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The Civil War in Southeast Asia: Trade and Privateering in Singapore

The Civil War in Southeast Asia: Trade and Privateering in Singapore

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The sectional conflict in North America coincided with vast upheavals around the world, including the wars of unification in Central Europe (Italy from 1859 to 1871, and Germany from 1864 to 1871), whose impact Civil War historians have done some work to illustrate. In Asia, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), with its twenty million dead (one of the deadliest wars in human history), also coincided with the Civil War. However Civil War historians, both transnational and diplomatic, have paid very little attention to events in Asia. Yet for U.S. diplomatic and economic representatives, the war’s impact on trade, and even more, the threat posed by Confederate privateers, was an ever-present issue requiring them to protect the commercial and maritime interests of the United States, even in far away places like Singapore.

So far, the only work on Civil War relations with Asia highlights the offer of war elephants by the Siamese king to President Abraham Lincoln.[1] If this sounds somewhat reminiscent of some early Roman history with Hannibal crossing the Alps, there are some possible similarities. A blogger at The National Interest hypothesized what the 1st Ohio Pachyderm Battalion would have done at the Battle of Gettysburg, suggesting the use of the animals in the opening engagement with the Iron Brigade and the destruction of the advancing Confederates of A. P. Hill’s Corps.[2] While certainly humorous as a counterfactual exercise, to U.S. consuls in Singapore, the Civil War was all too real.

Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, sprang into existence in 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles established the city and port for the British East India Company. As a stopping point en route to China, the port gained importance with the opening of China as a result of the Opium War (1839-1842). The city was, and remains, an essential trade center in Southeast Asia.

View of the Harbor of Singapore, c. 1860, Leiden University Library. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

For the United States, trade in Singapore was initially of only limited importance. In January 1852, U.S. consul W. W. Shaw reported that demand for U.S.-made cotton products was “moderate.” Nevertheless, he assumed that, “the consumption of American Cotton Goods is likely to increase in this market judging from the more frequent enquiries for them of late.” Furthermore, in 1852, ships tended to leave for the U.S. Pacific Coast, especially San Francisco, if their destination was the United States. With the aftereffects of the California Gold Rush, captains had to recruit new crew members in Singapore since recruiting sailors in San Francisco was extremely expensive, which had a detrimental impact on shipping costs.[3]

By the end of the 1850s, commercial activities in Singapore boomed again. Singapore’s location “as a commercial sea-port” was the result of “being situated on the great highway to India, China, Japan, and South Eastern Asia.” Over a hundred U.S. merchant vessels visited the port annually. Consul J. P. Sullivan used the commercial importance to point out that his salary was woefully inadequate to handle the trade, pay for a building to run the consulate in, and hire staff, a common complaint among U.S. consular agents at the time.[4]

The Civil War soon had an impact on the trade in Singapore. Whereas U.S. merchants represented the second largest group of ships in port prior to the war, the conflict allowed German merchants to assume second place. The change was in part the result of Confederate activities in Asian waters.[5]

One particular incident speaks to how Confederate naval operations complicated the U.S. presence in Asia. On December 8, 1863, U.S. consul Francis W. Cobb reported the departure of the U.S.S. Wyoming in search of the raider C.S.S. Alabama, an infamous Confederate ship that roamed the oceans for nearly two years.[6] Only two weeks later the Alabama arrived in Singapore. Captain Raphael Semmes had made his way across the Indian Ocean from the Cape Colony. The Alabama overnighted in port, and as Consul Cobb wrote in his report, took on coal for its continued voyage.[7]

The CSS Alabama. Courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Cobb’s attempts to communicate with the crew of the Alabama failed, as port authorities did not allow anyone near the ship. Like all U.S. representatives overseas, Cobb wanted the ship brought to justice and he frantically tried to locate the Wyoming’s exact whereabouts. He knew the U.S. vessel was on its way to Batavia to repair its boiler.[8] Unfortunately, the Wyoming did not receive the honor of bringing down Semmes. In accordance with British neutrality laws, which required belligerent vessels to depart port again within twenty-four hours, the Alabama put to sea on December 24. Despite Cobb’s failure to reach the vessel, others were luckier. Cobb explained that many Singaporeans visited the ship out of curiosity, which, he thought, should not be confused with sympathy.[9] Sadly, on the day of the Alabama’s departure from Singapore, the raider destroyed a British and U.S. merchant vessel, the latter probably the Texas Star.[10] Thankfully, after only three destroyed ships, Semmes departed the region for refits in France, where its career eventually ended outside of Cherbourg.

Ever so briefly the Civil War reared its ugly maritime face in Singapore, but merely the threat of Confederate privateering had an impact on U.S. trade in the region. While elephants at Gettysburg is a hair-brained counterfactual, much less crazy is the possibility of the Wyoming bringing the Alabama to battle in the Straits of Malacca. British colonial authorities around the empire faced difficult decisions when Confederate vessels put into port—a topic that is finally getting attention within the Atlantic context, but still needs more attention in Asia.[11] Similarly, the threat of these vessels had an impact on U.S. trade in Singapore, which was still on the margins of the U.S. trade network during the 1850s and 1860s. However, only once Civil War diplomatic and transnational historians start to integrate the far flung places of empire will we get a full understanding of the impact of the war around the world, and not be stuck with the decision makers in London and Paris.

 

[1] William F. Strobridge and Anita Hibler, Elephants for Mr. Lincoln: American Civil War-Era Diplomacy in Southeast Asia (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006).

[2] Angry Staff Officer, “What Would Have Happened If Lincoln Had Used Combat Elephants in the Civil War?” The National Interest, September 29, 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/what-would-have-happened-if-lincoln-had-used-combat-elephants-civil-war-73481?page=0%2C1.

[3] W. W. Shaw to Daniel E. Webster, January 30, 1852, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 3, January 21, 1852-August 20, 1855, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as NARA).

[4] J. P. O’Sullivan to Lewis Cass, January 23, 1859, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 5, February 1, 1858-November 16, 1859, NARA.

[5] Percy E. Schramm, Deutschland und Übersee: Der Deutsche Handel mit den Anderen Kontinenten, insbesondere Afrika, von Karl V. bis zu Bismmarck (Braunschweig, Germany: Georg Westermann Verlag, 1950), 88-90.

[6] Francis W. Cobb to William H. Seward, December 8, 1863, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 6, December 8, 1859-December 31, 1863, NARA.

[7] Francis W. Cobb to William H. Seward, December 22, 1863, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 6, December 8, 1859-December 31, 1863, NARA.

[8] Francis W. Cobb to William H. Seward, December 22, 1863, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 6, December 8, 1859-December 31, 1863, NARA.

[9] Francis W. Cobb to William H. Seward, January 8, 1864, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 7, January 8, 1864-December 31, 1869, NARA.

[10] Francis W. Cobb to William H. Seward, January 8, 1864, Despatches from United States Consuls in Singapore, 1833-1906, Volume 7, January 8, 1864-December 31, 1869, NARA.

[11] Beau Cleland, “Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: Confederate Informal Diplomacy and Privatized Violence in British America During the American Civil War,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Calgary, 2019).

Niels Eichhorn

holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas and has taught history courses at Middle Georgia State University and Central Georgia Technical College. He has published Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War (LSU Press, 2019) and Atlantic History in the Nineteenth Century: Migration, Trade, Conflict, and Ideas (Palgrave, 2019). He is currently working with Duncan Campbell on The Civil War in the Age of Nationalism. He has published articles on Civil War diplomacy in Civil War History and American Nineteenth Century History. You can find more information on his personal website, and he can be contacted at eichhorn.niels@gmail.com.

Paul Barba Joins Us as Field Correspondent

Paul Barba Joins Us as Field Correspondent

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As longtime readers know, at Muster we publish pieces that are commissioned or submitted to us for consideration, but we also have a slate of field correspondents who write regular “dispatches”–posts that explore the varied facets of life in the Civil War era and help readers broaden their understanding of the period. We are pleased to announce that we have a new correspondent joining us in 2020, writing on the Civil War in the West and borderlands history. Paul Barba is an assistant professor of history at Bucknell University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2016. His first book project, tentatively titled Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands, tracks and analyzes the multiple forms of slaving violence that emerged, dominated, and intersected throughout Texas from the early eighteenth century into the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is currently under contract with the University of Nebraska Press. Prior to Bucknell, Dr. Barba served as a managing editor at the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. Welcome to the team!

We would also like to thank Maria Angela Diaz, who was our first correspondent covering Western topics. She stepped down to focus on writing her manuscript, currently titled Saving the Southern Empire: The Gulf South, Latin America, and the Civil War. Thank you, Angela, for your contributions to Muster!

Poetry Not Yet Written: Revisiting Glory Thirty Years Later

Poetry Not Yet Written: Revisiting Glory Thirty Years Later

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Promotional poster for Glory. Courtesy of Tristar Pictures.

Glory begins as so many Civil War films do: the sun rises on a vast battlefield, brave Union men march into war, and a ferocious battle ensues, American and Confederate flags billowing in the background. Despite its adherence to well-worn tropes, however, Glory tells a tale that is often obscured – even obliterated – in Civil War narratives. Edward Zwick’s 1989 classic follows the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first African American regiments to fight for the Union cause. Viewed within the larger canon of Civil War films, Glory is a triumph. Most of these narratives sidestep the issue of slavery in order to appeal to the widest possible audience; Glory, in contrast, never lets the viewer forget that this truly was a war of emancipation. This laudable achievement aside, though, Glory has many significant shortcomings. And, as the film celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this December, it is well worth asking the question: who gets to tell this story?

Given Glory’s subject matter, the viewer could reasonably expect the men of the 54th Massachusetts to take center stage. Yet, mere moments into the film, it becomes clear that Glory is, in many ways, the story of the regiment’s white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick). The powerful narration of the film is drawn from Shaw’s real-life letters home, affording the viewer intimate access to the colonel’s thoughts, fears, and hopes. Never mind that the men of the 54th also wrote letters home – this fact is never imagined, much less acknowledged, and the viewer remains wholly unaware of the inner lives of the black men at the heart of the story. This negligence has significant consequences in Glory, and no small amount of unintended irony. At the beginning of the film, Shaw declares with evident self-satisfaction: “We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written.” In fact, there was a well-established tradition of African American poetry by this time in American history, a literary movement that included the voices of both free and enslaved black people.[1] The poetry of these men and women was indeed being written – Colonel Robert Gould Shaw simply wasn’t reading it.[2]

The men of the 54th are immensely compelling characters in their own right, yet Glory’s depiction of the regiment’s black soldiers never quite reaches the depth and nuance it reserves for its white protagonist. This lapse is most painfully evident in the case of Trip (Denzel Washington), a composite character based on several real-life soldiers who came to the unit as former slaves. Trip is a quick-tempered and confrontational man, who refuses to back down in the face of authority. In one of the film’s most significant moments, he turns down the honor of carrying the American flag into battle, defiantly telling Colonel Shaw: “I ain’t fighting this war for you, sir.” As powerful as Trip’s character is (Washington would win an Academy Award for his portrayal), the viewer’s insight into his lived experience remains quite limited. The few conversations touching on his enslavement are filled with tense silences, and the true contours of his suffering are never fully explored. This superficial portrayal of Trip’s life – whether a matter of intention or oversight by Glory’s producers – was a missed opportunity; even in the 1980s, there was no dearth of literature on slavery the filmmakers and screenwriters could have used for research.

Denzel Washington in Glory. Courtesy of Tristar Pictures.

Furthermore, Trip’s fury is often tempered – even invalidated – by his colleagues in the 54th. John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) takes issue with Trip’s aggrieved demeanor throughout the film, chastising him for being “full of hate” merely because he’s “been whipped and chased by hounds.” In case Trip misses the point, Rawlins declares: “that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain’t dying. And dying’s been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now, dying by the thousands, dying for you, fool.” This statement is distressing for two reasons: first, Rawlins denies Trip the right to be angry, asserting that the horrors he experienced as a slave do not justify his bitter outlook and, moreover, do not match the ultimate sacrifice made by “these white boys.” Furthermore, the assertion that white men had been dying for African Americans throughout the Civil War is deeply flawed, given that many Union soldiers joined the war effort purely to fight secession and did not, in fact, support the cause of emancipation; some even deserted when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.[3]

Over the past thirty years, historians have generally praised Glory for its historical accuracy, its skillful depiction of the war’s oft-forgotten heroes, and its refusal to adhere to Lost Cause ideologies. Shortly after the film’s cinematic release, Pulitzer-Prize winning Civil War historian James McPherson wrote a review of Glory in The New Republic, citing it as “the most powerful and historically accurate movie about that war ever made.”[4] McPherson wrote that Glory  would “throw a cold dash of realism over the moonlight-and-magnolias portrayal of the Confederacy,” and might even restore the heroic image of black soldiers which prevailed in the North for a brief time during and after the war, before the Lost Cause became entrenched.[5]

Nearly two decades later, the historian Gary Gallagher made similar observations about Glory in his book, Causes Won, Lost, & Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War. Gallagher’s analysis focuses primarily on Glory’s depiction of the Civil War as a battle of emancipation, noting that Hollywood films since the late 1980s have largely dismissed preservation of the Union as a central motivator for Northern soldiers. This artistic license, Gallagher writes, often comes at the cost of historical accuracy, effectively promoting a “flawed conception of the North’s Civil War,” given that many white soldiers were ambivalent toward the cause of emancipation.[6] This negligence notwithstanding, Gallagher maintains that Glory had a positive and tangible impact. He notes that even its star, Denzel Washington, had been unaware that black people fought in the Civil War. Washington was hardly alone; Gallagher writes that “moviegoers across the United States left screenings with a similar realization that the military struggle between 1861 and 1865 had not been a lily-white affair. In that respect, Glory worked a sea change in popular perceptions about the conflict.”[7]

McPherson and Gallagher have certainly made valuable contributions to the conversation about Glory. However, their respective analyses overlook a vital aspect of the film’s legacy: the framing of the 54th’s story though Colonel Shaw’s perspective. For decades, sociologists and black theorists have explored the implications of black stories being told by white storytellers, often referred to as “racial ventriloquism.”[8] Claire Oberon Garcia, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Charise Pimentel examine this topic in their book, From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Help: Critical Perspectives on White-Authored Narratives of Black Life. These scholars note that white-authored narratives are frequently “used to structure perceptions of American race relations, particularly black racial experiences,” while the work of black writers rarely achieves such dominance.[9] The authors assert that this cultural hegemony persists despite the continuing efforts of black storytellers. Although black writers, filmmakers, television producers, and scriptwriters have depicted both black and white stories through mainstream media, their works seldom achieve the level of financial success granted to white-authored narratives, “and thus do not figure greatly in Americans’ understanding of race in general and black experiences in particular.”[10] These white writers – no matter how well-intentioned – are thus culpable in a “long history of constructing ‘blackness’ to serve hegemonic concerns,” a tradition which effectively denies black people the agency to tell their own stories.[11]

Matthew Broderick, who portrayed Robert Gould Shaw in Glory. Courtesy of Tristar Pictures.

In cinema, such narratives are often referred to as “white savior films.” Sociologist Matthew Hughey investigates this phenomenon in his book, The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption. He writes that these stories are “often guided by a logic that racializes and separates people into those who are redeemers (whites) and those who are redeemed or in need of redemption (nonwhites).”[12] White savior films can have profound societal consequences. Hughey cites studies on the lack of interracial communication in many predominantly white areas in the United States, noting that 86 percent of suburban whites live in communities where black people make up fewer than 1 percent of the population.[13] In this context, he asserts, popular films become a kind of proxy for real-life interracial interactions. [14] This framework is certainly at work in Glory. Although the film depicts the 54th Massachusetts as a regiment of former slaves, the majority of the soldiers were, in fact, born free in the North.[15] Such a depiction paves the way for a falsified journey from slavery to freedom, a journey not possible without the fearless leadership of their white colonel (and white savior), Robert Gould Shaw.

The makers of Glory were certainly telling a story that needs to be told – but it is not their story to tell. Indeed, as Glory celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this December, it is worth taking a closer look at whose voices are being heard, both onscreen and behind the scenes (Glory having been written, directed, and produced by white men). In accepting the premise that the poetry of black Americans had “not yet been written,” Glory ensures that whatever poetry it does present is that of its white hero and savior. Viewers must question why, in a film specifically about black soldiers, the perspectives of African Americans are so conspicuously absent. In recent years, many historians have begun to call for a new Civil War documentary, one in which Shelby Foote’s romanticized view of the Old South is not the dominant voice. Perhaps it is also time for a new Glory, a version devoid of “racial ventriloquism,” in which the men of the Massachusetts 54th are not only free from slavery, but free to tell their own stories.

 

[1] Erika DeSimone and Fidel Louis, Voices beyond Bondage: an Anthology of Verse by African Americans of the 19th Century (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2014).

[2] Katie O’Halloran Brown, “Letters of Black Soldiers from Ohio Who Served in the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantries during the Civil War,” Ohio Valley History 16, no. 3 (2016): 72-79.

[3] James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 123.

[4] James M. McPherson, “TNR Film Classic: ‘Glory’ (1990),” The New Republic, January 15, 1990, https://newrepublic.com/article/91210/tnr-film-classics-glory-january-15-1990.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Gary W. Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 92.

[7] Ibid., 95.

[8] Claire Oberon Garcia, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and Charise Pimentel, From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the Help: Critical Perspectives on White-Authored Narratives of Black Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1.

[9] Ibid., 1-2.

[10] Ibid., 2.

[11] Ibid., 4.

[12] Matthew W. Hughey, The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 2.

[13] Ibid., 15.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Joseph T. Glatthaar, “‘Glory,’ the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, and Black Soldiers in the Civil War,” The History Teacher 24, no. 4 (1991): 475-85, 478.

Ella Starkman-Hynes

Ella Starkman-Hynes is an independent author and graduate of McGill University. Her research focuses primarily on the depiction of the Civil War in popular culture, and she is currently working on a project examining northern memory of the war through twentieth-century literature. She will be starting her Master's in history at Yale in Fall 2021.

Before Opinion Polling: Tracking Public Sentiment in Civil War-Era Politics

Before Opinion Polling: Tracking Public Sentiment in Civil War-Era Politics

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For better or for worse, public opinion polls are deeply embedded in American politics. Proponents argue that polls keep elected officials connected to their constituents, make the government more responsive to popular demands, and dispel “myths and stereotypes that might otherwise mislead public discourse.”[1] Critics argue that strict obedience to even the most accurate polls enables politicians to shirk the responsibilities of leadership, while misleading ones can damage the policymaking process and skew elections. Ever since George Gallup correctly projected Franklin Roosevelt’s victory over Alf Landon in 1936, however, serious politicians have relied on polls to help them manage campaigns and make crucial decisions.

But what about the generations of politicians who won, lost, and governed without the benefit of scientific polling? How, for instance, did Civil War-era politicians keep a pulse on public opinion? And how can historians recover their efforts to do so?

Nineteenth-century politicians had several tools for measuring the public mood. Like their constituents, politicians were voracious newspaper readers. While most Civil War-era papers were openly partisan, their news columns and editorials provided valuable information about what journalists were thinking and what voters were reading. Determining what any given politician read can be tricky, but traces turn up in a variety of sources, including congressional records, which reveal which newspapers were purchased for individual senators and representatives. The contingent expense report for the 35th Congress (1857-1859), for example, shows that eight members of the House of Representatives subscribed to the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, including both Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, later an infamous “Copperhead” Democrat, and Francis Preston Blair, Jr., a Missouri Republican and future Union general.

“Contingent Expenses – House of Representatives,” Letter from the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Communicating His Annual Report of the Contingent Expenses of the House of Representatives, House Documents, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., Misc. Doc. No. 25 (n.p.: n.p. [1860]), 117.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives kept careful track of the newspapers that were purchased for and delivered to their members. Although somewhat obscure, these records reveal much about how Civil War-era politicians kept up with national and local opinion.

Mingling directly with constituents was another option, of course, and some officeholders reserved time for regular face-to-face contact. Abraham Lincoln famously held biweekly receptions to allow any and all visitors to speak with him in the White House. Although taxing—and potentially dangerous—these “public-opinion baths,” as Lincoln called them, yielded vital political intelligence. “I have but little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way,” Lincoln explained, and the receptions gave him “a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage” to which he was responsible.[2] These were far from scientific polls, of course, and they were necessarily limited to those able to visit Washington, D.C., but the ritual reflected both the humanity and the shrewdness of a man who believed that “public sentiment is everything” in American politics.[3]

Private correspondence was another valuable source of information, particularly for occupants of state or national offices who had to relocate to state capitals or Washington for extended periods of time. Thus, archival collections of politicians’ papers can illuminate crucial intelligence-sharing networks. Some statesmen relied on family members for the latest news on public sentiment. Lucy Lambert Hale, for instance, maintained a politically candid correspondence with her husband, New Hampshire senator John Parker Hale, while he was away at Washington. In December 1848, she reported on a sermon delivered by a local minister who warned against making any degrading compromises on slavery, and in other letters detailed the extent of antislavery sentiment in their hometown of Dover.[4] For all their insight, however, Hale’s letters are limited in scope because it would have been considered unseemly for her to mingle in many of the spaces, like courthouses or taverns, where so much of nineteenth-century politicking took place.

Most politicians also received piles of constituent correspondence, which typically consisted of fulsome praise, angry recrimination, and, above all, urgent requests for patronage, ranging from pensions to postmasterships. Careful readers could glean nuggets of political intelligence from these letters, but the authors were prone to irrational exuberance or despondency, particularly right after elections. Many were also laden with self-serving flattery; a constituent seeking a plum government job, after all, would hardly be inclined to downplay the recipient’s popularity at home.

Not surprisingly, many powerful statesmen relied on one type of correspondent: the local agent who may or may not have held office, but served as the politician’s eyes and ears within a particular community. Careful study of rich archival collections shows that many of these pen pals supplied politicians with vital local updates over extended periods of time. One example is the unheralded but politically astute Samuel Ashton, who for several turbulent years provided Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas with timely and candid appraisals of public opinion in Chicago. Douglas had called Chicago home since 1847 but spent much of the year in Washington while the Senate was in session. As a register at the local land office and, from 1854 to 1856, an alderman from Chicago’s eighth ward, Ashton was well-positioned to keep tabs on developments in a city that had once been a base of Douglas’s strength but, by the 1850s, was beginning to turn against him.[5]

“Chicago, As It Was.” Currier & Ives, ca. 1856-1907. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The bustling Lake Michigan port city of Chicago had been a core element of Stephen A. Douglas’s political strength since his first bid for a congressional seat in 1838. As his political support in Chicago waxed and waned in the 1850s, updates from local operatives like Samuel Ashton provided a vital link between Douglas and his home city.

Ashton wrote to Douglas less frequently than some of the senator’s other operatives, like Indianapolis postmaster William W. Wick or Springfield resident Isaac R. Diller, but he offered inside information at critical moments. As the backlash against Douglas’s pending Kansas-Nebraska bill intensified in early 1854, for instance, Ashton penned a detailed account of a protest meeting held at North Market Hall (now Court House Place).[6] Two years later, Ashton sent a much more buoyant report shortly after Chicago Democrats endorsed Douglas for the presidential nomination.[7] Ashton’s commentary was colored by his partisanship—he denounced the anti-Nebraska meeting as the work of “violent whigs and abolitionists, assisted by a number of broken down politicians and disappointed office seekers”—but he shared an informed perspective on local affairs when Douglas was away from home for months at a time.[8] And because Ashton was politically prominent without being a rival for Douglas’s power in the Illinois Democratic Party, he was an ideal source of news.

Douglas clearly appreciated Ashton’s insights because in 1855 he sought to repay the shrewd Chicagoan in the expected nineteenth-century style: by securing him a patronage appointment. In the spring of 1855, Douglas recommended Ashton for a captaincy in one of the U.S. Army’s new regiments. The nomination provoked a prickly exchange of letters with the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, and ultimately Ashton—and Douglas—came away empty-handed when the commission went to another applicant.[9]

The Ashton episode seems trivial in comparison with the weighty decisions and quotable speeches that made Civil War-era politics so dramatic. But tracing the networks of family, friends, and allies which kept politicians apprised of developments back home, helps to reveal the inner workings of a nineteenth-century political world in which information was, as it always is, a vital source of power.

 

[1] Quoted in Matthew J. Streb and Michael A. Genovese, “Polling and the Dilemmas of Democracy,” in Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy, eds. Michael A. Genovese and Matthew J. Streb (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 2.

[2] Charles G. Halpine recollection in Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, comp. and ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 194.

[3] Quoted in Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 493.

[4] Lucy Lambert Hale to John P. Hale, December 3, 1848, Box 1A, Folder 5, John Parker Hale Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire.

[5] M.L. Ahern, The Political History of Chicago (Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1886), 105-106; Robin L. Einhorn, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 166.

[6] Samuel Ashton to Stephen A. Douglas, March 18, 1854, Box 4, Folder 5, Stephen A. Douglas Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

[7] Samuel Ashton to Stephen A. Douglas, March 5, 1856, Box 4, Folder 21, Stephen A. Douglas Papers.

[8] Samuel Ashton to Stephen A. Douglas, March 18, 1854, Box 4, Folder 5, Stephen A. Douglas Papers.

[9] Jefferson Davis to Stephen A. Douglas, March 15, 1854, Box 42, Folder 5, Stephen A. Douglas Papers; James Shields and Stephen A. Douglas to Jefferson Davis, March 23, 1854, in Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, ed. Dunbar Rowland, 10 vols. (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), II, 450; Stephen A. Douglas to Jefferson Davis, March 30, 1855, in The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas, ed. Robert W. Johannsen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 336; Jefferson Davis to Stephen A. Douglas, April 5, 1855, in Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, II, 448-450; Jefferson Davis to Stephen A. Douglas, February 10, 16, 1857, Box 42, Folder 6, Stephen A. Douglas Papers.

Michael E. Woods

Michael E. Woods is Associate Professor of History at University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is the author of Bleeding Kansas: Slavery, Sectionalism, and Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (Routledge, 2016) and Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States (Cambridge, 2014), which received the 2015 James A. Rawley Award from the Southern Historical Association. His most recent book is entitled Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy (North Carolina, 2020).

‘Disgrace, Ridicule, Hatred, Contempt and Reproach’: The Impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump

‘Disgrace, Ridicule, Hatred, Contempt and Reproach’: The Impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump

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Standing portrait of Andrew Johnson. Courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica.

“There has been no President in the history of our Country who has been treated so badly as I have,” complained President Donald Trump as the House of Representatives began its impeachment inquiry in September 2019.[1] Only three other Presidents have faced impeachment inquiries, and they certainly felt the weight of the world had fallen upon them too. But as commentators have turned to the Nixon and Clinton cases for guidance on how an impeachment process should unfold, it might make better sense to turn to the case of Andrew Johnson, especially as it was the first Presidential impeachment trial.

On March 2, 1868, the House of Representatives passed nine articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act when he removed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replaced him with Lorenzo Thomas, without the approval of the Senate. A day later the House passed two new impeachment articles. The tenth article addressed Johnson’s broader “attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States” through “intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues,” and the eleventh cited Johnson’s efforts to prevent passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by claiming that the Congress did not fully represent the United States.[2] On May 16 the Senate voted 35 to 19 on the eleventh charge, one vote short of the Constitutionally required two-thirds necessary for conviction and removal of Johnson from office. Ten days later the Senate trial adjourned.[3]

House impeachment managers needed to clear four thresholds to make the legal and political case for conviction. They needed to identify a “high crime or misdemeanor” justifying impeachment; prove that Andrew Johnson had, in fact, committed that high crime; demonstrate that Johnson committed this high crime with corrupt or malign intent; and show that Johnson was such an ongoing menace to the Constitution that the nation could not wait for November elections to remove him. The House’s attempt to clear these four thresholds in the Johnson case offers a helpful guide for understanding the impeachment of Donald Trump.

For the first threshold, House manager and Massachusetts Representative Benjamin Butler defined a high crime as an action “subversive of some fundamental or essential principle of government or highly prejudicial to the public interest.” It could either violate statutory law or, if not found in the legal code, reflect “the abuse of discretionary powers from improper motives or for an improper purpose.”[4] The House’s focus on Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act as the high crime proved difficult because of the dubious constitutionality and technical nature of the Act. The Act required the President to submit for Senate approval the removal of any Senate-confirmed executive officer. Passed at the end of the prior Congress in March 1867, the Act got to the heart of the larger dispute between Johnson and Congress over the course of Reconstruction.[5] The Military Reconstruction Acts of 1867 eliminated Johnson’s preferred state governments and placed the former Confederate states–except Tennessee–under military rule as they passed new state constitutions that protected the civil and voting rights of African Americans. Johnson repeatedly interfered with the work of effective commanders like Generals Sheridan and Sickles, replacing them with more pliant conservative officers likely to stifle the prospects of interracial democracy and justice.[6] Congress designed the Tenure of Office Act to counter this kind of interference with its Reconstruction plan by protecting Senate-confirmed Cabinet officials like Secretary of War Stanton. When Johnson suspended Stanton in August 1867 and then replaced him with Lorenzo Thomas in February 1868–even after the Senate rejected Johnson’s removal of Stanton–Johnson had pushed Republicans past the breaking point.

The Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Courtesy of PBS.

Johnson’s highly capable defense counsel argued that the Tenure of Office Act did not cover Stanton at all, because it only protected an officer for the term of the President plus one additional month of his successor’s term. Since Stanton had been appointed by President Lincoln in 1862, Stanton’s protection under the Act would run out in May 1865. House impeachment managers countered that Johnson had treated the matter all along as if Stanton were covered by the Act, right up until the final replacement with Thomas, and that Johnson’s term effectively continued Lincoln’s term. But that was not enough in the end, as William Groesbeck, Johnson’s lawyer, deployed this argument to convince seven “recusant” Republicans to join the Democrats and acquit.[7]

The second task in 1868 was to show that the President personally committed the high crime in question. For House managers, this was relatively easy since Johnson openly ordered Stanton’s removal himself. However, Johnson’s counsel argued that he never successfully consummated the removal of Stanton and should not be impeached and removed merely for attempting to violate the Tenure of Office Act.[8]

As for the third task–demonstrating corrupt and malign intent–House managers in the Johnson case showed how Johnson’s repeated refusal to accept Congressional authority indicated that his violation of the Tenure of Office Act was a deliberate threat to the Constitutional order. The House voted first on the eleventh impeachment article regarding the legitimacy of Congressional power, because it encapsulated the grave threat to the Constitutional order that Johnson posed. Defense counsel countered that Johnson showed good faith in notifying the Senate of Stanton’s removal per the Tenure of Office Act–mostly as a precautionary measure, as they saw it–and that his violation of the Act was simply a mistake and not a malign offense against the Constitution.

Regarding the fourth threshold–ongoing threat to the Constitution–Johnson made a rather remarkable promise to the House managers that he would no longer try to remove generals involved in Reconstruction. The trial’s timing actually helped matters, as several states ratified new constitutions before Johnson could possibly undermine them.[9] When Johnson committed to name an acceptable candidate, John Schofield as Secretary of War, some Republican Senators determined that Johnson had been chastened enough, especially with the November 1868 election in the near future.

Turning to the Trump case, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated impeachment hearings in September 2019 after a whistleblower reported questionable activity surrounding the President’s interactions with the government of Ukraine. Several witnesses have now testified that Trump withheld Congressionally authorized defense aid for Ukraine–and a highly coveted White House visit by the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky–in return for a public announcement of an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. Hunter Biden, son of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, sat on Burisma’s board between 2014 and 2019. If Ukraine’s President were to announce an investigation into the Bidens, it would undoubtedly cast a cloud over Joe Biden’s Presidential prospects in 2020. Trump only released the withheld funds when the whistleblower report reached Congress, just days before Ukrainian President Zelensky was prepared to announce the “investigation” on CNN.

Specific impeachment charges for Trump may include violations of campaign finance law making it “illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election,”[10] or violation of the Impoundment Control Act governing distribution of Congressional funds.[11] Technically, soliciting foreign election help in the form of an “investigation announcement” would, in itself, be a crime. But it alone might not rise to the level of impeachable high crime. However, a quid pro quo between that announcement and withheld financial aid raises the matter to something akin to extortion or bribery, an obviously impeachable offense spelled out in the Constitution.

Trump’s defenders have argued that this is biased hearsay evidence, and since the Biden investigation was never announced, no quid pro quo occurred. They have claimed that trusted allies like Rudy Giuliani or Ambassador Gordon Sondland may have freelanced the operation. Trump’s defenders have also argued that he was legitimately trying to fight corruption in Ukraine by investigating a firm, Burisma, that has long come under scrutiny for corrupt behavior. As in the Johnson impeachment, the primary issue is malign intent. Just as Johnson’s counsel argued that his violation of the Tenure of Office Act was mostly accidental and procedural, Trump defenders will likely argue that his intent was to carry out his Constitutional responsibilities to manage foreign policy as he sees fit.

For all of these reasons, House investigators have sought evidence of Trump’s direct involvement and willingness to follow through until caught by the whistleblower and Congress. To show corrupt and malign intent, the House has argued that Trump’s use of back-channel communications, his refusal to discuss Ukrainian corruption in any other context, and, most importantly, his demand that President Zelensky announce an investigation into the Bidens on CNN, all demonstrate corrupt intent to turn foreign policy into a “domestic political errand.”[12] Further, the ongoing threat to continue soliciting foreign interference is precisely what convinced so many reluctant Democrats to support impeachment. Impeachment serves as a preventative measure against future foreign election interference, much the same as it did for Johnson, forestalling any continued interference with Reconstruction.

Like with the Johnson case, Trump’s impeachment involves both technical matters of law and broader political contexts. The President will need defense counsel of the quality that served Andrew Johnson, both to refute the impeachment articles in the Senate and to offer the general public talking points for the President’s defense.

As a final note, we should be careful about predicting an outcome in the Senate based on partisanship. The partisan makeup of the Senate in 1868 portended certain conviction for Andrew Johnson. Instead he was acquitted by a single vote. The partisan makeup of the Senate in 2019 suggests certain acquittal. But if the House managers’ case is powerful enough, and the defense case weak and disjointed, the Senate may surprise us all, as it did in 1868.

 

[1] Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “There has been no President in the history of our Country who has been treated so badly as I have. The Democrats are frozen with hatred and fear. They get nothing done. This should never be allowed to happen to another President. Witch Hunt!” Twitter post, September 25, 2019 (7:24AM EST), https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1176819645699043328.

[2] Supplement to the Congressional Globe Containing the Proceedings of the Senate Sitting for the Trial of Andrew Johnson, 40th Cong., 2nd Sess., 3–5.

[3] The best analyses of the impeachment and trial of President Johnson are Brenda Wineapple, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (New York: Random House, 2019) and Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973). Readers can also consult an earlier Muster post, Patrick Rael, “By the Standard of Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment, Trump’s Would Be a No-Brainer,” Muster (blog), The Journal of the Civil War Era, September 1, 2017, https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2017/09/by-standard-of-johnsons-impeachment-trumps-no-brainer/.

[4] Trial of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, before the Senate of the United States, on impeachment by the House of Representatives for high crimes and misdemeanors (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868), 88, 147. Hereafter cited as Trial.

[5] An Act Regulating the Tenure of Certain Civil Offices, 14 Stat. 430-432 (1867).

[6] Benedict, 58-59.

[7] Wineapple, 325.

[8] Trial, 364.

[9] Gregory Downs, “Impeachment is the right call even if the Senate keeps President Trump in office,” Washington Post, October 7, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/10/07/impeachment-is-right-call-even-if-senate-keeps-president-trump-office/.

[10] Contributions and Donations by Foreign Nationals (a), 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (2002).

[11] Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, 2 U.S.C. § 601-688 (1974).

[12] Andrew E. Kramer, “Ukraine’s Zelensky Bowed to Trump’s Demands, Until Luck Spared Him,” New York Times, November 7, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/world/europe/ukraine-trump-zelensky.html; Fiona Hill, National Security Counsel official, made the “domestic political errand” comment in her testimony on November 21, 2019. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/21/he-was-being-involved-domestic-political-errand-fiona-hills-take-gordon-sondland-annotated/.

Aaron Astor

Aaron Astor is Associate Professor of History at Maryville College in Tennessee. He is the author of Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri (LSU Press, 2012) and The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau (History Press, 2015). He is currently at work on a book on the 1860 Presidential election as a grassroots phenomenon from the perspective of four American communities.

Editor’s Note: December 2019 Issue

Editor’s Note: December 2019 Issue

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Federalism in the Civil War Era

This special issue focuses on the role of federalism in the Civil War era, primarily in the years before the war. Federalism—or the distribution of power among different governing bodies—defined how most nineteenth-century Americans understood their relationship to the government, both in theory and in practice.[1] These men and women did not simply interact with the government and the law; rather, they were forced to navigate the complex relationships and overlapping authorities among the various governing bodies and regulations that made up the federal system.

Until recently, Civil War–era political and legal historians primarily viewed federalism as a binary—as the relationship between the federal government and the states. There is good reason for this: the two most pressing elements of the study of federalism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been the meaning of “states’ rights” in the conflict between northern and southern states and the role of the Civil War in producing the modern nation-state. This first emphasis comes from a desire to slay continuing Lost Cause dragons. Since the late years of the Civil War, Confederates and their defenders attempted to shift the meaning of the war from a conflict over slavery to one over the equality and sovereignty of the states. States’ rights, they argued, motivated white southerners to leave the union and caused the Confederacy’s downfall. No one captured this idea more distinctly than Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who later claimed he had told a colleague in 1864, “If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, ‘Died of a Theory.’”[2]

Historians have thoroughly dismantled the idea that Confederates fought primarily for a constitutional theory of states’ rights. Some have argued that white southerners only used states’ rights rhetorically, when it suited their political purposes. These historians often point to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act—the single biggest expansion of federal power in the prewar period—and white southerners’ efforts to enact a federal slave code as evidence of states’ rights hypocrisy.[3] More recently, scholars have emphasized the power of white southerners within the federal government and, conversely, how white northerners relied on their own states’ rights arguments in fighting against slavery.[4] While legal and constitutional historians remain interested in how conflicts between state and federal power manifested in the prewar period, all agree that any states’ rights arguments that Confederates made were grounded in concerns about the peculiar institution.[5]

Historians who have studied Confederate governance have also shown just how problematic Davis’s quip remains. These scholars emphasize how quickly the Confederacy centralized in the Civil War years.[6] Their work has contributed to a second emphasis of scholarship on American federalism: the creation of the modern nation state. Works concerned with the growing power of Congress and executive bureaucracy in the Civil War and postwar years abound.[7] Since the 1990s, scholars influenced by political science have pushed back on the idea that the Civil War revolutionized the role of the federal government, emphasizing the expansive nature of the State—both at the federal and state level—in the antebellum period.[8]

In recent years, new directions in the study of federalism have begun to take shape. A group of legal scholars has shifted the word’s meaning beyond the federal-state binary to highlight the interactions among local, state, and federal powers and the prevalence of intersecting legal authorities. This new definition has allowed for key insights into the ways Americans understood and engaged with the federal system, particularly in the Revolutionary era and the twentieth century.[9] Yet this new work also presents an opportunity for Civil War–era historians to reinvestigate how governance operated during our period. Thus, the articles in this issue examine federalism from multiple angles and investigate how the structures of the federal system had significant consequences for how Americans engaged with the most pressing problems of the period.

The importance of understanding the role of local governance in American federalism is critical to Laura Edwards’s essay on how women participated in the public order in the period before the Civil War. As Edwards shows, assuming federalism consists only of the binary relationship between states and the federal government has clouded our ability to see the myriad ways that women navigated and engaged with the “overlapping jurisdictions” of law from the Revolution to the Civil War. This broad understanding of federalism allows Edwards to reevaluate a generation of historiographical conclusions about women’s marginalization from the law—including her own previous scholarship.

Politicians interested in harnessing the power of their voters for partisan or ideological purposes also had to think about the intricacies of the federal system from bottom to top and vice versa. Both Matthew Karp and Jack Furniss show how the antebellum Republican Party was remarkably attuned to the complexities of federalism. Like Edwards, Karp extends the importance of federalism beyond the states to consider the relationship between local and federal issues. As he explains, local vigilance committees—“extralegal” local entities that were key to the workings of antebellum federalism—helped shape Republicans’ antislavery commitment on the national level. Furniss highlights the flexibility of party officials in answering state concerns as a natural element of partisan politicking. With no standardized election cycle or polling spaces for the various local, state, and federal offices, partisans worked overtime to adapt party ideologies to each electoral contest in order to appeal to potential swing voters. The party system, Furniss shows us, mirrored the federal system of governance. Together, Karp and Furniss reveal how the feedback loops of the federal system required partisans to pay attention to how local, state, and federal concerns interacted, both in traditional and nontraditional government spaces.

The importance of the states as sovereign entities—outside of conflicts with the federal government—was also important to Civil War–era federalism, as the essays by William Blair and Kate Masur demonstrate. Blair takes up the relationships among race, poverty, and immigration in evaluating how the Pennsylvania legislature adjusted its voting regulations in the 1830s. Propertied white Pennsylvanians were worried not only about black voters but also the potential for these men to join with “transient newcomers” and “vagrants.” Masur takes a fresh look at the familiar case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), which invalidated Pennsylvania’s personal liberty law. While this case is best known for its connection to antebellum debates over slavery, Masur illustrates how Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s opinion is critical to understanding bigger questions of a state’s right to regulate its population. By reexamining controversies over slavery as part of broader conversation about police powers, migration, and poverty, Masur shows how committed northerners were to state sovereignty. Ultimately, looking at state power and politics through the lens of federalism, as the pieces by Blair and Masur do, provides a fuller picture of how race and class interacted in the Civil War era.

Americans’ understanding of federalism also extended beyond national concerns. In the final essay, Frank Towers places the U.S. debate over the intricacies of federalism in a broader conversation about divided sovereignty in world affairs. He shows how American ideas about states’ rights were actually consistent with a search for empire, even as the relationship between U.S. federalism and the nation shifted from the Early Republic through the post–Civil War years. In fact, many Americans’ fears of “consolidation” by the national government corresponded well with incorporating new territories into the polity; states’ rights advocates considered a diverse collection of homogenous entities a strength.

Overall, by engaging the federal system in serious ways, these essays upend much of what we know about key elements of American governance in the period before the Civil War, from women’s political roles to partisan politics and from the relationship between immigration, poverty, and race to theories of empire. Yet, the articles that follow are not the final word on Civil War–era federalism—far from it. They are meant to be a starting point, to inspire more scholars of the period to think creatively about the ways Americans engaged with the federal system—politically, legally, and beyond.

 

[1] Sara Mayeux and Karen Tani emphasize the importance of “federalism in practice” in “Federalism Anew,” American Journal of Legal History 128 (March 2016): 128–38. The authors borrow “federalism in practice” from Harry N. Scheiber and Malcolm M. Feeley in Power Divided: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Federalism (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of Governmental Studies, 1989), vii. I am grateful to Kate Masur for directing me to this piece.

[2] Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols. (Boston: D. Appleton & Co., 1881), 1:518.

[3] See for example Leonard Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000); Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Eric Foner has published several popular pieces on this point, including “When the South Wasn’t Such a Fan of States’ Rights,” Politico, January 23, 2015, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/underground-railroad-states-rights-114536.

[4] See for example, Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016); Michael E. Woods, “’Tell Us Something about State Rights’: Northern Republicans, States’ Rights, and the Coming of the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era 7 (June 2017): 242–68; and Stephen Engle, Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union’s War Governors (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

[5] See Forrest McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); Don E. Fehrenbacher, Sectional Crisis and Southern Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995).

[6] The classic work on this subject is Richard Bensel’s Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Also see Michael Brem Bonner, Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016).

[7] See for example Leonard Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation in the First Civil War Congress (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968) and Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

[8] See, for example, William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113 (June 2008): 752–72; Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Richard John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

[9] Mayeux and Tani, “Federalism Anew,” outlines a great number of new works on federalism from the founding period to the present. Yet, in their excellent piece, there is a conspicuous absence of citations to new work on the period between the Early Republic and Reconstruction, illustrating that there are many avenues left to be explored by Civil War–era scholars. Also see Andrew Shankman, “Toward a Social History of Federalism: The State and Capitalism to and from the American Revolution,” Journal of the Early Republic 37 (Winter 2017): 615–53, Laura F. Edwards, “Sarah Allingham’s Sheet and Other Lessons from Legal History,” Journal of the Early Republic 38 (Spring 2018): 121–47, and Edwards’s essay in this issue, “The Legal World of Elizabeth Bagby’s Commonplace Book: Federalism, Women, and Governance,” 504–23.

Rachel Shelden

Rachel Shelden is an Associate Professor of American History at Penn State University, specializing in the long Civil War Era. Her research and teaching interests include slavery and abolition, the Civil War, the U.S. South, and political and constitutional history. She is the author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, & the Coming of the Civil War (UNC, 2013), which received honorable mention for the Wiley-Silver Prize for the best first book on the American Civil War. She is also co-editor, with Gary Gallagher, of A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History (Virginia, 2012).

Honoring and Remembering Indigenous Civil War Veterans in Public Spaces

Honoring and Remembering Indigenous Civil War Veterans in Public Spaces

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Artist rendering by Harvey Pratt/Butzer Architects and Urbanism, illustration by Skyline Ink. Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the National Native American Veterans Memorial was held on September 21, 2019—the fifteen-year anniversary of the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The memorial will be located on the grounds of the NMAI on the National Mall. The ceremony included the presentation of the colors by the U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard, speeches, a blessing of the ground before the groundbreaking, and, in closing, an honor song by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Singers.[1] The finished memorial—the Warrior’s Circle of Honor—will consist of a steel circle standing on a stone drum with water-flowing off of the drum, surrounded by lances where visitors can tie prayer cloths. The artist, Harvey Pratt, hopes his design will create a sacred place of “healing and comfort” for visitors, especially veterans.[2]

Pratt is a multimedia artist and forensic artist. He is also a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam and a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. The memorial is meant to honor Indigenous veterans from the American Revolution through the present—a goal Congresswoman Deb Haaland commented on in her speech during the groundbreaking. Haaland’s parents both served in the U.S. Armed Forces. Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, and Congresswoman Sharice Davids (also the daughter of a veteran) were the first Native American women elected to Congress. At the groundbreaking ceremony, Haaland emphasized that “Native Americans have served the nation’s military at a higher rate than any other group of people and have participated in every major U.S. military encounter since the Revolutionary War, yet Native American veterans and their contributions to our country have largely gone unrecognized throughout history. But we’re going to change that with the installation of this wonderful memorial. Our country owes a great deal of gratitude to the Native American community.” [3] Haaland briefly mentioned the Civil War, along with the American Revolution and the War of 1812, before talking about Indigenous contributions to twentieth-century conflicts. The National Native American Veterans Memorial has been a long time in the making with veterans, activists, and supporters arguing for a space to honor Native American veterans.

As part of these larger efforts to specifically recognize the military service and contributions of Native Americans, Indigenous individuals and nations have worked for Native Civil War veterans to be honored and remembered. In May 2010, descendants of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) soldiers in Company K of the First Michigan Sharpshooters traveled to Andersonville, Georgia, to honor seven Anishinaabe soldiers who died at Camp Sumter. The seven Anishinaabe men who died at Andersonville were part of a group of fifteen Company K soldiers captured at Petersburg in June 1864. Members of the Anishinabe Ogitchedaw Veteran and Warrior Society conducted a drum ceremony, sang a Mukwa (bear) song, and saluted the graves of the soldiers.[4]

Andersonville is not the only Civil War site where Company K men have been honored and remembered. In December 2010, Company K descendants and tribal representatives traveled to Petersburg, Virginia, to honor and recognize American Indian soldiers buried at Poplar Grove National Cemetery (including graves of Brothertown Indians and Menominee).[5] Eric Hemenway, who is currently the Director of the Department of Repatriation, Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, was one of the tribal representatives honoring Anishinaabe soldiers at Poplar Grove. Hemenway also attended a July 2014 commemoration of the Battle of the Crater, where Company K men fought.[6] Hemenway has researched and talked about Company K in multiple venues, working towards recognition of the participation of the Anishinaabek from Michigan in the Civil War. He argues that their story is important to understanding the Civil War, and he stresses their contribution to the Union war effort despite not being United States citizens.[7] The National Park Service has acknowledged the specific contributions of American Indians to the Civil War, releasing a collaborative book in 2013 to help educate the public.[8] There are plans and conversations at specific sites to facilitate collaborations between the NPS and several tribes in order to remember and honor Indigenous peoples who participated in the Civil War.

In the late 1860s, government officials sometimes remarked on the Civil War service of American Indian veterans. The U.S. Indian Agent for the Mackinac Agency, Richard Smith, wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs about “our Indians.” Smith estimated 196 Native men from the Mackinac Agency enlisted in the Union army. “Very much to their credit and praise it is to be mentioned, that when offered an opportunity of engaging in the military service of the country, they promptly and cheerfully came forward and assumed all the duties and responsibilities of the soldier.” In common rhetoric for a nineteenth-century government official, Smith noted that “these men who have thus periled their lives for their country deserve none the less of that country because of the tawny color of their skins.” Smith goes on in the following paragraphs to request “special attention” for the “land matter of the Indians of this agency.”[9] Service in the Civil War was mentioned occasionally in other correspondence related to land and politics in Michigan. Drawing attention to Anishinaabe Methodists and their contributions to the war, an 1866 report underscored: “These people are patriots as well. This mission [Pine River], was represented in the noble army of the Union. Some of their numbers went forth to return no more…. They fell in the conflict, and are now sleeping in honorable and honored graves on the battlefields of the republic.”[10] The Anishinaabek and government officials used similar rhetoric when negotiating citizenship after the war. While returning veterans were noted by government officials, many of the promises related to land were not fulfilled. As Hemenway has recounted in numerous interviews, the Anishinaabe members of Company K who returned home “were dealing with the same discrimination and same issues that were plaguing Native communities before they left.”[11]

The First Michigan Sharpshooters monument outside of the Michigan State Capitol was authorized by the state legislature in 1915. Photo by author.

Anishinaabe veterans took part in reunions and remembrances of their Civil War service. Veteran Francis Tabasash gave a speech about the war and his exploits at an event attended by the Indian agent for the Mackinac Agency. An account of the event calls it a “war-dance” but does not provide details about the context, participants, or attendees.[12] Tabasash may also have participated in Memorial Day parades. Upon Tabasash’s death, a newspaper reported that “[a]fter the war he returned to his farm, and his stooped form and gray hair were always seen in the soldiers’ parade here [Harbor Springs] on Memorial Day. He was the oldest member of the local G.A.R..”[13] Some Anishinaabe veterans joined the Grand Army of the Republic and took part in G.A.R. events, as well as regimental reunions. As part of the First Michigan Sharpshooters, Anishinaabe soldiers are memorialized with the First Michigan Sharpshooters monument outside of the Michigan State Capitol. They have been remembered in multiple ceremonies, talks, and discussions across Michigan by descendants, tribal nations, and outside researchers. The honoring of Native American veterans on the National Mall will be another step toward acknowledging the service of Native Americans in the Civil War, which is just one part of the larger contribution Native Americans have made to the U.S. Armed Forces.

[1] Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), “The Groundbreaking Ceremony for the National Native American Veterans Memorial,” YouTube, September 26, 2019, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64CV5wkkkg.

[2] Harvey Pratt, “Meet Your Designers 4— National Native American Veterans Memorial,” YouTube, February 7, 2018, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sPA3bBchUw.

[3] Congresswoman Deb Haaland, “The Groundbreaking Ceremony for the National Native American Veterans Memorial,” YouTube, September 26, 2019, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64CV5wkkkg. Also quoted in Rosemary Stephens, “Breaking Ground for the National Native American Veterans Memorial,” Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal Tribune, October 1, 2019, 1 and 7. Accessed November 10, 2019, https://cheyenneandarapaho-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Oct.-1-2019.pdf.

[4] David B. Schock, Kookoosh Roger Williams Kchinodin, and Chris Czopek, The Road to Andersonville [film], Penultimate, Ltd., 2013.

[5] Major Jo Ann P. Schedler, “Wisconsin American Indians in the Civil War,” in American Indians and the Civil War ed. Robert K. Sutton and John A. Latschar (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2013), 86.

[6] Jim Burnett, “American Indians in the Civil War? Petersburg National Battlefield is Part of the Story,” National Parks Traveler, December 17, 2010, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2010/12/american-indians-civil-war-petersburg-national-battlefield-part-story7361 and Thomas Duvernay, “Retracing the Footsteps of their Ancestor, A Member of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters,” Odawa Trails, October 2014, 6. Accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.ltbbodawa-nsn.gov/newspaper/2014/October2014.pdf.

[7] Eric Hemenway and Sammye Meadows, “Soldiers in the Shadows: Company K, 1st Michigan Sharpshooters,” in American Indians and the Civil War, 48.

[8] Robert K. Sutton and John A. Latschar, eds., American Indians and the Civil War (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2013).

[9] Richard M. Smith to Dennis N. Cooley, October 30, 1865, in Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1865 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), 452-453.

[10] The Forty-Seventh Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the Year 1865 (New York: The Society, 1866), 121.

[11] Eric Hemenway and Steve Ostrander, Stateside/Michigan Radio NPR, “The Story of Company K: Native Americans from Michigan who saw Tough Action in the Civil War,” August 23, 2017, accessed November 10, 2019, https://www.michiganradio.org/post/story-company-k-native-americans-michigan-who-saw-tough-action-civil-war.

[12] Andrew J. Blackbird to James W. Long, December 12, 1869, in Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives Microfilm 234, Reel 408.

[13] “Indian Veteran Dead,” Grand Rapids News, November 23, 1912, 5.

Michelle Cassidy

Michelle Cassidy is assistant professor of history at Central Michigan University. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 2016. Her current project emphasizes the importance of American Indian military service to discussions of race and citizenship during the Civil War era. She has presented her research at numerous conferences and has published an article in the Michigan Historical Review.

Removing Slavery from Westward Expansion: Two Case Studies of Public Memorials in Missouri

Removing Slavery from Westward Expansion: Two Case Studies of Public Memorials in Missouri

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The town of Marthasville, Missouri, is located about forty-five miles west of St. Louis. The oldest town in Warren County, Marthasville today is a quiet place with fertile farmland, a lakeside resort, and numerous wineries. Although I have lived in Missouri most of my life, I had never been to this place until fairly recently. I quickly discovered that residents of Marthasville are proud of their history. Dotted throughout this rural landscape are numerous historical markers celebrating the life of Daniel Boone—whose original gravesite was located two miles from downtown Marthasville—and the voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Another historical marker explaining the history of Marthasville notes that the town was founded by Dr. John Young, who purchased more than 500 acres of land and named the town after his first wife, Martha.

It soon dawned upon me, however, that something was missing from this landscape. Dr. Young’s name rang a bell in my head, and at first I struggled to remember where I had heard his name. But then it hit me: Dr. John Young was a wealthy settler from Kentucky who had owned a large number of enslaved African Americans. The most notable of these African Americans was William Wells Brown, the famous abolitionist who went on to become a prolific writer and the country’s first black novelist with his 1853 book, Clotel.

A historical marker detailing the early history of Marthasville, Missouri, that fails to mention the famous abolitionist William Wells Brown, who lived in the town from 1817 to 1825. Photo courtesy of the author.

Of the seventeen years in which John Young owned Brown, eight of them (1817-1825) were spent in Marthasville. As Brown’s biographer Ezra Greenspan notes, Brown’s experiences distinguished him from other African American antislavery activists before the Civil War because he “grew in maturity as a participant in the great frontier drama unfolding across the interior of nineteenth-century North America. Move by move, he and his relatives were pushed westward . . . their master following the footsteps of Boone and other pioneer settlers.”[1] And yet, visitors to Marthasville today would have no idea that one of the country’s earliest civil rights leaders—a man that contemporaries compared to the likes of William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass—had spent a number of his formative years in this small town.

Brown is not the only African American missing from the story of westward expansion in Missouri. In the city of St. Charles—a nearby suburb of St. Louis that lies on the Missouri River—a statue depicting Lewis and Clark figures prominently in a local park along the riverfront. Positioned in between the two men is “Seaman,” a dog that had been purchased by Lewis and accompanied the Corps of Discovery for the entire duration of their three-year trip. Notably absent from the monument is York, an enslaved man owned by William Clark who also accompanied the Corps of Discovery and played an important role as a scout, trader, and caretaker for the expedition. As far as I can tell, there are at least ten historical sites throughout the United States with monuments or statues that either depict or mention Seaman, while York only has two statues: in Louisville, Kentucky, and Portland, Oregon (Yorks Islands in Broadwater County, Montana, are also named for York).[2] The fact that a dog in the Corps of Discovery has more statues in his honor than an enslaved man (or any Indigenous people associated with the expedition) speaks volumes about the ways Americans have chosen to remember the interconnected stories of westward expansion, colonialism, and slavery before the Civil War.

The Lewis and Clark Monument and accompanying text in St. Charles, Missouri. Photo courtesy of the author.

A few conclusions can be drawn from these two historical icons in Missouri. First, while towns and cities throughout the United States frequently celebrate their “founders” and other early settlers through monuments and historical markers, the underlying historical actors who played their own roles in shaping the history of westward expansion—enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, and/or women who may have accompanied their white husbands in their travels—are often left out of the story. “Founders” monuments and historical markers often celebrate the image of heroic, “self-made” men who braved the dangers of a new frontier and helped create a new nation. That these same men contributed to growing conflicts over slavery’s westward expansion and eventual civil war is a point often ignored when told in a public history setting.

One reason for this silence is explained by my second conclusion: while historians have covered all aspects of slavery in the Deep South and Mid-Atlantic regions in recent years, the same cannot be said about slavery in the West. In her 2009 publication Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier, Lea VanderVelde argued that “although there is a very important increasing body of scholarship about antebellum southern slavery . . . there has been very little scholarship about frontier slaves.”[3] In the ten years since VanderVelde’s publication a range of studies has more closely examined slavery in wide ranging places such as the Northwest territory, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, and California.[4] Nevertheless there remains much work to bridge the gap and better demonstrate the interconnected history of westward expansion, slavery, and the Civil War. As Kristen Epps argues in her book Slavery on the Periphery, “enslaved emigrants found themselves participating in a westward movement designed to continue their enslavement on a structural level as well as a personal one.”[5]

How does your local community commemorate westward expansion in its public memorials? Let us know in the comment section.

 

[1] Ezra Greenspan, William Wells Brown: An African American Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014), 12.

[2] “Seaman – Lewis’s Newfoundland Dog,” The Lewis and Clark Trail, 2011, accessed November 5, 2019, http://www.lewisandclarktrail.com/seaman.htm.

[3] Lea VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3.

[4] See Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010); Christopher P. Lehman, Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011); Kristen Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016); Dale Edwyna Smith, African Americans Lives in St. Louis, 1763-1865: Race, Slavery, and the West (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2017); William S. Kiser, Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018); Stacy L. Smith, Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle Over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

[5] Epps, Slavery on the Periphery, 15.

Nick Sacco

NICK SACCO is a public historian and writer based in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds a master’s degree in History with a concentration in Public History from IUPUI (2014). In the past he has worked for the National Council on Public History, the Indiana State House, the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center, and as a teaching assistant in both middle and high school settings. Nick recently had a journal article about Ulysses S. Grant’s relationship with slavery published in the September 2019 issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era. He has written several other journal articles, digital essays, and book reviews for a range of publications, including the Indiana Magazine of History, The Confluence, The Civil War Monitor, Emerging Civil War, History@Work, AASLH, and Society for U.S. Intellectual History. He also blogs regularly about history at his personal website, Exploring the Past. You can contact Nick at PastExplore@gmail.com.

“I Donte Want to Fight”: One Union Soldier’s Struggle with Duty

“I Donte Want to Fight”: One Union Soldier’s Struggle with Duty

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Sketch of James M. Jones, taken from Asa Bartlett’s History of the Twelfth Regiment. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.

James Madison Jones wanted nothing more than to be out of the U.S. Army. The young father had enlisted in the 12th New Hampshire Infantry in August 1862, but once he donned the blue uniform and left his family behind, Jones regretted his decision. He tried–and failed–to renege on his enlistment for the next eight months. But by April 1863, as the 12th New Hampshire prepared for a new campaign, Jones had seemingly given up. “I donte want you to worey about me,” the twenty-seven-year-old father of five wrote to his wife, Maria, “all i want you to do is to pray for me and pray in faith to the lord to hav mursey on me and spair my life.” “I hope and pray to the lord,” he continued, “he will sone [soon] bring this ware to a close and dliver me from this unholey place and send me home to you whare I can take some comfort.” Unfortunately, none of his heavenly pleas were answered. A week later Jones was dead, his life snuffed out by a shell at Chancellorsville.[1]

James M. Jones presents an intriguing case study; the sentimental or patriotic language that historians have traditionally used to suggest the ideological motivations of Civil War soldiers is notably absent from his correspondence. Jones’s anguished words instead portray a man who struggled to reconcile his conflicting obligations to both country and home.[2] This New Hampshire father’s difficulty in defining his soldierly duty – and his acute pining for his family – is a searing reminder of the impacts of military service on the well-being of families during the Civil War. Jones’s experience also shares a strong commonality with that of present-day American military families. “Although many service members anticipate deployments, eager for the opportunity to defend their country and utilize their training,” explains a 2016 RAND Corporation study of the effects of deployments on American military families, “few look forward to time separated from spouses and children.” There is little doubt that James Jones and his family would have agreed with those conclusions. A microstudy of Jones’s struggle to fulfill both his patriotic and familial duties therefore helps us establish a tangible link to the past. The benefit is not only a more empathetic understanding of the wartime experiences of Civil War soldiers, but also of the challenges military families face in our own society.[3]

James Jones was a shoemaker living in the town of Alton, a community on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, when he enlisted in Company A of the 12th New Hampshire Infantry in the summer of 1862. It is not exactly clear why he joined, but considering that fifty-nine men—including his brother Charles—enlisted in the same company, social pressures from his community might have played a role in his decision. Jones already had three young children at home, with Maria expecting another by the end of the year, so the promise of a steady paycheck may also have been alluring for the young father.[4]

Alton Bay, New Hampshire, c. 1890s. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

But Private Jones almost immediately regretted his decision to enlist. Soon after arriving in Washington, D.C., Jones wrote his parents a letter full of longing for home. “You donte know how mutch i think of you all,” he scribbled from their camp on Arlington Heights. “I dremt of my famley last night i thought they came to see me and i wanted to [be] home with [them] and then i waked up.” The despair is even more palpable in Jones’s letters to Maria. “I would giv all that i hav got in the world if onley [to] bee at home with you and the Children but i cant so i will try to bee conted [content],” he wrote in December 1862. “I wish i could put my arms around you all,” he continued, “and hav a kis from you all i hope and trust the time will soon come when i can.”

Things got worse for James when Maria gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl) sometime in January 1863. Jones was frustrated at his inability to play the role of a new father. “I drempet last night i was at home and i thought i see the babyes and they was fat as hogs,” he told his wife not long after hearing about their birth. He recommended they name the boy after himself, and the girl Francis Caroline. If Maria did not like the names, Jones told her to “rite and let me no and i will try a gain.” In February 1863, while languishing in the cold at Falmouth, Virginia, Jones told Maria that “i think a grate deal about you and the children and i dremt that i was at home with you last night and see the babyes i wish that dream would com to pass sone [soon] donte you?”[5]

Unlike so many inexperienced Civil War soldiers, Jones was not naïve about what awaited him in combat. “I hope that we shant see eney battle a tall for i donte want to fight,” he wrote in October 1862. When the 12th New Hampshire first came under enemy fire during the battle of Fredericksburg in December, Jones’s courage understandably failed him. He abandoned his regiment and escaped to the safety of the rear. Jones’s regiment court-martialed him for desertion from duty while in front of the enemy and sentenced him to one month without pay. Although he dejectedly returned to the ranks, the traumatic battlefield experience convinced Jones that he needed to somehow find a way home.[6]

Sometime around Christmas of 1862, Jones tried to convince his younger brother, Samuel (who went by his middle name, Estwick) to take his place. Jones desperately offered “Eck” two hundred dollars (with one hundred and fifty dollars down), in addition to all of his bounty money and even his watch, to take over as his substitute. This incredibly generous offer – from a soldier who only made thirteen dollars a month and had six mouths to feed at home – affirms Jones’s desperation. “If it wont for my little famley i woodent give half so mutch to git of but i am in a worrey all of the time,” he told Maria. Jones became bitter when his brother would not bite on the offer, complaining to his wife that Eck would “dreather for me to stay hear and die than to do it for me.”

His next tactic was to declare family hardship. “Git moather to rite a letter for you over to Concord to the Govner,” he wrote to Maria in March 1863, “and tell him about how your case is and tell him all about your little children and that you cant take cair of them alone and tell him that he will col me home and you will pay him back the bounty that i drawed from the state.” If he had originally enlisted for the money, it was now clearly the last thing on Jones’s mind.[7]

Despite the candor of his letters, Jones still carefully guarded his intentions to leave the Army. “Donte let eney body no that i want to come home you must minde and not git bolde,” he warned Maria. He cautioned her not to “let eney body else see this,” because Jones feared the news would “go like hot cakes” at home and in the regiment. To publicly fail in his homecoming efforts, Jones would leave both himself and his family open to ridicule from their community for rebuking his commitment to his fellow soldiers and country. The bliss in returning home to his family, however, would likely have been worth the shame of evading his duty as a soldier.[8]

Chancellorsville battlefield. Jones was killed somewhere in the woods in front of the cannon. Photo courtesy of the author.

But James Jones never succeeded in leaving the Army on his own terms. By April 1863 he had given up; all that remained for him was to accept the consequences of his enlistment and reconcile his failures with himself. In one of his final letters home, Jones outwardly tried to do just this. He reasoned to his wife that if he had actually been successful in his efforts to get out of the Army, he would not “Git it paid up” and Maria “would haft to lose all the money that [she] hav got.” He therefore told her that he thought “it is best to let it rest for the present.” But had he actually personally reconciled his conflicting obligations to his nation, community, and family?[9]

As his regiment crossed over the Rappahannock River to offer battle to the Army of Northern Virginia, Jones still feared the consequences of his military commitment. “[He] had told me that he should be killed in this battle,” Sergeant O.F. Davis recalled years later, “and while we were lying by the brook [at Chancellorsville] a bullet struck between him and me, and I said ‘guess they mean us.’” As Davis remembered it, Jones was incredulous that the sergeant would “speak so heedlessly in the face of death” because he expected every bullet to be his “death messenger.” As the regiment advanced into a belt of woods atop a low ridge that morning, Jones was struck by a shell. According to those nearby, he remained standing long enough to reach into his pocket and remove his wallet and testament in an attempt to hand them to another nearby soldier. Before he could do so, Jones fell dead, his final message to Maria in his outstretched hands. In his final moments, James Jones’s duty remained to his family.[10]

The author would like to thank Marty Cornelissen and the Alton Historical Society for sharing the letters of James Jones and for assisting him in researching the 12th New Hampshire Infantry. The original letters are in the possession of a descendant, who self-published them. You can find the Alton Historical Society website at https://altonnhhistoricalsociety.org/.

 

[1] James Jones to Maria Jones, April 26, 1863, in James M. Jones III, ed., Civil War Letters of James M. Jones (Concord, NH: Town and Country Reprographics, 2008), 80-83.

[2] For a recent counterpoint to the well-entrenched historical interpretations concerning the motivations of Civil War soldiers, see William Marvel, Lincoln’s Mercenaries: Economic Motivation Among Union Soldiers During the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018).

[3] Sarah O. Meadows, Terri Tanielian, and Benjamin R. Karney, eds., The Deployment Life Study: Longitudinal Analysis of Military Families across the Deployment Cycle (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016), xvii.

[4] Asa Bartlett, History of the Twelfth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, Printer, 1897), 485. Also see Marvel, Lincoln’s Mercenaries for further elaboration on economic motivations of Union soldiers.

[5] James Jones to “Farther and Moather,” October 8, 1862, private collection of Marty Cornelissen, Alton Historical Society, Alton, NH; James Jones to Maria Jones, December 26, 1862, January 30, 1863, Civil War Letters, 35-38, 50-53.

[6] James Jones to Maria Jones, October 22, 1862, Civil War Letters, 24-27; 12th New Hampshire Infantry Regimental Order Book, March 15, 1863, RG 94, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC.

[7] James Jones to Maria Jones, January 30, 1863, April 1, 1863, March 15, 1863, Civil War Letters, 50-53, 74-77, 69-72.

[8] James Jones to Maria Jones, January 30, 1863, March 15, 1863, Civil War Letters, 50-53, 69-72; Peter Carmichael, The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 22.

[9] James Jones to Maria Jones, April 26, 1863, Civil War Letters, 80-83.

[10] Bartlett, History of the Twelfth Regiment, 345, 494.

Nathan Marzoli

Nathan A. Marzoli is a Staff Historian at the Air National Guard History Office, located on Joint-Base Andrews, Maryland. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he completed a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in history and museum studies at the University of New Hampshire. Mr. Marzoli’s primary research and writing interests focus on conscription in the Civil War North—specifically the relationships between civilians and Federal draft officials. He is the author of several articles in journals such as Army History and Civil War History, as well as numerous blog posts.

To Have and to Hold…or Not: Weddings, Independence, and the Civil War

To Have and to Hold…or Not: Weddings, Independence, and the Civil War

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“Record-Low Marriage Rate,” based on data from the Center for Disease Control’s National Vital Statistics System. Courtesy of economist Jay L. Zagorsky.

Even with the legalization of same-sex marriage, the U.S. marriage rate is the lowest it has been in at least 150 years, according to economist Jay Zagorsky of Boston University. Another recent study from Cornell University researchers concluded that the U.S. has “large deficits in the supply of potential male spouses.” Lead author of the article, Daniel T. Lichter, believes “marriage is still based on love, but it also is fundamentally an economic transaction. Many young men today have little to bring to the marriage bargain, especially as young women’s educational levels on average now exceed their male suitors.” Shortage of suitors or not, the marriage rate of millennials (defined as those born between 1981 and 1996) is most certainly lower than previous generations; in 1960, 72 percent of adults were married, while today the rate is 50 percent. Put together, these statistics suggest the institution of marriage is changing.[1]

From 1861 to 1865, marriage likewise seemed to be changing for those living through the Civil War. Some white southern women felt particularly worried that there would be few suitors left by the end of it all. In 1863, unmarried Ardella Brown lamented, “If I Can get any Body to have me you Shall get to a weding But there is nobody a Bout here only Some old widiwers for all the young men has gone to the army.” While some women would use the war as an excuse to delay marriage, the shortage of eligible men did worry others who intended to become wives and mothers. As historian Drew Gilpin Faust elegantly put it, “a married woman feared the loss of a particular husband; a single woman worried about forfeiting the more abstract possibility of any husband at all.” Not only was marriage a key component of ideal, nineteenth-century womanhood, for most southern white women, it also provided a clear societal position in this time of uncertainty.[2]

“Soldiers’ Cemetery, Alexandria, Va.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

And so, as a somewhat unexpected consequence of wartime death tolls rising, wedding bells rang. From Virginia, Judith McGuire believed there to be “a perfect mania on the subject of matrimony” during the war, writing that “some of the churches may be seen open and lighted almost every night for bridals, and wherever I turn I hear of marriages in prospect.” Another young woman, Esther Alden in South Carolina, reflected, “One looks at a man so differently when you think he may be killed to-morrow. Men whom up to this time I had thought dull and commonplace…seemed charming.” In a changing world, some women increased their dedication to seemingly unchanging institutions, like marriage.[3]

Women were not alone in this desire to marry; many young men also sought wartime weddings, wanting the reassurance of wives awaiting their return as they marched toward an undecided future. On July 2, 1861, Frank Schaller of the Twenty-Second Mississippi Infantry sent a letter to his “dearest Sophy” in South Carolina, writing, “Every day I feel more reluctant to go into an uncertain life without having the consciousness of being yours entirely…Now prepare for it. I am in earnest.” Not only did he believe, “I could fight better & do everything better” as a married man, he also reflected on her future, “Should I fall, you could have at least the satisfaction to be a soldiers widow who I trust will only die in honor. Besides, though I know you do not want me to tell you this, some pension would insure you the prospect of a humble but honorable existence.” Frank would be shot, but he ultimately survived the war. For Frank, it was not just about emotional stability, but also economic stability for Sophy.[4]

Frank was not alone in his urgency to secure the label of marriage – take Georgia Page King and William Duncan Smith’s story, in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. Just three months into his courtship he wrote, “A war is fast approaching. Oh Let me claim you as my own! Let me have the right to protect you, and shield you by my earnest love.” Realizing Georgia might object to their rushed courtship, he urged, “Do not let, oh! do not let, any slight obstacles, or conventionalities, prevent you from being mine as soon as you can. We know not what may happen!” They married July 9, 1861. William died in Georgia’s arms on October 4, 1862, after sixty-seven days of dysentery. In a time when everything seemed uncertain, and everyone seemed to be declaring independence, Georgia claimed her own in choosing to marry William. As she explained to her brother, “I feared that you all might not approve—but my heart relented.”[5]

Unexpected matches brought on by ambiguity and emotion reached even Abraham Lincoln’s family, with Elodie Todd, little sister of Mary Todd Lincoln. Elodie sent a letter to her future husband in May 1861, writing, “Ever since I can remember, I have been looked upon and called the ‘old maid’ of the family, and Mother seemed to think I was to be depended on to take care of her when all the rest of her handsomer daughters left her, and I really believe they all think I am committing a sin to give a thought to any other than the arrangements they have made for me.” They had just met in February. Elodie was twenty, he was thirty-two, twice-widowed, and the father of two little girls. It was an unlikely match, and a surprising proposal, made even more surprising when Elodie decided, “But as this is the age when Secession, Freedom, and Rights are asserted, I am claiming mine.” She married him the following year.[6]

“Marriage at the camp of the 7th N.J.V. Army of the Potomac, Va.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In 2019, women are more likely to claim independence not in the choice of marriage partner, but in the choice of marriage, period. Though the choices in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries may appear to be totally different, they are opposite avenues to the same path – choosing a future that best suits them. In a time of political and economic upheaval, some nineteenth-century women chose marriage in a search for stability, while today, some women delay marriage for similar reasons. If walking down the aisle, today many millennials do so with a combination of prenuptial agreements, cohabitation before marriage, and marriage at a later age (late twenties). Experts have also estimated that millennials are driving down the divorce rate as much as 24 percent since the 1980s. In short, fewer millennials are marrying, but those that do are staying married. While single white women of the Civil War era feared their chances for marriages would lessen, it turned out to be a false fear; “the vast majority (approximately 92 percent) of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives.” Today, with a percentage so much lower than this, it appears the institution of marriage is shifting again, with effects still to be seen.[7]

 

[1] Jay Zagorsky, “Why are Fewer People Getting Married,” The Conversation, 1 June 2016, https://theconversation.com/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married-60301; Daniel T. Lichter, Joseph P. Price, Jeffrey M. Swigert, “Mismatches in the Marriage Market,” Journal of Marriage and Family, 4 September 2019, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603; John Anderer, “Why are Marriage Rates Down? Study Blames Lack of ‘Economically-Attractive’ Men,” Study Finds, 5 September 2019, https://www.studyfinds.org/why-are-marriage-rates-down-study-blames-lack-of-economically-attractive-men/; Kim Parker and Renee Stepler, “As U.S. Marriage Rate Hovers at 50%, Education Gap in Marital Status Widens,” Pew Research Center, 14 September 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marriage-rate-hovers-at-50-education-gap-in-marital-status-widens/.

[2] This post keeps all spelling and phrasing quoted from documents in its original form without including [sic], except for on occasions when punctuation has been converted to modern-day notations. For elite white women, Confederate loyalty/service replaced many of the other qualifications, like wealth, manners, and family lineage, in evaluating the worth of a suitor, according to Anya Jabour, “Days of Lightly-won and Lightly-held Hearts: Courtship and Coquetry in the Southern Confederacy,” in Weirding the War: Stories from the Civil War’s Ragged Edges, ed. Stephen Berry (Athens: University of Georgia Press: 2011); Ardella Brown to Cynthia Blair, 20 May 1863, Blair Papers, Duke University, quoted in Anya Jabour, Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 270; Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 151.

[3] Judith W. McGuire, 8 January 1865, Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War by A Lady of Virginia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 329; Esther Alden, quoted in Francis Butler Simkins and James Welch Patton, The Women of the Confederacy (Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1936), 188.

[4] Frank Schaller, Soldiering For Glory: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Frank Schaller, Twenty-Second Mississippi Infantry, ed. Mary W. Schaller and Martin N. Schaller (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 44.

[5] William Duncan Smith, Savannah, to Georgia Page King, St. Simons, 10 April 1861, King and Wilder Family Papers [K-W Papers], 1817-1946, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia; Georgia Page King to Henry Lord Page King, 1 July 1861, K-W Papers, GHS.

[6] Elodie Todd to Nathaniel Dawson, 28 April 1861, quoted in Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder, eds., Practical Strangers: The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017), 22-24.

[7] Hillary Hoffower, “7 Ways Millennials are Changing Marriage, from Signing Prenups to Staying Together Longer than Past Generations,” Business Insider, 24 May 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-are-changing-marriage-divorce-weddings-prenups-2019-5#millennials-are-having-weddings-that-are-more-nontraditional-7; J. David Hacker, Libra Hilde, and James Holland Jones, “The Effect of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns,” The Journal of Southern History 76, no. 1 (February 2010): 42.

Angela Esco Elder

Angela Esco Elder is an assistant professor of history at Converse College. She earned her doctorate at the University of Georgia, and the following year she was the 2016-2017 Virginia Center for Civil War Studies postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech. Her research explores gender, emotion, family, and trauma in the Civil War Era South. She is the co-editor of Practical Strangers: The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln.

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