From Concord to Conquered: Two Revolutions

Commemorating the 1875 centennial of the original 'Shot Heard Round the World,' this Minuteman statue in Lexington, Massachusetts, was cast in bronze from melted-down Civil War cannons. The young sculptor was Daniel Chester French, who in 1920 gave us the great statue of Abraham Lincoln, sitting in the Lincoln Memorial. 

CONCORD, Massachusetts

 April 19, 2025, marked the semiquincentennial of Battle of the Old North Bridge, the dawn of the American Revolution, where about 400 Patriot minutemen routed 100 British Redcoats in 1775. 

 Ralph Waldo Emerson marked the occasion in 1837 by writing the Concord Hymn, which canonized the colonial uprising as "The Shot Heart Round the World." Emerson could see the old bridge from his "manse" along the Concord River.

 The Concord Hymn became a template for the Conquered Banner, written in 1865 by Confederate chaplain Father Abram Joseph Ryan to honor those who served under the Stars and Bars. (In a Boston accent, Concord rhymes with Conquered.) The Conquered Banner is quoted on Confederate monuments in Greenville, Anderson, and Abbeville—towns which were landmarks for Stoneman's Raid during the pursuit of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

 Emerson's line about the shot heard round the world has also been applied to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, triggering the Civil War. The Georgia soldier who claimed to have loaded that shot wound up as a captive of Stoneman's Raid:  "You Are the Man Who Caused All This Trouble?" 

 When Confederates tried to justify their rebellion and secession from the United States, they often draped their grievances in their forefathers' patriotism and the events of 1776.

 Several episodes in Stoneman's Raid crossed paths with the American Revolution: 

 Remember When N.C. Voted to Save the Union?  As we deal with a polarizing presidency and a fractured society, here's a refreshing history lesson about true patriotism and the rule of law.

 Hunting Jefferson Davis to the Ends of the Earth: The pursuit of the Confederate president intersected several Revolutionary War sites, including Cowpens, S.C. 

 Reasons for the War? How Quickly They Forget: Confederate leaders left no doubt that slavery was the reason for secession, while side-stepping the Jeffersonian ideal that "all men are created equal."

 Tear it Down? Or Can We Reconcile With It? A case study from Anderson, S.C.,  reveals how we might deal with Confederate monuments.

 Greenville Mule Gets Yankee's Goat: The daughter of a Revolutionary hero, Capt. Billy Young, saw one of Stoneman's Raiders humiliated. 

 Abraham Lincoln and the Horn of Freedom: Speaking of anniversaries, the summer of 2025 marked the 74th season of Horn in the West, an outdoor drama in Boone, N.C., that interprets the American Revolution through the legend of Daniel Boone. 

'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. 

Sounding 'Taps' for Stoneman's last veteran

Spanish American War veteran William Harbottle
plays taps in 1953 for Sgt. William Magee.
(Los Angeles Times photo)

Magee with his medals

  On August 19, 1952, William Magee celebrated his 106th birthday at the home of his daughter in Van Nuys, California. His family invited a reporter to interview him, because he was the last Civil War veteran living on the West Coast.
 As Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was campaigning for President, Magee was in a patriotic mood. "Our beloved United States has never been licked in war and we never shall be licked," he told the reporter. "They just can't lick her, because we have the power. We have real power—and we have real men." 
 Magee (1846-1953) was raised in a cabin near Lancaster, Ohio, the same hometown as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891). He told the reporter that he took part in Sherman's 1864 March to the Sea, but it appears he confused Sherman with Stoneman. His unit, the 12th Ohio Cavalry, spent the last year of the war on Gen. George Stoneman's raids.

 There is a Sgt. William McGee brashley quoted in Chris Hartley's history of Stoneman's Raid. Could it be the same man?  
 Magee was 17 when he ran away from home to enlist in Company M of the 12th Ohio Cavalry as a bugler. (Musicians often served as field medics. Another William Magee, a 14-year-old drummer in the 33rd New Jersey Infantry, was awarded the Medal of Honor for capturing Confederate artillery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1864.)
 Magee made the Army his career, became a Master Sergeant, and fought in the Indian Wars and the Spanish American War. He retired in 1898 after 35 years in the Army and drew a $200 monthly pension. At some point, he served alongside Buffalo Bill Cody (1846-1917). "Buffalo Bill was the best-looking man I ever saw," he told the reporter, "and I'm in second place right behind him." (Take that, Myles Keogh!)
 The 12th Ohio Cavalry was one of Stoneman's most dependable regiments. They were involved in the liberation of the Salisbury prison, the daring capture of the Nation Ford bridge near Charlotte, and the publication of the Yankee Raider newspaper in Athens, Ga. Capt. Frank Mason (later an aide to President Garfield) wrote the regimental history as well as this perspective on Stoneman's Raid. 
 Mason's book tells us that as the war was ending, Magee's band, "dusty and battered from its long and tuneless wanderings," had the opportunity to play Dixie and serenade Southern belles at the Young Ladies Seminary in Athens.

 After he retired from the Army, Magee settled in California. He had two daughters in the Los Angeles area and another in Chicago, as well as seven grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. 
 Asked the secret of his long life, Magee said, "Haven't had a drink of liquor for the past 50 years. And when I did drink, it was pure corn whiskey that the mountaineers made. It was good for a man. Today, the young men mix their drinks. That is what shortens their lives." As for the episode with the mountaineers, the regimental history of the 15th Pennsylvania Calvary has a vivid account of a rainy night in Wilkes County, North Carolina, when Stoneman's troops succumbed to the temptations of freshly distilled moonshine. 

 Magee remained in relatively good health until the following January, when he suffered a stroke and died three weeks later. He was buried with a 21-gun salute at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. The military band played two of his favorite tunes: Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground and The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  (I'm fond of this version, featuring William Lee Golden and Jimmy Fulbright of the Oak Ridge Boys, Jimmy Fortune of the Statler Brothers, and Tim Duncan singing bass on a refrain that seems to speak for Magee: "He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.") 

A SMALL-WORLD NOTE: My career has crossed paths with two Tim Duncans, the Wake Forest basketball player when I covered the ACC and the bass singer I met at an Operation Christmas Child event in Johannesburg, South Africa. "Stand by me!"

 Father William Lundy gave the eulogy: "He had a distinct privilege. His God permitted him to live long enough to see the ideals for which he fought fully realized. One nation, indivisible, with unity and freedom for all. His death marks the passing of a link in American history."
 The only Civil War combat veteran who outlived Magee was James Hard of Rochester, New York, an infantryman in the first Battle of Bull Run, who died at age 111 on March 12, 1953—48 days after Magee. Albert Woolson of Duluth, Minnesota, a drummer who never saw military action, lived until Aug. 2, 1956, at age 106. The last Confederate soldier, Pleasant Crump of Talladega, Alabama, died at 104 in 1951. 

A stereographic image of a Union band

The roster of the 12th Ohio Cavalry band, listed  with the place  and date they enlisted.

Cavalry vs. Calvary: Not a hill to die on

Etched in stone: Note the spelling correction on the seventh line of this marker

 Forty years ago, a British country singer named Paul Kennerly wrote a concept album dealing with the Civil War from a Southern perspective. "White Mansions" is far from politically correct, but it has become a cult classic. The characters were portrayed by  Waylon Jennings, his wife Jessi Colter, and John Dillon and Steve Cash from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
 One of my favorite songs on the album was about two warhorses, "The Union Mare and the Confederate Grey" (click to listen). Kennerly betrays his roots by using "grey" instead of "gray," which is how we usually spell it down South.
 But the greater faux pas in the song is in the way Waylon Jennings sang it. In an otherwise outstanding performance, he pronounced cavalry as calvary:

Two horses were trotting. They pranced and they ran.
Each one was commanded by a calvary man.
Two horses stood grazing where their dead riders lay.
A Union mare and a Confederate grey.

They nuzzled each other, as they teased and had fun.
They bathed in the warm rays of the old Southern sun.
No more senseless orders for them to obey.
So they acted like lovers, this mare and this grey.

Now these are such sad times that we're all living in.
For killing your brother is the mightiest sin.
How happy we'd be if we acted the way
of the Union mare and the Confederate grey.

Two horses were trotting. They pranced and they ran.
Each one was commanded by a calvary man.
Two horses stood grazing where their dead riders lay.
A Union mare and a Confederate grey.

 At least when Joan Baez recorded "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," she got "cavalry" correct when she changed "till Stoneman's cavalry came" into "till so much cavalry came."
 It's a common mistake. The Civil War memorial in Tampa, Fla., used Calvary instead of Cavalry, and it cost the veterans' committee $1,635 to fix the cast metal plaque.
 Cavalry was originally misspelled on the stone that marks the site of the May 1, 1865, skirmish in northern Anderson County, S.C. Jimmy Orr, who worked with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to install the monument in 1998, says he is unsure if the error was his or the engravers. "We Baptists are obsessed with Calvary, for obvious reasons," he said.
 Toward the end of Stoneman's Raid, during the pursuit of Jefferson Davis, it is said that some of Stoneman's cavalry camped at Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher, N.C. This account of Gen. Stoneman sparing the church is a myth, as the general was no longer with the raid by the time they passed through Henderson County. We don't know much about the general's faith, but we do know he had a unique perspective on the desecration of Southern churches.

Attorney & general: Little sister's big day

Kate Stoneman became the first female lawyer in New York

 Twenty years after the Civil War, George Stoneman was the governor of California. Meanwhile, back in New York where the general was raised, his little sister Kate was making her own mark in the Statehouse.

 That’s why the Albany Law School celebrates March 27 as Kate Stoneman Day. Catharine “Kate” Stoneman was a longtime teacher who, in 1885, became the first woman to pass the bar exam in New York. Then she was banned by a three-judge panel who ruled that there “no precedent … and no necessity” for women to practice law—not unless the state legislature voted otherwise.

 Kate Stoneman immediately proved her legal skills by personally marshalling a bill through the legislature and convincing the governor to sign it, making it legal for women to practice law. On May 22, 1886, at age 45 she became the first woman admitted to the New York bar, and 12 years later she became the first female to officially graduate from the Albany Law School.
 Gen. Stoneman’s relationships with his sisters reveal a softer side of the hard-driving Yankee, whose troops terrorized parts of the Carolinas and Virginia during the closing days of the Civil War.

Joan Baez: 'Till Stoneman's Cavalry came'

This marker was erected Jan. 19, 1988 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
They probably didn't mean to celebrate a Yankee birthday, but the ceremony
was held just one day after the 150th birthday of Major Abram B. Garner.
I know Garner's birthday because it's the same as mine. —Tom Layton, editor 

 The Stoneman Gazette congratulates Joan Baez on her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her biggest hit, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, references Stoneman's Raid:

Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
till Stoneman’s cavalry came, and tore up the tracks again.

 Songwriters Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm (who were inducted into the Hall of Fame with The Band in 1994) conjured up Caine to narrate historical events at the end of the Civil War.
 In the winter of '65, the Confederacy was just barely alive, and the purpose of Stoneman's Raid was to finish it off. After Stoneman's cavalry destroyed the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, the rebels' final lifeline was the Piedmont Railroad between Danville and Greensboro.
 After Richmond fell, both of those towns served as temporary capitals of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided April 3-10 in Danville, until he heard that Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered April 9 at Appomattox. Then he fled to North Carolina, where he hoped that Gen. Joseph Johnston's army would be able to continue the fight.

 Davis was aboard one of the last trains that made it to Greensboro before the Reedy Fork trestle was destroyed April 11 in a daring raid ordered by Stoneman and led by Maj. Abram Garner. At the time, the Yankees were unaware of Lee's surrender or Davis's flight.

 Davis stayed April 11-16 in Greensboro and then eluded Stoneman's cavalry on his way south through Charlotte, past the smoldering bridge at Nation Ford, and across South Carolina. He held final meetings in Abbeville and Washington (Ga.) before catching up with his family and being captured by Michigan troops May 10 in south Georgia. 

This bridge crosses Reedy Fork at the same place as the original timber trestle destroyed by Stoneman's cavalry. (Photo by Royce Haley).

Yankee band plays 'Dixie' for Athens coeds

ATHENS, Ga.

This arch was the gateway to the
University of Georgia when Yankee
cavalry camped on campus 150 years
 ago. Nowadays, only graduates are
privileged to walk through the arch.

 Weren't we just at war?
 You could hardly tell it May 4, 1865, in Athens. Trains were once again running between Atlanta and Augusta, with Yankees and Confederates riding peaceably together. 
 Confederate Gen. Alexander Reynolds invited Union Col. Brazilliah Stacy and his staff to have lunch at his home in Athens. 
 The only place lead was flying was in the composing room of The Southern Watchman newspaper, where the Yankees published an "extra" to proclaim their conquests and warn the Athenians against fighting. "In the four small pages of that unique journal," Ohio Capt. Frank Mason wrote, "there was given a concise account of the surrender of General Lee, the assassination of President Lincoln, the destruction of Salisbury, and other important recent events, and the editorial page bristled with original verses, and a stately appeal to the Athenians to accept the result of the war, and renew their allegiance to the Union of their fathers."
 Our war correspondent, Capt. Henry Weand, felt refreshed by a full night's sleep and enjoyed the morning ride from Danielsville into Athens. He wrote in his journal:

     This is another beautiful town; the fine weather, roses in full bloom, and the air filled with their fragrance make a happy resting place. In this place 500 rebels were encamped, but not a shot was fired at us, which seemed strange. Plenty of rebel Generals were here, and all mingled with us with the greatest freedom.
     There is nothing exultant about our men. The people treat us kindly and appreciate the treatment we accord to them.
     In this town, yesterday Confederate money had some value, but today it has none. In the town barber shop, which was well-patronized, a Confederate officer offered a twenty-dollar Confederate bill for a shave, and the barber refused it, on which the officer twisted the note into shape, lit his pipe with it, and stalked out of the shop.

 Mason's book explains another reason why the troops enjoyed their sojourn in Athens. 

     The local institution which most interested the invaders was the Young Ladies Seminary, where bevies of attractive-looking pupils in white dresses and palmetto hats were seen walking in the grounds during the afternoon under the watchful guard of their teachers, and venturing occasional glances at the dusty invaders outside the seminary fence. The band of the Twelfth Ohio*, dusty and battered from its long and tuneless wanderings, was stirred out and posted in front of the school, where it played a various programme, in which national airs were interspersed with "Dixie" and "My Maryland.” At the first note, the young ladies were hurried into the building by their indignant teachers, but they retired to their rooms and showed their appreciation of the serenade by furtively waving handkerchiefs from their windows. Theoretically, they were loyal to the Confederacy, as all Southern women were; practically, they were tired of the war and glad it was over.

 The Young Ladies Seminary would have been the Lucy Cobb Institute, which opened in 1859. (Women were excluded from the University of Georgia until 1918.) The institute closed in 1931, but the building still stands on Milledge Avenue as the home of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia.

The Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, where young ladies waved
 hankerchiefs from second-floor windows to tease the Ohio band.

 Stoneman's raiders camped May 4 in what is now the North Campus quadrangle of the University of Georgia. Union Gen. William Palmer was a forgiving sort, and his troops were not in a burning mood, which is why the Georgia campus still has antebellum buildings such as Old College and Waddel Hall. 

Georgia's Philosophical Hall, built in 1821,
named for Dr. Moses Waddel in the 1950s,
is now part of the Dean Rusk Center.

 A month earlier, the University of Alabama was not so fortunate. A Union raid under the command of Gen. James Wilson torched the Tuscaloosa campus April 4, 1865. Yankees ignored pleas to spare the Rotunda and its library. Care to guess what one book was rescued from the library? Insert your Alabama joke, or click here for the amazing truth. It was an 1853 English translation of the Quran.
 One hundred and fifty years ago today, Wilson and Palmer established communications between Macon and Athens and began to coordinate their efforts to capture Jefferson Davis, the elusive Confederate president. "Between the two of us," Capt. Weand wrote, "we expect to bag Jeff Davis."
 Meanwhile, Davis was in Washington, Ga., just 40 miles from Palmer, where he held one final meeting with a few of his cabinet members before they all scattered in their efforts to escape. Two of members of the Confederate cabinet eventually did make it to Cuba. Tomorrow, we'll have the story of how Davis got away—at least temporarily.

———

* The band of the 12th Ohio included an 18-year-old bugler named William Allen Magee, who lived to 106 and was one of the last three living veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic before he died in 1953. 

NEXT➤ Tennessee Yankees chase Jeff Davis' shadow

May 4: 1865 in Washington, Ga.: Confederate President Jeferson Davis disbanded what little was left of the Confederate government

Stoneman's headquarters on Caesars Head

Caesars Head, SC
(photo by Jeff Clark)

 As a member of the Army Signal Corps, 24-year-old Private Allen "Frank" Frankenberry had the best views of Stoneman's Raid. His unit was responsible for manning mountaintop flag stations to relay long-distance semaphore messages in a land without telegraph lines.  
 On April 30, 1865, his brigade marched south out of Brevard, N.C., crossed the Blue Ridge for the fifth time in 33 days, and entered South Carolina for the first time. Figuratively speaking, the Union soldiers looked down on the state where the rebellion began. Then Falkenberry stepped out onto the 3,200-foot high cliff called Caesars Head and literally looked down upon South Carolina.
 He wrote in his diary that Caesars Head had "the grandest, most magnificent view of the country and mountains I ever had." If it was clear enough, he could see all the way to Anderson, the brigade's destination over 50 miles away.
 Before the cavalry descended the ridge and marched toward Anderson, they received their wages for the first time in a couple of months. (Lack of pay could be one explanation for their looting during the past two weeks.) Union privates like Frankenberry earned $16 per month, lieutenants $105, colonels $181, and generals $315 to $758.

The 36-year-old benchmark
atop Caesar's Head has been
worn smooth by sightseers.
I doubt that the 150-year-old
 Stoneman inscription remains.

 Paying several hundred soldiers took some time, and while the march was halted, Frankenberry and a few friends left a mountaintop signal for the ages. He carved his initials into a rock on the summit, along with the message "HdQrs Stoneman Cav Apr 30th 65."

 Last time I was at Caesars Head*, I looked for the inscription but could find no sign of it in the well-worn rocks on the summit. State park employees told me they had never heard of it.
 Another member of the graffiti gang with Frankenberry was "the cute Yankee" who boasted about this inscription the following night in Anderson, when he was assigned to guard the home of Emmala Reed and her family. Tomorrow, we will launch a three-part serial from Emmala's journals as she chronicles Stoneman's Raid in my hometown.

 * Regarding the genitive apostrophe missing from Caesars Head. That's the style established by the U.S. Bureau of Geographic Names, page 30.) 

Sing from the mountaintops: Hold the Fort

 If you have ever sung the hymn Hold the Fort, for I Am Coming, you can thank Frankenberry. That's the message he sent in October 1864 from Gen. William T. Sherman to Gen. John Corse, who had come under siege from Confederates as he guarded the railroad that was so vital to supplying Sherman's army.
 Frankenberry used signal flags to wig-wag those encouraging words from the top of Kennesaw Mountain over the heads of the Confederates to Allatoona, Georgia, 15 miles away. Corse indeed held the fort long enough for Sherman to respond and defeat the rebels, securing the way for his infamous March to the Sea.
 Maj. Daniel Webster Whittle, who was also part of Sherman's march, shared Frankenberry's message as a Gospel illustration with Philip P. Bliss, who turned it into a hymn made famous by Ira Sankey singing at Dwight L. Moody's crusades. (Whittle was a hymnwriter himself, composing Showers of Blessing. Bliss also wrote Hallelujah, What a Savior! as well as the tune for It Is Well With My Soul.)
 Here are Bliss' lyrics for Hold the Fort (click here to listen to a recording by the Kings Heralds quartet):

Ho, my comrades, see the signal, waving in the sky!
Reinforcements now appearing, victory is nigh.

“Hold the fort, for I am coming,” Jesus signals still;
Wave the answer back to Heaven, “By Thy grace we will.”

See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on;
Mighty ones around us falling, courage almost gone!

          (Chorus)

See the glorious banner waving! Hear the trumpet blow!
In our Leader’s Name we triumph over every foe.

          (Chorus)

Fierce and long the battle rages, but our help is near;
Onward comes our great Commander, cheer, my comrades, cheer!

          (Chorus)

NEXT➤ Anderson: 'They wished to ruin us'

The view southwest from Caesars Head toward Table Rock and Anderson
(photo by Jeff Clark)

The Medal of Honor and even bigger prizes

On this map from Craig Swain's blog, blue arrows show the six-pronged raid of April 11, 1865. Red indicates railroads. Yellow stars north and southwest of Greensboro mark bridges Stoneman burned.

GREENSBORO, N.C.

    The Congressional Medal of Honor was established in 1861 and bestowed upon 1,522 heroes of the Civil War. The last of those was earned during Stoneman's Raid in North Carolina.
    On a foggy morning 150 years ago today, April 11, 1865, Lt. Col. Charles M. Betts led 75 soldiers toward Greensboro, which was guarded by thousands of Confederates. Betts did not yet know it, but Robert E. Lee had surrendered two days earlier, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis had evacuated Richmond and was on his way from Danville to Greensboro.
     Betts had no intention of attacking Greensboro, but he wanted the Confederates to think so. By forcing the Confederates to defend against that possibility, he was able to provide cover for simultaneous raids against nearby armories and railroad bridges.

Lt. Col. Charles Betts received the
Medal of Honor in 1892 for capturing
 a Confederate battalion April 11, 1865.

     The 27-year-old Betts and his Pennsylvania soldiers rode overnight from Salem through Kernersville and Sandy Ridge, where a slave informed them that a battalion from the Third South Carolina Cavalry was camped nearby. Charging out of the morning fog, they overwhelmed the Confederates so quickly that the Yankees were able to eat the breakfast the rebels had been cooking. Betts' troops killed one and took 48 captives, including their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Johnson, who got off only one shot before he surrendered at saber-point.
     Historian Chris Hartley tells of one awed South Carolina prisoner who asked, "Do y'all fight this way all the time?" Sgt. William McGee answered, "Yes, this is our style of fighting; how do you like it?"

     Could this be the same William Magee who was the last survivor of Stoneman's Raid? 
     With almost as many prisoners as he had soldiers, Betts had his hands full, and he knew he was in a precarious position deep in enemy territory. Still, there were other tempting targets nearby. Betts summoned Sgt. Selden Wilson and told him to pick 10 good men and fresh horses. Wilson chose one of the captured horses, wearing the South Carolina coat of arms on its bridle.
     Betts gave these 11 men what could have been a suicide mission: Attack the North Carolina Railroad just four miles from Greensboro, cut the telegraph line, and burn the bridge over Buffalo Creek. Amazingly, not only was the bridge undefended, but a local farmer offered to help the Yankees. "I will help you," he said, "for I am as good a Union man as God ever let live, but this the first time I ever dared say so."
     Buffalo Creek wasn't the biggest bridge-burning of the day. The other one became more famous than any Medal of Honor, thanks to the song, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
till Stoneman’s cavalry came, and tore up the tracks again.

     The Danville train was the Confederacy's last lifeline between Virginia and North Carolina. 
     When Lt. Col. Betts threatened Greensboro, he was providing cover for a raid on the railroad to Danville. Major Abram Garner led 99 men who circled west of Greensboro to destroy the Reedy Fork bridge north of town. It did not burn easily, so Garner's troops attacked it with axes. They were interrupted by a skirmish and one last passing train, but within hours they brought it down. They had to take an even longer way back to avoid capture, and by the time they caught up with Stoneman, they had missed the long-awaited Battle of Salisbury.
     Confederate President Jefferson Davis had crossed that very bridge just hours before it was destroyed. The next day, when President Davis heard what happened, he said defiantly, "A miss is as good as a mile." He would elude capture for another month.
     Ultimately, Lt. Col. Betts and some of these same Pennsylvanian raiders would finally chase Jeff Davis into a trap deep in Georgia on May 10.

 NEXT➤ Pyres in Salisbury, but a pyrric victory for rebels

While Stoneman's 1st Brigade was raiding around Greensboro, his other two brigades fought a skirmish April 11 in Mocksville on their way to attack Salisbury the following morning.