My Old Confederate Home

by Rusty Williams

  George A. Miller of Trimble County, one-time cavalryman John Lynn Smith, and paralyzed veteran Otway Norvell arrived on November 1. By November 4 eleven inmates were living in the Home.16 The next day, the executive committee voted to send letters of acceptance to twenty-three more applicants.

  When the veterans launched their plan to create the Kentucky Confederate Home, no one was certain exactly how many ex-Confederates had need of such a place or would consent to live there. Even some proponents of a home felt it would be a difficult matter to practice charity upon ex-Confederate soldiers.17

  On one hand, every UCV camp had a story of at least one comrade who was living in mean conditions on the charity of others. And Kentucky veterans had read of the number of indigent ex-Confederates who entered the Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, and Maryland homes. General Poyntz could say that Kentucky's camps had “many destitute Confederates,” and the editor of The Lost Cause could write that there were “a number of aged Confederates in the public charitable institutions”; but no one could actually say what that number was.18

  On the other hand, their own Lost Cause rhetoric convinced them that a noble Johnny Reb would be loath to accept all but temporary charity. (“Haven't you got any more sense than to think I am a beggar?” an indignant veteran reportedly responded when his UCV camp comrades offered assistance.) The U.S. pension program for Union veterans had become a graft-ridden national embarrassment, further dampening, it was believed, any desire for public charity. (“It is rare to find a pensioner who, with no blush upon his face, will look you in the eye and declare himself a pensioner,” sputtered one ex-Confederate.)19

  There was little the board of trustees could do but open the doors of the Kentucky Confederate Home and see who wanted in.

  In early November Harry P. McDonald realized he had used up his supply of application forms. He placed a rush order to have more printed.

  When a new inmate arrived at the Home, Salem Ford would take time off from whatever he was doing to greet the newcomer.

  If the inmate was hungry, if he had missed a meal during his trip, or if the superintendent believed the new arrival had missed more than a few meals in prior weeks, Ford would walk the man to the kitchen for a plate of whatever food the cook could rustle up on short notice. Some men were in immediate need of a bath and new clothes, so Ford would dig around in the boxes of donated shirts, pants, and underdrawers to assemble a decent wardrobe. (Bennett Young observed that some men “were in such condition that they could not be admitted in the Home without the destruction of all their clothing.”)20

  Eventually, Ford would lead every new arrival back to his office to read them the Home rules and have them sign the inmate register.

  The board of trustees recognized the need for some ground rules for the comfortable operation of the Home, basic rules of conduct meant to allow every inmate the quiet enjoyment of his new residence while showing respect for the rights of others. Treasurer Fayette Hewitt was assigned to draft the rules, and he did what any other bureaucrat might do when faced with a blank page: he revised someone else's rules to fit the needs of the Kentucky Confederate Home. Sometime, somehow, someone had acquired a copy of the “Rules and Regulations of Residents and Employees at Fitch's Home for Soldiers,” and Hewitt set about editing those rules for the Kentucky Home. As a result, Salem Ford would read to every new inmate at the Kentucky Confederate Home a set of barely modified rules originally written for Union veterans living in a state-run veterans home in Connecticut.21

  Section 2 of the printed rules required each inmate “to observe habits of order and cleanliness and good care with respect to his person, clothing and bed and bedding, and with respect to the building and premises, and a courteous demeanor to the other inmates.”

  Section 4 protected the inmates from any political or religious proselytizing by officers or employees of the Home and allowed inmates to hold nonsectarian religious services in the Home and attend (or not) any other religious services outside the Home.

  Sections 5 through 8 set rules for access to the Home. Inmates were prohibited from leaving the grounds without permission, and a roll call would be conducted each morning and evening to assure compliance (“All inmates shall answer to their names, unless absent from the Home, sick or excused”). The doors of the Home would be closed and all lights extinguished at nine o'clock each night; all inmates were expected to be in their rooms and in bed by that time.

  It was Section 3—the rules regarding alcohol—that would prove hardest for some inmates to follow. Intoxication was prohibited, of course, but so was the possession of alcohol anywhere in the Home. Further, inmates were forbidden to visit “places, stores or houses where intoxicating liquors are sold.” Inmates who enjoyed a little taste of the spirits now and then would have to break the Home rules to get it.22

  And for those inmates who broke the rules, Sections 10 through 13 spelled out the procedure for complaint, trial, and punishment—a lengthy process not unlike a military court-martial.

  In his office, with the incoming inmate seated across from him, Superintendent Ford would carefully polish his spectacles and begin a slow, deliberate reading of the Home rules. At the end of each section he would look up from the printed page, squinting over the top of his spectacles, and ask the newcomer if he understood what had just been read.

  Salem Ford used this time to size up the new man. Ford knew that most of the inmates came to the Home after years of living in rough circumstances, and like any good officer, he was taking responsibility for their well-being. By all accounts Ford was a patient listener, managing to convey sympathy without pity, concern without condescension, and the fact that he cared and would help.

  Finally, when Ford was certain that the inmate knew what was expected of him, he would ask the man to sign the formal register, a bound ledger book that would be maintained throughout the operation of the Home.

  Lorenzo D. Holloway's name is first in the register, written in a firm hand with rounded, well-formed letters typical of Spencerian script. Lee Beckham's handwriting is more cramped and jittery, and slightly left-leaning.

  By Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1902, forty-six more men had added their names in the register.23

  “The Confederate Home at Pewee Valley did ample justice to King Gobbler on Thanksgiving Day,” a newspaper reported. That first holiday banquet was a day of particular abundance: plenty to eat, plenty of heat, plenty of elbow room at the table.24

  Bennett Young and Andrew Sea visited the Home that afternoon, bringing a box of celebratory cigars for the old vets. After four years of planning, arguing, fundraising, meeting, arm-twisting, and optimism, Young could be justly proud of helping create this respectable place.

  The bill enacting the Kentucky Confederate Home mandated a facility spacious enough to house a minimum of twenty-five needy ex-Confederates. In their announcement of its purchase, the board of trustees said that the Villa Ridge Inn property was ideally suited for fifty residents, although Bennett Young maintained that it might have to shelter up to a hundred in a pinch.

  It wasn't until the end of the first month of operation, however, that the board of trustees realized just how badly they had miscalculated. Application forms were still flying off Harry McDonald's desk, and there seemed to be no way to turn off the flow. Bennett Young and his board of trustees, after a year of raising money and promoting the Home, couldn't begin turning down the indigent and invalid Confederate veterans for whom the Home had been conceived. By December 1, the executive committee had approved more than eighty applications for admission.

  As the number of inmates in residence grew—sixty-six ex-Confederates were living in the Home at the end of December—Salem Ford found himself overwhelmed by administrative and management tasks. During any given week, the cumbersome grocery purchasing process left him short of some staples and ruinously overstocked on others. He was trying to manage the day-to-day activities of ten employees while seeing to the medical needs of dozens o
f elderly men. His administrative paperwork was a mess, and to cap it all, the steam heating system was threatening to give out, forcing him to rely on expensive coal to heat the Home. At the same time, disciplinary problems were beginning to crop up among the inmates, problems the soft-spoken Ford was ill equipped to deal with.

  The executive committee may have been sympathetic to Ford's difficulties, but they had a bigger problem to deal with: the Home was deeply in debt and sinking deeper every day.

  Part of the problem was the committee's own doing. “Quite a large sum of money has been spent in procuring furniture and making outlays which will not be required again,” Bennett Young admitted. Among other things, the board had voted to spend $2,500 to provide uniforms for poorly clad inmates. The cash reserve was gone.25

  Another issue was the way the state appropriation was calculated—paid quarterly and based on the average number of residents during the previous quarter. With a skyrocketing inmate population, the ex-Confederates would be paying to house more inmates than the number for which the state would reimburse.

  But the biggest issue appeared to be runaway costs, and due to Ford's spotty record-keeping, it was difficult to determine exactly how far away those costs were running.

  Just after New Year's, Young did what executives for the rest of the twentieth century would do when they were in trouble: hire a consultant.

  George Milliken was a Louisville businessman who had been elected to several terms on the Kentucky Board of Prisons. He knew how state institutions worked; he came with an unsentimental, independent point of view; and he could write a good report. By the time he completed his investigation and reported to the executive committee on January 27, seventy-eight inmates were in residence at Pewee Valley.26

  “The figures show an expenditure $7.23 in excess of the monthly appropriation per inmate,” Milliken told the committee. The state had agreed to pay $10.41 per month—$125 annually—to feed and care for each Confederate veteran housed in the Home; the Home's management was spending $17.64 per month per inmate.

  “The monthly bills deserving especial notice are for fuel, $275, for servants, $231, and for subsistence, $444.”

  Milliken felt the winter coal bill could be cut in half if Superintendent Ford would switch to the cheaper (but dirtier) furnace coal and contract by the carload at wholesale prices. He also recommended restricting the hours of heating certain areas of the Home.

  The $231 monthly for “servants” paid the salaries of the cooks, waiters, and laundry helpers; Milliken suggested “employing a different class of servants.” He noted, “At present the Home employs two men to do the cooking at a cost of $48 per month.” According to Milliken, “Three Negro women could be employed to do the same work, with equal satisfaction, for $30 per month, thereby saving $18 per month.” He also recommended that the male waiters be replaced with women (“Man's labor invariably costs from one-third to one-half more than a woman's labor”).

  Milliken found that Superintendent Ford's “present system of bookkeeping, duplicating, receipting and purchasing are quite irregular and wholly unsatisfactory.” He advised a wholesale overhaul in the way staples were purchased, accounted for, and stored.

  After listening to Milliken's report, the executive committee voted to implement every recommendation. They also directed Fayette Hewitt to seek $5,000 in short-term loans and asked Bennett Young to hire several commission-only professional fundraisers. The committee decided, reluctantly, to ask the Kentucky UCV camps and UDC chapters to step up their cash contributions.

  Another result of that January 27 meeting may have been the resignation of Superintendent Salem H. Ford. Absent any written evidence, it is possible that the unflappable former druggist from Owensboro found the job of superintendent too large for him, or that, at almost seventy years old, he was simply tired of the constant struggles. But it is more likely that Bennett H. Young, lacking confidence that a man as good-natured as Ford could make the tough decisions necessary to turn around the Home's fortunes, asked the superintendent to fall on his sword.

  The executive committee met again on February 10 to accept Ford's resignation and elect one of their own as commandant of the Kentucky Confederate Home: board member and state senator William Oscar Coleman.27

  William O. Coleman was a man who never quite achieved in life what he felt he deserved.

  At the start of 1903, his term as state senator was ending, and it was clear he wouldn't win reelection. He had hoped for an appointment to the Kentucky State Prison Commission, but he had irritated too many of the governor's friends for that to be a reasonable possibility. Free room and board and $75 a month to manage the Kentucky Confederate Home looked pretty good to the former sheriff of Trimble County. He needed the paycheck.

  Born in 1839 to a farming family, Coleman left home and a young wife to join General John Hunt Morgan in 1861. There was little to distinguish his military service as an enlisted man, but on returning to Trimble County, he managed to parlay a minor war wound into election as county sheriff in 1868.28

  Sheriff Coleman was Trimble County's chief law enforcement officer at a time when white families feared the retribution of their former slaves and resentful freedmen. Many local lawmen earned reelection by protecting their white constituents, usually at the point of a gun and occasionally with a threat of the rope. Coleman earned a reputation as a toady, a man who sought to advance his career by the flattery of more successful men and the intimidation of less powerful ones.

  Coleman's physical appearance alone could be intimidating. He was six feet tall, with broad shoulders and powerful arms. His eyes were deep-set, dark, and glowering, and his hair remained unnaturally black for most of his life. He wore a full beard that fell to the middle of his chest and served to hide his thin neck.

  Though he kept a farm, Coleman had no interest in farming, preferring government work instead. Between terms in the state legislature, he sought appointment as collector of internal revenue and Indian agent, but the jobs never materialized, despite his elaborate promises to patrons.

  Coleman had introduced the Confederate Home bill in the Kentucky state senate and, as a result, earned appointment to the board of trustees. Perhaps he hoped to make a little money off the real estate or the purchasing of supplies for the Home, but those opportunities hadn't yet presented themselves. Meanwhile, Bennett Young had offered to Coleman a healthy percentage of all Confederate Home donations he could scare up, but Coleman had not yet set to the task when it became apparent that Salem Ford would be leaving the superintendent's position.

  Bennett Young and the executive committee needed a toughminded man who would do whatever it took to get the Home under control.

  And William O. Coleman needed the paycheck.

  “Therefore, we, the inmates of the Home, hereby express our implicit confidence in you as a man of irreproachable bearing and in your competent administration of the Home; and we must respectfully and earnestly request that you withdraw your resignation … believing that your continuance will be for the best interest of all concerned.”

  Seventy-five inmates and nine employees signed a petition urging their respected superintendent to change his mind and withdraw his resignation. A copy of the petition was mailed to the board of trustees, and a delegation of inmates called on Salem H. Ford in his office. But it was too late.

  There was no ceremony to mark Ford's departure. The kindly, bookish man was gone by the time Coleman arrived on March 1, and Coleman's first priorities were to bring some discipline to bear on the inmates and some new money in the door.

  Chapter 7

  The General's Sister and the Stockman's Wife

  A breakfast reception preceded the formal opening of the seventh annual convention of Kentucky's United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters in Owensboro on October 14, 1903. At tables decorated with roses, chrysanthemums, tiny Rebel flags, and hand-painted place cards, the 50 delegates representing 3,500 members of the state's UDC chapters exchanged
social pleasantries over plates of sweet breads and toasted mushrooms. This was an event for mannerly conversation, but from time to time one woman might catch another's eye and share a brief glance and a nod to signal their support of The Motion.

  The formal meeting opened at 2:00 P.M. in City Hall with an invocation and speeches of welcome. Mrs. James M. Arnold, the state president from Lexington, responded to the welcome and was presented a bouquet of Winnie Davis roses, a new variety of climbing tea rose with a salmon-pink center and outer edges of cream. Songs, a poetry recitation, and the reading of a brief historical essay occasionally interrupted the afternoon agenda of reports by officers and chapter delegates, but there was no formal mention of The Motion.

  An evening reception held at Owensboro's new public library, with pink punch and white cakes served on cobalt blue glassware, allowed for easier conversation among the delegates. Henrietta Morgan Duke, president of Louisville's UDC chapter and former two-term president of the state organization, spoke graciously with old friends and greeted the women with whom she had corresponded during the previous year. Mary Bascom, wife of Owingsville stockman A. W. Bascom and the delegate representing the Bath County chapter, circulated among the delegates from the small towns, exchanging news of fundraising activities, chapter membership, and local celebrations. The reception allowed ample time for shared compliments, gentle gossip, and informal discussion of The Motion.1

  The women gathered in convention certainly knew that an affirmative vote for The Motion the following morning would be seen as nothing short of a declaration of revolution. Their husbands, brothers, and fathers would view The Motion as an act of outright defiance.

  That's what made The Motion so irresistible to them.

  Upon replacing Salem Ford just three months after the Kentucky Confederate Home's opening, William O. Coleman and the board of trustees scrambled to bring about some measure of fiscal and operational control.