Category Archives: White Haven (U.S. Grant NHS)

04/14/13

A Bit Of Jewish History

Mt. Zion CemeteryWe stayed at a hotel in Maspeth (Queens). Directly across the street is Mt. Zion Cemetery, a  Jewish burial ground established in 1893. I didn’t take the photo above, but this was essentially the view we had from our room. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a cemetery so closely packed. Before going to New York I had read a few reviews of the hotel and one said the surroundings are “grim.” Well, cemeteries don’t bother Sue and I; in fact, we find them fascinating – so much history! I only wish we had had the time to walk across the street and explore a little. Since returning home I did a little googling and learned some very interesting things about Mt. Zion. For example, many of the workers who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire are buried there. Given the 1893 date, I’m sure there must be Civil War veterans buried there. For certain, there are WWI veterans buried there. See here, here, and here for more.

While I’m on the subject of Jewish history in New York, fellow blogger Keith Muchowski posted about an exhibit that recently opened at a museum in New York on Jews and the Civil War. See Keith’s post here. If you are going to be in New York this summer you might want to check this exhibit out; I wish I could get back for it.

Of course, no history of the Jews and the Civil War would be complete without an examination of Ulysses S. Grant’s infamous General Order No. 11, and it appears that the exhibit includes three mini-documentary films, one of which focuses on General Order No. 11. I was glad to see that Jonathan Sarna is involved with the project. You might recall that he recently published a book that put forth a positive interpretation of Grant and his attitude towards Jewish people. Dr. Sarna was a guest speaker at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site last year and his lecture was well attended and received. The park therefore, decided to try having an annual lecture on Jewish history. On June 2, 2013, the park will welcome Robert A. Cohn, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Jewish Light here in St. Louis. His topic will be “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War.” If you are interested in attending, remember to call a few weeks ahead and make a reservation.

04/1/13

A Tale of Two Julias

Julia GrantAs I’m sure many of you already know, The New York Times has been running a series of articles by various authors on the Civil War under the title Disunion. My impression is the series has been well-received. Personally, I have not followed the series too closely, partly because I was disappointed in the content of a few articles early on. (See here and here). The series is running on the Times “Opinion” page, and perhaps that is appropriate. The problem with most newspaper articles and blogposts (yes, this blog included) is that there are usually no source footnotes and no peer review. In the case of the Disunion series, I don’t know who is reviewing or approving the articles the Times is running. Regarding sources, the articles are not footnoted, although they do list source references at the end of the article. This, of course, is only somewhat useful in identifying the source of specific information related in the article.

A couple of days ago I came across an article that appeared in the Disunion series in February titled, “The Two Julias.” The subject(s) of the article, written by Candice Shy Hooper, are Julia Dent Grant and the slave nurse the Dent family called ”Black Julia.” I was flattered to see that Ms. Hooper cited a post from this blog in her sources. Overall her article relates some very interesting history and raises some very interesting historical issues. Ms. Hooper, however, makes some assertions that I find problematic.

Ms. Hooper tells us that throughout the Civil War “Grant wanted his wife with him at every possible opportunity, and he made that clear from the start,” and that “Julia Grant was the Civil War’s road warrior. Beginning with that first journey, she covered more than 10,000 miles in four years – and nearly 4,000 in just the first year – to be with her husband.” There is no question that Ulysses and Julia made every effort to be together; they had already endured a two year separation in 1852-1854 while Grant had been stationed on the west coast and they did not want to be separated that long again. Then Ms. Hooper writes, “She couldn’t have managed without her slave.” And this is where I begin to question. Ms. Hooper’s description of the difficulties of travel are certainly accurate. In fact, most middle and upper class women found it necessary to have domestic help, even when they weren’t traveling. These servants did not have to be slaves though. Julia had already managed to get along without slaves when as a young bride she had lived with her husband while he was stationed in Michigan and New York. She had also just spent a year living in Galena, Illinois without slaves. It’s true that Julia would have found it difficult to travel without the help of a “servant” but that doesn’t equate to “She couldn’t have managed without her slave.”

The slave that Ms. Hooper chooses to focus on in her article, “Black Julia,” was, according to Julia Grant, born at White Haven.  Ms. Hooper describes White Haven as “a plantation near St. Louis, where her father, Frederick Dent, and more than a dozen slaves lived a life more commonly associated with the Deep South.” But what exactly is ”a life more commonly associated with the Deep South”? Yes, Dent owned slaves. Yes, they labored in the fields and served the needs of the white family living in the main house. Beyond that, White Haven operated more like a family farm. There was a variety of crops grown, as far as we know there was never an overseer, we have no record at all of punishments of any kind being meted out. Julia Grant insisted that the slaves at White Haven were treated well. When Grant farmed there in 1854-1858 he worked in the fields alongside the slaves. It probably was not as idyllic for the slaves as Julia Grant remembered it, but we don’t really know.

Ms. Hooper then tells us “historians still debate whether Dent retained legal title to the four slaves his daughter claimed to own.” This is where the lack of footnotes begins to be a challenge. Who are these “historians” who are debating this issue, where is this “debate” taking place, and what evidence is being presented? Ms. Hooper notes that when the Grants moved from St. Louis to Galena in 1860, Julia’s father, Col. Dent, refused to let Julia take “her” slaves with her, but then Ms. Hooper asserts that the slaves were left with Col. Dent. Julia wrote in her Memoirs, however, that she and Ulysses “hired out our four servants to persons we knew and who promised to be kind to them.” (JDG Memoirs, 82) Ms. Hooper then states, “It is likely that in November 1861, when Julia traveled with her children from Galena to St. Louis and then to Cairo, she convinced her father and husband to allow her to take Jule with her.” Maybe so, but then she asserts, “As the price of having Julia with him, Grant tolerated Jule’s presence, though the slave’s arrival at his headquarters was surely an embarrassment.” How can we know if Grant was embarrassed? This is 1861-2. Grant is still fighting a war to save the Union, not to emancipate slaves. It seems to me that describing Grant as embarrassed that his wife has a slave traveling with her assumes that Grant was anti-slavery. As I have argued before, the evidence that Grant was anti-slavery in 1861 and earlier is sketchy at best. In addition, most Union officers had “servants.” Ms. Hooper has already noted that Grant himself had a servant at the beginning of her article.

Ms. Hooper relates one of my favorite passages in Julia Grant’s Memoirs in which Julia remembered being questioned by several Southern ladies in Holly Springs regarding her loyalties. Julia indignantly told them she was “the most loyal of the loyal.” Ms. Hooper asserts that the presence of “Black Julia” precipitated this exchange, however that is not at all clear in Julia’s account. (JDG Memoirs, 105-106)

Ms. Hooper admits that “we know almost nothing about Jule [Black Julia],” yet she goes on to make unsubstantiated guesses about what Jule might have been thinking and feeling. Ms. Hooper states that after the Emancipation Proclamation, “Jule must have wondered at a world in which any other slave in the South but she could find freedom in General Grant’s camp.” Since we don’t know anything about her, how can we assume what she is thinking? And, we don’t really know what kind of relationship “Black Julia” had with Julia Grant or with Ulysses Grant. Ms. Hooper quotes Julia Grant in her Memoirs, “Eliza, Dan, Julia, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.” But Julia, writing decades after the fact, was incorrect. Ms. Hooper acknowledges this, but she gets it wrong also. Eliza, Dan, and John were presumably still in Missouri which was not covered by the EP. Black Julia’s status, traveling with Julia Grant, may have been more uncertain, however there were areas under Union control where slaves were freed immediately by the EP. At any rate, Ms. Hooper then posits that “Jule continued her service to Julia, most likely as a paid servant.” Again the lack of footnotes makes it difficult to determine what the source is for this information. Ms. Hooper again quoting Julia’s Memoirs stated,  “’At Louisville, my nurse (a girl raised at my home) left me,’ Julia later recalled. ‘I suppose she feared losing her freedom if she returned to Missouri.’” This was actually a curious statement on Julia’s part, because it conflicts with her earlier assertion that the slaves she considered “hers” were all freed by the EP. And, if Black Julia had actually become a paid servant, wouldn’t that imply a right to leave at any time, unless she had signed some kind of employment agreement?

Despite having told us at the beginning of her article that historians are debating whether or not Julia Grant legally owned slaves, Ms. Hooper concludes by asserting, “One Julia was a slave owner and the wife of the general who defeated a slave nation. The other Julia was her slave for 37 years.” She also concludes, “The tale of the two Julias reveals the complexity of the Civil War’s social landscape in a way that the traditional image of brother fighting brother does not.” While this is manifestly true, her article actually misses some of that complexity by assigning thoughts and emotions to historic characters that can not be substantiated. It seems to me that Ms. Hooper has projected onto 19th century people, the “two Julias” and Ulysses Grant, a 21st century sensibility. The simple truth is that we don’t know exactly what kind of relationship these people had. We don’t know what “Black Julia” thought or felt. It is not difficult, however, to imagine that she stayed with the Grants as long as she did because she actually wanted to; because she felt a certain loyalty to this woman she had grown up with and the Grant children she had nursed as infants, because the Grants may have treated her with a certain measure of respect, and because there was a certain measure of security. What life might she have once she left them? Julia wrote that Black Julia married soon after leaving. Perhaps she had already met the man she married even before she made the decision to leave Julia Grant.

Finally Ms. Hooper wrote of Black Julia, “She risked more than her traveling companion during the war.” It’s not clear to me what this means. She concludes, ”We do not know much about Jule, but we know she had fierce determination. Once given her freedom, she refused to risk losing it.” Maybe so, but even Julia Grant, again writing decades later, only “supposes” that “Black Julia” avoided returning to Missouri for fear of losing her freedom. Maybe she just had a better offer. Maybe she just fell in love.

 

11/21/12

You Lie!

     On December 4, Amy S. Greenberg, author of A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, will be guest speaker at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. Dr. Greenberg titled her book after a quote by Ulysses Grant:

I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was younger, only I had not moral courage enough to resign. – Ulysses S. Grant, 1879

     I’m about halfway through the book and I’m finding it engaging and an easy read. Greenberg warns her readers right off that this is not a study of the military campaigns of the war with Mexico, but rather it is “a story about politics, slavery, Manifest Destiny, Indian killing, and what it meant to prove one’s manhood in the nineteenth century. It explores the meaning of moral courage in America, the importance of legacies passed between generations, and the imperatives that turn politicians into leaders.”

     This could obviously be a post about several important issues, but I want to share one passage I’ve found particularly interesting; that is Greenberg’s take on James K. Polk:

In the chilly first months of 1845, many Democrats came to believe that the president-elect had a predilection to make promises, or appear to make promises he had no intention of keeping… Newly  seated senator John A. Dix of New York… trusted Polk, because “his honor is a sufficient Security” to prevent him from lying. Dix believed Polk, because he assumed the president, like other men of his profession and class, cared about his reputation as an honorable man. Honorable men did not lie, at least not without plausible deniability.

Dix and others quickly learned, however, that James K. Polk’s “honor” offered little security…Before he was even inaugurated he had won a reputation as a man who couldn’t be trusted. It was becoming clear that Polk’s “mind was narrow, and he possessed a trait of sly cunning which he thought shrewdness, but which was really disingenuousness and duplicity.” No Democrat would dare say it out loud, but the new President was a liar.

     I couldn’t help but think of our recent history and the election campaigns we just passed through. Just like John Dix, we all would like to believe that men (and women) “care about their reputation.” We would like to believe that their “honor is a sufficient security” to prevent them from lying, yet we are also cynical. Trust is often an issue in political campaigns, but it is often a matter of which candidate lies the least, rather than which one is actually honest. Indeed, it has been argued that lying is a requirement in a successful politician. See here, for instance.

     Some of us also tend to think that lying politicians are a recent phenomena. Greenberg reminds us that is wistful nostalgia for a time that never existed, not true history, “Honest Abe” notwithstanding.  

 

 

 

09/18/12

The Mid-America Conference on History

     Tomorrow I will be heading over to Springfield to attend the Mid-America Conference on History hosted by Missouri State University. I will be presenting a paper on Thursday at the 3:15 session. I have presented papers to various groups and given interpretive talks for many years, but this will be my first academic conference. Dr. Worth Robert Miller is the conference coordinator this year. Dr. Miller was on my graduate committee  when I was working on my M.A. at Missouri State. It’s been more than four years since I saw him last, and it was a real honor to receive an email from him a few months ago asking if I had a paper I’d like to present this year.

     The paper I will be presenting discusses the personal politics and political party affiliations of Ulysses S. Grant in the years preceding the Civil War. Parts of the paper come from posts on this blog, but the paper represents the research and thought I’ve put into this subject for several years now; particularly the last four years since I’ve been at Ulysses S. Grant NHS. 

     We are all products of the times and the environments in which we are born, grow to maturity, live, and work. Ulysses Grant was no different. Grant biographers have relished the contrast between Grant’s upbringing in Ohio, including his father’s Whig Party and anti-slavery politics, and that of Grant’s years at White Haven, his Democrat, slaveholding, father-in-law’s Missouri plantation, where Grant lived and worked from 1854-1859. My paper explores those two seemingly contradictory influences on  Grant.

     I’m also looking forward to hearing several other presentations, including one by Joan Stack of the State Historical Society of Missouri titled, “The Hat, the Horse, and the Hero: The Impact of Newspaper Illustrations Representing the Civil War Battle of Wilson’s Creek on the Legacy of General Nathaniel Lyon.” Also, the featured speaker on Friday night is Dr. George Rable of the University of Alabama. His talk is titled, “God as General: Was There a Religious History of the American Civil War?” I listened to one of Dr. Rable’s lectures online not long ago in which he said there was an anti-party spirit at the outbreak of the Civil War; regular citizens believed partisan party politicians had brought on the crisis. I note in my paper that Grant displayed that anti-party inclination, despite his quick support of the new Lincoln Administration.

     If you will be attending, or if you are in the area this week, I hope to see you!

09/12/12

The Mary Robinson Interview

 

From Joan Waugh’s “U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth”

    Ulysses S. Grant died July 23, 1885 after a long battle with throat cancer. At the time he was one of the most well-known and popular men in the world, but he was particularly loved by those who appreciated his major role in saving the Union and emancipating America’s enslaved people.  On July 24, 1885, The St. Louis Republican published a special memorial edition dedicated to the national hero. Included was an interview with Mary Robinson, who was described as:

 a highly intelligent, copper-colored Negress, who spent the greater portion of her life as the trusted slave of the Dent and Grant families, is spending the evening of her long and useful life at 3305 Caroline avenue. She is nearly 58 years of age. Besides being much more intelligent than the average representative of her race, she is a keen observer and possesses a remarkably strong memory.

     Robinson’s interview is of particular interest to Grant scholars because she lived and worked at White Haven during the years 1854-1859, when Grant had resigned from his Army career and was attempting to make a living as a Missouri planter-farmer. There are no other known accounts of life at White Haven from the point of view of the enslaved people who lived there. In fact, little is known about what happened to the Dent slaves after they left White Haven. Good historians rely on primary source material to construct as accurate an account of history as possible. They also acknowledge that primary materials must be analyzed and interpreted. (See here.) So, here’s the challenge: How accurate is this published interview? Which of Mary Robinson’s recollections should be accepted as fact and which should be dismissed as false? If some of her recollections are demonstrably false, should any of the interview be trusted? The interview can be accessed at the Ulysses S. Grant Homepage.

05/23/12

Grant, the Jews, and the Separation of Church and State

      On June 20, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site will welcome guest speaker Jonathan D. Sarna, author of the recently published book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews. Grant scholars know that in December 1862, as the General in command of the Department of the Tennessee, Grant issued what is described as the “most notorious anti-Jewish order by a government official in American history.” The infamous General Orders No. 11 decreed:

     The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

     Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters

     No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits. 

     By order of Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant

     Sarna explains the circumstances that led to General Orders No. 11, including what might have motivated Grant to issue the order, without completely exonerating him. He does an excellent job of explaining the immediate affect this order had on innocent Jews living in the territory of Grant’s department. He introduces prominent Jews who immediately appealed to President Lincoln, who subsequently revoked the order.  The damage to Grant’s reputation, and the blot on his character could not so easily be revoked.  For his part, Grant himself quickly realized the mistake he had made, and spent the rest of his life doing his best to make up for it. As Sarna explains, Grant knew “that in expelling ‘Jews as a class’ he had failed to live up to his own high standard of what it meant to be an American” and this “was never far from his mind.”

     Here we are confronted once again with the question: What is an American? In this case the question more specifically is: Must you be a Christian (even more specifically, must you be a Protestant Christian) to truly be an American? Sarna relates that in the post-Civil War years many people concluded that the war had been punishment for “the absence of any adequate recognition of the soveriegnty of God…in our Constitution.” The National Reform Association was established in 1864, having as its objective to “declare the nation’s allegiance to Jesus Christ and its acceptance of the moral laws of the Christian religion, and so indicate that this is a Christian nation.” They proposed a rewrite of the Preamble of the Constitution which read:

     We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government…

      A major supporter of this amendment was Missouri Senator B. Gratz Brown, despite the fact that he was the grand-nephew and namesake of Benjamin Gratz, a prominent Jewish merchant. According to Sarna, during the years of Grant’s Presidency there was a steady push to get this amendment passed, but it failed to ever make it out of congressional committee, thanks in large part to “effective behind-the-scenes lobbying” by prominent Jews. Instead, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments “greatly broadened the constitutional definition of  ‘we the people,’ just as Grant and his party had hoped.”

     Today, there is a continuing effort to declare the United States a Christian nation (see here). Is, or has, the United States ever been a Christian nation? To answer this question in the affirmative is to declare that thousands of people living in this country are not really Americans because they are not Christians. The consequence of this way of thinking is this: If they are not really Americans, are they entitled to the same rights and privileges? Are they equal? The Jewish Americans of Grant’s day recognized this and fought against it. They demanded that Thomas Jefferson’s “high wall of separation between church and state” be maintained. Ulysses Grant agreed. ”Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private donation,” he declared in 1875, and ”keep the church and state forever separate.”    

 

12/3/11

B. Gratz Brown at White Haven 2011

   

  I was too busy to post much over the summer, so this is a very late post. In August, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site presented the annual living history program,”Night Walk Into the Past.” Over the years the program has had different characters, themes, and formats. I have been involved the last three years since I’ve been there. The first year I portrayed a railroad worker of the nineteenth century and last year I was Joseph Reynolds ca. 1860. Those years I was assigned a character and handed a script to memorize. This year I wrote my own script. After several re-writes and input from our Site Historian to make it the right length and fit for the overall program, I portrayed B. Gratz Brown in August, 1861. Unfortunately, I am already 21 years older than Brown would have been in 1861 (he was born in May, 1826), he was sporting a much longer beard, and he would not have been wearing glasses. While I may not have looked much like Brown, I hope my script, which contained some of Brown’s own words, and my performance conveyed a sense of Brown’s convictions, his passion, and his view of the momentous events unfolding in that violent summer 150 years ago. I wish I  had a video, but to my knowledge, no one made one, so here is my script, if you’d like to read it:

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen.  I’ve just arrived at White Haven to speak with Colonel Dent, to let him know I saw his son-in-law General Grant at Ironton and to relay a message from him. I must say, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else, but perhaps you are here to wish Colonel Dent well on Grant’s promotion. I see familiar faces so I know many of you reside in St. Louis. If you cast your votes for my election to the state legislature, let me thank you. I suspect many of you have read my editorials in my newspaper the Missouri Democrat, so you know where I stand on these vexing issues dividing our country today, but on the chance that some of you have not, if you will all indulge me, I will explain my views.

Like Colonel Dent and several of you here tonight, I am a Southerner. I come from a distinguished family of Virginians and Kentuckians, men who fought for our independence from Great Britain and for the founding of our democratic form of government. Yet, I have openly declared myself an opponent of slavery. This may not be typical of a Southerner. However, I strongly believe the institution of slavery retards progress, and cannot be reconciled with freedom and popular government. You may recall that I was forced to defend my honor as a gentleman when challenged for my views in 1856 – the last duel fought on Bloody Island. That scoundrel Thomas Reynolds, claiming to be a Democrat, and courting the German vote, was merely doing the bidding of the slave power in this state. When I exposed him in my paper, he challenged me to a duel. I tried to avoid such an outdated form of chivalry, but when he called me a coward for doing so, I had no choice but to issue a challenge myself. Reynolds shot me in the leg, and I’ve had to use this cane ever since.

When I arrived in Missouri more than ten years ago, I became a dedicated Democrat.  I remained a Democrat as long as I could, but when that party rejected free soil principles, when it aligned itself with slavery and oppression; I left and helped found the Republican Party here in Missouri. The platform of the Republican Party mirrors my own beliefs. You have heard me say in speeches and in my editorials: Wherever you see a free citizen of our state, relying upon his own labor, farming his own land, and living by the industry of his own hands, point to that man and say, there is the Republican platform. Free labor and free democracy are synonymous terms, ladies and gentlemen. Free labor and slave labor are incompatible institutions; one or the other must dominate or banish its rival. You must choose which you will prefer – upon which you will rest the liberties of yourselves and future generations.

As a Republican, I campaigned against the election of Claiborne Fox Jackson for Governor of this fine state.  I could see that his claim of being a Douglas Democrat was nothing but a ploy to get elected. And I have been proven right. Since his election as Governor, he and his no-good Lt. Governor, – Reynolds – yes, that same rascal I met on Bloody Island – they have tried every way possible to take Missouri out of the Union. In his inaugural address of January last, Jackson proclaimed that the destiny of Missouri and the slaveholding states was “one and the same.” This is absurd. Though slavery has tended to associate Missouri with the South, she owes no debt of gratitude to that section. She cannot be identified with the South either by geographical position or by natural association. Three fourths of Missouri’s exports go to northern seaports, and two thirds of her imports come from the North.  

As Governor, Jackson refused President Lincoln’s call for troops to put down this unholy rebellion and then carried on negotiations with the rebel government to bring arms into Missouri and to force secession on Missourians. His treasonous designs had to be stopped. I was proud to serve as Colonel of a regiment of my German neighbors in St. Louis who stood up for the Union and arrested that nest of secessionists assembled at Camp Jackson.

My regiment was then sent to Rolla for a time, before being reassigned to protect the railhead at Ironton. We were ninety day volunteers who responded to the President’s call, and supplies were running short. Our uniforms, which had been hastily made, were in tatters, and we were facing a far superior force to our immediate south. When Ulysses Grant arrived at Ironton with fresh troops to relieve me just a few days ago, I assured him that I was quite glad to see him, and we spent some time talking as I turned over my command. I did not know him personally when he lived in St. Louis. I had heard from some that he shared Colonel Dent’s proslavery principles, which might be expected since Grant lived under Dent’s roof here at White Haven. What I learned is that Grant is more a man of my beliefs than Colonel Dent’s. The Colonel might not appreciate that, but he ought to be proud of his son-in-law’s promotion. 

Right now this country needs more patriotic men like Grant. When southern slave states refused to abide by the fair and democratic election of Abraham Lincoln, and fired on our glorious Stars and Stripes, Grant immediately volunteered his services to his threatened country. He told me that we have a government and laws and a flag and they all must be sustained. These are sentiments with which I heartily agree. Grant’s skills seem to lie in military tactics and strategy, and while I am proud of my military service, I feel I can better serve the country by returning to my political career. Battles to keep Missouri in the Union and to abolish slavery must be fought on the field and in the political arena. That great battle at Wilson’s Creek near Springfield this month has shown this to be true.

Now, I’ve heard that the rebels are claiming a great victory at Wilson’s Creek.  I tell you, although they were greatly outnumbered, our Union boys fought bravely and dealt a stunning blow to those secessionists. General Lyon gave his life on Bloody Hill, but his gallant actions at Wilson’s Creek and here in St. Louis at Camp Jackson have secured St. Louis and Missouri for the Union. Furthermore, he drove those traitors Jackson and Reynolds out of Jefferson City which allowed a provisional government that is loyal to the Union to be established. General Lyon should be revered as a national hero.

It grieves me deeply to say that my young cousin, Cary Gratz, also fell at Wilson’s Creek. I fear many more may be sacrificed upon the altar of freedom before this wretched rebellion is put down.

Well, my apologies for keeping you all so long, but we are facing trying times and I hope you will consider the things I have said. I actually came out here at Grant’s request to ask Colonel Dent to pass on information about him to his wife up in Galena, Illinois. He has sent several letters to Mrs. Grant, but with the mail being interrupted and him moving his headquarters so often, there is no telling when or if she will receive them. So, I will take my leave of you now and see if I can deliver General Grant’s message. Good night and may God bless and preserve our United States.

 

 

Night Walk 2011 cast: EricHudson, David Newman, Anne Williams, John Samson, Sherie Phillips, Bob Pollock, Cynthia Knittel Van Sluys, Doug Harding.

09/9/11

Christopher Phillips Strikes Again – and this time it’s not Lyon

From "Captain Sam Grant" by Lloyd Lewis

     Apparently Christopher Phillips isn’t satisfied with attacking the first, but lesser known, Union hero, Nathaniel Lyon; he’s now going after bigger fish. His newest contribution to the New York Times Disunion series is an assault on the Union’s biggest and most well-known hero, Ulysses S. Grant. Why the Times chose Phillips for an article on Grant is a mystery when there are scholars much more qualified who could have been called upon (Hello, Brooks Simpson). I asked Brooks if he could post a review of Phillips’ article, but he answered that he doesn’t have the time, so this post will point out just a bit of what I see as problematic in the article in regards to Grant before the war. Anyone who has read this blog knows I disagree with much of what Phillips has written about Lyon, and I believe Phillips’ “revisionist” interpretation of the Civil War colors his views on Union heroes. See here, here, and here. So it is perhaps not surprising that I would take exception to his caricature of Grant. So here goes.

     First, it is a stretch at best to say that “Little Egypt” was ever Grant’s home, as one commenter on the NYT blog pointed out. Cairo, Illinois is almost four hundred miles from Georgetown, Ohio where Grant spent his boyhood years.  As Phillips acknowledges, the areas where Grant grew up and was educated were “hotbeds of abolitionism,” a description that could never be applied to “Little Egypt.” Ohio does not even share a border with Illinois and Grant never lived in Indiana. The closest Grant came to living in “Little Egypt” would have been his years in St. Louis where the politics of slavery were complex and increasingly contentious as I have discussed in several blogposts. If he wanted to write about a Union hero who was actually from “Little Egypt,” I might suggest John A. Logan.

     Phillips describes Grant’s father Jesse as “mildly anti-slavery.” While I would not say Jesse Grant was a William Lloyd Garrison or a Theodore Weld, he was pretty firm in his convictions. He wrote anti-slavery pieces for the local paper and he was more than a bit piqued when his son married into a “tribe of slaveholders” as he labeled the Dents. Then Phillips writes this:

“After graduating from West Point, Grant married the daughter of an affluent Missouri slaveholder and, after an undistinguished and often drunken army career, left to farm unsuccessfully on a rocky piece of Missouri timber that his father-in-law gave him. (Appropriately, Grant named it “Hardscrabble.”)”

First, Phillips completely skips over the fact that Grant was twice brevetted for bravery, which meant an honorary promotion to Captain, during the Mexican War. This begs the question, what would Phillips consider distinguished?  And then there is the “often drunken” charge. How does Phillips define “often”? When specifically is Phillips referring to here? During the Mexican War? While Grant was stationed in Detroit or New York? While he was making the difficult crossing of the Isthmus of Panama? Perhaps during Grant’s stay at Vancouver Barracks or his brief time at Ft. Humboldt? The charges of Grant’s alleged problem with alcohol have been, and will continue to be, debated among historians. I think there is little doubt that Grant drank on occasion while stationed on the west coast, but Phillips makes his statement as if it’s a proven fact that Grant drank all the time. This is a slanderous charge that should be better explained or at least qualified.  Then there is the disparagement of Grant’s efforts to make a living as a farmer back in Missouri.

     The name “Hardscrabble” had nothing to do with the soil or the farm itself; it was the appellation the Grants gave to the log house Grant built. It is an example of Grant’s wonderful sense of humor. As Julia wrote in her Memoirs, “The little house looked so unattractive that we facetiously decided to call it Hardscrabble.” And, Phillips’ assertion of Grant’s “poor head for business and ineptitude at farming” shows that Phillips knows little about Grant’s experience at White Haven. Grant’s biggest challenge was a lack of capital. Despite Phillips’ description of Julia’s father as an “affluent Missouri slaveholder,” Colonel Dent’s fortunes, by the time Grant arrived to farm in 1854, were already in decline. Like many plantation and farm owners, he was land (and slave) rich and cash poor. Grant tried to borrow money from his own father, but Jesse Grant was not happy Grant was involved with slaveholders and generally refused to help. Grant ran into three major obstacles in his quest to be a successful farmer. First, there was a “panic” or recession as we would call it today, in 1857, which caused farm prices to plunge. Second, Grant, his family, and the White Haven slaves were struck with a serious illness, likely malaria. Third, what really ended the farming operations, in June of 1858, a deep freeze killed farmers’ crops all around the St. Louis region. Given his lack of capital, this was a blow Grant could not overcome. None of these factors have anything to do with Grant’s ability to grow crops, which as near as we can tell, he was quite capable of doing. Furthermore, it should be noted that despite Grant’s struggles to support his family during these years, he was quite happy; he was back with his wife and children.

     This brings us to the issue of Grant and slaves. Phillips says:

 “Grant was even more ambivalent about slavery than his father — enough to free the only slave he ever owned (given to him by his wife’s father), but he was not sufficiently opposed to it to deter him from hiring slave field hands or sell his wife’s domestic servants.

How does freeing a slave that would fetch $1000-1500 (a substantial sum then) at a time when he desperately needed money to support his young family show ambivalence? And as I discussed in this earlier post, there is no evidence that Grant ever hired slave field hands. McFeely, from whom Phillips likely got this information, botched his handling of Grant’s letters upon which this is based. It is far more likely that Grant hired “free men of color.” Furthermore, Grant never sold any slaves ever! And, as I discussed in this earlier post, Julia never actually owned any slaves. Phillips goes on to say that Grant’s “ambivalence to slavery” did not “drive him from the Democratic Party, or even from the slave states.” Phillips, who has written books about Missouri politics should know that the Democratic Party dominated antebellum Missouri, but was often split into opposing factions. By the time Grant arrived in 1854, the Whig Party had begun to disintegrate and there was no Republican Party. Grant actually flirted with the Know-Nothing Party at one point, so he could not have been too dedicated to the Democrats. As I have said before, there were some who believed the Democratic Party would become the anti-slavery party. So what exactly does Grant’s association with Democrats really say about his views on slavery? See these previous posts (here and here) for more on this. The only slave state he ever lived in was Missouri and he had good reason for being there; he wanted to be with his family.

     I have to ask, what point is Phillips trying to make in describing Grant’s views on slavery before the war? That the war wasn’t really about slavery? That Grant didn’t really believe it was about slavery? As Brooks Simpson has pointed out before, what Grant thought about slavery tells us little about the cause of the war because he was not involved in the secession process on either side. But, we really don’t have to guess regarding what Grant thought. In 1861 he wrote explicit letters detailing his understanding of the cause, which I have written about before. These letters show a very insightful analysis and understanding of the politics of the day, which disproves Phillips’ most egregious assertion, that Grant was “largely politically uninformed.” That is just ludicrous.

I could go on with this post, but I think I will end here. It seems to me that Phillips took most of his article from McFeely’s biography which, in my humble opinion, is not the best source for understanding Ulysses S. Grant. He cites Simpson’s “Let Us  Have Peace,” but as Brooks said on his blog, his biography of Grant, “Triumph over Adversity,” would have been a much better source for this article. He also cites Joan Waugh’s book, but I can’t see much in this article that would reflect Waugh’s interpretation of Grant.

 

09/6/11

Howitzers at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

On pallets at Grant's Farm 2009

Back in 2009 I was asked to go across the street from U. S. Grant NHS to Grant’s Farm (yes, they are two different places) to check out a couple of cannon tubes that are owned by the Busch family. These had been owned by the Busch’s for so long that they were not sure exactly how or when they acquired them, or whether or not they were even authentic. I am certainly no expert on Civil War artillery, but I went to have a look, took some photos, got attacked by chiggers all up my legs, and began to do some research. As it turned out, the cannons are authentic. It seems likely that they were acquired as surplus from the Federal Arsenal in St. Louis, just as were the Civil War era rifle barrels used to create the famous fence at Grant’s Farm.

The cannons are actually cast iron 24 pounder howitzers manufactured by Cyrus Alger & Co. From civilwarartillery.com:  

Cyrus Alger & Co.:  Cyrus Alger, who during the War of 1812 furnished the government with shot and shell, in 1817 started South Boston Iron company which at an early date was known locally as Alger’s Foundry and later became Cyrus Alger & Co.  The Massachusetts firm was a leading cannon manufacturer and when Cyrus died in 1856, leadership was assumed by his son, Francis, who piloted the company until his death in 1864.  During the war, both Army and Navy were supplied with large numbers of weapons.  The initials “S.B.F.” (South Boston Foundry) occasionally may be found on cannon, but the signature is traditionally “C.A. & Co., Boston, Mass.” or, rarely, “C. Alger & Co., Boston, Mass.”

These two are marked “C.A. & Co., Boston, Mass.” They are dated 1846 and have the inspector’s initials J.W.R., James Wolfe Ripley, who was, according to Civil War Artillery.com an Army inspector from 1832-1863. Surprisingly, these two cannons bear consecutive serial numbers, 78 and 79. How these two stayed together through the years of use is a mystery. No one has been able to determine how they got from Boston to St. Louis. There has been some speculation that these could be the very cannons that were smuggled into Camp Jackson by the secessionists in 1861 in crates marked “marble,” however there is no evidence to support that theory at this time. Also, the letter sent by Jefferson Davis to Governor Jackson indicates that there were “two 12-pounder howitzers and two 32-pounder guns” sent to St. Louis, not 24 pounders. See here.

Usually 24 pounders like these were used in garrisons, not in the field. This is from the Robinson’s Battery website:

 24-pounder flank howitzer, Model of 1844. Total length, 69 inches; weight, 1480 pounds; total production, 577 from 1846 to 1864; known survivors, 269. These howitzers were essentially an iron copy of the 24-pounder bronze field howitzer, Model of 1841, without handles. The howitzer pictured is mounted on a restored upper flank carriage. It was among the first 300 cast by Cyrus Alger & Co. from 1846-49. It differs slightly from the final 277 made by Alger and six other foundries in that it has a 1.06-inch wide chase ring whose rear edge is located 7.0 inches behind the muzzle face. Those made after 1849 have an 0.8-inch wide chase ring whose rear edge is located 5.5 inches behind the muzzle face. All have a cylindrical 12-pounder chamber.

 

Mounted on field carriages and ready for unveiling on Sept. 17.

You can read more about 24 pounders at To the Sound of the Guns here. As noted there, Ulysses S. Grant had a battery of 24 pounders at Shiloh. Also see here. This has provided an interpretive link to Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. Andrew Busch has loaned the cannons to the park for display through the sesquicentennial. On September 17th there will be a day of special activities at the park to officially unveil these historic cannons.

 

 

 Update: Craig Swain of To the Sound of the Guns has contacted me regarding this post. He doesn’t think Grant used this type of howitzer at Shiloh. He provided me with another link regarding 24 pounders here.

For a follow-up on this post see here.

 

 

07/20/11

Was Grant a Democrat? (part two)

Notice the slogan on the banner, "The Union-It Must Be Preserved"

     The other day I spent some time at the Missouri Historical Society looking through their collection of the papers of Thomas Hart Benton where I found this campaign circular from the state election of 1856. This would be the last campaign of the man who had so much influence on Missouri’s early history, and on the nation at large. Benton, a slaveholder from Tennessee, had been an advocate of slavery in Missouri during the debates over the Missouri Compromise, and had become Missouri’s first U. S. Senator, serving nearly thirty years from 1821-1851. In 1852, he won a term in the House. These years of Benton power coincided with the years of Colonel Frederick Dent’s arrival in Missouri (1817), his financial success as a merchant in the fur trade in St. Louis, his purchase in 1820 of the White Haven farm, and the time when U. S. Grant courted and married Julia, Colonel Dent’s first born daughter.

     Benton, as I wrote in an earlier post, was a dedicated Democrat and supporter of Andrew Jackson. Benton was a leading champion of westward expansion and a dedicated Unionist. It was his strong belief in the United States as a nation that led him to oppose South Carolina’s Democrat Senator John Calhoun during the debates over the Wilmot Proviso. Benton, a slave-owner himself, had no sympathy for the abolitionist cause, but he was also afraid that Calhoun’s unceasing attempts to protect slave-holders’ rights by uniting the southern slave states against the free states of the north threatened the disunion of the states. His fear that the Union was threatened by extremists on both sides of the slavery issue led him to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new territories. Missouri’s other Senator, David Rice Atchison, was firmly pro-slavery and quite willing to cooperate with Calhoun. Benton’s opposition to Calhoun, Atchison, and the expansion of slavery caused a bitter divide in the Democratic Party in Missouri between Benton and anti-Benton factions. (This division of the party over slavery issues wasn’t just limited to Missouri. There was a time when some prominent Democrats believed their party would actually become the anti-slavery party; Salmon P. Chase, for example.)   

       By the time of the elections of 1856, Benton’s influence had waned in Missouri. Partly this was due simply to the fact that he had been around so long, but also he found himself caught between the strongly pro-slavery faction of the Democratic Party in Missouri, led by Atchison, Claiborne Fox Jackson, and others, and the increasingly strident anti-slavery faction. Benton’s chief political lieutenants, Frank Blair and B. Gratz Brown, with their St. Louis German constituency, were becoming more and more outspoken in their opposition to slavery. To an extent, Benton had been with them, which is why the pro-slavery faction hated him. Benton opposed the expansion of slavery into new states and territories, but as Brown and others began agitating for the abolition of slavery in Missouri as well, Benton felt betrayed. What Benton really wanted was to just have everyone shut up about the slavery issue so the country could get on with its business growth and westward expansion. 

     Benton did not win the Governor’s seat in 1856. On August 4th he garnered a majority of votes in the St. Louis area, but out-state Missouri was overwhelmingly in favor of the proslavery anti-Benton faction. He lost to the proslavery Trusten Polk. 1856, of course, was the same year that the Republican Party ran its first candidate for President, John C. Fremont, Benton’s own son-in-law. Yet despite the high hopes of Blair and Brown, Benton refused to endorse his son-in-law. On November 3, 1856, Benton addressed a crowd in St. Louis. As one of Benton’s biographers wrote, “Frank Blair had built a strong following for Fremont, and the city’s vote might change the fate of America. Thomas Hart Benton knew this and had come for a last persuasive effort.” He endorsed James Buchanan, saying that although he loved and had supported Fremont in his western explorations,

“…knowing from the first that Mr. Fremont was to be the candidate of a sectional party, I told him that it was impossible that I could support any such nomination. No matter what came, he must be national, he must have a vision that could look over the Union. He must not be a dividing line, he must be national, or I [sic] cannot only not endorse him but I must take ground against him.”

When Buchanan won, Benton’s daughter, Jesse was convinced it had been her father’s influence that had cost her husband the White House.

     What is striking about this is how similar Benton’s views were to the explanation Ulysses S. Grant gave for voting for Buchanan. From his Memoirs:

     “It was evident to my mind that the election of a Republican President in 1856 meant the secession of all the Slave States, and rebellion. Under these circumstances I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years. I very much hoped that the passions of the people would subside in that time, and the catastrophe could be averted altogether; if it was not, I believed the country would be better prepared to receive the shock and to resist it. I therefore voted for James Buchanan.”

    Did the great Democrat Thomas Hart Benton have an influence on Ulysses Grant? Grant himself wrote that he “was a Whig by education and a great admirer of Henry Clay.” But, in Missouri, the Whig party had never commanded a very large following, and over the years had either sat out elections or sided with one faction or another of the Democrats. By the mid 1850’s when Grant came to farm White Haven the Whig Party was disintegrating. As Grant wrote, “the Whig Party had ceased to exist before I had the privilege of casting a ballot.” (Note also that B. Gratz Brown had come from a strong Whig family background in Kentucky and had become a Benton Democrat.)

     In examining Benton’s possible influence on Grant, it is also intriguing to consider the views of Colonel Dent, but this is a challenge because there appears to be only second hand accounts of Colonel Dent’s politics, and often these are post-war reminiscences. Without doubt, Colonel Dent considered himself a Democrat. It has been said that this is why Grant did not get the County Engineer position in 1859; because he had been residing at White Haven living and working with his slave-holding Democrat father-in-law. But which faction of the Democrats in Missouri did Colonel Dent actually identify with? There are some clues. For example, as early as February 5, 1846, Grant wrote a letter to Julia from Texas in which he asked her, “Has John [Julia’s older brother] made application for an appointment in one of the new Regiments that are to be raised I hope he has not let the opportunity slip. With Mr. Benton’s influence he could probably get a Captaincy.”  Years later in January of 1854, Grant wrote Julia from Ft. Humboldt, California: “Hunt is making application for promotion in a new Regiment, should be raised this Winter, and any assistance that could be given by your father, or brother Lewis, in the way of writing to Col. Benton he would gladly receive, and, appreciate.” Clearly, Grant believed that there was a relationship of some importance between Benton and the Dents from early on. Was Dent still listening to Benton as Benton began to argue against the expansion of slavery?

     Colonel Dent is often painted as a fire-eating secessionist in complete opposition to his son-in-law, but the true picture of Colonel Dent and his relationship with his son-in-law is more complicated. On May 10th, 1861, the very day of the Camp Jackson affair, Grant was at the White Haven farm and wrote to Julia back in Galena: “Your father says he is for the Union but is opposed to having an army to sustain it. He would have a secession force march where they please uninterrupted and is really what I would call a secessionist.” On May 15, Grant wrote Julia, “As I told you your father professes to be a Union man yet condemns every measure for the preservation of the Union.”  Obviously, Grant and his father-in-law were not on the same page in 1861, but it is interesting to note Dent’s insistence that he is for the Union. Benton had died in 1858, and many of his supporters, under the leadership of Blair and Brown, became Republicans. One of the more fascinating what-if questions in American history is how would Andrew Jackson have responded to the secession crisis in 1861? This is equally true of Thomas Hart Benton. Was Colonel Dent, by this time an aging patriarch with a declining fortune, left politically rudderless with the passing of Benton? In her Memoirs, Julia recalled the scenes of patriotism she witnessed in Galena, Illinois in the spring of 1861. She remembered a torchlight parade and thought of it as a serpent out to “crush in its folds the beloved party of my father, of Jefferson, of General Jackson, of Douglas, and of Thomas Benton.”  And as I noted in an earlier post, there is the passage where she quotes her father in the midst of the war saying: “Good Heavens! If Jackson had been in the White House, this never would have happened. He would have hanged a score or two of them and the country would have been at peace. I knew we would have trouble when I voted for a man north of Mason and Dixon’s line.”

     I am not aware of any extant direct correspondence between Benton and Colonel Dent. Perhaps someone who has done more research knows of more evidence of the relationship between the two, but I think in some cases the differences of opinion between Grant and Dent in the 1850s have been exaggerated and I would like to know more about all this. As slim as the evidence appears to be, I don’t think we can have an accurate picture of Grant without a study of antebellum Missouri politics. Yesterday I asked, was Grant a Democrat? I still think the answer is…not really. But if he was, what kind of a Democrat was he?