The Hunley is Upright

"The first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship is upright for the first time in almost 150 years, revealing a side of its hull not seen since it sank off the South Carolina coast during the Civil War." (AP) Read about it here. 

Photo gallery is here (AP Photos: Bruce Smith).

Meanwhile, progress continues on preserving remnants of the U.S.S. Monitor.

Mary's life didn't end when John was hanged

Mary Brown with daughters Annie (left) and Sarah (right)
in 1853, Vernon, New York (Library of Congress)

John Brown's son, Salmon

I was surprised, some years ago, to learn that Mary Brown—the 2nd wife of John Brown of Bloody Kansas and Harpers Ferry fame, and his wife at the time of his execution—was buried in my "back yard," in the South [San Francisco] Bay town of Saratoga, in the hills southwest of San Jose. Surprised, too, to learn that she taught English to Japanese migrant workers in the Santa Clara Valley (today more often referred to as Silicon Valley, where remnants of the once-endless orchards still survive as isolated fruit trees in fenced-off back yards).

I wasn't surprised that she had made her way to the western end of the continent in the years after her husband was hanged in Charles Town, West Virginia. According to a direct descendant, Mary Brown and her children—and a stepson, Salmon, from John's first wife—moved to California to let their families experience a life "out of the shadow of John Brown."

I was surprised because I'd never heard about it before—surprised that in an area so enamored of its history, not many people beyond the local historical society know that the widow and other family members of the man author Tony Horwitz describes as "the most successful terrorist in American history" is resting peacefully in this beautiful and affluent Northern California suburb.

It wasn't always thus, of course. As is the way with history, things are forgotten over time. Her presence in California—first in Red Bluff, then up amongst the giant coastal redwoods in Rohnerville with daughters Annie, Sarah, and Ellen, and next door to Salmon Brown and his family—was well known and widely reported in her day. Daughter Annie reportedly served as her father's secretary during at least part of his anti-slavery campaigns. During the centennial of the Harpers Ferry raid, on October 18, 1959, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Annie "had, when but 16, assisted Martha Brown, wife of John Brown's son, Oliver, with the cooking at the Kennedy farm, where the daring maneuver was prepared" (this from Jessie Faulkner at the Humboldt County Historical Society).

In 1881, about three years before her death, Mary Brown relocated to Saratoga, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, and is buried in Madronia Cemetery along with her daughters Sarah and Ellen.

To the end of her days, it seems, she was both harassed by enemies of her late husband (even having to outrun southern vigilantes on the Oregon Trail, by one account) and warmly embraced by his supporters (supported financially to some degree by well-heeled abolitionist literary figures like Thoreau and Emerson), wherever she went. The latter outnumbered the former in this Far West Union state. Check out this blog entry about John Brown's great-great-great-granddaughter, Alice Keesey Mecoy, speaking about her famous ancestor. "'I didn't know I was related to him until I was 16,' Alice Keesey Mecoy said Sunday to a packed room at the Saratoga History Museum. 'I said, What? I'm related to this crazy man?'"

In 2009, dirt from Mary's grave in California and John's in North Elba, New York, were commingled. 

I enjoyed a number of hours reading material at this excellent John Brown blog, which includes considerable information on Mary Brown.

This Allies for Freedom website has lots of interesting information on Mary Brown and her family in California.

The 9/11 of 1859

Vivenne Flesher and Ward Schumaker

Author Tony Horwitz wrote this NYT Op-Ed piece in December of 2009, on the subject of his forthcoming book about John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (Midnight Rising, John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, coming from Henry Holt in October of 2011).

The "9/11 of 1859" essay can be read in its entirety here. Scroll down at this page of the publisher's site to hear a five-minute audio from Horwitz discussing what he was trying to accomplish in writing the book.

Here's an earlier (October 2010) Horwitz Op-Ed piece on the enduring Civil War, "The 150-Year War."

Charles Town, W. Va.

ONE hundred and fifty years ago today, the most successful terrorist in American history was hanged at the edge of this Shenandoah Valley town. Before climbing atop his coffin for the wagon ride to the gallows, he handed a note to one of his jailers: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
-- from "The 9/11 of 1959"

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

I extend a hearty thank-you to my history-major neice Susan for bringing this forthcoming Horwitz volume to my attention. First, let me say how gratified I am that there are still history majors, and that I am related to one of them. Second, let me say how excited I am that Horwitz took on the John Brown raid. Like many a Civil War buff, I enjoyed his Confederates in the Attic, and his talent as a writer and a journalist caused me to follow his efforts afterwards—his chronicling of Captain Cook's adventures (Blue Laditudes), and I did download, on the advice of the aforementioned Susan, his most recent book, A Voyage Long and Strange.

Not everyone cares for Horwitz's style, but I like it. I love the conflation of serious journalist, history enthusiast, and travel writer in his narrative voice. I don't even care if he turned to John Brown to capitalize on the sesquicetennial fervor (even if he's behind the date on the John Brown raid). I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, having never been disappointed thus far. It's also a perfect segue to my forthcoming blog post on John Brown's wife, Mary.

Google Earthing the Civil War

Look at the neat things Andy Hall has done with Google Earth over at his consistently interesting Dead Confederates blog. Through "image overlay," and careful scaling of the original to align with the Google image (when will someone come up with an App that scales these images for you?), one can get a reasonably accurate look at how a historic image fits into today's satellite view. Pretty damn cool. Have at look at what he did with the location of Henry Wirz's gallows (at the Old Capitol Prison -- see the full essay on the Wirz Execution photos here) in relation to today's U.S. Supreme Court building. Likewise, the overlay of 1865 Galveston with the modern view. The application of Google Earth tools to historic documents is as unlimited as our nearly infinite capacity for avoiding doing any real work (or as Andy put it, the functionality is limited only by the imagination of the user). 

Thus far, with respect to Google Earth, my imagination was limited to creating three Civil War quizes in which participants view an overhead view of a part of a battlefield or significant landmark -- just out of context enough to be disorienting for some -- and try to guess the Civil War location. If you haven't given it a shot yet, links to the quizes and answers are given below. Quiz #1 centers on fairly famous battlefield features, without clues, while the subsequent two quizes include more-or-less useful clues. 

Google Earth Quiz Number One is here -- Answers to Quiz One are here

Google Earth Quiz Number Two is here -- (the answers for Quiz Two are found in the last of the 3 comments attached to that post).

Google Earth Quiz Number Three is here -- Answers to Quiz Three are here

The largest offensive ever mounted by a Confederate army. . .

Historian Bobby Krick addresses members of the CompuServe
Civil War Forum at their 15th annual battlefield conference, April 2011

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battle of Gaines's Mill, a major fight that remains obscure even to many self-proclaimed students of the American Civil War. Why Gaines's Mill, the rest of the Seven Days Battles, and the overall 1862 Peninsula Campaign remain in the backwaters of Civil War studies is a mystery to me.

Fortunately for us, organizations on the front lines of the Civil War preservation movement have not given the Seven Days backwater status. Just this year, important portions of the Gaines's Mill battlefield have been saved by the Richmond Battlefields Association and the Civil War Trust.

Speaking of the Civil War Trust, the July 1-8 issue of "The Week" named Civil War Trust as their "Charity of the Week," noting that they have saved 30,000 acres on 110 Civil War battlefields in 20 states. Not a bad track record.

Civil War Trust's web site continues to grow into one of the most useful and fascinating resources on the Civil War. The articles, maps, interviews, photo galleries, and videos make up a treasure trove of some of the most reliable and interesting information to be found in one place. Their Gaines's Mill page, for example, is the perfect starting point for planning a visit to the battlefield. Once there, you would do well to get in on one of NPS historian Bobby Krick's tours of the battlefield.

In the penultimate essay, Krick looks at the climax of the battle of Gaines's Mill, by far the bloodiest of the Seven Days. His topic is Brig. Gen. W. H. C. Whiting's two-brigade division and its late-afternoon assault that breached Union lines near the Watt House. Krick draws on an impressive array of materials to make sense of the attacks, which, among other results, catapulted the soldiers of John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade to fame as the army's finest shock troops. Krick reminds readers that the offensive at Gaines's Mill was the largest ever mounted by any Confederate army, its 50,000 participants far exceeding the number involved in more famous attacks by George E. Pickett and James Johnston Pettigrew at Gettysburg and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. He also sees the attack on June 27 as a pivotal event that marked the first offensive tactical victory for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The general and his soldiers built on that foundation to create one of the most famous and effective military partnerships in American history.

[The extract above is from the introduction to Gary Gallagher's, The Richmond Campaign of 1862: the Peninsula and the Seven Days, speaking of Bobby Krick's contribution to the volume.]

Remembering Edwin Francis Jemison

This portrait of Private Edwin Jemison is one of the most iconic images of the war. Though he was descended from two of the founding families of Georgia, his branch of the family moved to Louisiana before the war. When secession came, Jemison enlisted in the 2^nd Louisiana Infantry as a 16-year-old.  

The 2^nd Louisiana was sent to Virginia, where it came under the command of John Bankhead Magruder. The regiment saw limited action at Dam Number One in the opening movements of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, but was not engaged again until the last of the Seven Days battles. There, at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, 17-year-old  Private Jemison was killed in action.

With family roots in Milledgeville, Georgia, it was presumed that his remains were returned to the family plot there, and indeed, there is a gravestone for him there, as well as a more substantial monument to his memory (Memory Hill Cemetery).

Two researchers, however -- Alexandra Filipowski and Hugh T. Harrington -- have concluded that Private Jemison’s remains are buried elsewhere, namely at Malvern Hill where he was killed. This, based mainly on a contemporary obituary that mentions his burial at Malvern Hill, and the lack of any documentation that Jemison’s body was relocated to Milledgeville. You can read those researchers’ convincing argument in this America’s Civil War article from 2004.

When I think of Milledgeville, I think of Sherman’s troops ransacking the then state courthouse, and I think of Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite authors. If Jemison is buried at Memory Hill, then he’s in good company.

"Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong. Almost."

Based on Joan Walsh’s outstanding critique at Salon.com, I purchased the Kindle version of this book today. The prospects of a well researched and thoughtful new “big picture” view of the run up to war and the appalling abandonment of African Americans afterwards – the effects of nativism and religion, religious intolerance, and bigotry – and the drawing of parallels to the political landscape 100 years later, is too intriguing to pass up.

I’ll revisit this subject with my own views once I delve into it, but be sure to read Walsh’s review by clicking HERE.

From the review:

Goldfield's book has been well-reviewed, because if it's sympathetic to Southern whites, it depicts the savagery of slavery and post-war white terrorism with unflinching and gut-wrenching clarity. (Literally. The book's tales of slaves' abuse and Southern white post-war savagery will make you sick.) Still, this Civil War history challenges the absolutism of the "Northerners were heroes, and Southerners were vicious, violent racists" school of history. He exposes and excoriates Southern whites' violence against black people before and after the war. But he also links the war to the pro-business evangelical Protestant crusade to eradicate native American Indians, Mexicans, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and an emerging class of landless Northern laborers – anyone who stood in the way of their vision of clean, hard-working, business-friendly American progress. 

*  *  *  *

Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to former Confederate Florida, became an Episcopalian, wrote a best-selling book about home decorating for women, and never again troubled herself about the (former) slaves. Abolitionist Horace Greeley gave up on Reconstruction and black rights quickly. His New York Tribune, which once crusaded against slavery, began to feature "exposes" of Reconstruction, including tales of black "corruption" and political incompetence. Even the Nation magazine, which we remember as a journal of abolitionism, soured on the experiment with black suffrage.

*  *  *  * 

For many reasons, Northern Republicans gave up on the early goals of Reconstruction: to grant free blacks civil and economic rights. Goldfield quotes a Northerner observing a general desire to forget the war, and particular "apathy about the Negro" – shades of the "compassion fatigue" that would be diagnosed by neoconservatives 100 years later, after the Great Society. The parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms, are unmistakable and chilling.  . . .After each morally overdue reckoning, the parties suffered, and then they changed sides. Republicans were trounced after Reconstruction, as Democrats became the party of the South; 100 years later, Democrats were trounced, and Republicans became the party of the South. The Civil War is still not over.

Freakonomics: Why Does the South Still Commemorate the Civil War, But Not the North?

Freakonomics fearlessly explains everything. It's tempting to say that the South commemorates the War more than the North because the South is where the war was fought. But I suspect there's more to the story than that, particularly when you consider that many of those who are most eager to commemorate it are also eager to rewrite the history of the War.  

Those consequences are most apparent in the economic inversion that took place following the war. The parts of the South that were generally the richest in 1860 are today its poorest. These were the areas with the highest concentration of plantations: a swath of land stretching from coastal South Carolina down through Georgia, and west into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Today, this region is home to some of the poorest counties in America, with high rates of unemployment, low-skilled labor, and other social ills like obesity and a lack of education.

From the June 7 blog posting at "Freakonomics: the Hidden Side of Everything."

"Thanks a lot, Ken Burns"

For all its appeal, however, The Civil War is a deeply misleading and reductive film that often loses historical reality in the mists of Burns' sentimental vision and the romance of Foote's anecdotes. Watching the film, you might easily forget that one side was not fighting for, but against the very things that Burns claims the war so gloriously achieved. Confederates, you might need reminding after seeing it, were fighting not for the unification of the nation, but for its dissolution. Moreover, they were fighting for their independence from the United States in the name of slavery and the racial hierarchy that underlay it. Perhaps most disingenuously, the film's cursory treatment of Reconstruction obscures the fact that the Civil War did not exactly end in April of 1865 with a few handshakes and a mutual appreciation for a war well fought. Instead, the war's most important outcome—emancipation—produced a terrible and violent reckoning with the legacy of slavery that continued well into the 20^th century.

From "Thanks a lot, Ken Burns," by James M. Lundberg, Slate, June 7, 2011

Over 4,000 Civil War graves identified in a Brooklyn cemetery

Using the cemetery's own burial records, plus government, military and privately owned documents available online, Green-Wood's project has identified the graves of about 4,600 Civil War veterans. Green-Wood historian Jeffrey Richman estimates 3,000 to 4,000 more are scattered among the cemetery's more than 560,000 total interments.

The Civil War dead buried at Green-Wood include unknown privates and famous officers, buglers and Medal of Honor recipients, Yankees from Maine to Iowa, fathers, sons and brothers, and even 75 Confederates, including two generals. None of the original gravestones for the Confederates gave any indication they had fought for the South, an intentional omission being rectified by the installation of new granite markers provided by Veterans Affairs.

Read the full article here. 

Solarium: A novella

I just finished reading a pretty amazing short work of fiction called, "Solarium: A novella," by Josh Weil. It was published in the journal, "American Short Fiction," vol. 13, issue 50 (Winter 2010/11). I had subscribed to the journal because the previous issue featured a short story by a friend of mine (great job, Rob!), and because I was curious what this resurrected literary journal was doing these days.

I was surprised to find a story set during the Civil War—"Solarium" takes place on a Virginia plantation in 1865, beginning some time before Richmond falls and continuing beyond. But I was really surprised that the author boldly told the tale in the first-person vernacular of mid-19th century master and slave. Generally speaking, I'm of the opinion that if your name is not William Faulkner, the practice should be avoided, but author Josh Weil did an admirable job. So I will modify my recommendation to say don't do it unless you're good enough to pull it off. Seriously, who are you trying to kid?

The story is told in six overlapping narratives—each headlined simply by the narrator's  name (As I Lay Dying)—mainly giving alternating perspectives from a cotton farmer and certain of his slaves. I so want Civil War historical fiction to be as engaging and powerful as the material itself, and I am so regularly disappointed, that I started reading this novella with trepidation.

But I was soon caught up in the strange story centered on the discovery one day of an errant hot air balloon that lands on the farm. Weil skillfully gives us characters to care about (which is to say believable and compelling), and builds an ever-rising tension about the coming of the end for some, and the promise of a new beginning for others.

It's hard to review a 90-page story without giving away elements that would otherwise contribute to the reader's pleasure of discovery, but suffice it to say I found it impressive in its construction, unpredictable, and exciting. What more do you want from historical fiction, other than a reasonable faithfulness to accuracy? It has that, too.

One of the best things you can say about a work of art is that it causes you to reflect on it long after you've moved on. I've been thinking a lot about "Solarium," puzzling out some things I moved over too quickly, suddenly recognizing a larger image that I was too close to discern while reading, or replaying in my head a powerful scene, as if I had seen it acted out. Damn it, I'm going to have to read it again, and life is already too short to read all the books I own once.

I had never heard of Josh Weil, but his biography in the journal indicates he's off to a good start—many prizes and many prestigious fellowships. His 2010 triptych of novellas, The New Valley, is described in some detail on Amazon.

You can read "Solarium" by buying the current issue of "American Short Fiction" at the publisher's website—"Solarium" and three other short stories—for five bucks. Unless I'm mistaken.

the Wire, to Treme, to Lincoln Assassination?

Steve Earle, May 20, 2001 at Kepler's in Menlo Park, CA

Friday night I went to see Steve Earle promote his brand new first novel at a local bookstore, I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive. I enjoyed his earlier book of short stories, and very much like his literary "voice." Of course Earle has made his name with his music -- I'll be seeing him again at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this fall. He's written a few Civil War-themed songs that, for me, arrive at a happy intersection of great music and a favorite historical subject. I posted a blog entry on Earle's Ben McCulloch earlier this year. Great song.

Earle has also had some roles in David Simon's highly acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, and more recently in Simon's newer series, Treme. During the Q&A Friday night, I got the opportunity to ask Earle if he reads a lot of Civil War history. He said he has in the past, but not lately. The question, however, caused him to relate the story that David Simon told him not to cut his beard, because he had him in mind for a particular cavalry officer who participated in the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. Earle said Simon, who is a crime reporter at heart (was, in fact, a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun) had no interest in Lincoln or Booth so much as the other characters involved. It occurred to me that Robert Redford recently addressed this very subject, but undoubtedly Simon would take it in another direction.

I hope it comes to fruition. Might be a nice counterbalance to all of the other assassination-related dramas we're going to see in the next few years.

"I was wearing the name of Lewis Smith"

Portrait of Dick Barnett and his wife, date unknown.
(Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG 15)

A fascinating article. . .

Winter 2005, Vol. 37, No. 4

Voices of Emancipation:
Union Pension Files Giving Voice to Former Slaves
By Donald R. Shaffer and Elizabeth Regosin
© 2005 by Donald R. Shaffer and Elizabeth Regosin

Civil War pension files have the potential to rival the more famous WPA narratives of ex-slaves in offering evidence on the experiences of 19th-century African Americans from a black point of view. In fact, based on when the information was collected—mainly between the 1880s and 1910s—they are arguably superior. Civil War pension files are much more contemporaneous to the experiences of slavery, the Civil War, and their aftermath than the WPA narratives, which were not gathered until the mid-to-late 1930s. Many pension files include in-depth interviews of former slaves by special examiners for the purpose of clarifying information on such issues as military service, identity, health and disability, marital and family relationships, employment, economic circumstances, and previous ownership. The depositions are often quite effective in giving a voice to former slaves, allowing them the opportunity to talk about their lives and provide important clues about how they saw the world.

 Read the full article here. 

Five Myths About Why the South Seceded

ALEXANDER GARDNER/ AP - A photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken
by Alexander Gardner in Washington in August of 1863.

Lies Across America author, James W. Loewen, dispenses with some enduring misconceptions about secession in this piece for the Washington Post. 

As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war’s various battles — from Fort Sumter to Appomattox — let’s first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.

(1) The South seceded over states’ rights.  (2) Secession was about tariffs and taxes.  (3) Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.  (4) Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery.  (5) The South couldn’t have made it long as a slave society.

Loewen's offers up his reasons for each point.  

"The Foolishness of Civil War Reenactors," by Glenn W. LaFantasie

Though I'm a regular reader at Salon.com, I just learned of this article by visiting Andy Hall's excellent Dead Confederates blog. 

The Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina

The people have spoken. Every year a dedicated contingent of long-time members of the Civil War Forum—along with a handful of welcome newcomers to the group—meet at a different battlefield for three days of battlefield tramping, good food, and good company. Next year, the group has voted to visit North Carolina. Mark your calendars.

16th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference
The Battle of Bentonville
Wilmington & Fort Fisher
March 29 to April 1, 2012
Headquarters: Dunn, NC

Mark Bradley, author of the definitive campaign study, The Battle of Bentonville: Last Stand in the Carolinas, will guide us through Averasboro and Bentonville, and Chris Fonvielle, author of The Wilmington Campaign: Last Rays of Departing Hope, will handle the Forts Fisher and Anderson tours. Additionally, we'll visit the Monroe's Crossroads battlefield on the grounds of Fort Bragg.

Check out the Civil War Trust's Bentonville and Fort Fisher pages for maps, articles, and other resources.

We'll do things a little bit differently next year, in that I'll most likely book the bus for three full days, reserving the last day for the long ride to Wilmington and back (Sunday, April 1st). For that trip, we'll put on a Civil War movie and pull out the refreshments, to include copious amounts of adult beverages.

We'll be headquartered at a hotel in Dunn, North Carolina, which is about an hour from the biggest airport in the region (Raleigh), and close to the battlefields. Stay tuned for hotel info and final itinerary. Let me know if you'd like to receive registration information by email.

End of the line for Lincoln

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Dockworkers prepare to receive the Lincoln
as it arrives at the Mare Island shipyard in Vallejo.

----------
A gray old ship, the Lincoln, that is part of San Francisco's maritime past was towed up the bay Thursday on a final voyage to be scrapped at Mare Island in Vallejo. . . .

The trip was part of an unusual nautical swap in which the government traded the Lincoln for its identical sister ship, the President. Both vessels will be scrapped: one of them in Texas, the other in Vallejo. 

The two ships - originally named President Lincoln and President Tyler- were built in San Francisco in 1961 and sailed out of the city on voyages all over the world for years. They were general cargo ships, operated by American President Lines, a company that traces its roots to the Gold Rush of 1849.
----------

Read the full article here.

How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books

[from salon.com. . .]

Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union Army and the 18th president of the United States, would have been 189 years old last week--not long after the "official" opening of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, which will run through 2015.

Grant -- like George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower -- was both a professional warrior of a defining war and a twice-elected president. And like Washington and Eisenhower he dominated his era, which in his case encompassed both the Civil War and its aftermath, called Reconstruction, from 1862 (when he rocketed to fame with his defeat of Confederate forces at Fort Donelson) to 1876.

 Read full article here. 

Was one of your ancestors lost on the U.S.S. Monitor?

The skeleton to the left, victim “Monitor 2,” is shown
by digital overlay where it was uncovered after the photo
of the first victim was taken. (Monitor Collection, NOAA)

The United States Navy would like to identify the remains of two men found in the turret of the U.S.S. Monitor -- two of the 16 officers and crew who went down with the ship on New Year's Eve, 1862. If you think you might be a descendant and are willing to produce some DNA, contact  Jeff Johnston at (757) 591-7351, Jeff.Johnston@noaa.gov. Thanks to Robert Moore for highlighting this article at Civil War News. 

List of Monitor casualties:

OFFICERS:
Attwater, Norman Knox: Acting Ensign
Frederickson, George: Acting Ensign
Hands, Robinson Woollen: 2nd Asst. Engineer
Lewis, Samuel Augee: 3rd Asst. Engineer

ENLISTED AFRICAN-AMERICAN:
Cook, Robert: 1st Class Boy (b. Gloucester County, VA)
Howard, Robert H: Officers’ Cook (b. Howard County, VA)
Moore, Daniel: Landsman (b. Prince William or Loudoun County, VA)

ENLISTED WHITE:
Allen, William: Landsman (b. England) 24 yrs.
Bryan, William: Yeoman (b. New York City) 31 yrs.
Eagan, William H: Landsman (b. Ireland) 21 yrs.
Fenwick, James R: Quarter Gunner (b. Scotland) 23 yrs.
Joyce (Joice), Thomas: 1st Class Fireman (b. Ireland) 23 yrs.
Littlefield, George: Coal Heaver (b. Saco, ME) 25 yrs.
Nicklis (Nickles), Jacob: Seaman (b. Buffalo (?), NY) 21 yrs.
Stocking, John: Boatswain’s Mate (b. Binghampton, NY) 27 yrs.
Williams, Robert: 1st Class Fireman (b. Wales) 30 yrs.

The Civil War: 1861 (Forever)

Get these nifty Civil War postage stamps (commemorating Ft. Sumter and First Bull Run) while they last. Avoid long lines and surly civil servants by ordering them online.

"The Apostle of Liberty" and The Gipper

Thomas Starr King

Ronald Reagan
under the rotunda

For most of the 20th century, California was represented in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall by the likenesses of Father Junipero Serra, and the Unitarian preacher Thomas Starr King. King, as much as any one figure and much more than most, helped keep California in the Union (the state's popular vote totals were close among the top three candidates in 1860: Lincoln: 38,733, Douglas: 37,999; Breckinridge: 33,969). Thomas Starr King was a dedicated anti-slavery campaigner who helped put Leland Stanford in the governor's office, and who traveled the state giving fiery orations in defense of the Union. According to one source, "King covered his pulpit with an American flag and ended all his sermons with 'God bless the president of the United States and all who serve with him the cause of a common country.'" 

Alas, King's contributions to the state of California, and to the maintenance of the union, are no longer celebrated as they once were (though you can follow the Thomas Starr King Appreciation Society on Facebook, with its 110 members, hike two mountains named for him, and admire his namesake tree at Yosemite). In 2006 the California state legislature voted to recall King's statue from the National Statuary Hall and replace it with one of Ronald Reagan, a former Des Moines radio broadcaster. There was no public discussion about such a monumental change. No debate about whether John Muir, or Joe DiMaggio, or Earl Warren, or Jerry Garcia might have been more appropriate.  

The statue of "the orator who saved the nation" eventually found a new home in the Civil War Memorial Grove of Sacramento's Capitol Park. According to the Capitol Museum, the grove was planted beginning in 1896 to the east of the capitol with saplings collected from Manassas, Harpers Ferry, Savannah, Five Forks, Yellow Tavern, and Vicksburg, and ultimately 34 other battlefields. The brainchild of GAR ladies from California and Nevada, the grove was intended to honor soldiers from both sides of the conflict, and was the first monument on the capitol grounds. 

Thomas Starr King's tomb, Starr King Way and Franklin, San Francisco

If it were up to me, I would have recalled Serra's statue from Washington (even if he is one miracle away from sainthood), and left King's -- Serra died in 1784, 66 years before California statehood. I was not consulted. Interestingly, the Californians of 1927 who voted to include King as one of the two most notable representatives chose a man who only lived in the state for four years. He arrived in San Francisco on the eve of the war in 1860, and died in March of 1864. 

King Statue, Sacramento

1861: The Civil War Awakening

Unidentified soldier in Union officer's uniform at Point Lookout,
Tennessee. (Liljenquist Family Collection, Library of Congress)

Slate published an interesting interview with Adam Goodheart on Friday. He is the author of the brand-new 1861: The Civil War Awakening, and is a main contributor to the New York Times Disunion blog. Go to the Slate article and launch the slide slow for some select images from the Liljenquist collection that was recently donated to the Library of Congress. 

Slate: Americans have a sense of the whole scope of the Civil War, but what is it about the year 1861 that we miss when we look back and see the Civil War as a single complete event?

Goodheart: We tend to think of the Civil War in a very fatalistic way, as a sort of vast national martyrdom. It's hard to recover the fact that things could have turned out very, very differently. It's also hard to grasp the idea that Americans at the beginning of the war had no sense of the way that things were going to unfold. When I wrote the book, I really wanted to recover that moment of uncertainty and change – to convey how people, then and now, experience history not as seen from 30,000 feet as the History Channel might, but as a barrage of individual events coming at them, alternately thrilling and terrifying.

Seven Days Travelogue, part two

History is all explained by geography.
— Robert Penn Warren

Dateline: Princeton-by-the-Sea, California

So this is what a blog post from an iPad looks like in Blogspot. If there's an app out there that allows one to compose with more sophisticated formatting, I've not found it yet. Might have to go back and format this after the fact. For now, I'm just happy to be able to dock the iPad on a full size keyboard.

The last two days of the 15th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference transpired without a hitch. It was a beautiful thing to walk out into the heart of the Glendale battlefield and listen to Bobby Krick read personal accounts related to the particular plot of protected land we were standing upon.

After a spectacular lunch of fried chicken at the Elko Community Center, done up only as country church ladies can do, the balance of the afternoon was spent at Malvern Hill. Revelations abounded as we walked the Confederate assault route to the "high water" mark near the site of the slave cabins, and ultimately moved into a swale on the Confederate left to experience first-hand how two separate and parallel fights occurred out of sight of each other. Reading a description of that phenomenon is fine, but seeing it is to understand it.

At the close of the day, we stopped at the Jeb Stuart monument at Yellow Tavern, mere yards from our hotel, for a short talk on the 1864 fighting there. Sunday morning was warm and sunny, with great visibility, just perfect for our visit to Drewry's Bluff and Battery Dantzler. For decades I've pictured that stretch of the river below the guns at Drewry's Bluff, images evoked from countless written accounts, but this was the first time I was able to commit the actual view to memory.

Now I'm 3,000 miles away again, in a small fishing village overlooking the old Romeo Pier and planning next year's conference. The votes are in, and we're headed to Bentonville and Fort Fisher in 2012. Invitations are already out to guides Mark Bradley and Chris Fonvielle.

Seven Days Travelogue, part one

[CONFERENCE] Day One -- twenty or twenty-five of us met up with author and researcher Chris Ferguson at the South Cherry Street entrance to Hollywood Cemetery, and spent the next three hours hiking and driving through the graveyard with numerous stops to hear Chris relate the history of the cemetery, and stories about individuals buried there. Best quotes came from the records of the Old Soldiers Home, regarding the antics of a spritely and heavily-armed 80-year-old. 

[CONFERENCE] Day Two -- Mechanicsville through Gaines's Mill with Bobby Krick, the best tour guide we've had in 15 years of conferences, and we've had many of the best that Civil War battlefield touring has to offer, including his father. I don't say that lightly. He's the consummate pro -- aware of his audience, able to distill an exceedingly complex campaign into a comprehendable narrative, with a perfectly engaging delivery and an absolute command of the subject matter. But it's more than that. There's a long list of qualities, some intangible, that I would highlight in recommending him to anyone else. 

Highlight of the day: the Civil War Forum, thanks to the brand-new acquisition by the Richmond Battlefields Association, became the first group to traverse the Gaines's Mill battlefield in the tracks of the 4th Texas Infantry, starting on the Confederate side of the creek, descending into the creek bottom and crossing on a rudimentary "Krick bridge," before scaling the slope to the site of the Confederate break-through. The yellow box on this Richmond Battlefields Association map shows the new parcel acquired by RBA, the first preservation success at Gaines's Mill since Douglas Southall Freeman and friends purchased a small part of the battlefield in the 1920s (and the first piece on the CSA side of Boatswain's Creek to be locked off from development). 

Friday night Bobby gave a fascinating talk on "Drewry's Bluff, Gibraltar of the Confederacy," making us all realize how little we actually knew about that otherwise commonly known story.


Tomorrow: all the way to Malvern Hill, and beyond.

Kunta Kinte's worst nightmare

Thanks to Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory for bringing this series of  collectibles to our attention. Buy the courthouse and get the R. E. Lee figurine for free. Buy Confederate Station and they'll throw in Stonewall Jackson. 

It's not as realistic as this photo of Richmond in ruins, but then I don't suppose the intended audience wants a free figurine of Presdient Lincoln, surrounded by joyous slaves, strolling over to the White House of the Confederacy to rummage through Jeff Davis's desk. 

One of last 2 WWI veterans turns 110 in Australia

By ROHAN SULLIVAN  The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 2, 2011; 10:50 PM

SYDNEY -- One of the last two known veterans of World War I celebrated his 110th birthday Thursday with at least three generations of family and a contingent of navy officers in dress uniform. His daughter said he didn't want a fuss. Claude "Chuckles" Choules, who sneaked into the British navy in 1915 aged just 14, has lived quietly in Australia for more than 80 years, though his longevity has brought him closer to history with the passing of each comrade who fought the war that was meant to end all others.

They say the last Civil War veteran died around 1959, the year I was born. Now, a mere half century later, my grandfather's generation of WWI veterans are down to two (that we know of). History is a work in progress. Every day we watch it unfold, and the events of today are profound even if we cannot discern the ramifications. The nightly news is nothing short of astonishing. Not the Charlie Sheen part. The medical and technological advances part. The revolutions in the Middle East part.

Tour of the Seven Days Battlefields

The Seven Days Battles
with Richmond National Battlefields Historian
Robert E. L. Krick

The 15th Civil War Forum
Battlefield Conference
Richmond, Virginia
March 31-April 3, 2011

There's still room to join us on a spectacular weekend of battlefield tramping with the most authoritative guide on the Seven Days battles, the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862 and a major turning point in the war. We have 40-some souls signed up so far, and will cut off registration when we fill our coach (either a 44- or a slightly larger coach).

ITINERARY:

Thursday afternoon, March 31st:
WALKING TOUR: 1:00-4:30 p.m.
a guided stroll with narrative interpretation through Hollywood Cemetery with historian Chris Ferguson (see bio below)—we'll carpool from the hotel. Gather in the hotel lobby at 12:30 p.m. prepared to leave by 12:45 p.m.
No evening event scheduled for Thursday night.

Friday: April 1st:
BUS TOUR: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Dabbs House (Lee's HQ); Meadow Bridges; Mechanicsville battlefield; lunch at Cold Harbor County Park; Gaines's Mill battlefield (extensive walking here); to close the day, we'll take the opportunity to stop at Yellow Tavern, since our hotel is on the edge of the battlefield, and the Stuart monument is less than a mile away and hard to find for most folks on their own.
RECEPTION: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Yellow Tavern Bar, in the hotel)
DINNER: 7:15 p.m. (Glen Restaurant -- in our reserved seating area)
AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER: 8:00 p.m. (York Room)
Robert E. L. Krick, on "Drewry's Bluff:  Gibraltar on the James"

Saturday: April 2nd:
BUS TOUR: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Savage's Station; White Oak Swamp; lunch at Elko Community Center, Frayser's Farm/Glendale (only recently accessible thanks to CWPT); and Malvern Hill (extensive walking here).
RECEPTION: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Yellow Tavern Bar)
DINNER: 7:15 p.m. (Glen Restaurant -- in our reserved seating area)
AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER: 8:00 p.m. (York Room)
John Coski, "After the Seventh Day They Rested"
John is the Historian and Director of Library & Research,
Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia

Sunday: April 3rd:
OPTIONAL car pool tour: 9:00 a.m. to noon:
Drewry's Bluff and Battery Dantzler (the two best sites between Richmond and Petersburg)
Gather in the hotel lobby at 8:30 a.m. for 8:45 a.m. departure.

REGISTRATION:
$295
—includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday tours
—includes box lunches on Friday and Saturday
—includes buffet dinner and after dinner speakers on Friday and Saturday evenings
Breakfast is not included, but you'll receive a discount voucher when you check in. No formal meeting is scheduled for breakfast, but we will still have a reserved seating area from 7:00-8:00 a.m. for anyone who has breakfast in the restaurant]
[Registration does not include lodging]
Pay by check or money order, or credit card via PayPal (request a PayPal invoice)
Mail checks or money orders (made out to David Woodbury)
to: Civil War Forum
P.O. Box 19130
Stanford, CA 94309


HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS
Wyndham Virginia Crossings hotel and conference center
1000 Virginia Center Parkway
Glen Allen (Richmond), Virginia 23059
http://www.wyndhamvirginiacrossings.com/
Cost: $99 (with tax, it comes to 111.87 per night)

Most attendees will check into the hotel Wednesday evening (3/30/11) and check out Sunday morning (4/3/11).

RESERVATIONS: Individuals will be responsible for their own reservations. Reservations will be accepted over the telephone by calling (804) 727-1400 or (888) 444-6553 and referencing “15th Civil War Forum Battlefield Conference.” Book your rooms!

 Our Tour Guides:

Robert E. Lee Krick is a historian at the Richmond National Battlefield, and is recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, and the Seven Days battles, as well as many other aspects of the Civil War in the East. He is the author many articles, as well as a regimental history of the 40th Virginia Infantry.

Bobby Krick is also author of a well-regarded reference work, Staff Officers in Gray: A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, which profiles over 2,000 officers—a fine companion on your bookshelf to his father’s Lee’s Colonels. Check out this interview with Bobby Krick at the Civil War Preservation Trust website. More Malvern Hill videos, maps, and other resources from the same site.


Chris Ferguson is a native of Atlanta, Ga., currently residing in Winchester, Va. with his wife of 30 years and their beloved cat Romeo. He's a graduate of Georgia State University, BS: Criminal Justice, 1977, and is presently Vice President with Zwicker & Assoc., P.C., a national law firm based on Andover, MA. He is the author of two books covering the Confederate dead in Hollywood Cemetery, and co-author, with Robert K. Krick, of the Gettysburg Death Roster. He is also the author of numerous articles covering Confederate dead removed from Virginia battlefields.