____________________
“The
Yankees would back up against the North Pole before they would fight.”
Bold Southern prediction.
____________________
ENTHUSIASM for war – in the beginning –
is a common phenomenon. Those who predict the duration are often wrong by
years.
The historian, Benjamin Andrews, describes a class, in the South, “of swaggering whites,” who predicted, in their words, that “the Yankees would back up against the North Pole before they would fight.” (11/115)
*
February 22: On George Washington’s birthday, President-elect Abraham Lincoln spoke at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He noted that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence believed “that all should have an equal chance,” and that he would rather be assassinated than give up that principle. During a stop at Harrisburg, a 34-gun salute, one for each state, was fired in his honor.
Lincoln had this to say:
Now,
in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need for bloodshed and
war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course; and I may
say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it be forced upon the Government.
The Government will not use force, unless force is used against it. (Finley,
190)
March 4: The historian John Meacham, writing in Time (pp. 43-46; 10/31/22) describes Lincoln’s trip from the Willard Hotel, down Pennsylvania Avenue, to the Capitol. With him is outgoing President James Buchanan.
The two men rode together in an open carriage up Pennsylvania Avenue, bound for the covered platform that had been erected on the East Front for the presidential Inauguration. Double files of cavalrymen escorted the procession to the Capitol. Cross streets had been closed to secure the route in the event of attack. Sharpshooters were stationed on rooftops along the avenue, “with orders,” an officer recalled, “to watch the windows on the opposite side, and to fire upon them in case any attempt should be made to fire from those windows on the presidential carriage.”
In his inaugural address, President Lincoln holds out faint hope:
That there are persons in one section
or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any
pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny. If there be such, I need
address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union, may I
not speak?
“One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended,” he added, “while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”
Then came this admission:
This country, with its
institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow
weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right
of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow
it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens
are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I
make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority
of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes
prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing
circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the
people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode
seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people
themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions
originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might
not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I
understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution – which amendment,
however, I have not seen – has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal
Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States,
including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I
have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so
far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional
law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
Lincoln also offered warning:
Plainly, the central idea of
secession, is the essence of anarchy. Why should there not be a patient
confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal
hope, in the world? In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not
in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail
you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You
have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have
the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend” it.
There was also this, from Mr. Lincoln:
We are not enemies, but
friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone,
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
With Lincoln as a model, and writing in difficult times, Meacham also notes that our finest presidents “are those who are committed not only to the pursuit of power but also to bringing a flawed nation closer to justice.”
Meacham also takes note of the conflicting pressures under which the sixteenth president was operating. He believed in gradual emancipation, with payment to slave owners. He “was born in, and came to lead, a nation in which anti-Black prejudice was a fact of life.” Such sentiments limited his ability to act. Lincoln, says Meacham, was pragmatic, as Frederick Douglass understood.
In 1876, Douglass wrote, “Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent: but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”
W.E.B. Dubois would later describe the president so:
Abraham Lincoln was a Southern poor
white… poorly educated and unusually ugly, awkward, ill-dressed…cruel, merciful;
peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting
slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man – a big, inconsistent, brave man.
Writing in 2022, Meacham also notes, “in a recent YouGov-Economist poll 54% of self-identified “strong Republicans” thought “a civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next decade.”
He adds:
The forces of unchecked power
are self-evidently in the ascendant, and they are the controlling element of
one of our two major parties. The past is not always prologue, but history
suggests that our divisions are as deep as they have been since Lincoln’s time –
and thus his experience repays consideration. (43-44)
He
means, of course, the Republican Party, under the guidance of former President
Donald J. Trump.
NOTE TO TEACHERS: It would be easy to get a discussion going in any class, I think, by directing students’ attention to a C-Span rating of presidents, done by historians at the end of every administration. Who would students think were the three greatest presidents of all time? Do they have a favorite – and, if so, why? Where do they think President Biden will rate?
In the last survey, the bottom ten were:
35. Zachary Taylor
36. Herbert Hoover
37. Warren G. Harding
38. Millard Fillmore
39. John Tyler
40. William Henry Harrison
(this seems harsh, in light of his limited time in office)
41. Donald J. Trump
42. Franklin Pierce
43. Andrew Johnson
44. James Buchanan
It’s telling that Richard M. Nixon doesn’t even fall into the bottom ten. I know most of my students had never heard of Millard Fillmore.
U.S. News and World Report
compiled a
similar poll in January 2024, with similar results –Mr.
Buchanan once again finishing dead last.
*
LOOSE ITEM in author’s files: “I never made a speech or gave a vote that was not in favor of the Union of the States, but…when I heard of a Confederate victory, I could not help feeling a sympathy for it.”
John Griffin Carlisle, Kentucky, lawmaker (voted not to secede)
*
April 12: The South opens fire on Ft. Sumter. Van Loon captures the scene:
…and after a bombardment that lasted
twenty-four hours, the ardor of the cannoneers was rewarded by the surrender of
the objectionable Federal stronghold.
Although there had been a great deal of
smoke and noise, the actual damage was very slight.
Not a single one among the Federal
soldiers had been either killed or wounded. And as for the Confederates, they
had turned the affair into a fashionable society event and had bravely fired
their ten-pounders amidst the plaudits of the pretty girls from Charleston.
All of which then seemed harmless
enough.
But
these good people overlooked one very important item.
It
was they who had fired the first shot.
It
was they who had hauled down the flag of the United States.
In
short, it was they who had committed an “overt act” of war.
And
by so doing they had given their clever opponent in the White House the one
thing for which he had hoped and prayed all along, a loyal nation, ready to
back him up in whatever measures he might deem necessary. (124/379-380)
Lincoln will soon tell Congress that the Civil War “presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy – a government of the people by the same people – can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.”
*
April 15: President Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers. Eventually, enthusiasm for war fizzled. As Van Loon describes it,
Thereupon
bounties of one or two hundred dollars had been offered to all those who were
willing to in list and enterprising business men had gone to Europe and had
filled whole ships with Belgian and English and Polish immigrants who entered
the army as soon as they set foot on our free soil and had divided their
bounties with promoters! And this profitable business had continued until the
British government complained of it in such forcible terms that the Washington
authorities were forced to take notice and forbade further enlistments on the
part of these “contract soldiers.” (124/384-385)
*
THE CALL for volunteers is for 90 days’ service. William Tecumseh Sherman responds, “You might as well try to put out a fire with a squirt gun as expect to put down this rebellion with three months’ troops.” (36/53)
He is pessimistic: “Don’t expect to overrun such a country or subdue such a people in one, two, or five years. It is the task of half a century.” (36/96-97)
Northrop adds: “He soon astounded the Washington optimists, who were going to put down the revolt in sixty days, by declaring that to retake the Mississippi Valley would require two hundred thousand men.” When, in, a meeting he told the same to Secretary Cameron, Cameron replied with “much warmth and irritation, ‘Where do you suppose, General Sherman, all this force is to come from?’” (36/99 and 110)
Northrop on WST: “He was so direct and so honest as to produce with the simplest phrases the profoundest impression.” “The general was hot-tempered.” “He would often write orders for the direction of affairs in the West which would be in direct conflict with the civil law.” This was brought to his attention on one occasion by his adjutant. “So much the worse for the law. Go ahead!” Sherman replied. “He had keen intuitions and formed impressions as rapidly as a woman.” Sherman on religion: “I believe in God the Almighty; that is as far as I have got.” “There was not a particle of envy in Sherman’s nature, and he never intrigued for place of position.” (36/121, 123, 125, 130, 135)
If anything was said that did not meet
with his approval, he was quick to say so in most forcible terms, and he did
not care how it was taken. Even in private life he was the fighter, and it was
this aggressiveness and pugnacity of his nature and his way of hitting out
straight from the shoulder that got him into so many disputes in St. Louis
about seeming trifles… (36/133)
*
Lee is torn by conflicting loyalties.
April 18: In January, Robert E. Lee writes to Markie Williams, a young female friend of the Lee family.
I wish to live under no other
government, and there is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the
preservation of the Union save that of honour. If a disruption takes place, I
shall go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state,
and save in her defence there will be one soldier less in the world than now. I
wish for no other flag than the “Star spangled banner” and no other air than “Hail
Columbia.” I still hope that the wisdom and patriotism of the nation will yet
save it. (22/106-107)
When Twiggs was removed from command in Texas, and E.V. Sumner, of the First Cavalry, named to replace him, Lee was offered command of Sumner’s regiment and promoted to colonel. His commission, which he received on March 28, he accepted. It was signed by Abraham Lincoln. He also received an offer of a commission from the Confederate government – of brigadier general.
Then on April 18, during a call on Francis Blair, he was offered command of a Union army. Lee later wrote:
I declined the offer he made me to take
command of the army that was to be brought into the field, stating as candidly
and as courteously as I could, that though opposed to secession and deprecating
war, I could take no part in an invasion of the southern states.
Lee visited Scott next. “Lee,” he said, “you have made the greatest mistake of your life; but I feared it would be so.”
The
future hero of the South also wrote, “I must say that I am one of those dull
creatures that cannot see the good of secession.” His sister’s son was an
officer in the U.S. Army and his son Custis “was as loath as he to quit the
service of the United States.” He would never look back, saying after the war,
“I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without
dishonor. And if it all were to be done over again, I should act in precisely
the same manner.” He was 54 years old, stood 5 feet 11, and weighed slightly
less than 170 pounds. (22/110-113)
*
BENJAMIN ANDREWS describes the state of the U.S. Navy at this point:
“At the outbreak of the Rebellion our
navy was totally unprepared for war. Forty-two vessels were in commission, but
most of them were in distant seas or in southern ports. The service was weak
with secession sentiment. Between March and July, 1861, 259 naval officers
resigned or were dismissed. … At the close of the war [the U.S. Navy] had 671
ships, carrying 4,610 guns and 50,000 sailors. (4/132-133)
During the war 1,500 prizes were taken, worth $30 million, as ships tried to run the Yankee blockade. (4/134)
Blockade-running
became a regular business, enormously profitable. Moonless and cloudy nights
were of course the most favorable times for eluding the blockade; but the swift
steamers, sitting low in the water and painted a light neutral tint, could not
easily be detected by day at a little distance, especially as they burned
smokeless coal. The bolder skippers would take all chances. Undercover of a fog
they would steal into or out of harbor at risk of going aground, or set sail
boldly on a bright moonlit night, when the blockaders would naturally relax
their vigilance a little. Occasionally some dare-devil would crowd on all steam
and dash openly through the sentinel fleet, trusting to speed to escape being
hit or captured. When hard pressed, the blockade-runner would beach his craft,
set it afire, and take to the woods. At the close of the war thirty wrecks of
blockade-runners were rotting on the sands near Charleston Harbor.
*
Date uncertain: It is estimated that at the time of the Civil War, the Chinese population in California has reached 35,000, one tenth of the total. . Nearly ten times as many would immigrate to the U.S. by 1882, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.
From a brochure provided by the
Marshall Gold Discovery State Historical Park – “Welcome to the Wa Hop Store” –
we learn this: In 1848, there were only two Chinese persons in California.
Coloma had a large Chinatown [located where the park now stands], with a Chinese barber, mail services to China, practitioners of herbal medicine, banking and food services. The Wa Hop Herb and Dry Goods Store still stands.
Trouble, however, was brewing. With “placer mines petering out,”
Coloma declined from its heyday,
but Chinatown continued to prosper as diggings abandoned by less patient miners
were taken over by the Chinese. The success of Chinese miners provoked violent
reactions. In 1861, a riot occurred over the right to mine under an old hotel.
A mob of white miners fueled by alcohol rampage throughout Chinatown looting
and destroying property. Buildings were burned and the Chinese chased away. Several
Chinese were beaten, and one or two were killed as a large crowd of spectators
looked on.
May: This description (lightly edited by the blogger) comes from Fascinating, on “X.”
Nine-year-old John Lincoln “Johnny” Clem runs away from his home in Newark, Ohio, to join the Union Army, but finds the Army is not interested in signing on a child, when the commander of the Third Ohio tells him he isn’t interested in “enlisting infants,” and turns him down.
Clem tried the Twenty-Second Michigan next, and its commander told him the same. Determined, Clem tagged after the regiment, acted out the role of a drummer boy, and was allowed to remain. Though still not regularly enrolled, he performed camp duties and received a soldier’s pay of $13 a month, a sum collected and donated by the regiment’s officers. (See: 1862.)
*
July: The 71st New York
Volunteers play a game of baseball against a collection of baseball enthusiasts
in Washington D.C. As Michael Morgan writes, “Playing nearly in the shadow of
the White House,” they won 42-13. Soon after, they “marched out to meet the
Confederates at Bull Run,” where the regiment sustained heavy casualties.
Baseball was enjoyed by players on both sides during the war. On Christmas Day, 1862, Yankee troops from two New York regiments, stationed on Hilton Head Island, played a game with as many as 10,000 spectators watching. No one, Morgan says, managed to report on the score.
A regimental historian for the 79th New York later joked that the men, when new to camp life, had much to learn. “It was rather a difficult undertaking for the majority of us, this pitching tents – we would pitch ball better.”
In camp, for many young soldiers,
“the game served as a revival of their school days and a cure for
homesickness,” Morgan writes. In 1863, the Nineteenth Massachusetts
defeated the Seventh Michigan and won a bet of $120 in the process.
Confederate troops also played games for money, and as one observer said,
“Among sporting characters a considerable amount of money changed hands.” When
the commander of one northern prison was criticized for the poor treatment of
Rebel prisoners in his hands, he responded, “I am told they did not hesitate to
express satisfaction with their treatment. They appeared to enjoy their daily
game of ball greatly.”
*
July 10: Fanny Appleton Longfellow, Henry’s beloved wife dies of burns suffered in an accident the day before. James Marcus describes what happened:
when her dress caught fire, most likely from a few drops of hot sealing wax falling onto the garment. Longfellow tried to quench the flames with a small rug, and then with his arms, but it was no use – she died the next morning. His hands and face were burned as well, and swollen for weeks. The psychic wounds were deeper still. Writing to his dear friend George William Curtis, he described himself as “utterly wretched and overwhelmed, – to the eyes of others, outwardly, calm; but inwardly bleeding to death.”
“It was not in Longfellow’s nature to write about himself,” Marcus notes. “He once described ‘I’ as ‘that objectionable pronoun.’”
But the tragic loss was never forgotten. Marcus explains the significance of a poem, “The Cross of Snow,” he wrote later, about her death.
Longfellow finished the
poem on the eighteenth anniversary of Fanny’s death, slipped it into an
envelope, and deposited it in the vast drift of his papers. In this sense, it
is a private utterance. It is not, of course, a raw confessional, and the first
half consists of a fairly straightforward treatment of Fanny’s portrait on the
wall. But then, without any reader-friendly transition, Longfellow cuts to
something more mysterious:
There is a mountain in
the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its
deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow
upon its side.
Marcus, reviewing a biography on Longfellow notes,
[The biographer] suggests
that the image is derived from a very specific source, the painter Thomas
Moran’s “The Mountain of the Holy Cross” … which depicts an alpine oddity:
cruciform trenches on the flank of a Colorado peak, whose depth and placement
keep the snow within them from melting. Longfellow was doubtless drawn to the
cross as an emblem of Christian suffering. But what sticks in the mind, and
stirs the heart, are those “sun-defying” depths, where we are too numb to feel
our pain, or to control it.
 |
Henry and Fanny Longfellow. Photograph found online. |
*
July 21: Northern forces are routed at the Battle of Bull Run.
Van Loon:
When
news of this rout (for it really was a pretty sad business) reached Europe it
caused general satisfaction among the many enemies of the United States and the
friends of the Confederacy predicted that Lee would soon be able to hang his
flag from the national capital in Washington. (124/388)
(Here we see a problem
with Van Loon – as an historian – that he has “Lee” somehow in charge in 1861.)
*
July 21
(Part 2): These notes come from
I Rode with Stonewall by Henry Kyd
Douglas (paperback edition, Premier Books, 1961)
“Everything much like a joke.”
His regiment and brigade mustered
quickly at the start of the war and “the ranks were filled with the best blood
of Virginia; all its classes were there. Mothers and sisters and other dear
girls came constantly to Harper’s Ferry and there was little difficulty in
seeing them. Nothing was serious yet; everything much like a joke.” (20/17)
The morning of battle, as his
regiment approached Bull Run: “I had been sick during the night and was
horrified at the thought that I might be compelled to fall out; but the distant
sound of musketry coming nearer and nearer made me forget my bodily ills and
acted as a bracer.” (20/20)
Jackson did not “concur in the
opinion which so extensively prevailed in the fall of 1861, that the war would
be a short one and our independence easily gained. He regarded with great
regret the inactivity, which for a while so seriously injured the South, after
the first battle of Manassas.” (20/39)
July 21 (Part 3): The experience of the 2nd Wisconsin at First Bull Run proves unique:
This regiment is uniformed in gray cloth,
almost identical with that of the great bulk of the Secession army, and when
the regiment fell into confusion and retreated toward the road, there was a
universal cry that they were being fired on by our own men. (36/180)
The Union forces had fought well until half-past 3 p.m. “Up to that time all had kept their places, and seemed perfectly cool and used to the shell and shot that fell, comparatively harmless all around us.”
“There was no positive order to retreat, although for an hour it had been going on by the operation of the men themselves. The ranks were thin and irregular, and we found a stream of people strung from the hospital across Bull Run and far toward Centreville.”
At Centreville, Sherman found McDowell
who hoped to rally his forces there and make a stand. “But about nine o’clock
that night I received from General Tyler, in person, the order to continue the
retreat to the Potomac. The retreat was by night and disorderly in the
extreme.” (36/181-183)
*
July 21 (Part 4): This letter was written by Major Sullivan Ballou, 34, an officer who died in the first major battle at Bull Run. Ballou’s leg was shattered by a cannonball as he led his men into combat. He survived only a short time after. At his death he left a wife, Sarah, and two young sons, Edgar, 5, and William, 2. Below are portions of his last letter:
My Very
Dear Wife,
The
indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps
tomorrow, and lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to
write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.
My dear
Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes
me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name...But, oh, Sarah! if the dead
can come back to this earth and flit [fly] unseen around those they love, I
shall be always with you...ALWAYS, ALWAYS, and when the soft breeze fans your
cheek it shall be my breath[,] or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall
be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait
for me, for we shall meet again.
Love,
Sullivan
*
AFTER Bull Run, Horace Greeley wrote the president a letter. It
began: “This is my seventh sleepless night.” It ended: “Yours in the depths of
bitterness.”
*
August: As Bruce Catton once said, as commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George B. McClellan always faced one insurmountable obstacle: George B. McClellan. Even during his successful campaign against Rebel forces in the mountains of what is now West Virginia, he complained, “I am here in a terrible place; the enemy have from three to four times my force [emphasis added]; the President, the old general [Winfield Scott], cannot or will not see the true state of affairs.” (62-66)
Not once will he be outnumbered in this war – and at Antietam he will have a 2-1 advantage over Lee.
A soldier in the 75th New York described the condition of his regiment in the fall of 1861: “Tonight not 200 men are in camp. Capt. Catlin, Capt. Hulbert, Lt. Cooper and one or two other officers are under arrest. A hundred men are drunk, a hundred more are at houses of ill fame, and the balance are everywhere…Col. Alford is very drunk all the time now.” (62-62)
The band of the 15th Massachusetts didn’t appreciate being assigned to ambulance duty, which meant they would have to serve as stretcher bearers during any fighting. When they refused, their colonel clapped them in the stockade and fed them bread and water till they relented. (62-71)
McClellan did an excellent job organizing Union forces and promised the war would be “short, sharp and decisive.” Pressed by Lincoln to move against the enemy, he was soon complaining to his wife, “I can’t tell you how disgusted I am becoming with these wretched politicians.” “I am becoming daily more disgusted with this administration – perfectly sick of it. If I could with honor resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow…” “There are some of the greatest geese in the cabinet I have ever seen…” “It is sickening in the extreme, and makes me feel heavy at heart, when I see the weakness and unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this great country.”
Typically, he said that if defeat did come, “the fault will
not be mine…” In this former teacher’s opinion: McClellan was really good at
making excuses, almost always a fatal flaw in any kind of endeavor. (62/88-90)
.jpg)
“The first man who has done justice to the mind of women.”.
September 26: Vassar College opens its doors to 353 students, paying $350 for tuition and residence. It is the first college for women in the country. (It goes co-ed in 1969.) Sarah Hale objects strenuously to the first name, Vassar Female College. She believes a “female” could be a donkey, and asks Matthew Vassar, as her “good friend,” to alter it. In 1867, the change was made. Mr. Vassar himself had been in the habit of scratching out the “Female” in the college letterhead when he corresponded with the editor of Godey’s.
The song “Vassar ------ College” by Amy L. Reed, from 1900 is amusing:
An institution once there was
Of learning and of knowledge
That had upon its high brick front
A “Vassar Female College.”
The maidens fair could not enjoy
Their bread and milk and porridge,
For graven on the forks and spoons
Was “Vassar Female College.”
A strong east wind at last came by,
A wind that blew from Norwich;
It tore the “Female” off the sign
Which was upon the college.
And as the faculty progressed
In wisdom and in knowledge,
They took the “Female” off the spoons
As well as off the college. (113/205)
There had also been a protest, possibly written by Horatio Hale, Sarah’s son, that the plan of organization had so few women in positions of authority, “some ‘assistant teachers’…, a Nurse, a Housekeeper and a Matron.” The editorial went on to suggest that “a Lady Superintendent…should have the more immediate control of the pupils, and all instructors should be ladies except when properly qualified teachers of that sex cannot be found.”
Surely the President and
Trustees of this college, which is designed by its generous Founder for the
elevation of woman, will not commence by degrading her. They will not announce
to the world that, owing to something peculiar in the character or intellect of
woman (a defect now for the first time discovered), they have not been able to
find a lady in the United States qualified to instruct her own sex in the
higher branches of science and learning, or to take charge of a department in a
College for Young Women. (113/212-213)
On the opening of the school, Hannah W. Lyman, held the position of “Lady Principal,” there was a woman professor of astronomy, a woman resident physician and a woman professor of physiology and hygiene. There were twenty-two women on the faculty, and only eight men.
Mr. Vassar often wrote to Hale for advice. He was considering a “uniformity of Costume for the pupils,” he told her in one letter.
The object of which is first,
to prevent jealousy which generally rises in the minds of young persons in the
articles of Dress. … Secondly to secure more comfort and convenience to them,
while in School or at their playful recreations. Your fertile mind will readily
suggest what there should be… something like the ‘Bloomer Dress.’”
Hale responded, saying she was not a fan of the idea of controlling what the students wore, but,
It might be well to announce
that simplicity and appropriateness of dress will be expected of the pupils,
and that any superfluous jewelry is not approved. But I should not counsel
uniformity of apparel. And any hint approaching the Bloomer standard would, I
greatly fear, be a serious injury to the college. (113/215-216)
Hale enthusiastically praised Vassar’s position on physical exercise for the students. That included “Calisthenics (Boston light gymnastics),” a radical idea at the time. Finley writes:
Here Vassar, indeed, pioneered,
encouraging its students to invite sunburn and freckles (theretofore avoided by
ladies like the plague) by walking over the four hundred acres of campus and
rowing and swimming in the two lakes on the college grounds. Furthermore, they
were invited to become proficient in such then ultra strenuous outdoor sports
as, to quote the listing, run in Godey’s for August, 1865 “archery,
croquet (or ladies cricket), graces, shuttlecocks, etc.”
Hale and Vassar also championed the endowment of the college, just as colleges for men had been heavily endowed.
When
Vassar died three years later, Godey’s remembered him thus: “as the first
man who has done justice to the mind of women… whose good work has made him a
perpetual benefactor to the daughters of America.” (113/218-219, 221)
 |
Croquet was considered a "strenuous sport" for college girls of the era. |
“Granny
Lee.”
October 24: Virginia, fifth most populous state, had a little more than a million whites, and nearly 600,000 blacks, most of them slaves. “The war may last ten years,” he wrote his wife from Richmond, soon after his arrival. (22/121)
If the South could capture and hold Harper’s Ferry, with its arsenal and machinery, production of small arms would proceed more smoothly. Freeman writes, “Everyone wanted to fight; few were willing to recognize that war calls, first of all, for ordered preparation. The public seemed to think that all that was needed was the word to go forward and overwhelm the enemy.” (22/125)
Powder was in short supply, and artillery, and Virginia simply ordered its 51,000 volunteers to provide their own uniforms.
In his first campaign in the mountains of western Virginia, Lee had trouble convincing a jealous rival to move. The Rebel forces were low on food – it rained for twenty days straight, reducing roads to mud – and measles and dysentery spread among the troops. “Half the army was sick.” At Cheat Mountain, he tried to urge his regiments to attack. Their officers told Lee that the men were wet and too hungry – and morale was shot. When captured Union soldiers told one of Lee’s officers that several thousand Federal troops held the mountain, he decided it would be unwise to attack. In fact, there were 300. Floyd and Wise clashed so bitterly, that the former said the latter was almost as “injurious” to the Southern cause as he would have been if he were in the Union camp.
Lee struggled to feed his men, and his horses, “to say nothing of building up a supply for an offensive.” “Troops and horses lived only from day-to-day, the soldiers were still dogged by sickness and the animals so thin they manifestly would break down under heavy duty.” The troops lived from “barrel head to frying pan.” Lee and another officer had to pool their blankets on a bitter cold night and sleep together. “Finally there was soon no prospect of surprise. For the newspapers had learned of Lee’s plan and were printing the precise details of what was intended to be a secret move.” (22/151)
On October 24, West Virginians voted to form a separate state, and skeptics began calling the general who had failed to hold it “Granny Lee.”
When he was assigned command along the Georgia and South Carolina coast, both governors expressed their displeasure over his appointment.
*
The Trent
Affair
November 8: The U.S.S. San Jacinto is on patrol along the coast of South America, intent on stopping slave running. Sailing for home, the warship stops at Havana, learns that James M. Mason and John Slidell are aboard the Trent, a British mail-steamer, and seizes them.
London
papers talk so bitterly of this terrible, yea, this unbearable insult to a sovereign
British vessel that any statesman less skeptical and worldly-wise than Lord
Palmerston might easily have been driven into war. Even so, His Lordship was
forced to instruct Her Majesty’s representative in Washington to ask for the
immediate release of the two prisoners and, in case of refusal, to demand his
passports and leave the country.
By
advice of the Prince Consort, the Palmerstonian and letter was made as conciliatory
as possible, but the situation was regarded as serious in the extreme and
troops were beginning to be moved in the general direction of Canada and the navy
yards of the North Sea showed an unusual activity. (388-389)
According to John Bach McMaster, Slidell later wrote that he had been led to believe by the French, “that if New Orleans had not been taken and we suffered no very serious reverses in Virginia and Tennessee, our recognition would very soon have been declared.” (97/361)
Captain Wilkes was congratulated by the
Secretary of the Navy, thanked by the House of Representatives, and given a
grand banquet in Boston; and the whole country was jubilant.
The British minister at Washington was
directed to demand the liberation of the prisoners and “a suitable apology for
the aggression,” and if not answered in seven days, or if unfavorably answered,
was to return to London at once. (97-377)
War seemed imminent.
Benjamin Andrews adds a few interesting details, as well. Russia, during the Civil War “evinced warm friendliness to the United States. The rest of the world, save England and France, showed us no ill-will.”
As for England, he explains:
England,
with unfriendly haste, admitted the belligerent rights of the Confederacy
before Mr. Adams, our minister, could reach the British court. The North was
surprised and shocked that liberty-loving, conservative England should so far
side with “rebellious slave-holders.” It would seem that, besides sympathy with
the aristocratic structure of southern society, national envy helped put
England into this false position. Commercial interests had greater weight. Four
millions of people in England depended upon cotton manufacturers for support. Three-fourths
of the cotton they had used came from our southern ports, which the blockade
closed. Moreover, the Confederacy declared for free trade, while the North
adopted a high war tariff which drove many English goods out of American
markets. The London Times complained that nearly $4 million worth of
English cutlery alone had been made worthless by our tariff.
In the days and weeks after Mason and Slidell were taken off the Trent, Andrews notes, “All England was hot with resentment. Troops were shipped to Canada, and other war preparations begun. A special messenger was hurried to Washington, demanding an apology and the release of the prisoners.” (4/160-162)
France, in some ways, was even less friendly, in Andrews’s telling. “Our most vicious enemy abroad was Napoleon III, so profuse yet so hypocritical in his professions of good-will.” Seven war vessels were built in France for the Confederacy, he adds. In 1861, France sent an army into Mexico, later put the Austrian archduke Maximilian on the throne, and “the protests of the United States were disregarded.” (4/166-167)
Andrews writes. “From the beginning to the close they averaged $2,000,000 a day, sometimes running up to $3,500,000.”
He
notes that the national debt also rose with “frightful rapidity.” It was
$64,000,000 in 1860, increasing to $1,100,000,000 in 1863, and more than
doubling to $2,800,000,000 in 1865. State and local debt brought the total to
more than $4,000,000,000. “The expenses of the war were colossal.” (4/167)
*
MCMASTER gives this description of the blockade runners:
So nicely would the voyage be timed that the vessel would be off the port some night when the moon did not shine. Then, with all lights out, the runner would dash through the line of blockading ships, and, if successful, would by daylight be safe in port. The cargo landed, cotton would be taken on board; and the first dark night, or during a storm, the runner, again breaking the blockade, would steam back to Nassau. (97/377)
*
November
11: James Hill, of the 31st
Virginia, writes home:
A man dies every now and then in our
Regiment. I felt extremely sorry for one poor fellow who was lying in a tent
without any fire. He had the fever but was suffering extremely from the cold.
Sickness is more to be dreaded by far in the army than any bullets. No bravery
can achieve anything against it. The soldier may sicken and die. When he is
buried he is as soon forgotten. (Battlefield of Gettysburg Museum)
*
MCMASTER notes:
To obtain the money [needed to fight
the war] Congress began…by raising the tariff on imported articles: by taxing
all incomes of more than $800 a year; and by levying a direct tax, which was
apportioned among the states according to their population. Greenbacks also
came into circulation. (97-381)
*
November 13: A cargo of arms comes into Savannah; Lee authorized to take 4500 Enfield rifles for use arming any new troops he can raise. The rifles were produced by a British company – and if the South could keep getting supplies – there was hope of victory. (22/155)
“Lee departed with the curious distinction of having been ten months in a command without having fought a single battle.” (22/160)
“The worst was not known, even to Congress. The Confederacy’s supply of powder was nearly exhausted. Arsenals were almost bare.”
Earthworks “were despised by the Confederate volunteers as representing labor no white man should do and cover behind which no Southerner should take refuge.” (22/161)
“Silent were the platform-patriots who had predicted defeat of the United States within ninety days.” Lee had warned the fight might last ten years. (22/161)
