Weather Is Just Right for a Campaign~May, 1863~the 18th to the 23rd

One Southern woman arrives in a Federal prison on spying charges while others take the opportunity to sell things to the Yankee soldiers. A Union soldier reveals herself as a woman and is sent home. Walt Whitman’s mother sends him some badly needed clothes. The daughter of a Cabinet member is involved in romance with a new senator. Wives and girl friends occupy the minds of soldier husbands and lovers.

President Lincoln orders Vallandigham to be sent to the Confederacy and considers changing the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Anglo-American relations remain tense.

General Grant begins the final encirclement of Vicksburg but fails to take it by direct assault. General Lee moves ahead with plans to invade the North. Clerk John Jones expects Confederate troops to occupy Philadelphia in two weeks. Around the world, life goes on.

The height of fashion

May 18– Monday– Vicksburg, Mississippi– Grant’s forces begin investing the city, digging trenches and placing artillery.

May 18– Monday– London, England– In Parliament’s House of Lords some members complain about the seizure by the United States of British ships attempting to run the blockade of Confederate ports. Lord Russell declares that Her Majesty’s Government finds no objection to American conduct and the Crown will not interfere in the American war.

May 19– Tuesday– Martinsburg, Pennsylvania– William Heyser of Chambersburg is in attendance at a large-church-wide meeting. “Cool. We are bringing our classes to a close here, after electing several groups for the different Synods to meet next year. Even here, we have petty politics among religious groups to vie for honors to represent their views of ideas. I was much honored and congratulated on my writings and method of conducting prayer services, often mistaken for one of the clergy. Why did the Lord choose the business world for me, when I was better fitted for the church?”

May 19– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– Gideon Welles records a bit of high society gossip. “Governor Sprague and Miss Kate Chase called this evening. I have been skeptical as to a match, but this means something. She is beautiful, or more properly perhaps, interesting and impressive. He is rich and holds the position of Senator. Few young men have such advantages as he, and Miss Kate has talents and ambition sufficient for both.” [William Sprague, age 32 at this time, comes from a wealthy manufacturing family, has just finished three consecutive one-year terms as Rhode Island’s governor and, when Congress came into session in March, took his seat in the U S Senate. Kate Chase is 22 years old at the time. She and her younger sister Janette are the two of the six daughters of Treasury Secretary Salmon P Chase who survived childhood. She is known to be ambitious and resentful that Lincoln rather than her father won the Republican nomination in 1860.]

Kate Chase

May 19– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln sends an order via Secretary of War Stanton to General Burnside in Ohio. “The President directs that without delay you send C. L. Vallandigham under secure guard to the Headquarters of General Rosecrans, to be put by him beyond our military lines; and in case of his return within our lines, he be arrested and kept in close custody for the term specified in his sentence.”

May 19– Tuesday– Washington, D. C– Walt Whitman thanks his mother for her care package. “O mother, how welcome the shirts were– I was putting off, & putting off, to get some new ones, I could not find any one to do them as I wear them, & it would have cost such a price & so my old ones had got to be, when they come back from the wash I had to laugh, they were a lot of rags, held together with starch. I have a very nice old black aunty for a washwoman, but she bears down pretty hard I guess when she irons them, & they showed something like the poor old city of Fredericksburg does, since Burnside bombarded it. Well, mother, when the bundle came, I was so glad & the coats too, worn as they are, they come in very handy & the cake, dear mother, I am almost like the boy that put it under his pillow & woke up in the night & eat some.”

Walt Whitman

May 19– Tuesday– Vicksburg, Mississippi– General Grant tries to take the city by a direct assault but the Confederates repulse him, costing about 1000 Union casualties.

May 19– Tuesday– Harrington, Prince Edward Island, Canada– Birth of John Alexander Mathieson, jurist, politician and who will serve as Premier of Prince Edward Island from 1911 to 1917.

John Mathieson

May 20– Wednesday– Washington, D.C.– A heated debate takes place in today’s Cabinet meeting about whether or not the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 remains in effect and whether known escaped slaves ought to be allowed to enlist in the Union army.

May 20– Wednesday– Alton, Illinois– The Federal prison here receives a Miss Mollie Hyde of Nashville, Tennessee, arrested under the orders of Union General Rosecrans and convicted of “spying and other misdeeds.” She is to be held until the war ends.

May 20– Wednesday– Richmond, Virginia– President Jeff Davis and Secretary of War Seddon receive news of General Pemberton’s defeat at Big Black River at the same time they receive a letter from General Lee stating that he must have General Longstreet and his men to invade Pennsylvania and cannot spare them to assist General Pemberton.

May 20– Wednesday– Middleburg, Kentucky– Union soldier William Taylor writes to his wife Jane at home in Pennsylvania. “I have another idle day to look forward to unless the quartermaster brings a lot of clothing up with him I will have nothing to do, and even if he does it will only make an hour or more work. If we must stay on here I will begin to wish for the arrival of my fish hooks that I may go and fish some, even if they are small ones. I have some reading matter, but get tired doing that all the time. I have Les Miserables, of 800 pages and am about half through. I only read about 50 pages a day of it as I don’t want to get done too soon, and then have nothing left.”

May 21– Thursday– Battle Creek, Michigan–The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is formed.

May 21– Thursday– Falmouth, Virginia– Elisha Hunt Rhodes in his diary: “We have been fixing up our camp, and we look very fine. I do not imagine that we shall stay here very long for the weather is just right for a campaign.”

May 21– Thursday– Middleburg, Kentucky– Union soldier William Taylor to his wife Jane: “A while ago two women came up. They had with them in a basket some geese and ducks. They were cooked & stuffed. Our cook was away and only the quartermaster and myself in. They made us buy two geese and a duck. Geese cost 50 cents a piece; the duck 25 cents. One of the women was pretty, the only pretty one I have seen in Kentucky. She was a widow too. She came on purpose to see the quartermaster. She had heard a good deal about him. She is rich– has nine hundred acres of land, two children and twenty five ‘n******.’ She sold us a stack of hay, and says we can have one of her meadows & cut in the shares.”

May 22– Friday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln offers command of the Army of the Potomac to General Darius Couch, age 40, West Point Class of 1846 and a career soldier. General Couch refuses the President’s offer and recommends General George Meade, age 47, West Point Class of 1835, also a career soldier. In the afternoon, President Lincoln meets in the East Room of the White House with a group of 20 to 30 veterans who have each lost a leg. He praises their courage and thanks them for their service.

May 22– Friday– Richmond, Virginia– John Jones records a recent conversation. “I met with Robert Tyler to-day, who offers to wager something that General Stuart will be in Philadelphia in a fortnight, and he said there was a proposition to stop the publication of newspapers, if the President would agree to it, as they gave information to the enemy, and at such a time as this did no good whatever. He thinks they are on the eve of revolution in the North.”

May 22– Friday– Nashville, Tennessee– The Nashville Dispatch reports that “A female soldier, who has been in service twenty-two months, reported at headquarters yesterday, for impersonation to Minnesota, where she resides. She was in the battles of Shiloh and Stone River, and twice wounded severely. She enlisted in the same company as her husband, and was with him up to the time of his death, which occurred at Murfreesboro, and she concluded to leave the army and return to her friends.”

May 22– Friday– Vicksburg, Mississippi– The well-positioned Confederates repel a second Union assault. Federal killed, wounded and missing total 3,199; Rebel losses are under 500 total.

May 22– Friday– Fort Hudson, Louisiana– Union forces begin to besiege the Confederate position.

May 23– Saturday– Columbus, Ohio– Throughout the state people are signing and circulating petitions in protest of the “arbitrary arrest, illegal trial, and inhuman imprisonment of the Honorable C L Vallandigham.”

May 23– Saturday– Washington, D.C.– Charles Russell Lowell to Robert Gould Shaw: “E. [Effie, Gould’s sister, whom Charles loves and will eventually marry] wrote me an account of your flag presentation and sent the speeches: I suppose the responsibility of your own speech to follow prevented you from appreciating the Governor’s speech as he was delivering it– but, as read, it seems full of feeling and sense, lofty sense and common sense– he is a trump. Your regiment has proved such an entire success– has given such good promise of taking a very high place among our Massachusetts regiments– that it is easy to forget the circumstances under which you took hold of it; I feel like telling you now, old fellow (as an officer and outsider, and not as your friend and brother), how very manly I thought it of you then to undertake the experiment.”

Charles Russell Lowell

May 23– Saturday– Middleburg, Kentucky– William Taylor to his wife Jane: “When I can’t write I only think the more about you. It is not because I am discontented however that I think of home and you, but because I feel happy in doing so. It is better to do that than make oneself uncomfortable by finding fault with the little inconveniences that present themselves so often. A look in fancy towards home has made me feel warm many a cold night, and kept the wet from settling into my bones, and I can make any annoyance vanish by bringing the light of your smile up before it. I don’t know what the poor fellows do who have no sweethearts at home. I can really pity them, and I think I could pick them out from among the others. I heard to day that Capt. Geibner was killed at the last battle at Fredericksburg. Do you know if it is so? We have not yet seen any list of the killed and wounded since that fight.”

the wife of a Union soldier prays for her husband

May 23– Saturday– Leipzig, Germany–Ferdinand Lassalle 37 year old socialist jurist, founds the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (General German Workers’ Association, ADAV), the first socialist workers party in the country.

Ferdinand Lassalle

Seeing the Enemy Mowed Down~May, 1863~the 13th to the 18th

General Robert E Lee, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, Attorney George Templeton Strong and poet Walt Whitman all feel the effects of the battle at Chancellorsville and ponder it all. President Lincoln cautions General Hooker. The black soldiers of the 54^th Massachusetts receive their battle flags and various honors. General Grant moves on rather successfully to isolate Vicksburg, Mississippi. General Lee has a radical new plan. A 12 year old boy is arrested as a spy.. Some Northerners still support slavery and oppose emancipation. Romance blossoms in the ranks of soldiers. Charlotte Forten Grimke believes that no white man could love a woman of her complexion. Life around the world goes on.

May 13– Wednesday– New York City– George Templeton Strong takes note: “Today’s only news is a seemingly trustworthy report that the very salient rebel Stonewall Jackson died last Sunday of pneumonia, which attacked him while weakened by a recent amputation. He seems to have been a brave, capable, earnest man, good and religious according to his Presbyterian formulas, but misguided into treason by that deluding dogma of state allegiance.”

George Templeton Strong

May 13– Wednesday– Washington, D.C.– Gideon Welles takes note. “I am apprehensive our loss in killed and prisoners was much greater in the late battle than has been supposed.”

May13– Wednesday– Washington, D.C.– Walt Whitman writes to his mother, describing the death of a soldier under his care. “I was in hopes at one time he would get through with it, but a few days ago he took a sudden bad turn, & died about 3 o’clock the same afternoon– it was horrible– he was of good family (handsome, intelligent man, about 26, married) his name was John Elliott of Cumberland Valley, Bedford County, Penn., belonged to 2d Pennsylvania Cavalry. I felt very bad about it– I have wrote to his father– have not rec’d any answer yet– no friend nor any of his folks was here & have not been here nor sent, probably didn’t know of it at all.”

Walt Whitman

May 13– Wednesday– Nashville, Tennessee– Federal authorities arrest 12 year old Martin Fogarty who has apparently been spying for the rebels and acting as a courier.

May 14– Thursday– Washington, D. C.– President Lincoln to General Hooker: “It does not now appear probable to me that you can gain anything by an early renewal of the attempt to cross the Rappahannock. I therefore shall not complain if you do no more for a time than to keep the enemy at bay and out of other mischief by menaces and occasional cavalry raids, if practicable, and to put your own army in good condition again. Still, if in your own clear judgment you can renew the attack successfully, I do not mean to restrain you. Bearing upon this last point, I must tell you that I have some painful intimations that some of your corps and division commanders are not giving you their entire confidence. This would be ruinous, if true, and you should therefore, first of all, ascertain the real facts beyond all possibility of doubt.”

May 14– Thursday– Washington, D.C.– Walt Whitman writes to a friend about his work in the hospitals, regularly bringing food which he has cooked and fresh fruit which he has purchased. “Yet after all this succoring of the stomach (which is of course most welcome & indispensable) I should say that I believe my profoundest help to these sick & dying men is probably the soothing invigoration I steadily bear in mind, to infuse in them through affection, cheering love, & the like, between them & me. It has saved more than one life. There is a strange influence here. I have formed attachments here in hospital, that I shall keep to my dying day, & they will the same, without doubt.”

May 14– Thursday– Jackson, Mississippi– Union General Grant tightens the noose around Vicksburg. After a morning of intense fighting the Confederates withdraw, having lost 850 killed, wounded and missing. Union forces’ losses total 286. In the afternoon, Union soldiers burn part of the city and destroy the railroad connection to Vicksburg.

Battle of Jackson, Mississippi

May 14– Thursday– Hamilton, Ontario, Canada– Birth of John Charles Fields, mathematician and educator.

John Charles Fields

May 15– Friday– Boston, Massachusetts– As evidence of pro-slavery sentiment in the North, the Liberator quotes the Manchester [New Hampshire] Union. “The Abolitionists will fail. . . . They accepted war, which might have been avoided with honor, because they thought it would furnish an occasion to strike at slavery. . . . Slavery will not be abolished by this war, and our sacrifices of men and women will be in proportion to the extent to which that purpose is carried in its management. . . . A majority of our people will not willingly take any part in any war whose purpose is not the restoration of the old Union.”

May 15– Friday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln announces renewal of the Saturday concerts by the Marine Corps band on the White House grounds.

May 15– Friday– Evansville, Indiana– Birth of Annie Fellows Johnston, author of children’s books.

Annie Fellows Johnston [on the left]

May 15– Friday– Liverpool, England– Birth of Frank Hornby, inventor, businessman and politician. His Meccano Ltd (1908) will become world famous for its toy trains and die cast miniature vehicles.

May 16– Saturday– Middleburg, Kentucky– Union soldier William Taylor writes bitterly to his wife Jane about the people of Kentucky. “Their garden arrangements are all in equal bad taste with their farming, and that equally bad with their dress and personal appearance. They are a hard set of people to look at and we see plenty of them, They come in numbers into our camp both men and women, selling us such things as they can spare. The principal articles are butter, eggs, poultry, corn bread, soda biscuit and cider. But these are so bad that they are beginning to sell very little of them. We of our mess have quit buying altogether.”

May 16– Saturday– Murfreesboro, Tennessee– A soldier reports an interesting event. “To-day we had a novel wedding. The bridegroom was private J. N. Hamilton, of the 15th Indiana volunteers, and the bride Miss A. Bonn a volunteer nurse from Chicago. The ceremony took place on the bank of Stone river—on the very place where the 15th Indiana fought so nobly in the battle of Dec. 31st,1862. The nuptial knot was tied by Rev Post Chaplain at Murfreesboro. A large circle of friends and acquaintances was present and just as the ceremony was over, and the newly married couple were receiving the well wishes and congratulations of their friend, . . . [three generals] drove up in a carriage, but too late to witness the ceremony. They were not too late however, to exact a kiss from the blushing bride.”

May 16– Saturday– Champion Hill, Mississippi– In another bloody and day-long battle, General Grant defeats another Confederate force. Federal casualties total 2,441dead, wounded and missing. Confederate losses amount to 3,851. Later, Grant will write of ths campaign: “While a battle is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to alleviate the sufferings of an enemy as a friend.”

May 16– Saturday– Carthage, Missouri; Ravenswoord, West Virginia; Tickaw Bridge, Louisiana; Piedmont Station, Virginia; Elizabeth Court House, west Virginia– Rebels and Federals have at one another.

May 17– Sunday– Big Black River Bridge, Hinds County, Mississippi– Grant’s forces defeat a smaller Confederate force while suffering 276 dead, wounded and missing. Confederate lose about 300 killed and wounded but 1700 are take prisoner by the Union army. For all practical purposes, Vicksburg is now surrounded. Confederate General Pemberton must either fight or surrender but after today he and his men cannot escape Vicksburg.

Battle at Big Black River Bridge

May 17–Sunday– Puebla, Mexico–After a two month siege, the French forces take the town.

May 17– Sunday– Padron, Galicia, Spain– The writer Maria Rosalia Rita de Castro, age 26, publishes a book of poetry entitled Cantares Gallegos, her first book in the Galician language. [The day continues to be observed as Galician Literature Day.]

May 18– Monday morning– Readville, Massachusetts– Frederick Douglass, Professor Louis Agassiz, Josiah Quincy [the former mayor of Boston and retired president of Harvard is 91 years old at this time], William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Reverend Samuel J May, and many others, black and white, women and men are present to watch Massachusetts Governor Andrew present the American flag, the Massachusetts state flag, a white flag with the Goddess of Liberty and a blue flag with a large cross to the 54^th Massachusetts. The flags were hand-sewn by women from Boston just for this regiment.

May 18– Monday evening– Readville, Massachusetts– Robert Gould Shaw to his mother: “I am so sorry you were not here to-day. The presentation went off finely. The Governor made a beautiful speech. My response was small potatoes. The day has been beautiful; and on the whole it was a success. After the ceremony, we had a Battalion drill, and then refreshments for guests at my head-quarters. The Governor handed me a telegram from the Secretary of War, saying, ‘The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts will report to General Hunter; make requisitions for transportation, so that they may go at once.’”

May 18– Monday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln sends a letter of congratulations to Queen Victoria on the marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark on March 10^th.

May 18– Monday– Fredericksburg Virginia– Confederate General Lee returns to his headquarters after concluding several days of meetings with President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Cabinet to discuss strategy for the coming summer campaigns. He has convinced them that his plan to invade the North without sending any of his troops to reinforce Vicksburg will draw Grant away from Vicksburg and win the war. His planning for summer campaigning is hindered by the loss of 12 brigade commandeers, killed or wounded, at Chancellorsville.

Charlotte Forten Grimke

May 18– Monday– St Helena Island, South Carolina– Charlotte Forten Grimke writes about a Mr Thorpe. “Report says that he more than likes me. But I know it is not so. Have never had the least reason to think it. Although he is very good and liberal he is still an American, and would of course never be so insane as to love one of the prescribed race.”

Most Urgent Occasion, Amounting to a Manifest Necessity~ May, 1863~ the 8th to the 12th

The consequences of the battle at Chancellorsville begin to be felt. In the capital, Walt Whitman helps to nurse scores of wounded coming from the fight. To the sorrow of the Confederacy and the relief of the Union, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson dies of pneumonia contracted after the amputation of his arm. Another Confederate General is murdered by an angry husband for the general’s philandering. Feeling the need of more soldiers, President Lincoln orders that aliens who are becoming citizens are subject to the draft. Colonel Shaw returns from his honeymoon and finds the 54^th Massachusetts fit and ready for duty. General Grant makes steady progress against Vicksburg, much to the concern of President Jeff Davis. Soldiers write home about food and tobacco.

Abolitionist editor Garrison argues for the rights of all women and of black men. Secretary of State Seward instructs several American ministers to make clear to Britain, France and Russia that as the United States opposes European intervention in the American war, so too American policy opposes intervention in Russian affairs in Poland. In a foretaste of the organizing efforts of industrial workers which will be a key part of American society in the half century after the Civil War, railroad engineers organize. Around the world life goes on.

May 8– Friday– Boston, Massachusetts– In the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison writes that “The agitation of the Negro’s rights, and the discussion of the rights of woman, have from the beginning gone hand in hand. What natural alliance could be closer? The advocates of each have been forced to occupy common ground, because the claims of both the Negro and woman are based upon the same general principles, and the success of one necessitates the progress of the other.” Today’s issue also honors the 20 year old Anna E. Dickinson, a passionate abolitionist speaker, by grouping together “some of the numerous flattering testimonials which this gifted young lady has recently elicited from the press, and from distinguished professional gentlemen and prominent citizens, in various places.”

Anna E Dickinson, abolitionist & feminist

May 8– Friday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln issues a proclamation requiring military service of aliens who have declared their intent to become citizens and are of the appropriate age. “I do hereby order and proclaim that no plea of alienage will be received or allowed to exempt from the obligations imposed by the aforesaid act of Congress any person of foreign birth who shall have declared on oath his intention to become a citizen of the United States under the laws thereof, and who shall be found within the United States at any time during the continuance of the present insurrection and rebellion or after the expiration of the period of sixty-five days from the date of this proclamation.”

President Lincoln

May 8– Friday– Marshall, Michigan–Initial organization of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

May 8– Friday– Richmond, Virginia– President Jeff Davis writes to General E Kirby Smith, seeking information about what is happening along the Mississippi River and expressing his concern. “You are doubtless aware of General Pemberton’s position and of the presence of the enemy’s fleet between Vicksburg and Port Hudson and therefore cannot look until there is a change of circumstances for anything from the east side of the River. The guns & ammunition which have been sent out for you cannot now be transported and it therefore becomes of increased importance to push forward the work on the foundry near Shreveport, as well for the casting of guns, as shot and shell. Powder, I hope, you will be able to bring, in requisite quantities from the Rio Grande.”

May 8– Friday– Spring, Hill, Tennessee– Wealthy local doctor George Peters walks into the mansion where Confederate General Earl Van Dorn, age 42, has his headquarters. He calmly shoots the general in the head, killing him instantly as retribution for Van Dorn’s affair with the beautiful Jessie Peters, the doctor’s much younger wife. Van Dorn, a West Point graduate, married to the same woman for twenty years, had a reputation as a “ladies’ man” and was considered by colleagues as “a danger to ugly husbands.” The doctor will never be prosecuted.

May 9– Saturday– Utica, Mississippi; Big Sandy Creek, Mississippi; Bayou Tensas, Louisiana; Stone County, Missouri; Oiltown, West Virginia– Skirmishes and raids add to the death toll.

May 10– Sunday– Guiney Station, Virginia– Stonewall Jackson dies at a field hospital near here from pneumonia which he contracted after the amputation of his left arm. His last fevered words are, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” He is only 39 years old.

Jackson shot by his own men

May 10– Sunday– Hamilton’s Crossing, Virginia– Confederate soldier Henry Dedrick to his father “We had one of the hardest fights that we ever had since the war begun. General Jackson has lost one of his arms and [has] now got the pneumonia. He is not expected to live. He was shot by our own pickets. He got out side of our pickets after night and he come up in a gallop and they fired on him and wounded him and all of his guard but one. Our loss is said to be twenty thousand killed wounded and missing. I don’t know what the [loss] of the enemy was but it must be terrible. I have just heard that General Jackson was dead. If he is it is a great loss to the Southern confederacy.” Dedrick also invites his father to visit and bring food to sell: ” wish you would come down and bring me something to eat for we don’t get half enough and I can’t stand it. If you do come you can bring something along and make more off of it [than] you can make any other way. You can get from 50 to 75 cents for a pie, and tobacco is very high. You can sell most anything atall [sic],potatoes 50 cents per quart.” [That 50 cents would equal about $9.24 today.]

May 10– Sunday– Hanover, Germany– Violinist Joseph Joachim marries contralto Amalie Schneeweiss. Considered one of the greatest violinists of the 19^th century, Joachim is 32; Ms Schneeweiss, who performed under the stage name Amalie Weiss, is 24 and gives up a promising career. She will bear six children to her husband.

May 10– Sunday– Moshua, Begal [now Bangladesh]– Birth of Upendrakishore Ray, Bengali writer, painter, violinist and composer.

May 11– Monday– Readville, Massachusetts– Robert Gould Shaw to his father: “I found the regiment looking remarkably well; there are already one hundred men for the Fifty-fifth. . . . . I hope Mother and you will come on very soon. We [the regiment] shall get away next week without a doubt, if nothing unexpected turns up. General Wilde goes to New York Wednesday, and sails for Newbern on Friday. We [he and his new wife, Annie] are settled at Mrs. Crehore’s, and ready to receive you whenever you can come.”

May 11– Monday– Washington, D.C.– Secretary of State Seward instructs William Dayton, American Minister to France, to inform the French government that the United States will not join or support any European alliance intervening in Poland. “Our policy of non-intervention, straight, absolute and peculiar as it may seem to other nations, has thus become a traditional one, which could not be abandoned without the most urgent occasion, amounting to a manifest necessity. Certainly it could not be wisely departed from at this moment, when the existence of a local, although as we trust only a transient disturbance, deprives the government of the counsel of a portion of the American people, to whom so wide a departure from the settled policy of the country must in any case be deeply interesting.” Seward sends copies of this communication to Charles Francis Adams in London and to Cassius Marcellus Clay, American minister to Russia. He tells Clay that there could “be no impropriety in your informally making known the contents of the paper to Prince Gorchakov,” the Russian Foreign Minister. Clay, 52 years old, a cousin to the late Henry Clay, had emancipated his own slaves years ago and became an out-spoken anti-slavery activist, twice surviving assassination attempts by slave-holders.

Cassius Marcellus Clay, abolitionist & diplomat

May 11– Monday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln inquires of General Dix: “Do the Richmond papers have anything about Grand Gulf or Vicksburg?”

May 11– Monday– Washington, D.C.– Walt Whitman describes to his friend Moses Lane the flood of casualties from recent fighting and gives an opinion about the state of the war. “Now coming up in one long bloody string from Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg battles, six or seven hundred every day without intermission. We have already over 3000 arrived here in hospital from Hooker’s late battles. . . . You there north must not be so disheartened about Hooker’s return to this side of the Rappahannock and supposed failure. The blow struck at Lee & the rebel sway in Virginia, & generally at Richmond & Jeff Davis, by this short but tremendous little campaign, of 2d, 3d, 4th & 5th inst’s, is in my judgment the heaviest and most staggering they have yet got from us, & has not only hit them nearer where they live than all McClellan ever did, but all that has been leveled at Richmond during the war. I mean this deliberately. We have I know paid for it with thousands of dear noble lives, America’s choicest blood, yet the late battles are not without something decisive to show for them.”

fighting at Chancellorsville

May 11– Monday– Middleburg, Kentucky– Union soldier William Taylor to Jane, his wife. “I have not quit smoking, and you need not expect I will be likely to do it here, where the tobacco is growing all around me. I don’t smoke such a great deal however. John Haworth sent me a pound of tobacco at Newport News, and George brought me a pound when he came. It has kept Willie and me in smoking ever since, and is not more than half done. This is not considered heavy smoking here. Dick Holmes would smoke twice that much himself in the same time.”

May 12– Tuesday– New York City– George Templeton Strong in his diary: “General Grant has taken Jackson and thereby made Vicksburg untenable. We shall see.”

May 12– Tuesday– Washington, D. C.– Gideon Welles in his diary: “We have information that Stonewall Jackson, one of the best generals in the Rebel, and in some respects, perhaps in either service, is dead. One cannot but lament on the death of such a man, in such a cause, too. He was fanatically earnest, and a Christian but bigoted soldier.”

Jackson on his deathbed

May 12– Tuesday– Richmond, Virginia– John Jones in his diary: “The departments and all places of business are still closed in honor of General Jackson, whose funeral will take place to-day. The remains will be placed in state at the Capitol, where the people will be permitted to see him. The grief is universal, and the victory involving such a loss is regarded as a calamity.”

Ulysses S Grant during the Civil War

May 12– Tuesday– Raymond, Mississippi– In a battle which lasts several hours, a Confederate brigade tries and fails to stop Union General Grant’s advance toward Vicksburg. Each side sustains about 500 casualties.

The Time Appointed by God for Deliverance~May, 1863~the 4th to the 7th

Attitudes harden and casualties mount. General Lee wins an important victory at Chacellorsville but at a terrible cost. The after-shocks ripple to Washington and New York City. Union General Hunter praises the enthusiasm of black soldiers and the those of the 54^th Massachusetts are ready to go to war. Senator Sherman writes that the South does not want peace and compares the Confederacy to the French Revolution of 1789. Southern officials complain of the arrest by Union soldiers of two “very excellent young ladies belonging to the best families.” In Ohio a former Congressman is arrested and speedily brought to trial on charges of treason. A friend warns Whitman that some important people are prejudiced against him because he is doing nursing.

In the midst of bloodshed and unrest soldiers of both sides enjoy romance. Confederate General Pickett writes to his sweetheart with a soldier’s fantasy of glory, designed to make her swoon. Union Colonel Shaw enjoys his time with his new wife.

May 4– Monday– Readville, Massachusetts– James Gooding, one of the African American soldiers in the 54^th Massachusetts, sends a description to the Mercury newspaper. “The past week has been one of encouragement and interest to the 54^th ; our muster is now 868 men, and this week I hope to chronicle the pleasing intelligence, ‘the 54^th is full.’ We have sufficient reason to warrant us in saying that such will be the case. Fast Day [April 30^th as requested by President Lincoln] was observed here by a respite from drilling in the forenoon, and a grand review in the afternoon. Indeed it looked like anything but a day of humiliation and prayer– it seemed more like a grand gala day, if judged by the number of visitors on the ground.” He comments upon the number of healthy, young males who visit but have not enlisted. “I could not but put the question to myself, when I saw so many strong, able-bodied looking young men, why are you not here? why come as spectators when there is ample chance for you to become actors? I felt a mingled feeling of joy and sorrow– joy, because I felt the men who stood as actors in the scene were superior, in the eyes of all patriotic men, to those who came to see the show; sorrow, because these men had the effrontery to come here and look patronizingly upon those who are on the eve of going to secure them a home hereafter. . . . The regiment will be full; but it would be more credit to the State if it were filled by her own colored citizens.”

May 4– Monday– New York City– George Templeton Strong receives news. “Telegram at No 823 [New York office of the Sanitary Commission] this afternoon from Sanitary Commission, Washington office, calling for large supplies of hospital stores. . . . My anticipations are gradually settling downward. I now expect Hooker to fail, though perhaps after punishing the enemy severely. The obstinate silence of the War Department, the absence of official reports, is uncomfortable, and if the rebels be in the right place in which we suppose them, they will assuredly fight like cornered rats.”

fighting at Chancellorsville, Virginia

May 4– Monday– Chancellorsville, Virginia–On the fourth and final day of the battle, the Confederate forces finalize their victory as Union forces retreat. Union casualties–dead, wounded-missing– total 17, 287 since May 1^st; Confederate casualties amount to 12,764. However, the victory is costly for General Lee. His casualties total about 21% of his total force whereas General Hooker’s casualties are less than 13% of his total force.

May 4– Monday– Port Royal, South Carolina– Union General David Hunter writes to Governor Andrew of Massachusetts to express his satisfaction with the black soldiers under his command. “They have never disgraced their uniform by pillage or cruelty, but have so conducted themselves, upon the whole, that even our enemies, though more anxious to find fault with these than with any other portion of our troops, have not yet been able to allege against them a single violation of any of the rules of civilized warfare. These regiments are hardy, generous, temperate, patient, strictly obedient, possessing great natural aptitude for arms, and deeply imbued with that religious sentiment – call it fanaticism, such as like – which made the soldiers of Cromwell invincible. They believe that now is the time appointed by God for their deliverance; and under the heroic incitement of this faith, I believe them capable of showing a courage and persistency of purpose which must in the end extort both victory and admiration.”

Union General David Hunter

May 4– Monday– Tullahoma, Tennessee– Isham Harris, governor of the state when Tennessee voted to secede, writes to Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon about the arrest of two young women by Union soldiers back on April 7^th. “I send you herewith a note which I have just received from Colonel Joel A. Battle upon the subject of the arrest and imprisonment at Camp Chase [Ohio] of his daughter Miss Fannie Battle and Miss Booker. They are refined and very excellent young ladies belonging to the best families in the county, and were arrested alone upon the ground of their strong and openly avowed sympathies with the Confederate cause. Miss Battle has had two brothers killed in battle and her father dangerously wounded at the head of his regiment (the Twentieth Tennessee) at the battle of Shiloh. General Bragg tells me that he can do nothing here in the premises and advises me to address you upon the subject. I trust that the peculiar character of this case will be held to justify the most speedy and decided action. If these ladies are not liberated is it not legitimate to retaliate by placing in close confinement a number of Federal officers?” [Nine days from now the two young women will be released to Confederate authorities under a flag of truce at City Point, Virginia.]

May 5– Tuesday– Boston, Massachusetts– James Redpath to Walt Whitman: “I did not answer your last letter because I could not reply to the questions it put. I have heard since that Emerson tried to have something done about you, but failed. Believing that he would write to you, I didn’t. There is a prejudice against you here among the ‘fine’ ladies & gentlemen of the transcendental School. It is believed that you are not ashamed of your reproductive organs, and, somehow, it would seem to be the result of their logic that eunuchs only are fit for nurses. If you are ready to qualify yourself for their sympathy & support, that you may not unnecessarily suffer therefrom is the sincere wish of your friend.”

James Redpath

May 5– Tuesday– Dayton, Ohio– Acting on orders from General Burnside, Union soldiers arrest former Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, age 42, the leader of the Peace Democrats known as “Copperheads.”

May 5– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– Gideon Welles in his diary: “It is strange . . . that no reliable intelligence reaches us from the army of what it is doing, or not doing. This fact itself forebodes no good.”

May 5– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– Walt Whitman to his mother: “The condition of things here in the Hospitals is getting pretty bad– the wounded from the battles around Fredericksburg are coming up in large numbers. It is very sad to see them.”

May 5– Tuesday– Suffolk, Virginia– General George Pickett to his sweetheart, Salle Corbell: “I am ordered instead to proceed at once with three of my brigades to Petersburg, via the ‘Jerusalem-Plank-Road,’ to intercept a cavalry raid. Perhaps, my darling, I shall have met these raiders ere this reaches you. Who knows how many of us may then hear the roll-call from the other side and be sorry? . . . . my darling, there is no death, and you must feel, must know now and always, that whether here or there, at the roll-call your Soldier answers, ‘Here!’ Now, adieu, my beloved. Close your brown eyes and feel my arms around you, for I am holding you close oh, so close!”

May 5– Tuesday– Thompsom’s Crossroads, Virginia; King’s Creek, Mississippi; Peletier’s Mill, North Carolina; Rover, Tennessee; Fort Scott, Kansas– Skirmishing, raids and cavalry clashes add to the death toll.

May 6– Wednesday– Lennox, Massachusetts– While spending time away with his new bride, Robert Gould Shaw writes to his sister, Effie. “Annie and I shall be in Boston on Monday. . . . . what a pity the weather is so bad; it has been beautiful up here until now. I have been in quite an angelic mood ever since we got here— as is becoming — and haven’t felt envious of any one. Excuse this short note, for I am dreadfully busy. Annie sends love to you and Charley. We haven’t seen a single soul until today, and we’ve only been off the place twice. We began to read The Mill on the Floss, but have only finished three or four chapters. We read it three years ago together, when I was here on a visit. Our own ideas are more interesting to us just now, than Miss Evans.” [Mary Ann Evans, 1819 – 1880, wrote under the pen name of George Eliot.]

Robert Gould Shaw~”Blue-eyed Child of Fortune”

May 6– Wednesday– Washington, D.C.– Secretary Welles records that after a night filled with an ominous and violent rainstorm Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts came into Welles’ office “and raising both hands exclaimed, ‘Lost, lost, all is lost!’ I asked what he meant. He said Hooker and his army had been defeated and driven back to this side of the Rappahannock. Sumner came direct from the President, who, he said, was extremely dejected.” Later Welles observed President Lincoln to be “uneasy, uncomfortable and dissatisfied.”

May 6– Wednesday– Bank’s Ford, Virginia– Union soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes to his diary: “Thank God I am alive and well. I shall be glad when the war is over and I can be civilized again. I do not like so much death and destruction.”

May 6– Wednesday– London, England– Irish-born Sir Robert Arbuthnot, British military officer who served with great distinction on the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic wars, winning the Army Gold Cross, dies at age 79.

General Sir Robert Arbuthnot

May 7– Thursday– New York City– George Templeton Strong to his diary: “Storm continues, but grows less savage. It is cloudy and cold and northeasterly but rain has ceased. Moral coloring of the day livid blue. Failure and repulse again! Hooker has retired across the Rappahannock and is where he was a month ago, but no doubt sorely shattered.”

May 7– Thursday– Mansfield, Ohio– Senator John Sherman to his brother, General William Tecumseh Sherman: “If only the people will be patient so long, all will be well. The best of it is, they can’t help themselves. The rebels won’t let us have peace even if we wanted it. . . . This war has always seemed to me a tragic necessity. I have watched its progress, and hope to see its termination. It may, like the French Revolution, travel in a large circle, destroying all that have taken part in it ; still there is no way but to go ahead. We may slowly learn wisdom in its prosecution, for we certainly have not shown it thus far.”

Senator John Sherman, Republican from Ohio

May 7– Thursday– Dayton, Ohio– At the conclusion of a two-day trial by a military commission, Clement Vallandigham is found guilty of expressing treasonable sympathies.

Clement Vallandigham

May 7– Thursday– Washington, D.C.– Secretary Welles reports, “Our people, though shocked and very much disappointed, are in better tone and temper than I feared they would be.” Yet he suggests that the President wants an explanation of the serious Union defeat. “There are, indeed, many matters which require explanation.”

So Much of the Heart-Breaking~May, 1863~the 1st to the 3rd

The month of May opens with plenty of conflict. In Virginia, a vicious battle begins at Chancellorsville. In the course of the fighting Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is seriously injured by his own men and losses an arm. In Mississippi, Union General Grant begins to encircle Vicksburg. Elisha Hunt Rhodes suffers a minor wound. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw marries his sweetheart. Charlotte Forten Grimke writes about black church services.. Elizabeth Cady Stanton calls for Northern women to become more patriotic. A Confederate soldier praises Southern women for their patriotism. A writer in The Atlantic Monthly describes the South as enslaved to the system of slavery. George Templeton Strong despises the British. And life goes on outside of the American Civil War.

　

May– Boston, Massachusetts– This month’s issue of The Atlantic Monthly contains, among other things, two poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, an essay by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, an essay by Professor Louis Agassiz, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne and an essay by D A Wasson entitled “Shall We Compromise?” The writer concludes with this: “Even would the Secessionists consent to partial compositions, as they will not, they must inevitably break faith, as ever before. They are slaves to the slave-system. As wise were it to covenant with the dust not to fly, or with the sea not to foam, when the hurricane blows, as to bargain with these that they shall resist that despotic impetus which compels them. They are slaves. And their master is one whose law is to devour. Only he who might meditate letting go a Bengal tiger on its parole of honor, or binding over a pestilence to keep the peace, should so much as dream for a moment of civil compositions with this system. Its action is inevitable. And therefore our only wisdom will be to make our way by the straightest path to this, which is our chief, and in the last analysis our only enemy, and cut it through and through.”

May 1– Friday– Boston, Massachusetts– The Liberator gleefully reports that “Thomas Sims, who was returned from Boston in 1851, to his master in Georgia, under the Fugitive Slave Law, arrived in Boston on Thursday of last week, with his family. He came direct from Vicksburg, where he had been employed as a bricklayer, having escaped from that city about three weeks ago, to General Grant’s lines, in a dugout, with his wife, child, and four colored men.” [The Sims case created a passionate demonstration against the new Fugitive Slave Law of September, 1850, so much so that President Millard Fillmore sent U S Marines into the city to escort the slave catchers and Sims to the ship which took them south.] This issue also reprints a patriotic speech by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “The women of the South know what their sons are fighting for. The women of the North do not. They appreciate the blessings of Slavery; we do not the blessings of Liberty. . . . What are wealth and jewels, home and ease, sires and sons, to the birthright of freedom, secured to us by the heroes of the Revolution– liberty to universal man? Shall a priceless heritage like this be wrested now from us by Southern tyrants, and Northern women look on unmoved, or basely bid our freedmen sue for peace? No! No!” At this time Stanton is 47 years old with four of her seven children under age 12 yet she remains extremely active in the causes of abolition and woman’s rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton with 2 of her sons, c.1847

May 1– Friday– New York City–Cornelia Knight and Dr James Knight open the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled Children, the first orthopedic hospital in the United States.

May 1– Friday– New York City– George Templeton Strong in his diary: “At the Society Library tonight looking through English magazines and papers. Their misrepresentations about us are amazing and many of their blunders must be dishonest and malignant. . . . The fair-minded honest old English people, in which I believed so many years so firmly, has ceased to exist.”

May 1– Friday– Chancellorsville, Virginia– Having correctly anticipated that Union General Hooker was trying to outflank him, Confederate General Lee, having left part of his force at Fredericksburg, prepares to blunt the Union attach. In response Hooker stops advancing and takes up defensive positions. In the evening, Lee and Stonewall Jackson consult and decide to split the Confederate force yet again, with Jackson taking 26,000 of the Confederate’s 47,000 to launch a surprise attack on Hooker’s right flank, although the Union force totals almost 70,000 soldiers.

General Hooker & his staff as portrayed in Harper’s Weekely

May 1– Friday– Port Gibson, Mississippi– Union General Grant’s campaign against Vicksburg takes a big step forward as his soldiers defeat a Confederate force. Union killed, wounded and missing total 861; Confederate losses amount to 787.

May 1– Friday– Blountsville, Alabama; Washington, Louisiana; Suffolk, Virginia; Chalk Bluff, Arkansas; La Grange, Arkansas; Lizzard, Tennessee– Skirmishes, raids and small but intense pitched battles add by the tens and by the hundreds to casualty lists.

May 1– Friday– St Helena Island, South Carolina– Charlotte Forten Grimke reflects in her diary. “This is a glorious moomlight night. From the window I can see the water in silver waves shining in the clear soft light. Sat a long time on the piazza . . . thinking of some loved ones who are far, far away.”

Charlotte Forten Grimke

May 1– Friday– Dunedin, New Zealand– The Evening Star newspaper, founded by G. A. Henningham and Co and edited by George Henningham, publishes its first issue. The paper will be in continuous publication until 1979.

May 2– Saturday– Brooklyn, New York– Jeff Whitman to his brother Walt Whitman: “I suppose, dear Walt that you will have more to do in the Hospitals than ever pretty soon. I hardly can see how you can stand seeing so much of the heart-breaking I certainly could not do it. I am sure it would make me sick enough to die.”

May 2– Saturday– New York City– Colonel Robert Gould Shaw marries Annie Kneeland Haggerty at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension.

Church of the Ascension in NYC as it looks today

May 2– Saturday– Washington, D.C.– Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles in to diary: “Thick rumors concerning the Army of the Potomac . . . . This indefiniteness, and the manner attending it, is a pretty certain indication that the information received is not particularly gratifying.”

May 2– Saturday– Washington, D.C.– The Washington Chronicle reports that during the past week a certain gentleman called on President Lincoln, requesting a pass to go to Richmond. “Well,” said the President, “I would be very happy to oblige you, if my passes were respected; but the fact is, sir, I have, within the past two years given passes to 250,000 men to go to Richmond, and not one has got there yet.”

May 2– Saturday– Chancellorsville, Virginia– At 6 o’clock in the evening Confederate General Stonewall Jackson launches an attack upon the unprepared Union right flank while General Lee mounts a limited and distracting attack against the Federal front. Union troops fall back. Jackson considers continuing with a night attack and rides forward to see for himself what the Federals are doing. Returning in the dark from scouting Union positions, General Jackson is accidentally shot by some of his own soldiers. His pickets, mistaking his party for Federal soldiers, open fire. Three of Jackson’s staff are killed and the general is seriously wounded in his left arm. In a matter of hours, surgeons amputate the arm.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

May 2– Saturday– New Orleans, Louisiana– Colonel Grierson’s Union cavalry raiders arrive in the city. He reports that in 16 days he and his men have killed about 100 rebel soldiers, taken another 500 prisoners, captured more than 1000 horses and mules as well as 3000 weapons and destroyed more than 50 miles of railroad and telegraph lines as well as several depots and warehouses of supplies.. His casualties are 3 dead, 7 wounded and 9 missing. His raiders covered 600 miles through enemy territory.

May 3– Sunday– Chancellorsville, Virginia– Union forces continue to fall back as the Confederates push hard against them. However, General Lee’s final push does not take place as he turns to defend himself against Union General Sedgwick who has pushed through Fredericksburg and attacks Lee’s right wing.

May 3– Sunday– Salem Church, Virginia– From late afternoon until nightfall, Sedwick’s Union soldiers and Lee’s Confederate soldiers maul each other. Lee successfully prevents Sedwick from joining Hooker’s troops at Chancellorsville, thus ensuring a Confederate victory. Elisha Hunt Rhodes is one of the Union soldiers participating in the bitter struggle. He is slightly injured. “One iron bullet struck me upon my foot causing me to jump into the air, but only lamed me a little. I picked up the iron bullet and put it in my pocket and will send it home.” He adds that in today’s fighting his regiment lost 7 killed, 68 wounded and 9 missing.

Elisha Hunt Rhodes

May 3– Sunday– Franklin, Tennessee- A Confederate soldier writes: “God bless the ladies, the part they have acted in this war will never be forgotten, and that part is no little. Their fair hands have clothed our army, have woven the fabric that warmed the soldiers frozen form, as he laid down to sleepat night in the cold winters blast, and have administered to the wants of the sick and wounded; they have breathed words of consolation to the sick and afflicted; and by their spirited address, have nerved men on to deeds of daring.”

May 3– Sunday– Dubuque, Iowa– Roman Catholic Bishop Clement Smyth, Irish born, 53 years old and a Union supporter, cautions church members not to become involved with the pro-Southern Knights of the Golden Circle.

May 3– Sunday– St Helena Island, South Carolina– Charlotte Forten Grimke writes about religion among the freed slaves. “Too weary and ill to go to church . . . I always like to see the people, looking so bright and cheerful in their Sunday attire, and to hear them sing. . . . . It is wonderful that perfect time the people keep with hands, feet, and indeed with every part of the body. I enjoy these ‘shouts’ very much.”

May 3– Grand Gulf, Mississippi– Confederate troops evacuate their fortified position, worried about being encircled and cut off by General Grant.

Introducing Elisha Hunt Rhodes

Elisha Hunt Rhodes, a quintessential New England Yankee, was born on Monday, March 21, 1842 in Pawtuxet Rhode Island and died on Sunday, January 14, 1917 in Providence, Rhode Island at 74 years of age. He came to the attention of most modern readers, like me, when Ken Burns used extensive quotations from his diary and letters, read by an actor with a proper Yankee accent, in the film The Civil War.

Elisha Hunt Rhodes

Elisha Hunt Rhodes was the eldest son of Elisha H. and Eliza A. Chace Rhodes. He grew up in the Baptist church and was a life-long member in that denomination. After attending the local grammar school, at 14 he entered Potter & Hammond’s Commercial Colleger in Providence until his father was reported lost at sea commanding the schooner Worcester on a trip to the Bahamas in early December, 1858. Young Elisha became the sole support of his mother and siblings, taking a job as a clerk in the office of Frederick Miller, a supplier to New England’s numerous mills, until the outbreak of the Civil War. In response to President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the insurrection of the southern states against the United States, Rhode Island Governor William Sprague issued an order for the immediate muster of the Second Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry, to join the Rhode Island Brigade already under General Burnside’s command in Washington. On June 5, 1861, Elisha and two of his friends enlisted as privates. One of those friends died in battle during the war.

Elisha kept a diary and wrote letters home all during the war. Repeatedly, he wrote in his journal, even in times of Federal losses, that it was worth the struggle for it was “All for Union!” He and his regiment managed to be present at numerous key battles and campaigns, from the war’s beginning to its bitter conclusion: the Peninsula Campaign, Second Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellosville, Gettysburg, Mine Run, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. Because of his literacy, clerical and administrative skills, he received a dramatic series of promotions, the most significant when he was named regimental

adjutant on November 7, 1863; became a captain on May 5, 1864; assumed command of the depleted regiment as captain on June 5, 1864; and became colonel of the regiment on July 18, 1865. He remained with the Second Regiment from its creation to the end of the war when the regiment was mustered out on July 28, 1865.

On the day the Second Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry disbanded, Colonel Elisha Hunt Rhodes stood on the steps of the Providence City Hall and gave a short farewell address to the men under his command. “Comrades ! The time has come for us to part, after serving together for over four years. Before bidding you farewell, I wish to express my gratitude to you all for your uniform kindness to me, and your attention to duty. Nobly have you served your country, gallantly have you followed our battle scarred flags through the fiercest of the fight. You have never allowed the good name of our State to suffer, but have added to its historic fame. You may well be proud of the part that you have taken in preserving the Union. Your Commanding Officer will ever be proud to say that he served through the Rebellion in the Second Rhode Island Volunteers, and will remember with pleasure the brave men who so nobly supported him during the time that he had Command. We are now to commence a new career. We are to become citizens. Show the Nation that you can be goodcitizens as well as gallant soldiers. Be true to God, your country and yourselves. Farewell !”

Elisha married Caroline Pearce Hunt on June 12, 1866. The couple had two children: Frederick Miller Rhodes, who later married Annie Webb, and Alice Caroline Rhodes, who married Howard Chace. Caroline Hunt Rhodes, a year younger than her husband, outlived him by thirteen years

grave of Elisha & Caroline Rhodes

After the war, Elisha became a successful businessman, using many contacts among fellow veterans and was extremely active in veterans’ affairs. He never missed a regimental reunion. From 1879 until 1893 he served as Brigadier General in command of the Rhode Island State Militia. He and his wife belonged to the Central Baptist Church in Providence, where he served for many years as a deacon and as superintendent of the Sunday School. He also was an active Mason and served for a number of years on the city school board. During the period from 1875 to 1885, he worked as Customs Officer for the District of Rhode Island, an appointment first given to him by Ulysses S Grant when Grant was President of the United States.

In 1985, Robert Hunt Rhodes, one of Elisha’s six great-grandchildren, published All For The Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes. The Rhode Island Historical Society holds a large collection of Elisha Hunt Rhodes’ personal and military papers.

Introducing Charlotte Forten Grimke

Charlotte Forten Grimke

Charlotte Forten Grimke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 17, 1837, one of the two children of Robert Bridges Forten and Mary Virginia Woods Forten, free-born African Americans. Her paternal grandfather, James Forten, was a wealthy sail-maker. When the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison of Boston sought funding to begin publishing his newspaper The Liberator, it was James Forten and John B Vashon of Pittsburgh, the two wealthiest black men in the state, who gave him the necessary money. Most white abolitionists in 1831 were too unwilling to invest in such a dangerous venture. James Forten also provided financial backing to Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society.

James Forten, businessman & abolitionist

Mary Forten died in the summer of 1840. Charlotte missed her mother all the rest of her life. Robert Forten would not send his daughter to the segregated schools of Philadelphia so he had her tutored at home. She was bright, friendly and attractive. Charlotte spent a lot of time with her grandparents and her uncle, Robert Purvis. Purvis, a wealthy and college-educated man of mixed race, married Harriet Forten. Charlotte’s grandparents, father, Uncle Robert and Aunt Harriet were politically active in the anti-slavery cause so from a young age Charlotte found herself in the company of Garrison, John Greenleaf Whittier, Harriet Martineau, Lucretia and James Mott, Sarah Mapps Douglass, William Nell, and Charles Remond. At age 16, Charlotte was sent by her father to Salem, Massachusetts to pursue further education. A young woman interested in the cause of abolition and with a flair for writing, Charlotte became active in the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society and Garrison published one of her poems in The Liberator. In addition she began, in 1854, to keep a diary, which she would maintain periodically until 11892. During this time, escaped slave Anthony Burns was returned to slavery by Federal marshals under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The incident, which frightend both free-born black people and other fugitive slaves who had made lives for themselves in urban areas, prompted Robert Forten to move his family to Canada, but he left Charlotte in Salem with the Remonds in Salem. She graduated from Higginson Grammar School in March, 1855.

Charlotte Forten wrote to her father in Canada for permission to attend the Salem Normal School, where she had already passed the entrance exam. Robert Forten ordered his daughter to return to Philadelphia immediately. The school principal Mary Shepard urged her to write to him again, and Forten eventually agreed to allow Charlotte to attend, but he did not offer to pay her expenses. Ms Shepard loaned her the money to continue her education.

In June, 1856, Ms Forten became a teacher in Salem at the integrated Epes Grammar School but health problems forced her to return to Philadelphia after only one year of work. Her great classroom abilities made her popular with students, parents and colleagues and gave her certainty that she could teach well.

Between June, 1857 and the summer of 1862, Charlotte Forten struggled with recurring health problems, taught school when she was able and had several poems and essays published. On August 9, 1862, she and Mary Shepard visited with the poet and dedicated abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier in his home. Whittier advised the talented teacher to join the teachers at Port Royal, South Carolina who were instructing escaped slaves, children and adults, under the protection of Union soldiers. She applied to the Philadelphia Port Royal Educational Commission, was accepted and headed south on October 27, 1862.

From then until May 1864, she taught school, kept her diary quite faithfully, maintained extensive correspondence and built many friendships, including the white Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson and many of his black soldiers as well as the white Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and a number of his black soldiers. The few Southern whites remaining in the area openly showed their hatred, and Charlotte Forten began to carry a pistol after someone made an attempt to break into her sleeping quarters. She noted in her diary, “The thought of falling into the hands of the Rebels was horrible in the extreme.”

Essays chronicling her experiences, entitled “Life on the Sea Islands,” appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, edited at that time by James Thomas Fields, in the May and June issues of 1864. Under increasing physical and emotional stress, Charlotte Forten became ill once again, experiencing terrible headaches, among other symptoms, and, with deep regret, left St. Helena and returned to Philadelphia.

After the conclusion of the Civil War, Ms Forten worked with the Freedmen’s Relief Association in Boston to help former slaves find jobs and homes. In the late 1860s, she worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC recruiting teachers and in 1873 she became a clerk at the Treasury Department.

On December 19 1878, at age 41, Charlotte married Francis Grimke, age 26, the biracial nephew of abolitionists Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke Weld.. Francis’ father was Henry Grimke, one of the brothers of Sarah and Angelina, and Francis’ mother was a house slave by the name of Nancy Weston. She bore two other sons by her master as well. [Sarah and Angelina had left the South for Pennsylvania. Their writing and public speaking on behalf of the abolitionist cause severed their relationship with their parents and siblings.]

In 1868, Angelina Grimke Weld took note of Francis and his two brothers, seeing the Grimke name mentioned in an African American newspaper. Angelina and Sarah recognized them as family members and supported Francis and his bother Archibald financially through college until both graduated from Lincoln University in 1870. They further assisted Francis through his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, from which he graduated. He became ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

Charlotte Forten Grimke helped her husband in his ministry and organized a women’s missionary group. Francis became pastor at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, and Charlotte continued to work for education and equality for African Americans.

15th Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., c1899

In her marriage Charlotte Forten Grimke joined two of the most prominent family names of antebellum abolition. Charlotte and Francis Grimke lived in Washington, DC, and their home became a social and intellectual gathering place for friends and associates. Charlotte gave birth to a daughter in June 1880 but the little girl died in infancy. The couple were active in civil rights and Charlotte proudly helped Francis in activism with W. E. B. DuBois in the Niagara Movement and participation in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

After many years of suffering from poor health, Charlotte Forten Grimke died on July 22, 1914 at her home in Washington, DC, at the age of 77. Francis outlived his beloved wife by more than twenty years, dying on October 11, 1937. He never remarried after her death.

　

　

　

　

　

Introducing Sarah Morgan Dawson

Two readers of my blog have asked, at different times, if I might provide additional information about some the persons whose correspondence and diaries I quote from on a regular basis. Motivated by the fascinating lives of these rich personalities from this experience which in so many ways defined the United States, I am beginning today an occasional series on this amazing cast of real characters from this great drama of the nineteenth century, the American Civil War. (Indeed, in my opinion, the 19th century was, in many ways, the greatest of centuries!)

Sarah Morgan Dawson

I start today with Sarah Morgan Dawson (1842 to 1909) of Louisiana. Along with her distant relative Mary Chesnut, Ms Dawson is remembered as a Southern diarist whose writing provides key insights in the events of the war. Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan was the born in New Orleans on February 28, 1842, the seventh child of Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan and his second wife, Sarah Hunt Fowler. Ms Dawson loved her father very much and respected his opinions. In 1850, the family relocated to Baton Rouge, where Thomas worked as a district attorney and later a district judge. In the manner of many women of the period, Ms Dawson received less than a year of formal education. Most of her learning came from the tutelage of her mother in the family home. She read widely as one can tell from her diary. Her family owned slaves, was well-to-do and Sarah lacked for nothing. For Ms Dawson, as for many, her life changed radically with the coming of war in 1861.

In April 1861, Ms Dawson’s brother, Henry, died in a duel. Later the same year, her father, “who opposed secession but supported his state once it seceded,” died. Sarah began her keeping her diary early in 1862, even as she mourned the death of her brother and father and the departure of her three remaining brothers– Thomas Jr., George, and James– to the Confederate army and navy.

According to Ms Dawson’s son, Warrington, who published his mother’s diary in 1913 and wrote the introduction, “In the early days of Secession agitation, another son of Judge T. G.Morgan, Henry, had died in a duel over a futile quarrel which busybodies had envenomed. The three remaining sons had gone off to the war. Thomas Gibbes Morgan, Jr., married to Lydia, daughter of General A. G. Carter and a cousin of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, was Captain in the Seventh Louisiana Regiment, serving under Stonewall Jackson; George Mather Morgan, unmarried, was a Captain in the First Louisiana, also with Jackson in Virginia. The youngest, James Morris Morgan, had resigned from Annapolis, where he was a cadet, and hurried back to enlist in the Confederate navy.”

“At the family home in Baton Rouge, only women and children remained. There was Judge Morgan’s widow, Sarah Fowler Morgan; a married daughter, Eliza or ‘Lilly,’ with her five children; and two unmarried daughters, Miriam and Sarah. ‘Lilly’s’ husband, J. Charles La Noue, came and went; unable to abandon his large family without protector or resources, he had not joined the regular army, but took a part in battles near whatever place of refuge he had found for those dependent on him.”

In Baton Rouge with her mother and sisters, Ms Dawson recorded the scarcity of food, clothing and household goods as a result of the Union blockade, remarking that the word “Confederate” amounted to anything that was “rough, unfinished, unfashionable or poor.” She refrained from the use of the word “slave” but called the African Americans in her household “servants” and “our people” while asserting their undying loyalty to the family.

After the Union army and navy captured New Orleans in April, 1862, Federal military operations reached into other parts of Louisiana. Ms Dawson recorded how the family kept clothes packed if it became necessary to flee. She kept about her person a small pistol and a large, sharp knife to keep away any unwelcome Yankee advances.

Ms Dawson and her family fled from Baton Rouge to Clinton and later to Linwood where she a fall from a horse which left her bed-ridden for months. Eventually they returned to New Orleans, which was still occupied by Union troops, and stayed in the house of her half-brother, Judge Philip Hicky Morgan, a Unionist who had sworn allegiance to the United States. While there until the end of the war, Ms Dawson leaned of the death of her two brothers who served in the army. The next to last entry, dated May 2, 1865, in the six carefully hand-written volumes of her diary, reads: “While praying for the return of those who have fought so nobly for us, how I have dreaded their first days at home! Since the boys died, I have constantly thought of what pain it would bring to see their comrades return without them–to see families reunited, and know that ours never could be again, save in heaven. Last Saturday, the 29th of April, seven hundred and fifty paroled Louisianians from Lee’s army were brought here– the sole survivors of ten regiments who left four years ago so full of hope and determination. On the 29th of April, 1861, George left New Orleans with his regiment. On the fourth anniversary of that day, they came back; but George and Gibbes have long been lying in their graves.”…

In May 1872, Dawson and her mother moved to South Carolina to make their home with Sarah’s younger brother, James. In an effort to support herself, Ms Dawson accepted an editorial position at the Charleston News and Courier, and throughout 1873, she wrote a series of editorials on the plight of young, single women in the postwar South. Out of her own necessity, she wrote in support of women’s employment outside of the home. However, she did not believe in women’s rights, frequently deriding and mocking woman suffragists and stressing her personal dedication to women’s
traditional place in society as wives and mothers. In 1874, Ms Dawson married the newspaper editor, Francis Warrington Dawson, an Englishman who loved the South and was a friend of her brother. The couple had three children: Ethel in 1874, Warrington in 1878, and Philip in 1881. Philip died at six months of age. After her husband’s murder in 1889, Ms Dawson again turned to writing for survival, publishing a series of short stories and translations of French works. In 1899, she relocated to Paris with her son Warrington, where she published Les Aventures de Jeannot Lapin, a French version of the Brer Rabbit stories, in 1903. She died in Paris on May 5, 1909.

Though Ms Dawson originally asked that her six-volume diary be destroyed upon her death, she left it to her son Warrington in her will. In 1913, he arranged to have the first four volumes published as A Confederate Girl’s Diary. The diary was later edited by Charles East and published in its entirety in 1991. The edition I use and quote from is available on the wonderful Project Gutenberg website.

Her son finished his introduction to the printed edition of his mother’s diary with these words of tribute: “Sarah Morgan Dawson was destined to outlive not only her husband, but all save three of her eight brothers and sisters, and most of the relatives and friends mentioned in the pages which follow; was destined to endure deep affliction once more, and to renounce a second home dearer than that first whose wreck she recorded during the war. Yet never did her faith, her courage, her steadfastness fail her, never didthe light of an almost childlike trust in God and in mankind fade from
her clear blue eyes. The Sarah Morgan who, as a girl, could stifle hersobs as she forced herself to laugh or to sing, was the mother I knew in later years.

“I love most to remember her in the broad tree-shaded avenues of Versailles where, dreaming of a distant tragic past, she found ever new strength to meet the present. Death claimed her not far from there, in Paris, at a moment when her daughter in America, her son in Africa, were powerless to reach her. But souls like unto hers leave their mark in passing through the world; and, though in a foreign land, separated from all who had been dear to her, she received from two friends such devotion as few women deserve in life, and such as few other women are capable of giving.”

Great Battle Will Undoubtedly Be Fought~April, 1863~the 24th to the 30th

Anticipating the coming effusion of blood, the number of armed skirmishes increases. Grant’s new campaign against Vicksburg begins well with a successful cavalry raid. However, one more disaster is about to befall the Union as the next month begins. Charlotte Forten Grimke attends religious services with escaped slaves. Sara Morgan laments the state of things in Union-occupied New Orleans. Proper people in Nashville want something done about the increasing number of “lewd women” parading brazenly around the streets. The tragic number of deaths causes increased business for a woman who is clairvoyant and capable of dealing with “all complaints peculiar to females” as well. The governor of Pennsylvania worries, prematurely, about a rebel invasion. The French invaders in Mexico suffer unexpected reverses. Life goes on all around the world.

　

April 24– Friday– Richmond, Virginia–The Confederate government levies a 10% tax on all produce–a tax to be paid in kind in order to help feed the army.

April 24– Friday– Newton’s Station, Mississippi– Union cavalry under Colonel Benjamin Grierson seize the town, destroy a large supply of Confederate uniforms and ammunition, the railroad depot, two trains and several miles of track, thereby cutting the east-west route of the Southern Railroad of Mississippi.

Colonel Grierson depicted on the front page of Harpers Weekly

April 24– Friday– the Gulf of Mexico– The USS DeSoto captures four different blockade runners.

April 25– Saturday– Brooklyn, New York– Jeff Whitman writes to his brother Walt. “Although I have little to write you about yet I thought I would just ‘drop you a line’ as they say telling you that we all are in our usual style of liberty, health and pursuit of happiness. The latter of course under great difficulties as everything is so awful dear that you can hardly get enough to make a happy dinner on for less than 150cts but then we are doing the jolliest we can. How goes things with you. We don’t hear from you as often as we used to. I hope you are not so engaged but that you can find time to write home? Do you visit the Hospitals as often as usual? I suppose so. I hope you are enabled to do as much good as formerly.”

April 25– Saturday– St Helena Island, South Carolina– Charlotte Forten Grimke attends a worship service with some of the fugitive slaves and some of Colonel Higginson’s soldiers. “The people on the place have grand ‘shouts.’ They are most inspiring. . . . There is an old blind man, Maurice, who has a truly wonderful voice, so strong and clear. It rings out like a trumpet. One song– ‘Gabriel blow the Trumpet’– was the grandest thing I have yet heard. . . . Several of the soldiers . . . joined in the shout with great spirit.”

Charlotte Forten Grimke

April 25– Saturday– Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory; Greenland Gap, West Virginia; Webber’s Falls, Indian Territory [Oklahoma]– Small but significant contests add to the spring’s blood-letting.

April 26– Sunday– New York City– The New York Times reports about efforts to raise black soldiers in the Union-occupied parts of Louisiana. “An expedition will also be sent to Bayou Macon, where there are large numbers of contrabands, some of whom are reported anxious to enlist. There will be no difficulty experienced in raising ten or twelve regiments in this department.” In a separate article the paper updates readers about the fighting in Mexico. “The French, in the commencement of their campaign in Mexico, quite underrated the Mexican soldiers in comparison with their own troops. They imagined that all they had to do was simply to land on Mexican soil and march to the City of Mexico; that the Mexicans would scarcely offer them resistance; . . . . But to their astonishment, and at the cost of one year’s campaign, they have been taught a lesson which they will not fail to remember, as they make their advance further into the interior, that the Mexican soldiers do not fear them, and will fight them on an equal footing in regard to numbers, for that has been fully shown.”

April 26– Sunday– Union camp outside Vicksburg, Mississippi– General William Tecumseh Sherman writes to his brother, Senator John Sherman, outlining General Grant’s plan to lay siege to the city. “There is no national or political reason why this army should be forced to undertake unnecessary hazard. It is far in advance of Hooker, Rosecrans, or Curtis. We have done far more than either of these armies, but have encountered more calumny and abuse than all.”

General William Recumseh Shreman

April 27– Monday– Memphis, Tennessee– The Memphis Bulletin declares: “Madam Cora James, the only reliable clairvoyant of the day, is daily astonishing citizens of the highest rank by her wonderful clairvoyant power in revealing the past and predicting coming events, Madam James has mastered all the science embraced in this glorious gift of prophecy and invariably gives satisfaction to all who consult her, and all acknowledge the truthfulness of the revelations made to them. Clairvoyant examinations and prescriptions in all chronic disease, insanity in its various forms, rheumatic affections, nervous afflictions and all complaints peculiar to females.”

April 27– Monday– Hazlehurst, Mississippi– Two of Colonel Grierson’s troopers, disguised as Confederate soldiers, casually walk into the telegraph office and send a message to Confederate General Pemberton that Grierson’s raiders are headed for the state capital.

April 27– Monday– Jackson, Missouri; Carter Creek Tennessee; Barboursville, Kentucky; Town Creek, Alabama; Morgantown, West Virginia; Murray’s Inlet, South Carolina; Wise’s Crossroads, North Carolina– Cavalry encounters, infantry skirmishes, firefights and small brawls add to the number of dead, wounded and missing.

April 28– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– President Lincoln sends a telegram to Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania. “I do not think the people of Pennsylvania should be uneasy about an invasion. Doubtless a small force of the enemy is flourishing about in the northern part of Virginia, on the ‘skewhorn’ principle, on purpose to divert us in another quarter. I believe it is nothing more. We think we have adequate force close after them.” The President is referring to maneuvers by Confederate General James Longstreet.

Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania

April 28– Richmond, Virginia– John Jones takes note of Grierson’s raid. “The enemy’s raid in Mississippi seems to have terminated at Enterprise, where we collected a force and offered battle, but the invaders retreated. It is said they had 1600 cavalry and 5 guns, and the impression prevails that but few of them will ever return. It is said they sent back a detachment of 200 men some days ago with their booty, watches, spoons, jewelry, etc. rifled from the habitations of the non-combating people.”

April 28– Tuesday– Union Church, Mississippi– Colonel Grierson’s Union cavalry tangles with a small unit of Confederate cavalry. After putting the rebels to flight, Grierson gives the impression to townspeople that he and his men are headed for Natchez, when in fact he is headed for Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

April 29– Wednesday– Rumford Place, Virginia– Elisha Hunt Rhodes anticipates a big fight coming soon. “The balance of the Army under General Hooker has crossed the river above Falmouth and a great battle will undoubtedly be fought. May God help us and give us victory.”

April 29– Wednesday– Fredericksburg, Virginia– Confederate General Lee, anticipating that Union General Hooker is trying to outflank the Confederate Army, splits his force in two and sends one part westward where he expects the Union attack.

April 29– Wednesday– Vicksburg, Mississippi– As part of General Grant’s plan to deceive General Pemberton’s Confederate forces in the city, Union General Sherman and his men, with 10 transports and 8 gunboats, head up the Yazoo River.

April 29– Wednesday– San Francisco, California– Birth of William Randolph Hearst, journalist and newspaper mogul.

William Randolph Hearst

April 29– Wednesday– Montreal, Quebec, Canada– Sources report that the British vessel the Anglo-Saxon floundered and sank off of Cape Race, Newfoundland and all the mails on board are lost as well as 237 people of 445 passengers and crew on board.

April 29– Wednesday– Loosdorf, Austria– Birth of Maria Theresa Ledochowska. A daughter of Polish nobles, she will become a Catholic nun and found an order to work in Africa, especially among victims of the slave trade.

April 30– Thursday– New York City– In a letter to the New York Times a writer who signs only as “G. P. L.” writes about England’s claims to the law of neutrality during war-time. “Our complaint against England is not for permitting her citizens to sell ships-of-war to the Confederates, but it is for permitting the creation of hostile armaments, the enlistment of hostile troops, and the setting on foot of hostile expeditions within her jurisdiction.” Today’s paper also reports that the rebels in Poland have rejected the Russian Tsar’s offer of amnesty and the revolution is gaining strength. In addition it includes a report from Germany that the banking firm of Baron Rothschild supports the Union cause, opposes slavery and neither that firm nor any reputable German Jewish firm will lend money to the Confederacy.

April 30– Thursday– Washington, D.C.– Secretary Gideon Welles notes that “To-day has been designated for a National Fast. I listened to a patriotic Christian discourse from my pastor, Mr Pyne.”

April 30– Thursday– Memphis, Tennessee– The Memphis Bulletin reports on the need to handle houses of ill-repute and the duty of Federal authorities, who have occupied the city since last June, to control the problem. “It is a fact too notorious that our city at the present time is a perfect bee hive of women of ill fame. The public conveyances here become theirs by right of conquest, so much so, that a lady fears to side through the streets for fear of being classed with them. To a certain extent the steamboats plying between this and other cities North of here have not the same respectability that characterized them in former years. In fact morality, from importation of lewd women from the North, is almost at a discount. It is no common occurrence to see that class of beings walking arm and arm with men who wear the apparel of gentlemen, who are here in civil as well as military capacity, in broad daylight, to the infinite satisfaction of the women and the great annoyance to respectable people. The nuisance can be stopped, will it be? An order closing houses of ill-fame, punishing officers and soldiers for associating with the inmates of those houses and making it a heavy penalty for steamboat-men to bring lewd women down the river would no doubt have the desired effect.”

April 30– Thursday– Bruinsburg, Mississippi– About noon, General Grant begins crossing the Mississippi River from the Louisiana side and landing Union troops well south of the city of Vicksburg which is his real target but he will approach from the south.

April 30– Thursday– New Orleans, Louisiana– Sarah Morgan describes the situation in the city with regard to those who have not sworn allegiance to the Union. “To-day, thousands of families, from the most respectable down to the least, all who have had the firmness to register themselves enemies to the United States, are ordered to leave the city before the fifteenth of May. Think of the thousands, perfectly destitute, who can hardly afford to buy their daily bread even here, sent to the Confederacy, where it is neither to be earned nor bought, without money, friends, or a home. Hundreds have comfortable homes here, which will be confiscated to enrich those who drive them out. . . . Such dismal faces as one meets everywhere! Each looks heartbroken. Homeless, friendless, beggars, is written in every eye. . . . Penned up like sheep to starve! That’s the idea! With the addition of forty thousand mouths to feed, they think they can invoke famine to their aid, seeing that their Negro brothers don’t help them much in the task of subjugating us.”

This Union Will Conquor~April, 1863~the 19th to the 24th

The poet Walt Whitman, nursing wounded soldiers in Washington, expresses hope for the Union. General Sherman worries about the loss of good officers. Secretary Welles worries about a new crisis with Great Britain. President Lincoln issues a code of conduct for Union soldiers. Black soldiers make good impressions while the 54th Massachusetts trains for fighting. Union soldiers find things to admire in Tennessee and in Kentucky. Federal troops massacre Native Americans in California. The French government wants the United States to apply pressure on Russia regarding the situation in Poland.

In the Confederacy President Jeff Davis is ill. General Lee worries about food for his men. Blockade runners seem to be flourishing along the Rio Grande.

April 19– Sunday– Nashville, Tennessee– A Union soldier visits a local church. “John Marvin, Tim Marvin, Jos Blackson Harvey . . . & My Self went to a presbyterian church in the lower end of town heard a very good sermon the text taken from Corinthians first chapter & 21st verse the preacher prayed for the welfare of the union & the success of our army there was but very few citizens at church about a dozen Ladies and a number of Children and some twenty five or 30 men the balance were Soldiers the church was not over one third full it is the finest and best finished church I have seen in Nashville. . . . we went to the Presbyterian church this evening and saw a great many young secesh ladies they try to look sour at the soldiers but pleasant and smiling countenance will beat out in spite of their teeth.”

nice dresses of the period

April 19– Sunday– near Keyesville, California– Federal cavalrymen shoot or saber to death 35 Native Americans suspected of being hostile to white settlers.

April 20– Monday– Richmond, Virginia– John Jones observes: “It is thought by many that Hooker will change his base from the Rappahannock to the Pamunky, embarking his army in transports. If this be so, we shall again have the pleasure of hearing the thunders of battle, this summer, in Richmond.”

April 20– Monday– near Columbia, Tennessee– Union Lieutenant Albert Potter to his sister. “I don’t believe I think more of the Negro. . . but I do believe and say they ought to have their freedom and they shall have it—not only because they are human and have souls, but because their masters have forfeited all right to them and their loss is our gain—And again they make good soldiers, good Fighting soldiers, and I say let them fight. They are no better to stop a ball than I am—- If working men are so opposed to arming the Negro let them take the musket out of their hands and come along. Show one a man, who is down on our Negro soldiers and who keeps hanging back and shirking and I will show you a coward. Yes a moral coward and I believe God hates a coward.”
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April 21– Tuesday– New York City– George Templeton Strong has a report from the South. “Dr March, one of our Sanitary Commission inspectors, just from Port Royal, says the First South Carolina is the best regiment he has ever seen– the best disciplined, the most subordinate, and the most pugnacious. It’s a regiment of Negroes with an infusion of Florida Seminole blood.” [This is the regiment commanded by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.]

George Templeton Strong whose diaries provide much information about Northern life during the Civil War

April 21– Tuesday– Washington, D.C.– Walt Whitman to Thomas P Sawyer. “I believe this Union will conquer in the end, as sure as there’s a God in heaven. This country can’t be broken up by Jeff Davis, & all his damned crew. Tom, I sometimes feel as if I didn’t want to live– life would have no charm for me, if this country should fail after all, and be reduced to take a third rate position, to be domineered over by England & France & the haughty nations of Europe &c and we unable to help ourselves. But I have no thought that will ever be, this country I hope would spend her last drop of blood, and last dollar, rather than submit to such humiliation.”

Walt Whitman in a photo by Matthew Brady

April 21– Tuesday– Hightown, Virginia– Confederate cavalry on a raid to damage the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reach this vicinity.

April 21– Tuesday– Fredericksburg, Virginia– General Lee reports to Richmond that the men of the Army of Northern Virginia are being supplied with a daily ration of one pound of flour and a quarter-pound of meat. There are increasing reports of typhoid fever and scurvy among his troops.

April 21– Tuesday– London, England– The Zoological Society receives a report from Australia that the quest for a living specimen of the didunculus strigirostris [“tooth-billed pigeon” thought to be related to the dodo bird] has been unsuccessful as the bird appears to be nearly extinct due to “wild cats.”

April 22– Wednesday– Washington, D. C.– Navy Secretary Gideon Welles takes note of foreign trade with the Confederacy. “Admiral Bailey writes . . . that an immense trade has sprung up on the Rio Grande; that there are at this time one hundred and eighty to two hundred vessels off the mouth of that river, when before the War there were but six to eight at any one time.”

April 22– Wednesday– Richmond, Virginia– Government clerk John Jones takes note of sentiments in the capital. “The President is reported to be very ill to-day– dangerously ill– with inflammation of the throat, etc. While this is a source of grief to nearly all, it is the subject of secret joy to others. I am sure I have seen some officers of rank to-day, not fighting officers, who sincerely hope the President will not recover. He has his faults, but upon the whole is no doubt well qualified for the position he occupies. I trust he will recover.”

April 22– Thursday– Lexington, Kentucky– George Whitman writes to his brother Jeff. “I sent $350 to Mother, tell her not to be afraid to use it. Kentucky is the most beautiful Country I ever saw, the people seem much more intelligent, and every way better, than in any other part of the South I have ever been. I like Ky first rate and am very glad we were brought here, as the living is good, and there is none of that devilish, Virginia mud to travel through, the roads here are the finest I ever saw as hard and firm as a floor, so that its no trouble at all to march 15 or 20 miles.”

April 23– Thursday– Washington, D.C.– The Lincoln Administration still struggles about what to do with the international mail taken at the seizure of the Peterhoff. Secretary Welles records that “Senator Sumner called this P.M. to talk over the matter of the Peterhoff mail. Says that he has been examining the case, that he fully indorses my views. Seward, he avers, knows nothing of international law and is wanting in common sense, treats grave questions lightly and without comprehending their importance and bearing.”

April 23– Thursday– Union camp outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi– General Sherman writes to Senator Sherman about Washington’s orders to reduce the number of officers as some units are brought greatly below strength by casualties. “Grant started to-day down to Carthage, and I have written to him, which may stave it off for a few days, but I tremble at the loss of so many young and good officers, who have been hard at work for two years, and now that they begin to see how to take care of soldiers, must be turned out. . . . If not too late, do, for mercy’s sake, exhaust your influence to stop this consolidation of regiments. Fill all the regiments with conscripts, and if the army is then too large disband the regiments that prefer to serve north of the Potomac and the Ohio. Keep the war South at all hazards. If this Consolidation Law is literally enforced, and no new draft is made, this campaign is over. And the outside world will have a perfect right to say our Government is afraid of its own people.”

General William Recumseh Shreman

April 23– Thursday– Paris, France– The French Foreign Minister writes to Henri Mercier, France’s Minister to the United States. He instructs Mercier to ask the United States to join in a European declaration to Russia on behalf of the Polish people. “The good relations which exist between the government of the United States and the court of Russia cannot but give greater weight to the counsels presented in a friendly form; and we rely entirely on the cabinet of Washington to appreciate the measure in which it will be able most satisfactorily to open its views to the Russian government.”

April 24– Friday– Readville, Massachusetts– Colonel Robert Gould Shaw writes to his father. “Everything continues to progress favorably with the 54th. We have now about 730 men. . . . All our ordinance has come from Washington. I expect to get it out here tomorrow. We have Enfield Rifles. The Ladies’ committee have agreed to pay an instructor for a band, so I shall have one going before long.” [The Enfield was an English-made weapon with fairly good accuracy and range. By the war’s end about 800,000 of these rifles will be in use by soldiers on both sides.]

Enfield rifle of the type issued to the 54th Massachusetts

April 24– Friday– Boston, Massachusetts– The Liberator reports that “We are informed that a circle of young ladies are exerting themselves to procure a suitable flag for the Massachusetts 54th (colored) regiment. Communications for the Committee may be addressed to Miss Addie Howard, 40 Poplar street, or to Miss Mary Louise Lockley, 31 Garden street.”

Sergeant-Major Lewis Douglass, 54th Massachusetts [a son of Frederick Douglass]

April 24– Friday– Washington, D.C.– Prepared by Francis Lieber and promulgated as General Orders No 100 by President Lincoln, The Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field are issued to all Union commandeers. Article 37 of the 157 articles declares that “The United States acknowledge and protect, in hostile countries occupied by them, religion and morality; strictly private property; the persons of the inhabitants, especially those of women: and the sacredness of domestic relations. Offenses to the contrary shall be rigorously punished.” Lieber, over 60 years of age, a German immigrant, scholar and jurist, developed these articles at Lincoln’s request in order to direct proper conduct by all Union officers in areas such as the use of martial law, the limits of military jurisdiction and the treatment of prisoners, spies, deserters and non-combatants. [Other scholars will use this document, one of the first such on the modern laws of war, to develop other such codes and Lieber’s work will influence in part the Geneva Conventions of 1864, 1906 and 1929.]

Francis Lieber, legal scholar & jurist