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 Last Casualties of the Civil War

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, S.C., McKenzie "Theodore" Parker of South Carolina, was killed during a confrontation with Stoneman's rear guard. A week later in Madison, Ga., 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 the Michigan. And in October, three federal soldiers from Maine were ambushed at Brown's Ferry on the Savannah River.

 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, a Union detachment delivering mail was attacked by Confederate guerrillas at Hodby's Bridge near Eufala, Ala., resulting in the death of John Skinner of the 1st Florida Cavalry.

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, they often draped their grievances in their forefathers' patriotism.

 Several events 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, this summer will mark 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. Horn will be on a limited schedule in 2025, while the theater undergoes renovations.

'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.

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