Meanwhile, the relief column of seven hundred Michigan and Ohio regulars courageously battled toward Athens for three hours. Finally, within sight of the fort, they were overcome and forced to surrender—just in time to witness the evacuation of the Union fort. On that one day of “battle,” Forrest took 1,300 prisoners, plus horses and weapons.
All totaled, General Forrest’s army killed or wounded 1,000 Union soldiers and captured 2,360 on its campaign into Tennessee. Of the approximately 4,500 Confederates involved, only 47 were killed and 293 wounded. Despite these great victories, the Confederacy was on its last legs. Atlanta had fallen and Sherman was marching through Georgia. Forrest’s trickery had come too late and was too little to help.
SOURCE: Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), p. 354.
ZACK CHANDLER AND THE WOODCHUCK
“Zack Chandler [the Republican politician from Michigan] had three men working in a saw-mill in the woods below Saginaw. During Lincoln’s last campaign, Zack went up to the saw-mill to see how the men were going to vote. He found that each had a different political faith. One was a Democrat, one a Republican and one a Greenbacker. A farm-boy had just killed a fine woodchuck, and Zack offered to give it to the man who would give the best reason for his political faith.
“‘I’m a Republican,’ said the first man, ‘because my party freed the slave, put down the rebellion and never fired on the old flag.’
“‘Good!’ said old Zack.
“‘And I am a Greenbacker,’ said the second man, ‘because if my party should get into power every man would have a pocket full of money.’
“‘First-rate!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘And now you,’ addressing the third: ‘Why are you a Democrat?’
“‘Because, sir,’ said the man trying to think of a good democratic answer—‘because—because I want that woodchuck!’”
SOURCE: Melville D. Landon, Kings of the Platform and Pulpit (Chicago: Werner Company, 1895), p. 546.
A LIE REVEALED
One of the most famous anecdotes from the Civil War was Lincoln’s response to complaints about General Grant’s drinking habits: “If I knew what brand he used, I’d send every other general in the field a barrel of it.” Unfortunately, the story was completely untrue. Lincoln himself said so when someone for once asked him whether he had actually said what was commonly attributed to him.
SOURCE: David Homer Bates, Lincoln Stories (New York: William E. Rudge, 1926), pp. 49–50.
LINCOLN ORDERS A PASS TO RICHMOND
“A gentleman called upon President Lincoln before the fall of Richmond and solicited a pass for that place. ‘I should be very happy to oblige you,’ said the President, ‘if my passes were respected; but the fact is, I have, within the past two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond and not one has got there yet.’”
SOURCE: Paul Selby, ed., Anecdotal Lincoln (Chicago: Thompson & Thomas, 1900), p. 21.
THE CONFEDERACY OFFERS TO ABOLISH SLAVERY
Fearing the imminent collapse of his government, Confederate President Jefferson Davis in March 1865 notified England and France that the South would be willing to abolish slavery in exchange for diplomatic recognition. Before either European power could respond, however, the war was over.
SOURCE: Emory Thomas, The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 130–31.
JEFFERSON DAVIS’S CAPTURE
When Jefferson Davis was captured by Federal troops on May 10, 1865, he was wearing his wife’s raglan and shawl, which he had put on in the dark of his tent just as he was trying to make an escape. Cartoonists and illustrators in the North mercilessly pictured Davis fleeing in woman’s dress.
Jefferson Davis fleeing in woman’s clothes. (Harper’s Weekly, May 27, 1865, p. 336.)
BEFORE JOHN WILKES BOOTH
The bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in April 1865 was not the first to be fired at the President. Twice before he had been shot at, both times while on his way to the Soldier’s Home. In 1861, while riding alone at night to the Home, Lincoln was fired upon by a man standing less than fifty yards away. In August 1864 he was again shot at, the bullet passing through the upper part of his stovepipe hat. In both cases Lincoln joked about the incidents and ordered that they not be publicized.
SOURCE: Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), II, 205–6; III, 440–41.
Lincoln in his coffin. (Harper’s Weekly, May 6, 1865, p. 285.)
AMERICAN WAR DEATHS GREATEST IN THE CIVIL WAR
Counting both Northerners and Southerners, more American lives were lost in the Civil War than in any other conflict. Following is a list showing the number of lives lost in every war in United States history. The figures include death owing to sickness:
American Revolution c. 25,324
War of 1812 c. 2,260
Mexican War c. 13,283
Civil War c. 498,332
Union 364,511
Confederacy c. 133,821
Spanish-American War 2,446
World War I 116,516
World War II 405,399
Korean War 54,246
Vietnam War 56,244
Persian Gulf War 148
SOURCE: Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), VII, 232.
A NEGRO BUYS A PRESIDENT’S PLANTATION
Although Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, at the end of the South’s struggle to maintain slavery his brother, Joseph, with the full consent and approval of Jefferson, sold the Davis plantation to Benjamin T. Montgomery, one of their former slaves. When the Civil War ended, Jefferson Davis was thrown into a Union jail, and Brierfield, the Davis plantation, was in bad financial condition. Davis’s brother, aged and unable to properly manage the land, sold it to Montgomery in 1866 for $300,000. Four years later Joseph Davis died.
Unfortunately, by 1881 it became clear that Montgomery would not be able to continue making payments on the land. The mortgage was foreclosed and Brierfield reverted to Davis’s hands. Ownership of the plantation by the Davis family continued until the early 1950s, when Brierfield became a state museum.
SOURCE: James T. McIntosh, ed., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), II, 245.
SANTA CLAUS DID NOT ALWAYS HAVE A BEARD
In the seventeenth century Dutch settlers brought the myth of Santa Claus to America. But the Santa Claus they brought did not look anything like the jolly figure pictured today. Their Santa was tall, slender, and very dignified. Around the beginning of the nineteenth century Santa took on the appearance of a jolly figure. In 1809, Washington Irving imagined Santa as a bulky man who smoked a pipe and wore a Dutch broad-brimmed hat and baggy breeches. Later in the century artists pictured Santa as a fat man, with brown hair and a big smile. Finally, in 1863, Thomas Nast drew a picture of Santa as a jolly old man with a white beard and wide girth—the first picture of Santa as he looks today.
Santa Claus as he was pictured before Nast, in 1858. (Harper’s Weekly, December 25, 1858, p. 817.)
Nast’s 1863 Santa Claus. (Albert Bigelow Paine, Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures [New York: Macmillan, 1904], p. 22.)
SOURCE: Albert Bigelow Paine, Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures (New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 22.
AN IMPEACHMENT DEFENSE
Senator William S. Groesbeck made the closing speech at President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. With a solemn tone and tears in his eyes, Senator Groesbeck defended Johnson with these final remarks: “The President is not a learned man, like many of you senators; his light is the feeble light of the Constitution.”
Andy Johnson. (Harper’s Weekly, April 15, 1862, p. 221.)
SOURCE: Melville D. Landon, Eli Perkins: Thirty Years of Wit (New York: Cassell, 1891), p. 249.
HE GAVE US CHEWING GUM?
In the fall of 1866,
Mexican general Santa Anna, exiled from his native land, lived on Staten Island, New York. His new interpreter and secretary, a young American named James Adams, noticed how the old general would constantly cut slices from an unknown tropical vegetable and place the pieces in his mouth. Inquiring, Adams learned that the substance was called “chicle.” When Santa Anna left New York the following May, the young interpreter persuaded him to leave behind his supply of chicle. Adams then began experimenting with the substance, adding different sweetening agents to bolster the flavor. Soon he had “invented” chewing gum. When Adams introduced his new product to the American public, he found a willing and hungry market. Later, Adams founded the Adams Chewing Gum Company, and Americans, helped by a most unlikely Mexican source, have been chewing gum ever since.
SOURCE: Oakah L. Jones Jr., Santa Anna (New York: Twayne, 1968), p. 145.
THE CENTURY’S GREATEST INVENTION
Sarah Hale, editor for forty years of Godey’s Ladies Magazine, editorialized in 1868: “There are many great men who go unrewarded for the services they render to humanity: even their names are lost, while we daily bless their inventions. One of these is he (if it was not a lady) who introduced the use of visiting cards.”
SOURCE: Sarah Hale, Manners (Boston: J. E. Tilton, 1868), p. 217.
STEVENS IS CARRIED TO THE CAPITOL
“There is nothing finer, as I think, in the annals of humor than [Thaddeus Stevens’s] quaint question to David Reese and John Chauncey, the two officers of the House, who in his last days used to carry him in a large armchair from his lodgings across the public grounds up the broad stairs of the noble Capitol[.] ‘Who will be so good to me, and take me up in their strong arms [Stevens asked], when you two mighty men are gone?’”
As Stevens lay on his bed, sick and near death, friend John Hickman came for a visit and told the congressman that he looked well. “Ah John,” quickly replied Stevens, “it is not my appearance, but my disappearance, that troubles me.”
Thaddeus Stevens on his deathbed. (Harper’s Weekly, August 29, 1868, p. 548.)
SOURCE: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, August 1871, p. 478.
MISTREATING GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
“Ex-Governor Chapman, of Alabama, one of the sturdy old patriots who are honored by the special hatred of the Yankees, suffered seriously in wanton spiteful depredations on his property near Huntsville, Ala. Thinking that some of the doings of the Yankee villains were beyond orders, he waited on the Yankee commander (Colonel Alexander), and stated his case:
“Colonel.—‘Well, Governor, I don’t think you have any property about here.’
“‘Well, sir, if it is not mine, be so kind as to inform me whose it is?’
“Colonel.—‘It is the property of the Government of the United States, sir.’
“Governor.—‘Ah! very well, Colonel, I have come to inform you, then, that your soldiers are treating the property of the United States Government d——d badly. Good day, Colonel.’”
SOURCE: Nora F. M. Davidson, ed., Cullings from the Confederacy (Washington: Rufus H. Darby, 1903), p. 63.
THE POST–CIVIL WAR DEATH OF CLEMENT VALLANDIGHAM
Everyone has to die. Yet it seems unfair for a great life to end in the way Ohio Civil War Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham’s did.
Vallandigham was a leader of the “Peace Democrats,” or “Copperheads,” a group of Middle Westerners and Northerners who opposed war as a means of bringing the South back into the Union. As the struggle dragged on, Copperhead cries for peace found increasing support among the war-weary populace. By 1862, the movement’s strength began seriously to hinder the administration’s military efforts. Finally, to force at least a semblance of unity on what was left of the nation, Lincoln used his power as a wartime commander-in-chief and had Vallandigham arrested and banished to the Confederacy as a traitor. But the Ohio congressman managed to escape and fled to Canada, where he continued to espouse his Copperhead views.
In 1871, however, Vallandigham was back in his native Ohio practicing law. In June he accepted the case of Thomas McGehan, a young rowdy accused of killing one Tom Myers in a barroom brawl. Vallandigham’s defense would show that Myers had actually shot himself while drawing a pistol out of his pocket while rising from a kneeling position. On June 16, in a conference with his fellow defense lawyers, Vallandigham outlined the performance he planned to give before the jury the next day. Taking a pistol from his bureau and placing it in his right pocket, the former congressman knelt to exactly the same position he claimed Myers had assumed immediately prior to the shooting. Slowly Vallandigham lifted the pistol out of his pocket as he rose. When the muzzle of the gun cleared his pocket, Vallandigham carefully cocked the weapon and placed it in precisely the same spot he believed Myers had held his gun when it had discharged.
“There, that’s the way Myers held it,” Vallandigham commented triumphantly, “only he was getting up, not standing erect.” Suddenly, however, there was a flash and the muffled sound of a shot. “My God,” the former Copperhead leader exclaimed, “I’ve shot myself!” Twelve hours later Vallandigham died.
His argument must have impressed someone. After a hung jury and a mistrial, a third jury found Thomas McGehan innocent of the charge of murder.
SOURCE: Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), pp. 309–10.
GRANT OVERTURNS DARWIN
Henry Adams, a Harvard historian and the descendant of two presidents, would not be expected to have had much sympathy for U. S. Grant. He didn’t.
“Simple-minded beyond the experience of Wall Street or State Street, [Grant] resorted, like most men of the same intellectual calibre, to commonplaces when at a loss for expression: ‘Let us have peace!’ or, ‘The best way to treat a bad law is to execute it’; or a score of such reversible sentences generally to be gauged by their sententiousness; but sometimes he made one doubt his good faith; as when he seriously remarked to a particularly bright young woman that Venice would be a fine city if it were drained. In Mark Twain, this suggestion would have taken rank among his best witticisms; in Grant it was a measure of simplicity not singular. . . . That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called—and should actually and truly be—the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. One must be as commonplace as Grant’s own commonplaces to maintain such an absurdity. The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.”
SOURCE: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1906; rpt. New York: Modern Library, 1931), pp. 265–66.
GRANT LEARNS ABOUT GOLF
A friend once tried to get U. S. Grant to learn the increasingly popular game of golf. After persistent prodding, Grant finally consented to go to a course as an observer.
As they arrived, a man stepped up to the ball and began hacking furiously at it with his driver. Dirt and grass flew everywhere, but the beginning golfer simply could not connect with the ball. Somewhat confused, Grant turned to his friend.
“That does look like very good exercise,” he admitted. “What is the little white ball for?”
SOURCE: Sid Frank, The Presidents (Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond, 1975), p. 48.
HORACE GREELEY RUNS LAST IN 1872
Horace Greeley, the famous newspaper editor, was the presidential candidate of the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties in the 1872 contest against Republican incumbent U. S. Grant. Greeley personally and politically despised Grant. He considered the Republican’s Reconstruction policies a sham and thought Grant a poor judge of moral character. But the Civil War general was popular with the American public, and Greeley was given virtually no chance of winning.
To compound his problems, Greeley’s wife was on her deathbed. In late October a very despondent Greeley wrote a friend, “I disagree with you about death. I wish it came faster. . . . I wish she were to be laid in her grave next week, a
nd I to follow her the week after.” On October 30, Molly Greeley died.
On November 4, with political defeat looming, Greeley wrote the same friend, “I am not dead but I wish I were. My house is desolate, my future dark, my heart a stone.” The next day Grant was reelected by a landslide. Greeley carried only six states. Both politically and financially, he was ruined.
By the middle of November, Greeley, his mental condition rapidly deteriorating, was removed to a private sanitarium in upper New York State. On November 29, three weeks after the election, he died.
When the electoral college met in December, the sixty-six Democratic electors who had been elected for Greeley were instructed to use their own judgment in casting their ballots. Most voted for Thomas A. Hendricks of Illinois. Three Georgia electors, however, insisted on voting for the deceased Greeley. Congress refused to count their votes.
Thus, not only did Horace Greeley, in less than a month’s time, lose his wife, the election, his money, his mind, and his own life, but he also became the only presidential candidate of a major political party to receive no electoral votes.
SOURCE: Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), p. 420.
One-Night Stands with American History Page 12