Gettysburg Newspapers Mourn a President and Debate Reconstruction

The news of the death of President Lincoln, by assassination, was received here on 

Saturday morning, between 8 and 9 o'clock. That it shocked, appalled all--such as 

no piece of intelligence ever before did--is but using a weak expression as to its effect. 

Every face gave evidence of the occurrence of some terrible calamity.

The weekly edition of The Compiler went to press late on Monday, April 17, 1865. The editor of Gettysburg's Democratic newspaper apologized for the delay, explaining to subscribers that he desired to include all the latest particulars of the shocking news of the President's assassination. The news moved at an astonishing pace in April of 1865. Since the start of the month, Richmond and Petersburg had fallen, the largest rebel army had surrendered, and an actor had murdered the President of the United States. The brutal war was swiftly coming to an end, but the daunting and unprecedented task of reconstruction now stood before the nation. Gettysburg's dueling partisan newspapers attempted to make sense of it all.

The news of Lincoln's death brought a measure of unity to Gettysburg. Both the Republican Adams Sentinel and The Compiler described a town in mourning. "This awful event," the Sentinel recorded on April 18th, "...threw over our town a gloom which has never been equaled. The dreaded deed was so shocking to every heart, even of those who had been his friends, and as also his opponents, that but one feeling prevailed, of deep and painful sorrow." All businesses shuttered their doors, and flags draped in mourning soon covered the town. Bells tolled to announce the shocking tragedy.

Yet a survey of these newspapers in the spring of 1865 reveals that rebel surrenders and the assassination of the President did nothing but paper over Gettysburg's obvious political divisions. Alongside notes about Lincoln's funeral, and exciting news about the progress of the United States army, the Compiler and Sentinel continued to lock horns in partisan battles. As during the war, slavery and racism drove these divisions among white Gettysburgians. By April of 1865, Congress had sealed the fate of slavery with the passage of the 13th Amendment. The rights of African Americans and the status of four million newly freed-slaves now hung in the balance. For Democrats, "the Union as it was" reemerged as the rallying cry. The Compiler reported just ten days after Lincoln's death:

If the Abolitionists are in earnest in their professions of attachment to the Union, why not allow[?] to have it as our fathers made it? Why these talked of negro-equality experiments and other equally repulsive and unnatural schemes? The old Union was good enough for the men of 1783--why not for those of 1865? Reasonable men should want no more.

Later in the same issue, the editor commented, "When the war is fully over...the people will begin to reflect, and estimate what Abolitionism has cost the country. The result will stagger many who give the subject no thought now."

Republicans had successfully argued for the end of slavery as a war measure. Yet in the coming years, one central question of Reconstruction tested the nation: would white Americans accept full political and social equality for African Americans. The battlelines formed even as northern states celebrated the end of the war and mourned Lincoln. What political power could African Americans expect to gain? What political power could the defeated white plantation class that brought on the war expect to retain? These questions shaped competing memories of the war before the smoke cleared from its last battlefields. On May 9th, the Sentinel scoffed at the veneration of Robert E. Lee in a passage that could have just as well been written in 2019:

It is disgusting to observe the indications of a mawkish spirit which has appeared in certain quarters to regard some of the rebel leaders, and hold them up as great and admirable men.... In what respect is Robert E. Lee better than the cause of treason, murder and arson which he served? He was probably its ablest instrument, but in every respect he was as bad as any of his associates. Educated at the expense of the United States, he rebelled against, and used the very qualifcations which he had received from them to work their destruction.... It is a most weak, false, perverted sentiment which attaches to traitors the qualities and virtues which belong to honest and honorable men.... The memories of tens of thousands of our brethren who fill untimely graves forbid it. The melancholy procession of widows and orphans made so by this rebellion protest against it. Towns destroyed by fire--devastated fields, and ruined works of public improvement, bear witness to the guilt of treason. Shall the men who wrought all this evil be exalted in public estimation while their crimes cry aloud for punishment? We think the ghosts of all that fell from the day on which Massachusetts men were massacred in Baltimore, until Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, exclaim against it.

These competing Gettysburg newspapers highlighted the challenge Republicans faced as they looked toward the reconstruction of the nation. Though a semblance of unity existed among white northerners to support the war effort and reunite the country, that unity did not extend to guaranteeing freedom and equality for black Americans. Though the fighting between field armies on battlefields came to an end in April 1865, the war over the central issues at stake raged on.

"Valor, devotion, and loyalty are not always rewarded according to their just deserts" - Robert Brown Elliott and the Civil Rights Act of 1875

Sometimes, you read a source so good, you just have to share it out.

The speech given on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Robert Brown Elliott on January 6, 1874 opens a window on the radical and swift changes wrought by the Civil War and Reconstruction, reveals the hope and optimism of that particular historical moment, and serves as a stark reminder of the nation's ultimate failures.

Born in England, Elliott had served in the Royal Navy before emigrating to the United States and settling in Charleston, South Carolina in 1867. There he became an associate editor of a freedmen's newspaper and an emerging leader in the Reconstruction politics of South Carolina. Elliott represented South Carolina's 3rd District in the 42nd and 43rd Congress and counted himself among the first black Congressmen in the nation's history. On the sixth of January, 1874, he rose to give a blistering speech in defense of the Civil Rights Bill that Senator Charles Sumner, continued to push through both houses of Congress. The bill made it illegal for places of public accommodation and entertainment to make distinctions between black and white patrons, and prohibited discrimination on account of race in public schools, churches, transportation, cemeteries, and on juries. Sumner thought that "very few measures of equal importance have ever been presented" before the United States Congress, and spent the better part of four years championing the bill, which only passed after his death in 1875.

When he took to the floor of the House of Representatives on January 6th, Elliott particularly sought to rebut the arguments of two Southern Democrats - Kentuckian James F. Beck and former Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens. Just one day before Stephens had spoken in opposition to the bill. The author of the famous "Cornerstone" speech again admitted that slavery caused the war, but declared "the cause is now forever removed," and rejected the need for further national protections for African Americans. Stephens invoked the self-evident truth of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but opined: "This truth was never meant, in my opinion, to convey the idea that all men were created equal in all respects, either in physical, mental, or moral development." He insisted he held no prejudices, but railed against the idea of desegregated accommodations: "I do not believe the colored people of Georgia have any desire for mixed schools, and very little indeed, for mixed churches." He rejected the Constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill and concluded with an impassioned defense of states rights - the same arguments that Southern segregationist lawmakers recycled for the next century. "The United States," Stephens said, "still exist as a Federal republic, and are not yet merged into a centralized empire."

Robert Brown Elliott had built a reputation for his oratorical skills, and deployed these skills to full effect on this day in the House of Representatives, in front of a gallery packed with African American spectators. He began:

While I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy that has been accorded to me by this House, it is a matter of regret to me that it is necessary at this day that I should rise in the presence of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue of my skin may lend a color to the imputation that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Sir, the motive that impels me is restricted by no such narrow boundary, but is as broad as your Constitution. I advocate it, sir, because it is right. The bill, however, not only appeals to your justice, but it demands a response from your gratitude.

Elliott offered a history lesson on the bravery of African American soldiers in the Revolution and War of 1812. He highlighted the loyalty and service of African Americans to the Union during the Civil War, while sniping at the record of Beck's Kentucky - "a State which answered the call of the Republic in 1861, when treason thundered at the very gates of the capital by coldly declaring her neutrality in the impending struggle."

Elliott unleashed a point-by-point rebuttal of the Constitutional arguments laid out by Stephens, Beck, and others. He carefully recounted the limits of the Supreme Court's recent Slaughterhouse decision and demonstrated why it did not affect Congress's ability to pass the Civil Rights Bill.

Elliott reserved particular scorn for the former Confederate Vice President:

...In this discussion I cannot and will not forget that the welfare and rights of my whole race in this country are involved. When, therefore, the honorable gentleman from Georgia lends his voice and influence to defeat this measure, I do not shrink from saying that it is not from him that the American House of Representatives should take lessons in matters touching human rights or the joint relations of the State and national governments. While the honorable gentleman contented himself with harmless speculations in his study, or in the columns of newspaper, we might well smile at the impotence of his efforts to turn back the advancing tide of opinion and progress; but, when he comes again upon this national arena, and throws himself with all his power and influence across the path which leads to the full enfranchisement of my race, I meet him only as an adversary; nor shall age or any other consideration restrain me from saying that he now offers this Government, which he has done his utmost to destroy, a very poor return for its magnanimous treatment, to come here and seek to continue, by the assertion of doctrines obnoxious to the true principles of our Government, the burdens and oppressions which rest upon five millions of his countrymen who never failed to lift their earnest prayers for the success of this Government when the gentleman was seeking to break up the Union of these States and to blot the American Republic from the galaxy of nations. [Loud applause.]

Sir, it is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized world by announcing the birth of a government which rested on human slavery as its corner-stone. The progress of events has swept away that pseudo-government which rested on greed, pride, and tyranny; and the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned and trampled on are here to meet him in debate, and to demand that the rights which are enjoyed by their former oppressors--who vainly sought to overthrow the Government which they could not prostitute to the base uses of slavery--shall be accorded to those who even in the darkest of slavery kept their allegiance true to freedom and the Union. Sir, the gentleman from Georgia has learned much since 1861; but he is still a laggard.

 In a powerful conclusion, Elliott laid out the stakes of the bill:

Technically, this bill is to decide upon the civil status of the colored American citizen; a point disputed at the very formation of our present Government, when by a short-sighted policy, a policy repugnant to true republican government, one negro counted as three-fifths of a man. The logical result of this mistake of the framers of the Constitution strengthened the cancer of slavery, which finally spread its poisonous tentacles over the southern portion of the body-politic. To arrest its growth and save the nation we have passed through the harrowing operation of intestine war, dreaded at all times, resorted to at the last extremity, like the surgeon's knife, but absolutely necessary to extirpate the disease which threatened with the life of the nation the overthrow of civil and political liberty on this continent. In that dire extremity the members of the race which I have the honor in part to represent--the race which pleads for justice at your hands today, forgetful of their inhuman and brutalizing servitude at the South, their degradation and ostracism at the North--flew willingly and gallantly to the support of the national Government. Their sufferings, assistance, privations, and trials in the swamps and the rice-fields, their valor on the land and on the sea, in part of the ever-glorious record which makes up the history of a nation preserved, and might, should I urge the claim, incline your respect and guarantee their rights and privileges as citizens of our great common Republic. But I remember that valor, devotion, and loyalty are not always rewarded according to their just deserts, and that some after the battle who have borne the brunt of the fray may, through neglect or contempt, be assigned to a subordinate place, while the enemies in war may be preferred to the sufferers.

All seven African American members of the 43rd Congress spoke passionately in support of the Civil Rights Bill and offered personal testimony of the types of discrimination they had personally faced. Congressman and former U.S. General Benjamin Butler sponsored the bill and shepherded it through the House. Speaking of his support for the Bill, Butler recalled an engagement in Virginia in which he commanded black soldiers who had died in battle:

As I looked on their bronzed faces upturned in the shining sun to heaven as if in mute appeal against the wrong of the country for which they had given their lives...feeling I had wronged them in the past...I swore to myself a solemn oath...to defend the rights of these men who had given their blood for me and my country.

The Civil Rights Act finally became law in 1875, though without several key provisions such as that prohibiting racial discrimination in schools. The Grant Administration declined to enforce the law. The Supreme Court effectively overturned the law in 1883, arguing that the 13th and 14th amendments did not empower Congress to prohibit racial discrimination by private individuals. Historians consider the Civil Rights Act as the last major piece of Reconstruction legislation passed by Congress. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 later reenacted portions of the act almost a century later.

Sketching out a Unionist Spy Operation in Orange, Virginia and stumbling across Charles A. Beard

The mystery begins with a photograph taken at Brandy Station, Virginia in March of 1864. The image depicts scouts and guides of the Army of the Potomac just a few months before the start of the Overland Campaign.

According to the Library of Congress summary, the second man standing from the left may be James Cammack. I say "may" because a question mark placed after his name indicates a lack of certainty. How his name became attached to this photograph in the first place, I am unaware.

Who was this man dressed in civilian clothing, and what was his role with the Army of the Potomac in March of 1864? A variety of sources connect some, but not all, of the dots, adding to our knowledge of how Unionist Virginians provided invaluable assistance to the Army of the Potomac's Bureau of Military Information.

The name Cammack appears several times in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. On September 5th, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant received a message from Assistant Adjutant General George K. Leet, relating the following:

WASHINGTON, September 5, 1864--2:30 p.m. Lieutenant-General GRANT, City Point, Va.:

The information contained in dispatch of 29th ultimo was obtained by the scouts from an agent named Cammack, an old man who lives near Orange Court-house. Scouts in this morning, who derive their information from the same source, report the following: No troops have passed to or from the Valley since Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry went up. Force of infantry there is Ewell's old corps, Breckenridge's division, and Anderson's brigade of Field's division. Have been steadily falling back of late, but no signs of their leaving the valley.

This information is to the 3d instant, and Mr. Babcock, who has charge of scouts, thinks it reliable.

Geo. K. Leet, Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

Ten days letter, another message sent from the head of the Bureau of Military Information, George Sharpe, to Army of the Potomac Chief of Staff Andrew A. Humphreys also mentioned Cammack:

I have a report from Captain McEntee, dated day before yesterday, at Washington. Scouts had returned that morning from Cammacks and Silvers. The news they bring amounts to the absence of all movements through Orange Court-House toward or from the Valley. Cammack reports that a neighbor of his lately received letters from friends in the Ninth and Thirtieth Virginia Regiments...."

Two scholars of the intelligence operations of the United States army during the Civil War, Edwin Fishel and William B. Feis, obliquely refer to the agent named Cammack in their writings, but spend more time exploring the role of another spy in the area, Isaac Silver. In Fishel's landmark study, The Secret War for the Union, he writes:

 Silver again put his Orange county business connections to use as cover for visits to that problem area. He paid special attention to railroad depots, where he questioned railroad employees and travelers, seeking information of movements on the Orange and Alexandria and the Virginia Central, and any other military news they might have. James W. Cammack, who evidently had connections similar to Sliver's (and shared with Silver the sobriquet 'the old man') was similarly employed.

 In Feis's work, Grant's Secret Service, he writes something similar:

Sharpe sent Babcock to Washington in early August to establish an organization to monitor Early's main rail links with Richmond. This operation depended upon three Virginia Unionists who lived in the vicinity of the depots of the Orange and Alexandria; the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac; and the Virginia Central Railroads. Isaac Silver (alias 'the old man'), James W. Cammack, and Ebenezer McGee, all of whom lived west of Fredericksburg, would visit the depots regularly, question passengers and railroad employees about the composition and direction of recent traffic, and watch specifically for troop trains heading for the valley.

Yet the identification of James W. Cammack as the individual referenced in the September, 1864 dispatches flowing to and from Grant's headquarters at City Point raises some questions. One dispatch clearly labels "Cammack" as an old man. Census records reveal that there was a James W. Cammack who lived in Orange County, Virginia. However, he was born in 1833, and in 1864 would have been about 31 years of age. This potentially matches the Library of Congress image we have of Cammack at Brandy Station, but neither supports the description of an old man.

A variety of census, marriage, and death records  start to unravel the mystery of the Army of the Potomac's agent, including census records for 1850, 1870,and 1880. James W. Cammack's parents were William E. and Rebecca Cammack. They operated a farm of about 150 acres in Orange County, Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War. William E. was 53 years old in 1861, and his wife 66. The couple had at least three children: James W. (age 28 in 1861), George W. (24), and Catherine (19). George W. enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861, serving with the 46th Virginia, but his brother apparently did not.

There is compelling evidence to suggest that the "old man" related by Union reports was actually William E. Cammack, and that his son served for a period as a scout for the Army of the Potomac, traveling to and from his father's home.

An 1863 Army of the Potomac map in the Library of Congress highlights a residence named "Cammack" just south of Robertson's Tavern and Old Verdiersville, several miles to the east of Orange Court House.

Then there's an intriguing account left us by Judson Knight, a man who served as a scout (and later chief of scouts) in the Army of the Potomac. Writing in The National Tribune on July 21, 1892, Knight weaves the following story of creating a new source of information within Confederate territory:

During that [Mine Run] campaign a party of scouts from Army Headquarters found themselves in the vicinity of "Old Vidersville," about 12 miles south of Culpeper, Va. in the neighborhood of the farmhouse that looked as though food for man and beast might be procured. Upon the party riding up to the house they were met by an old Virginia farmer who anxiously asked if they were "Yankees." He was told that they were, to which he replied, "I am mighty glad to see you-all."

"Oh! Give us a rest; we have heard that kind of talk before," was the reply from some of the scouts. The old farmer looked anxiously and rapidly from one to another, and a shade of fear swept over his face as he observed the motley dress of several of the party until his eyes rested upon one who wore a full Federal uniform. He scrutinized him carefully, while the boys were still chaffing him, and addressing him personally, said: "Are you Yankees?"

"Yes, we are!" And the reply was so emphatic and made in such a tone as though the speaker was proud of the fact and of the chance of telling one whom he supposed to be an enemy of the government, that his face instantly cleared and all could see that his assertion of "I am mighty glad to see you all," was a fact.

"Come, gentlemen, light," was his next salutation; and they "lit."
"Can you furnish us a dinner and a feed for our horses?"
"Yes, and glad to do it, too."

While discussing the news the old farmer said: "I am glad you-all came out here today, for I have a son that I want you-all to take with you when you leave here."

He was told that it would not be done, as there was no spare horse for his son to ride.

"Never mind about the horse. I have got as good a horse as any of you-all, and he can have him, if you will only take him along with you all."

All hands saw by this time the old man was a Unionist, and in dead earnest. He told the party his son had been in a neighboring State, and had been able to keep out of the army until the previous June, when he was conscripted and allowed to go home to join a Virginia regiment. He had been home about six months, hid in one of the chambers, and had not been out of doors in daylight in all that time. Stepping to the stairway he called him down. His son was about 32 years of age, and about five feet 10 inches in height, and as white as ghosts are supposed to be, from his enforced seclusion during all those weeks. He was taken along, and when Gen. Meade fell back across the Rapidan he went with us.

Some time during the month of December, 1863, it was concluded at Headquarters that if we could find a good crossing just above Jacob's or Germanna Fords, we would start a line between Headquarters of our army and Headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia by sending relays of men to the house of the old Unionist, whose name I am not going  to divulge; neither shall I tell the name of his son, but in future will refer to him as "Bob."

The "old man" - William E. Cammack - continued to live in Orange, Virginia after the war. In the 1870s he applied for and apparently received reimbursement for war damages from the Southern Claims Commission. Reimbursement required proof of Union sympathies and loyalty.

His two sons went west. Both James and George moved to Indianapolis after the war. George returned to Virginia by 1870 and was later buried at New Hope Baptist Church in Orange County, Virginia, along the old Plank Road.

James W. Cammack did not return. At an unknown date during or perhaps before the war, James had married Laura Ann Beard of Guilford County, North Carolina. If James and his father are the individuals referenced in Knight's account, it is likely that North Carolina was the "neighboring state" that Cammack spent time in prior to returning to Virginia upon his conscription.

Laura Beard's family were staunch Quaker Unionists during the war, and removed to Indiana at its conclusion, apparently leading or following James and Laura Cammack. James and Laura eventually settled in Knightstown, Indiana with the rest of the Beard family. And it was in Knightstown in 1874 that their famous nephew, noted American historian Charles A. Beard, was born.

-----
Sources Included:

U.S. Census Records, 1850-1880
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Collection
Ancestry.com Public Member Stories (including newspaper obituaries for members of the Beard family)

Feis, William B. Grant's Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Fishel, Edwin C. The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War. New York: Mariner Books, 1998.

 United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

 Tsouras, Peter G. Scouting for Grant and Meade: The Reminiscences of Judson Knight, Chief of Scouts, Army of the Potomac. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2014.

The Power of Place: Germanna Ford

View of the Rapidan River at Germanna Ford

Sometimes you can stand in a place and connect with a sense of its history. Yesterday, I felt this power of place when I visited Germanna Ford on the Rapidan River for the first time. As I stood overlooking the stream with the sound of modern traffic audible on the Route 3 bridge nearby, I was struck by the fact that it was here, on the south bank of the Rapidan, that the war entered its final, darkest, act on May 4th, 1864.

The Rapidan begins high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains as a small stream, cascading down over rocks and creating small pools. It meanders across the Piedmont of Central Virginia on its 88-mile journey to a confluence near Fredericksburg with the Rappahannock, which continues on to the Chesapeake Bay.

These two rivers became the dividing line of the war in the east. John Pope and Robert E. Lee's armies skirmished and sparred with each other over these rivers in August of 1862, as a prelude to Second Manassas. The Army of Northern Virginia contested a Rappahannock crossing again at Fredericksburg in December of 1862, and the two armies wintered on opposite banks in the battle's aftermath. In April of 1863 the Army of the Potomac utilized Germanna Ford in an attempt to flank Lee's position at Fredericksburg, but withdrew after defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Under George Gordon Meade, the army returned  to Germanna Ford in November, a portion crossing here before aborting its campaign in front of Lee's entrenchments at Mine Run. During the winter of 1863 and 1864, the Rapidan divided the armed camps of both armies.

For nearly three years, rebel forces had thwarted every attempt by the United States army to establish itself south of these rivers.

After dark on May 3, 1864 the Army of the Potomac broke up its camps around Culpeper to begin yet another, final, attempt to pass the Rapidan. By 4 a.m. on May 4th, the men of the 50th New York Engineers had arrived at Germanna Ford and began to build two 220 foot bridges across the Rapidan. Within two hours, the engineers completed both bridges, and troops began to flow across the river. By 6 p.m., that evening, some 50,000 soldiers of the 5th and 6th Corps, of the Army of the Potomac had crossed on these two bridges.

Germanna Ford, Rapidan River, Virginia. Grant's Troops Crossing Germannia [Sic] Ford.
Timothy O'Sullivan. Library of Congress

Sometime late that afternoon, photographer Timothy O'Sullivan, traveling with the Army of the Potomac, crossed the bridges with his dark wagon, and set up on a bluff on south side to record a series of historic images of the crossing.

These fascinating images record an army in motion. By May of 1864, the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac had gotten used to crossing the Rapidan River. Few of these soldiers probably thought about the historical nature of this crossing. Who among them could have predicted that for most of them, this would be their final crossing of the river before the end of the war? Yet the stakes were higher this spring. The end of this season of battle would bring with it a Presidential Election. It may be hard for many of us to fathom, but the election season of 1864 was darker and fraught with more dangers than even our current unhappiness.

Theodore Lyman, a military aide to Meade, recorded crossing at about 9:30 in the morning, and resting for some time on the high bank south of the river,watching "the steady stream of men and cannon and trains pouring over the pontoons." He later reflected:

I remember thinking how strange it would be if each man who was destined to fall in the campaign had some large badge on! There would have been Generals Sedgwick, Wadsworth, and Rice, and what crowds of subordinate officers and privates, all marching gaily along, unconscious, happily, of their fate. 

Up ahead lay the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County, where the men of the 5th and 6th Corps would be drawn into battle the following morning. It marked the beginning of 42 days of consecutive battle.

Further Reading
William Frassanito, Grant and Lee: The Virginia Campaigns, 1864-1865
Theodore Lyman, With Grant and Meade: From the Wilderness to Appomattox.
Gordon Rhea, The Battle of the Wilderness: May 5-6, 1864.

Stumbling into Civil War History in Shenandoah National Park

We've made efforts to preserve parts of our history through monuments, interpretive markers, historic houses, battlefield parks, and museums. Yet our preservation and commemoration efforts are often narrowly selective. Sometimes the past remains hidden in plain sight, obscured but not erased from our more modern landscapes. With a little work, intrepid history lovers can discover these forgotten stories. And living in Virginia, I love the constant opportunities for stumbling across Civil War history.

Over the Labor Day Weekend, my wife and I met some friends and camped at Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park. During our stay, we set off from the campground on a round-trip hike that took us up to Fisher's Gap, down a hiking trail to Rose River Falls, and looping back along the Rose River Fire Road and the Appalachian Trail to our campsite. It was a beautiful, somewhat strenuous hike. We made the trip down to the falls along a rocky and steep trail, and the terrain on our climb out provided additional challenges, at least until we hit the Rose River Fire Road. This well-maintained gravel road eased our travel considerably, not the least because its ascent back to Fisher's Gap proved much more gradual than our previous trail.

Google Maps shows the Rose River Fire Trail today, along the remnants of the 19th Century Blue Ridge Turnpike.

Today, Shenandoah is wilderness; but for centuries before it became a national park, many people made their homes and utilized the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the 19th century, various roads, turnpikes and byways crossed the mountains to connect the Shenandoah Valley with Eastern Virginia. As we hiked, I thought about the many times both United States and Confederate soldiers crossed these very mountains during the Civil War. But I did not realize that for part of our hike, we tread one of the frequent paths they used. That discovery awaited my return home, when I looked up the history of the various fire roads in the area, and came upon the story of the Blue Ridge Turnpike.

Chartered in 1848 and opened in 1853, the Turnpike ran 56 miles from Gordonsville across the Blue Ridge to New Market. The private toll road opened a vital connection for agriculturally rich areas of the Valley to what was at that moment the closest railroad link - the Virginia Central Railroad - in Gordonsville. The 1851 Report of the President and Board of Directors of the Blue Ridge Turnpike Company declared the turnpike:

One of great value and importance, penetrating as it does into such a rich and fertile portion of the Valley, over mountains deemed heretofore almost impassable, and affording as it will the easiest and shortest communications with the markets of Eastern Virginia.... The industrial wealth of the Valley will be poured into Richmond; or, when the Alexandria railroad, now in progress is completed, they will have a choice of markets, and will have the benefit of that competition for their trade.

The company macadamized portions of the turnpike crossing the Blue Ridge to improve the firmness of the road, and envisioned creating "an excellent road of easy grade." After only eight years though, war disrupted the operations of the turnpike. Along with the agriculture riches of the valley, the turnpike now saw the movement of thousands of soldiers.

Map showing the Turnpike completed by Confederate Chief Engineer Jeremy F. Gilmer during the Civil War.
Library of Congress.

The road through Fisher's Gap was sketched by Confederate cartographer Jedediah Hotchkiss, He later wrote to his wife of the experience riding through the pass:

Monday was a fine day, and I had a nice ride across the Blue Ridge, by the crookedest road I have ever seen -- 19 miles across -- but the road is a fine one -- I stopped for the night at the foot of the Mt. Tuesday I came on to New Market...

Stonewall Jackson utilized the turnpike during his Valley Campaign in the spring of 1862. Later that year, following the conclusion of the Maryland Campaign, Jackson's Corps again used the Blue Ridge Turnpike in November to pass through Fisher's Gap (sometimes called Millam's Gap during that time). They marched to rejoin the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia at Fredericksburg. Captain James Cooper Nisbet of the 21st Georgia recalled the march:

The pike road leading across the Blue Ridge to Madison Court House winds up the mountain by easy grade. It was a cool November afternoon, the brandy warmed the boys up, and made them hilarious. They sang corn-shucking songs. One of my men, Riley Thurman, who had a remarkably fine voice, led. The whole Brigade joined in the chorus; which they could do well, as the leading Regiment was often close to the rear of the Brigade, on account of the windings of the road. General Jackson caught up with us, and in trying to pass on was caught in the jam; and had to listen to some very risque couplets. The austere Presbyterian Elder could not hide his amusement at the cheek of the fellow leading. He did not seem to be worried that his twenty thousand veterans felt happy and light hearted.

Seven months later, at the end of July, 1863, portions of the Second Corps again passed through Fisher's Gap during Lee's retreat from Gettysburg. This time Sam Pickens, a soldier from the 5th Alabama, traveled through the pass with the sick, wounded, and those unable to walk from Robert Rodes's division. He left the following diary entry:

Started at 6 yesterday evening and had a very rough ride. Went through Luray, a pretty large town, & turned to the left & traveled till 12 O'clock--having made 12 or 15 miles. This morning John C. & I walked on ahead & soon came into the New Market & Gordonsville Turnpike wh. we traveled last Fall, & wh. crosses the mountain at Fisher's Gap. The Divis. train came around this way too, & when we got tired John & I got into Maj. Adams' wagon & rode & slept. J. & I got out on top the mountain & walked on all the rest of the day. There is a stream of cold--pure water that dashes down the side of the Mountain & crosses the road [the Dark Hollow Falls of Hogcamp Branch]. Here we stopped & drank & washed our faces & hands. The road is very winding; so that by cutting across & going straight down the mountain a few hundred yards you cut off a mile or more in some places. The distance over the mountain is 14 ms., & I suppose we traveled about 20 in all to-day. 

The war put a premature end to the Blue Ridge Turnpike Company. By 1867 the toll gates were no longer maintained, and the road itself had fallen into disrepair from the constant passage of troops. Pursuant to state laws, abandoned turnpikes became the property and responsibility of county governments. The turnpike continued on well into the 20th Century, remaining in use into the 1940s. In an interview conducted in 1977 as part of the Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection, Ralph Cave--a local who grew up along the turnpike in the early part of the 20th century, recorded some reminiscences of the road:

Interviewer: ....It must have taken him a while to get there.

Cave: Well, we'd always just walk down there and tell him. Have to - or ride. Ride horseback. A lot of 'em ride horses in there, you know.

Interviewer: Uh-huh.

Cave: We'd ride a horse or sometimes they had what they call a buckboard or a spring wagon or something like that.

Interviewer: Was that a pretty rough road? That Gordonsville Turnpike?

Cave: Well, it wasn't that bad. They kept it up - the State kept it up pretty good.

In the era of Shenandoah National Park (1935), the road over the mountain closed to public transportation. Today, the old Blue Ridge Turnpike is marked on trail maps of Shenandoah as the Rose River Fire Road east of Fisher's Gap, and as the Red Gate Fire Road west of the gap. Many tourists come each year to hike along these fire roads and the interconnected trails and foot paths in the vicinity. They seek out the Dark Hallow Falls or the Rose River, and perhaps hope to see some wildlife along the trail. The wilderness experience they crave was a 20th century creation, but the 19th century toll road at their feet still speaks to Shenandoah's earlier story.

Sources for further reading
The History of Millam's / Fisher's Gap - Great info on the Turnpike, the Gap, and the families that called the area home.

Voices from Company D: Diaries by the Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virgina, Edited by G. Ward Hubbs.

Four Years on the Firing Line by Colonel James Cooper Nisbet.

Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection - James Madison University Libraries

The Meaning of Memorial Day

Fredericksburg National Cemetery

Each year on this weekend, I'm reminded of the powerful message of Memorial Day.

This morning, I thought about twenty-year-old Corporal William G. Smith, who was instantly killed with a bullet to the head while charging the railroad cut on July 1st, 1863 at Gettysburg. I think about his father Robert, a newspaper editor in Haverstraw New York, who set out on an ultimately unsuccessful journey to Gettysburg to recover his son's body. And I think of the unmarked grave where Corporal Smith's remains likely reside on Cemetery Hill today.

I think about the men of the 1st Minnesota, and their sacrificial charge on July 2nd, 1863 at Gettysburg. I think of the fifty-two Minnesotans buried on Cemetery Hill, and of the simple yet powerful memorial erected by their surviving comrades, the very first memorial erected on the Gettysburg Battlefield:

All time is the millennium of their glory.

I think of the 15,300 United States soldiers buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery, 12,000 of them unknown.

I think of these men and all that they lost, but I also think more broadly about the lessons they can teach us. Memorial Day was born out of a sad necessity. Some 700,000 men lost their lives in the Civil War (we will never know a precisely accurate number). The war resulted from the birth defects present at our nation's founding: racially-based slavery. Through four bloody years of savage combat, our ancestors saved our Union and ended slavery. Yet those four years created their own bitter legacies and lasting acrimony, and they failed to solve the issues of racial bias at the root of conflict.

In Gettysburg, site of Lincoln's call for a "new birth of freedom," we can find another, obscure cemetery that contains the remains of thirty African American Civil War soldiers. These men fought to preserve their country, and yet were laid to rest segregated from the cemetery where Lincoln spoke his immortal words. For years, stretching into the twentieth century, the black community in Gettysburg held its own, segregated Memorial Day observances.

It's a mistake to think we have moved beyond the legacies of this war. We need only to pay attention to the events and heated debates of the last year to understand this.

When I contemplate the meaning of Memorial Day, I often remember the poignant words Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry. In December of 1881, Congressman Dawes wrote to his wife:

My dear wife:--I have today worshiped at the shrine of the dead. I went over to the Arlington Cemetery. It was a beautiful morning and the familiar scenes so strongly impressed upon me during my young manhood, were pleasant. Many times that I went over that road, admiring the beautiful city and great white capital, with its then unfinished dome, going to hear the great men of that day in Congress. An ambitious imagination then builded castles of the time when I might take my place there. Now at middle age, with enthusiasm sobered by hard fights and hard facts, I ride, not run with elastic step over the same road, with this ambition at least realized, and with warmth enough left in my heart to enjoy it. My friends and comrades, poor fellows, who followed my enthusiastic leadership in those days, and followed it to the death which by a merciful Providence I escaped, lie here, twenty-four of them, on the very spot where our winter camp of 1861-1862, was located. I found every grave and stood beside it with uncovered head. I looked over nearly the full 16,000 head-boards to find the twenty-four, but they all died alike and I was determined to find all. Poor little Fenton who put his head above the works at Cold Harbor and got a bullet through his temples, and lived three days with his brains out, came to me in memory as fresh as one of my own boys of today, and Levi Pearson, one of the three brothers of Company A, who died for their country in the sixth regiment, and Richard Gray, Paul Mulleter, Dennis Kelly, Christ Bundy, all young men, who fell at my side and under my command. For what they died, I fight a little longer. Over their graves I get inspiration to stand for all they won in establishing our government upon freedom, equality, justice, liberty, and protection to the humblest.

 Dawes's words speak to me. For Memorial Day is not just a day to remember our deceased soldiers, but also a call to action to heed the lessons they might teach us. For what they died, I fight a little longer. Over their graves I get inspiration to stand for all they won.

Debate Continues Over St. Louis Confederate Memorial

My wife and I spent some time this holiday season visiting her family in St. Louis. While visiting the Missouri History Museum this week, we passed by the Confederate Memorial in Forest Park. Over the past year, this monument has generated a fair amount of controversy as the city considers proposals for its removal and relocation. Nick Sacco has covered this on his Exploring the Past Blog. It will be interesting to see how the debate turns out.

I first ran across the Confederate Memorial on one of my earlier visits to the city, and ended up doing a bit of research about the monument's erection. Here's what I wrote back in January of 2013, before the controversy erupted:

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My most interesting discovery during the week though was two monuments located in Forest Park, just a few hundred yards away from the Missouri History Museum and a stone's throw from one another. These two monuments speak strongly to the divided nature of the war years in St. Louis, and also to the struggle over the memory of the war.

General Franz Sigel Statue, in Forest Park, St. Louis.

During the war, St. Louis was a city with divided loyalties. Many residents had southern roots. Yet the growth of finance and industry before the war created many strong ties to the North, and St. Louis's expanding population of German-born Americans remained staunchly Unionist and antislavery. The first monument we ran across spoke to this population of German immigrants - it was an equestrian statue of General Franz Sigel.

Sigel obtained his first military experience in his home nation of Baden, and participated in the 1848 Revolution. When the Revolution was suppressed, Sigel fled, eventually settling in New York in 1852. He made a name for himself in the German-American community, writing for the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and the New York Times. In 1857, Sigel moved to St. Louis, and at the outbreak of the war proved instrumental in rallying German-born Americans to enlist. He became a Colonel in the 3rd Missouri and fought under Lyon. In August of 1861 he was promoted to Brigadier General, a position he earned in no small part to his value as a recruiter of German-Americans. Sigel served throughout the Civil War, but never gained much success as a military commander.

The statue was unveiled in 1906. It was sculpted by German sculptor Robert Cauer and cast at the Lauchhammer Foundery in Lauchhammer, Germany. The inscription at the base of the monument reads: "To remind future generations of the heroism of German-American patriots in St. Louis and vicinity in the Civil War of 1861-1865. General Franz Sigel."

Nearby, we came across the Confederate Memorial in Forest Park. At first, I was somewhat surprised to find a Confederate Memorial here. Missouri divisions ran deep, but St. Louis remained a Union stronghold throughout the war, despite the presence in the city of southern sentiments. When we arrived at the monument though, I began to understand: this monument, dedicated in 1914, sought to set in stone (quite literally) the Lost Cause mythology of the war.

Confederate Memorial, Forest Park, St. Louis.

The statue features bronze statuary depicting a southern family sending a young man off to war, above which sits a relief carving of the "Angel Spirit of the Confederacy." The back side of the 23 foot tall memorial features two engraved quotations. The first was written by Robert Cattlett Cave, a St. Louis minister who had served as a Virginia soldier in the war:

To the Memory of the Soldiers and Sailors of the Southern Confederacy.

Who fought to uphold the right declared by the pen of Jefferson and achieved by the sword of Washington. With sublime self sacrifice they battled to preserve the independence of the states which was won from Great Britain, and to perpetuate the constitutional government which was established by the fathers.

Actuated by the purest patriotism they performed deeds of prowess such as thrilled the heart of mankind with admiration. 'Full in the front of war they stood' and displayed a courage so superb that they gave a new and brighter luster to the annals of valor. History contains no chronicle more illustrious than the story of their achievements; and although, worn out by ceaseless conflict and overwhelmed by numbers, they were finally forced to yield, their glory, 'on brightest pages penned by poets and by sages shall go sounding down the ages.'

The inscription oozes Lost Cause mythology at its finest. We did not fight to protect slavery, this monument states, but rather to protect the right of self government guaranteed by the Declaration and the Constitution. And, it continues, we would have won if not for overwhelming numbers. If one inscription does not drive the point home - another inscription quotes Robert E. Lee:

We had sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend for which we were duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor.

After viewing the monument, I hoped to find out more about how it came to be when I returned to New York. So far I have yet to locate any newspaper coverage of the construction and dedication, but I have found some information about the monument in Katharine T. Corbett's In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women's History, published in 1999. The monument was dedicated on December 5, 1914, and was funded by the Ladies Confederate Monument Association of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It's construction came not without a bit of controversy though. It took several years of advocacy on the part of the UDC to succeed in placing the monument. Government officials objected to any memorial that commemorated Confederate military forces.

Confederate Memorial, Forest Park, St. Louis.

To get around this injunction, the UDC held a public competition calling for designs that did not depict a soldier in Confederate uniform, nor any object of modern warfare. Models of each submission were displayed in the new St. Louis Public Library. George Julian Zolnay's winning design - with it's young man in civilian clothing headed off to war - met the requirements. The UDC raised the $23,000 for the monument and presented it as a gift to the city. Not wanting to expend any money on a monument to treasonous Americans, city councilmen passed an ordinance requiring the UDC to pay for the upkeep on the monument.

By 1914, the Lost Cause version of the Civil War was in the ascendancy. The following year would bring the release of Birth of a Nation. In 1917, the Virginia Memorial would be dedicated at Gettysburg, the first of the Confederate state monuments on the battlefield.

Today, the Confederate Memorial that stands in Forest Park not only honors the memory of the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy. It also stands as a testament to the effort to win the battle over the memory and to rewrite the meaning of the war. Taken together with the monument to Sigel that stands not too far away - it reminds us that St. Louis was a divided city during (and after) the Civil War.