Ecstatic Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

  259 “If there is a worse place”: Quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 574.

  260 “Horrid war”: Bronson Alcott, The Journals of Bronson Alcott, ed. Odell Shepherd (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938), 353.

  260 “I think through all this”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 93.

  261 “when the great muster roll”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 42.

  261 “the barren honors”: Ibid., 36.

  261 “carelessness of the value of life”: Ibid.

  261 Surprisingly, Dix managed: See Helen E. Marshall, Dorothea Dix: Forgotten Samaritan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937), 206–10.

  262 “The field is no place”: Quoted in Blanche Colton Williams, Clara Barton: Daughter of Destiny (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1941), 73.

  262 Soon she was sorting: See, e.g., Charles F. Ritter and Jon L. Wakelyn, eds., “Clara Barton,” in Leaders of the American Civil War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), 11.

  262 In her plain brown frock: Williams, Clara Barton, 73.

  262 A few weeks later: See Agatha Young and Agnes Brooks Young, Women and the Crisis: Women of the North in the Civil War (New York: McDowell, Obolensky, 1959), 45.

  263 “I wrung the blood”: Quoted in Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 107.

  263 “All that was elegant”: Ibid.

  263 “My position is one”: Clara Barton to Elvira Stone, August 30, 1862, Clara Barton Papers, LC.

  263 “I am singularly free”: Clara Barton to Elvira Stone, [October or November,] 1863, LC.

  264 “the ordinary deliberations”: Quoted in Ann Douglas Wood, “The War within a War: Women Nurses in the Union Army,” Civil War History 18 (September 1972), 211.

  264 “I do not believe in missions”: Pryor, Clara Barton, 102.

  264 “This war of ours”: “Our Women and the War,” Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 6, 1862, 570.

  264 “Dr. Buck informed me”: Quoted in Jane E. Schultz, “The Inhospitable Hospital: Gender and Professionalism in Civil War Medicine,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and History 17 (Winter 1992), 375.

  265 “lucky”: Walt Whitman, “Our Wounded and Sick Soldiers,” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 1864, 1.

  265 “I don’t want to see”: William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, in Novels, 1875–1886, ed. Edwin Cady (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1048.

  266 “a great deal of opposition”: Kate Cumming, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 38.

  266 “The women of the South”: Phoebe Yates Pember, A Southern Woman’s Story (New York: G. W. Carleton and Company, 1879), 13.

  266 “The results of war”: Ibid., 44.

  266 “in what I consider”: Ibid., 60.

  267 “with a narrower scope”: Henry Timrod, “The Two Armies,” in War Poetry of the South, 159.

  267 “the women of the south”: William Gilmore Simms, “To the Women of the South,” in War Poetry of the South, i.

  268 A volume of Confederate verse: See Samuel Albert Link, War Poets of the South (Nashville, 1898).

  268 “Had I Stonewall Jackson”: Quoted in Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (Louisville: Prentice Press, 1895), 611.

  268 “crowded to suffocation”: Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 430.

  268 “Bread! Bread”: See Paul D. Escott, “ ‘The Cry of the Sufferers’: The Problem of Welfare in the Confederacy,” Civil War History 23 (September 1977), 228–40; see also George C. Rable, Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).

  268 “women and children”: Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 137; see also Michael B. Chesson, “Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92 (April 1984), 139–43.

  268 When the mayor couldn’t: See Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by His Wife, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Nautical Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1990), 375; for an account of the riot, see “Richmond’s Bread Riot,” The New York Times, April 30, 1889.

  269 James Seddon: See Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. 6, 523–24.

  269 The various conflicting accounts: See “Reported Bread Riot at Richmond,” Harper’s Weekly, April 18, 1863, 243.

  269 “We had forgotten Yankees”: Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 436.

  270 “I write from the border”: Rebecca Harding Davis, Margret Howth (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1862), 3.

  270 “My family lived”: Rebecca Harding Davis, Bits of Gossip (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), 165–66.

  270 “While they thought”: Ibid., 32–33.

  270 “the actual war”: Ibid., 34.

  270 “A man cannot drink”: Ibid., 125.

  271 “right and wrong mixing”: Rebecca Harding, “David Gaunt,” The Atlantic Monthly 10 (October 1862), 409.

  271 “Does anybody wonder”: Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 371.

  271 “What an extraordinary paper”: George W. Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, June 26, 1862, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  CHAPTER 12: THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION

  272 They died from cannonades: See Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 97.

  272 Assuming their chances of survival: Drew Gilpin Faust, “ ‘The Dread Void of Uncertainty’: Naming the Dead in the American Civil War,” Southern Cultures 11 (Summer 2005), 15.

  273 By the time her bureau closed: Ibid., 25.

  273 “The corpses seemed to be everywhere”: George F. Williams, Bullet and Shell: War as the Soldier Saw It (New York: Ford, Howard, and Hulbert, 1882), 257.

  276 “on July 1 was without order”: Henry Heth, “Letter from Major-General Henry Heth, of AP Hill’s Corps, ANV,” Southern Historical Society Papers 4 (1877), 159.

  276 “Can you tell me”: Ibid., 156.

  276 “one boot off”: John Bell Hood, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies (New Orleans: G. T. Beauregard, 1879), 57.

  277 Critics later alleged: I am indebted for this summary to Kurt Silverman.

  277 “desperate-looking character”: Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur James Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, April–June 1863 (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1863), 253.

  277 “The execution of the fire”: OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, 1863, 884.

  277 “The Rebels—three lines deep”: Quoted in Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, vol. 2 (Hartford: O. D. Case, 1867), 386.

  278 “Death! death everywhere”: George F. Williams, Bullet and Shell: A Soldier’s Romance (New York: Ford, Howard, and Hulbert, 1882), 257.

  278 “That day at Gettysburg”: James Longstreet, “Lee’s Right Wing at Gettysburg,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3, ed. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (New York: Century Co., 1884), 345.

  278 “I thought it would not do”: James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896), 386.

  278 “The rebels behaved”: Henry Livermore Abbott, Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott, ed. Robert Garth Scott (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 188.

  278 “Never mind, General”: Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 289.

  279 “proceed in search of the enemy”: OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, July 6, 1863, 80.

  279 “They will be ready”: Quoted in David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (New York: Century Co., 1907), 157.

  279 “act upon your own judgment“: OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, July 13, 1863, 92.

  280 “to an attempt to lock”: Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meri
dian, vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1963), 591.

  280 “We have certain information”: OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, July 7, 1863, 83.

  280 “Your golden opportunity is gone”: Ibid., 479.

  280 “It’s all my fault”: See Edward A. Pollard, Lee and His Lieutenants (New York: E. B. Treat, 1867), 114.

  280 “fate of the Confederacy”: Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, ed. Mary Drake McFeely and William S. McFeely (New York: Library of America, 1990), 381.

  281 “wan, hollow-eyed, ragged”: Dora Miller Richards, “A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg,” Century Magazine 30 (1885), 771.

  281 “We are whipped”: Mary Ann Webster Loughborough, My Cave Life in Vicksburg: With Letters of Trial and Travel (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), 42.

  282 “Caves were the fashion”: Ibid., 72.

  282 “the burning matter”: Ibid., 64.

  282 “We are utterly cut off”: Dora Miller Richards, “A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg,” Century Magazine 30 (1885), 771.

  282 “sleek horses, polished arms”: Ibid., 775.

  283 “In boldness of plan”: OR, vol. 24, pt. 1, August 1, 1863, 63.

  283 “I can’t spare this man”: Quoted in Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, compiled and ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 315.

  283 “I posted the First and Third”: OR, vol. 26, pt. 1, May 30, 1863, 45.

  284 “completely revolutionized the sentiment”: Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War: With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties (New York: D. Appleton, 1899), 86.

  284 “The war is not waged”: Edmund Clarence Stedman, The Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman, vol. 1, ed. Laura Stedman and George M. Gould (New York: Moffatt, Yard, 1910), 242.

  284 “was too good a fellow”: Abbott, Fallen Leaves, 198–99.

  284 “We are for the Union”: Told to the author, January 13, 2011.

  284 “Shall we sink down”: Quoted in Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York: Viking, 1942), 125.

  285 “[Horatio] Seymour, the New York World”: Ibid., 303.

  285 “I think, to be sure”: Ibid., 310.

  285 “PATRIOTISM ABOVE MOCK PHILANTHROPY”: Clement Vallandigham, The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham on Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War (Columbus, Ohio: J. Walter, 1863), 39.

  286 “the Secession Rebellion South”: Ibid., 146.

  286 “enslavement of the white race”: Ibid., 189.

  286 “Ought this war”: Ibid., 183.

  287 “The real genuine Democracy”: Quoted in Gray, The Hidden Civil War, 121.

  287 “his sympathies for those in arms”: Quoted in Vallandigham, The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham, 253.

  288 “I am a Democrat”: Ibid., 254.

  288 “ours is a case of rebellion”: Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865, vol. 2, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Library of America, 1989), 457.

  288 “shoot a simple-minded”: Ibid., 460.

  289 in the summer or fall of 1863: See OR, ser. 2, vol. 7, 233–36, 629–46.

  289 “worth regarding”: John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, ed. Tyler Dennett (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1939), 192.

  290 “the Father of Waters again”: Lincoln, Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1850–1865, 498.

  290 “The conscription is necessary”: “The Conscription and the War,” The New York Times, July 10, 1863, 4.

  290 That Saturday, July 11: For the best single volume on the draft riots, see Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  290 “a proposal for the butchery”: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner’s, 1959), 302.

  291 The draft had taken recruitment: For a discussion of the relation between state and federal authority in this matter, see Rachel Shelden, “ ‘Speedy Conclusion’: A Reexamination of Conscription and Civil War Federalism,” Civil War History 55 (December 2009), 469–98.

  291 “Men and ladies attacked”: George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 3, ed. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 342.

  291 “They are the most peaceable”: Ibid., 343.

  292 “the Democratic party”: Ibid., vol. 3, 340.

  292 “I at once felt myself”: Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, from 1817 to 1882 (London: Christian Age Office, 1882), 422.

  292 “I have given the subject”: Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 9, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 196.

  293 “To be plain”: This and subsequent quotations from the famous “Conkling letter” are in Lincoln, Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865, 495–99.

  CHAPTER 13: FAIRLY WON

  296 “True Democracy makes no”: Quoted in John Niven, Salmon P. Chase (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 85.

  296 “How his example shames”: Salmon P. Chase, The Salmon P. Chase Papers, vol. 1, ed. John Niven et al. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1993), 212.

  296 His abolitionism too: See Albert Bushnell Hart, American Statesmen: Salmon Porter Chase (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899); Herman Belz, “Salmon P. Chase and the Politics of Racial Reform,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 17 (Summer 1996), 27; Stephen Maizlish, “Salmon P. Chase: The Roots of Ambition and the Origins of Reform,” Journal of the Early Republic 18 (Spring 1998), 47–70.

  297 “man of mark”: Gideon Welles, The Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 59.

  297 “inordinate ambition”: Ibid., 121.

  297 “He constantly indulged”: Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 2 (New York: McClure Company, 1907), 172.

  297 “Chase is a good man”: John Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, ed. Tyler Dennett (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1939), 53.

  297 “fond dreams”: Noah Brooks, Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 69.

  297 “Chase keeps ahead”: Ibid.

  299 “like a duck hit”: Hay, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, 106.

  299 “make capital”: Ibid., 110.

  299 “I suppose he will”: Ibid.

  300 “the country will never”: Ibid.

  300 “it can not be known”: Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865, vol. 2, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Library of America, 1989), 504.

  300 “attempt to retract”: Ibid., 552.

  301 “a retail policy”: James McPherson, “No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865,” The American Historical Review 109 (February 2004), 5.

  301 “the best the Executive”: Lincoln, Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865, 558.

  301 “President’s message and proclamation”: George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 3, ed. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 379.

  301 “the negro’s freedom”: James McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 242.

  301 Jefferson Davis and his ilk: Elizabeth Blair Lee, Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee, ed. Virginia Jeans Laas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 325.

  302 “The Goliath”: James Harvey Young, “Anna Elizabeth Dickinson and the Civil War: For and against Lincoln,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31 (June 1944), 66.

  303 “Ask no man”: Quoted in Thomas Higginson, Contemporaries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 258.

&n
bsp; 303 “counterweight”: Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Vintage, 1967), 137–38.

  303 “Peace if possible”: Quoted in Richard Mardock, Reformers and the Indian (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 17.

  303 “carved her way”: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Anna Elizabeth Dickinson,” in James Parton, Eminent Women of the Age (Hartford: S. M. Betts & Co., 1868), 479.

  303 “the young elephant”: Quoted in Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Struggle in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 102.

  303 The Pennsylvania State Republican Party: See Giraud Chester, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1951), 71–73.

  304 “what you brought away”: Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian, vol. 2 (New York: Vintage, 1986), 961; see also Stanton, “Anna Elizabeth Dickinson.”

  304 “crazy Jane in a red jacket”: Quoted in Young, “Anna Elizabeth Dickinson and the Civil War,” 70.

  304 “Let no man prate”: Quoted in ibid., 69.

  305 A constitutional amendment: “Miss Dickinson’s Lecture,” Washington Chronicle (January 28, 1864).

  305 “slavery or involuntary servitude”: CG, 38th Congress, 1st Session, March 29, 1864, 1313 (the proposal had been made about two months earlier).

  306 Raymond didn’t believe: “Congress,” The New York Times, Feb. 2, 1864, 4.

  306 “Let them be free”: Jean-Charles Houzeau, My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civil War Era, ed. David C. Rankin, trans. Gerald F. Denault (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 92.

  306 “Negro equality”: This paragraph is derived from the report “Thirty-eighth Congress, First Session,” New-York Tribune, Feb. 11, 1864, 8.

  306 “the word slavery”: Quoted in C. Peter Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers: The United States, 1859–1865, vol. 5 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 300–301.

  306 “By rejecting Sumner’s language”: Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 59.