A Year in the South
Page 29
Though he traveled to the South on a number of occasions in his later years, he apparently never revisited any of the places where he had lived as a slave. Nor did he make any effort to learn what became of those who had held him in bondage. He resided in Milwaukee for the remainder of his days, moving in with one of his daughters and her husband after Matilda’s death in 1907. By then he was a well-known figure in Milwaukee, thanks to his extensive business contacts and his published memoir. When he died in 1913, at the age of eighty, every newspaper in the city featured an article about him. He was laid to rest in Forest Home Cemetery next to Matilda.33
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CPM
Mrs. Cornelia McDonald, A Diary with Reminiscences of the War and Refugee Life in the Shenandoah Valley, 1860–1865 (Nashville, 1934)
JCR
John C. Robertson Memoir, McClung Historical Collection, Knox County Public Library, Knoxville, Tennessee
LH
Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom (Milwaukee, 1897)
SAA
Samuel A. Agnew Diary, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. LH, 5.
2. Ibid., 5–7, 9–12.
3. Ibid., 12–13.
4. Ibid., 14–15, 17–18, 19, 63–64.
5. Ibid., 58, 59–62.
6. Ibid., frontispiece photograph, 78–79, 81.
7. Ibid., 73–74, 86.
8. Ibid., 80–89.
9. Ibid., 93, 94, 111–12.
10. Ibid., 120–22, 136.
11. Ibid., 127–37, 139–46.
12. Ibid., 160–64; McGehee Family Genealogical File, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson.
13. CPM, xiii-xiv, 1–7.
14. Ibid., 3–4.
15. Ibid., 4, 451–53; Mrs. Flora McDonald Williams, The Glengarry McDonalds of Virginia (Louisville, 1911), 331–32.
16. CPM, 5.
17. Ibid., xiii-xiv, 5–6, 340–52; Williams, Glengarry McDonalds, 332; James B. Avirett, et al., The Memoirs of General Turner Ashby and His Compeers (Baltimore, 1867), 318–31.
18. CPM, xi, 6, 352–53, 413–33; Avirett, Memoirs, 331; Virginia Personal Property Tax Books, Frederick County, 1860, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
19. CPM, xiii, 6, 353–54; Avirett, Memoirs, 332–33; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Frederick County, Virginia, p. 257/527, National Archives, Washington; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Slaves, Frederick County, Virginia, District 4, National Archives, Washington.
20. CPM, 16–38, 356; Avirett, Memoirs, 334–48.
21. CPM, 40–176, passim.
22. Ibid., 177–90.
23. Ibid., 197; Avirett, Memoirs, 345–46.
24. CPM, 201–37, 277–84; Avirett, Memoirs, 348–58.
25. CPM, 234–39.
26. Ibid., 239–45.
27. JCR, 1, 137, 148.
28. Population of the United States in 1860 … (Washington, 1864), 466; Agriculture of the United States in 1860 … (Washington, 1864), 132–35, 215, 238; Blanche Henry Clark, The Tennessee Yeomen, 1840–1860 (Nashville, 1942), chap. 1; Fred Arthur Bailey, Class and Tennessee’s Confederate Generation (Chapel Hill and London, 1987), chaps. 2, 4.
29. Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Greene County, Tennessee, p. 58/361; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Productions of Agriculture, Greene County, Tennessee, District 17, National Archives, Washington; J. T. Trowbridge, The South: A Tour of Its BattleFields and Ruined Cities … (Hartford, Conn., 1866), 243; Clark, Tennessee Yeomen, chap. 2; Donald L. Winters, Tennessee Farming, Tennessee Farmers: Antebellum Agriculture in the Upper South (Knoxville, 1994), chaps. 3, 4.
30. JCR, 149, 156, 157, 236, 293; Bailey, Class and Tennessee’s Confederate Generation, chap. 3.
31. JCR, 186; Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, and Jeanette Keith, Tennesseans and Their History (Knoxville, 1999), 132–40.
32. Noel C. Fisher, War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869 (Chapel Hill and London, 1997), passim; W. Todd Groce, Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War (Knoxville, 1999), passim; Charles Faulkner Bryan Jr., “The Civil War in East Tennessee: A Social, Political, and Economic Study” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1978), passim.
33. JCR, 1–8; Compiled Civil War Service Records, 39th Tennessee Mounted Infantry, National Archives, Washington.
34. JCR, 8, 11–22.
35. Ibid., 22–62; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, 1880–1901), Series One, 30(2): 639–40.
36. JCR, 16, 63–78.
37. Ibid., 76–80; “List of Persons Taken [sic] the Oath,” Records of the Provost Marshal, ser. 2764, District of East Tennessee, Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands, RG 393, Pt. 2, No. 173, National Archives, Washington.
38. JCR, 81–110.
39. Ibid., 99, 110–45.
40. Ibid., 1, 8–11, 148.
41. SAA, passim. The forty-five-volume diary spans the years 1851 to 1902.
42. Ibid., 26 January, 26 February, 30 September, 16 October 1864, 6 January, 12, 18 February, 5 September 1865; The Centennial History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1803–1903 (Charleston, S.C., 1905), 42–44.
43. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1891), 1:287–88; Centennial History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, 42–44.
44. Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Tippah County, Mississippi, p. 43/691; Tippah County Tax Rolls (Personal), 1861, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson.
45. SAA, 1860–1865, passim, especially 24 February 1865.
46. Ibid., 1861–1865, passim, especially 13 December 1861.
47. Ibid., 5, 16, 22 January 1865.
48. Rev. Samuel A. Agnew, Historical Sketch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church of Bethany, Lee County, Miss. (Louisville, 1881), 12; Andrew Brown, History of Tippah County, Mississippi: The First Century (Ripley, Miss., 1976), chaps. 23–26; SAA, 6–15, 23 January, 26 June 1862, 13 December 1865.
49. Brown, History of Tippah County, 156–57; O. Davis to William L. Sharkey, 28 June 1865, Provisional Governor William L. Sharkey Letters, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson; SAA, 6 October, 27–29 November 1863, 21 February, 24 July 1864.
50. SAA, 9–13, 16 June 1864; Samuel A. Agnew, “Battle of Tishomingo Creek,” Confederate Veteran 8 (1900): 401–403; Margaret Agnew Simpson, “The Battle of Brice’s Crossroads,” typescript reminiscence in possession of David Frazier of Guntown, Mississippi.
51. Brown, History of Tippah County, 150–55.
WINTER: LOUIS HUGHES
1. T. L. Head Jr., “The Salt Works of Clarke County, Alabama,” 7, 15, unpublished typescript in Salt Commission File, Quartermaster Department—Civil War and Reconstruction, Public Information Subject Files, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery; Clarke County (Alabama) Journal, 26 January 1865.
2. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 1–2, 12, 14–15; Ella Lonn, Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy (New York, 1933), 112–13, 129, 134; LH, 161, 166–67.
3. LH, 161; Malcolm C. McMillan, The Disintegration of a Confederate State: Three Governors and Alabama’s Wartime Home Front, 1861–1865 (Macon, 1986), 95.
4. LH, 164; McGehee Family Genealogical File; Benjamin Woolsey to Sarah McGehee, 8 February 1864, Alabama State Salt Works Letter Book, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham.
5. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 8, 15–16; N. S. Brooks to E. G. Wagner, 18 December 1863, Benjamin Woolsey to T
homas Watts, 1 March 1864, to Thomas Blewitt, 28 March 1864, Alabama State Salt Works Letter Book; payrolls, February, March 1865, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports and Abstracts, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
6. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 15–16; Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Watts, 12 April 1864, payroll, 30 October 1864, and “Abstract of Property Expended,” 31 March 1865, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports; Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Watts, 1 March 1864, and to Mrs. W. H. Ketchum, 28 March 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book; J. Michael Bunn, “Slavery in the Clarke County Saltworks, 1861–1865,” Clarke County Historical Society Quarterly 24 (1999): 21.
7. LH, 165–67; Bunn, “Slavery in the Clarke County Saltworks,” 22–23; payroll, February 1865, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports.
8. T. H. Ball, A Glance into the Great SouthEast; or, Clarke County, Alabama, and Its Surroundings (1879; repr., Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1962), 647; N. S. Brooks to Mrs. M. E. Fletcher, 11 November 1863, to Edmund McGehee, 5 December 1863, Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Blewitt, 5 February 1864, to Thomas Watts, 1 March 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book.
9. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 16; Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 61–64; N. S. Brooks to E. G. Wagner, 18 December 1863, Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Blewitt, 28 March 1864, to Mrs. W. H. Ketchum, 28 March 1864, to Thomas Watts, 1, 12 April 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book; Bunn, “Slavery in the Clarke County Saltworks,” 21.
10. Payroll, February 1865, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports; Benjamin Woolsey to W. H. Ketchum, 26 March 1864, to Mrs. W. H. Ketchum, 28 March 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book; Bunn, “Slavery in the Clarke County Saltworks,” 23; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (Oxford and New York, 1999), 36–37, 98–99.
11. “Abstract of Monies Paid Out,” 31 December 1864, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports; Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 125.
12. Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 14–15, 19; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 6; McMillan, Disintegration of a Confederate State, 48.
13. Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 13–14, 16–18; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 6.
14. Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 19–21, 38–39, 87–89, 92, 116–18; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 1–2, 5, 10–11, 12; McMillan, Disintegration of a Confederate State, 48–50, 95; Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905), 158–59.
15. McMillan, Disintegration of a Confederate State, 49; Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 21–22, 92, 111–14, 129–36; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 6–10, 14–17; Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 159; “Statement of Salt Made May 1-June 1, 1864,” Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports; Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Watts, 1 March 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book.
16. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 15–16; Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 135; N. S. Brooks to Thomas Watts, 4 November 1864, and “Abstract of Supplies Furnished,” 31 December 1864, Alabama Salt Commissioner’s Quarterly Reports; Bunn, “Slavery in the Clarke County Saltworks,” 22.
17. LH, 21–22, 44–45, 67–68, 159.
18. Ibid., 62, 65, 67, 106, 107, 116, 122, 171–72.
19. Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 16; Clarke County Journal, 26 January, 1 February 1865.
20. Clarke County Journal, 26 January, 1, 9 February, 2, 16 March 1865; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 1, 18; Lonn, Salt as a Factor, 21–22, 120.
21. LH, 95, 99, 191; Twelfth Census, 1900, Manuscript Returns of Inhabitants, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ED 194, Sheet 4, National Archives, Washington.
22. LH, 91, 94.
23. Ibid., 91–93.
24. Ibid., 93–94, 95.
25. Ibid., 96–97, 108, 128, 131, 135–36, 145, 174–75, 178.
26. Clarke County journal, 22 December 1864; Mark Mayo Boatner III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York, 1959), 559; Head, “Salt Works of Clarke County,” 2.
27. Benjamin Woolsey to Thomas Blewitt, 28 March 1864, Alabama Salt Works Letter Book; LH, 167–68; Clarke County Journal, 9 March 1865.
WINTER: CORNELIA MCDONALD
1. CPM, 195, 195n, 237n, 265, 265n, photograph facing 193, map facing 324.
2. Ibid., 178–79, 193, 195, 200.
3. Ibid., 27–28, 195n, map facing 324.
4. Oren F. Morton, A History of Rockbridge County, Virginia (Staunton, 1920), 1–11; The Statistics of the Population of the United States. (June 1, 1870) (Washington, 1872), 282; Charles H. Lynch, The Civil War Diary 1862–1865 of Charles H. Lynch, 18th Conn. Vols. (Hartford, 1915), 75; CPM, 190–91, 199.
5. Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston (Boston and New York, 1903), 341–45.
6. Morton, History of Rockbridge, 127–28; Susan P. Lee, Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton … (Philadelphia, 1893), 383.
7. CPM, 241–42; Jer. 13:20.
8. CPM, 41, 63, 77, 99, 134–35, 140–41, 163, 189, 196, 224, 242, 413–33; Williams, Glengarry McDonalds, 259–87; James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill and London, 1998), 103–105.
9. Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Frederick County, Virginia, p. 257/527; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Slaves, Frederick County, Virginia, District 4; Virginia Personal Property Tax Books, Frederick County, 1860; CPM, 180–88, 190, 205.
10. CPM, 195, 225, 232; Compiled Civil War Service Records, 7th Virginia Cavalry.
11. CPM, 232, 245, 247; Compiled Civil War Service Records, 7th Virginia Cavalry; Lee, Memoirs, 392–93; Morton, History of Rockbridge, 131; Robert J. Driver, Lexington and Rockbridge County in the Civil War (Lynchburg, 1989), 54–55, 97.
12. Lexington (Virginia) Gazette, 25 January 1865; “Letters of John Letcher to J. Hierholzer, 1864–1865,” William and Mary Quarterly 8 (1928): 137; Charles W. Turner, ed., The Diary of Henry Boswell Jones of Brownsburg (1842–1871) (Verona, Va., 1979), 87; Ann Pendleton to William Pendleton, 6 November 1864, 14 March 1865, William N. Pendleton Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Driver, Lexington in the Civil War, 55; CPM, 250.
13. Agriculture of the United States in 1860, 158–61; Driver, Lexington in the Civil War, 54, 57, 78; Morton, History of Rockbridge, 131–32; William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York and Oxford, 1998), 101, 119.
14. Rockbridge County, Virginia, County Court Minute Book, December 1864, Library of Virginia, Richmond; Lexington Gazette, 18 January 1865; Rose Pendleton to William Pendleton, 12 March 1865, Pendleton Papers.
15. Driver, Lexington in the Civil War, 78, 84; Morton, History of Rockbridge, 133–34; William F. Zornow, “Aid for the Indigent Families of Soldiers in Virginia, 1861–1865,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 69 (1958): 454–58; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 70–71, 75–76, 94–95, 119–20; Rockbridge County Court Minute Book, December 1864, January 1865.
16. Lee, Memoirs, 391; Lexington Gazette, 1 March 1865; George C. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana and Chicago, 1989), 108–11.
17. CPM, 188–89; Mary Elizabeth Massey, Refugee Life in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1964), 139–59; Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill and London, 1996), 40–45.
18. CPM, 188–90, 189n, 192; Williams, Glengarry McDonalds, 283–84.
19. CPM, 193, 233, 233n, 235, 244, 266; Ann Pendleton to William Pendleton, 18 October, 8, 30 December 1864, Pendleton Papers; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Rockbridge County, Virginia, p. 8; Lisa Tolbert, Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee (Chapel Hill and London, 1999), 130–33, 141–43; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Wit
hin the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill and London, 1988), 225–26.
20. CPM, 195–96, 195n, 235–36; Eighth Census, 1860, Manuscript Returns of Free Inhabitants, Rockbridge County, Virginia, p. 13.
21. CPM, 193, 245, 246.
22. Ibid., 198, 245, 246–47; Massey, Refugee Life, 160–64; Rable, Civil Wars, 128–31; Faust, Mothers of Invention, 80–88; Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, 46.
23. CPM, 246–47.
24. Ibid., 235, 247; Marten, Children’s Civil War, 170–73.
25. CPM, 199, 201, 236.
26. Ibid., 196n, 199, 209, 224–25, 226, 235, 236n, 245; Williams, Glengarry McDonalds, 286n.
27. Virginia Personal Property Tax Books, Frederick County, 1860; CPM, 140n, 200n, 204n, 225, 262.
28. CPM, 234–35, 235n; Williams, Glengarry McDonalds, 274, 286.
29. CPM, 197n, 204n, 205, 225, 225n.
30. Ibid., 196, 205, 247.
31. Ibid., 193, 197, 198, 232, 245.
32. Ibid., 193, 265; Faust, Mothers of Invention, 47–49, 77–78.
33. CPM, 193, 198n, 207, 237.
34. Ibid., 207; Morton, History of Rockbridge, 133; Driver, Lexington in the Civil War, 78.
35. Rockbridge County Court Minute Book, December 1863, December 1864.
36. Agriculture of the United States in 1860, 244; Population of the United States in 1860, 517; Driver, Lexington in the Civil War, 82; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 121–24; Lexington Gazette, 18 January, 1 March 1865; Lynch, Civil War Diary, 75; Morton, History of Rockbridge, 131; circular from Secretary of the Commonwealth to Virginia county court clerks, 16 November 1864 (Richmond, 1864); Rockbridge County Court Minute Book, December 1864, January, February 1865.