Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Praise the Praise Houses

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 06:50:00 -0500

Following in Donald�s footsteps of religion in the Civil War � I wanted to share this article from the Beaufort Gazette (which was my first real employer back in the days that Paper Boys still were under 18 and rode bikes on their route) on praise houses and their use by slaves and freedman before and after the Civil War.

The article is extremely well done and deals not only in why they were created (fear of slave revolt), the ongoing use after the Civil War (poverty and segregation) and the eventual downfall due to the acceptance of African-Americans into mainstream society. Also included is a nice slideshow of what is left of the Praise Houses in Beaufort County, which includes a narration.

In an era where the Lost Cause has tried so hard to glamorize the institution of Slavery � Slave owners treated slaves nicely because they were such valued pieces of property � it is good to see an article that shows proof, this wasn�t so.

Kyrie Eleison

Thu, 4 Mar 2010 04:00:00 -0500

Not Catholic? Neither am I. But when there's the potential for an interesting story in the telling, and the telling at the Surratt House Museum on a Saturday afternoon is only a short drive away, my ears are always willing to listen to the telling, because there's no telling what one might learn.

Her life story began in the slaughter and retaliatory slaughter of the Haitian revolution, when slaves, inspired by aristocratic blood dripping from the guillotine's blade an ocean away, rose up, farm implements in hand, and began hacking their way through a small forest of Frenchmen who blocked their path to freedom. Haiti was a jewel in an ever shrinking French empire in the western hemisphere and its loss would not only dramatically impact white slaveholders on the island, but investors throughout the ancestral home of Charlemagne and William the Conqueror. It was a twenty-year bloodbath, with both sides equally guilty of atrocities, that sent shivers throughout the southern United States, where American slaveholders sat on a powder keg of their own making and slept with one eye open listening for the sound of drums in the night.

Sister Mary Reginald Curtis, former principal at St. Francis Academy in Baltimore, the first and oldest school devoted to the education of African-American children in the country, related that most of what is known about Elizabeth Lange, the school's founder, is the result of an oral tradition that's been handed down from one generation to the next for the past 180 plus years.

Lange, a mulatto, was probably a child of privilege, certainly well educated, most probably by Catholic nuns, before she and her mother fled to Cuba at the height of the revolution. That seems to be Haiti's perpetual story; the rich and educated always taking flight when trouble or tragedy beckons. Personal safety certainly factored into the equation when droves of mulattos and slave holders fled the bloodletting and removed their few remaining slaves with them to neighboring islands. A large segment sought refuge in New Orleans, where the wines and guttural words rolling from tongues were entirely familiar. Significant numbers, encouraged by the beckoning hand of Bishop John Carroll, made their way up the Chesapeake Bay to call Baltimore their new home.

According to Sister Mary, Lange and her mother were forced to leave Cuba, possibly around 1815, and emigrate to the United States when they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the then ruling Spanish government. Lange to her dying day in 1882 would always identify herself as French.

There's speculation that mother and daughter first disembarked at Charleston and then journeyed to Baltimore, where they were absorbed into a large Haitian community of free blacks in the Fells Point section of that city. Historian Diane Blatts Morrow, in her history of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, states that Lange supported herself through a significant inheritance from her father, however in 1827 she began a private school in her home to educate refugee children from Haiti. Blacks would be entirely on their own for another forty years, as the State of Maryland would not provide support for their public education until 1868.

The Catholic Church took the lead in educating blacks in Baltimore. Rev. John Marie Tessier, pastor at a church for the city's blacks on Paca Street for 30 years, founded a lending library and religious society, all the while keeping meticulous records, which have subsequently proven to be a boon for both professional and amateur genealogists. Upon Tessier's death he was succeeded by the Rev. James Joubert, a former French military officer and tax collector in Haiti, who joined the priesthood in Baltimore. Joubert was granted permission in 1828 by the Archbishop of Baltimore to open a school primarily for the benefit of French speaking black children, but soon found himself wanting as an educator of young minds and learning of Lange's reputation offered her the teaching position. What he got in return was not only Lange, but three other black women willing to become brides of Christ and it was Lange, under Joubert's guidance, who conceived the idea of a religious order for black women.

Both the order and school were anomalies in a pervasive mist of overt racial hostility. Sister Mary marveled that Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange through sheer force of will and personality was able to do battle and persevere in the face of what she labeled the "four strikes:" Lange was black, she was a female, she was educated, and she was Catholic at a time when the majority of women were uneducated, Protestant, white, and subservient in a white male dominated society. Most of all, black women didn't don habits and join religious orders.

St. Francis Academy, which is now a co-educational high school and a basketball powerhouse, was supported through early financial support from the black Catholic community, fairs, sales of sewn clothing articles, and support groups. Significant, too, was funding from some of Baltimore's elite families, including the Chautards, also Haitian emigres and noted as pre-eminent medical practitioners, the McTavishes, and Dugans. Beginning with a small body of students, most of whom boarded in and were on financial scholarship, the school struggled through a number of relocations, once when the city of Baltimore claimed their building by eminent domain. By 1855 close to 300 crowded into classrooms. What drew students wasn't Booker T. Washington's vision of vocational training for blacks. St. Francis, instead, offered a palate of academics, art, music, including orchestra and piano lessons, religion, and training in the "household arts."

In spite of her deeply held religious beliefs and devotion to both the Sisters of Providence and the Church, Lange was every Catholic school child's nightmare come true. Blatts Morrow described her as a strict disciplinarian and hints that she dispensed severe punishment to the wayward or disobedient. While children feared her, so did her own mother, who, as a resident, in what could probably be labeled a retirement home for the elderly run by the order, called her "mistress." Christian charity and self sacrifice reigned, though, when the Sisters helped to nurse city residents during a cholera epidemic.

Today there are 75 women who wear the habit of the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Most residing in the United States, according to Sister Mary, are advanced in age. The Order's future and home of its youngest members seems to lie in Costa Rica. There is also a movement afoot that has petitioned the Vatican to canonize Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange. If this comes to fruition, which Sister Mary is hopeful will occur in her lifetime, Lange would be the first African-American female to be so designated.

Abe Lincoln's true awesomeness

Tue, 2 Mar 2010 07:36:38 -0500

Not only did he keep the union whole but now we know he kept it safe from vampires - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. This is from the same author who brought us "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

Your Face And My Dog's Butt

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:01:00 -0500

Donald does self-assigned homework for the Surratt Society's upcoming conference on the Lincoln Assassination.

I did a sudden and radical change of course in my planned choice of reading material since the subject was last mentioned. With the approach of next month's Surratt Society's Lincoln Assassination conference it was deemed perhaps somewhat smarter to read books the presenters were going to be focusing on, including Larry Tagg's "The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln," Michael Kline's "The Baltimore Plot," Andrew C.A. Jampoler's "The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows," and Charles Lachman's "The Last Lincolns: the Rise and Fall of a Great American Family."

I'm not quite half-way through Tagg's book, but his point is well made that people perceived Lincoln as down right plug ugly, unintelligent, uncouth, given to telling, for the times, dirty stories, (though never in mixed company), a stumbler, a bumbler, slow witted, completely at unease in a crowd, totally lacking in social graces and manners, a devoted slob outfitted in dirty and stained clothing, and whose high pitched Southern twang drove those listening to distraction. Simply put, he horrified and repulsed nearly everyone at first meeting.

Director Stephen Speilberg has cast acclaimed Irish actor Liam Neeson in the lead role for his planned biopic on Lincoln. Based on Tagg's descriptive work perhaps a wiser choice would have been another of Kentucky's native born sons, Ernest P. Worrell, also known as actor Jim Varney.

That Lincoln's approval rating among the American public dropped to 25 per cent shortly after his election and that he was subjected to more threats to his person than a Meter Maid is well proven by Tagg, whose book, even this early in the reading, is recommended as well worth purchasing.

My favorite quote thus far, and one that made me laugh aloud, in a book full of great quotes and observations, came from a note Lincoln received shortly after his arrival at the Willard Hotel in Washington just prior to his inauguration. I don't suppose Lincoln or those in his entourage found anything funny about it at the time though.

"if you don't Resign we are going to put a spider in your dumpling and play the Devil with you god or might god dam sundde of bitch go to hell and buss my Ass suck my prick and call my Bolics your uncle Dick god dam a fool and goddam Abe Lincoln who would like you goddam you excuse me for using such hard words with you but you need it you are nothing but a goddam Black nigger."

Quick Update On Tuesday's Post

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

I promise I'm not going to beat this issue to death, but a quick update on Tuesday's post concerning the alleged quote by Leonard L. Haynes regarding Black Confederates. One person responded and said it was not Leonard L. Haynes III who made the statement, but his father Leonard L. Haynes, Jr., a former historian at Southern University and now deceased.

Another effort was made to determine how widespread the use of the quote was on Confederate and Southern heritage sites and after tallying 50 Web sites I stopped counting, thus concluding the quote rivals "The only thing we have to fear is itself" as one of the most popular maxims appearing on the Web.

In response to the response, Leonard L. Haynes, Jr. was not on the faculty or in an administrative capacity at Southern. He was by vocation a pastor and leader of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church in Louisiana, and also served on the Board of Trustees at Tarrant County (Louisiana) Junior College, as a dean at Claflin College, Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the staff of Phillander-Smith College, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and as president of Morristown College, in Morristown, Tennessee. He authored at least one book titled "The Negro Community Within American Protestantism, 1619-1844," which was published in 1953.

I also sent an email to someone who just might be able to shed some light on the quote, but doubt I'll hear back. I can imagine their thoughts after receiving my query. It was probably something along the lines that they weren't going to get involved in a fight between a bunch of white guys arguing over whether African-Americans, of their own free will, fought to maintain a slave holding republic.

Maybe It's Indigestion, But Something's Not Sitting Right In My Stomach

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

Maybe you've seen this particular quote making the rounds on Civil War related Web and blog sites.

"When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South. ..."

I keep seeing this quote, attributed to Dr. Leonard L. Haynes III, an African-American educator, on Confederate history and Southern heritage Web sites and blogs. In fact I did a search using the quote and stopped counting after seeing it featured on 28 different sites. You know what Arlo Guthrie said during his Alice's Restaurant soliloquy, "more than two's a conspiracy."

Dr. Leonard L. Haynes III is a very real person, most recently serving, from what I've been able to determine, as executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities under the Bush Administration from October 2007 until Barak Obama replaced him with his own director.

Haynes is alleged to have made the statement while a faculty member at Southern University. The quote simply stands alone on the aforementioned Web sites and blogs, followed by Haynes name and his affiliation with Southern University. None of the Web sites and blogs state when or where Haynes made the statement. Haynes was, in fact, a faculty member at Southern University, but has also held the following additional positions: "Special Assistant to the Secretary of Education, Senior Advisor to the Superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools, Acting President of Grambling State University, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Postsecondary Education, Director of Academic Programs for the United States Information Agency (now State Department), Senior Assistant to the President of American University, Assistant Superintendent of Academic Programs for Louisiana's State Department of Education, and Executive Vice President of the Southern University System. He has been a member of the faculties of Howard University, University of Maryland, and George Washington University." Whew! Very simply put, a smart and accomplished man.

I'm not arguing against the fact that there were blacks who bore arms in the Confederate cause, small though those numbers may have been (no, I don't buy the estimated 40,000 to 100,000 being bandied about). However, this particular quote smacks of "Urban Myth, Urban Myth!"

One of the prerequisites in establishing an Urban Myth and, in effect, to give it authority, so it becomes believable, is to have a quote attributable to a seemingly legitimate source, in this case Dr. Haynes. The next trick is to make certain that person is not accessible to confirm or refute the alleged quote. This fits, because good luck in trying to track down Dr. Haynes to ask him if he really said what people are saying he said.

So, I'm going to ask any Web sites or blogs that feature the quote to provide some type of proof positive as to when and where Dr. Haynes made the statement and in what context it was used. I'm assuming it was either contained in a speech, book, academic paper, or said during an interview. And I'd be obliged if someone could provide an email or snail mail address for Dr. Haynes so I can ask him myself. For all those who have the quote on your site, go ahead, talk amongst yourselves before getting back to me. I'm a patient person. I'll wait.

Oh, and by the way, I saw one Web site which attributed the quote to Robert E. Lee.

The Gravitational Pull Of "Home"

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

"I have picked up a great many relics during the war but have been compelled to throw them away as I could not carry them..."

Capt. Joseph Collingwood, Co. H, 18th Massachusetts Infantry

Not so with Sergeant Edmund F. Churchill of Company E, 18th Massachusetts Infantry. One of the Regiment's truly great souvenir hunters, he grabbed nearly everything of personal significance he could lay his hands on and, after carefully tagging them, shipped them home via Adams Express to Pembroke, Massachusetts. Lacking photographs to visually document his wartime experience, the relics would have allowed him and all who held them to have something tangible beyond memories by which to remember the war.

Tom and I both wrote recent posts about a letter written by his second great-grandfather Edmund Churchill that was returned "home" to Tom 146 years after it was written. Both posts spoke of a collection of letters, equipment, and souvenir relics that the Churchill family had been forced to sell due to financial hardship. Over time we've been fortunate enough to reassemble a few of those relics that were once scattered to the winds. Now we're happy to report that three more relics and another of Edmund's letters will be coming our way soon. Of course we're still chanting "C'mon Powerball, come to Papa" in our dreams. Herein are the latest finds.

Relic One: A piece of tent:

Churchill documented on the tag that the sliver of wood from a log hut built on December 16, 1863 at the confluence of the Rappahanock and Hazel Rivers in Warrenton County, Virginia where the 18th Massachusetts was encamped housed brothers Alden and Lyman Spooner, William Dunham, Henry Wright, and Churchill until May 1, 1864, when the Union Army mobilized and began its Overland Campaign. The Spooner brothers would never make it home, Lyman being killed at Bethesda Church on June 3, 1864 when a shell took off his leg, while Alden was killed in a freak accident during target practice conducted by the 32nd Massachusetts Infantry on February 9, 1865. A minie ball would tear into Wright's side at Bethesda Church, also on June 3, 1864, but he'd survive and live a long life, dying at the Soldier's home in Marshalltown, Iowa on March 20, 1926.

This photo, in the possession of the Dedham Historical Society, is the only known group shot of members of the 18th Massachusetts and shows officers from the regiment at Beverly Ford.

This photo of the Rappahannock River at Beverly Ford, Virginia, shot on July 4, 2009, and unbeknownst to me at the time, was taken about a hundred yards from where the 18th was actually encamped. Do I hear return trip to Beverly Ford in the spring in the making?

Relic Two: "Eddy's flag"
On January 16, 1863, Private David Meechan, of Company E, who would survive ten months of captivity at Andersonville and the Florence Stockade, wrote home, "Our old flag is so tattered and torn by constant use and the bullets and shells of the Enemy that there is hardly enough of it left to tie on the staff, but we love it all the more and the more we suffer for it the dearer it becomes to us..."

Edmund Churchill would become part of the 18th Massachusetts' Color Guard by default. Just four months into his military service, as members of the 18th's Color Guard fell one by one at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Churchill stepped forward to assume responsibility for the National colors and would bring them safely off the field during the Union withdrawal from Marye's Heights on December 14, 1862. Churchill, one of 11 members of Company E cited for bravery at Fredericksburg, would continue as a member of the Color Guard from that day forward.

Although I can't be certain, and could very well be wrong, it appears the swatch of blue cloth was taken from the seal of the State of Massachusetts which was emblazoned in the center of the State flag carried by all Massachusetts regiments and which had a deeper shade of blue than that of the National flag. The State of Massachusetts would replace the National and State colors referred to in Meacham's letter in March 1863.

Relic Three: slivers of wood from the Marshall House, Alexandria, Virginia

The tag reads simply, "Marshall House, Alexandria, Virginia, 1862." Tantamount to a holy relic in 1862, Churchill would secure his souvenir from the building where Col. Elmer Ellsworth of the 11th New York Infantry was killed by a blast from a shotgun wielded by James W. Jackson on May 24, 1862. Jackson, incensed that Ellsworth had cut down a large Confederate flag flying on the roof of his hotel, was, in turn, cut down by the blast from a musket wielded by Corporal Francis Brownell. Considered the North's first martyr, Ellsworth's body would lie in state at both the White House and City Hall in New York City.

Churchill was not the only the member of the 18th Massachusetts to shave pieces of wood from the staircase where Ellsworth fell. 2nd Lietuenant George M. Barnard, Jr. would seal his in an envelope and mail it to his brother Inman in Boston, while Marcus Soule, a descendant of Mayflower passenger George Soule, would present his as a gift to the editor of the Middleboro Gazette. "I also send a sliver from the flight of stairs on which Col. Ellsworth was shot in the Marshall House, Alexandria."

The Marshall House, which stood at the corner of King and South Pitt streets in Old Town Alexandria until the wrecking ball came calling in the 1950's, is marked by a plaque on the side of a Holidy Inn which now occupies the same spot.

For A Friday In The Dead Of Winter

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

"It's been a cold hard lonely winter," so we all deserve this on a Friday, smack in the middle February, as a sign of things yet to come.

The Way of the Rat

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

A few weeks back I happened to see a dead rat lying on a strip of grass next to my work place in Southwest DC. It wasn't that large of a rat, probably about nine inches in length with its tail outstretched. I wasn't certain how it died, but I knew for certain what was going to happen if no one disposed of it. Sure enough no one disposed of it and little by little, day after day, nature took its course, until, after about ten days, only a skeleton remained. And I was struck by the absolute certainty of this thought as I observed the body decompose: we all go the way of the rat. The only uncertainty is when.

The uncertainty as to if or when certainly played on the minds of soldiers during the Civil War. It would have played in their minds before a battle. It would have played in their minds if they got sick and were sent to the hospital. It would have played in their minds if they were taken prisoner. It would have played in the minds of a nation when it was realized that 20 per cent of the men who marched off to war didn't return home. For those fortunate enough to have escaped death on the battlefield, in the hospital, or a prison camp, life was expected to be more certain after the guns were silenced. That is until circumstances that comprise life's uncertainty intervened.

George M. Barnard, Jr., a Captain in the 18th Massachusetts Infantry, labeled himself "bulletproof." During the Second Battle of Bull Run, where 55 members of the Regiment were killed or mortally wounded, Barnard escaped any serious injury even though "I was hit five times, once in the temple with a ball, which merely left a splinter of lead in the flesh, twice in the hand with balls which merely scooped out a little flesh, once in the ankle with a piece of shell as big as my hand, but its force was spent, and once in the body with a ball; the ball which grazed my temple took off two fingers of a man�s hand with whom I was talking."

Barnard would return to Boston at the conclusion of his military service in September 1864, finish out his bachelor's degree at Harvard, marry the sister of a fallen officer from the 18th, father two children, work for Boston City government, and maintain memberships in the Massachusetts Military Historical Society, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, Society of the Army of the Potomac, the Temple and Officers Clubs of Boston, and serve as Secretary of the Fifth Army Corps Association, and the Somerset Club in Boston until late November 1898. Whether his horses were startled, or he lost control of them, Barnard was thrown from his carriage at the Mattapoisett train station and died a week later of his injuries on December 1st. In funeral services overseen by the Military Order of the Loyal Legion at the Arlington Street Unitarian Church, Barnard's body was then escorted to Forest Hills Cemetery where it was cremated.

Daniel F. Nichols, the son of a Congregational minister and a Private in Company G, survived not only a severe case of Dyspepsia, which hospitalized him for four months, but a year in Confederate prisons, including eight months at Andersonville before being exchanged in November 1864. After recovery from scurvy and intermittent fever, Nichols would serve as a Captain of Co. G with the 5th U.S. Colored Artillery in Mississippi, a commission that would allow him post-war membership in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion and Post Number One of the Grand Army of the Republic in the City of Brotherly Love. Marrying into one of the city's most affluent families, Nicholas worked as General Manager of the American Button Hole and Manufacturing Company.

At a time when improvements in the safety and comfort of bicycles, foremost being the creation of the pneumatic tire, led to a bicycle craze in America, Nichols was seriously injured when he fell while riding his bike in the town of Wayne. Sprawled on a roadside 19 miles west of Philadelphia, he succumbed to his injuries on October 23, 1899.

Milton Reed, a private in Company D, who knew the ins and outs of shoemaking when he enlisted on May 20, 1861, suffered a gunshot wound to the right ankle at the battle of Fredericksburg and battled a case of heart disease before his first term of military service was brought to a close on April 27, 1863. Nine months later, under threat of being drafted, he enlisted for a second time with the Second Massachusetts Heavy Artillery and wound up in North Carolina. Having been admitted to the hospital in Beaufort on April 7, 1864, Reed avoided the mass surrender of his comrades to Confederates at Plymouth just 17 days later. Those taken prisoner would experience the highest mortality rate of any Unit held at Andersonville, with over 250 of their number buried in the red Georgia clay.

Reed's path following his discharge is less clear. It's known that he had married, had three sons, worked intermittingly as a laborer, and in 1880, following his wife's death, resided with his brother Francis' family, providing care for his own 13 year old son William. Recipient of a six dollar a month disability pension, Reed died shortly after being admitted to Morton Hospital in Taunton, Mass. in February 1888 due to accidental injuries.

Thirty-three years after Reed's death, another son, Ira, then 45 years of age, down on his luck, and in admitted poor health, would send a written appeal for help to President Warren G. Harding.
Dear President...I am writing to you to ask you if you can give me an idea how I can get the money that is coming to me from the Government on my father pension which I know the money is there for me. Father died in the year of 88 in the month of Feb. I was a boy of 13 years and 10 months. After father died the home was broke up and my two brothers and I went in different places to live. I was the youngest and went to my Cousin June to live. We lived in East Taunton at the time and I went to Middleboro, Mass. I was borned in Middleboro, Mass. April 27, 1875. There is two years and two months pension due me until I was sixteen. Dear President can you and will you please inform me to preceed to get it as I am in need of it and it will help me as I am not in the best of health. That is something that belonge to me and I should have it.

One of Harding's secretarys would refer the letter on to the Pension Bureau for what ultimately turned out to be a flat rejection. "...if, as you allege, the above named soldier was your father and his death in February 1888 was due to an accident, it does not appear that you ever had a pensionable status as his minor child."

I suppose if someone did some digging we'd know if a Cornorer's Inquest was ever called to investigate the death of William L. Marshall, who had served as a private in Company D. After losing his left middle finger to amputation due to a gunshot wound at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 39, 1862 and assisting patients as a nurse while on detached service at an unknown hospital, Marshall, an English immigrant, would return to Taunton, Massachusetts and take up employment as a Brittania Worker. Eleven years after his discharge, the word "Poisoned" would appear on his August 2, 1875 death certificate. Was it the grieving widow who lived until October 31, 1930, or what would be a modern day OSHA violation? Your guess would be as good as mine.

Maybe it was the loss of his parents at an early age that would have explained a lot about William "Billy" Strong. Raised in the home of his paternal grandparents, his grandfather, Titus, was an Episcopal minister who held the pulpit at Greenfield, Massachusetts for 41 years. An affiant in Billy's widow's pension claim would state: "He was smarter than chain lightning. He did not marry just right and went bad. He was a wild sort of fellow." Wild enough that he would run off at age 16 to enlist as a drummer boy with the 46th Massachusetts Infantry on August 15, 1862 and, after being mustered out on June 3, 1863, enlist for a second time with the 2nd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery the very same day. Life with a garrisoned Heavy Artillery regiment was evidently not enough excitement, because on August 10, 1863, 17 year old Billy Strong, claiming to be a 21 year old clerk from New York City accepted $300 from Daniel Whittier, a homeopathetic physician, to serve as a draft substitute. According to Whittier's wife, who was also deposed in the case of Strong's widow, "I was not willing for him [Daniel Whittier] to go into the army. I well remember his coming into the house and telling me that he had been drafted and I well remember how I felt about it... he hired a substitute and paid him three hundred dollars...I was only too glad that my husband did not have to go and all that I knew was that the man was accepted to take my husband�s place. I don�t even know where the man was from."

Strong would be drafted into Co. C of the 18th Massachusetts Infantry and see action at Rappahannock Station and Mine Run before the year was out. In 1864 he would see further action in the Overland Campaign and suffer a slight shell wound to a leg at Laurel Hill on May 8, 1864. Strong would see service with his fourth regiment when the 18th and 22nd Massachusetts regiments were consolidated with the 32nd Massachusetts. Dreamer, liar, or AWOL in Washington at the time, Strong would later tell all who would listen that he witnessed the four Lincoln conspirators hung at the Arsenal Prison.

Following his discharge on June 29, 1865, Strong bounced from one town and job to the next, residing in quick succession at Fitchburg, MA, Providence, RI, and Dover, NH, where he was employed at Sawyer's Mills, a textile manufacturer. There he set eyes on 23 year old Sarah E. Mills, another mill worker who originally hailed from Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. Married on July 19, 1873 their first child was born exactly nine months later. Two more children would join the brood, with one, Rufus dying at two years of age. Two more moves would take place before the family removed to Springhill, Nova Scotia, where Billy took employment with a mining company.

If Billy Strong was "smarter than chain lightning," he was smart enough to realize on September 22, 1879 what was about to happen when his foot became wedged in a railroad braking with a train approaching. Whether he had time to recite some of the prayers taught to him by his grandfather is unknown, but the train of coal cars "litterly pulled his leg off."

Sarah Strong's pension claim as the widow of William H. Strong, filed in 1912, when the rules for claimants had been relaxed thanks to the efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic, was rejected outright after three years of depositions and appeals, when Billy's past as a deserter from the 2nd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery caught up to both him and her.

Daniel Dunham lied about his age when he enlisted at Cambridge, MA on Nov. 4, 1861. Claiming to be 21, he was actually only 15 at the time and standing 6 feet tall was more than big enough to have successfully pulled off the lie. Three years later, Private Dunham, a member of Company C of the 18th Mass., was one month shy of being pulled from the trenches at Petersburg due to his impending expiration of three years service when a shell tore off his left arm four inches below the elbow. Age may have had something to do with what amounted to a quick healing process, as he was discharged three months later, on October 20, 1864 at Gallup's Island in Boston Harbor.

Dunham put the pieces of his life back together as quickly as his application sailed through the Pension Bureau, which awarded him eight dollars a month for the loss of his arm. He found work as a peddler and trader and a girl that saw beyond an empty sleeve. Two years his senior, Eunice Shurtleff would give birth to two sons and a daughter before dying in 1874. Daniel and the children, who ranged in age from three to six, moved in with her parents until he married Sylvia Chandler nine years later. Sylvia was no virgin. A widow and divorcee, she cast her lot with this one armed man and bore him two additional children.

With more mouths to feed and a hustler by nature, Dunham worked his way up to become a foreman for a cranberry grower. He'd be dead five years after his second marriage, the result of arsenic poisoning. Don't cast your eyes on the widow, because an investigation conducted after his death led directly to the culprit. Using testimony from Edwin E. Calder, a Chemistry professor at Boston University, and Dr. A.D. Harmon, Sylvia (Chandler) Dunham was able to prove to the satisfaction of the Pension Bureau, who initially rejected her claim that Dunham's death was related to his military service, that Dunham, due to the loss of his arm, had held pay tickets laced with arsenic between his teeth due to the loss of his arm. The poison was traced directly to a green dye used to color the tickets, which led Professor Calder to this conclusion: "The long handling and holding in the mouth of cards so strongly charged with an arsenic pigment, as those green ones, I think very probable would produce slow or chronic arsenic poisoning."

Sylvia Dunham would be rewarded for successfully arguing that the loss of her husband's arm was the chief contributing cause of his death with a pension of eight dollars a month, with two dollars each for her dependent children. She wouldn't marry a fourth time, but would remain faithful to Daniel Dunham's memory until her own passing in 1924 at age 74, even though she was residing with 76 year old Israel Hipson in 1920.

And lastly let's not forget Eugene Covert who was unable to work as a printer after returning from the war due to a gunshot wound to his left thumb. Reduced to laboring status, Covert was killed on May 22, 1886 when struck by a falling tree at Lemon, Pennsylvania.

A Call For Papers

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0500

A couple of blogs mentioned the Center for the Study of the Civil War's upcoming June Conference on "Petersburg: In the Trenches With the Common Soldier." Taking it a step further, here's a roundup of Civil War related conferences scheduled for the rest of the year. Please let us know if we've missed any. We'll periodically update and repost this entry as changes occur.

Note: some of these conferences are approaching fast, so you'll need to act quickly if you want to attend

Sponsor: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park
2010 Theme: The Cavalry: Weapons, Leaders, and Battles
Dates: Saturday, February 27, 2010 9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Location: Longwood University, Farmville, VA
Registration fees: Free
Notes: Featured speakers include Robert Dunkerly (Horsepower and Firepower), Eric Wittenberg (Little Phil), Jeffrey D. Wert (Jeb Stuart), Clark "Bud" Hall (Battle of Brandy Station), and Scott Patchan (Overview of cavalry operations)

Sponsor: Center for the Study of the Civil War
2010 Theme: Petersburg: In the Trenches with the Common Soldier
Dates: Thursday, June 24 to Sunday, June 27, 2010
Location: Pamplin Historical Park, Petersburg, Virginia
Registration fees: Tuition only: $395 Tuition, Room and Board: $555-687
Notes: "To study the Petersburg Campaign and the soldiers who fought there, no site could be better than Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg, Virginia... We will spend TWO DAYS touring the Petersburg Battlefield and associated sites, including City Point, the Crater site, the Breakthrough Battlefield, and A.P. Hill�s death site, led by Pamplin Park�s director, A. Wilson Greene. Each year, we bring together a group of distinguished and respected Civil War historians to share their expertise with our seminar participants. These talented teachers and writers remain available to seminar participants throughout the seminar for questions and discussion."

Sponsor: Civil War Forum
2010 Theme: Civil War New Orleans
Dates: Thursday, April 15 to Sunday, April 18, 2010
Location: New Orleans, LA
Registration fees: Tuition only $300
Notes: "The Civil War Forum is a non-profit, on-line Civil War Round Table with members from across the United States and participation from Canada and the U.K., but registration in our annual battlefield conference is open to all! Our gatherings are famous for outstanding tours, good company, good food, and the best guides at a bargain price."

Sponsor: Civil War Institute
2010 Theme: The Election of 1860
Dates: Sunday, June 27 to Saturday, July 3, 2010
Location: Gettysburg, PA
Registration fees: Tuition only: $430; with Room and Board: $690-$805
Notes: "The theme for the 2010 Civil War Institute Conference will focus on the "Election of 1860" considering the politics of the day, introducing the "characters" surrounding the election, and Secession with historians Michael Burlingame, Allen Guelzo, Matthew Pinsker, Michael Holt, Craig Symonds, and others. Former Senator George McGovern will speak on his new book, Abraham Lincoln."

Sponsor: Civil War Preservation Trust
2010 Theme: Battle in the Bluegrass: The Fight for Kentucky
Dates: Thursday, June 3 to Sunday, June 6, 2010
Location: Lexington, KY
Registration fees: via Internet: $575; via mail: $585; does not include hotel costs
Notes: "Join CWPT members and staff, along with some of the nation's elite historians for four days of camaraderie and Civil War touring at some of America's great Civil War battlefields."

Sponsor: Liberty University
2010 Theme: Civil War Seminar: "Jine the Cavalry"
Dates: Friday, March 26 to Sunday, March 28, 2010
Location: Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA
Registration fees: before 3/1: $60 3/1 to 3/25: $65 after 3/25 $75; Friday only: $35; Saturday only: $46
Notes: "Our Special Guest Speakers and their topics: Dr. James I. Robertson; Keynote Address; Kent Masterson Brown (John Hunt Morgan); Brenda Ayres (Flora: Mrs. J.E.B. Stuart); Scott Patchan (Phillip Sheridan: The Man Behind the Myth); Eric J. Wittenberg (Custer and the Calvary Actions at Gettysburg); Jeffrey Wert (J.E.B. Stuart); Horace Mewborn (John Mosby); Clark Hall (The Battle of Brandy Station); Steven Alexander (George Custer During the Latter Years of the Civil War); Delanie Stephenson (Libby Custer: In the Shadow of Her Husband); Brian Wills (Nathan Bedford Forrest); Rev. Alan Farley - Period Church Service (Sunday, March 28,2010) "

Sponsor: Mosby Heritage Area Association
2010 Theme: Art of Command: The Battle of Fredericksburg
Dates: Friday, October 1 to Sunday, October 3, 2010
Location: please contact the Association
Registration fees: $400; for details and registration call 540-687-6681 or go online
Notes: "Lectures Friday and Saturday plus Sunday tour of the Fredericksburg battlefield."

Sponsor: Popular Culture Association
2010 Theme: Civil War and Reconstruction
Dates: Wednesday, March 31 to Saturday, April 3, 2010
Location: Renaissance Grand Hotel, St. Louis, MO
Registration fees: Tuition only: $100 to $175 up to 3/15/10; $125 to $200 up to 3/31/10
Notes: Speakers and agenda had not yet been finalized. Early registration is encouraged.

Sponsor: Rice University
2010 Theme: Millennialism and Providentism in the Era of the American Civil War
Dates: Friday, October 1 to Saturday, October 2, 2010
Location: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Registration fees: To be announced
Notes: This conference is still in the early planning stages. In the call for papers the following appeared: "Recent studies have emphasized the importance of the Civil War in recasting the millennial spirit and providential expectations that coursed through antebellum culture. Yet recent historiography leaves pressing questions unanswered as to the fate of these energies after the War. It is to this end that the history department at Rice University seeks to initiate a critical reconsideration of millennialism, the Civil War era, and American culture."

Sponsor: Shenandoah Civil War Associates
2010 Theme: The Lincoln Assassination: Path of the Conspirators
Dates: Friday, June 25 to Sunday, June 27, 2010
Location: Colony South Hotel, Clinton, MD
Registration fees: Tuition only: $350
Notes: "Participants will visit the Navy Yard Museum, Ford�s Theater, and Lincoln�s Cottage at the Soldiers� Home. Visit the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Md., country home of Mary Surratt. On June 27 there will be an all day tour of Booth�s escape route."

Sponsor: Society of Civil War Historians
2010 Theme: Biennial Meeting
Dates: Thursday, June 17 to Saturday, June 19, 2010
Location: Marriott Hotel, Richmond, Virginia
Registration fees: Non-member: $100 prior to June 1st
Notes: "The goal of the conference is to promote the integration of social, military, political, and other forms of history on the Civil War era among historians, graduate students, and professionals who interpret history in museums, national parks, archives, and other public facilities."

Sponsor: Society of Civil War Surgeons
2010 Theme: No title yet, but will focus on Civil War medicine
Dates: Friday, April 9 to Sunday, April 11, 2010
Location: U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY
Registration fees: Tuition only $260; Hotel is separate
Notes: "The following speakers have committed to a presentation: Edgar G. Archer, Ph.D. - Colonel Sly, C.S.A.; Sr. Mary Denis Maher, CSA on the Sister Nurses in the Civil War; George Munkenbeck presenting An Accurate and Discriminating Mind: Dr. Joseph Lovell, M.D. - the First Surgeon General of the U.S. Army; John T. Moss, V.M.D. on The Influence of the Civil War on Veterinary Medical Education in America; Les Buell on the 18th and 19th Century Glass and Mineral Springs of the Northeast; Jackie Greer, R.N. on Crimean War Nursing; John Stancil on Dr. David Llewellen - Martyr of the C.S.S. Alabama: Stacey Peeples on The Pennsylvania Hospital During the Civil War; and John Fahey on Dr. Bernard John Dowling Irwin: Post Surgeon, West Point Military Academy, 1873-1878. Paul DeSessa, C.R.N.A., will present a pre-conference workshop on Friday morning demonstrating two of his surgical techniques."

Sponsor: Society for Women and the Civil War
2010 Theme: Not yet announced
Dates: Check back on their Web site as exact dates are unknown as of yet, but the 2009 Washington, DC conference was held in July
Location: Raleigh, NC
Registration fees: To be announced. The general public can begin registration in March 2010
Notes: the 2009 conference featured lectures, workshops, and field trips related to the important role of women in the Civil War

Sponsor: South Bay Civil War Roundtable
2010 Theme: Coastal Defense: Blood on the Ramparts
Dates: Friday, November 12 to Sunday, November 14, 2010
Location: San Francisco War Memorial, San Francisco, CA
Registration fees: To be posted
Notes: "Lectures will be held in the San Francisco War Memorial, featuring speakers including (tentative) James M. McPherson, Craig L. Symonds, Jim Stanbery, John Martini, and Rick Hatcher. On Sunday, November 14, an optional tour will visit Alcatraz Island, Fort Point, the Presidio, and Fort Mason."

Sponsor: Surratt Society
2010 Theme: Lincoln's Assassination: More Revealed
Dates: Friday, March 19 to Sunday, March 21, 2010
Location: Colony South Hotel, Clinton, MD
Registration fees: Tuition only: early registration to 3/10/10: $160 and $185 from 3/11 to 3/20/10; Washington, DC tour on Friday: $90; Fredericksburg tour on Sunday: $85
Notes: "The Surratt Society is pleased to present its eleventh annual conference addressing the many issues surrounding the Lincoln assassination. This year�s theme focuses on events and topics ranging from the bad press and social ostracism that faced Abraham Lincoln throughout his political life, to the first plots against his life in 1861, the many �escapes� of John Wilkes Booth and the nearly successful one of John Surratt, to the downfall of the Lincoln descendants, and the treasures at Ford�s Theatre."

Sponsor: University of Louisville
2010 Theme: Louisville, the Ohio Valley and the Civil War
Dates: Friday, March 26 to Saturday, March 27, 2010
Location: Chao Auditorium, Univ. of Louisville, KY
Registration fees: Please check the site; last year's conference was $65 for Non-students
Notes: "Following last year�s �Land, River and Peoples: Louisville before the Civil War,� this year�s theme will be Louisville�s important role in the first two years of the Civil War. Located astride the boundary between slave and Free states, Louisville�s location was strategic in planning and executing that war."

Sponsor: Virginia Center for Civil War Studies
2010 Theme: Civil War Weekend
Dates: Friday, March 12 to Sunday, March 14, 2010
Location: The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, Roanoke, Va.,
Registration fees: Not listed
Notes: "a weekend of activities geared to Civil War enthusiasts...participants gather to hear presentations by Civil War authorities and to browse books by noted Civil War historians. Based on past events, a record enrollment of university alumni, friends, and Civil War buffs from across the country is anticipated. Registration will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis."

Sponsor: Virginia Center for Civil War Studies
2010 Theme: Campaigning With Lee
Dates: Sunday, June 20 to Saturday, June 26, 2010
Location: Clarion Hotel, Hagerstown, MD
Registration fees: Not listed
Notes: The annual Campaigning with Lee seminar, known as "Bud's Brigade," brings together Civil War enthusiasts from across the nation to learn more about the rich history of the Civil War. Day-long field trips to local historic sites are planned. Registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Maximum enrollment is 145 people.

Sponsor: Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission
2010 Theme: Race, Slavery and the American Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History and Memory
Dates: Friday, September 24, 2010
Location: Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia
Registration fees: To be announced
Notes: "the second of seven annual Signature Conferences sponsored by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission and hosted by Norfolk State University. Noted historians will gather in the state of the art L. Douglas Wilder Performing Arts Center to discuss various aspects of Race, Slavery and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History and Memory."