'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"?

'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. 

Revisiting the Lincoln-Calhoun debate

Judge Felix Alley's 1941 book tried to show the underlying resemblance between Lincoln and Calhoun.

CRAYTONVILLE, S.C.

 The last time The Stoneman Gazette delved into Abraham Lincoln's parentage, the Yankees were in Lincoln County, N.C., where it was widely rumored that that the president had been born in the hills nearby.
 Now that DNA tests have traced the lineage of Lincoln's mother, let's explore another possible root of Lincoln's family tree. This one involves John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina statesman who was known as the "Father of Secession."
 Could Calhoun have also been the father of the president who defeated secession?
 Indeed, it appears likely that Calhoun had a fling with a young lady named Nancy Hanks. She lived in Anderson County, S.C., and her ancestors and mine share the same graveyard.

 After further review, however, I would say it is unlikely that she was the same Nancy Hanks who married Thomas Lincoln and gave birth to Abe, not necessarily in that order.
 Unlikely—but not impossible.

Lloyd Ostendorf's 1963 portrait
 of the enigmatic Nancy Hanks Lincoln

 Nancy Hanks was not an uncommon name. After Lincoln disclosed his mother's name in his 1860 campaign biography, more than a dozen Nancy Hanks were mentioned as the possible mother of the president. Hanks families here and there were suddenly reminded of young Nancies who had moved west over a half-century earlier. "Do you think Lincoln's mother could have been OUR long-lost Nancy?" You can see how rumors got started.
 Similarly, Calhoun is just one of a dozen men who have been investigated as Lincoln's possible father. You can read about them in The Many-Sired Lincoln, a 1925 story in The American Mercury magazine by a University of North Carolina professor named J.G. de Roulhac Hamilton.

 Regarding Calhoun, Hamilton reported:

     At Craytonville, Anderson County, South Carolina, was a stage-road tavern kept by one Christopher Orr. In Orr’s employ was a girl from the neighborhood, named Nancy Hanks, who was possessed of unusual beauty. At Abbeville lived Calhoun, a young, unmarried lawyer who made frequent trips to Pendleton by way of Craytonville. When he reached Orr’s tavern he nearly always developed a sick headache of such severity as to compel his stopping. Presently it was discovered that Nancy, free of favors, of course, was the cause of his visits and that presumably he was responsible for the condition which led to her discharge, and to her rejection by her own people. Calhoun then bought a horse and saddle and sent her off with some horse-drovers to Kentucky, where she had an uncle. Two months later her child was born and named for her uncle, Abraham Hanks. Six months later, the ever-obliging Thomas Lincoln married her. A variant of this is that Thomas Lincoln came to South Carolina with the horse-traders and for a consideration agreed to take Nancy off Calhoun’s hands. A frill on the story is that Calhoun once left Washington on horseback, bound for Kentucky, ostensibly to visit Henry Clay, but really to see his son Abraham. The rumor does not indicate whether he admired him or not.

       There was undoubtedly a Nancy Hanks at Craytonville, but she never married Thomas Lincoln nor gave birth to Abraham Lincoln. She did marry and was living long after the death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln [in 1818]. Whether or not the story of her relations with Calhoun is true is a matter of no importance so far as Abraham Lincoln is concerned.

 The Calhoun-Hanks relationship is no secret to historians. Margaret Coit detailed it in her 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, John C. Calhoun, American Portrait. (Flip to pages 49-52.) She wrote that Hanks "may even have been related to the Kentucky girl who became the mother of Abraham Lincoln."
 Coit does not mention a pregnancy but says that Calhoun had lifelong regrets about the relationship, even suggesting that it may have haunted him in his own presidential aspirations.
 The key to the story, of course, is whether the Nancy Hanks from Craytonville was the same woman who gave birth to Lincoln. Some members of the Hanks and Calhoun families believed she was.
 However, the recent DNA tests have traced Nancy Hanks' bloodline to ancestors in Virginia, rather than South Carolina. She was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and the granddaughter of Ann and Joseph Hanks, a Virginia farmer. Lucy was 17 and unmarried when she gave birth to Nancy Hanks in 1784 in Virginia. A month later, Lucy’s father Joseph moved the entire family to Kentucky.
 Lincoln cited his mother's Virginia roots in biographical information he wrote in 1859 and 1860. Abe idolized his mother, who died in 1818 when he was just nine, though he hinted to his law partner and biographer that he might have been born out of wedlock.
 Calhoun’s Nancy evidently came from a different branch of the Hanks family that settled on the South Carolina frontier near the Anderson-Abbeville county line.
She was said to be the daughter of Luke and Ann Hanks, and many of her kin (and mine) are buried at the Ebenezer Methodist Church in lower Anderson County. Luke Hanks evidently was from Virginia, so it is possible that Calhoun's flame and Lincoln's mom were cousins.
 Hamilton concluded that Craytonville's Nancy Hanks moved to Huntsville, Ala., married a man named Richard South, and lived into the 1830s. If this is true, it would rule her out as Lincoln's mother, who died in 1818. However, I think this is incorrect. What I have found online indicates that Huntsville's Nancy Hanks South was born in 1768, while Craytonville's Nancy Hanks was born 19 years later in 1787. Lincoln said his mother was born in 1784.
 John C. Calhoun was born in 1782 and would have been a 26-year-old bachelor in 1808 when Lincoln was conceived. In 1811 he married one of his cousins, Floride Bonneau Colhoun, and they had 10 children. Their fourth child, Anna Maria Calhoun (1817-1875), married Thomas Green Clemson (1807-1888). After he outlived his family, old Tom Clemson specified in his will that Calhoun's Fort Hill plantation would become the Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina. To this day, Mr. Clemson's will guides the selection of the university trustees.

This marker was erected in 2019 by the Belton Area Museum Association

Craytonville: A crossroads for Stoneman's Raid
 The Craytonville crossroads also had what-if implications for Stoneman's Raid. A battalion of the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry commanded by Medal of Honor winner Lt. Col. Charles Betts rode through Craytonville on May 2, 1865, on their way from Laurens to Anderson in search of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Some of them were involved in a brief skirmish with rebels.
 If the westbound Yankees had turned south at Craytonville, they could have captured Davis 20 miles away in Abbeville. That same day, Davis was at the home of Armistead Burt, where he presided over the last cabinet meeting of the Confederacy. Davis eluded capture for eight more days.
 By the way, Jefferson Davis' father, Samuel Davis, was also among those implicated in The Many-Sired Lincoln. If that had been true, the rival Civil War presidents would have been half-brothers. 

The paternity case for John C. Calhoun

 Would you think more highly of John C. Calhoun if you knew he was Lincoln's daddy? It's an interesting premise that some of Calhoun's apologists tried to advance in the context of the "Lost Cause" following the Civil War.
 Among them was Armistead Burt (1802-1883), a five-term U.S. Congressman who was Davis' host at Abbeville. Burt had married Calhoun's favorite niece, Martha, so he knew the family secrets. According to some accounts, he confided with friends that he believed President Lincoln was the son of Calhoun and the Craytonville barmaid, Nancy Hanks.
 Judge Felix Alley of Waynesville, N.C., attempted to legally prove that Calhoun was Lincoln's father in his 1941 book, Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer. (Flip to page 371). He made an interesting point when he said the Nancy Hanks of Craytonville was the niece (rather than the daughter) of the South Carolinians, Luke and Ann Hanks. If that was the case, it's possible that the Nancy Hanks in Craytonville was from the Virginia family identified by DNA tests. On the other hand, Alley thought Nancy's mother Lucy was actually a Shipley, and this was disproven by DNA.

 Judge Alley's research appears to be well-documented, but TIME magazine scoffed at his conclusions:

Last week a judge of North Carolina's Superior Court handed down his considered opinion that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of South Carolina's fire-breathing State's-righter John C. Calhoun. Since the day Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency, amateur historians of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains have tried to prove that he was illegitimate. The Calhoun theory was not new. When it was first advanced, in 1911, it was soon shown that the Nancy Hanks in the case eventually became a respectable Mrs. South.

 The Great Smoky Mountains Colloquy published "The Curious Paternity of Abraham Lincoln" in 2008, referencing several publications that traced Lincoln's roots to the Oconoluftee Valley near Cherokee, N.C.
 If you dare to Google, you can find even more. Here is a link to one account that appears to have been written in the 1960s. It is probably based on a series of newspaper articles by D.M. Knotts published in Columbia, S.C., in 1911, which in turn may have been based on 1893 stories in the Charlotte Observer. It is fascinating to read, but it is unsigned and includes several glaring historical errors, so I can't vouch for any of the testimonies or details. In particular, it refers to Abbeville courthouse records where Calhoun agreed to pay Hanks $100 per year to support an illegitimate son born February 12, 1809 (Lincoln's birthday). What's more, the legal witnesses included none other than Thomas Lincoln.
 Such a document would be a blockbuster, but as far as I know it does not exist. Many of Abbeville's historic court records were destroyed in a fire in 1872. 

NEXT➤ First in war, last in peace, and still sipping taxes

I have overlaid red arrows on this 1845 map to show Calhoun's 50-mile route from Abbeville to Pendleton via Craytonville (labeled as Creytonville). Northwest of Pendleton, "J.C. Calhoun" marks the site of Fort Hill, which was Calhoun's plantation and is now the campus of Clemson University.
 
Blue arrows show the route of Stoneman's 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. On May 2, 1865, they passed through Craytonville en route from Laurens (labeled as Laurensville) to Anderson. They missed a chance to capture Jefferson Davis, who was fleeing via Abbeville (yellow arrows).

To see the entire map, click here. It was drawn before the creation of Oconee County in 1868, Saluda in 1896, Greenwood and Cherokee in 1897, and McCormick in 1916.

Scoop! One of Stoneman's newspapers

CREDIT: University of Georgia archives

 When I began researching Stoneman's Raid, I was fascinated to discover that the Union troops published newspapers in three towns they briefly occupied: Salisbury April 12, Spartanburg April 30, and Athens May 6, 1865.
 I contacted historians in all three towns but was unable to find any of these newspapers during the 150th-anniversary run of The Stoneman Gazette. That was disappointing but not surprising. Confederate publishers did not keep Yankee scrapbooks. In fact, they often erased history as they shaped the myth of the Lost Cause. For example, the publisher of the Salisbury newspaper squelched any mention of Stoneman's Raid in a 618-page history of Rowan County that he published 16 years after the war. (Stoneman's scribes did not ignore him, as we shall see!)
 So I was pleasantly surprised to hear recently from a diligent librarian at the University of Georgia who was able to track down this copy of the Athens paper (click here to enlarge the image). Even better, it includes stories from the other two editions.
 You may not be impressed, but this old newspaperman feels like he has found a buried treasure.
 Each story warrants its own discussion, which we will do in subsequent blogs. Follow the links below.
 The scanned copy is smudged and hard to read, but I think this is what it says:

One last Confederate broadside

Elise Bragg outlived her husband Braxton by 32 years. She was 39 when they were captured, and she caught the eye of Union Corp. William Spang, who became an artist after the war. "She was good looking, had black hair and eyes, in fact the perfect type of a Southern brunette," he wrote.

MONTICELLO, Ga.

 Stoneman's raiders missed the $100,000 bounty on Jefferson Davis, but they got a consolation prize May 9, 1865, by capturing one of Davis' best friends, Gen. Braxton Bragg, and his indomitable wife Elise.

Sgt. Levi Sheffler

 "General Bragg's wife was not altogether amiable," reported our war correspondent, Capt. Henry Weand. "She scolded our men and applied all sorts of epithets to them, but the principal burden of her song was the disgrace of having been captured by a Philadelphia fireman." 
 The fireman was Sgt. Levi Sheffler, who recognized Bragg even though the general had tried to disguise himself by shaving his beard and removing insignia from his uniform.
 Corp. William Spang confiscated a trunk that belonged to Mrs. Bragg. "She opened her batteries by reminding us who we were and said that she had never been so insulted in all her life as to have her effects searched by a set of Yankee hirelings," Spang wrote. "While she was giving vent to her eloquence, she was at the same time tearing up a letter of dispatch into very small pieces, and by the time her tirade was exhausted, the ground was covered with small bits of paper, reminding me of 'the beautiful snow'."
 E.L. Palmer helped escort the Braggs on the 10-hour ride to Union headquarters, and he never forgot how she gave the guards another earful: "Now, gentlemen, you left your homes, where you had all you wished, and came into our country, and brought misery and sorrow to us by all the cruel circumstances of war, with its destruction of life and property. You have made us helpless, hopeless, and comfortless to a degree from which we can never recover. Would you not, as well as we, have been better off without this terrible invasion and subjugation? We have no heart, no hope, no country we care to call our country."
 Palmer later wrote: "These words, coming from such a distinguished lady, seemed to call for a reply, but I felt that silence was the most appropriate under the circumstances."

Gen. Braxton Bragg:
 Did the unibrow blow his cover?

 Braxton Bragg was raised in Warrenton, N.C., and graduated from West Point in 1837, nine years ahead of Stoneman. He retired from the army after serving under Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War, 1845-47, and in 1849 he married young Elise Brooks Ellis, who was heiress to a sugar plantation. In 1855, he bought a Louisiana sugar plantation with over 100 slaves.
 Bragg prospered until the outbreak of the Civil War. He was lukewarm about secession and initially declined Davis' offer to become a Confederate general.
 In 1863, he commanded a significant rebel victory at Chickamauga, Ga. But Bragg is more widely known for several defeats—including Perryville, Ky., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Fort Fisher, N.C.—and became a scapegoat for the fall of the Confederacy.

 Bragg accompanied President Jefferson Davis when the Confederate government fled by train from Richmond to Danville. Confederate Lt. John Wise left us an eyewitness description. "Mr. Davis sat at a car window. The crowd at the station cheered. He smiled and acknowledged their compliment, but his expression showed physical and mental exhaustion. Near him sat General Bragg, whose shaggy eyebrows and piercing eyes made him look like a much greater man than he ever proved himself to be."

 Meanwhile, in 1862 Federal troops confiscated the Braggs' beloved plantation home, called Bivouac. The Freedman's Bureau used it as a shelter for ex-slaves before selling it at auction. It's no wonder that Mrs. Bragg was so indignant about being captured by "Yankee hirelings."

 Stripped of his reputation and fortune, Gen. Bragg died in 1876 at age 59. Elise lived until 1908, and her obituary noted that she fell into her final sickness on the 45th anniversary of Chickamauga.
 Confederates had their own misgivings about Bragg, as reflected in the subtitle of Earl Hess's 2016 biography: Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man in the Confederacy.

 The U.S. Army honored him in 1918 by naming its North Carolina post as Camp Bragg. Fort Bragg became the nation's largest Army base, was renamed in 2023 as Fort Liberty, and then in 2025 regained its old name, this time honoring a World War II paratrooper, Roland L. Bragg, who was an unsung hero in the Battle of the Bulge.

     

NEXT➤ Jeff Davis' dilemma: Station wagon or mustang?

Hitting the wrong jackpot in Georgia

WATKINSVILLE, Ga.

 Let's face it: If Stoneman's raiders were all Jefferson Davis had to worry about, the Confederate president would have gotten away. 
 Listening to the veterans, you would think they were hot on his heels. Stoneman's commander, Gen. George Thomas, gave equal credit to Gen. William Palmer (leading Stoneman's cavalry) and Gen. James H. Wilson (whose Fourth Michigan regiment captured Davis May 10 in Irwinville, Ga.). "Gen. Wilson held the bag, and Palmer drove the game into it," Thomas wrote.
 But when you study the maps, you realize that Palmer's troops—Stoneman's raiders—were well over a hundred miles away when Davis was caught. 
 Nor was it entirely the fault of the Tennesseans who were blamed for letting Davis escape from Washington, Ga. Davis actually left Washington two days before the Union troops got there. 
 Instead, the esteemed Gen. Palmer was trusting bad intelligence that no doubt was being fed to him by Confederates.
 On May 7, Palmer received a report from Wilson (who had a spy in Davis' escort) that the Confederate president was just 25 miles south of Athens. Actually, Davis was 90 miles away in Sandersville. Palmer's troops never went further south than Milledgeville, which was then the capital of Georgia. That's 130 miles from Irwinville.
 On May 8, Palmer sent a battalion to check out what he thought was a credible report that Davis had passed through Fair Play, which was near Madison, Ga. (not the modern community of Fair Play west of Atlanta). They were obviously on the trail of a sizable Confederate force. 
 But when the Yankees caught the rebels May 9 in Conyers, Ga., President Davis was not among them. Instead, it was Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler, who had been effectively setting a smokescreen for Davis since May 4. 
 Gen. Wheeler was an important prize—especially in the eyes of Stoneman, who had been taken prisoner by Wheeler's cavalry the previous July in the Battle of Sunshine Church. The Yankees put Wheeler on a spotted pony and marched him off to custody in Athens.
 "The debt of Sunshine Church was paid in full," Stoneman's biographer Ben Fuller Fordney wrote, alluding to Stoneman's statement at the beginning of the raid: "I owe the Southern Confederacy a debt I am anxious to liquidate, and this offers a propitious occasion."
 This wasn't the only near miss of the pursuit. On May 7 near Watkinsville, Pennsylvania troops hunting for Davis captured seven Conestoga wagons carrying close to $2 million in gold, silver, and bonds, not to mention $4 million in Confederate dollars. The wagons also contained the private baggage of two rebel generals, Pierre Beauregard (whom Stoneman had outfoxed at Salisbury) and Gideon Pillow. 
 They first thought this might be the missing Confederate treasury, which was presumed to be traveling with Davis. The bounty posted by Gen. Wilson on President Davis specified, "Several millions of specie, expected to be with him, will become the property of the captors."
 However, this turned out to be private property, belonging to the Bank of Macon, which sent it toward Atlanta to avoid confiscation by Gen. Wilson.
 Union Col. Charles Betts (who would receive the Medal of Honor for his service April 11 with Stoneman's Raid) arranged to have the treasure shipped to Athens and then Augusta for safekeeping. Our war correspondent Capt. Henry Weand later reported with pride that "all the captured money and other property had been returned to the owners without the loss of a dollar."

NEXT➤ What Civil War statues are whispering to us

 

Jefferson Davis caught up with his wife and children near Dublin, Ga., May 7, 1865

Reason for the war? How quickly they forgot

William Palmer as a young Union colonel

 Some of us still debate whether the Civil War was about slavery. If a pollster had asked Stoneman's raiders why they were fighting, I doubt that many of them would have cited an emancipation provocation. Even some who condemned slavery as an institution displayed little concern for the welfare of the freedmen. 

 But in the eyes of Union Gen. William Jackson Palmer, slavery was the one and only reason for the war. As a Quaker, Palmer was morally opposed to fighting, but he was even more passionately opposed to slavery. In his heart, emancipation was a cause worth fighting for.
 Before the war, Palmer been involved in abolitionist rallies. Afterwards, he became a major supporter of Hampton Institute to educate the children of freed slaves.
 After fighting for four years to free the slaves (and earning the Medal of Honor along the way), Palmer was appalled to hear reports that the new president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, might "phase in" emancipation, delaying the end of slavery in order to help heal the wounds of secession. Even while he was commanding the last days of Stoneman's Raid and leading the pursuit of Jefferson Davis in Georgia, Palmer took time to write this eloquent letter to an influential friend in Philadelphia, urging President Johnson to never compromise on the abolition of slavery.

 Samuel C. Morton was a longtime president of the Philadelphia Board of Trade:

ATHENS, Ga.

 May 6, 1865

Mr. Samuel C. Morton
Philadelphia, Penna.

Dear Sir,
     I have no right to communicate directly with the President of the United States, being forbidden by the position I hold in the army, but as I have had peculiar and extraordinary opportunities of becoming acquainted with the phases of public sentiment among the most intelligent men of North and South Carolina and Georgia since the surrender of Lee’s army, I have a strong desire that President Johnson should become acquainted with one or two points that I shall mention in this letter.
     Of course, everybody has abandoned the cause, and the most intelligent and influential men everywhere have candidly acknowledged to me that they are entirely in the power of the United States Government, and will have to submit to any terms that may be imposed. Not one of them has the slightest expectation of any continued resistance in the Trans-Mississippi Department—nor do they wish it. I am satisfied from the inquiries made of me by leading men in all three States, that a strong united effort will be made throughout the South to influence Northern sentiment to grant the gradual abolition of slavery. This is the utmost they hope for.
     Now I hope most sincerely that those who have the settlement of this matter will not be influenced (by any fear of a sullen resistance to the authority of the Government or any desire to pacify the Southern people and make them give a cheerful submission to what is so unpalatable) to yield this point. They should consent to nothing but an immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery. I have told these people everywhere that no matter what else is done, this is inevitable; that as they evidently expected universal confiscation, subjugation, and in some case annihilation, they should deem the other mild terms; that as their labor system has to be reorganized on a compensatory basis, the soon it is begun the sooner they will have a stable system—and that they have more to fear from insurrection and disturbances among the negroes if their emancipation is procrastinated than if it were immediate, especially since the whites have been disarmed and so many of the blacks made soldiers.
     Some of their leading people have partially admitted the force of these arguments, but all would, I am convinced, cheerfully submit to these terms if they found that this was the best and the worst, and that no general confiscation would ensue.
     If slavery is not immediately got rid of, pacification will be indefinitely delayed, and political parties in the North will before long be based on this issue.
     I would be glad to see even the leaders of the rebellion or most of them pardoned, and not a dollar’s worth of other than slave property confiscated, in order to gain this point, and it might be done in a way to ensure the influence of these leaders to make the main point (immediate abolition) palatable to the Southern people.
     The crime of rebellion is so great that any punishment of these concerned seems trifling and insignificant. And the value of the property that might be confiscated to the United States Government is absurdly small compared to the mere pecuniary advantages it would derive from the increase of taxable property in the South, in a very few years under a free labor system.
     But let us have freedom everywhere—the whites of the South expect it, the negroes are longing for it, and civilization and peace demand it.

                With kind regards to yourself, I am, Sir,
                Yours very respectfully,
                WM. J. PALMER
                Brev. Brig. Genl.
                (Commanding Stoneman’s Cavalry)

Rebels explain why they seceded

 So was the Civil War really about slavery? Or states' rights? Or northern aggression?

 After 150 years of spin, we all have our opinions.
 I suggest we all take a deep breath and listen to the statements of those who voted to leave the Union. Six of the 11 states expressly mentioned slavery either in their ordinances of secession or in the supporting declarations of cause.
 For example, this is what Mississippi said in its Declaration of Cause:

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

 Texas went even further, declaring that the government was established by and for the white race (implicitly affirming the 1857 Dred Scott decision):

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

 This is not to say that there were not noble reasons for Southerners to fight, especially when their homelands were invaded by hordes of Yankees. Most rebels did not own slaves. Most of them probably would not have voted to secede. (North Carolina actually held a referendum, and the voters rejected secession.)
 But their leaders did, and did.
 Read their words, and then tell me what you think. 

NEXT➤ Hitting the wrong jackpot in Georgia