Sunday, May 28, 2017

Memorial Day: 'Your Dear Son is Dead'

Union private Oliver Stebbins
 The Civil War was nearly over when John and Charlotte Stebbins of Three Rivers, Michigan, sent their oldest son Oliver to join the Union Army.
 He enlisted Feb. 17, 1865, in the 11th Michigan Cavalry, which was one of the eight brigades assigned to Stoneman's Raid. They rode out of Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 21, 1865—Oliver's 18th birthday.
 For the next four weeks, Stoneman's troops were beyond the reach of mail or telegraph, so we can assume that Stebbins' family heard nothing from him. They must have rejoiced to hear of the fall of Richmond April 2 and the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee April 9—certain signs that the war was ending and that their son would soon be coming home.
 Then came the following heartbreaking letters, the first two from a fellow Michigan soldier named John Schroder. [The crude spelling and wording is preserved from the original letters. I have inserted a few explanatory notes in brackets.]

Chattanooga, Tenn. April the 23 1865

Mrs. Stebbins,
I will let you know about your Oliver he is sick in the Hospital here. he was brought here with the Measles he has got over the Measles and has got Nuemonia in his side and the Bronchetis in the other side it is a hard case I have been here sick with the Measles and am just getting over them I am doing all that I can for your Dear Son he is very thirsty and wants watter every little while I watched him all last night and if he was in his right mind I assure you he will get well my bed is right beside his if he wants any thing he cals on me but I dont know whether he is in his right mind or not I see that he has something to eat every meal for I giv it to him myself I belong to the same regiment that he does. I will write you again in two or three days No more at present
John Schroder Co J 11th Michigan Inf Chattanooga, Tennessee

Monday, May 1, 2017

Reasons for the war? How quickly we forget

This is not the first time a new president has needed a history lesson on the Civil War.
 It also happened in May 1865, when the war was as fresh as cavalry dust and the Yankees were still chasing the fugitive Confederate president Jefferson Davis across Georgia.
Here's a link to our original story in The Stoneman Gazette, where Union Gen. William Palmer wrote a passionate and eloquent letter intended for President Andrew Johnson. Palmer was alarmed to hear that the administration might delay the full emancipation of slaves, now that Lincoln was dead. Gen. Palmer wanted the new president to know what he was hearing from Southerners and why emancipation was non-negotiable.
 Our original story also includes links to the "Declaration of Causes," where several seceding states explained why they left the Union.
 If we're honest, we all have questions about the real reasons for secession and the Civil War (which are not necessarily the same), not to mention the complicated motives of individual generals and soldiers on both sides.
 However, the declarations of those who voted to secede are undeniable. For example, read what the delegates from Mississippi wrote:

Saturday, April 8, 2017

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).

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Remember when N.C. voted to save the Union?

 Four days before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, North Carolina held a statewide referendum to decide whether to secede from the Union. 
 You might have thought that was a foregone conclusion. Seven southern states had already exited.
 Yet at the end of February 1861, voters across North Carolina rejected secession and chose to remain in the Union. The vote was close, and it wasn't binding for long, but it remains a refreshing history lesson for our generation as we deal with another polarizing presidency and an increasingly fractious society.
North Carolina Standard, March 20, 1861
 This referendum was news to me when I began researching Stoneman's Raid and learned about it from the books of North Carolina historian Michael C. Hardy. I looked it up in old newspapers and found this county-by-county table in the North Carolina Standard published March 20, 1861 in Raleigh. The referendum was held February 28 (156 years ago today), but back then it took a couple of weeks to compile all the votes.
North Carolina voters faced two questions:
  1. Should the state hold a constitutional convention to consider secession?
  2. If the convention is approved, who would you vote for as your delegate?
 In effect, a vote against the convention was a vote for the Union.
 North Carolina rejected the convention by a margin of just 661 votes, 47,333 against and 46,672 for. That made the second question moot, but if the delegates had convened, they would have been 83-37 in favor of the Union.
 Many of the counties that would be raided by Stoneman in 1865 were overwhelmingly loyal to the Union: Watauga voted against a convention 536-72, Caldwell 651-186, Wilkes 1,890-51, Yadkin 1,490-34, Forsyth 1,409-286, and Guilford 2,771-113.
 Among counties ready to secede were Rowan 1,150-882, Catawba 918-158, Lincoln 708-86, Mecklenburg 1,448-252, McDowell 638-217, and Buncombe 1,219-389. Most of the support for secession was in eastern North Carolina, where slavery was more widespread.
 While North Carolina was still counting votes, Lincoln gave his inaugural address on March 4 and made one last eloquent plea to save the Union:
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.
So if North Carolinians were loyal to the Union, how did we wind up in the Confederacy?

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Cowpens: Following the footsteps of liberty

Stoneman's 1st Brigade probably visited the Scruggs homeplace on the Cowpens Battlefield
COWPENS, S.C.
Americans are notoriously bad at history, but here's one question you can't get wrong: Cowpens figured in (a) the Revolutionary War, (b) the Civil War, (c) World War II, or (d) the Iraq war?
 The answer is ... all of the above.
 Tuesday, January 17, marks the 236th anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, a brief but fierce fight in 1781 that went a long way toward ensuring American independence. Cowpens became the namesake for two Navy warships: an aircraft carrier nicknamed "the Mighty Moo" that was the first U.S. ship to enter Tokyo Bay in 1945, and a cruiser that fired Tomahawk missiles at an Iraqi nuclear facility in 1993. (That attack came on the 212th anniversary of the original Battle of Cowpens, which I will assume is only a coincidence.)

 As for the Civil War connection, we turn to Stoneman's 1st Brigade, which crossed the Cowpens battlefield April 29, 1865, in hot pursuit of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. 
 In his official report, Gen. William J. Palmer of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry wrote, "I had reached the vicinity of Cowpens battlefield, S.C., on April 29, when I received the order to endeavor to intercept Jefferson Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate specie." The orders came from Gen. George Stoneman, by now back in Knoxville, who believed that Davis absconded with up to $6 million in gold and silver specie when he abandoned his capital in Richmond April 2.
Red lines on this 1906 map show how Gen.
Palmer's 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry headed
from Rutherfordton toward Kings Mountain
before doubling back and crossing the Broad
 River at Island Ford. "Nashville" on this map
is actually Asheville. "Cowpens" marks the
location of the town rather than the
battlefield, which is 10 miles north of the
town and just south of the North Carolina
line. I added the blue arrow to show an
April 29-30 expedition by the 12th Ohio
in pursuit of Jefferson Davis.
 Gen. Palmer actually began the manhunt the day before, starting at Hickory Nut Gap southeast of Asheville (labeled Nashville on this map). He marched through Rutherfordton, N.C., headed toward another Revolutionary War battlefield at Kings Mountain. Then he had to backtrack 20 miles to find a way across the Broad River.
 His cavalry made the crossing at Island Ford (near the current U.S. 221 bridge north of Chesnee, S.C.) and headed toward Spartanburg on a road that took them across the Cowpens battlefield.
 As the Yankees scouted for information about Davis, it seems likely that they inquired at the cabin of Robert Scruggs, whose farm encompassed part of the old battlefield. (Sixteen years earlier, in 1849, historian Benson John Lossing had interviewed Scruggs to document details of the Battle of Cowpens for his Pictorial Field Book of the RevolutionLossing later wrote the Pictorial History of the Civil War, including a clever bridge-burning episode from Stoneman's Raid that he called "one of the most gallant little exploits of the war.")