'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, which had become known 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. 

Macie Sherard, 1905

 My grandmother was Macie Sherard Griffin (1887-1973), an honor roll student under Miss Hubbard at Central Graded School. She married Thomas Jackson Griffin (1885-1952), the son of Confederate veteran Pierce Butler* Griffin (1847-1925). Pierce was a war orphan: He was 14 when his father, Jackson Griffin (1819-1861) died of typhoid fever in the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond. 

 Miss Hubbard was 36 years old in June 1891 when she took up the cause of raising a monument in Anderson to recognize the county's Civil War veterans. She was elected the first president of the Ladies' Memorial Association of Anderson County. They held a series of bake sales, cake walks, suppers, silver teas, and baby showers and eventually collected $2,500. 

Nora Hubbard's grave at Silverbrook Cemetery:
"Others wrought in brick and stone,
she sought to shape the lives of men."

 Then she served on a committee that commissioned Oscar Hammond, a marble dealer from Greenville, to sculpt the monument, rather than use one of the mass-produced zinc memorials sold to so many Southern towns. Hammond's craftsmen carved a 7-foot image of Gen. William Wirt Humphreys (1836-1893), a local Confederate veteran who had organized the local reunions.

 The monument cost $2,760. Made of Tennessee gray marble, it was originally proposed for Silverbrook Cemetery but was erected on the Anderson square. If it must come down, I hope it will be relocated to the cemetery, where Miss Hubbard and Gen. Humphreys are buried. 

 The monument was unveiled on January 18, 1902 (my birthday, 53 years before I was born—a blessed day for Macie, as I was given the name of her late husband). About 150 Confederate veterans attended the ceremony, and I presume they included my 54-year-old great-grandfather, Pierce Butler Griffin*, as well as my 73-year-old great-great grandfather, Sgt. James Wiley Sherard (1829-1910), who was hobbled by a battlefield injury that he suffered in 1863 while defending Jackson, Mississippi. Sherard was among five brothers who fought for the Confederacy, serving in Company F of the 24th South Carolina infantry. Their youngest brother, William Yancey Sherard (1838-1864), died in the battle of Fort Harrison near Richmond, Virginia. Three of the brothers lived long enough to see the monument erected.

 The ceremony featured the military band from 9-year-old Clemson Agricultural College, which played "Maryland, My Maryland" and "Taps," and a speech by Mayor George Tolly. Mrs. Cora Reed Ligon sang "The Conquered Banner," a poem by Father Abram Joseph Ryan (a Catholic priest who was a Confederate chaplain), set to music by her sister, Mrs. Emmala Reed Miller, a teacher who famously chronicled life in Anderson during and after the war.
 "The Conquered Banner" is styled after the "Concord Hymn," a classic Revolutionary War poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that immortalized the line "the shot heard round the world."

 Miss Hubbard was given the honor of unveiling the monument. According to some accounts, as she pulled the cord it slipped loose from the shroud. But a young boy from the crowd climbed the 35-foot monument and unveiled the statue.

Tear it down? Or can we reconcile with it?

It's time to replace this panel on the monument.

 The 118-year-old monument is a stately fixture on the town square, facing east toward the 122-year-old county courthouse across Main Street. When you look closely, though, it's not so dignified. Read the inscriptions, and it's painfully obvious why many want it removed.
 If you approach the monument from Mr. Whitner's statue, you will be greeted by a carved Confederate flag with these lines from The Conquered Banner:

  Though conquered, we adore it!
  Love the cold, dead hands that bore it! 

 On the opposite side, those walking up from Sullivan's Metropolitan Grill see another verse from Father Ryan's "Sentinel Songs." These lines were also used on the Confederate monuments in Greenville in 1892 and in Abbeville in 1906 and 1996:

  The World shall yet decide 
  in Truth’s clear, far off light,
  That the soldiers who wore the gray and died 
  with Lee, were in the right.

 No wonder that so many of our fellow citizens are appalled.

 The other two panels include a list of Civil War battles and a dense verse praising the Confederate soldiers for their chivalry, fortitude, and valor.

 I have no doubt that those inscriptions were approved by Miss Hubbard with the intention of honoring the Confederate veterans, especially those who were still living. It was not her nature to be provocative, and she could never have imagined how these would sound in the 21st century. If she could twist our ears today, I think she would tell us it's time to remove, replace, or cover up those antiquated sentiments. They are not worth fighting over, and they absolutely should not be displayed on the courthouse square. We should never forget the war, but we need not remember it in those terms. 

I hope that our generation can find a constructive way to keep the memorial. Perhaps we could redeem it with more appropriate messaging that shows that Andersonians have learned lessons from our history and repented of our ancestral transgressions. Atlanta has taken similar steps with some of its Confederate monuments, adding "contextual markers" that address the underlying issues of slavery, racism, and states' rights. 
 Would it be too radical to update the inscriptions on Anderson's monument? Here are possible alternatives for four plaques to cover and replace the original words:

1. The last stanza of Father Ryan's "Conquered Banner" concedes defeat and says respectfully that Confederate ideals should be put away forever, along with the flag: 

  Furl that banner, softly, slowly!

  Treat it gently—it is holy—

    for it droops above the dead.

  Touch it not—unfold it never.

  Let it droop there, furled forever,

    for its people's hopes are dead.

2. Add a plaque in memory of the 9,000 slaves who lived in Anderson County during the Civil War. Confess the truth—slavery was the reason South Carolina seceded. Our leaders explicitly said so in 1860 in their Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secesssion of South Carolina from the Federal Union. This plaque might say: 

South Carolina led the secession movement in 1860, declaring that it was necessary to dissolve the Union because of "increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery." After the the War Between the States ended in 1865, about 9,000 slaves in Anderson County were liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation and the ratification of the 13th Amendment. South Carolina was restored to the Union in 1868.

3. After 155 years, I think it's time to add a plaque about Stoneman's Raid, which is not commemorated in the city of Anderson: 

On May 1, 1865, weeks after the surrender of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Anderson was invaded and occupied by Federal cavalry under orders from Gen. George Stoneman to pursue Confederate President Jefferson Davis. On this square, Cadet McKenzie Parker from The Citadel became one of the last casualties of the Civil War on May 3, 1865.

4. Acknowledge the history of the monument itself with a plaque that says something like this:

This memorial was dedicated in 1902 to veterans of the Confederacy and rededicated in 202_ to these principles from our Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 I'm open to suggestions about what to do with the CSA symbols carved into the plinth or the marble man up top. Gen. Humphreys was a newspaperman as well as a soldier, so maybe he could surrender his rifle and stay up there as a memorial to journalism.

President Lincoln's slavery map shows the percentage of slaves in South Carolina counties in the 1860 census. Abbeville and Edgefield were adjacent, before the counties of Greenwood, McCormick, and Saluda were established. Slaves were the majority of the population in Abbeville and Edgefield.

Pierce Butler Griffin in 1925
with my uncle, Claude Griffin.

* PIERCE BUTLER is a prominent name in South Carolina history. My great-grandfather Pierce Butler Griffin (1847-1925) apparently was named for Pierce Mason Butler (1798-1847), who was raised in Edgefield County, studied under Rev. Moses Waddell, was elected governor in 1836, and was martyred in 1847 while carrying the Palmetto Regiment flag in the Mexican-American war. My great-grandfather was born in Abbeville County, the cradle of the Confederacy, just four months after the death of Gov. Butler. Edgefield bordered Abbeville in the Antebellum era and is known as the "Home of Ten Governors," including Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond.

 In 1856, nine years after the death of Gov. Butler, his brother and cousin were serving in Congress. Sen. Andrew Butler was a slavery advocate who had been insulted by Sen. Charles Sumner in a fiery and lurid speech during the debate over the statehood of Kansas: "The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course, he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator." When Sen. Stephen Douglas heard the speech, he said, "This damn fool is going to get himself killed by some other damn fool."

 The Butlers' cousin, Rep. Preston Brooks, vowed to defend the honor of Sen. Andrew Butler. Brooks could have challenged Sumner to a duel, but he considered Sumner unworthy of defending his honor. So on May 22, 1856, Brooks marched into the Senate chamber and pummeled Sumner with his cane. Sumner suffered a traumatic brain injury and barely survived. It was three years before he was able to return to his Senate seat. This was the same cane that Lt. Johnson mentioned in the story above. 

 The attack in the Senate was a breaking point for the nation, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was Sumner's neighbor in Boston. "I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom." The incident was so polarizing that it fostered the rise of the Republican party and the election of Abraham Lincoln.

 A couple of generations earlier, there was another Pierce Butler (1744-1822), a plantation owner in Georgetown who was one of America's largest slaveholders and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1788 and 1802. As a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, he introduced the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2), which essentially institutionalized slavery on a federal level. In 1860, Georgetown's population was 85.7 percent slaves—the  most of any county east of Mississippi. His grandson Pierce Mease Butler (1810-1867) sold 436 slaves in 1859 for more than $300,000 (an average price of about $700 per person).

 The Edgefield Butlers were not descended from the Georgetown Butlers, but it seems likely that Gov. Pierce Mason Butler was named for the Constitutional delegate. 

 Edgefield is dealing with its own Old South heritage—as protestors want to rename Strom Thurmond High School, which was named for the senator in 1961, the same year that the Confederate flag was raised over the state capitol in Columbia (Gov. Nikki Haley took it down in 2015 after the Charleston church massacre.) Thurmond popularized the flag as a symbol of defiance when he was the Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948, and after he was elected to the Senate as a write-in, he infamously filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act. (If the school is renamed, we can assume that its athletic teams will no longer be known as the Rebels.) Inevitably, there will be a showdown on the town square in Edgefield, where a Confederate obelisk has stood since 1900 and a bronze statue of Sen. Thurmond was erected in 1984.

FULL DISCLOSURE: My ancestors were slaveowners. Pierce Butler Griffin's dad, Jackson Griffin, was a miller who owned 17 slaves according to the 1840 census. The Sherard patriarch, William Alexander Sherard (1800-1862), owned 25 slaves in 1850, including two that he fathered.

—Tom Layton 

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