Galena's Gen. John E. Smith-- Part 3: Born Overseas

In 1861, John E. Smith probably was the most important man in Galena.  He was born overseas and in 1832, at age 16, arrived in St. Louis where he lived for three years before coming to Galena, Illinois. He had a store at 85 Main Street there.   (Grant was at 15 Main Street.  They became friends.)

Smith was very active in Galena's civic affairs.

Ely Parker was an Indian civil engineer and built the Galena Custom House.  (One of the Galena Nine.)

He also became friends with Joseph Russell Jones who owned the Belvedere Mansion in town.  Jones was very involved in the steamboat industry. 

Smith was a staunch anti-slavery man.  He became a supporter of Lincoln.

Grant did not come to Galena until April 1860.

--Old Secesh

This Month in the Civil War: Seven Days' Battles Begin

From the American Battlefield Trust June 2022 calendar.

JUNE 17, 1863

**  Battle of Aldie, Virginia.

JUNE 19,  1862

**  Lincoln signs legislation prohibiting slavery in the current and future federal territories.

JUNE  25, 1862

**  The Seven Days' Battles begin at Oak Grove, Virginia.

JUNE 27, 1862

**  Battle of Gaines Mills, Virginia (Seven Days' Battles)

JUNE 27, 1864

**  Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia.

JUNE 29, 1862

**  Battle of Savage's Station, Virginia.  (Seven Days' Battles)

JUNE 29, 1864

**  The First Battle of Reams  Station, Virginia.

June 30, 1862

**  Battle of Glendale (Frayser's Farm), Virginia.  (Seven Days' Battles)

--Old Secesh

Gen. Grant Speaks-- Part 3: Hard Times at 'Hardscrabble and St. Louis, Grant's Slave and a Move to Galena, Illinois

When he got married, Grant's Best Man was his wife's cousin and a good friend at West Point, James Longstreet, later a Confederate general.

In the years at St. Louis, Grant would even go into the city to sell firewood.  He wasn't doing well financially at all.

While living in Missouri, his father-in-law gave him a slave named William Jones.  Even though Grant was not an abolitionist, he also was not a slavery man and in 1859, he gave William his manumission (freedom) even though William was worth at least $1,000, money Grant sorely needed.

However, Grant's father did arrange for him to get a job at his father's leather goods business there that was being run by two of Grant's younger brother:  Simpson and Orvil.  There he was, back in the tanning/leather business.   However, this enabled him to get out of debt.

Then, came the Civil War.  

--Old Secesh

Confederate Slave Payrolls Provide a Wealth of Information

From the September 25, 2021, Terre Haute (Indiana) Tribune Star  ""Genealogy:  Confederate Slave Payrolls provide a wealth of information" by Tamie Dehler.

The National Archives and Records Administration has a valuable online resource called Confederate Slave Payrolls, which can be of great value for persons doing research on their black past.  Not to mention the Civil War.

"During the Civil War, the Confederate Army required enslavers to loan their enslaved people to the military.  Throughout the Confederacy from Florida to Virginia, these enslaved people worked as cooks and laundresses, labored in deadly conditions to mine potassium nitrate to create  gunpowder, worked in ordnance factories, and dug the defensive  trench works that defended  cities such as Petersburg, Virginia.

"This series , comprising nearly 6,000 payrolls for enslaved labor,  sheds light  on the lives of enslaved people loaned to the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and may provide a wealth of genealogical  information relating to the names and home counties of African Americans.

"The payrolls show the time period covered, the Confederate officer under whom the enslaved people were employed, the place of service, names of the enslaver,  names and occupations of the hired enslaved person, number of days employed, daily rate of wages, amount paid, and the signature of the person receiving the payment."

You can view the full series of the "Confederate Slave Payrolls" in the  National Archives Catalog:  National Archives Identifier 719477.

So, It Is Now Enslaved People Instead of Slaves.  Enslavers Instead of Slaveowners.  --Old Secesh

Civil War Events in June: Seven Days' Battles Begin and kennesaw Mountain

JUNE 19, 1862

Lincoln signs a bill prohibiting slavery in the Western Territories.

JUNE 25, 1862

The Seven Days' Battles begins at Oak Grove, Virginia.

JUNE 27, 1862

Battle of Gaines' Mill, Virginia

JUNE  27, 1864

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia

JUNE  29, 1862

Battle of Savage's Station, Virginia

JUNE 29, 1864

Battle of Reams Station, Virginia

JUNE 30, 1862

Battle of Glendale (Frayser's Farm), Virginia

--Old Secesh

USCT Monument Proposed for Natchez Memorial Park

From the April 7, 2021, Natchez, Miss.  Democrat by Sabrina Robertson.

It will be placed prominently in the Natchez Memorial Park outside of St. Mary Basilica.  This would honor those who risked their lives by joining the U.S. Army.

The story of Forks of the Road, one of the largest slave markets in the country will also be a part of the monument's design.   Some of the people in the Forks of the Road were about to be sold when they were freed by Union forces.

Parts of the Forks of the Road were used in the construction of Fort McPherson in Natchez.  Some Natchez residents are calling for the removal of the Confederate memorial at the Memorial Park, but it sounds like it will remain as it gives another aspect of Natchez's heritage and past.

I agree whole-heartedly with letting the Confederate monument remain and building the monument to the USCT as more than likely, USCT troops manned Fort McPherson.  However, I would want there to be a separate monument to the Forks in the Road slave market.

I believe history should give all aspects of a group or place.

Natchez has a slave and a Confederate past.  Both should be memorialized.

--Old Secesh

Born a Slave, Henry Mack Served in Union Army and Lived to Be 107-- Part 1

From the January 30, 2021, Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Former slave, Civil War vet lived final decades in Minneapolis" by Curt Brown.

The picture shows him at the age of  104 in 1941.  Five Civil War veterans were honored at the Third Annual Good Will dinner at Post 166 Jewish War Veterans.  He is bottom row, right.

Grave No. 384 in Section A-3 commemorates one of the most remarkable lives among the 240,000 military and family members buried  at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

This is the grave of Henry Mack, an escaped slave, Civil War veteran who lived to be 107.  He died in 1945 and was buried in the area where early black veterans were interred.

Mack was born into Alabama slavery sometime between  1836 and 1838 according to pension records.  Newspapers later settled on 1837 for his birth year.

"I only know my birthday being July 4th as having been told by my parents and master," Mack said in a 1912 interview.  "He concluded:  "I am 75 years old and past."

At age 100 in 1937, he was described as being in great shape for a man of his age.  The Minneapolis Star-Journal reported in 1941 that Mack, at 104, was "trim, alert, conversational," a busy man" with little time for reminiscing" given his schedule as a "patriotic instructor" and one of the last members of the Civil War veterans group, the Grand Army of the Republic.

--Old Secesh

December Civil War Dates: 13th Amendment and Stones River

From the American Battlefield Trust 2021 calendar.

December

DECEMBER 6, 1865

The 13th Amendment ratified, officially abolishing slavery.

DECEMBER 7 1862

Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.

DECEMBER 11, 1862

Battle of Fredericksburg, Va. begins.

DECEMBER 12, 1862

USS Cairo sinks in the Yazoo River, Miss.  Hit a torpedo (mine).

DECEMBER 15, 1864

Battle of Nashville, Tn. begins.

DECEMBER 18, 1865

The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery becomes a part of the U.S. Constitution.

DECEMBER 31, 1862

Battle of Stones River(Murfreesboro), Tenn. begins.

--Old Secesh

The Family of Col. Benjamin Lewis Blackford

I wrote about him a lot in my Running the Blockade blog back in November and December 2013.  I am having to go back to that time and redo my entries as I was unable to use paragraphs for seven months.  I was redoing an entry on him (he was not impressed with the Wilmington, N.C., area when posted there during the war.

So I looked him up on Find-A-Grave.  He was there, but there was no information about him, but I did find some history about him in 29 September 2010, Virginia Memory Out of the Box "A Surveyor's View of Wartime Virginia."

He was born in 1835 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to William Matthews Blackford (1801-1864) and Mary Berkeley  Minor Blackford (1802-1898) who was an anti-slavery activist.  At age ten, Lewis and his family moved to Lynchburg, Va..

When the war began, Lewis and his four brothers joined the Confederate Army, despite their mother's strong pro-Union sympathies.  Lewis enlisted in Co. G, 11th Virginia in April 1861, but left in May to join the Confederate Engineering Corps and spent the war making maps in Virginia and North Carolina.

Lewis had the reputation in his family of being a little too easy-going.  Although two wartime romances ended badly for him (one of them was in Wilmington, N.C.), nether seemed to keep him down for long.

--Old Secesh

Nebraska in the Civil War-- Part 1: Anti-Slavery

From Wikipedia.

Nebraska was a territory during the Civil War and did not achieve statehood until March 1, 1867 (157 years ago this month).  Even so, Nebraska did contribute to the war.

Nebraska Territory was largely rural and unsettled, at the edge of the American Frontier.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 has established the 40th parallel as the dividing line between Kansas and Nebraska.  It had also repealed the Missouri Compromise which had allowed  settlers in those territories to determine if they wanted slavery or not.

Anti-Secession feelings  ran high in the Nebraska Territory.  Seward County was originally named Greene County, but after Colton Greene pitched his lot in with the Confederacy, the county was renamed after Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward.

--Old Secesh

Jayhawks and Tigers, Oh My!!!-- Part 1: What's In An Athletic Name

From KCUT NPR  "Civil War origins of the Kansas Jayhawk and Missouri Tiger" by Lisa Rodriguez.

Since I have been writing about the University of Missouri a lot lately, and because the name Tigers which is used by their teams, also dates to the Civil War, I found this article to be of interest.

For more than 100 years, an athletic contest between the University of Missouri Tigers and the University of Kansas Jayhawks has been a bitter rivalry with bragging rights on the line.  Before Mizzou left the Big 12 Conference to join the Southeastern Conference the rivalry was even bigger.

But, this rivalry can be dated even back to the Civil War.

According to the University of Kansas, the state in the 1850s was a fierce battlefield between those who were "Free Staters and those who were pro-slavery.  At the time, people started referring to those across the region as jayhawkers, which was a combination of two bird names.  The blue jay is a noisy, quarrelsome bird and the sparrow hawk a stealthy hunter.

The nickname was meant as a warning:  "Don't mess with a Jayhawker!!"

The term originally was used to refer to both Free Staters and Pro-Slavers.  But eventually it came to be used for the Free Staters.  When the KU football team played their first game in 1890, it adopted the name.

The first illustration of the mythical Jayhawk  in 1912 wore shoes for kicking opponents.  These boots/shoes are made for walking.

So That's Why the Jayhawk Wears Shoes.  I Was Always Wondering.  --Old Secesh

The Southern Abolitionist Preacher, William Irving Kirk

One of the presenters at the Hainesville re-enactment was Robert Kaplafka who was William Irving Kirk, a Southern abolitionist preacher.

I always thought most abolitionists were of the Northern persuasion, but here was a Southerner preaching against the evils of slavery.  He did not have much luck and was even wounded once and came close to other horrible things during the course of his preaching.

He was from Rowan County, North Carolina, and tried to convince slave owners they were wrong and figures he only got six of them in all his travels to change their mind.  However, he noted that the N.C. vote to secede was just barely passed.

I was unable to find out any more about him.

--Old Secesh

Happy July 2-- Part 6: But What Does This Mean to the Slave?

Continued from today's posts on my Running the Blockade:  Civil War Navy blog.

After the War of 1812, this ushered in a new era for the Declaration of Independence as anti-slavery activists began using the rhetoric of the second sentence, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Right" to advocate that there should be true equality and no slavery.

In a July 5, 1852, address commemorating the 76th anniversary of the declaration's public release, Frederick Douglas reflected on the July 2 resolution,  "Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution.  They succeeded; and today you reap the fruits of their success."  he asked,  "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?  I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim."

--Old Secesh

John Beall's Hangman's Noose-- Part 4: Gordon Found Guilty, Sentenced to Hang

Of the 897 slaves,  172 were grown men and 162 were women.  The rest were children, preferred by Gordon because they were too young to rise up against him for his cruelties.

The Erie was captured by the USS Mohican on August 8, 1860.  The slaves were taken to Liberia, the American colony established in West Africa by the American Colonization Society.  It was a settlement of free Blacks from the United States.

Nathaniel Gordon was taken to New York City to stand trial for slave trading and piracy.  After one hung jury, he was found guilty November 9, 1861, and  sentenced to death by hanging on February 7, 1962.

After his sentence was announced, his supporters appealed to President Lincoln for a pardon.  Lincoln was known for his compassion and issued many pardons during his presidency, he refused to grant one to Gordon, even refusing to meet with his supporters.

What Lincoln Said Next.  --Old Secesh

John Beall's Hangman's Noose-- Part 3: Nathaniel Gordon

From Wikipedia.

NATHANIEL GORDON

One of the four people hanged using the noose that ended John Yates Beall's life.

February 6, 1826 to February 21, 1862

Was the only slave trader in the United States to be tried, convicted and executed "for being engaged in the Slave Trade," under the Piracy Law of 1820.

Gordon was born in Portland, Maine, and went into shipping and eventually owned his own ship, the Erie.

On August 7, 1860, he loaded 897 slaves aboard his ship, the Erie,  at Shark's Point, Congo River, West Africa.

--Old Secesh

Henry Beard, One of First Blacks in Sycamore-- Part 1

Continued from April 27, 2018.

From the March 15, 2011, DeKalb County New Values Magazine  "Henry Beard -- One of the First African Americans to Settle in the Area."

He was born a slave in Kentucky in 1840.  In 1862, the Union Army controlled most of the state and he got his freedom.  He was hard-pressed to find work and a new life, but fortunately for him, the Union regiment stationed in his area was the 105th Illinois Infantry from the DeKalb and Sycamore area.

The unit's commander hired Henry as a laborer and eventually he became cook for the adjutant general of the area.

After the war, he followed his original regimental commander back to Sycamore.  In a 1924 story in the True Republican, Henry Beard was reported as "the original colored citizen of Sycamore."

--Old Secesh

Emancipation Proclamation Copy Signed By Lincoln At Auction-- Part 2

Continued from April 23, 2018.

This is one of the copies sold at the Great Central Fair in 1864 in Philadelphia.  The original Emancipation Proclamation is in the National Archives.  Several other of the Great Central Fair copies exist.

These copies are known as the "Authorized Edition" of the Emancipation Proclamation and are signed by Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward.  The authorized edition was as close to the original as it could get and made for use as a fundraising item.

Entrepreneurs Charles Leland and George Boker came up with the idea.  They had 498copies made for the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia in 1864.

--Old Secesh

Henry Beard-- Part 2: A Cook With the 105th Illinois

From General Duttons's America by the Sycamore, Illinois History Museum.

Henry Beard was born a slave in Kentucky on January 1, 1831.  Described as a big, strong man and very dependable.  But, "like most colored men of the time, he could neither read nor write."  But he had an "ultra polite manner and deference to all of his acquaintances on the street."

He joined the 105th Illinois Infantry regiment in Kentucky and worked as a cook in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Maryland.  This was dangerous because the regiment was often under fire and there was always the prospect of Confederate atrocities on black solders.

When the regiment was mustered out, he went along with them back to Illinois.  He met his wife, Judy Jones, at Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1871 and brought her back to Sycamore.

They lived in a two-room house in "The Big Woods" north of Sycamore.

There is a picture of his large family of 9 children.

--Old secesh

How the National Anthem Became a Part of Sports-- Part 2: Both North and South Wanted It During Civil War

During the Civil War, both the North and the South wrestled over who would claim "The Star-Spangled Banner" as their own.  The North won.

Ironically, the Confederacy's anthem, "Dixie" was written by an anti-slavery Northerner while the National Anthem was written by a slave-owning Southerner whose family supported the Confederacy long after Keys' death in 1843.

--Old Secesh

Things To Know About P.G.T. Beauregard-- Part 1: "A Man of Great Contradiction"

From the May 16, 2017 (n)ew (o)rleans Times Picayune    "P.G.T. Beauregard:  What to know about him before his Confederate monument is removed"

**  His roots to (n)ew (o)rleans run much deeper than those of Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee.  He was born in St. Bernard Parish and spent most of his non-military career in (n)ew (o)rleans.

**  He "was a man of great contradiction.  He fired the first shots in a war to preserve slavery, yet in defeat argued passionately for human rights and for granting black people the right to vote."

(Actually. Lincoln had already said that slavery would be allowed to remain in the Southern states after he was elected and before the states seceded so i would have to disagree with part of that last statement.)

**  His biographer, T. Harry Williams, in his book "P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray," wrote, "but after the war he helped destroy the old agrarian way and to build the New -- the industrial-- South."

--Old Secesh