“Durante vita”
A number of bloggers put up posts in anticipation of tonight’s History Detectives episode on the famous tintype image of Andrew Chandler and Silas Chandler. I was struck by two things watching the episode. First, this quote from Chandler Battaile, great-great-grandson of Andrew Chandler, on discovering that much of what he’d always understood to be true is contradicted by contemporary evidence:
I think it’s interesting to understand the place of stories in family histories. Obviously, the story that we’ve shared is one that is very comfortable, and comforting to believe. But without documentary evidence, it is a story. Our families’ histories have been, and will always be, deeply intertwined and evolving with the times.
That strikes me as a remarkably self-aware statement. I’ve found in my own family’s history cases where cherished family stories don’t stand up well to close examination in bright sunlight. But I think in the end, one is better for going through that process.
The second thing is the mention by Mary Francis Berry, that Mississippi law did not allow the manumission of slaves at the time of the Civil War. This is significant, because part of the Chandler oral tradition is that Silas had been freed at (or soon before) the beginning of the war, and went off with Andrew into the 44th Mississippi Infantry as a free man. While I wasn’t familiar with the Mississippi law, it’s not in the least surprising that this provision would be so. In my own state, it wasn’t just a law, it was actually written into the 1861 Texas Constitution, adopted immediately after the state’s secession. Under Article VIII, Slaves:
Sec. 1. The Legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.
Sec. 2. No citizen, or other person residing in this State shall have power by deed, or will, to take effect in this State, or out of it, in any manner whatsoever, directly or indirectly, to emancipate his slave or slaves.
Or as Professor Berry put it, referring to Mississippi, the “law made slaves, slaves for life: durante vita.”
Antebellum Texas was not a welcoming or easy place for free African Americans; it’s not surprising that in the decade 1850-1860, while the slave population of Texas more than tripled (58,161 to 182,566), the number of free blacks in the state actually declined, from 397 to 355 — not even enough to fill a typical middle school auditorium.
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Image: Andrew Chandler (l.) and Silas Chandler, c. 1861, via the Toledo Blade.
Friday Night Concert — “No, The Civil War Really Was About Slavery”
Kevin linked to this a few days ago, by I didn’t click through until my fellow Coatesian commenter, Sergi Avteniev (a.k.a. HappySurge), reminded me today.
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“Facial hair and longish hair are a big plus.”
Casting is open in Richmond for extras in Spielberg’s adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.
Filming for the project – with a working title of “Office Seekers” – is expected to begin within the next couple of weeks and last until December, but the exact dates and locations remain a secret. “With the casting wrapping up, you can tell that they will start filming soon,” said Mary Nelson, communications director with the Virginia Film Office. . . .
Just days before the beginning of filming, the casting crew is still looking for Caucasian and African-American men. All must be 18 years of age or older, between 6’1″ or under, 200 pounds or less. Facial hair and longish hair are a big plus. Men with shaved heads, dreads, braids or piercings need not apply.
“We are especially looking for men to portray African-American Union soldiers,” Dowd said. Other extra roles for African-Americans include slaves. “We’re still looking for servants for White House scenes, so restaurant experience is a plus,” Dowd said.
Other openings still available include African-American women. Long hair is not necessary, but no dreads, braids, modern cuts or wigs. Dress size should be between 6 and 12. The casting crew is also looking for Caucasian women with longish hair of natural color, dress size between 6 and 12.
Dowd said that the job pays $79.75 per day for up to 10 hours or less. But extras are sometimes required to stay on set for up to 12 hours or longer. “We’ll need many extras for more than one day, which makes this a great opportunity for people who are currently without a job,” Dowd said.
Applicants may send a recent photo to osextrascasting@gmail.com along with height, weight and contact information or mail to Office Seekers, Attn: Extras Casting, 8080 AMF Drive, Mechanicsville, VA 23111.
The high-profile project has not gone unnoticed by heritage groups, which have a tendency to react to anything that depicts the Lincoln administration in a sympathetic or positive light. A few days ago there was a reception for Spielberg at the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond (above), which was duly protested by the “Virginia Flaggers,” who work to promote the display of the Confederate flag and, in this case, to remind the director “of the truth about Lincoln and the ultimate sacrifice made by over 32,000 Virginians in defense of the Commonwealth.”
Governor McDonnell, of course, has been declared an enemy by these same folks for the last eighteen months, since he retracted his original 2010 Confederate History Month proclamation, one reportedly written by the Virginia SCV. McDonnell subsequently announced that Confederate History Month would be replaced by a more inclusive Civil War in Virgina Month. In response, senior SCV officials went so far as to hold a press conference “to outline the ‘ongoing failures’ ” of the governor “to deal with a variety of history and heritage issues in Virginia.” They threw in a denouncement of former Governor George Allen (of “macaca” infamy) who had publicly distanced himself from the organization while in office.
Should we expect even more carping in the wake of Tuesday’s announcement that the Virginia State Capitol, which served as the Confederate Capitol during the war, will be used as a filming location? You can bet on it. Today, in 2011, Virginia is shaping up to be central battleground of memory of the conflict of 1861-65.
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Image: Gov. Bob McDonnell welcomed filmmaker Steven Spielberg to the governor’s mansion for a reception on Monday. Via Roanoke.com. Thanks to Jimmy D at Coates’ place for suggesting this story.
South Carolina Flag Dispute: Heritage vs. Heritage
In putting together my recent post on the rancorous neighborhood dispute over a resident’s display of a Confederate Battle Flag in an historically African American neighborhood, I made a passing reference to the fact that the community itself had been founded by former USCTs. In retrospect, I “buried the lede,” as they say, and gave that aspect of the story short shrift — it likely plays a much bigger role in how that community identifies itself, and in its reaction to Ms. Caddell’s display:
Among [Brownsville’s] founding families were at least 10 soldiers stationed to guard the Summerville railroad station at the close of the Civil War. They were members of the 1st Regiment, United States Colored Troops, part of a force of freedmen and runaway slaves who made history with their service and paved the way for African Americans in the military.
At least some of the men were from North Carolina plantations. When the war ended they stayed where they were, living within hailing distance of each other along the tracks. Some of them lived on the “old back road” out of town where outrage has erupted recently over a resident flying a Confederate battle flag. Their ancestors [sic., descendants] still live there.
It’s a striking note in a controversy over heritage that has raised hackles across the Lowcountry and the state.
The community’s past is an obscure bit of the rich history in Summerville, maybe partly because for years the families kept it to themselves. They were the veterans and descendants of Union troops, living through Jim Crow and segregated times in a region that vaunted its rebel past.
The great-great-grandfather of Jordan Simmons III was among them. But growing up in Brownsville a century later, all Simmons remembers hearing about Jordan Swindel, his ancestor, is that he was a runaway slave who joined the Army. The rest, he says simply, “was not talked about.” He didn’t find out about it until he was an adult doing research on the Civil War and the troops and came across Swindel’s name.
Now he’s at work on a book about his family and the Brownsville heritage. Other 1st Regiment surnames in the community include Jacox, Berry, Campbell, Edney and Fedley.
Simmons, 64, has lived through some history of his own. He was one of the South Carolina State University students injured in the infamous 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. He too served in the U.S. Army, a 29-year veteran who fought in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne infantry and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He now lives in Virginia.
It overwhelmed him to see his great-great-grandfather’s name on the wall of honor three years ago when he visited the African-American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Pvt. Swindel fought in four battles in nine months in 1864, from Florida — where he was wounded — to Honey Hill, S.C. Simmons wishes he would have sought out that history when he was younger.
As I said previously, neither side in this dispute seems much interested in letting go of this game of one-upsmanship. The historical circumstances surrounding the town’s founding don’t change the core legal issues at hand, but given that the Southron Heritage folks routinely dismiss criticism of the Confederate Flag as “political correctness” or as unfairly tarnishing an honored symbol of the Confederacy with its use by hate groups, it’s interesting to see a case where the protestor’s case against the flag is so explicitly based in the very same “heritage” argument that the flag’s proponents righteously embrace. For at least some local residents, pushback against the CBF is every bit as grounded in the history of the American Civil War, and honoring one’s ancestors, as Ms. Caddell’s display of it. For them, it’s personal, and for exactly the same reasons.
I don’t know what the answer here is. What is clear, though, is that there’s an historical dimension to this case — very real and very valid, by the same “heritage” standard that the folks in (say) the South Carolina League of the South embrace for themselves — that needs much wider dissemination, and it plays a big role in how that community thinks and feels and reacts.
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Image: Soldiers of the 1st USCT on parade. Library of Congress.
Nostradamus Totally Called It. Totally.
And here I thought preoccupation with the prophecies of a sixteenth-century French alchemist apothecary was a modern craze. I was wrong. From the Sheveport Daily News, September 28, 1861:
Although many of the predictions made by Nostradamus (especially those concerning the deaths of Henry IV and Louis XVI) have been completely verified, they are generally discredited in our times. But in the “Prophecies at Vaticinations” of that great man, vol. 2d, (edition of 1609) we find the following, which would seem to deserve some attention:
“About that time (1861) a great quarrel and contest will rise in a country beyond the seas–America. Many poor devils will be hung and many poor wretches will be killed by a punishment other than a crowd. Upon my faith you may believe me. The war will not cease for four years, at which none should be at all astonished or surprised, for there will be no want, of hatred and onstinacy [sic.] in it. At the end of that time, prostrate and almost ruined, the people will re-embrace each other in great joy and love.”
Now, here is something very confirmatory of the prophetic genius of Nostradamus, but in no way consoling for us poor devils and wretches (pauvres diables et pauvres heres) who will have to suffer under this war for four years. Let us hope that the astrologer was mistaken at least on this point.
This is, like most citing of mysterious prophecy, a case of what James Randi calls “retroactive clairvoyance,” connecting vaguely-worded prophecies to events that have already happened, or are plainly inevitable to all. For any Daily News readers who might not make the connection between Nostradamus’ writing and then-current events, of course, the editors helpfully insert the date and location he was (obviously) referring to.
Why can’t prophets offer predictions that don’t have to be explained to make sense? 😉
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Do (Ever-Higher) Fences Make Good Neighbors?
Some folks may recall the case last year in South Carolina where Annie Chambers Caddell moved into a historically African American neighborhood, and put a Confederate flag on the front of her house. Her neighborhood’s origins go back to the close of the Civil War, when the area was settled by several former members of the 1st USCT, who’d been stationed there at the end of their military service. Caddell, who is white, argued she was honoring her Confederate ancestors; her neighbors, not surprisingly, see the flag as a symbol of something else entirely.
Inevitably there were protests against Caddell, and counter-protests in response (above). It got worse; someone reportedly threw a rock through Caddell’s front window. There has been inflammatory, over-the-top rhetoric on both sides. Not surprisingly, both sides have chosen to escalate the dispute.
Earlier this year, two solid 8-foot high wooden fences were built on either side of Annie Chambers Caddell’s modest brick house to shield the Southern banner from view.
Late this summer, Caddell raised a flagpole higher than the fences to display the flag. Then a similar pole with an American flag was placed across the fence in the yard of neighbor Patterson James, who is black. . . .
“I’m here to stay. I didn’t back down and because I didn’t cower the neighbors say I’m the lady who loves her flag and loves her heritage,” said the 51-year old Caddell who moved into the historically black Brownsville neighborhood in the summer of 2010. Her ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
Last October, about 70 people marched in the street and sang civil rights songs to protest the flag, while about 30 others stood in Caddell’s yard waving the Confederate flag.
Opponents of the flag earlier gathered 200 names on a protest petition and took their case to a town council meeting where Caddell tearfully testified that she’s not a racist. Local officials have said she has the right to fly the flag, while her neighbors have the right to protest. And build fences.
“Things seemed to quiet down and then the fences started,” Caddell said. “I didn’t know anything about it until they were putting down the postholes and threw it together in less than a day.”
Aaron Brown, the town councilman whose district includes Brownsville, said neighbors raised money for the fences.
“The community met and talked about the situation,” he said. “Somebody suggested that what we should do is just go ahead and put the fences up and that way somebody would have to stand directly in front of the house to see the flag and that would mediate the flag’s influence.”
Caddell isn’t bothered by the fences and said they even seem to draw more attention to her house.
“People driving by here because of the privacy fences, they tend to slow down,” she said. “If the objective was to block my house from view, they didn’t succeed very well.”
You can see where this is going; by this time next year, one side or the other will have put up a big-ass flag.
More seriously, this is just headache-inducing. The only people benefiting from this rancorous business are flagpole installers and the local lumber yard.
I don’t know what the answer here is. Caddell has a right to display her flag; her neighbors have a right to make their objection to it clear. But neither benefits from continually upping the ante, nor does it help to bring in outside groups and activists to use this case to fight a larger proxy battle for historical memory, as recently happened in Lexington. That only serves to harden the resolve of all concerned, by raising the purported stakes beyond what they actually are. I hope Caddell and her neighbors eventually come to some sort of resolution in this business. But that doesn’t seem likely anytime soon, so long as all parties insist on following the tired script of action and reaction, and insist on having others fight their rhetorical battles instead of talking to each other like responsible grown-ups.
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Image (Original Caption): Brownsville Community resident Tim Hudson (right) tells H.K. Edgerton of Ridgeville he looks “ridiculous” in his Confederate uniform as he stands with outside the home of Annie Chambers Caddell Saturday, October 16, 2010. Brownsville community members marched past Caddell’s home to protest her flying of the confederate flag outside her home in the predominantly black neighborhood. Hudson was not a marcher in the protest group. Photo by Alan Hawes, postandcourier.com.
“Can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.”
It seems that, in the process of removing and burying the dead from the military hospitals around Richmond, some of those removed weren’t quite ready to go. From the Richmond Dispatch, April 28, 1862:
Burying Soldiers Prematurely.
Most, if not all, of the soldiers who die in the various, hospitals located in this city, are interred at Oakwood Cemetery, in the eastern suburbs.–It cannot be supposed that when so many men are to be attended to, that all can have that care and attention bestowed on them that they would get at home or here under more favorable auspices, consequently many become food for worms that might otherwise be living. It does seem, however, eminently proper that when, to all appearance, the poor volunteer has shuffled off this mortal coil, his body should be retained a sufficient length of time to put the truth beyond doubt. We fear this is not always done. Anxiety for the living swallows up respect for the dead, and the remains of the latter are often hurried too precipitately to the place of interment. It would seem that there should be attached to each hospital a place for the temporary deposit of those who die or are supposed to have died from disease. We are led to make those suggestions from having heard that on two occasions recently parties who were about being subject to the rites of burial in Oakwood Cemetery had signified their disapprobation of the proceeding while on their way thither. The driver of the hearse in one instance, as we hear, was horrified at the vigorous manifestations of the supposed defunct, and quickly carried him to a place where he could be released from his unpleasant predicament. In another instance, as we learn, Mr. Radford, keeper of the cemetery, having undoubted assurance, from the knocking and exclamations of the subject, opened the coffin and sent the supposed dead man back for further medical treatment. While attaching no blame to any one, the matter is mentioned in the hope that it will induce a caution that experience has abundantly shown to be necessary.
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The Civil War Monitor
As many of you already know, Terry Johnston’s new magazine — that’s him on the right, I believe — The Civil War Monitor, hits the stands next week. The online version went live Wednesday afternoon, and is available here. It promises to be a great endeavor. I love Terry’s guiding principle for the magazine, that it would be “devoted to the belief that popular history need not be superficial or sentimental.” Damn straight.
I’m both pleased and humbled also to announce that I’ll be blogging at The Front Line, the new magazine’s group blog. It’s a great honor for me to be asked to join other bloggers there whose work I’ve admired for a long time, including Keith Harris, Jim Schmidt, Harry Smeltzer, Robert Moore and Craig Swain. I would also like to thank the Monitor‘s Blog and Social Media Editor, Laura June Davis, who’s been working steadily behind the scenes to make all the electrons go in the right places.
In many respects, I anticipate that my blogging at The Civil War Monitor will be similar to my blogging here. The postings here at Dead Confederates may thin out a bit, but I hope that this new publication will prove to be as exciting and successful as it looks to be.
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Book News
Congratulations to Jimmy Price, who blogs about USCTs at The Sable Arm, on the publication of his new book, The Battle of New Market Heights: Freedom Will Be Theirs by the Sword. It’s a great volume on an action that deserves to be much better known. Everyone knows the story of the 54th Massachusetts, thanks to the 1989 film Glory, but arguably it was at New Market Heights where African American troops proved their courage on a large scale.
In other news, S. Thomas Summers‘ volume of Civil War poetry (some of which has been featured here and here) has been picked for publication by Anaphora Literary Press later this year, or early next. From the press release:
In Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War, poem by poem, Private McGraw, each poem’s speaker, shares with us his journey through the landscapes of the American Civil War. McGraw, a Confederate soldier and racist, steps into the War in order to assure that slavery will exist long enough for him to purchase a slave with hopes that purchase will impress his love, Martha. As McGraw treks through blood and mire, experiencing both triumph and tragedy, he begins to transform into a man of peace and compassion – a man who no longer sees men in shades of black or white.
One of Summers’ poems, “Shards of Night,” deals specifically with Private McGraw’s first encounter with black troops.
Congrats to both these gentlemen on their accomplishment!
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Friday Night Concert: “Pay Me My Money Down”
In 1944 Alan Lomax recorded a song, “Pay Me,” sung by African American stevedores in Brunswick, Georgia. In 1960 Lomax wrote:
They bellowed songs as they hoisted, heaved and screwed down their cargoes, as had twelve generations of their forebears. By the 1940s, however, their songs were no longer nostalgic or oblique. . . . [Their songs] said directly and openly what they thought, and their song has proved enormously appealing to young people all across America.
The song, with a simple melody and simpler lyrics, became a popular his during the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of the young people Lomax was talking about in the early ’60s was a kid from Freehold Borough, New Jersey named Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen. He revived the song a few years ago for his Seeger Sessions Band. Their cover may not sound much like the one Lomax heard in Brunswick sixty-odd years before, but it is guaranteed to lift your spirits.
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