by ©2021 Sarah Becker Juneteenth On June 19th, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger entered Galveston, Texas, and announced the end of the Civil War, the belated end of southern slavery. General Order No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a [January 1, 1863] proclamation from the Executive of the United States [President Abraham Lincoln], all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equalityof personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labor. The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” Texans celebrated Juneteenth beginning in 1866. It was revived in 1979 and became an official state holiday in 1980. The Commonwealth of Virginia first acknowledged the June 19th jubilee in 2007—the 44th state to do so. Why so late to the table? Virginia—for more than 150 years—has championed southern history: Confederate Generals, Lee-Jackson Day, and the Lost Cause. “The lessons that negroes make a bad use of liberty is taught daily in the police court of this and all other cities in which they are numerous,” the Alexandria Gazette wrote on August 1, 1895. “Nearly all the cases before such courts are those of negroes, the parties to which are either sent to jail or the work house, put on the chain gang, or impoverished by fines. Before the Negroes were freed it was a rarity for one of them to be arrested…their money spent in the payment of fines.” “Between the idea of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the…
©2020 Sarah Becker The Lee-Jackson Debate At long last the New Year has arrived. Joe Biden (D-DE) is president-elect; COVID-19 continues its sinister spread, and Virginia no longer observes Robert E. Lee-Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson Day. Lee-Jackson Day was established in 1904. “It is past time that we stop honoring the Confederacy,” Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said in 2020. The times—the politics—are ‘changin.’ Last October Virginia judge W. Reilly Marchant ruled Richmond’s controversial 1890 statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee can be wholly removed—from Monument Avenue by order of the Governor. Virginia Military Institute’s 108 year-old statue of Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson was removed last month. Jackson was nicknamed “Stonewall” after his showing in the first Battle of Bull Run. Lee-Jackson Day—celebrated coincident with Martin Luther King’s birthday—included Confederate wreath-laying ceremonies, a Civil War parade and ball. The lore is “deeply entwined in the state’s self-image;” the related monuments “erected by propagandists pushing a Lost Cause.” In 2017 white supremacists and Neo-Nazis gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to aggressively defend a 1924 statue of Confederate General Lee. Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 1807, the fifth child of overspent Revolutionary War hero General Henry “Light-horse Harry” Lee and his second wife Ann Hill Carter, the great granddaughter of Virginia slaveholder Robert “King” Carter. Robert E. did not live the “legendary Victorian virtue” as “celebrated in a thousand marble statues across the South.” His sense of Duty, Duty before desire did not include the South’s “terrible hardening of the heart.” Lee emancipated his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis’ slaves on December 29, 1862; approximately three months after President Lincoln’s September 23 Emancipation Proclamation was published in draft. Congress renamed Arlington’s historic Custis-Lee mansion—the Custis’ family home—Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial in 1972. The name change first discussed…
by ©2019 Sarah Becker Walt Whitman and the Civil War “In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look),” poet Walt Whitman wrote in 1867 in Old War Dreams. “Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide, I dream, I dream, I dream….Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields, Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, Onward I sped at the time—but now of their forms at night, I dream, I dream, I dream.” In 1861 the United States offered approximately 40 medical schools and six schools of pharmacy. Despite the seeming sophistication, Civil War hospitals were mostly makeshift. “The [Prince Street] house is commodious, and, for a confiscated dwelling, is very fine,” the Alexandria Gazette noted in 1864. Alexandria’s Civil War hospitals included Prince Street Hospital, Lyceum Hall, Carlyle House, Lee-Fendall House and Episcopal Seminary. Also Prince Street’s L’Ouverture Hospital for colored troops. Medical and other supplies were secured, in part, from Fairfax Street’s Leadbeater & Co. including Lamp Oil, Charcoal, Castile Soap, Laudanum and Morphine Sulph. Virginia seceded from the Union on May 24, 1861, only to find the Federal Army ready to stake an Alexandria claim. Occupied Alexandria, a budding hospital town, served as an Army logistical supply center. It operated alongside the city of Washington, Georgetown and Aquia Creek. “Still sweeping the eye around down the river toward Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where the Convalescent Camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes ten thousand inmates,” Walt Whitman penned. Whitman, a New Yorker, traveled to Washington in 1862 to search for his brother George, missing in the Battle of Fredericksburg. He called infirmaries the “marrow…
by Sarah Becker ©2018 The South Secedes! More Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state. The majority of the clashes occurred between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, an interesting fact given Virginia’s initial reluctance to secede. “In spite of all excitement, rash conduct, and reckless language indulged in by the ultras at the South, we plainly perceive that the calm attitude and conservative course of Virginia, so far, is exercising its influence in several of the States around South Carolina,” the Alexandria Gazette reported on November 16, 1860. “Enough is known now to satisfy every body that Virginia will not favor ‘precipitate action…that she does not consider the election of Lincoln, as, of itself, ground for an attempt to break up and dissolve the Union….” “What is secession?” The New York Times then asked. “The Southern Disunionist journals are laying great stress on their assumed right to secede.” Said James Madison father of the Constitution in 1832, “It is high time that the [nullifiers] claim to secede at will should be put down by public opinion, and I shall be glad to see the task commenced by one who understands the subject.” After much political pondering—on April 17, 1861—delegates to Virginia’s secession convention voted 88-55 to depart the Union. The vote came only two weeks after the convention roundly rejected an April 4 secession proposal. What changed the delegates and, in turn, the public’s mind? Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln took his Presidential oath of office approximately three weeks after Virginia’s secession convention began. The 1860 Republican platform was clear: “That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is freedom.” Lawyer Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural message was also clear: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of…
By Sarah Becker ©2018 Robert E. Lee, the Marble Model West Point classmates called Virginia-born Robert E. Lee the Marble Model, the Marble Man. He was nicknamed such probably for reason of heritage; his statuesque quality, dignity and bravura. Lee entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1825, mostly because it was free. “We beg leave to recommend to your personal consideration Mr. Robert Edward Lee, a son of the late General Henry Lee of Virginia, as an applicant for admission to the Military Academy at West Point,” the Congressional signers wrote. “The assurances which we have received of the talents and attainments of this young gentleman, apart from the regard we feel for the military services of his deceased father, induce us to hope…for the admission.” A plebe cum cadet staff sergeant, Lee was born January 19, 1807, the fifth child of overspent Revolutionary War hero General Henry “Light-horse Harry” Lee and his second wife Ann Hill Carter. Robert E. did not live the “legendary Victorian virtue” as “celebrated in a thousand marble statues across the South.” His sense of Duty did not include the South’s “terrible hardening of the heart.” Lee emancipated his in-laws’ slaves on December 29, 1862; approximately three months after President Abraham Lincoln’s September 23 Emancipation Proclamation was published in draft. The Emancipation Proclamation became law on January 1, 1863. “Know all men by these presents, that I, Robert E. Lee, executor of the last will and testament of George W.P. Custis deceased, acting by and under authority and direction of the provision of the said will, do hereby manumit, emancipate and forever set free from slavery the following named slaves.” “[Lee’s] specialty was finishing up,” Alexandria school teacher Benjamin Hallowell said of young Robert’s studies. “He imparted a finish and…
By Sarah Becker © 2017 An Act to Encourage Immigration Abraham Lincoln, in his 1864 holiday proclamation, praised Almighty God for augmenting “our free population by emancipation and by immigration…” To immigrate: to enter and settle in a foreign country. To naturalize: to admit a foreigner to citizenship. In 1790 naturalization was limited to “any Alien being a free white person who shall have resided within…the United States for a term of two years.” On July 4, 1864 the U.S. Congress “passed a bill to encourage immigration,” an Act President Lincoln signed into law the same day. The Act permitted foreign emigrants to enter as Alien contract labor “for a term not exceeding 12 months.” In 1864 America’s Civil War was ongoing and labor (common and otherwise) was in short supply. Particularly in the South’s pre-war cotton producing states. The 1860 Census “showed the aggregate population of the United States amounted to 31,041,977, an increase of 8,449,921 as compared with 1850.” Slaves accounted for 12.9% of the total population. The increase in free men was 38%, “a material increase due to immigration from abroad.” Between 1845-1850 Ireland’s potato famine brought approximately 500,000 immigrants to the United States. The Republican Party platform of 1860, the platform upon which President Lincoln was first elected, referenced immigration. The Party “opposed any change in our naturalization laws.” Especially as regards “free homestead policy” and or construction of “a railroad to the Pacific ocean.” “Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new, and the countries of Europe are densely populated, if there are any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to…prevent them from coming,” President-elect Lincoln said. Ninety-three million Americans are descended from Homesteaders. In 1862 President Lincoln, an architect of a…
CIVIL DISCOURSE, MAY 1865 As the war wound down in April of 1865, 2100 paroled Union POWs assembled at a camp near Vicksburg, Mississippi to await transport home by steamer. On April 24th, they crowded aboard the Sultana for the ride home. About 2:00 in the morning on April 27th, the boat’s three boilers exploded, scalding many of her crew and passengers. Scattered embers immediately set the ship ablaze and those who had not been flayed alive by steam were forced into a cold and flooded Mississippi to perish from hypothermia. About an hour later, another ship came upon the burning wreck and managed to rescue some of the survivors, while others were pulled from the water as they drifted past Memphis. Many of these would later die in hospitals of their wounds and burns. In all, deaths are believed to be in the range of 1800 – more than the Titanic’s 1512 – making the Sultana the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. For a time the Sultana disaster was blamed on faulty maintenance – an accident. But the deathbed confession of Robert Louden, Confederate secret agent, later called this into question when he claimed to have sabotaged the boat with a “coal torpedo.” This refers to a four pound iron shell disguised as a large lump of coal, painted black and covered with coal dust, filled with gunpowder. When shoveled into a steam engine coal-box, the shell would soon explode, triggering a catastrophic rupture which would release scalding steam and scatter burning coal to start fires. These devious devices were the invention of Thomas Courtenay, who planned to seed them among Union vessels and even to have decoy coal barges confiscated by blockaders, who would then transfer the booby-trapped coal into their own bins. Louden may have in…
“Like so many individual participants in the national blood-letting, Alexandrians going to [civil] war were simply fulfilling their duty, upholding personal honor, not caught up in the political argument over a state’s right to secede or the moral argument of owning slaves,” George Kundahl wrote. Until President Lincoln responded to the Confederate firing on Ft. Sumter in April 1861. “I have received your communication, mailed [April 15th] in which I am requested to detach from the Militia of the State of Virginia ‘the quota designated in a table,’ which you append, ‘to serve as infantry or riflemen for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged,’” Governor John Letcher wrote the Secretary of War on April 16, 1861. The Secretary asked the states for 75,000 soldiers. “In reply…I have only to say that the Militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view,” Letcher continued. “Your object is to subjugate the Southern states, and a requisition made upon me for such an object—an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the Act of 1795, will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war and, having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined by the Administration and exhibited towards the South.” Like South Carolina before, Virginia seceded from the Union. During the Civil War, Alexandria, occupied as of May 24, 1861, functioned primarily as a military base. Railroads and the Potomac waterway combined to form a Federal transportation hub. In 1861 three railroads entered Alexandria. Another operated river steamers between its rail terminus at Aquia Creek and the city. “We landed at Alexandria and saw as melancholy and miserable a town as the mind of…
CIVIL DISCOURSE, FEBRUARY 1865 In most of our minds, 150 years later, we have a notion that the North fought the South, which is true. But it also misleading in suggesting all the Northerners agreed with Lincoln and all the Southerners favored secession. Even the divisions were divided. For starters, count the number of stars on a Confederate flag – thirteen. We forget that two of the border-states, Kentucky and Missouri, voted to secede even though they remained under Union control. Maryland likely would have seceded and rendered Washington City a tiny island in hostile territory had not Lincoln preemptively arrested and jailed its pro-secession legislators. Still, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland provided entire regiments to the Confederacy. On the flip side, West Virginia seceded from Virginia, while eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina provided regiments to the Union. We usually imagine the Civil War as being fought between armies of blue and gray, but the reality was far uglier – much of the war was fought by partisans, neighbor against neighbor, really just murder and bushwhacking. This is Quantrill burning Lawrence, Kansas and gunning down perhaps 164 civilians, many individually targeted in advance. This is the war in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, where gangland-style executions are carried out in dark coves by civilians against other civilians, where Confederate veterans struggling to bring in a crop to feed their families are fighting both their Unionist neighbors and home guards who will shoot them for desertion. This is the Lumbee Indians bushwhacking law enforcement from the swamps to avoid Confederate labor details. This is all very local and not on the other side of some frontier. Because this conflict is unorganized and largely civilian, these casualties are usually not counted in the official tally of losses, but the cost…
CIVIL DISCOURSE, JANUARY 1865 A lot of people think that the Civil War ended in April of 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Not so – the last fight in the East was at Waynesville, North Carolina on May 6, 1865. West of the Mississippi, the battle of Palmito Ranch on May 12th is often considered to be the last engagement of the war. The very last Confederate command, that of Brigadier General Stand Watie, fought at Palmito Ranch, but did not lay down its arms until June 23rd, 1865, more than two months after Appomattox. The common thread among these last engagements: the Confederate troops were largely Native American. Even at Appomattox, the terms of surrender were drafted by Grant’s adjutant Ely Parker, a Seneca, who with Stand Watie was one of two Indians to attain the rank of general. At the McLean house, Lee shook his hand and said, “I am glad to see one real American here”, to which a conciliatory Parker replied, “We are all Americans.” The Indians at Waynesville were North Carolina Cherokees commanded by William Holland Thomas, who had been adopted by the Cherokees as a boy and went on to become a chief of the Eastern Cherokees. As an attorney, he negotiated with the Federal government to prevent their removal to Oklahoma. In September of 1862, he raised Thomas’ Legion of Cherokee Indians and Highlanders, a “legion” being an independent command with its own infantry, cavalry and artillery. For most of the war, the Legion defended southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee. In its first engagement, a popular Cherokee lieutenant was killed; enraged Cherokees retaliated by scalping dead or wounded Yankees. Thomas returned the scalps in a bag with his apologies. This was not the only time scalps were taken by the Confederacy –…
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