Circa1865

Independence the Fulfillment of American Nationalism

“The nationalist movement with which the American Confederacy most frequently identified with was- paradoxically yet logically – the American War of Independence. A central contention of Confederate nationalism, as it emerged in 1861, was that the South’s effort represented a continuation of the struggle of 1776.

The South, Confederates insisted, was the legitimate heir of the American revolutionary tradition. Betrayed by Yankees who had perverted the true meaning of the Constitution, the revolutionary heritage could be preserved only by secession. Southerners portrayed their drive for independence as the fulfillment of American nationalism.

Evidence of this self-image abounded in the new nation. The figure of Virginian George Washington adorned the Confederacy’s national seal and one of the earliest postage stamps; Jefferson Davis chose to be inaugurated at the base of a statue of Washington on the latter’s birthday in 1862; a popular ballad hailed the new president as “our second Washington.”

Songsters used by soldiers and civilians alike were filled with evocations of past glories such as the battles of Cowpens and Yorktown – events, like the figure of Washington himself, at once American and Southern.

“Rebels before,

Our fathers of yore, Rebel’s the righteous name Washington bore.

Why, then, be ours the same.”   

(The Creation of Southern Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. Drew Gilpin Faust. LSU Press, 1988. Pp. 14-15)

The first of Richmond’s 1861-1865 patriot memorials was that to Stonewall Jackson, dedicated in 1875. The impressive statue was “presented by English gentlemen” who greatly admired “the soldier and patriot” whose deeds it commemorated. Fifteen years would elapse before the impoverished American South could manage to provide a similar memorial to Robert E. Lee.  Of note, though colored militia units did not participate in the Lee Monument parade, they had marched in the funeral procession two days earlier in honor of Gen. George Pickett.

The sculptor of the Lee monument was Jean Antoine Mercie’ was a graduate of the Paris Ecole de Beaux Arts and acclaimed throughout Europe. He also sculpted the Marquis de Lafayette Monument at Baltimore in 1891, and the Francis Scott Key monument at Baltimore in 1911. The Lincoln government arrested the latter’s grandson, a newspaper editor, in May 1861.

Robert E. Lee Monument at Richmond

“[The] Unveiling of the Lee equestrian statue at Richmond in 1890, on what later became Monument Avenue, was an event to which the South had been looking forward almost since the close of hostilities. Raising the money to pay for it was one problem, and calming the rivalry between two organizations that wanted to take the lead in raising it was another. There were also disagreements concerning the design.

The first competition awarded the contract to a “Yankee” sculptor from Ohio. This aroused the Confederate ire of the always bellicose General [Jubal] Early, who wrote [Virginia] Governor Fitzhugh Lee that “if the statue of General Lee is erected after that model,” he (Early) would “get together all the surviving members of the Second Corps and blow it up with dynamite.”

So, another competition was held, and the model submitted by Jean Antoine Mercie’ of France was chosen. This statue, showing Lee seated on Traveller, was received with universal satisfaction. When it arrived from Europe, hundreds of veterans and others turned out and pulled it with ropes to the site at what is today the intersection of Allen and Monument Avenues.

The unveiling went off without a hitch. There were fifteen thousand Confederate veterans in the parade, fifty generals in grey among them, along with ten thousand other citizens. The procession took two hours to pass by.”

(The Last Review: The Confederate Reunion, Richmond 1932. Virginius Dabney. Algonquin Books, 1984, pg. 7)

Robert E. Lee gained his fundamental understanding of the US Constitution while at West Point, that the States were superior to their federal agent in Washington. It is important to note that the word “union” first appears in the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” (which 11 of the 13 States seceded from in 1787).  Two additional States seceded two years later. The 1789 Constitution’s text was prefaced with “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union . . .” The 1861 Constitution of the Confederate States of America began: “We the People of the Confederate States, each acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government . . .”

No Other Course but Dishonor

“Among Lee’s professors at West Point was the distinguished jurist William Rawle, a Pennsylvanian and author of A View of the Constitution of the United States of America (1829), a book that formed the basis of many of Rawle’s lectures. It is likely that cadet Lee became quite familiar with Rawle’s view that the Union was not a compact into which the States had entered irrevocably. Rawle wrote:

“It depends on [the State] itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle upon which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases the right to determine how they will be governed.”

The newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, had offered Lee, still only a colonel in rank, command of his army, comprised at the time of some 100,000 men. Had he accepted this, the appointment would have been the pinnacle of his career – everything that he had worked toward for more than 35 years as an officer. But he could not take up arms against his native State and all the complexities of consanguinity that she represented.

“I did only what my duty demanded,” Lee said after the war. “I could have taken no other course without dishonor.” [The final act of his command [of the Army of Northern Virginia], an honorable surrender, was his greatest demonstration of forbearance.”

(Excerpted from Remembering Robert E. Lee, Jack Trotter. Chronicles Magazine, June 2022, pp. 19-20)

Fighting for the “Juster Cause”

The following details the first encounter of the revolutionary CSS Virginia with the USS Monitor after the former had sunk the USS Cumberland and severely damaged the USS Congress the previous day. The Virginia was commanded by Commodore Franklin Buchanan, with Lt. Catesby Jones assuming command after Buchanan was injured. Also aboard was the indefatigable Lt. John Taylor Wood.

“When Jones saw that the Virginia’s guns only dented the Monitor’s turret, he ordered his gun commanders to concentrate their fire on her pilothouse. The vessels wore around until the Virginia’s stern was only ten yards from the Monitor’s pilothouse. Wood quickly barked out the necessary orders to his stern gun crew. A lightning flash erupted from the muzzle of the powerful Brooke rifle and a heavy shell seared the air to strike against the front of the Monitor’s pilothouse, directly in the observation slit. The explosion cracked the iron and partially lifted the top. The blow partly stunned the commander and filled his eyes with powder, temporarily blinding him while ordering his ship to disengage the Virginia. The Monitor retired briefly but resumed firing again.

Wood now had an idea that foreshadowed his special place in the war. As a last hope to defeat the Monitor, he called for volunteers to form a boarding party which he intended to lead to the enemy deck. The response was enthusiastic, and Wood organized the group into special forces, each with a specific task. Some collected sledgehammers and spikes to wedge the Monitor’s turret. Others were ready to fling oakum-ball grenades down the pipes and cover all openings with canvas to cut off visibility and air. A few men carried pistols, boarding pikes and cutlasses in the event of hand-to-hand combat. The Confederates intended to win this battle with brains, seamanship, heroism and the “juster cause.”

When all was ready, the Virginia made a run for the Monitor. The boarding party watched from all ports, each man “burning for the signal to swarm around the foe.” The blood was “fairly tumbling through our veins” recalled one crewmember as the hoarse bark of the boatswain called “boarders away.” At that moment, however, the Monitor frustrated the scheme by standing away and steaming to shallow water.

Wood was disappointed, and with good reason, since the would-be-boarders might well have succeeded [in capturing the Monitor].”

(John Taylor Wood: Sea Ghost of the Confederacy. Royce Gordon Shingleton. UGA Press, 1979, pp. 35-36)

$300 Patriots and Deserters

“As a sideline to his regular clothing business, [John N.] Eitel was a recruitment broker. During the Civil War, recruitment for the [north’s] armed services fell largely into private hands. The government itself at first encouraged private recruiting by offering a two-dollar premium to any person who brought in a recruit who was accepted into service.

Gradually this led to private brokers all but taking over the supply side of the recruiting system. And nowhere were they more active than New York City, where the New York County Board of Supervisors offered a $300 bounty for volunteers and permitted another committee to use private brokers for distribution of the bounties. When a man volunteered in New York, the broker who brought him in paid the soldier a part of the bounty price agreed upon beforehand. Then the soldier would assign the whole bounty to the broker, who would collect $300 from the New York County committee. Three hundred dollars constituted a substantial sum of money in those days, and there were thousands of recruits, the bloodiest war in American history.

Opportunities for fraud were abundant in this system not only because of the middlemen and the vast sums of money involved, but also because of the rather primitive record keeping. War Department Detective Col. Lafayette Baker wrote: “Another manner of desertion, and by far more generally practiced [between May and October 1864], was by permitting recruits to desert in transit from the rendezvous in New York to the Island or receiving ships.”

The problem of northern draftees buying substitutes in 1863 bedeviled Lincoln’s unending need for troops. Historian William Marvel writes: By early September administration officials claimed that a thousand conscripts a day were arriving in the national capital, but those men came under increasingly heavy guard. Most of them had enlisted as substitutes [and were described by one New York captain as ‘the ugliest set of Devils that ever went unhung’. Thieves thickly seeded every lot, ready to stomp or stab anyone who resisted their pilfering. Sergeants were soon tying or locking up many of the rest to prevent them from running off, but they still drained away to the rear – or to the enemy.” (Lincoln’s Mercenaries, Marvel, pg. 191).

(The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. Mark E. Neely, Jr. Oxford University Press. 1991, pp. 95-96)

The Meaning of Monuments

An appreciation for the odds the American South fought against 1861-1865 is found in the numbers of those fighting on either side. The Northern government called forth some 2,535,799 white men plus nearly 179,000 colored soldiers, for the purpose of subduing Southern forces never numerically one-fourth as strong. The Northern army had the glory of success, but the gallantry and endurance of the Southern soldier has become legendary.

From the Richmond Dispatch, December 14, 1892:

The rainy weather of Tuesday, December 13, 1892, was not propitious for the Richmond Howitzer Monument unveiling. It lacked every suggestion of a gala occasion and could but carry many Howitzers and other veterans back to the days when, half-starved and half-clad, they shivered over a handful of a fire.

But the driving, penetrating and piercing blast could not daunt the spirit of the men whose guns had been heard upon every battlefield from Bethel to Appomattox, nor those who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the heroic Howitzers.

The step of the veterans was not as jaunty as it was in the period from 1861 to 1865, but their hearts glowed with the recollections with no lack of enthusiasm from the beginning to the end of the ceremonies.

The unveiling was a success in all of its details, and the memorial now stands as an object lesson for future generations. It is an imperishable illustration in the history of a people whose valor, fortitude and unselfish devotion to principle have no parallel in the annals of war.

What does the Howitzer Monument mean? What does it stand for? It means more than that this one fell under his gun never to rise again, or that one who lived will go to his grave a physical wreck. It means also that the survivors were among the rebuilders of the devastated American South. It stands also for a moral courage that could rise superior to any adversity.

The crowd of veterans assembled at this unveiling were hundreds who, when the war closed, were absolutely penniless, but whose energy, enterprise, self-denial and patience constitute the foundation stones upon which the present prosperity of Richmond and Virginia is reared. [This monument] stands for the spirit of the South – not only the spirit that was invincible in war, but the spirit that defied being broken or humiliated in peace.”

(Unveiling of the Monument to the Richmond Howitzers. Southern Historical Papers, Volume XX, R.A. Brock, editor. pp. 259-260)

The Virginia Military Institute furnished the most generals of any Southern military school, 20; VMI also furnished 92 colonels, 64 lieutenant-colonels, 107 majors, 310 captains and 221 lieutenants. Author Bruce Allardice points out that though the North in 1861 “had a two-to-one advantage over the South in West Point-trained officers, this was counter-balanced by the six-to-one edge the South enjoyed in men who had attended private military schools.”

West Points of the Confederacy

When Francis Henley Smith, an 1833 graduate of West Point, assumed the superintendency of the newly established VMI, he sought to make it “the West Point of the South.” Since many Southern schools modelled themselves after VMI, often hiring its graduates as teachers, the VMI model, with its distinctly non-military spread throughout the South. By 1843 South Carolina had converted its Columbia Arsenal and Charleston Citadel into interconnected military schools; in addition to the education, the cadets relieved the State of the expense of providing guards for its armories.

If the Civil War had taken place five or ten years later, the State military school programs would have given the South a huge edge over the north in potential officer candidates with military training. In 1861 the programs in many of the Southern States had scarcely begun; the numbers educated were small and the graduates too young to play a significant part in the war.

Douglas Southall Freeman recognized that Virginia’s VMI graduates “constituted a large, immediate and indispensable officers reserve corps” at the start of the war and concluded “that the Army of Northern Virginia owed to the Institute such excellence of regimental command as it had. I do not believe the campaign of 1862 could have been fought as successfully without VMI men.”

Almost to a man, the cadets, former and present, joined the Southern armies. And whereas 304 West Point graduates joined the Southern army, at least 12,000, and possibly many more, matriculants of ninety-six Southern military schools donned the Rebel grey and filled the high ranks of command. Thirty-seven of the matriculants became Confederate generals, about 8 percent of the total number of Confederate generals.”

(West Points of the Confederacy: Southern Military Schools and the Confederate Army. Bruce Allardice. Civil war History – A Journal of the Middle Period. Vol. 43, No. 4, December 1997, pp. 315; 317; 321-322)

An address on “Who Owns These Monuments?” delivered by Dr. Joseph Grier of Chester, South Carolina at the dedication of the Richburg monument on May 7, 1939, best sums up the issue of responsibility.

“Whose monument is this? Dr. Grier asked.

It is the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s because it is their labor of love, representing a long period of loyalty, devotion and sacrifice, culminating in the erection of the splendid memorial.

Secondly, it belongs to the village, town or city in which it is erected because it will stand by the roadside for centuries in the same place and all may see it and draw inspiration from it.

Thirdly, it belongs to the American soldiers of the Confederacy whose names are inscribed upon it, because it is erected in their honor.

And fourthly, to God, because patriotism and devotion to duty and willingness to sacrifice are a vital part of religion, and as we feel the impact of these things, we are swept toward God.”

(A Guide to Confederate Monuments in South Carolina . . . Passing the Silent Cup, Robert S. Seigler, SC Department of Archives and History, 1997, pg. 21)

Rose Greenhow’s Source

“Who told Southern spy Rose Greenhow that General Irvin McDowell had issued marching orders to Manassas Junction for July 16^th? Who gave her the red-dotted map? Was this vital information passed to her by a man so swept away by her voluptuous embraces as to forget duty, honor and country?

When she was later taken into custody a month after the First Manassas debacle, federal agents seized a packet of love letters. She had destroyed all else. These letters, in a masculine hand, were signed with the single initial “H.” Could this “H” have stood for Henry? One of these letters was dated January 20^th, 1861. It was written on US government stationery bearing the imprint “Thirty-sixth Congress, United States of America” and the seal of the United States Senate. It indicates an intimacy had existed between Roe Greenhow and “H” even before hostilities began.

Handwriting experts have claimed these letters were not written by Senator Henry Wilson, although they speak of bills before the Senate in which he was interested. No known charges were brought against him, but his share in this business has never been cleared up. Whatever suspicion may have rested on him, he must have explained to the satisfaction of federal authorities who made no record of it.

General Pierre Beauregard later said his information at First Manassas had come through a private source, from “politicians high in council.”

Throughout the war Henry Wilson was a pillar of strength to Lincoln’s administration, and in 1872 was elected Grant’s vice-president.

What of his companion, Rose Greenhow? Over her grave at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina, there is a marble cross, erected by sympathetic ladies. On it are carved the words: Mrs. Rose O’Neal Greenhow – A Bearer of Despatches to the Confederate Government.”

(Congress and the Civil War, Edward Boykin. The McBride Company, 1955, pp. 304-305)

Confederate Brigadier-General Edward A. Perry, born on a farm near Richmond, Massachusetts in 1831, was descended from old New England stock which migrated to America in the 1630’s. He attended Yale for two years before moving to Alabama where he taught school and studied law.  In the postwar he rebuilt his life and turned to politics in the 1880s, and became governor in 1885. His primary platform issue was replacing the odious carpetbag constitution forced upon Floridians in 1868.

A Pensacola Lawyer from New England

“Perry moved to Pensacola, Florida about 1856, where he formed a partnership with Richard L. Campbell. Perry and Virginia Taylor [of Alabama] were married during this time and led a quiet and happy life together until he volunteered to defend his adopted State.

On the eve of the Civil War Pensacola seethed with military activities. Federal soldiers with the stars and stripes overhead held the forts guarding the harbor. A town which normally welcomed the regulars, now presented a hostile front. The young lawyer had a hard and momentous decision to make, for his native State and his family – were loyal to the Union.

His wife was a Southerner and he had chosen to make his living in the South. Although it meant fighting against his brothers, he volunteered his services to his State, the State of his adoption. Early in 1861 he was elected captain of an infantry company known as the Pensacola Rifle Rangers. The company first saw service near Pensacola when they captured the naval base, with Fort Barrancas and Fort McRee.  In July, 1861, the Rifle Rangers became Company A, Second Florida Infantry Regiment, and was assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia.

The regiment received its baptism of fire in the defense of Yorktown . . . On May 10, 1862, Perry was elected colonel of the Second Florida, [after] first demonstrating his leadership in the Seven Days fight for Richmond. In November the Florida regiments . . . [were] organized into the Florida Brigade under the command of Perry, promoted to brigadier-general.

[Perry led his men at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, but contracted typhoid fever before Gettysburg, where] the Florida Brigade lost about one-half its effective strength. At the Wilderness in May of 1864, General Perry, badly wounded, became permanently disabled for front line duty, thus depriving Florida troops of their gallant leader. [By late 1864] Perry’s men, who had once numbered over three thousand, were down to less than five hundred. When the end came at Appomattox . . . the original Perry Brigade numbers nineteen officers and 136 men left of the original three thousand.”

(Edward A. Perry, Yankee General of the Florida Brigade, Sigsbee C. Prince, Jr., Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3, January 1951, excerpts pp. 197-203)