Uncategorized – Circa1865

“Not Veterans, But Trained Soldiers”

In early June 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant engaged Gen. Lee at Cold Harbor with a well-equipped 117,000-man army, against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s 60,000 ragged and hungry men in grey rags. After several days of futile assaults, Grant decreased his strength by 12,738 men – 1845 killed outright, 9077 wounded and over 1800 captured or missing. Lee’s loss was 5,287 men, of which 788 were killed, the remainder captured or missing.

“Not Veterans, But Trained Soldiers”

“At Bermuda Hundred, Virginia in late-May 1864, a new division was formed under the command of Major-General Robert F. Hoke and consisting of the following: the North Carolina brigades of Maj. Gen’s James Martin and Thomas Clingman; the South Carolina brigade of Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood, and the Georgia brigade of Brig. Gen. Alfred Colquitt.

General Grant ordered Sheridan’s cavalry and a corps of infantry to seize the heights of New Cold Harbor. Hoke’s division was first ordered to Richmond on June 1, and then moved into the fighting line at Cold Harbor. On the same day, Maj. Gen. Richard Anderson, with Maj. Gen. Richard Kershaw’s and Hoke’s divisions, attacked Sheridan and drove him back to Old Cold Harbor while securing the heights around New Cold Harbor and Gaines’ Mill – an all-important movement for the approaching battle.

These high positions were at once fortified for they were the key to Richmond. The troops were halted under the fire of an unseen enemy, but a line of skirmishers was quickly thrown out and the enemy’s picket line was driven out of reach. Maj. Gen. Martin formed his brigade en echelon, thus enabling his command to take the most dangerous position on the line and hold it under heavy fire. Had it not been for this well-directed movement at the opportune moment, the brigade might have been repulsed or captured. The skirmishers of the Forty-second had captured the crest of the hill, which position they fortified during the night, using their bayonets and pans, and were ready for the conflict.

It is stated that General Lee learned that the enemy’s main effort would be directed against Martin’s part of the line, and sent a message to him to replace his brigade with a brigade of veterans. Martin replied with his compliments, saying that while his brigade were not veterans, they were trained soldiers and would hold their part of the line.

That day’s conflict showed the stuff the Forty-second was made of, for they held their line without flinching or wavering. In this battle the Confederates gained a decisive victory. In many places in front of the line of battle the dead and wounded were thick enough to walk on.

It is reported that the enemy lost 10,000 men in twenty minutes.”

(Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from Noth Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865. Walter Clark, editor, Written by Members of the Respective Commands. Nash Brothers Publishing, 1900. p. 798)

Wendell Phillips on South Carolina’s Independence

Abolitionist Wendell Phillip’s own State of Massachusetts was the first British colony in America to codify African slavery within its borders, and its maritime fleet dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first half of the eighteenth century. The speaker below was Major Graham Daves, Memorial Day Address presenter at Raleigh, North Carolina, May 10, 1901. All city businesses were virtually closed that afternoon – all banks and most State offices were closed.

Wendell Phillips on South Carolina’s Independence

“It is a matter of interest and worthy of memory, that the right of secession and the duty of the United States Government to withdraw its forces from the seceded territory were admitted by very distinguished abolitionist authority. By no less a person than Wendell Phillips of Massachusetts, the great and able abolitionist, the ‘silver tongued orator,’ distinguished scholar, bold uncompromising foe of the American South and of her institutions.

In a speech delivered at New Bedford, Massachusetts, on April 9^th, 1861, just four days before the reduction of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces, he said:

“Here are a series of States girding the Gulf, who believe their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or me. A large body of the people sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right?

Standing with the principles of 1776 behind us, who can deny them the right? What is the matter of a few millions of dollars or a few forts? It is a mere drop in the bucket of the great national question. It is theirs as much as it is ours. I maintain on the principles of 1776 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter.”

Those are the words of Wendell Phillips. Can language be more plain or more forcible in support of the belief and action of the people who united in establishing the Confederate States of America?

(Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume XXXII, R.A. Brock, editor, published by the Society, 1904, pg. 283)

Republicans and Marxists

In their most revealing book “Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists,” (iUniverse, 2007), authors Al Benson and Walter Kennedy cite historian and diplomat William E. Dodd’s observation that “the election of Abraham Lincoln and, as it turned out, the fate of the Union was thus determined not by native Americans but by voters who knew least of American history and institutions.” Not only did Lincoln gain the presidency with only 39% of the popular vote, but among that 39% were many new arrivals who understood and spoke little English.

Republicans and Marxists

Distinct Marxist organizations had all but disappeared from the American scene by the end of the Civil War. The Communist Club, founded in New York City by refugee [German] Forty-Eighters in 1857, had dwindled to some twenty members, few of them workers. The most influential Marxists of the 1850’s, having concluded that at the moment America’s bourgeoisie were more revolutionary than her inert proletariat, allied themselves closely with the Republican party.

Military service during the war completed the process of drawing many such Marxists away from labor activity, for some met their deaths . . . and others simply exchanged the Marxism of their younger days for a Radical Republican outlook. Still others turned their attention at the war’s end to organizing aid to the expected revolution in Germany.

The founding of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864, however, not only opened the way for a revival of Marxist influence but also linked Marxist thought (and Marx’s personal activity) directly with the trade-union movement. The “final object” of the workers’ movement, Marx emphasized to his New York disciple Friedrich Bolte, is “the conquest of political power.”

(Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872. David Montgomery, University of Illinois Press, 1981, pp 167- 168)

A British Consul’s View

A British Consul’s View

After the election of Lincoln in November 1860, British consul at Boston, Thomas Colley Grattan (1792-1864) wrote:

“The day must no doubt come when clashing objects will break the ties of common interest which now preserve the American union. But no man may foretell the period of dissolution . . . The many retaining cause are out of sight of foreign observation. If a foreign nation hints at hostility, the whole union becomes in reality united. And thus, any contingency from which there can be danger, there is also found the element of safety.”

Yet, he added, “All attempts to strengthen this federal government at the expense of the State governments must be futile . . . The federal government exists on sufferance only. Any State may at any time constitutionally withdraw from the American union, and thus virtually dissolve it.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Ephraim Douglass Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018. p.37)

Colorphobia at New Orleans

In early 1863 Gen. Nathaniel Banks commanded occupied New Orleans and had to deal with problems between his New England troops and colored soldiers of the former Louisiana Native Guards – reconstituted as “Gen. Butler’s Native Guards.” The original Louisiana Native Guards of the city, officers and men, were all free, and in May 1861 were mustered into State service. They became the first black unit in the Civil War, serving a Confederate State. After conquering New Orleans Butler worked to change this during his tenure with most free blacks leaving the unit and replaced by contrabands.

Butler’s replacement, Gen. Banks, was a Waltham, Massachusetts native who shared the deep prejudices of his fellow New Englanders.

Colorphobia at New Orleans

“British-born Colonel Leonard Currie of the 133^rd New York Infantry told his men “to continue in the performance of their duty until such time as the regiment is brought in contact with [black soldiers] by guard duty, drills or otherwise.” If that happened, he promised to march them back to their camp so as not to cause “their self-confidence or manliness to be lowered by contact with an inferior race.” The colonel’s prejudices were shared by the post commander, Brigadier General Cuvier Grover, who refuse to recognize Butler’s Native Guards 3^rd Regiment as part of the Union army and would not allow it to draw clothing, blankets, or pay.

The volatile situation exploded within days of the 3^rd Regiment’s arrival when a black captain reported for duty as officer of the day. The guard was composed of white soldiers from the 13^th Maine Regiment of Colonel George Foster Shepley, a Saco, Maine native and Harvard graduate. When the black captain arrived to inspect the guard, the soldiers refused to recognize his authority. The white soldiers were willing to “obey every order consistent with their manhood,” a news correspondent reported, “but as to acknowledging a [black man] their superior, by any virtue of the shoulder straps he might wear, they would not.” The situation quickly turned ugly. The black officer pressed his authority; the white soldiers grounded their rifles in protest and threatened to kill him should he attempt to coerce their obedience.” (National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 28, 1863).

Gen. Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts, the new department commander at New Orleans, soon heard of the episode but did not punish the mutinous white soldiers from the 13^th Maine. Banks called the black officers for an interview, listened to their grievances, then instructed them that it was not the government’s policy to commission blacks as officers in the US Army. Banks then recommended they all resign to avoid the embarrassment of being kicked out. Uncertain of their future, the black officers agreed and all sixteen resigned and to their surprise soon found that their white replacements had already been named to take their place.”

(Louisiana Native Guards, James G. Hollandsworth, LSU Press, 1995, pp. 44-45)

Louis Leon of Mecklenburg, Confederate Sharpshooter

A German immigrant of the Jewish faith, Private Louis Leon was not unusual as a Confederate soldier from North Carolina. Many German Jews settled in Wilmington during the 1840s and 1850s, with many owning black slaves as was common then. In 1860, the Kahnweiler and Brothers store of Wilmington held five slaves; Charlotte dry goods merchants David Elias, Levi Drucker and Seigfried Frankenthal held slaves as well. In Atlanta, four of the six Jewish families in 1850 owned slaves – by 1860 this increased substantially plus David Mayer and Solomon Cohen were both slave dealers.

Captain Christian Cornehlson organized the German Volunteers in Wilmington in 1861, which became Company A of the Eighteenth North Carolina Regiment. Of the 102 men in Company A, every officer and every enlisted man but 30 had been born in Germany. Residents Jacob Blumenthal and Henry Wertheimer died during the War; Solomon Bear was sent to Europe to arrange for goods and munitions to run the blockade into Wilmington. Simon Kahnweiler was also sent to Europe as a Confederate purchasing agent.

Returning to Wilmington postwar, German Volunteers M.M. Katz, Gustav Rosenthal, David Eigenbrunner and Jacob Weil all helped organize the Temple of Israel. (Bauman, 2010)

Louis Leon of Mecklenburg, Confederate Sharpshooter

“Louis Leon, a well-known resident of Wilmington and a veteran of Confederate States service, was born in Mecklenburg, Germany, November 27, 1841. Three years later he was brought by his parents to New York City, whence he moved to Charlotte in 1858, and engaged in mercantile pursuits as a clerk. Becoming a member of the Charlotte Grays, he entered the active service of that command, going to the camp of instruction at Raleigh on April 21, 1861.

The Gray’s were assigned to Col. D.H. Hill’s regiment, the First, as Company C, and took part in the Battle of Big Bethel, in which Private Leon was a participant. At the expiration of the six months’ enlistment of the Bethel Regiment, he reenlisted in Company B [of] Capt. Harvey White, of the Fifty-first Regiment, commanded by Col. William Owen.

He shared the service of this regiment in its subsequent honorable career, fighting at Gettysburg, Bristow Station, Mine run, and the Wilderness, receiving a slight wound at Gettysburg but not allowing it to interfere with his duty. During the larger part of his service, he served as a sharpshooter.

On the 5^th or 6^th of May 1864, the sharpshooters of his regiment were much annoyed by one of the Federal sharpshooters who had a long-range rifle and who had climbed up a tall tree, from which he could pick off the men, though sheltered by stumps and stones, himself out of range of their guns.

Private Leon concluded that “this thing had to be stopped,” and taking advantage of every knoll, hollow and stump, he crawled near enough for his rifle to reach, and took a “pop” at this disturber of the peace, who came tumbling down. Upon running up to his victim, Leon discovered him to be a Canadian Indian, and clutching his scalp lock, he dragged him back to the Confederate line.

At the Wilderness battle Leon was captured and from that time until June 1865 was a prisoner of war at Point Lookout and Elmira, N.Y. Upon being paroled he visited his parents in New York City, and then worked his way back to North Carolina.

He is warmly regarded by his comrades of Cape Fear Camp, United Confederate Veterans, and has served several terms as its adjutant. When Col. James T. Morehead prepared a sketch of his regiment, the Fifty-third, Private Leon furnished him with a copy of a diary which he had kept from the organization of the regiment up to the 5^th of May 1864, when he was captured.

(Chronicles of the Cape Fear River, James Sprunt, Edwards & Broughton, 1916, pp. 334-335; Jews at the Cape Fear Coast, Anton Hieke. Southern Jewish History, Mark Baumann, editor, Volume 13, 2010)

Penalty for Not Re-enlisting

Lincoln was counting on a brief war with the South as he raised an army – without Congressional approval – to send southward. The army of General McDowell was full of 90-day volunteers and battle had to be joined (and won) before they went home with the government’s $100 in their pockets. The battle of First Manassas was a Northern debacle which cooled the alleged flag-insult at Fort Sumter and it became obvious to Lincoln’s War Department that generous enlistment bounties were necessary to keep men in blue uniforms. Between 1861-1865 the North paid about $750,000,000 in bounties to fill its ranks. An excellent resource is William Marvel’s “Lincoln’s Mercenaries,” LSU Press, 2018.

Penalty for Not Re-Enlisting

Author Jonathan W. White’s book “Emancipation, the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln” (LSU Press, 2014) suggests that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton utilized intimidation tactics to ensure Lincoln’s election and use the soldier vote to help accomplish it. His assistant secretary, Charles A. Dana, admitted to using the full power of the War Department to ensure Lincoln’s electoral triumph. Stanton was also creative in his filling the ranks with blue soldiers as the unpopular war wore on.

By May 1864, the initial three-year enlistments had expired and strong measures utilized for re-enlisting the veterans. The hated draft was causing riots in northern cities, and Grant complained often of the useless soldiers he was sent — paid substitutes and draftees who often deserted at the first opportunity.

Desperate to retain the veterans, Stanton demanded additional government bounty money to entice them to stay, one-month furloughs home to show off their “Veteran Volunteer” sleeve chevrons, and commanders rewarded with promotions for re-enlistments obtained. Commanders unsuccessful in their re-enlistment efforts were denied promotion or cashiered.

The bounty money made soldiers wealthy men for the time, but naturally caused them to avoid battle in order to spend it. White estimates that only 15 percent of veteran soldiers re-enlisted, leaving 85 percent who walked away, as it had become an abolition war rather than the “save the Union” banner they had enlisted under. Additionally, they saw emancipation bringing many black freedmen north in search of employment, thus depressing wages and taking jobs from white northerners.

“In May [1864] the three-years’ service of the regiment had expired; and three hundred and seventy-five men who had not reenlisted as veterans were mustered out and made their way home as best they could. On arriving in New York, they drew up and adopted a series of resolutions. They began by rehearsing an order of Col. [Henry L.] Abbot, dated May 21, urging them to “stand by their colors, and not march to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.”

The reason for their non-re-enlistment seems to be stated in the charge against Col. Abbot:

“That he has spared no pains to place over us a military aristocracy, subjecting us to every variety of petty annoyance, to show his own power, and take away our manhood; subjecting men to inhuman and illegal punishments for appealing to him for justice; disgracing others for attempting to obtain commissions in colored regiments; . . . about May 4 ordering his heavy artillery men who had not re-enlisted, into the ditch for the remainder of their term of service, thus placing us on a level with prisoners under sentence for court-martial; and finally capping the climax by leaving us to the tender mercy of provost-marshals, turning us loose on the world, without pay, without officers, without transportation, without rations and without our colors.”

(The Military & Civil History of Connecticut, During the War of 1861-1865. W. Croffut & J. Morris. Ledyard Bill. 1869, pg. 558-559)

Cultural Mediocrity and Majority Tyranny Sweeping the Globe

Two young visitors from the Old World who briefly studied America, Alexis de Tocqueville of France and Russian Alexandr Lakier, were historians, jurisprudents, and both involved in public service careers. It is said that Alexis de Tocqueville was fascinated by the idea of political equality in America and wished to obtain first-hand knowledge of this. While Tocqueville, the philosopher, spoke with the upper classes, Lakier was a better reporter on the typical American. Tocqueville arrived in 1831, Lakier in 1857.

Cultural Mediocrity and Majority Tyranny Sweeping the Globe

“Tocqueville came with overpowering credentials. He was able to see everybody who was anybody – presidents, senators, judges, university presidents, scholars, men of letters. He managed, in the brief time he was here, to interview statesmen like Albert Gallatin, John Quincy Adams and Edward Livingston; jurists like Chancellor Kent and Joseph Story; scholars like Edward Everett, Francis Lieber and Jared Sparks; luminaries like Daniel Webster and William Ellerry Channing, and his thinking was profoundly influenced by what these distinguished men told him.

Lakier came on his own, and depended on fortuity for his interviews. He talked with the most miscellaneous people – shipboard acquaintances, workingmen, petty officials, farmers, fur traders, and newly arrived immigrants – a pretty good cross-section of American society.

There was a pervasive melancholy in much that Tocqueville wrote, a conviction that though democracy was indeed the wave of the future, that wave would drown out much that was precious – that democracy would expose every Old World society to the threat of cultural mediocrity, majority tyranny, and the ultimate subversion of liberty.

Lakier, who was by nature more sanguine and more buoyant, looked with confidence to the future – a future that would see the triumph of equality and a closer friendship between the United States and his own nation.

Lakier saw too, that the example of America could not be confined to the Western Hemisphere, but would sweep around the globe . . . “They will have an influence on Europe, but they will use neither arms nor sword nor fire, nor death and destruction. They will spread their influence by the strength of their inventions, their trade, and their industry. And this influence will be more durable than any conquest.”

(A Russian Looks at America: The Journey of Aleksandr Lakier Borisovich in 1857, University of Chicago Press, 1979, excerpts x-xiii)

“Not Since Hermann Destroyed the Roman Legions”

The Wilderness battle was fought July 1-3, 1864: 104,000 Union troops versus 61,000 Southern. Once again the carnage was appalling and once again Lincoln had the opportunity to end the struggle against the South’s independence as the British did some eighty years earlier with the colonies. Several peace conferences committed to saving the lives of soldiers and civilians alike would end in failure as Lincoln stood firm in his conviction to rule all the American States, and nearly half in subjugation.

“Not Since Hermann Destroyed the Roman Legions”

“Before the close of the day Grant’s army was on the south side [of the Rapidan], four thousand wagons filled with forage and ammunition, beef-cattle, cavalry, artillery and infantry. This feat was so pleasing that Grant regarded it as a great success and “undoubtedly a surprise to Lee.” The ensuing night the Union army entrenched and camped in the Wilderness, that tangled forest in which Hooker had come to grief.

Now that Grant was busy with his operations, Lee had not been idle. He had observed the movements of the enemy from every angle and had made a report to his government. Yet the crushing numbers of the enemy gave him concern. He made no excuses, raised no questions and expressed no doubts, but he must have more troops.

By April 30 the federal plans had been foreseen by Lee, precisely as they had been worked out by General Grant, and he had prepared his line of defense. In the Wilderness, he would attack Grant’s army on its left flank and throw it back on the Rapidan. He would make a strategic offensive and concentrate his forces and shut Grant up in that dense jungle.

Of this strategy of Lee’s it must be said it was one of his boldest and most skillful. His proposed plan, experts declare, broke all modern precedent – it was to be a duel in the dark. Such an engagement had not been fought since Hermann destroyed the Roman legions in the forest of Teutoburg.

But Lee was not bound by rule. He practiced his own theory of the art of war and, in the coming campaign, was to furnish such an example of the use of natural features to neutralize a superior force as will always be a model. Grant’s telegraph lines were to be rendered useless, his artillery rendered useless, his artillery wholly ruled out, the guns, three hundred of them, to stand silent. Cavalry was to be still more useless.

Five times the federal charge was made and five times it failed. [The last days’ assault] lasted but sixty minutes, yet it was one of the most disastrous Union defeats of the war. Six thousand Union soldiers were killed or wounded in an hour, and Cold Harbor passed into history with Fredericksburg. The fatality among the Union officers was astounding; they literally went forward and led their men into battle and death. The loss to Lee’s army was slight.”

(Robert E. Lee: A Biography, Robert W. Winston, William Morrow & Co., 1934, excerpts pp. 291-292; 306-307)

A Sovereign and Independent Nation

Florida, a territory acquired by the United States through an 1819 Treaty with Spain, began its move toward Statehood in the late 1830’s. The preamble to its 1838 Constitution agreed with the United States Congress of Florida being a free and independent State, and qualified to voluntarily become a State within the 1789 Constitution’s confederation of States. Florida’s legislature ratified the document and joined that confederation on March 3, 1845.

On January 10, 1861, the State of Florida withdrew from that confederation which it determined to be a threat to the peace and prosperity of the State. As the new Southern confederation of States did not yet exist, the legislature in Tallahassee declared Florida to be “a sovereign and independent and nation.”

In part, the withdrawal from the 1789 confederation is as follows:

“We, the people of the State of Florida in convention assembled, do solemnly ordain, publish and declare that the State of Florida hereby withdraws herself from the Confederacy of States existing under the name of the United States of America, and from the existing government of the said States; and that all political connection between her and the government of said States ought to be and the same is hereby totally annulled, and the said Union of States dissolved, and the State of Florida hereby declared a sovereign and independent nation . . .”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, William W. Watson, Columbia University, 1913, pg. 64)