Circa1865

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)

The election of Democrat Grover Cleveland ended the reign of the Republican party since Abraham Lincoln plunged the country into a war from which it has never recovered. The following was written postwar by Ohio Congressman Samuel “Sunset” Cox, a painful thorn in the side of Lincoln during the war.

The Political Result of the War

“On June 9, 1882, Cox delivered a ringing denunciation of the Republican party in the House of Representatives. He referred to it as “the defiled party of moral ideas and immoral deeds,” responsible for “plutocratic usurpation of . . . the federal government . . . unscrupulous fealty to corporate wealth, fast becoming the main, and only, and the all-sufficient qualification for the high offices of state.” A power behind the Republican party “has grown up within the last twenty-five years under national charters, cash subsidies, land grants . . . and the excessive profits of indirect tariff taxes” and “has now almost exclusive control of the entire floating wealth of the nation . . . and the great bulk of the fixed wealth.”

Cox asserted that the cause of the Republican excesses was “plainly the continued extravagance of the war times, when the foundations of most of the present colossal fortunes were laid in great contracts and cemented with the blood, tears and cruel taxation of the people.”

In early December, some 800 New York Democratic leaders gathered at the Manhattan Club to greet President-Elect Grover Cleveland. Cox wrote of the Democratic triumph:

“At length peace has come. Slavery, the bête noir of our politics, is no more.”

(Sunset Cox: Irrepressible Democrat. David Lindsey. Wayne State University Press, pp. 235-238)

Ohio congressman Samuel S. Cox stood out in the north as one who repeatedly challenged Lincoln’s wartime policies. A prewar Ohio newspaper editor in Columbus, he entered Congress in 1857 and served through 1865. As a War Democrat who wanted to somehow preserve the union, his efforts were directed toward effecting a rapid conclusion of the war before extreme bitterness had cut too deeply – and conciliation might still be possible.

Northern Democrat Thorn in Lincoln’s Side

“In the postwar, Cox said in retrospect: Could not this union have been made permanent by a timely settlement, instead of being cemented by fraternal blood and military rule? By an equitable adjustment of the territory this was possible . . . the Crittenden proposition . . . the Republican Radicals denounced . . . They were determined to prevent a settlement. Those who thought to counteract the schemes of secession were themselves checkmated by the extreme men of the Republican party.

Early in January 1862 Cox wanted to obtain from Lincoln his view regarding prisoner exchanges with the South. Asking if he would look to the safety of captured northern soldiers & sailors, Lincoln replied “You will have me recognize those [Southern] pirates as belligerents?” This was, then, the sum of his reasoning against the exchange or prisoners. It had in it no element of humanity or international law. With Cox’s prodding, an official agreement was established with the Confederacy in mid-1862.

By the spring of 1862 the tempo of fighting had increased along with the temper of northern politics, as the Radical Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania pressed for the confiscation of Southern property and emancipation of the South’s slaves. Congress had already in August 1861 enacted a confiscation act for property used for “insurrectionary purposes.” Stevens now wanted confiscation of the property of all “enemies,” slaves of all persons supporting the rebellion to be “forever free of servitude.” Cox denounced this proposal on June 3rd and urged Lincoln to reassure the public mind as to the purpose of the war. Playing upon the fears of the northern fears of freedmen flooding northward he asked: “will Ohio troops fight at all if the result should be the movement of the black race by the millions to their own State?”

Pressing his point, he said: “I would protect against this ambiguous policy” of professing a war to preserve the union but actually fighting a war to abolish slavery.  As for the cause of the war, he argued: “Slavery is the occasion, but not the cause . . . but slavery agitation, north and South, is the cause.”

Rep. Cox noted that “Indiana and Illinois, the latter Lincoln’s home State, already forbade the entrance of Negroes into their States. Ohio Republican legislators, resenting Cox’s obstructionist attacks on Lincoln’s administration, proceeded to redistrict the State under the new federal reapportionment act that cut Ohio’s representation from 21 to 19. Cox’s district was redrawn to make his reelection impossible.

The October 1862 Republican congressional defeats can be traced to waning enthusiasm for Lincoln’s stalemated war, waning enlistments and threatened conscription, arbitrary arrests of citizens and newspaper editors, and fear that his emancipation crusade would flood the north with freedmen in search of cheap wages. The Democrats were victorious in 14 of the Republican-redrawn 19 congressional seats.

Cox, outraged by Republican charges of disloyalty against northern Democrats, retorted: “Who brought on this war and then dragooned Southern Negroes to fight battles in which they would not even risk their own lives? How many abolitionists were hiding from the draft or paying for substitutes to fight for them?

In a mid-December 1862 speech Cox blamed Lincoln’s administration for the Radical rule that had resulted in a divided country, a national debt of $2,500,000,000, a tariff paying “millions into the pockets of capitalists from consumers,” the destruction of “the rights of personal liberty,” and the deaths of “at least 150,000 of the best youth of the country.”

During 1863 congressional Democrats steadily opposed the actions of Lincoln’s Administration, citing New England’s responsibility for the war, the unconstitutionality of federal emancipation, and the arbitrary despotism of the President.”

(Sunset Cox: Irrepressible Democrat. David Lindsey. Wayne State University Press, 1959, pp. 52-70)

By the end of 1862 a total of 164,000 American had been killed or maimed over the decision of several Southern States to gain independence as the American founders had done. Given the carnage to that date, it is astonishing that an American president – who was encouraged by his predecessor to convene a constitutional convention to settle differences peacefully – chose to continue the slaughter of civilians and soldiers alike.

Fearing a severe public backlash after his army’s defeat at Fredericksburg in mid-December 1862, Lincoln ordered news reports of the loss suppressed.

“Victory Rested on Our Banners”

“On Wednesday, December 10^th, [1862], clothing was issued to the [Sixteenth Connecticut] regiment. Shoes were very much needed. In the evening a pontoon [wagon] train went down towards the Rappahannock River, but no unusual notice or remarks were made about it, and both officers and men went to sleep that night without suspecting the least that early on the morrow a heavy battle would be raging.

The next morning the troops were early aroused by the tremendous discharge of two mortars, and simultaneously the opening of our batteries of nearly two hundred pieces. Nearly the entire day the batteries poured incessantly their deadly fire of shot and shell into the city with terrible rapidity. During the afternoon the firing gradually ceased and at sundown victory rested on our banners.

During the day three days rations and sixty rounds of cartridges were issued to the men. The next day the Sixteenth advanced to the river early in the morning and lay on the banks all day, watching the fighting on the other side of the stream. In the evening they crossed the pontoon bridge and went into the city of Fredericksburg. After stacking arms on Main Street most of the men went into houses to sleep.

The effects of this short siege were awful to contemplate. Some portions of the city were completely battered down. Buildings in various parts of the city were burning, and during the night fresh fires were continually breaking out. Although the enemy had carried away most of their wounded and dead, still a few remained in the city.

Our men found ten women and a child, all dead, in a cellar; they had gone there for protection from our shells but one of them struck there, and bursting, killed them all.”

(History of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, B.F. Blakeslee, Case, Lockwood and Brainard Printers, 1875, pp. 27-28)

Author Josh Doggrell provides an exceptional synopsis of George Wallace’s political career and his positions which appeared in the December issue of Chronicles Magazine. This periodical provides some of the finest commentary on American culture today and is highly recommended.

Doggrell posits that “In the poisonous political climate of the 21^st century, it is nearly impossible to have rational conversations about the social issues of the 1950s and 1960s. Nearly sixty years later, not only have the wheels not fallen off that bus, but the bus has become a revenge locomotive surging ahead at full speed.”

The author identifies “two main takeaways from the life and impact of George Wallace. He failed to improve his legacy as “those on the Right cannot seem to learn that trying to win points with the Left and win battles on their home turf playing by the Left’s warped rules is an exercise in futility.” No matter what, the Left still reviles him as much as the unfortunate Trent Lott who groveled in front of Jesse Jackson.

Second, Wallace won enormous support from the people. He said that “Reagan ran on everything I ran on . . . He even used some of the same phrases I used.” The author suggests that the George Wallace’s populist revolution of the 1960s made possible the Reagan revolution of the 1980s.

Reassessing George Wallace  

“One can study the texts of [George] Wallace’s inaugural address and his schoolhouse-door speech from 1963 and see the consistent themes of federal overreach, State sovereignty, Yankee dissimulation, constitutionalism, free enterprise and regional pride.

Virtually ignored in the popular history of this event is that in the following three days Wallace received over 40,000 letters and telegrams, the vast majority supportive and over half coming from outside the South.

Barry Goldwater became the first presidential candidate to echo, if not incorporate wholesale, the views of candidate Wallace when Goldwater became the Republican nominee in 1964. In 1968 Richard Nixon won the presidency by sounding a lot like Wallace without a Southern accent.  The “Southern strategy” was born.

Nixon took the populist threat of Wallace very seriously, instructing his personal attorney Herbert Kalmbach to make secret payments to his opponent’s campaign.

It is easy for us to forget just how well Wallace was doing in the 1972 presidential race, before calamity struck. He was riding high in the polls just before he was shot five times in Laurel, Maryland. Before entering the 1972 Florida Democratic primary, he said: “I have no illusions about the ultimate outcome. But we gonna shake up the Democratic party. We gonna shake it to its eye-teeth.”

Wallace would go on to win more Democratic primaries than anyone except the nominee, George McGovern, in a five-way race. Wallace’s popular vote was less than two points behind McGovern’s.

Nixon went on to win by a landslide – and we are left only to imagine the entertainment spectacle of a Nixon-Wallace debate.”

(Reassessing the Legacy of George Wallace. John Doggrell, Chronicles Magazine, December 2021, pp. 39-40)

In the postwar Grant admitted his regret for sending so many of his men to their deaths at Cold Harbor, stating that “no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.” In the first few days at Cold Harbor in early June 1864, he lost some 3,000 men in fruitless attacks on Gen. Lee. In his last assault on the 4^th at least 4,000 of his soldiers were killed or maimed in the first thirty minutes of the attack.

Slaughter at Cold Harbor

“Under an enfilade fire from enemy skirmishers we retired to a point about one mile to our rear and threw up such hasty breastworks during the night as could be done with the poor facilities at hand. They were made mostly with the aid of bayonets, tin plates, etc. This was to be the attacking point of the bloody battle of the second Cold Harbor, known in history as one of the most sanguinary conflicts of the war.

Grant’s attack was made on Clingman’s Brigade of Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s Division of North Carolinians about 3 PM on June 1, 1864. The enemy advanced not only in line of battle but on our left wing in heavy column, masked by the line of battle in front. This attack was signally and repeatedly repulsed with great loss to the enemy, in the entire front of our (Clingman’s) Brigade. On the left flank of the brigade was the 8th NC Regiment, then the 51st NC Regiment, then the 31st NC Regiment, and the 61st NC Regiment, from left to right, as designated; the heaviest attack was on our left, where the enemy attacked in column. There was an interval between our brigade and a brigade on our left, in consequence of a swamp intervening between the two, which was considered impassable, therefore not protected by breastworks or troops. In this interval the enemy’s heavy columns pressed forward and effected a lodgement, which then enfilading our line, compelling the 8th and 51st NC Regiments to fall back.

They were, however, quickly re-formed in line of battle parallel to the original one in an open field while under constant fire from the enemy. While it was so doing the 27th Georgia Regiment of Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt’s Brigade came up from our right and advanced with us; the enemy were then, after a hard struggle, driven back and the whole of our original line was re-occupied.

The following is taken from President Jefferson Davis’ History of Confederate States, p. 400:

“The carnage on the Federal side,” writes General Richard Taylor, “was fearful. I well recall having received a report from General Hoke after the assault and whose Division had reached the army just prior to the battle.

The ground in his entire front, over which the enemy had charged, was literally covered with their dead and wounded and up to that time Hoke had not had a single man killed. No wonder that when the command was given to renew the assault, the enemy soldiers sullenly and silently declined. The order was issued through officers to their subordinate commanders, and from them through the wonted channels; but no man stirred, the immobile lines thus pronouncing a verdict, silent, yet emphatic, against further slaughter. The loss on the Union side in this sanguinary action was over 13,000, while on the part of the Confederates it is doubtful whether it reached that many hundred.

 General Grant asked for a truce to bury his dead, after which he abandoned his chosen line of operation, and moved his army so as to secure a crossing to the south side of James River.”

(www.carolana.com; Thirty-first North Carolina Regiment)

The excerpt below from William B. Feis’s “Grant’s Secret Service” notes the efforts the Northern military utilized to encourage desertion within the Southern ranks. It often backfired as described below, but as the war progressed found men tired of combat, being near starvation and willing to provide information to the enemy.  It is noted that if Northern interrogators thought information provided was suspicious, they were “not above resorting to torture to loosen tongues.” One was tied up by the thumbs “which made a perfect lunatic of him for twenty-four hours.”

Enterprising Union Soldiers

“During the winter of early 1865, Northern officials were concerned about the increase in Northern desertion as a result of Grant’s Special Order Number Eighty-two, which updated an earlier policy designed to endue Southern soldiers to defect.

Under the new orders, copies of which were spirited into Southern lines, deserters who took an oath to Lincoln’s union would receive subsistence and, if their homes were within Northern lines, free transportation back to their families. If their homes were behind enemy lines, the federal government would transport them without charge to “any point in the Northern States.”

Anxious to get home, some enterprising Northern soldiers sensed an opportunity and left their regiments (usually while on picket duty) and disguised themselves as Southern deserters. With any luck they might convince their “captors“ that “home” was in enemy territory, which meant free transportation anywhere in the North.

The policy was designed to shrink Southern armies through desertion, but the prospect of Northern runaways slipping through the cracks and being sent not to the stockade, but home at government expense, forced the army to act.   Capt. John McEntee’s primary mission at occupied Norfolk, a concentration point for processing Southern prisoners, was to be the official “examining officer” tasked with using his familiarity with the Southern army’s organization (which few enlisted men knew anything about) to trip up Northern deserters and close this avenue for escaping military service.”

(Grant’s Secret Service. The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox. William B. Feis, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, pp. 199-200; 259)

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)

As true then as it is today, it is not “treason” to question the autocratic actions of a republican form of government, especially through the citizen’s elected representatives. Lincoln and his sectional party wrongly considered any criticism of their policies and actions “treason.” The US Constitution defines treason in Article III, Section 3: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” It is very clear who levied war against the States, adhered to their enemies, plus gave them aid and comfort.

As he levied war against Virginia, it was Grant (with Lincoln’s approval) who directed Sheridan to lay absolute waste to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864, sufficient to starve any crows flying above and in search of food – likewise for Virginia’s citizens. Below he congratulates his underling for his violent act of treason while referring to Virginians as “the enemy.”

As is well-known, Grant went on to win the presidency only with the help of recently enfranchised freedmen marched to the polls with Republican ballots; he is afterward known as the most corrupt president in the history of the United States.

Grant and Treason

“Now one of the main objects of the expedition began to be accomplished. Sheridan went to work with his command, gathering in all the crops, cattle and everything in the upper part of the Shenandoah Valley required by our troops; and especially taking what might be of use to the enemy. What he could not take away he destroyed so that the enemy would not be invited to return. I congratulated Sheridan upon his recent great victory and had a salute of one-hundred guns fired in honor of it, the guns being aimed at the enemy around Petersburg.

I had reason to believe that the Lincoln administration was a little afraid to have a decisive battle fought at that time, for fear it might go against us and have a bad effect on the November elections. The convention which had met and made its nomination of the Democratic candidate for the presidency had declared the war a failure.  Treason was talked as boldly in Chicago at that Democratic convention as ever it had been in Charleston. It was a question of whether the government would then have had the power to make arrests and punish those who thus talked treason.”

(Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Vol. II. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1886, pp. 331-332)

The American war of 1861-1865 revealed the depth of the irreparable schism between the sections as well as the unusual sectional allegiances it produced. None was more unusual than Mystic, Connecticut born brothers Asa and Nelson Tift who arrived on the island of Key West with their parents and siblings in 1826. Asa remained on the island to run the family chandlery business while Nelson departed in 1830 to pursue his fortune in Georgia. They were both well-acquainted with Stephen Mallory who would become Confederate Secretary of the Navy, and with whom they helped develop the South’s ironclad navy.

Ironclad designer Nelson Tift became south Georgia’s antebellum economic prosperity machine – Tift County and the city of Tifton are namesakes. Asa returned to Key West postwar to rebuild his business and in 1876 constructed a “West Indian Creole” mansion at 907 Whitehead Street complete with an ironclad-shaped planter in the entrance walkway. The home was later purchased by Ernest Hemingway about 1931.

The following is excerpted from “Key West’s Civil War: Rather Unsafe for a Southern Man to Live Here.” The book is available from Shotwell Publishing,  www.maryjanesclosetfloridakeys.com and www.amazon.com.

Rebel Shipbuilders: The Brothers Tift

How two Mystic, Connecticut natives came to put their lives and fortunes on the line for the American South can be explained only through the culture they adopted, families and many friendships made over time. Nelson, Asa and Charles all had profited greatly in business while absorbing and coming to understand the rich, patriarchal culture around them. With Southern wives and families, they all risked their lives and fortunes in defense of the South and were among the many who deeply believed that secession could be accomplished peacefully. After all, President James Buchanan opposed the withdrawal of States but was aware that his constitutional powers did not include waging war against any of “them,” as stated in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution.  Like their Southern neighbors who surrounded them, Asa, Nelson and Charles all understood that the citizens of a sovereign State, North or South, had every right to decide its own political future.

Nelson designed a simple green-pine vessel with triangular ends that could be cheaply built along the South’s coast, armed with 16-cannon, 8 per side, and one end reinforced for ramming. He and Asa travelled to Richmond in August 1861 to present a scale-model for review by Key West-friend and now Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, and the Confederate Navy’s Board of Naval Officers, which included chief naval constructor John L. Porter and his engineer. The brothers received resounding approval and support.

In a letter to Mallory in late August the brothers proposed to superintend construction of Nelson’s warship employing ordinary carpenters who could be easily found, pledging to cede their ironclad invention to the Confederacy without compensation or profit other than reimbursement for their material and labor expenses, and travel costs, which was approved.

Arriving at New Orleans in mid-September 1861 with brother Charles attending to Nelson’s business interests at Albany after late October, the Tift brothers went to work on their ship, the CSS Mississippi, locating their shipyard – which had to be created with a sawmill, blacksmith shop, hull berths, and sheds for workers – on the Mississippi’s left bank above New Orleans at Jefferson City. Likely through Mallory’s influence former-US Navy paymaster Felix Senac from Key West was assigned as paymaster for both ironclads.

Fully aware that the CSS Mississippi was nearly complete, Capt. David Porter of the US Navy thought her “strong enough to drive off the whole Union fleet,” as it was “the most splendid specimen . . . the world had ever seen (a sea-going affair), and had she been finished and succeeded in getting to sea, the whole American navy would have been destroyed.”

(Key West’s Civil War: Rather Unsafe for a Southern Man to Live Here.” John Bernhard Thuersam. Shotwell Publishing, 2022. Excerpts pp. 114-119)