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.

Vet's dilemma: Which side would he fight for?

FLAG POND, Tenn.

 One cold winter night in 1947, Anderson Moore was on his way to bed when he stumbled and fell. For the next five weeks he tolerated a painful crick in his neck, until he finally sought care at the Oteen Veterans Hospital near Asheville, N.C.

Anderson Moore (1847-1949)

 Doctors diagnosed a fractured vertebra and admitted Moore into a ward with a dozen young veterans of World War II. That must have made for some interesting war stories—because Moore was 100 years old and fought for the Union in the Civil War.
 Hospital administrators tipped The Asheville Citizen, which published Moore's story and asked him the obvious question: Why would a Southerner enlist with the Yankees?
 "To keep out of the rebel army," he declared.
 By the middle of the 20th century, it was easy for the public to forget that not all southerners were rebels. In fact, back in 1861 following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the majority of North Carolinians voted against secession. Pro-Union sentiment was strongest in the mountains, where few families owned slaves and most saw no reason to fight against the country that their fathers and grandfathers had fought for.
 Yet as soon as they turned 17, young men like Moore were required to join the Confederate army. If they dodged the draft, the local Home Guard would hunt them down.
 "I didn't have any better sense than to fight," Moore said.
 Actually, he had no choice but to fight. His only choice was: Which side would he fight for?
 When Moore turned 17 in 1864, he walked 50 miles to Strawberry Plains, Tenn., to enlist with the Union Army in the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. Unfortunately, there were not enough horses for all the soldiers. "We weren't mounted," he joked. "We were webfeet."
 He said he fought in a number of skirmishes and minor battles, including Stoneman's Raid. The 3rd N.C. Mounted Infantry was part of Stoneman's rear guard and occupied Boone and Asheville in the closing weeks of the war.
 Moore was born Jan. 10, 1847, in Flag Pond, Tenn., a mountain community just across Sams Gap from North Carolina. His longevity was no surprise, since his father lived to be 108. After the war, Moore became a farmer, was married twice, and had five children, five step-children, and 35 grandchildren. Some of them shared his pro-Union sympathies, because one of his grandsons was named Meade, after the Union general who defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. 
 Moore lived two more years and was 102 when he died June 3, 1949, at home in Madison County, N.C. As far as I have found, he was the next-to-last surviving veteran from Stoneman's Raid.
 

The nurse quoted in this clipping, Mercina "Jimmie" Pananes McSwain (1922-2013), was the daughter of Greek immigrants and a graduate of Johns Hopkins who met her husband Ray McSwain during the year she worked at the Oteen Veterans Hospital. She became known as the godmother of tennis in the Swannanoa Valley, and the town courts in Black Mountain are named for her.

NEXT➤ 75 years later: Roadside fame, household name

The ghost of Della Barnes

Della Barnes' truncated statue

PADUCAH, Ky.

 Della Barnes was a heartbreaker. One man gave her an expensive engagement ring, but she chose to marry another. The jilted man was so enraged that he cut off Della's ring finger, and she bled to death. 
 Or so the legend goes.
 The true story of Della's demise, as reported in the Paducah Daily Sun, is just as haunting. One summer night in 1897, Della told a friend that she didn't feel well and was going to take a dose of calomel, a mercury compound that is now known to be toxic but back then was used to treat various ailments. By accident, she swallowed morphine instead. Della went to bed and never woke up.
 The heartbroken man in this real-life tragedy was her father, Major George Barnes. A Tennessee native who remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War, he rode with the 12th Kentucky Cavalry in Stoneman's Raid and was mentioned in the New York Times for his leadership in the invasion of Boone, N.C. He was also entrusted with the destruction of the Confederate armory at Salisbury.
 After the war, Maj. Barnes married 17-year-old Anna Robinson and became a successful coal merchant and city councilman in Paducah, a city on the lower Ohio River across from Illinois.

Della's original monument

 Della was born in 1874, when her father was 38. He had three other daughters (two grew up to marry and one died at age five), but Della was his darling, and after she died on June 27, 1897, he never got over it. To mark her grave, he commissioned an Italian sculptor to carve a life-sized statue of Della holding a rose over her heart.
 Over the next year, he was engulfed by grief, his business failed, and his debts mounted.
 On November 3, 1898, Barnes bought 30 grains of morphine—the same drug that had killed Della. That's enough to kill 10 men. To get so much, he had to go to two apothecaries, and he told one of them he needed it for a sick horse. Instead, he swallowed it all with a bottle of whiskey. Hours later when his family found him, they called the same doctor who had tried to revive Della, but it was too late.
 Barnes, 62, left a note written on paper that had wrapped the morphine, explaining that he had no domestic trouble, but that he took his life because of financial embarrassment and his grief over Della's death. He asked God to have mercy on his soul and take care of his little grandson.
 According to his obituary:

The deceased was a good, conscientious man, and highly esteemed by all who knew him. His friends were numbered by the hundred, and among them are not only his old comrades at arms in the Union army, but the men who fought on the other side as well, and for whom he always showed the highest regard and friendship.

 Major Barnes was buried in an unmarked grave next to Della in Paducah's Oak Grove cemetery.
 Today, Della's grave is barely recognizable. Her monument has disappeared, piece by piece. After vandals broke off her ring finger, people swore they saw the statue bleeding or crying. Then her head and torso disappeared. Now, all that remains is the marble foundation, decorated by flowers.
 But some people say ... if you dare to visit the cemetery at night on the anniversary of her death, you just might see Della's pale ghost walking the darkened paths through the old oak grove, clutching a blood-red rose over her heart.

NEXT➤ Vet's dilemma: Which side would he fight for?

Paducah Daily Sun, June 28, 1897

Paducah Daily Sun, Nov. 5, 1898

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

Reconciled: Yankees honor Jeff Davis' daughter

The 1907 reunion of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry in Colorado Springs (click to enlarge)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.

 After leading Stoneman's Raid in the manhunt for Jefferson Davis, Gen. William J. Palmer founded the city of Colorado Springs, built a railroad empire, and gave away fortunes. In 1894, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in the 1864 Battle of Red Hill, Alabama.

Gen. William Jackson Palmer

 As he turned 70 in 1906, the Quaker general was a widower who lived in a Rocky Mountain castle called Glen Eyrie and enjoyed riding horses with his daughter Margory in a majestic canyon called "the Garden of the Gods."
 His genteel world came crashing down on Oct. 27, 1906, when the old cavalryman was thrown from his horse and paralyzed by a broken neck.
 Gen. Palmer survived for over two years but was no longer able to travel on the trains he loved. He was so determined to attend the 1907 reunion of his Fifteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry that he brought all the veterans to Colorado Springs, chartering a train for the 1,800-mile journey from Philadelphia.
 It would turn out to be much more than a reunion of aging Yankees, as the entrepreneurial magazine The World's Work reported in its February 1908 issue. Here is an excerpt: