Maj. General Loring's Remains Found Under His Monument in St. Augustine

From the August 26, 2020, First Coast ABC News "100 years later:  Confederate major general's remains exhumed  in St. Augustine  beneath removed memorial:  Who was William Loring?" by Melissa Guz.

On Wednesday, August 26, archaeologists believe they have found Gen. William Loring's remains  within a container that was buried  underneath his memorial in downtown St. Augustine.  That memorial, an obelisk, was removed on Monday as part of a relocation process and is heading to  Trout Creek Fish Camp.

His descendants had asked the University of Florida, who manages the property it is on, to remove Loring's memorial and ashes to another place.

Archaeologist Kathleen Deegan carefully worked the exposed soil under the monument and found a name plate with the words "General William...Re-enterred"  written in cursive.  Part of a sword and its scabbard, believed to be his, were also found.

Other items were also found in the dirt, however, it is difficult to determine exactly what they were because of water intrusion.

All of the items will be reburied with Loring's remains in its new location at a cemetery.

All of the items found were respectfully placed in a hearse  on Wednesday afternoon.

--Old Secesh

William Loring Monument Removed in St. Augustine By Descendants' Request: First Hurricane Isaias, Now This. A Bad Month for the General.

From the August 24, 2020, News 4 Jax (Jacksonville, Fl.)  "UF  has Confederate statue removed from St. Augustine before dawn" by Zachery Lashway.

St. Augustine, Florida.

The University of Florida had it removed as it is on land leased by them.  The monument stood there since 1920.  His remains are under the monument and will also be removed and re-interred along with his monument on private land with "respect and dignity."

Loring was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, (see the previous blog entry), but grew up in St. Augustine.  According to Wikipedia, he joined the Florida militia as a teenager and fought in the  early skirmishes of the Second Seminole War.

He became a lawyer and served  in the Florida legislature before joining the U.S. Army.  When the Civil War started, he resigned and joined the Confederacy where he rose to the rank of general.  After the war, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from Florida, then lived in New York until his death.

A Bad Time for William Loring Stuff.   --Old Secesh

Civil War-Era Wilmington Historic Markers In Need of Repair or Replacement

From the August 20, 2020, Wilmington (NC) Star-News "Photos:  Wilmington-area historic markers  in need of repair."

**  The Thalian Hall / City Hall  highway historic marker on Third Street was blown over and damaged during Hurricane Florence in 2018.  It has been rewritten and  and is waiting to be replaced  when the marker program gets money from the N.C. Department of Transportation.

It read:  "D 49 / THALIAN HALL  CITY HALL  /  Built 1855-58 as city hall and theatre for the Thalian Association (amateur), formed c. 1788."

This was operating during the Civil War.

**  The William W. Loring highway historical marker at Orange and Third streets before it broke off recently, possibly during Hurricane Isaias.

It read:  "D 48 /  WILLIAM W. LORING / Major general in  the Confederate Army, lieut. colonel in the Mexican War, general in the Egyptian Army , 1870-79.  His birthplace was 1 bl. W."

Quite an interesting story about this man.

--Old Secesh

Stephen A. Douglas After the 1860 Election

From Wikipedia.

After the election defeat, Douglas returned to the U.S. Senate, where he sought to prevent the break-up of the United States.  He joined a special committee of 13 senators led by John J. Crittenden which sought a legislative solution  to the increasing sectional divide between the North and the South.

He supported the Crittenden  Compromise, which called for a series of Constitutional amendments that would make the Missouri Compromise a part of that document, but this was defeated in committee.

As late as Christmas 1860, he wrote  Alexander H. Stephens and offered support to the idea of making Mexico as a slave territory to prevent secession.

But, South Carolina voted to secede on December 20, 1860, and by mid-January 1861 another five Southern states had done likewise.  In February, Jefferson Davis took the office of President of the Confederate States of America.

--Old Secesh

Okay, So Actually My Big COVID-19 Road Trip Was a Little Longer Than I Thought

I had mentioned back in July that my drive to Algonquin, Illinois, from Spring Grove, Illinois, was 20.4 miles.  I looked it up on the internet and that number was evidently from town limits and not for driving to a specific spot.  Saturday, I set the trip odometer at zero and drove it again for our second MCCWRT discussion meeting, this time on "Beast" Butler.

It turns out that the drive from home to the Panera Bread in Algonquin was 22.4 miles.

Still the longest I've driven anywhere since March 17, Year of the Coronavirus.

By the way, this Saturday, August 29, is going to be the first of three Record Store Days, rescheduled from April because of you-know-what.  And, this year, it will be held on three days instead of one to hopefully prevent the big crowds that usually attend.

Also, next month's McHenry County Civil War Round Table (MCCWRT) discussion group's topic will be on another much-maligned Civil War personage, none other than Braxton Bragg.

Now I Am, Going to Have to Put Gas in the Tank.  --Old Secesh

A Stephen Douglas Major Date Today, August 21, 1858

Can you guess what happened this date 162 years ago?

It involved another man.

It had to do with politics.

It had to do with who was going to be the next Illinois U.S. senator.

This was the first of seven.

Okay, it was a debate.

Got it yet?

Today in 1858 the Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas held the  first of their seven debates.

It was held in Ottawa, Illinois.  Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery.

Douglas went on to win the election in November where the voting was done in the state legislature even though overall Lincoln received 3,000 more popular votes in the general election.

--Old Secesh

McHenry County Civil War Round Table (MCCWRT): The State of Our Speakers

It seems like quite a long time ago in March that we had our last meeting thanks to the virus.  That was in March 10, right before all this broke.

We meet every second Tuesday of the month March to November at the Woodstock Public Library in Woodstock, Illinois.  Needless to say, every meeting since March has been cancelled, including the upcoming September one.  I sure miss everybody and all those interesting talks.

In July we we were to hear Steve Acker speak on "Petersburg."

In August we had "The Fisher Family" by Dave Oberg.

This September we were to have "Fort Sumter and Other Civil War Forts" by Scott Larimer.

Hopefully, we can have the October meeting "Confederates from Iowa" by Dave Cannon.

Then, the season finale, as it were, in October, Don Hatch will speak on "Road Trippin' Thru History:  The Great Wyoming and 'Howling Wilderness--  The Rest of the Story."

I sure miss my monthly doses of the Civil War.

Here's Hoping We Get At Least the Last Two Talks In.  --Old Secesh

Stephen A. Douglas Tomb-- Part 6: His Tomb and Memorial

He was buried in Chicago near Lake Michigan.  Immediately after his death, an association of prominent Chicagoans was formed to oversee the construction of a  suitable tomb and monument for a man of his important stature.  But, they failed to raise the sufficient funds for it.

In 1865, the state of Illinois purchased  the tomb from Douglas' widow, Adele Douglas, for $25,000.  On June 3, 1868, Douglas' remains were placed in the completed portion of the tomb
Leonard Volk, a relative of Douglas, designed the tomb and monument.

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed Volk's plans for the unfinished structure.  The tomb was completed in May 1881, at the cost of $90,000.

The memorial was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977.    The tomb is maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation  Agency.

--Old Secesh

Stephen A. Douglas Tomb-- Part 5: His Tomb and Memorial in Chicago

From Wikipedia.

The Stephen A. Douglas Tomb and Memorial, also referred to as the Stephen Douglas Monument Park is located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago (primarily Black). It is near the site of the Union Army's training camp and Confederate prisoner of war camp known as Camp Douglas.

The memorial is a 96-foot tall granite structure comprising three  circular bases and a  20-foot diameter octagonal mausoleum which holds Douglas'  sarcophagus.  Four figures portraying Illinois, History, Justice and Eloquence are at the four corners of the mausoleum.  A ten-foot statue of Douglas stands at the top of the  46-foot column of white marble from his native state of Vermont,

Douglas is probably best known for his series of debates with Abraham Lincoln in 1858 and his run for presidency in 1860.  However, he died soon after the Civil War began on June 3, 1861, from typhoid fever.

--Old Secesh

Sure Was Nice to Get Together With Civil War Folk Again-- Part 4: Stephen Douglas' Connection to Rose O'Neal Greenhow

Stephen Douglas' first wife, Martha,  died in 1853.  In 1856, he remarried, this time to 20-year-old Adele Cutts who was 23 years younger than him.  She was a Southern woman from Washington, D.C. and daughter of James Madison Cutts, a nephew of former president James Madison. and Ellen O'Neal, , a nice of Rose O'Neil Greenhow, who went on to fame during the Civil War.

Adele had been raised as a Catholic and with Stephen's permission, had his two sons from his first marriage baptized Catholic and raised in that faith.

--Old Secesh

Sure Was Nice to Get Together with Civil War Folk Again-- Part 3: Stephen A. Douglas Gets a Plantation

I was unable to find out how Stephen Douglas' wife's father living in North Carolina ended up with a large plantation in Mississippi.  Regardless, Douglas now was property manager of  a 2,500 acre plantation with 100 slaves in Mississippi.

As a senator from a free state with presidential aspirations, Douglas found that having this plantation posed a problem for him.  He created distance by hiring a manager to operate the plantation, while using his allocated 20% of the income from it to further his political career.

He only made one lengthy visit to the plantation in 1848 and  only brief emergency trips there afterwards.

In the summer of 1847, Douglas moved his family from Springfield, Illinois, to fast-growing Chicago and that is where he acquired a vast amount of land, some of which eventually became Camp Douglas, a training camp for Union soldiers initially and later a notorious prison camp for Confederate soldiers.

His wife, Martha died in 1853.

A Free State Senator With a Southern Plantation?  --Old Secesh

Sure Was Nice to Get Together With Civil War Folk Again-- Part 2: Illinois' Stephen Douglas

Actually, I should say that this "road trip" to Algonquin was the farthest I've been from home since March 4, when we went to DeKalb, Illinois, for the NIU basketball game.  This trip clocked in at an astounding 20.4 miles.

Back to the 1860 presidential election.  A lot of today's hatred of Stephen Davis among certain folk revolves about his being a slave owner.  I didn't know he owned slaves.  How could he own slaves if he lived in the Free State of Illinois which allowed no slaves?

His original last name was Douglass with a second letter "s", but he dropped it in 1846.  No one knows for sure why, but that was a year after Frederick Douglas published his first autobiography.

ABOUT THOSE SLAVES

In 1847 he married Martha Martin, daughter of the wealthy Robert Martin of North Carolina.  A year after they were married, Martha's father died and he had bequeathed her a 2,500-acre cotton plantation in Mississippi which was worked by 100 slaves.

So that was how he got the slaves.  But if her father lived in North Carolina, how did he get a large plantation in Mississippi?

Well, Anyway.  --Old Secesh