towns in Texas and to murder their citizens. No other issue during this emotion-charged campaign so completely caught the fearful imaginations of Southern editors as the “Texas Troubles.” Breaking as they did just before the climax of the campaign, the sometimes irrational, usually exaggerated, and always vivid stories of the alleged abolitionist scheme probably did more than any other issue to steel the minds of many Southerners against the acceptance of a Republican President.
P. 101-102
The Texas “conspiracy” apparently was contagious. In August and September the press alleged that similar, if less extensive, plots existed throughout the South. Abolitionists reportedly had planned murder, fire, and rapine for many communities– most notably in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The many hangings and whippings that occurred during the summer of 1860 make it clear that in the aftermath of the Texas fires the South experienced one of the greatest witch hunts in American history. The press, which gave screaming headlines to each new rumor, played the key role in spreading fear. Editors all over the South reprinted Pryor’s shocking account of the Dallas plot and reminded their readers that, unless the strictest vigilance was observed. Texas’s sad plight might become their own as well. Papers defended Judge Lynch as the best means of dealing with “abolitionist emissaries,” who allegedly had infiltrated virtually every community in the South.
Meanwhile, hysteria swept Texas. On the eve of the state elections, which were to be held on August 6, many people sat up all night with guns in their hands, determined to sell their lives dearly when the expected insurrection began. On a farm near Marshall, a woman heard a firearm discharge in the distance. Apparently thinking that she was about to be seized by Negroes and abolitionists and unable to appeal to her husband who was in town voting, she fled into the woods. A search party finally located her the next day, miles from home, and “in a wretched condition.” Another report stated that fear had made a number of Texas women and children “almost confirmed maniacs.”
P. 110
There is even reason to believe that the Dallas fire, which gave rise to the panic, began innocently. Thirty-two years after the holocaust, a Dallas reporter sought out several citizens who had resided in the small Trinity River town at the time of the fire and asked them for their recollections. One of those interviewed had served on the vigilance committee which had condemned three Negroes to death. The man at first refused to be interviewed, saying that “this was a bit of Southern history that was not good.” But he finally consented to talk and gave his opinion that the Northern Methodist preachers who had been accused of instigating the alleged insurrection were not guilty. “In fact,” he said, “there was no insurrection. People became frightened and almost panic stricken.” The former vigilante then gave his own version of what had occurred:
When the town was burned it was a hot day– so hot that matches ignited from the heat of the sun. Wallace Peak had just finished a new two story frame building and in the upper story that day a number of men were lounging and smoking. Piled up near the building was a lot of boxes filled with shavings, and I think a cigar stump or a match was thrown into one of the boxes, and from that the fire started about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Several fires had occurred; there was a great deal of excitement about the apprehended negro uprising; somebody had to hang and the three negroes went.
P. 111
Governor Sam Houston, rising from a sickbed to address a mass Union meeting in Austin, deplored the pernicious effects that the panic had wrought in the state. Houston dismissed as false the stories of an abolitionist scheme to destroy Texas and charged that those responsible for the stories were themselves nonslaveholders, who had deliberately spread false rumors for political effect. A.B. Norton, editor of the Austin Southern Intelligencer, and leader of the Opposition press in Texas, agreed with the governor. Norton charged that Democratic editors, by fabricating and spreading stories of an abolitionist conspiracy, had sought to inflame the emotions of the electorate so that the more radical Southern-rights candidates would win the state elections in August.
P. 116
It is impossible to exaggerate the role of the Southern press in fanning the hot-weather flames of the Texas prairie into a roaring inferno of terror that swept the whole South. Pryor’s letters to the State Gazette, the Era, and the Telegraph were read and believed by thousands of people throughout the region. Radical Southern-rights editors elaborated upon these fearful reports from Texas and suggested, none too subtly, that this was but the beginning of the horrors Southerners must suffer if they accepted Lincoln as their President. Fire-eating politicians such as Wise of Virginia, Wigfall of Texas, Yancey of Alabama, and others of their ilk chorused their opinion that Lincoln once ensconced in office, would send abolitionists scurrying into the South to complete the work begun by Brown in Virginia and continued by his cohorts in Texas.
From June to October– or for three-fourths of the presidential campaign– the Southern press had occupied itself primarily with bitter, personal feuds, in which the adherents of Bell and Douglas usually sided against Breckenridge. An outsider reading Southern newspapers might have thought that one or all three of these candidates, but not Lincoln, posed the greatest threat to the South, so vicious were the recriminations. Alleged incendiarism in Texas, followed by abolitionist scares in other states, served to refocus the attention of the Southern press upon Lincoln, and to set the stage for the last month of the campaign, when the dominant question would become: Would the South submit to Lincoln’s election?’”
Note: Texas, March 27, 1836, the Goliad Massacre during the Texas Revolution. Mexican Army executed 425-445 under the order of the president of Mexico, who shall not be named.
The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and its Legacies Victoria E. Bynum P. 25
“There were plenty of Unionists in Texas, including Governor Sam Houston…. Given that German Texans of the Hill Country and North Texas farmers were harassed and even murdered for publicly supporting the U.S. government, the extent of silent support for the Union can never be known.”
**Black Reconstruction in America W.E.B. DuBois P. 555 quotes Sheridan as saying, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
Black Reconstruction in America W.E.B. DuBois P. 555
Note: The New York Times came right out on 1/22/61 & stated the paper opposed abolition.
Note: And the New York Herald came right out, Summer of 1868, & suggested Robert E. Lee as the Democratic contender for the Presidency: “With one quarter the men Grant had this soldier fought magnificently across the territory of his native State, and fought his army to a stump. It is certain that with half as many men as Grant he would have beaten him from the field in Virginia….”
Note: Lincoln paved way for methodical materialism, a well-rehearsed life some say. Some want to dig up his bones & have a talk with him.
Sidenote: This day in 1883, Krakatoa will throw up 7 miles of ash in a prelude to its August explosion; the loudest sound in the world, it killed over 36,000 (even up to 120,000), caused 120 feet high waves, ruptured eardrums 40 miles off, & 3000 miles away its sound was heard. The sound wave crossed Earth 4 times in several days, taking 34 hours to do so each time.
I hope this war may soon be over….
Where do the stories come from? Stories come from people who have been dead. The dead need to see, too. You have to be able to talk from the dead if you’re gonna die, you have to see from the dead after you die.
You couldn’t find this place unless you knew it (unlike areas where veins and arteries are closest to the surface, say, at Gettysburg). Over the years landscapes have absorbed them. Even now, the people who live here still know the oldest stories, how there will always be small pieces of bone left– scattered mammoth bones because you can’t get rid of a story, can’t ever disappear a thing like that. Not really. It can be dust. It can still blow in a wind. It had to land somewhere before we got here, how bones migrate under the soil in the rains and snows, absolved. The Confederate trenches, depressions in the ground still visible on satellite, so that’s something.
Yet we stay in a circumference of amnesia perpetuating itself with such force it left an exit wound the size of a sky approaching two centuries.
We don’t know where they were born. We don’t know where they died. We just know they were there. They passed through this land & stayed.
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