Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Rusty Williams blogs about My Old Confederate Home, supplementing his recent history of the various Southern states’ efforts to provide facilities for indigent veterans of the war. Recently, Williams told the brief story from the home in Austin where, in 1904, one old veteran killed another:

On a warm day in September 1904 at the Texas Confederate Home for Men, John Rotley [sic.] and another man got into a heated argument. A third inmate, 65-year-old C. H. Lyster from Galveston, stepped into the argument as peacemaker. Rotley picked up a chair and smashed it over Lyster’s skull, sending him to the ground, unconscious.

Lyster died soon afterward, and Ratley was arrested and charged with murder. (Early press accounts gave the assailant’s name as Rotley, but these were later corrected to Ratley.) It turns out that both Ratley and Lyster were long-time residents of Galveston before they moved into the home. From the Galveston Daily News, September 11, 1904:

Thursday’s News contained an item from Austin giving an account of the death in the Confederate Home there of C. H. Lyster, resulting from an injury received at the hands of John Rotley, another Confederate veteran and inmate of the home. It was reported that “according to the statement of those who witnessed the affair, Lyster was acting as a peacemaker to prevent trouble between Rotley and another inmate, when Rotley picked up a chair and struck Lyster over tho head with it.”

It was learned, yesterday that both parties were formerly residents of Galveston and went from here to the home. Rotley, those acquainted with him say, was an old resident of Galveston. He is thought to have served in Hood’s Brigade [sic., Parson’s Texas Brigade] throughout the Civil War. He lived here for thirty years or more, and for a long time was a traveling salesman for the old firm of Gary & Oliphant, wholesale grocers and cotton factors. After that he embarked in business for himself, retailing tobaccos. It Is said that his only surviving relative is a daughter who resides either in Tennessee or Georgia. Those who knew him in Galveston state that he was an Intelligent man and considered inoffensive. He went from here to Austin about four months ago.

C. H. Lyster went to the Confederate Home from Galveston about two years ago. He served under Capt. D. W. Ducie In the Civil War as a member of the Mississippi Regiment. In Galveston he resided for the past twenty or twenty-five years. For quite a while he was a clerk In Mr. Ducie’s paint store. He also served as Deputy Constable under Constable Moran in 1838 and also under Justice Spann. He is survived by a brother, Mr. James Lyster, who resides at Sherman. During the war he was captured at Gettysburg and taken to Baltimore, where he remained until the exchange nf prisoners. He was regarded here by his friends as a kind-hearted man, quiet and courageous.

Ratley’s son, John Ratley, Jr., of Ardmore, Indian Territory, traveled to Austin and secured his father’s release a few days later on $1,500 bond. The case didn’t go to trial for over a year, but the Galveston Daily News of October 5, 1905 noted that Ratley was acquitted of the charge, and was once again a resident of the Confederate Home in Austin.

Charles H. Lyster, Jr. enlisted joined the 16th Mississippi Volunteers as a private in April 1861. His father, 43-years-old Charles Sr., served as the company first sergeant. On December 10, 1861, Private Lyster was designated a musician and re-enlisted for ten years, entitling him him to a bounty of $50. He received a 50-day furlough in early 1862, but was back with his unit later in the spring. During Private Lyster’s time in the 16th Mississippi, the regiment participated in numerous actions as part of the Army of Northern Virginia, including Mechanicsville, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill, Second Manassas (Bull Run), Sharpsburg (Antietam), Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Lyster was captured at Gettysburg on July 2 or 3, 1863, where the 16th was part of A. P. Hill’s corps’ unsuccessful attacks on Cemetery Ridge. (The 16th Mississippi continued with the Army of Northen Virginia through to Appomattox, where it mustered four officers and 68 enlisted men.)

In the 1893-94 city directory, brothers Charles H. and James Lyster are listed as “collectors,” rooming over the business at 516 Tremont Street, between Postoffice and Church, on the site of present-day Star Drug Store. I haven’t found a similar listing for Ratley, but it’s certainly possible that the two long-time residents of Galveston knew each other before Ratley entered the home in Austin.

John Ratley’s background is a little less clear. I’ve found nothing about him in Galveston, although he is supposed to have lived here for decades. There are a number of other, useful clues, however. The old Confederate veteran John Ratley, aged about 74 in 1904, appears to be the 30-year-old John Ratley who enlisted in Captain John Alston’s Company of Lancers in March 1862 at Hempstead. He brought with him $150 in horses and $30 in equipment, and signed up for three years or the duration of the war. Alston’s Company was subsequently designated Company H of the 21st Texas Cavalry. The 21st Texas later became part of Parson’s Texas Brigade, a primarily cavalry unit, that served in the Trans-Mississippi region. The last note in Ratley’s service file, dated October 13, 1863 at Caddo, Arkansas, notes Ratley’s vocation as carpenter.

John Ratley, working as a carpenter, appears in the Washington County, Texas census of 1870. (Hempstead, John Ratley’s place of enlistment in 1862, is the seat of Waller County, adjacent to Washington County.) He is 38 years old, with a 36-year-oldwife, A. R. Ratley, and a fourteen-year-old female, E. L. — presumably a daughter. Ratley is listed as having born in England. In 1871, Ratley and five other local men successfully petitioned the state legislature to incorporate the Victoria Society of Washington County, “to encourage and promote the emigration of British farmers and others to aid in the development of the agricultural and mechanical interests of the country.”

A 26-year old carpenter named John Ratley, born in Ireland, immigrated from Liverpool to New York in September 1857, accompanied by his wife Marian, age 21, aboard the ship Margaret Tyson. At the time. all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and Ratley may have been of hereditary English, rather than Irish, parentage.

John Ratley is listed as a carpenter and joiner at the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway roundhouse in San Antonio in 1891, residing at 320 Bowie Street.

Note: There was also a John Andrew Ratley, born about 1830 in Alabama or Tennessee, who served with the 44th Tennessee Infantry during the war. He later moved to Texas and died in 1910 or 1914 in Harrison County (Marshall). I believe this John Ratley is not the old veteran from the Confederate Home in Austin.

Of my several Civil War ancestors, the only one who might be considered famous (at least among Civil War buffs) is Major General John George Walker (1822-1893), who commanded a division in the Army of Northern Virginia’s Maryland Campaign of 1862, and played an important role in the capture of Harpers Ferry and the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam). He was subsequently assigned to command of a division in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and at the close of the war commanded the Confederate Military District of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. General Walker is my great-great-great uncle, being the younger brother of Margaret Courtenay Walker (1818-1869), my mother’s mother’s father’s mother.

At the close of the war, Walker did not wait for parole, but when the Confederacy collapsed and his military command dissolved in the spring of 1865, he headed to Mexico, and eventually ended up in London. While it’s generally understood that the war “ended” with Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox in early April 1865, that’s largely a convenient shorthand; the war dragged on for some weeks still, especially in locations far removed from Virginia. To cite just one example, the Federals boarded and burned the blockade runner Denbigh at Galveston on the morning of May 24, 1865, the same date that General Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee marched up Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington as part of the nation’s victory celebration.

Walker later claimed that he did not surrender himself to federal authorities for parole because of a widespread belief that the senior officers of the Confederacy would be tried by civilian or military tribunals for treason. He is correct in this, at least in saying that the fate of senior Confederate military officers was very much an open question at the time. Lincoln had ordered an amnesty for enlisted men and junior officers as far back as 1863, but it explicitly exempted more senior military officers and government officials. There was a strong sentiment in the North to hang Jefferson Davis, Lee, and other Confederate leaders, and President Johnson did not order a general amnesty, contingent on swearing allegiance to the United States, until the end of May 1865. Walker’s decision to flee to Mexico without waiting to be captured is understandable, at least on a personal level.

“President Johnson in the attitude of pardoning rebels who have returned to their allegiance. Hundreds of these pardon-seekers daily besiege the White House. They crowd into the ante-room and are ushered into the President’s presence each in his turn, and if found all right on the record they are pardoned, otherwise not.” Harper’s Weekly, October 14, 1865.

In the fall of 1865, writing from Liverpool, Walker requested a pardon from President Johnson. It’s not clear what became of that request, but in October 1866 Walker traveled to Washington, D.C. to plead his case in person. In his application, Walker wrote:

Washington, D.C.
October 26, 1866

To His Excellency
The President of the U.S.

Sir,

Early in September of last year I had the honor to address you a communication from Liverpool, England, setting forth the circumstances of my absence from the United States, and applying to be reinstated in my citizenship. I stated in that application that I was a captain in the United States Army at the commencement of the late Civil War, and that after the acceptance of my resignation by the War Department, I accepted services under the late Confederate government, and at the close of the war was a Major General commanding a corps of twenty-eight regiments of Texans in that state. When it became evident that the surrender of troops west of the Miss. River was inevitable, notwithstanding my strenuous exertions to prevent it, my command became thoroughly disorganized, broke up and, seizing public property, disbanded. I stated also that in consequence of a belief, prevalent in Texas at the time, formed upon statements published in the newspapers published at the North, that officers of high rank in the Confederate Army would be held for trial before Civil or Criminal tribunals of this Country for their participation in the war, I determined to withdraw from the country — that I consequently went to England where I was them and am still residing, but regard myself as a citizen of Texas to which state I expect to return.

I stated, which I desire now to reiterate, that I entirely and with perfect good faith consider the issues growing out of the war, or rather the issues that led to it, or which brought it about as practically settled and disposed of, and in common with my fellow citizens of the late Confederate States are desirous of rehabilitating myself in my citizenship, and to take upon myself to discharge in good faith all its obligations.

I would state that I am not a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, & that I know of no other cause of disfranchisement and civil disqualification except that of having been an officer of the United States Army before the late war.

I am, Sir,
Your obt. servant,
John G. Walker

Major General Gordon Granger

While waiting for news of his application for a pardon, Walker received news that his wife, still in the U.K., was seriously ill, and he returned there to look after his family. But by March 6, 1867, he was back in Washington, applying personally to the U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanbery. On Stanbery’s own letterhead, with “Attorney General’s Office” carefully marked out across the top of the page,Walker again made his case, this time attaching new letters of reference from Paymaster General Benjamin W. Brice and Major General Gordon Granger, the officer who had occupied Galveston, Texas in June 1865 and whose General Order No. 3, formally freeing slaves throughout the state, is the origin of Emancipation Day, better known as Juneteenth. Granger’s note, addressed to the president, was direct:

Having been apprised that John G. Walker, late a General in the Confederate Army has applied for a pardon. I have the honor to state that I have personally known him for twenty years & further that he is a man of the highest integrity & great moral worth & I further [illegible] believe your clemency in his behalf is dictated by Sound policy & the best interests of the Country & I do urgently recommend him to your Early & favorable consideration.

On this occasion — Walker’s third round of correspondence, and his second visit to Washington to plead his case in person — the official response was immediate:

Walker’s oath of allegiance to the United States, which is undated but I believe was submitted along with his re-application for a pardon in October 1866, is as follows:

District of Columbia
County of Washington

I, John G. Walker, of Texas, do solemnly swear in presence of ALMIGHTY GOD that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder; and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing reb\bellion with reference to the emancipation of Slave. So help me God.

[Signed] J. G. Walker

Walker’s oath of allegiance to the United States.

Walker went on to serve as U.S. consul general in Bogota, Columbia, and as a special commissioner to the South American republics on behalf of the Pan American Convention. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1893.

Walker’s complete pardon file is online here (18MB PDF).

Confederate soldiers captured at Gettysburg, 1863, by Matthew Brady.

Over at Civil War Memory, Kevin Levin has a great post on the near-impossibility of really knowing one’s ancestors, particularly those who died long ago and left no correspondence or journals. His post is, I think, motivated in part by real frustration at the tendency of some folks to build a narrative about their ancestors’ beliefs, attitudes and motivations out of — well, out of nothing but their own desires. This is a particular problem with the Lost Causers. They imagine their ancestors as brave and truthful and honest and patriotic and generous not because they actually were — because in fact we cannot know those things — but because those are the traits their descendants want to see in them. It’s not history; it’s fantasy. Based on my read of his blog, Kevin tends to be a pretty equanimous guy in his discourse, but he (quite rightly) makes a sharp and very direct point here:

This is a roundabout way of getting to my main point, which is that most of you with ancestors who fought in the Civil War don’t know a damn thing about them. You don’t know what they thought about slavery, secession, Lee, Jackson, Lincoln, Sherman, emancipation, defeat, victory or anything else for that matter. Without an opportunity to talk directly with them or the benefit of some written document your claim to know why they fought is about as valid as your claim to know why any random individual fought. You just happened to be lucky enough to fall within the same family tree. Your tendency to be offended by a claim about Civil War soldiers or anyone else from that time tells us everything about how you remember the past and nothing about how your ancestor might respond.

In my own case, I’ve been doing a little research on my family, with particular focus on identifying Civil War veterans. It’s turned up some surprises. In one case, I found a soldier who enlisted in a Georgia infantry unit in April 1861, and served the entire war in the same regiment — apparently in the same company — all the way from First Manassas to Appomattox. It’s staggering to think about the things he must have seen, the places and events and people that we know only from books and film. I do think — or maybe only hope — that it’s possible to at least to get a sense of what they knew, a sense of what they went through.

But even if that’s possible, it’s only a snapshot of a moment in time. In most cases we cannot know their minds, their fears, or their motivations, because there is no record of those intangible things. The men who marched off to war in 1861 were, like soldiers today, motivated by a whole range of reasons, often multiple reasons at once, and often by reasons that they cannot fully articulate to themselves.

I’m fortunate that I have a large collection of detailed stories about part of my family — though not involving the branch this particular Confederate inhabits — but even these would not really serve the matter, for they’re inevitably filtered though succeeding generations of perceptions, misunderstandings and prejudices. As you say, these often tell us more about those who have carried on the oral tradition than about the original subject.

I really do wish I could talk to that twenty-year-old soldier, a century and a half ago, and ask him why — why was he enlisting? What motivated him? What did he expect would happen? And I wish I could talk to him again, trudging back home from Appomattox — tired, hungry, hardened, and perhaps traumatized by his experiences.

Those are questions I want to ask, and never can. That’s a hard thing, but to my thinking, it’s preferable to creating an alternate fantasy. That’s no way to honor one’s ancestors.

[Cross-posted as a comment over at Civil War Memory]

Later addition, May 16: Robert Moore, writing over at Cenantua’s Blog, had an outstanding post last month on the the Virginia SCV’s response to the Virginia Confederate History Month debacle, to make the point that those who are most vocal in honoring their Confederate ancestors are actually doing their credibility a lot of harm by making false or entirely irrelevant historical claims (Lincoln was a segregationist! Grant owned slaves!), and by broad-brush assumptions about their Confederate ancestors’ beliefs and motivations that, while comforting to their descendants, are based on nothing more than wishful thinking. Moore’s writing very neatly expresses my thoughts about my own Confederate ancestors, and how they should be viewed:

As I have pointed out, I don’t believe that all [those men] embraced the Confederacy. They may have worn gray uniforms at different points, but belief in “the Cause” is subject to debate. Of those who went willfully (initially), I suspect that most were likely committed to the thought that they were enlisting to “defend their homes”, to “repel the oncoming invasion”, and maybe even believed that states’ rights were in jeopardy, but I remain quite aware that their motivations and that of many of those in high places in the Confederate government were not always one in the same. This is the line that I draw when looking back at my Confederate ancestors; a line between the motivations of the men (as they understood things) and those of the government.

I admire the valor, courage, and sacrifice of the common Confederate soldier. I respect their decision to do what they thought was right, then. I marvel at the stories of their lives in those four short years.

YET, I know what underlying factors were at play, not with the common soldiers, but in the motivations of the Confederacy. I acknowledge that the Confederate government was a government conceived in the interests of preserving slavery. The Southern states felt their power waning in national government as slavery was not being allowed to expand, but was slowly being limited. I acknowledge that high officials took initiative into their own hands, without regard for the common Southerner’s voice.