A new marker in Boone

 Stoneman's Raid historic markers are ubiquitous in western North Carolina, and there will soon be a new one in Boone, where the action started 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 will be part of the Civil War Trails program, a six-state initiative is designed to promote Civil War tourism. This is separate from the state historical markers. One of those markers has stood in Boone since 1940.
 The new marker, to be erected in April, details the March 1865 skirmish, the April 1865 occupation, and the Boone Cemetery, where 13 Union loyalists are buried.
 Boone was not incorporated until 1873 and was then known as Councill's Store. Jordan Councill's nephew, Jacob Mast Councill, was among the three local men who died in the raid.
 Watauga County had voted pro-Union in the 1860 secession referendum, but there was a Confederate contingent organized as the Home Guard. These men were drilling that morning at the original courthouse on Linney Street when Union Major Miles Keogh led the blue-coated cavalry into town.
 The Civil War Trails program already marks sites in Cove Creek (Camp Mast), Patterson, and near Linville (the graves of Keith and Melinda Blalock).

DISPATCHES 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  

Railroaded: Union rides Southern again

Radford, Virginia

 

The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, ancestor of Norfolk Southern, was a prime target for Stoneman's Raid. Red lines on this map show the movements of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry, commanded by Col. William Jackson Palmer and Major William Wagner. At the top right, note Lynchburg, where the raiders pinched Appomattox, hastening the surrender of Robert E. Lee. Palmer founded two western railroads that were ancestors of the Union Pacific.

 Union Pacific is acquiring Norfolk Southern in an $85 billion merger that will create America's first transcontinental freight railroad, spanning 43 states with more than 50,000 miles of track. The Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern both have roots in Stoneman's Raid, which was basically a Yankee attack on the trains that supplied Robert E. Lee's army.
 In the days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Stoneman's troops wrecked the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad, cutting off the rations and ammunition that Lee needed. The ET&V (also known as the Virginia & Tennessee) was an ancestor of Norfolk Western and Norfolk Southern.
 President Lincoln described the ET&V as "the gut of the Confederacy." Future president Rutherford B. Hayes (whose troops burned the New River trestle in 1864) called it "the jugular vein of rebeldom."  
 Gen. George Stoneman's orders were to "destroy the ET&V beyond Christiansburg, about ten or fifteen miles, where there are numerous trestles and small bridges." If he met only light resistance, he was to spare several bridges (including the big one crossing the New River) and move onto Danville. The Pennsylvania officers who carried out these raids later were railroad men who would help build Union Pacific. The New River Bridge had been burned in 1864 in the Battle of Radford (Va.), only to be rebuilt by the Confederacy. 
 The "Danville Train" mentioned in the song "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" was a forerunner of the Southern Railway, which also was merged into Norfolk Western in 1980. Stoneman's raiders cut that track just a few hours after Jefferson Davis fled from Danville to Greensboro. 

New River crossing in Pulaski County, Va., with19th-century bridge piers next to the Norfolk Southern trestle.

 Here are some of our favorite train stories from the annals of The Stoneman Gazette:

How to hack Confederate secrets: On April 4, 1865,  Stoneman's raiders captured the railroad depot in Christiansburg, Virginia. They held the telegraph operator at gunpoint and forced him to disclose some of Lee's secrets. Back when Roanoke was known as Big Lick, Christiansburg was an important station on the ET&V.

Some bridges you just hate to burn: As the raiders approached Christiansburg, Stoneman ordered a cavalry battalion led by Major William Wagner to burn covered-bridge trestles at the foot of the Peaks of Otter. Wagner camped one night at the Buford homeplace. Confederate officer Algernon Buford was president the Richmond & Danville Railroad. 

Rebels and their bridge fall for Yankee-pranky: The Nation Ford trestle connects Charlotte with ports in Charleston and Savannah. The Catawba River was a formidable crossing when the original trestle was built in 1852. Stoneman's raiders burned the wood-framed trestle April 19, 1865 with a ruse that historian Benson John Lossing described as "one of the most gallant little exploits of the war." The bridge was rebuilt after the war and after an 1916 flood and has been part of the Norfolk Southern system. 

The Medal of Honor and even bigger prizes: Col. Charles Betts was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for a raid near Greensboro, N.C., where his troops destroyed the Reedy Fork trestle and nearby armories. Confederate President Jefferson Davis escaped over the trestle just hours before the Yankees burned it.

Swannanoa: One last stand for the Lost Cause: The last Confederate victory was at Swannanoa Gap, where rebels repulsed Union raiders headed toward Asheville. The gap is where the Southern Railway built the Swannanoa tunnel, which opened in 1879 and brought trains from the Piedmont into the Land of the Sky.   

Pyres in Salisbury, but a pyrrhic victory for rebs: Salisbury was a major hub for the Southern Railway, and the Spencer Shops are now the site of the North Carolina Transportation Museum. The next-to-last Confederate victory was when the rebels successfully defended the Yadkin Valley Trestle, which became part of the Southern Railway.

Reconciled: Yankees honor Jeff Davis' daughter: Gen. William J. Palmer chartered a Pennsylvania Railroad train to bring his former troops from Philadelphia to Colorado Springs for the 35th reunion of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The "Pennsy" and New York Central merged in 1966 and went bankrupt in 1976, with Norfolk Southern taking many of the tracks. Palmer founded the Kansas & Western and Denver & Rio Grande railroads, which became part of the Union Pacific. 

Gen. Palmer was an innovator who used coal rather than wood to power his locomotives, and pioneered narrow-gauge tracks that enabled his Denver & Rio Grande trains to navigate mountains. 

Connecting the Shots: 1861-1865

Anderson Intelligencer, May 30, 1900

 Could the same man have fired the first and last shots of the Civil War? That's the implication of some recently unearthed newspaper clippings.

 The Anderson Intelligencer of May 30, 1900, reprinted a story from the Greenville Mountaineer, signed anonymously by "Old Coins," who interviewed eyewitnesses to document the last "battle" of the Civil War, which involved Stoneman's raiders on May 1, 1865—three weeks after Robert E. Lee's surrender in Virginia. The clipping quotes a veteran of the skirmish, Butler Dyer:

Mr. Paul Allan, of Charleston, was one of the Citadel cadets and who was the man who fired the first shot of the war on the steamer "Star of the West," was also a member of this company, and fired the last shot at the enemy on this occasion, thus having the somewhat remarkable experience and distinction of having inaugurated and finished the sanguinary conflict of '61 to '65.

 The Bamberg Herald of May 19, 1921, carried an account from The Greenville News, where the skirmish was documented by Louise Ayer Vandiver, who authored the Traditions and History of Anderson County in 1928. Mrs. Vandiver (1865-1938, born in Union, S.C., during Stoneman's Raid) collected historical clippings, and her source may have been the 1900 account. 

Among the Confederate party was young man named Paul Allen, a Charlestonian, who, it is said, fired the first shot at the Star of the West, having been a Citadel cadet at the time, and who, just to complete his record in a satisfactory manner, fired the last shot at the retreating Federal cavalry in this final skirmish on the lonely road away off in Anderson county, ending, as he had begun, one of the greatest wars in all of history. 

 Mrs. Vandiver goes on to identify Andersonians who were part of that skirmish, including James L. Dean, D.S. McCullough, F.A. Silcox, J.B. Lewis, G.W. Sullivan, and E.A. Smyth. Ellison Adger Smyth became the founder of Pelzer Mills and helped make Greenville the "Textile Capital of the World." We previously reported Smyth's role in the Anderson skirmish. Smyth (1847-1942, raised in Charleston) also claimed to have witnessed the first shot on Fort Sumter.

 Sullivan (1847-1928) later became mayor of Williamston, which may help explain why the "Confederate Skirmish" historical marker was erected there in 1964, rather than nearer the actual site. 

 John Baylis Lewis (1848-1929) became an Anderson businessman. 

 The Stoneman Gazette previously reported how a Georgia rebel boasted of loading the first gun fired at Fort Sumter. 

More Civil War coincidences

 The possibility that the same man might have fired the first and last shots of the war reminded me of these coincidences.

 The war began and ended on farms owned by the same man. The first battle in 1861, called First Manassas (by the Union) or First Bull Run (by the Confederates), was waged on a plantation owned by Wilmer McLean (1814-1882). Seeking to protect his family from combat, he moved to Appomattox Courthouse, Va., where in 1865 generals Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant met in his parlor as they negotiated the terms of surrender.  

 Among the Confederate veterans at Bull Run was Lt. John Long, serving with the 4th S.C. Volunteers. His son Billy Long married Caty Moore Callahan, whose father owned the farm where the Anderson skirmish occured. 

 Here are a few more coincidences that we reported previously.

The latest victims of the 'Late Unpleasantness'? 

Jay County, Indiana

 Two Confederates were killed during Stoneman's Raid after Robert E. Lee's surrender April 9, 1865.
 On May 3, 1865, in Anderson, South Carolina, McKenzie "Theodore" Parker of Charleston, was killed during a confrontation with Stoneman's rear guard. A week later in Madison, Georgia, Texas Ranger A.C. Wall was shot by Stoneman's 12th Ohio cavalry.
 Several Union soldiers died in Anderson during the post-war occupation. Some were at the hands of Manse Jolly, including a Lt. Chase from Michigan. And in October, three federal soldiers from Maine were ambushed and killed at Brown's Ferry on the Savannah River.

 The last Confederate funerals were in our century. After the submarine Hunley was recovered in 2000, the remains of the crew were interred in 2014 in Charleston. In 2020, Jack Buttram was reburied after his remains were found on a battlefield in Mumford, Alabama, near Talladega. Buttram, 39, died April 23, 1865, in the "Battle of Mumford," when local civilians made a stand against the 2nd Michigan Cavalry. That unit was returning from Wilson's Raid, which had captured Jefferson Davis May 10, 1865, in Irwin, Georgias. Stoneman's Raid was also involved in the pursuit of the Confederate president.

 Indiana claims that private John Williams was the last man to die in the Civil War. He was killed May 13, 1865, in the Battle of Palmito Ranch on the Rio Grande River in Texas.

 On May 19, 1865, during the Union occupation of Eufala, Alabama, the 1st Florida Cavalry was ambushed at Hodby's Bridge, resulting in the death of Corporal John Skinner.

Anderson Intelligencer, April 30, 1900

 

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. 

'The better angels of our nature'

March 4, 1861

 Eight-score and four years ago, the United States of America was at a crossroads. Seven of the 34 states had seceded after the election of Abraham Lincoln, and eight more were on the verge of leaving on March 4, 1861, as the 16th President gave his inaugural address. Speaking from the East Portico of the Capitol, beneath scaffolding on the unfinished Rotunda—Lincoln appealed to the "better angels of our nature" as he walked a nuanced line between the legality of slavery and the preservation of the Union. His words still resonate in our times.
 Four years later, Lincoln struck a different tone in his second inaugural, raising national hopes with these thoughts: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
 During Lincoln's 1865 inauguration, Gen. George Stoneman was in eastern Tennessee, organizing the raid that Gen. U.S. Grant believed was vital for ending the Civil War. Stoneman was not a Lincolnite and was not free of malice. His views toward Reconstruction were illustrated in this 1865 episode from a Knoxville church, plus this 1866 riot in Memphis. 
 Here is Lincoln's 1861 speech, with a few passages I have bold-faced for your attention. Ellipses indicates passages that I've edited out. 

Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural Speech

Fellow-Citizens of the United States:
 In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President before he enters on the execution of this office. ...
 Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
 Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
 Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
 I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause--as cheerfully to one section as to another.
 There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
 No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
 It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
 There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
 Again: In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States"?

Civil War hooks in my new book

Order at McFarlandBooks.com/LeConte-Lodge

 McFarland Books recently published LeConte Lodge / A Centennial History of a Smoky Mountain Landmark, which has been a three-year project with my former newspaper colleague, Mike Hembree. 

 Somebody asked me, "What's your next book? The Civil War?"
 I have considered turning The Stoneman Gazette into a book (since Google's blogspot platform will not last forever). 

 But there are Civil War tales in the new book. Joseph Le Conte, whose family name adorns Mount Le Conte, evidently visited Alum Cave searching for nitre, the raw ingredient in gunpowder. His pro-slavery sentiments complicate his legacy.

 Before LeConte Lodge was built, the highest inn in eastern America was the Cloudland Hotel atop Roan Mountain. It was built by Gen. John T. Wilder, a Union officer whose "Lightning Brigade" made a decisive stand in the 1863 Battle of Chicakmauga. 

 Uncle Ike Carter, who was 75 when he visited the tent camp that became LeConte Lodge in 1925, was one of the first to scale Mount Le Conte. Carter told photographer Dutch Roth that he first made the hike as a boy before the Civil War.

 Samuel Simcox, an English immigrant who worked on railroads during the Civil War, became the oldest man to climb Le Conte when he made the hike at age 80 in 1927. (The record is now 93, by Rufus Morgan). 

 I haven't been able to connect any of these individuals with Stoneman's Raid. It's likely that the raiders would have had a view of Mount Le Conte in March 1865 as they departed Knoxville via Strawberry Plains and Morristown en route to North Carolina.

 Mike has another book on the way, Petty vs. Pearson,  a chronicle of NASCAR's defining rivalry. In the last days of the war, Stoneman's Raiders passed through Spartanburg, Pearson and Hembree's hometown; and Greensboro, 20 miles from Petty Enterprises. I glanced at their genealogies, hoping to find if their rivalry might go back to the Late Unpleasantness. But I didn't find any Civil War veterans in their family trees. 

–Tom Layton

'You are the man who caused all this trouble?'

  This past weekend marked the 163rd anniversary of the 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, which is a historical touchstone for many of our readers. 

 So I was glad to see historian Heather Cox Richardson address that fateful day in her astute "‬Letters from an American."

 The Georgia man who claimed to have loaded the "Shot Heard Round the World" ended the war as a captive of Stoneman's Raid. The Stoneman Gazette had that story: "You are the man who caused all this trouble?"

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. 

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.