9 No equivalent to Brady or Gardner existed in the South. There simply were not the extra engravers and paper to allow for such a luxury. See William F. Thompson, Image of War, 23, 91-93.
10 Frassanito, Gettysburg, 190.
11 William F. Thompson, Image of War, 89.
12 On the slow evolution of fine arts in the Civil War, see Holzer and Neely, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, introduction.
13 For a comprehensive overview of Homer and the Civil War, see Marc Simpson, Winslow Homer. On the avoidance of tragedy in his paintings, see Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer, 20.
14 Christopher Kent Wilson, “Marks of Honor and Death,” in Marc Simpson, Winslow Homer, 28.
15 Henry Joslin to Mother, July 20, 1862, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 8, AAS. Joslin would later die of disease in a Union hospital.
16 Stevens, Berdan’s United States Sharpshooters, 368.
17 Christopher Kent Wilson, “Marks of Honor and Death,” 37, 38.
18 Peters, Currier & Ives.
19 LeBeau, Currier & Ives: America Imagined, 72.
20 Ibid., 73. The firm of Kurz and Allison rivaled Currier & Ives as Civil War lithographers and chromolithographers and pursued exactly the same heroic themes.
21 For other examples of bayonet charges in Currier & Ives lithographs (all at the American Antiquarian Society) see The Battle of Gettysburg (1863), The Battle of Baton Rouge (1862), and The Battle of Malvern Hill (1862). Of about 245,000 wounds treated by surgeons in Federal hospitals, fewer than 1,000 were from bayonets or sabers. But this statistic does not address the psychological impact that drawn bayonets continued to impose in the Civil War. See Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible of Courage, 598.
18. “ALL WHO DIE FOR COUNTRY NOW, DIE ALSO FOR HUMANITY”
1 Quoted in Donald, Lincoln, 364. Donald goes on to demonstrate how Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was motivated at least in part to “undercut the congressional initiative for emancipation by acting first, ”365.
2 The literature on slavery and emancipation during the Civil War is immense. For primary sources, the best compilation is Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, the ongoing series of edited documents from the National Archives, edited by Berlin, Fields, Miller, Reidy, and Rowland. Major secondary works include Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation; Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long; McPherson, Struggle for Equality; Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation; and, most recently, Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
3 Berlin et al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1, Destruction of Slavery, 275.
4 Lincoln’s technical objection to the Second Confiscation Act was over the issue of whether Congress had the right to legislate over states. In his view, only the commander in chief could exercise such powers under the war powers of the chief executive. But to see his prior interests in limited emancipation through, he held his tongue and signed the act.
5 Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 153.
6 Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is reprinted in Delbanco, Portable Abraham Lincoln, 271-73.
7 See Berlin, “Destruction of Slavery,” in Berlin et al., Slaves No More, 40.
8 Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, 495.
9 Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, 666—88; quotation at 685.
10 Moses Smith, Our Nation Not Forsaken, 11.
11 Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 30, 1862.
12 William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis, 495.
13 Southern Illustrated News, January 12, 1863; Augusta Weekly Constitutionalist, October 8, 1862.
14 Coulter, Confederate States of America, 266.
15 Christian Recorder, June 28, 1862.
16 Southern Illustrated News, October 18, 1862.
17 William Williams, Of the Birth and Death of Nations, 19, 21, 31. The unnamed source may have been Lincoln’s war ethicist Francis Lieber.
18 Dwinell, Hope for Our Country, 16, 12-13. See also Joseph P. Thompson, Christianity and Emancipation, 67: ”Emancipation is not abolition.... There are those whose opposition to slavery did not originate in a military necessity. For one, I am opposed to slavery because I am a Christian—a member of that anti-slavery society of which He who came to preach liberty to the captive is the founder and head.” The same point was made in Hodgman, Nation’s Sin and Punishment (New York, 1864), 206: ”We have, as a nation, done what was right, but not because it was right.... But nevertheless, since the act of Justice, and right and humanity has been passed, and there is an end of slavery, we will say that we are satisfied—that we are thankful!
19 Sumner, Emancipation! 6-7, 23.
20 Hodge, “The War,” 152.
21 Shedd, Union and the War, 32, 39. See also Spear, Duty of the Hour, 9.
22 Philip Foner, Frederick Douglass Selected Speeches and Writings, 549.
23 Page, Speech of Moses B. Page, 10.
24 Samuel Cox, Emancipation and Its Results, 7.
25 Tyson, Institution of Slavery, 191-92.
26 Henry Joslin to Mother, July 20, 1862, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 8, AAS.
27 The Illinois State Legislature resolution is reprinted in Commager, Civil War Archive, 579.
28 Berlin, “Destruction of Slavery,” 68.
29 Quoted in Campbell, When Sherman Marched North from the Sea, 65.
30 Masur, “The Real War Will Never Get in the Books,” 12.
31 Spectator (London), October 11, 1862. Among American historians, a similar argument may be found in Hofstadter’s classic American Political Tradition, 132-33.
32 See Wiggins, O Freedom!
33 Library of Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 345, 344.
34 Christian Recorder, January 3, 1863.
35 Marshall’s letter is reprinted in Berlin et al., Free at Last, 85.
36 Banks, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana, 8, 23. For similar sentiments, see Seebohm, The Crisis of Emancipation in America, 30: “The middle passage out of slavery, here as elsewhere, is one of trial and suffering; but it is short in duration, and the negro emerges out of it with a fair capacity for freedom, and a fair chance of success as a free citizen.”
37 Quoted in McKaye, Emancipated Slave, 17.
38 New York Evangelist, April 3, 1862.
19. LINCOLN, EMANCIPATION, AND TOTAL WAR
1 Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, 343-76.
2 Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 71.
3 William R. Williams, National Renovation, 18.
4 Neely, Last Best Hope of Earth, 105.
5 In Emancipation Moment, 19, David Brion Davis argues that “military reverses strengthened the pressure to enlist black troops and to invoke the ultimate weapon of slave emancipation.”
6 See chapter 32.
7 Donald, Lincoln, 374.
8 Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, 652.
9 Douglass, Day of Jubilee Comes, reprinted in Commager, Civil War Archive, 578. For a fuller discussion of Douglass’s response to emancipation, see Blight, Frederick Douglass’s Civil War, 106-15.
10 Moses Smith, Our Nation Not Forsaken, 10-13.
11 This theme is developed brilliantly in Blight, Race and Reunion.
12 Quoted in Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 169.
13 Quoted in William Wells Brown, Black Man, 209.
14 The Liberator, August 22, 1862. See also Liggett, “Our National Reverses,” 253-54: ”What means the recently enacted black code of the great, patriotic and Liberty professing State of Illinois? Do the sons of that would-be-glorious State die by the thousands for the liberty of the black man, as of the white man, and then by a vote almost unanimous, deny him a resting place for the sole of his weary foot on their own boasted free soil? What means the most extraordinary spectacle of the President of our great nation, inviting to his own council chamber a large number of as intelligent and respectable colored men as he could find ... to say to you that your expenses sh
all be paid, if you will be gone from our sight and the land of your unfortunate birth forever?” On the failure of Lincoln’s colonization scheme, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 508-9.
15 This point is made in Belz, Emancipation and Equal Rights (New York, 1978), 30-31: ”A closer look at Republican Unionism will show ... that it contained a moral dimension identical to that which historians have more readily discerned in the emancipation policy. Instead of a two-stage progression of war aims from nationalistic reason-of-state to antislavery moral principle, there was in Republican war policy a continuous concern for both expediency and moral idealism in the defense of the Union and in the adoption of an emancipation policy.”
16 Quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 769.
17 Hodge, “The War,” 157-59.
18 On the prudential Lincoln, see, especially, Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.
19 On the advances of Lincoln’s proclamation over congressional acts, see Oates, Man Behind the Myths, 106-7.
20 For an insightful essay tracing the co-optation of Northern clergy by lawyers and politicians during the Civil War, see Fredrickson, “The Coming of the Lord,” in Randall M. Miller et al., Religion and the American Civil War, 110-30.
21 See chapter 20.
22 Moses Smith, Our Nation Not Forsaken, 14.
23 Barnes, Conditions of Peace, 7.
24 Skinner, Light in Darkness, 4, 8, 11.
25 Moorhead, American Apocalypse, 81.
26 On Lincoln’s Indian policy, see Weeks, Farewell, My Nation, 75.
27 Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, 688.
28 Sutherland, “Abraham Lincoln, John Pope, and the Origins of Total War,” 580.
20. FREDERICKSBURG: ”SO FOOLHARDY AN ADVENTURE”
1 Lieber’s Code is printed in Friedman, Law of War, 1:158-86, and Hartigan, Lieber’s Code and the Law of War. These provisions for protection of civilians are reiterated in the Geneva Convention, whose signators pledge: ”Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion, or faith.... Outrages upon personal dignity in particular humiliating and degrading treatment ... shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever.”
2 Johnson, Just War Tradition, 300.
3 The same applied in subsequent American wars. When American officers were accused of torturing Filipino prisoners in the Spanish-American War, they defended themselves (successfully) with General Orders No. 100 and the doctrine of military necessity. In remonstrating against the excesses of American troops in the Philippines, Charles Francis Adams protested the token punishments imposed on American officers as “almost farcical” and continued: ”If we are, or appear to be, satisfied with them [the sentences], it would indicate that as a Nation we regard the killing of people and the devastation of a country, and the practice of torture as mere peccadilloes.” Quoted in Friedman, Law of War, foreword, xix.
4 For an insightful collection of essays on the battle of Fredericksburg, see Gallagher, Fredericksburg Campaign.
5 To be sure, Burnside’s plan was not wholly without merit if he could launch an immediate attack on Lee’s undermanned army. But like McClellan before him, a wary Burnside blinked when he should have attacked, by which time Jackson had rejoined Lee and Longstreet.
6 Quoted in Catton, Never Call Retreat, 24.
7 Ibid., 24.
8 John E. Anderson, Reminiscence, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, 71, AAS.
9 Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 6:107.
10 Quoted in Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War, 331.
11 Ibid., 335, 339.
12 Central Presbyterian, December 18, 1862.
13 The cartoon is reproduced in Kristen M. Smith, Lines Are Drawn, 81.
14 James Gassner to His Mother, December 22, 1862, Civil War Papers, Box 2, Folder 8, AAS.
15 Henry Joslin to Mother, March 10 and April 15, 1863, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 8, AAS.
21. “GOD HAS GRANTED US A HAPPY NEW YEAR”
1 Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 163—64.
2 Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 23, 1863. Puritan fathers like Thomas Shepard and Cotton Mather, the paper argued, not only inherited the intolerance of their age but were intolerant on principle, with Roger Williams as the lone exception.
3 Ibid., December 31, 1860; January and March 7, 1861.
4 Ibid., May 19, 1861.
5 Ibid., May 2, 1861; January 18, 1862.
6 Ibid., September 27, 1862.
7 Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 96.
8 Julia Williams to President Davis, Civil War Papers, Box 4, Folder 1, AAS.
9 Central Presbyterian, March 12, 1863.
10 For accounts of this battle I have relied chiefly on McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 580-83; Cozzens, No Better Places to Die; and Catton, Never Call Retreat, 35-47.
11 Catton, Never Call Retreat, 42.
12 Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, 693-94.
13 John Emerson Anderson to Parents, March 3, 1863, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 2., AAS.
14 Willoughby’s letter of January 1, 1863, is preserved in the “William Augustus Willoughby Papers, 1861-64,” Manuscript Collections, AAS.
15 New York Evangelist, January 8 and January 15, 1863.
16 American Presbyterian, December 18, 1862. Presbyterian Historical Society.
17 Rees, Sermon on Divine Providence, 11-13.
18 Hovey, Loyalty, 7.
19 Spear, Duty of the Hour, 14.
20 On internal divisions in the Democratic party see Hettle, Peculiar Democracy.
21 Kimball, Starve or Fall, 131.
22 For a sampling of the literature suggesting an erosion of nationalism, see Escott, “Failure of Confederate Nationalism,” in Owens and Cooke, Old South in the Crucible of War, 15-28; Powell and Wayne, “Self-Interest and the Decline of Confederate Nationalism,” in ibid., 29-45; Lebergott, “Why the South Lost,” 58-74; or Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism, 36-39. While these works document increasing conflicts they do not, in my view, document an erosion of nationalism any more than increasing controversies in the North indicate a loss of nationalism there. I am indebted to the argument put forward in Carp, “Nations of American Rebels,” 5—33.
23 This does not, however, mean that political news sheets critical of Davis were also critical of the rich. The Richmond Examiner, for example, ridiculed the “rioters” in the bread riots and suggested they be shot on the spot. In this sense, the poor had no vehicle to express their grievances other than oral demonstration and desertion.
24 J. B. Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 128, 120. On widespread anti-Semitism see Chesson, Richmond After the War, 52.
25 J. B. Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 104.
22. “AS SAVAGE AS SAVAGES”
1 Richmond Daily Dispatch, March 9, 1863.
2 Richmond Examiner, March 21, 1863,
3 Birdwhistell, “Extracts from the Diary of B. F. Hungerford,” 28.
4 John Randolph Tucker, Southern Church Justified in Its Support of the South, 23.
5 J. B. Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 280.
6 Richmond Daily Whig, March 27, 1863.
7 Central Presbyterian, March 19, 1863.
8 MacDonell, “Sermon on Matthew 22:21,” in Sermons, 1861-67, Manuscript collection, Georgia Historical Society.
9 Elliott, Sampson’s Riddle.
10 Pierce, Sermons of Bishop Pierce.
11 See, for example, Lacy, Address Delivered at the General Military Hospital, or Milies, God in History.
12 Norwood, God and Our Country.
13 Southern Illustrated News, April 4, 1863.
14 Charleston Daily Courier, Marc
h 27 and April 3, 1863.
15 Central Presbyterian, April 2, 1863.
16 Dowdey, Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee, 419.
17 Bunting’s sermon books and diaries are preserved in the Robert Franklin Bunting Papers, Barker Center for Texas History, University of Texas. For a brief sketch of his career see Marks, “Bunting Trusted in God and His Comrades.”
18 Kimball, Starve or Fall, 131-44.
19 Central Presbyterian, January 8, 1863.
20 Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 285.
21 Quoted in Furgurson, Ashes of Glory, 196.
22 Putnam, Richmond during the War, 208—9.
23 Ann Grymes to Jefferson Davis, April 2, 1863, Civil War Papers, Box 4, Folder 1, AAS.
24 Philo B. Buckingham to Mrs. Buckingham, April 8, 1863, Manuscripts Collection, AAS.
25 New York Evangelist, April 23, 1863.
26 The Liberator, May 15, 1863.
27 New York Evangelist, April 23, 1863.
28 Ibid.
29 Seth Sweetser Papers, 1834-78, AAS.
30 Abijah Marvin, “Fast Sermon on Psalm 80:4-7,” April 30, 1863, Manuscript Collection, AAS.
23. CHANCELLORSVILLE: “THE CHAMBER OF DEATH”
1 For this account of Chancellorsville, I have relied heavily on Furgurson, Chancellorsville, 1863 and Catton, Never Call Retreat, 144-67. For technical detail, maps, and complete coverage, the best work on Chancellorsville remains Bigelow, Campaign of Chancellorsville.
2 John E. Anderson, Reminiscence, Civil War Papers, Box 1, Folder 1, AAS.
3 Robert E. Lee to “My Dear Mrs. Jackson,” January 25, 1866, Manuscript Archives, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond.
4 Hooker’s version made its way back to the press. A writer for the New York Evangelist on May 7, 1863, noted: “Jackson’s whole corps, reinforced by D. H. Hill’s men, had precipitated themselves on Howard’s corps ... without waiting for a single volley from the rebels, this corps disgracefully abandoned their position ... and commenced coming, panic stricken, down the road toward head-quarters.” In fairness to Hooker, though he was wrong to question Howard’s “manliness,” he didn’t do any worse in the Wilderness than Grant would do a year later. See Neely, “Wilderness and the Cult of Manliness, in Boritt, Lincoln’s Generals, 79-120.
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