Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Small stories that don’t warrant full posts of their own:

• The U.S. Department of the Interior recently named 27 new historic landmarks, including Admiral Farragut’s gravesite in New York and Black Jack Battlefield in Douglas County, Kansas, where abolitionist John Brown’s forces fought a pro-slavery contingent led by Henry Clay Pate.
• Jeanette Keith’s Fever Season, about the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, doesn’t really sound like a fun read — but it does sound like an important one.
• So if you’re making a CW-themed movie about, oh, I don’t know — say, the sixteenth president — where do you go to get a dozen pieces of authentic artillery for the film set? Charlie Smithgall of Lancaster, Pennsylvania is your man.
• Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind is hugely popular in Pyongyang.
• Ann “Little Rebel” DeWitt observes that “the movie Lincoln disappoints Lincoln fans. As it turns out the movie isn’t much about slavery, but about Lincoln.” No, I don’t know what that means, either.
• The last known “real son” of a Confederate veteran living in Texas, Marion Wilson, died on Amarillo on November 11. He was 99.
• Winslow Homer’s “Home, Sweet Home” (above) is one of the pieces shown in the new exhibit, “The Civil War and American Art,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.
• Looks like Alabama’s leading advocate for secession is some dude from Mobile who used to run a topless car wash.
• Channing Tatum (Dave’s kin?), star of “Magic Mike” (never heard of it) is supposedly the “Sexiest Man Alive” (um, OK), and apparently has a Confederate ancestor. Isn’t that special?
• Coy Matthew Hamilton may think twice next time about pilfering bones from a Civil War battlefield. (h/t Michael Lynch)
• This year is the 50th anniversary of Topps Civil War News trading cards.
• Archaeologists in Fredericksburg have unearthed a trove of historical materials in a previously-buried cellar.

Got any to add? Put ’em in the comments.

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My colleague Jim Schmidt, author of Galveston and the Civil War and other Civil War titles, interviewed me recently for his blog, Civil War Medicine (and Writing).

Also, Mark Lardas, a history author and book reviewer for the Galveston County Daily News, puts up his review of the Buffalo Bayou steamboat book. “Surprising and informative?” That works.

I’ll be signing books Saturday afternoon, Nov. 17, at the Galveston Bookshop from 2 to 4 p.m. I’d be happy to meet and talk with any blog readers in the area. If for nothing else, come and meet Gus. You’ll be glad you did.

This morning I learned of the passing of Dr. Charles Peery of South Carolina, on October 6. He was 71. Peery needs no introduction to those interested in Civil War naval history or archaeology, as he was heavily involved in (and a contributor to) both those areas. It was an inquiry from Peery in 1995 that was the catalyst in locating, identifying and excavating the wreck of the blockade runner Denbigh, a project that continues to be a focus of research today. Peery was a surgeon, specializing in obstetrical and gynecological surgery, but Civil War history and shipwrecks were always the things he was most passionate about:

Peery graduated from Davidson College and earned an M.D. from Duke University. “Yet even while he was in medical school, he would find time to break away on weekends and come down to the coast,” Bright said.

Active in North Carolina diving groups, Peery was one of the young divers who aided in the excavation of the blockade runner Modern Greece in the early 1960s. He later joined work on other wrecks, including the Ranger and the Condor.

Later, with friends, Peery formed a maritime archaeology firm, MARS, to explore and excavate the wreck of the Ella, a blockade runner that was sunk off Bald Head Island in December 1864.

“It was more than just a hobby for him,” said Gordon P. Watts Jr., a marine archaeologist with Tidewater Atlantic Research of Washington, N.C. “He loved history.”

Peery’s work helped lay the foundations for underwater archaeology research in North Carolina, Watts said.

I only met Peery once, when he made a quick visit to Galveston, the one that touched off the research on Denbigh and finding her wreck. When we parted that evening after dinner, Dr. Peery handed me his business card, with his office telephone number on it. “Now if you call that number,” he said, “they won’t let you speak to me directly. But if you tell them it’s about the Civil War, they’ll come get me out of surgery for that.”

Goodbye, Dr. Peery, and thanks for all you’ve done for the rest of us.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to:

or to:

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve added several new events to my book schedule. Next Saturday I’ll be at the Houston History Book Fair & Symposium, along with CW authors Jim Schmidt, author of Galveston and the Civil War: An Island City in the Maelstrom, and Ed Cotham, author of Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston and other works. Other upcoming events between now and the end of the year include:

The Galveston-Houston Packet: Steamboats on Buffalo Bayou is also available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I’ll be taking direct orders via PayPal soon; details to follow.

Finally, I was notified last week that the History Press will be releasing the book in electronic format sometime in the next several weeks. I’ve been asked about that by several folks, and I’m pleased to know that’s moving forward, as well.

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While looking at a high-res version of this photo from the Library of Congress, taken during the Union occupation of Atlanta in the autumn of 1864, I noticed this roughly-lettered broadside posted to the corner of the Atlanta Intelligencer building at the corner of Whitehall (now Peachtree) Street and Alabama, near the railroad depot. The broadside advertises a concert:

BENEFIT NIGHT

Mr. I. Smith

Leader of the Band

of the 33rd Mass.

The Laughable Pantomime of the

COBBLER’S FROLIC

at the Atheneum

Saturday Night Nov 5th

“Mr. I. Smith” would be 37-year-old Israel Smith, Principal Musician of the 33rd Massachusetts Infantry, of New Bedford. Before the war he had led that town’s brass band, prompting the local paper, the Mercury, to write in 1857, “the efforts he has made and the excellence of the band under his leadership, demonstrate the value of his skill as a musician.” According to an 1859 city directory, he lived on Pope’s Island, smack in the center of New Bedford harbor.

As for the performance seven years later in Atlanta, there’s this description of the show from Three Years’ Service of the Thirty-third Mass. Infantry Regiment 1862-1865 by Adin Ballou Underwood:

Peace and quietness reigned in Atlanta. Not a hostile gun was heard there for two months, till a brigade or two of Georgia Militia appeared on the scene one day, and they were quietly made to skedaddle. Everything went “merry as a marriage bell” with the soldiers, and the few inhabitants that still lingered there. Hooker’s old Corps that had been so hard marched and hard fought, relaxed itself, and the bronzed and staid old veterans became gay and festive. Games, parties, dances, serenades, suppers, concerts and an actual Theatre, divided the time with drills, picket and parades in the gay garrison town. One night while the Thirty-Third band was serenading Gen. Sherman, he proposed that it should give a concert in the theatre for the benefit of Mrs. Welch, the widow of the late Masonic Grand Master of the State, whose house he was occupying as headquarters, and who was very poor. The experiment was promptly undertaken. Friends of the beneficiary were to do the star singing. The band rode to the theatre a few times in hacks to rehearse, and on the night set, gave the following programme which was duly printed:

The concert was a success artistically and financially, and netted $200 for the beneficiary. Several similar concerts were given with varied programmes, “Thirty-Third Mass. regiment Quick-step (I. Smith) band;” Clarionette solo, J. Calnum;” “Lecture, Woman’s Rights, A. P. Hazard;” “Lord Lovell,” by the same; “Quartette by the Glee Club of Knapp’s Battery,” being some of the additions. Then the season hegan to wane; prices were rather high for enlisted men, getting only $13 a month, and it was rather necessary to get up something striking. A bright idea struck Hazard, and he got up a play. So the following addition appeared on the programmes for October 29th, printed on old blank discharge papers:–

Afterwards the farce, “The Lover’s Serenade” was given. Hazard was musician, author, actor, stage manager, printer, bill poster and property man. The theatre had a great’ run till the very last night before the march, when it took $667. The season lasted four weeks, seventeen nights, and the band took $8000 in all. It gave $2000 to Mrs. Welch and out of the balance kept enough to pay its numbers the amount due from the officers according to their enlistment agreement to the end of their three years.

 

The last night before the city was evacuated, the last train that left it was kept waiting till midnight to take away one of the stock actors. The yield of this bonanza suddenly stopped.

As Underwood notes, a $1 theatre ticket is no small sum for a private earning $13 per month, before any deductions against his pay. It must have been one helluva show to take in $8,000 in seventeen performances — upwards of $500 per night. Of course, the notion of Union soldiers willingly raising (at Uncle Billy’s suggestion) $2,000 in Yankee greenbacks for the benefit of an Atlanta widow doesn’t exactly fit their reputation as the demon horde, either.

And then there’s Underwood’s description of the band’s earlier performance for the president, after which (perhaps understandably) Smith and his fellow bandsmen were a bit full of themselves:

About this time [Spring 1863], while the corps was busy corduroying the vile secesh roads of the neighborhood, it was relieved from that delectable duty one day to be reviewed, together with the Twelfth Corps, by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armies, good President Lincoln. And how the soldiers did reverence that tall citizen, as he rode along the lines on the little mustang, with that beaver [hat], the like of which some in the lines had not seen for two years! While he was at General Hooker’s headquarters, the band of the Thirty-Third was sent  for, to go up by special train, to play for the President’s entertainment during his visit there. On its arrival, the five other bands that had been ordered there also, including some excellent ones, were informed that their services were no longer required, as the band of the Thirty-Third Massachusetts would be sufficient. It is said, on competent authority, that Israel Smith, the leader, Amasa Glover, “the irrepressible,” (as he came to be called) the managing man, and the other members of the band, felt rather “stuck up” for some time at this great compliment.

 

They must have realized some contrast between this occasion, when they traveled in state in a special car on the railroad, and enjoyed the delicacies which they managed somehow to have at army headquarters — and a certain other occasion, when they went to visit and play for the Second Massachusetts, when they were treated, doubtless by necessity, on army rations, including ‘army commissary,” that cheers, and does certainly inebriate, if the thirsty soldier does not practise rigid self-denial. The band had· to foot it home, lugging their instruments with them. The hour, of departure was after taps; the road, a mixture. of Virginia mud and snow to the depth of three feet; the distance, seven miles; with these conditions given, and some knowledge of the personnel of the band, and the imagination can easily supply the rest. The load became, in some cases, too heavy, and it is asserted that the devious way of the band could be easily traced next morning, or, rather that morning (of arrival), by the brass instruments sticking out of the snow, strung along like a skirmish line, where they had been thrown away. The amount of frozen music temporarily buried that night will probably never be known.

Israel Smith returned to New Bedford after the war, where he and his wife Sophia raised a family and he worked as a music teacher and musician. He was still living in Winchester, Massachusetts as of 1910, a widowed octogenarian living with his daughter and son-in-law.

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Small stories that don’t warrant full posts of their own:

• The dispute over renovations to a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest in Selma drags on, and on, and on, sucking in more aggrieved parties as it goes. I haven’t talked about it much here because every aspect of it seems to be exactly according to script, with lots of angry, clichéd rhetoric and hyperbole on all sides. We’ve seen this movie before.
• Charles F. Bryan, President and CEO emeritus of the Virginia Historical Society, points out in an editorial that Jefferson Davis’ wartime administration committed many of the same “big government” sins commonly ascribed unilaterally to Lincoln then, and to the political left today. Among these were creating a “massive debt while imposing heavy taxes on its citizenry. It had a virtual monopoly on foreign trade. It maintained de facto control over raw materials, labor, transportation systems and much of the manufacturing sector. It mushroomed into a huge bureaucracy to keep these controls in effect.” “By happenstance and by design,” Bryan argues, “the new republic was marked by profound centralization and nationalization.” He’s right; deal with it.
• Mark Vogl, the self-styled “chancellor”of the online Confederate War College, has been carping for months about Mitt Romney. He’s argued that “Romney’s Mormon faith is NOT Christian,” and about Romney’s supposed commitment to “socialism,” based on Romneycare in Massachusetts. He’s accused Romney of being a “globalist,” in contrast to candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who Vogl views as “Americans.” He’s whined that Romney’s religious beliefs are getting a pass in the media because “a Mormon is a politically correct minority.” He’s called out Romney for the candidate’s “lies” about his living conditions when working as a missionary in Paris in the 1960s. Several months back Vogl gleefully cheered that “Dixie says no to Romney!” He was outraged that Romney supposedly “supports the Gays against the Boy Scouts!” and didn’t “support Chick-Fil-A in a huge battle about Christianity.” Vogl even went so far as to announce publicly that in November he will “be writing in Jefferson Davis of Mississippi for President of the United States“So guess who he’s supporting now. Go ahead, guess.
• Underwater archaeologists have discovered the wreck of the Confederate gunboat C.S.S. Pee Dee in the Greater Pee Dee River in South Carolina. Archaeologist Chris Amer cautions that the wreck is “as messy as the history that put it there,” probably in part because parts of it were salvaged in the 1950s.
• I’ve observed in the past that the various “flagging” groups have a pretty low threshold for claiming an accomplishment; now it appears they’re claiming “victory” just by showing up.
• Looks like the white nationalist League of the South (LoS) has decided to slink back into the shadows, having changed the status of its Facebook group to “closed,” so that non-members can no longer see the LoSers’ online discussions in real time. This is not entirely unexpected, as the group has come in for some negative media coverage lately. It does raise the question, though, about how their abandonment of social media is going to raise the public visibility of their movement; mens room graffiti and flagging empty office buildings at night isn’t likely to do the trick.
• Next month, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond will offer an additional tour, “Servant Life of the Confederate White House,” as part of the interpretation of that site.
• Is this a photograph of A. P. Hill? Sure looks like him.
• Speaking of look-alikes, check out this still from the upcoming Spielberg film. Can you believe that the actor who’s a dead-ringer for Stanton is also this guy? I never aspired to an acting career, but if I had, I’d want to be Bruce McGill.
  
  
  
  
• Unrelated to the CW, the Pittsburgh Steelers are doing their dead-level best to make fans regret buying those HD teevees.
• Finally, on a purely personal note, my friend and blogging colleague Jim Schmidt had a very successful book signing Saturday for his new volume, Galveston and the Civil War: An Island City in the Maelstrom. I couldn’t be more happy for Jim, because his volume really does bring a lot of new material and analysis to Galveston’s CW experience. We will both be at the Houston History Book Fair & Symposium in a couple of weeks, and hope to see you there.

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