A new marker in Boone

 Stoneman's Raid historic markers are ubiquitous in western North Carolina, and there is a new one in Boone, where the fighting began on March 28, 1865. These markers inspired The Stoneman Gazette, an anachronistic online newspaper I published in 2015 to mark the 150th anniversary of the final battles of the Civil War. 
 The new marker is part of the Civil War Trails program, a six-state initiative is designed to promote Civil War tourism. This program is separate from the state historical markers. One of those has stood in Boone since 1940.

The new marker maps the location of the war-era courthouse and the retreat of the Home Guard toward Howard Knob.

 The new marker was unveiled April 21, in a ceremony in front of the downtown post office on King Street in Boone. Back in 1865, that location was the home of Jordan Councill, the father of Boone. Boone was not incorporated until 1873 and the Watauga County seat was then known as Councill's Store.
 The new marker perpetuates a few myths about the fighting in Boone. It quotes Gen. Stoneman's report to his command back in Tennessee: "We arrived this a.m. with the Twelfth Kentucky in the Advance, captured the place, killing 9, capturing 62 home guards." Actually, only three local men were killed, including Jordan Councill's nephew, Jacob Mast Councill.
 The new marker says Stoneman commanded 6,000 troops, but not all of his regiments participated in the raid. There were probably no more than 4,000 mounted Yankees in Boone.
 If I may nitpick, Howard Knob should not have an apostrophe.
 The 1940 state historical marker stands a block west at the Watauga County courthouse.

Historian Ina Van Noppen at the 1940 marker at the Watauga County Courthouse.

 Watauga County had voted pro-Union in the 1860 secession referendum, but there was a Confederate militia organized as the Home Guard. These men were drilling at the original courthouse on Linney Street the morning that Union Major Miles Keogh led the blue-coated cavalry into town, after an overnight march along the Watauga River.
 Boone was only a waypoint, as Stoneman's troops were headed to Virginia to fence in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
 The Civil War Trails program already marks sites in Cove Creek (Camp Mast), Patterson, and near Linville (the graves of Keith and Melinda Blalock).

PREVIOUSLY FROM OUR WATAUGA COUNTY BUREAU
Jan. 25: The month they drove old Dixie down
Feb. 1: Abraham Lincoln and the Horn of Freedom
March 23: Stabbing the Confederacy in the back
March 26: 'A Yankee gentleman can steal butter'
March 27: Stoneman's midnight ride takes a wrong turn
March 27: Rallying the Home Guard to fight the Yankees
April 6: Meanwhile, back in Boone
April 17: Historical marker finally finds its way home

Penning heads on Civil War tales

 They don't make headlines like they used to.
 As dying newspapers lay off the ink-stained wretches on the copy desks, we may never see another headline quite like this verbless wonder written by Vincent Musetto for the New York Post in 1983—the most unforgettable head in the history of journalism.

 Headline writing is an art. It may be a dying art—a victim of malnewstrition—but the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) still has a #HeadlineoftheYear contest to recognize the finest examples. If you are curious about the state of the art, here are the winners for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015. 
 At The Stoneman Gazette, we take pride in our headlines and have never laid off a copy editor. If ACES ever adds a prize category for anachronistic online newspapers, here are a few of our favorites we'd like to nominate.
 If you feel enticed to click on any of these blue links, go hug a headline writer. 

From Concord to Conquered: Two Revolutions

This headline works best in a Boston accent, where Concord rhymes with conquered.

Rebels and their bridge fall for Yankee-pranky

If you're ever caught in a headline fight, remember that the pun is mightier than the sword. This story describes a ruse involving a Union captain (a 27-year-old teacher with the eminently punable name of Erastus Cratty Moderwell) who impersonated 43-year-old Gen. George Stoneman to fool and intimidate Confederate forces who had him outnumbered. The rebels unwittingly surrendered the Nation Ford railroad trestle connecting the Carolinas, and the Yankees burned it down before Jefferson Davis could cross it.

Headquarters on Caesars Head

Here's my double-headed homage to Vincent Musetto (who died four weeks after we ended the daily run of The Stoneman Gazette). When the Yankees headed south out of Asheville and crossed the Blue Ridge at Caesars Head, they looked down on rebellious South Carolina in more ways than one. While they were descending, they were also condescending. (And don't blame me for the genitive apostrophe missing from Caesars Head. That's the style established by the U.S. Bureau of Geographic Names, page 30.) 

Your taxes are still paying for Stoneman's Raid

If a headline can't be cute, it needs to be profound. It should make the reader feel personally invested in the story. In this case, we thought our fellow Americans would want to know that until 2020, Uncle Sam was still paying for the Civil War—and the monthly checks are being cashed by the daughter of one of Stoneman's veterans. In a different era, this 1938 Gettysburg headline about her father also did a good job of enticing readers:

The longest raid begins with a single debt

Headline writers often start with a familiar phrase and then twist it like one of Sherman's neckties. You can understand why we wrote raid instead of journey, and here's why we changed step to debt: After rebels captured Gen. Stoneman in 1864, he became the highest-ranked prisoner in the South and a laughingstock in some parts of the North. So when he got a chance to vindicate himself with a thousand-mile raid in 1865, he declared, "I owe the Southern Confederacy a debt I am anxious to liquidate."

Myles to go: Stoneman's rock star

The story includes a quote about s-e-x from Myles Keogh, a debonair Yankee officer and international man of mystery. We resisted the temptation to use that cheap clickbait in our headline, because it would have been beneath our dignity. Instead, we'll tease you with it here—underskirting our headline.

Twin fiddling: Tom Dooley and Gilliam Grayson

The Kingston Trio and Doc Watson were also part of this story, but the title characters were both fiddlers, and young Tom fiddled around in more ways than one. In fact, he had a harem of cousins. For headline writers, a double entendre is the triple crown. 

Pyres in Salisbury, but a pyrrhic victory for rebs

It's a rare headline that can pair two pyr-words. It almost makes me want to go back and rewrite the story in inverted pyramid. Almost.

Four days in a den of Yankee lions

I like to include Bible allusions in my headlines. With Stoneman's cavalry fast approaching the Carson House, Miss Emma Rankin wrote that she still made it to church on Easter Sunday, "and our blessed old pastor gave us all the hope and strength he could gather from the Bible, reminding us that there were lions in the way, but God could shut the lions' mouths."

'Destroy Charlotte!' 'Will Asheville do?'

"If it's a good headline, we'll make it fit," Phil Batson used to say. But blogs, like newspapers, have fixed widths for columns and pages, and the challenge is to say a lot in a few words (in this case: 34 counts). This headline sums up a flurry of messages between Gen. Stoneman in Knoxville and two of his cavalry brigades in the North Carolina mountains.

How to stop the U.S. Cavalry? With a winefest

The purpose of a headline is to get you to stop and read the story. Clickbait, they call it nowadays. I think this one clicks. The bacchanalian story comes from my hometown of Anderson, S.C.

Scoop! Sly Stoneman chides rebel church

The little story behind this headline was lost to history until The Stoneman Gazette dredged it out of the The New York Times digital archives. "Chides" is such a fine word that it is usually reserved for headlines. Otherwise, our headline might have been Education of black children vs. edification of white Presbyterians. Sly readers of my generation may read something else into that headline.

Greenville mule gets Yankee's goat
The raiders quickly wore out their horses, and one Yankee regretted the day he swiped a mule from the plantation of a Revolutionary war hero.

Tell Mama! The War is Finally Over
A month after Lee's surrender, the war and the raid were still dragging on. So was the daily run of The Stoneman Gazette. We needed a way to finish strong, and I think we found it in our Mothers Day issue, which featured heartfelt quotes from the likes of Abe Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson's mother, and Mark Twain. Some newspapers don't like exclamations in headlines, but we're different, and moms are special.

'Angel of mercy' behind Anderson's monument

Anderson's Confederate memorial

Lenora Hubbard
(portrait from Hannibal Johnson's book)

ANDERSON, S.C.

 My grandmother Macie Sherard would have been 14 years old in 1902 when the Confederate memorial was dedicated in Anderson. I assume she was among the thousands who attended the ceremony, since her grandfather was a wounded veteran and her teacher Lenora Hubbard had the honor of unveiling the monument. She might even have been in the children's choir that sang Dixie. 

 Miss Hubbard used school events to raise funds for the monument, and I like to imagine that Macie helped by collecting pennies. 
 Miss Hubbard's story deserves to be heard, now that there is an outcry in Anderson to remove the Confederate monument from the town square. As our society struggles with how to deal with our Civil War heritage, I think we could all learn a lesson from my grandmother's esteemed teacher.

 She was a "daughter of the Confederacy," but she also graciously tended the graves of the enemy—three Union soldiers from Maine who were murdered near Anderson in the months following Stoneman's Raid. 

Lt. Hannibal Johnson

 I discovered her story in a little book titled "Sword of Honor," written by Lt. Hannibal Johnson, a Union veteran from Maine who called her "an angel of mercy." 

 Lt. Johnson's story is fascinating in its own right and will bring context to this story. Let me introduce him before we get to Miss Hubbard, and then a few thoughts on how we might rededicate Anderson's monument—as a symbol of reconciliation rather than rebellion.

 Wounded at Gettysburg, Lt. Johnson was captured twice by the rebels. He briefly encountered Gen. Stoneman when they were both in Confederate custody in Macon, Ga., in 1864. He escaped from Columbia, S.C., to Knoxville, Tenn., via the Underground Railroad in 1864, and spent several cold winter nights at Leaside Plantation near Ninety Six, S.C., where slaves showed him the gold-capped cane that South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks* broke over the head of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in 1856. When Lt. Johnson finally reached the Union lines in Tennessee in January 1865, he was received by the 10th Michigan Cavalry, which was preparing for Stoneman's Raid.

 During Reconstruction, Lt. Johnson and a small outfit from Maine were stationed in Anderson to impose martial law and serve as a freedman's bureau. Anderson was still boiling with vengance after the indignities of Stoneman's Raid May 1-3, 1865. On October 8, 1865, three Union soldiers from Maine were ambushed and killed while guarding a shipment of cotton across Brown's Ferry (on the Savannah River near the site of Hartwell Dam). The next day, Johnson recovered their mangled bodies from the river and buried them in the Anderson cemetery. The accused murderers were led by Crawford Keys or Keyes (1813-1895), who was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. President Andrew Johnson commuted his sentence, and Keys served time at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, an inescapable island in the Gulf of Mexico west of Key West. 

 After the war, Lt. Johnson (1841-1913) became a businessman in Boston and Lynn, Mass., and he maintained close relationships in South Carolina. 
 In 1875, he was invited to Charleston by Confederate Capt. J.C.B. Smith, who wanted to return the sword Johnson had surrendered in 1864 during the Battle of the Wilderness. 
 In a nostalgic 1906 trip through the South, the 64-year-old Johnson went to the Old Soldier's Home in Richmond (where he saw "Little Sorrel," Stonewall Jackson's taxidermied horse) and continued to South Carolina to visit Miss Hubbard, 51. He complimented Anderson (newly famous as the "Electric City") on its post-war prosperity. His book does not mention the Confederate monument, which had been erected in 1902.
 In his book, Johnson wrote glowingly of Miss Hubbard's values: 

Shortly after we left South Carolina, a true Southern woman, fearless, loyal, and Christian, took it upon herself, against the wishes of her personal friends, to decorate, each Memorial Day, the graves of our dead, just the same as the dead of the Confederacy. And this Christian-like act she has personally continued up to the present time.

I had kept in touch with the people of Anderson since I left there in 1866, having corresponded with some of their leading citizens, and was known officially to this angel of mercy, Miss Lenora Hubbard. When this obscure village had grown into a thriving city, residences and cemeteries were removed to make way for the march of improvement, and the cemetery where our boys were buried had to be moved also. This good woman went to the city authorities, and had assigned to her a spacious lot in the new cemetery for the burial of our boys. Knowing my address, she wrote to me, to see if some provision could not be made by the State toward defraying the expense of headstones for their graves, as she did not feel financially able to do it herself. Our correspondence was made public through the press, and coming to the ears of the officials at Washington, an order was given by the Quartermaster General to have these bodies taken up and removed to the National Cemetery at Marietta, Georgia.

I knew this would be a disappointment to Miss Hubbard, as she had cared for our boys for many years, but the will of the Government was stronger than the wish of this lone woman—so the bodies were removed. Feeling that Miss Hubbard should be recognized for her sacrifice and heroic act, I wrote to the Governor of Maine, and asked his assistance. Governor Cobb immediately entered into my plan of having the Legislature take hold of the matter. When it convened the following January, he brought the matter before his Council, and they unanimously agreed to recommend an act publicly thanking Miss Hubbard for her patriotic service; the same, after its passage, was embossed on parchment and sent to Anderson, with the united thanks of the Legislature. (Feb. 8, 1905)

 Johnson also wrote about the burden borne by Southern women, where he mentioned "her love and charity being broad enough to take in both Union and Confederate armies." 

I am still in correspondence with this true-blue Southern woman, whom it is an honor and credit to know. She is generally loved and respected by all who have the pleasure of her acquaintance; she has more honorable titles from Confederate camps and societies than any woman south of Mason and Dixon's line—her love and charity being broad enough to take in both Union and Confederate armies. It has been said that the Southern women by their loyalty and sacrifice kept the war going twelve months longer than it otherwise would have been, for they helped the struggling men in the field; and although the same men fought against me, I respect the part these Southern women took.

Our Northern women will never know what their Southern sisters suffered and endured to give encouragement and help to their overtaxed and starving veterans in the field. Some of them even did men's work on the plantations, to allow their old and young men to go to the front, others made clothing for their fathers, brothers, and lovers—doing all that was honorable and brave to perform their part in the great struggle.

What the war meant to the Southern women, will be shown in the following extracts from a letter written by Miss Hubbard to a northern friend.

 Here is Miss Hubbard's letter, which describes the difficult circumstances in places like Anderson in the era when Confederate monuments were raised. Yes, she was part of the Lost Cause, but listen to her as she looked forward to the New South. "Our country is just beginning to be what God meant it to be," she wrote:

The good women in many parts of Maine have sent me a number of post cards, many of them unusually interesting ones. Seeing these pictures of your splendid buildings makes me feel keenly the poverty of our South land. While your soldiers returned to find their homes and educational institutions just as they left them, our Southern men returned to ruined homes and to the heavy task of rebuilding almost the entire country. If the men found this a hard task what can be said of our women who, by the fortunes of war, were left widows and orphans to struggle against such fearful odds? Hardest of all, they had to break away from so many old Southern traditions, as to woman's sphere. With so many professions and occupations closed to them, there seems almost a hopeless outlook.

My father died two years after the close of the war, and left my mother with five little children, not one of whom was old enough to be of any help to her. I know what a struggle she had, for all her friends and relatives were too poor to help her. My father, a comparatively rich man, had such faith in the triumph of the Confederacy that he converted all his property into government bonds. Thus we were left almost penniless. The South had few schools then, no free ones. No one knows the task of my mother to care for us and give us some little education.

At that time, not one woman in Anderson had dared venture out from the sheltered privacy of home and enter store or office to earn a living. I well remember the first one who did so; and though the position she filled was that of bookkeeper in her own father's store, for a time she was almost ostracized for so departing from "Woman's Sphere." I was the second one to take this daring step, and at the age of fifteen [about 1868] was given a position in the photographic studio of an old friend of father's. My doing so called forth a storm of protests from uncles and aunts, not one of whom was financially able to make it unnecessary for me to do this. My hours at the studio were from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. I got up at six every morning, practiced my music until seven, then helped cook breakfast, went to my work in the studio and in my spare moments there prepared a lesson in German which I recited to a private tutor after supper. Then three times a week I had a Latin lesson after studio hours. In this way I prepared myself to teach. After I secured a diploma which entitled me to teach, it took thirteen years of hard work to save enough money to buy my little home.

I have seen the Old South, its chivalry and traditions disappear and watched the development of our grand New South, with its spirit of progress, and vast opportunities for both women and men. Our country is just beginning to be what God meant it to be and with increasing financial prosperity, our people are striving to attain the position which our great natural facilities entitle us to hold.

Anderson's first public school

 Miss Hubbard (1855-1933) taught at Anderson's original public school, the Central Graded School at 414 West Market Street. She lived at 424 Marshall Avenue, just three blocks from my mother's childhood home at 715 Marshall. When I asked my mother if she knew anything about Miss Hubbard, she recognized the name right away. "Mama said she was strict," she told me. "You had to be strict back then." Boys knew that if they misbehaved, Miss Hubbard might twist their ears. 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Yankees published this 4-column extra May 6, 1865, while they occupied Athens.

 
 If you are reading The Stoneman Gazette on your phone or tablet (like many in our audience), we invite you to try us the way newspapers were meant to be read—with more than one column.
 Open our page on an old-fashioned computer screen (or switch your iPhone to "View web version") and you'll discover a right-side column that features a search engine, a timeline that guides you day-by-day and town-by town along the path of the raid, and birthdays and biographical links for hundreds of folks who have graced our pages. This is also where we give proper credit to all the fine historians whose work we've plundered.
 Our broadsheet edition also features section tabs where you can explore topics we've covered, such as Faith, Music, Sports, Tech, and Travel. Looking for a table of contents? Start here.
 In other words ... there's more to The Stoneman Gazette than meets the iPhone.  

 

(If you're not pun-shy, you're also invited to visit my other blog. —Tom Layton)

✭✭✭

THREEDOM OF THE PRESS: The Athens newspaper (above) was one of three issues published by Union troops during Stoneman's Raid. Others were in Salisbury, N.C., and Spartanburg, S.C.

1940: Roadside fame or cast-iron shame?

Civil War veterans clad in gray and blue meet across a rock wall on Cemetery Ridge during the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The fellow on the left is giving the "rebel yell."

 December 7, 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese air raid at Pearl Harbor that drew the United States into World War II.

 At The Stoneman Gazette, we are all about anniversaries and memorials. This newspaper was created to cover the double-diamond 150th anniversary (or sesquicentennial, if you prefer) of Stoneman's Raid.
 So, Pearl Harbor Day seems like a good time to look back at how our forefathers commemorated the 75th anniversaries of Stoneman's Raid and the end of the Civil War—just 19 months before "the date that will live in infamy."
 Nationally, the biggest ceremony was in 1938—the 75th anniversary of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. Some 2,500 Yanks and Rebs, all in their nineties, gathered on that blood-consecrated field for one last reunion. (Watch remarkable footage from Ken Burns' 1990 epic, The Civil War). Those veterans included at least one associated with Stoneman's Raid, Mose Triplett, who died just two weeks afterwards. (His daughter is the last person receiving a Civil War pension.)

Burlington Daily Times-News, April 16, 1940

 By 1940, the 75th anniversary of the end of the Civil War was overshadowed by the beginnings of World War II in Europe. Across North Carolina, the United Daughters of the Confederacy held local ceremonies on Confederate Memorial Day, May 10 (the date of Stonewall Jackson's death in 1863 and Jefferson Davis's capture in 1865), to remember fallen heroes and salute the last few surviving veterans. Prominent politicians made speeches under a battle flag at Hillsborough's Alexander Dickson House, known as "the last headquarters of the Confederacy."

 (The Dickson house now serves as the Hillsborough County Visitor's Center. This history by a Dickson descendant is fascinating, though some of the details are contradicted by what we know about Stoneman's timeline.)
 As for Stoneman's Raid, you might have expected North Carolina to sweep the whole painful episode under the rug of history. Instead, the state marked the 75th anniversary of the raid by bestowing Gen. George Stoneman with roadside fame and making him a something of a household name in the mountains and foothills. 

These markers in Salisbury are among 18 erected by North Carolina 75 years after Stoneman's Raid.

 In 1940, the state's official historian, C.C. Crittenden*, commissioned 18 cast-iron historical markers to trace the path of Stoneman's Raid along highways from Boone to Mount Airy and from Salisbury to Asheville. As the grandson of two Confederate soldiers, Crittenden must have known how provocative this would be.
 Some North Carolinians were outraged that their state would spend their taxes to honor the notorious Yankee general and a campaign that was scorched into their family memories. "When the first North Carolina historical markers commemorating the raid were installed over seventy years afterward, citizens tore them down and threw them in a river," historian Chris Hartley wrote in the cover notes for his book, Stoneman's Raid, 1865.

 In 1969, historian Glenn Tucker (the award-winning biographer of Gov. Zebulon Vance) had a similar reaction. Writing about the Civil War for the centennial edition of the Asheville Citizen-Times, he scoffed:

Stoneman's raid, though still prominently advertised, did not hasten the end of the Confederacy by an hour. Anyone is entitled to wonder why, since it passed through Asheville after Lee and Johnston's men had laid down their arms, it is commemorated so extravagantly by historical markers in Asheville, Hendersonville, Lynn, and places in the Piedmont. Little if any heroism appears to have been involved. Incidents occurred which had better be forgotten. ... A salutory event would be for the historical commission in Raleigh to apply the Stoneman touch and trip down those signs, then substitute more worthy markers.

 Tucker raised a legitimate question, since Stoneman's Raid has nearly twice as many markers as Sherman's march through eastern North Carolina—a much more significant campaign that effectively ended the Civil War. Undeniably, some of the raiders were guilty of rape, pillage, and other dishonorable deeds during the week they spent in the mountains.
 However, I must respectfully disagree with some of Tucker's conclusions about the timing, conduct, and consequences of the raid. And I have corroborating witnesses. Gen. Ulysses Grant shared Tucker's disdain for Stoneman, yet Grant did acknowledge that the raid helped finish off the Confederacy. An Ohio captain who later became a historian and a diplomat described Stoneman's Raid as "brilliant but inadequately appreciated."

 Are the markers appropriate? I think so, and the scholars in Raleigh seem to agree: In the 76 years since the signs were erected and the 47 years since Tucker objected, only one of the 18 has been decommissioned by the state. It was in Newton, and it was replaced by the city in 2009 after it was knocked down by a snowplow in 1989.

 Eleven of the original 1940 markers still stand. You can find six of them near the courthouses in Boone, Wilkesboro, Dobson, Danbury, Salisbury, and Rutherfordton. Two more are on the outskirts of Salisbury, the most significant battlefield of Stoneman's Raid. Others remain in Statesville, Lenoir, and Lynn.
 Six of the originals have been replaced with newer plaques in Hendersonville, Asheville, Morganton, Shallow Ford, Mount Airy, and Blowing Rock. Two more monuments to Stoneman's Raid were added at Deep Gap in 1959 and Swannanoa Gap in 1960. So there were 20 state markers before the disappearance of the one in Newton.
 Contrary to Tucker's generalizations, these markers are not one-sided in favor of the Yankees. The ones at the Yadkin River near Salisbury and the Swannanoa Gap east of Asheville commemorate heroic rebel stands that resulted in the last Confederate victories of the war.

Civil War Trails displays along Stoneman's route
 include this one at Andrews Geyser near Old Fort,
commemorating the last Confederate victory.

 In addition to the state and city markers, Stoneman's Raid is also documented by 24 Civil War Trails displays. These illustrated and informative plaques are part of an effort to promote Civil War tourism.
 Near Greensboro, there are also two monuments related to Stoneman's Raid erected by the Col. John Sloan Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.

 Altogether, I've found 46 historical markers documenting the 28 days and 500 miles that Stoneman's raiders criss-crossed 24 counties in western North Carolina.

 Folks who agree with Tucker might be more content in Tennessee, Virginia, or South Carolina, where few markers mention Stoneman by name. Georgia has several, but most of them focus on an 1864 raid where rebels captured Stoneman.

 

C.C. Crittenden

S.S. Crittenden

* C.C. CRITTENDEN (1902-1969) should not be confused with S.S. CRITTENDEN (1829-1911), a Confederate veteran who wrote the 1903 centennial history of Greenville, S.C. As far as I can tell, they were not related, and they would have disagreed on how we should remember Stoneman's Raid. In his brief chapter on "Greenville During the War," S.S. Crittenden did not mention the two occasions that Stoneman's cavalry invaded Greenville (May 1-2 and May 22-24, 1865). Certainly he knew of these incidents, and it would not be surprising if he was personally involved in the local resistance. His mother was from Salisbury, N.C., which famously denied its history with Stoneman.

The first 11 markers for Stoneman's Raid were announced May 7, 1940—75 years after the raid and 19 months before Pearl Harbor. This clipping is from The Robesonian in Lumberton, N.C.

First in war, last in peace, and still sipping taxes

 By the epic standards of the Civil War, Stoneman's Raid was relatively trivial. 
 Yet it is rich in material for a game of Trivial Pursuit in a category we'll call Civil War Bookends.
 The answers to all these first-and-last questions can be found in the annals of Stoneman's Raid.

 Who was the first man mustered into the Confederate army?

  According to an obituary I found from The Greenville News dated June 27, 1917, it was William T. Shumate of Greenville, S.C.: "Mr. Shumate, according to the story he and his friends often related, was a member of the old Butler Guards, an ante-bellum military organization in Greenville. The guards volunteered for service in 1861 upon the outbreak of the war, and upon proceeding to Virginia, were mustered in. Mr. Shumate was the tallest man in the command, so was placed on the extreme right. The mustering officer took the men from right to left, and this company happening to be the first selected, Mr. Shumate was the first man to be mustered into the service."
 The Butler Guards, later known as Company B of the Second South Carolina Infantry, organized January 5, 1861—just two weeks after South Carolina voted to secede. They were called to active duty on April 15, three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and were among several companies mustered in on May 22 and 23, 1861 in Richmond, Va. (We'll reveal Shumate's role in Stoneman's Raid at the end of this quiz.)

 So who was the first to enlist for the Union?

 I don't know for sure, but a tall Ohio schoolteacher named Erastus Cratty Moderwell was among the very first who enlisted April 14, 1861, under a Kentucky abolitionist named Cassius Clay. A tribute to Moderwell in a 1912 memorial book said this was the "first volunteer organization raised for the War of the Rebellion."
 Moderwell became a major in the 12th Ohio Cavalry, which was one of eight regiments in Stoneman's Raid. On April 21, 1865, he impersonated the 6-foot-4 Stoneman, fooled the Confederates, and bluffed them into surrendering the Nation Ford railroad trestle across the Catawba River, cutting the lifeline between Charlotte and South Carolina. Historian Benson John Lossing described this raid as "one of the most gallant little exploits of the war."
 If only wars were always this much fun!

 Who loaded the first gun fired at Fort Sumter? 
 Historians may not agree with me on this, but I still like the story told by a Georgia soldier named Thomas Wheat who was captured by Stoneman's troops April 10, 1865, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "I had nothing against the Yankees," he told a New York newspaper, "but I was in for anything that promised a little sport."
 The first shot from Fort Sumter, by the way, was fired by none other than Abner Doubleday of baseball fame. The closest I can tie him to the raid is that he graduated from West Point just before Stoneman matriculated.

 Two old South Carolina newspapers say that a Citadel cadet named Paul Allen (or Allan) was responsible for the first and last shots of the war. 

 Where was the last Confederate victory?
 Some say it was the defense of the Yadkin River bridge by Col. Zebulon York on April 12, 1865, during Stoneman's invasion of Salisbury, N.C. My vote is for Swannanoa Gap, where short-handed rebels and their one-armed general prevented Stoneman's Raid from crossing the Blue Ridge on April 20 and won a temporary reprieve for the citizens of Asheville. Both of those rebel stands came after Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9.

 Who was the last Confederate veteran in North Carolina?
 A former slave named Alfred "Uncle Teen" Blackburn received the state's last Confederate pension ($26.26 per month) until 1951, when he died at age 109. Blackburn served in the rebel army alongside his master, so you could say that he owed his freedom to a war he lost. Uncle Teen was an eyewitness to one of Stoneman's battalions that burned three mills in Yadkin County on April 1, 1865.

 What about the last Union pension from the Civil War?
 There's one remaining. Irene Triplett of North Wilkesboro, N.C., still gets $73.13 per month from Uncle Sam for her father's service with Kirk's Raiders, a Union outfit under Stoneman's command who occupied Boone, N.C., in April 1865. She turned 86 in January 2016. Her father Mose Triplett was 83 when she was born in 1930 and 92 when he died in 1938, just a few days after attending the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. In effect, your taxes are still paying for Stoneman's Raid.

 Who were the last Confederate soldiers killed in battle with Union troops?
 As far as I have found, the last two were A.C. Wall of Texas, shot on or about May 9, 1865, near Madison, Ga., by Stoneman's 12th Ohio cavalry; and McKenzie "Theodore" Parker of South Carolina, killed May 3 in Anderson, S.C., by Stoneman's rear guard. The last Confederate officer killed in action was probably Captain Charles Connor of Catawba County, N.C., who was shot April 17, by Stoneman's 10th Michigan cavalry as they rode through Newton, N.C. There were several Yankees killed later, including two by friendly fire in the capture of Jefferson Davis on May 10.

 Who was the last veteran of Stoneman's Raid? 
 William Magee of the 12th Ohio was one of the last three Union soldiers alive before he died January 23, 1953, at age 106. Magee was an 18-year-old bugler in the regimental band that serenaded the young ladies of Athens, Georgia, on May 4, 1865. The last combat veteran of the Civil War, a New York infantryman named James Hard, outlived Magee by 48 days.

 Who was the last Medal of Honor winner of the Civil War?
 Col. Charles Betts of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania received the award in 1892 for leading 75 men from Stoneman's Raid who captured the Third South Carolina Cavalry April 11, 1865, near Greensboro, N.C. Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia two days earlier, but neither side had heard the news.

 Where was the last Confederate skirmish east of the Mississippi?
 Let's end where we began, with the long arm of the law—tall Bill Shumate in Greenville, S.C. Sheriff Shumate organized a small force of Confederate veterans who exchanged gunshots with the Union's Thirteenth Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry. The skirmish was May 22, 23, or 24, 1865 as the Yankees headed home from Georgia following Stoneman's Raid. There is no mention of the skirmish in Shumate's obituary nor in three books on the history of Greenville County, and there is no historical marker on the likely site near Crescent Avenue. In recent years, however, Union and Confederate accounts have been found that show that the Yankees were on the verge of executing three or four captured Greenvillians and burning down the town—until the Masons intervened.

William T. Shumate

NEXT: Honoring the warriors, if not the war

Scoop! One of Stoneman's newspapers

CREDIT: University of Georgia archives

 When I began researching Stoneman's Raid, I was fascinated to discover that the Union troops published newspapers in three towns they briefly occupied: Salisbury April 12, Spartanburg April 30, and Athens May 6, 1865.
 I contacted historians in all three towns but was unable to find any of these newspapers during the 150th-anniversary run of The Stoneman Gazette. That was disappointing but not surprising. Confederate publishers did not keep Yankee scrapbooks. In fact, they often erased history as they shaped the myth of the Lost Cause. For example, the publisher of the Salisbury newspaper squelched any mention of Stoneman's Raid in a 618-page history of Rowan County that he published 16 years after the war. (Stoneman's scribes did not ignore him, as we shall see!)
 So I was pleasantly surprised to hear recently from a diligent librarian at the University of Georgia who was able to track down this copy of the Athens paper (click here to enlarge the image). Even better, it includes stories from the other two editions.
 You may not be impressed, but this old newspaperman feels like he has found a buried treasure.
 Each story warrants its own discussion, which we will do in subsequent blogs. Follow the links below.
 The scanned copy is smudged and hard to read, but I think this is what it says:

Meet 'the better angels' of Stoneman's Raid

     As I look back over the 150th anniversary of Stoneman's Raid, these are some of my favorite personalities who brightened the pages of The Stoneman Gazette.
     I sought every perspective I could find, and those you see here represent slaves and presidents, preachers and teachers, journalists and journalers, generals and privates, fiddlers and flatpickers, pacifists and hawks. 
     Even if you don’t care about the Civil War in general or Stoneman’s Raid in particular, I bet you will enjoy these tales.

ALFRED 'UNCLE TEEN' BLACKBURN at age 106
Hamptonville NC

North Carolina’s last living Confederate veteran was born as a slave and owed his freedom to a war he lost. And boy did he exercise his freedom, walking 150,000 miles on the job and living almost 110 years. Because we published his story on April Fool's Day, some thought it was a joke or a myth, but I wouldn't have run it if I didn't think it was mostly true.

• Guess where NC’s last rebel came from!
• What sort of liberation is this? 

GOV. WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW
Knoxville TN

Before he became governor of Tennessee, “the Fighting Parson” was a firebrand publisher who skewered the Confederacy in a federally funded newspaper called the Rebel Ventilator. If you have ink in your blood and remember when newspapering was fun (or if you are a fellow Methodist) you'll enjoy his story.

• Scoop! Sly Stoneman chides rebel church

ENG & CHANG BUNKER
Mount Airy NC

The original Siamese Twins probably went into hiding when Stoneman’s Raid came through Mount Airy, the iconic little town where they raised 21 children and owned 30 slaves. But what if they got into one of their occasional arguments and one of them betrayed the other? Mark Twain was amused by the possibilities, and according to one account, so was Gen. Stoneman.

• A punchline worthy of Mark Twain

JOHN C. CALHOUN (1849 daguerreotype by Mathew Brady)

Abbeville SC, Washington DC, Clemson SC

Might the "Father of Secession" also have been the father of the president who defeated secession? That would be outrageous in every sense of the word. Still, some have suggested (or insisted) that Calhoun was indeed the father of Lincoln. If they are right, it would give a whole new meaning to the Civil War slogan "brother against brother."

• Father of all irony? The other Land of Lincoln
• Revisiting the Lincoln-Calhoun debate

CONFEDERATE LT. CHARLES CONNOR

Terrell NC

Was he a daring hero? Or an innocent bystander? The Stoneman Gazette sorts out the facts and legends about the Catawba County man who may have been the last Confederate officer killed in combat.

• 'Wading Through the Blood of Our Men, Women, and Children'

CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS (1885)
with daughter Maggie, wife Varina, grandchildren, and servants in Biloxi MS

The last fortnight of Stoneman's Raid was essentially a manhunt for Jefferson Davis. Yankees called him the “Prince of Traitors,” and rebels never exalted their president like they did their generals. The Confederacy and his administration were doomed from the start. But Davis turned out to be more of a sympathetic character than I expected. He did not seek the presidency of the Confederacy but served out of a binding sense of duty that became blinding (literally and figuratively) in the end. Jimmy Carter and Congress restored Davis' citizenship in 1978. In this era when gender-hopping is considered courageous, shouldn't we pardon him for one episode of cross-dressing?

• Medal of Honor and even bigger prizes
• Hunting Jefferson Davis 'to the end of the earth'
• The Confederacy comes home to die
• Tennessee Yankees chase Jeff Davis’ shadow
• Jeff Davis’ dilemma: Station wagon or mustang?
• Reconciled: Yankees honor Jeff Davis' daughter

CONFEDERATE PVT. "TOM DOOLEY"
Ferguson ("Happy Valley") NC

Doc Watson and Grayson’s nephew chime in on the murder mystery made famous by the Kingston Trio. Tom Dula was in a Yankee prison when Stoneman's Raid came through the valley where he was raised, and he might-a lived happily ever after if it hadn't-a-been for the girls back home. (NOTE: This photo has become identified with Tom Dooley but is not the actual Tom Dula.) 

• Twin fidding: Tom Dooley and Gilliam Grayson

LENORA HUBBARD

Anderson, SC

My grandmother's schoolteacher was a daughter of the Confederacy but graciously tended the graves of the enemy—three Union soldiers murdered in Anderson in the months following Stoneman's Raid. She also led the effort to raise the Confederate memorial on the square in downtown Anderson. We can learn a lot from her example. 

• 'Angel of Mercy' behind Anderson monument

UNION COL. MYLES KEOGH
County Carlow, Ireland, and Fort Lincoln ND

Gen. George Stoneman’s right-hand man was an Irishman recruited from the Pope's guards who led the charges into Boone and Salisbury and later died with Gen. George Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. "My great weakness," he once said, "is the love I have for the fair sex, and pretty much all my trouble comes from or can be traced to that charming source." The Stoneman Gazette found a soap-opera picture to affirm his claim. 

• Myles to go: Stoneman’s rock star

U.S. PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
entering Richmond April 4, 1865 (drawn by Thomas Nast)

Seven-score and fourteen years later, America needs to heed the closing words of President Lincoln's 1861 inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

• Abraham Lincoln and the Horn of Freedom
• Lincoln’s map showed the way
• Good Friday and Abraham Lincoln
• GIS mapping: Another Civil War innovation
• Father of all irony? The other Land of Lincoln
• Tell Mama: The Civil War is finally over!
• Reconciled: Yankees honor Jeff Davis’ daughter
• Revisiting the Lincoln-Calhoun debate

CONFEDERATE CAPT. WILLIAM LUFFMAN

Guilford County NC, Spring Place GA

How did this wounded rebel outrun hundreds of mounted Yankees? Read Milton Cundiff's 1897 account and see if you believe it. 

• 'Great heavens, the Yankees are upon us!'

UNION GEN. WILLIAM J. PALMER
Philadelphia PA and Colorado Springs CO

The 28-year-old Quaker was the good guy of Stoneman’s Raid, even earning the respect of loyal Confederates such as Stonewall Jackson's widow and Jefferson Davis' daughter. He began the march as a colonel and received a field promotion to general when Stoneman put him in charge of pursuing Davis. "Palmer is worth a whole brigade of cavalry," one of his commanders said. After the war, Palmer received the Medal of Honor, founded Colorado Springs, made a fortune in railroads, built a majestic castle for his "Queen," and helped educate thousands of slaves’ children. If you have ever toured Glen Eyrie or ridden the Durango & Silverton scenic railroad, you have experienced a bit of his vision.

• Still standing like a stone wall
• 'Just what sort of liberation is this?'
• ‘Yankees can eat the dust off my feet and think it’s pepper’
• Reason for the war? How quickly they forgot
• What Civil War statues are whispering to us
• Reconciled: Yankees honor Jeff Davis’ daughter

EMMA RANKIN
Lenoir and Marion NC

Stoneman’s Raiders never met a feistier rebel than Miss Emma Rankin, a teacher who wrote a little book about her four-day ordeal at the hand of the Yankees. In the spirit of 19th-century journalism, The Stoneman Gazette presented excerpts as a serial:

• Prelude: Four days in a den of Yankee lions
• April 19: ‘Biggest burying I ever attended’
• April 20: ‘So awfully desolate and forsaken’
• April 21: Shirt stolen off old man’s back
• April 22: ‘You will not dare touch me!’
• Illustration: Teaching the Yankees a Lesson

EMMALA REED
Anderson SC

The Scarlett O’Hara of Stoneman’s Raid, Emmala Reed was pining for her Confederate beau when Yankees raided Anderson, SC—her hometown as well as mine. Fortunately for us, she kept a journal that Robert Oliver edited into a book called A Faithful Heart, and The Gazette excerpted as a three-part serial.

• May 1: The audacity of the cute Yankee
• May 2: Many drunken demons
• May 3: A ruined, humiliated people

ROBBIE ROBERTSON & LEVON HELM

Woodstock, NY

In the midst of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, Robertson and Helm say they found time to visit a local library to learn more about the Civil War and flesh out a song that became "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." In the original version, they wrote "Till Stoneman's cavalry came," but when Joan Baez made the song famous she sang "Till so much cavalry came." 

• The month they drove old Dixie Down
• Joan Baez: "Till Stoneman's cavalry came"

LITTLE SORREL

Lexington, VA

Horses were the unsung heroes of the thousand-mile march of Stoneman's Raid. Many wore out after a few hard days of cavalry duty in the mountains. Frank the Warhorse went the distance and was rewarded with his own headstone. Meanwhile, the most famous prisoner of the raid is still saddled up for the South. 

• Warhorses: Indispensable yet disposable
• Still standing like a stone wall
• What Civil War statues are whispering to us
• Greenville mule got a Yankee's goat

UNION GEN. GEORGE STONEMAN
(portrait in Harper's Weekly, 1862)
Busti NY, Washington DC, San Marino CA

General Stoneman personally led the first half of the raid and had a very personal reason to excuse himself from the rest of the march. People in Salisbury were thankful that Stoneman was not as incendiary as Sherman. Beyond that, I'll let you decide what to make of him.

• The longest raid begins with a single debt
• Meet George Stoneman
• 'A Yankee gentleman can steal butter'
• 'I believe I am talking to the Yankees now'
• The awful burr in Stoneman’s saddle
• Stoneman's worst mistake?
• Scoop! Sly Stoneman chides rebel church
• Yosemite bridge may be Stoneman's last stand
• An animated glimpse of Gen. Stoneman
• 75 years later: Roadside fame or cast-iron shame?

IRENE TRIPLETT
Wilkesboro NC

The Wall Street Journal identified Miss Triplett as the last person receiving a Civil War pension. Her father Mose Triplett served on both sides of the war and was a member of Stoneman's rear guard that terrorized Boone in April 1865.

• Your taxes are still paying for Stoneman's Raid

MARK TWAIN
(portrait by Carroll Beckwith)
Hannibal MO, Elmira NY, Hartford CT

The great storyteller made America laugh with an outrageous tale rooted in Stoneman’s Raid. But Samuel Clemens also had blood on his hands from his brief days as a Confederate soldier in Missouri, and his Private History of a Campaign that Failed is so true that it hurts: "All war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it."

• A punchline worthy of Mark Twain
• Tell Mama: The Civil War is finally over!

DOC WATSON
Deep Gap NC

It's always good to listen to Doc Watson. On his debut album in 1964, he shared his family's remarkable memories of Tom Dula and the days of Stoneman's Raid.

• Twin Fidding: Tom Dooley and Gillam Grayson 

UNION CAPT. HENRY WEAND
Norristown PA

I commissioned Capt. Weand as the war correspondent for The Stoneman Gazette. Many of our stories quote from his journal, which details the daily events of Stoneman's Raid.

• Pennsylvanian’s pen was mightier than sword
• How do you stop the U.S. Cavalry? With a winefest!
• Yankee band plays Dixie for Athens damsels
• Memorial Day: Yankee rests in rebel graveyard

CONFEDERATE PVT. THOMAS WHEAT
Rome GA

Did this Georgia farmer really start the Civil War? That's what he confessed when he was captured near Winston-Salem by Stoneman's cavalry. "I had nothing against the Yankees," he said, "but I was in for anything that promised a little sport."

• ‘So you’re the man who caused all this trouble?’

UNION PVT. JOHN JERVIS WICKHAM
Beaver, PA

Long before he became a Pennsylvania Superior Court judge, Wickham was a 21-year-old "cypher expert" who tricked a Confederate telegraph officer into divulging the troop movements of Robert E. Lee. 

• How to hack Confederate secrets

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK: Stoneman Bridge

Though he had the perfect name for a marble bust, you won't find Stoneman among the pantheon of Civil War statues. However, dozens of monuments mark his path from the Carolinas to California.

• The month they drove old Dixie down
• Yosemite bridge may be Stoneman's last stand
• Historical markers: They report, we deride
• Stoneman's headquarters on Caesar's Head
• What Civil War statues are whispering to us
• 75 years later: Roadside fame or cast-iron shame?

__________________________________

TOM LAYTON (with my mom and our ancestor's 1744 English musket) 

Just in case you're wondering where this blog is coming from ... 

• The Stoneman Gazette: Not just whistling Dixie
• Daily Gazette tracks stories behind Stoneman's Raid