Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Small stories that don’t warrant larger posts all their own.

• The City of Lexington, Virginia will make its case at a hearing in Roanoke on June 11, seeking to have the lawsuit filed against them by the Virginia SCV thrown out. I doubt they will be successful in getting the case dismissed, but it will be the first time (I think) that each side will lay out their positions in court. My earlier thoughts on the plaintiff’s likelihood of prevailing in court are here.
• The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is opening two new exhibits of Civil War images, including “The Confederate Sketches of Adalbert Volck,” the caricaturist who liked to vilify Lincoln and other Northern figures. Who says Confederate voices are censored in “the Empire”?
• The Confederate submersible H. L. Hunley was known as the “peripatetic coffin” for sinking three times, killing its crew each time. Turns out, it’s not so great on the freeway, either.
• This month marks the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, a major strategic development which effectively closed the mouth of the Mississippi to the Confederacy. Wartime operations in this part of the South sometimes don’t feel like they get the attention that they should. The Plaquemines Parish Historical Association in Louisiana is looking to change that.
• In that same area, several Confederate monuments in New Orleans were defaced with graffiti in protest of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. That does nothing to serve the cause of justice, asshats.
• The Harper House on the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site in North Carolina served during the conflict as a hospital. Now experts will test to see whether stains in the floorboards are actually from blood, as long believed.
• The Virginia Flaggers continue to generate free publicity for the Museum of the Confederacy’s new Appomattox facility. Lots of familiar faces at the protest Saturday, including Karen Cooper, who was twice the Confederate her colleagues were. I see Billy Bearden was there, too, pushing the Grant-was-a-slaveholder meme. Dramatic but way-inside-baseball slogans seemed to be the theme of the day, and you gotta ask how many regular visitors to the new museum actually understood what the protest was about. I also wonder where Edgerton was; maybe no one was fronting his $20K speaking fee.
• Speaking of the Flaggers, former-state-SCV-officer-turned-culture-wars-columnist Mark Vogl argues that Susan Hathaway, of Virginia Flaggers fame, may be a Southern Sarah Palin. I agree, though probably for different reasons.
• One Southron recently posted the cover of a raunchy 1960 pulp novel, She Wouldn’t Surrender: The Wild Days and Nights of Belle Boyd – the Notorious Confederate Spy (right), as a “dedication to all Southern Belle’s [sic.].” I’m sure they, and any descendants of Belle Boyd living today, are mighty pleased to be depicted with that particular imagery. Other works in the same vein by James Kendricks (pen name of well-known comic writer Gardner F. Fox) include Sword of Casanova, The Adulterers, Beyond Our Pleasure and Love Me Tonight.
• Finally, congratulations to Clint Lacy, who recently changed the tagline of his blog to “we cover the news like the dew covers Dixie.” At least now, when he’s going off on a rant about how Columbian drivers are ruining NASCAR, or race-baiting the presidential campaign, or comparing Rick Santorum to Adolph Hitler, or using a dead teenager as an excuse to whine about all the streets in the South named after MLK, he’s not simultaneously claiming to be “your voice in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.” Whatever else its faults might be, the SCV doesn’t deserve to be linked with that.

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I’d like to thank the folks who came out to the Houston Museum of Natural Science Tuesday evening to attend my talk on blockade runners. It was a good time — folks laughed where intended to, not where they weren’t, and there was lots of good Q&A at the end. I did get a little too technical on ship construction and machinery, though, and I oughter watch out for that in the future. Not everyone is that interested in frame spacing and entrance lines.

I’d also like to thank the folks who made my talk possible, particularly Amy Potts from HMNS and Ed Cotham. Thanks, y’all!

One thing that I didn’t have a chance to do, using the format of the talk, was to provide a list of suggested readings. And so:

• J. Barto Arnold III. The Denbigh‘s Civilian Imports: Customs Records of a Civil War Blockade Runner between Mobile and Havana. College Station, Texas: Institute of Nautical Archaeology, 2011.
• W.T. Block, Schooner Sail to Starboard: The US Navy vs. Blockade Runners in the Western Gulf of Mexico. College Station, Texas: Institute of Nautical Archaeology, 2007.
• Eric J. Graham. Clyde Built: Blockade Runners, Cruisers and Armoured Rams of the American Civil War. London: Birlinn Ltd, 2008.
• Thomas E. Taylor, Running the Blockade: A Personal Narrative of Adventures, Risks and Escapes during the American Civil War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
• Rodman L. Underwood, Waters of Discord: The Union Blockade of Texas During the Civil War. McFarland, 2008.
• William Watson, The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
• Stephen R. Wise. Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running during the Civil War. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

This guy was not a visitor who, on a whim, pocketed a couple of Minié balls he found lying on the ground. He also kept a detailed, day-by-day journal of his looting activities. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

By his own account, Santo wrote that he recovered more than 18,000 bullets, 68 fuses, 31 cannonballs and shells, 13 buckles, seven breastplates, five saber tips and 91 buttons over 1,014 days.

“The defendant’s journal is a tell-all of his misconduct, identifying with a high degree of specification where he engaged in metal detecting/relic hunting and when and what he recovered,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney N. George Metcalf in federal court papers. “He even kept a running tally of the items he found from day to day on a yearly basis.”

Santo’s handwritten journal, recovered during a July 10, 2011, search of his Petersburg home, proved to be his undoing. On Wednesday, the 52-year-old unemployed Pennsylvania native was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Richmond to one year and one day in a federal prison.

He pleaded guilty in December to two counts of damaging archaeological resources and one count of pillaging Petersburg National Battlefield Park.

Santo is regarded as the park’s most prolific relic thief.

Unfortunately, Santo’s conviction still leaves important, unanswered questions:

[Park historian Jimmy] Blankenship said one of the issues that concerned the court was the amount of relics Santo apparently sold. “We know he found over 18,000 bullets,” Blankenship said. “We only confiscated something like 8,500. So what happened to the other 10,000 bullets?”

But archaeology, as opposed to private treasure hunting on public land, remains a hard sell to the general public. As one archaeologist notes on the Historical Archaeology e-mail list,

If you want to see where the public perception of archaeology is, or if you have wondered who would watch and champion shows like Digger or American Digger, just read the comments at the end of the article. To nearly all commenters, the perpetrator is a hero who has rescued the artifacts from the ground, something the power-loving authorities and archaeologists have no desire to do so.

Trust me, professional archaeologists would love to have the resources to devote to a systematic study of sites like Petersburg, but they don’t. (And note that comprehensive study of a battlefield site can completely revise our understanding of well-known engagements, as Doug Scott’s study of the Little Bighorn and the THC’s work to reconstruct the Red River War both attest.) But there’s little public support for investing in that sort of work, which requires a lot of time by highly-trained people, and is therefore expensive. Buckets of Minié balls and uniform buttons, looted from public land — which is to say, stolen from us — don’t do a damn thing to improve our knowledge or understanding of the conflict.

One additional note: Santo’s 366-day sentence is common in the federal system for low-level, non-violent criminals. The federal system does not have parole, but does allow some credit for inmates with good behavior or who participate in rehab or educational programs while incarcerated. This can knock, I believe, about 15% off the time they actually spend in jail. But to be eligible for this, the law requires that the prisoner be sentence to “more than a year” behind bars — thus the sentence of 366 days. Santo will likely serve about ten-and-a-half months, and then be put on some form of supervised release.

Small stories that don’t warrant larger posts all their own.

• The City of Lexington, Virginia has filed a petition to dismiss the Virginia SCV’s lawsuit against the city, which seeks to overturn a 2011 ordinance that bars all non-governmental flags from city property, including light poles. (The ordinance does not prohibit the flag on private property, nor parades or other displays of the Confederate flag, as is sometimes claimed.) This latest filing is a standard motion that doesn’t add much significant to the case. My earlier thoughts on the plaintiff’s likelihood of prevailing in court are here.
• The long-running lawsuit of Candice Hardwick (above, with Confederate activist/performance artist H. K. Edgerton in 2006) appears to have come to an end, with the dismissal of her federal lawsuit against the administration of Latta High School, in Latta, South Carolina. In 2006, then-fifteen-year-old Hardwick was suspended twice from school for wearing a Confederate flag shirt. She sued, and her case became a cause celebré among heritage groups.
• Near Raleigh, North Carolina, volunteers spent six hours digging up the graves of two brothers, Joseph and Joel Holleman, to move the remains to a nearby cemetery to be reburied alongside other Civil War veterans. This story is the most ghoulish thing I’ve read in a long time; it reeks of necro-voyeurism. The original graves were marked, identified, and not threatened by development or erosion. Nor, as far as I know, was there any wish on the part of these men’s descendants to have this done. So they dug them up anyway, because (in the words of the event’s organizer), ““my heart says this is the right thing.” The folks who scream “GRAVE DESECRATION!” and “SPITTING ON THE GRAVES OF AND DISHONORING AMERICAN VETERANS!” when a cemetery owner removes Confederate stick flags ought to be up in arms about this foolishness. But they ain’t gonna say boo about it.
• Speaking of disturbing graves. . . .
• It looks like Kentucky will finally shut down its Confederate Soldiers Pension Fund, a mere fifty years after anyone was eligible to receive benefits from it. Don’t do anything precipitous, y’all.
• Union County, North Carolina, is moving one step closer to putting up a monument to local African American men who went into the field with the Confederate army as personal servants of soldiers. The description of the men in question by historians interviewed is reasonably accurate, but it’s still all very muddled. Earl Ijames doesn’t help by observing that “history has attempted to negate what they did. . . .They would die for their freedom before freedom was available for their own people. . .  .For Union County, Jesse Helms’ (home) county, this makes a big statement that we are a society that has evolved into a more integrated society.” I have no idea what he’s saying, but it sure sounds good.
• Fed up with Waite Rawls, John Coski and the Museum of the Confederacy, the SCV is soliciting money to build and operate the Confederate Museum at Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee to counter the “forces of political correctness,” who are attempting “to ban any and all things Confederate through their ideological fascism.” The first 20 camps or divisions to contribute $1,000 or more will each receive a commemorative gavel, “made from wood taken from the damn [sic.] at Fredricksburg [sic.] during the War.“

Finally, I’d like to remind folks that I’ll be speaking on Civil War blockade runners in Texas at the Wortham MAX Theater at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. It should be fun.

I’d like to extend my thanks to the SCV John Bell Hood Camp No. 50 for hosting my talk on blockade runners Monday evening. A few members recalled my earlier talks on the subject from 10+ years back, and came armed with questions. I talked a little long (surprise!), but I got a lot of solid info in there. I even got in a plug for Jim Schmidt’s upcoming book on Galveston during the war. It’s going to be a good one.

Tuesday evening at 6:30 my friends Bob Gearhart, Amy Borgens, and Edward T. Cotham, Jr. will present “U.S.S. Westfield, A Civil War Shipwreck in Galveston Bay” in the Wortham Theater at the Houston Museum of Natural Science:

In the fall of 2009, a team of marine archeologists working under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supervised the recovery of artifacts from USS Westfield, a Staten Island ferryboat that had been converted into a Civil War gunboat after its purchase by the U.S. Navy in 1861. Westfield saw significant Civil War action, participating in battles at New Orleans, Vicksburg and other places along the Gulf Coast. Its destruction at the Battle of Galveston on January 1, 1863, was one of the most important and dramatic events of the Civil War in Texas. This audiovisual program uses rare historic documents and images to describe the conversion of a ferryboat to armored warship and examine the military career of this unique “fighting ferryboat” and its impact on the war in Texas. It retraces the series of events that led to the relocation of Westfield’s wreck and the challenging project that resulted in recovery of tons of artifacts undergoing conservation at the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University. Among the artifacts being conserved is a more than 4 ton Dahlgren cannon capable of firing a projectile almost 2 miles.

And next Tuesday, March 27, I’ll be presenting my own talk there, “For-Profit Patriots: Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast.” Hope to see y’all there!

Small stories that don’t warrant larger posts all their own.

• A life-sized bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest was stolen last weekend from the Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Alabama. Police reported no leads, and it’s unclear whether the Forrest monument was specifically targeted, or if the bronze was stolen for its metal value.
• Ron Wilson (right), a coin and precious metals dealer from South Carolina, is under investigation by the state for allegedly running a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme involving the purchase of silver securities. Wilson, a former National Commander of the SCV, was one of the so-called hard-liners that came to prominence within that organization in the early 2000s, bent on a more aggressive, politically-engaged course for the group. Wilson remains prominent in local Confederate heritage circles, and apparently hawked his dubious investments among his butternut friends. Wilson has a history of skeevy business dealings dating back to his tenure as a local elected official, some of which involved steering favors to his SCV buddies.
  
• Also in South Carolina, State Senator Glenn McConnell has agreed to serve as that state’s Lieutenant Governor. McConnell has been invaluable in raising funds and public support for the recovery and conservation of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, but he’s also caught grief for posing for some seriously ill-advised photos. Cartoonist Kate Salley Palmer wonders whether McConnell, who’s been a fixture in South Carolina state politics for decades, is really enthusiastic about relinquishing his senior post in the State Senate. John Courson, the new South Carolina Senate Pro Tem, was (with McConnell) one of the Senate Republicans that negotiated the compromise by which the Confederate flag was removed from the State House in Columbia and placed at the Confederate memorial, where it remains today. (Update: the claim about Cleburne’s coat is being the one in which he was killed is in dispute, as noted in the comments below.)
• The coat worn by Confederate General Patrick Cleburne when he was killed at Franklin in November 1864 will be one of the centerpiece artifacts on display at the new Appomattox site of the Museum of the Confederacy. Cleburne is, after Jackson, Lee and Forrest, probably the most-celebrated Confederate general officer today, but his prominence at the museum is being overshadowed by the controversy surrounding that institution’s decision not to fly a Confederate flag out front.
• Cole Grinnell has a great new blog post up at the Civil War Monitor, “How I tried and failed to escape the Civil War.”
• Finally, ninety-two year-old Pete Seeger sings (what else?) “Forever Young,” part of an album celebrating Bob Dylan’s 50-year career. More about the song here.

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Detail of “Sons of Erin,” by Don Troiani. Father Corby rides across the advancing line of the Irish Brigade at Sharpsburg.

On a day when everyone’s just a little Irish, the Very Rev. Dr. Stephen Duncan of Galveston is marching in New York:

Next weekend I will travel to New York City and march with my Civil War re-enactment group the 69th New York State Volunteers Historical Society as a part of the famous Irish Brigade from the Civil War. This unit traditionally leads the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York and this year will be in two of the parades — one for the old Cathedral and the other, larger parade in the afternoon.

The men of the Irish Brigade and their chaplain, Father Corby, helped change the perception of Americans about the Irish.

During the Civil War, many Irish immigrants and Irish Americans enlisted and served with distinction on both sides. There were more Irish serving in Union blue, but there were significant numbers with the harp of Erin under the gray.

Many had joined as members of the Fenian Society. They were determined to gain experience in modern warfare so they could return to Ireland and free it from the yoke of England.

Their fathers and grandfathers had served in the last Irish rebellion and many had fallen on Vinegar Hill.

In the end, the fact that England tacitly supported the South by continuing to buy cotton and sell supplies fueled the fervor of the Irish love for the Union and the freedom it represented for Ireland.

It was how well the Irish performed their duties as soldiers that got the attention of the (non-Irish) American officers.

The Irish as a unit were fearless in battle. They did what they were told even in the face of insurmountable odds, such as at Fredericksburg.

The soldiers closest to the Confederate lines at the end of that dreadful battle wore the green sprig of boxwood in their kepis — reminders of the green of Ireland that Gen. Meagher had asked them to wear as they marched off to the strains of the Garryowen.

At Gettysburg, Father Corby, later president of the University of Notre Dame, climbed on a rock and asked the unit to kneel to receive general absolution before the battle.

The men dropped to their knees, their hats off in prayer. He exhorted them to do their duty and to make a full confession later if they were able and then pronounced the Latin words absolving them of their sins.

The non-Catholic officers nearby were impressed. Certainly this was not the first time general absolution had been given on an American battlefield, but something about the men of the Irish Brigade, en masse, going to their knees in prayer affected the Union officers greatly.

It began a notice that these Irish Catholics were somehow more human, more God-fearing, more American and more like themselves than they had been told all their lives.

Though there were terrible losses, the unit continued through the entire war.

After the Civil War, many of the young soldiers followed Father Corby back to Notre Dame where they became students and loaned their moniker “the Fighting Irish” to that French-founded University de Notre Dame du Lac (founded by the Holy Cross Fathers from France).

To this day, Notre Dame is a symbol of Ireland and Catholicism here in the United States — more than a great football team, more than a fantastic school — a place where the Irish in America found their home.

I think it is a good thing indeed that on every St. Patrick’s Day everyone is at least a wee bit Irish. Erin Go Braugh.

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