Plot, Plan and Organize

Rapper Killer Mike gave an impassioned call for citizens of Atlanta to plot, plan, and organize in the wake of George Floyd's murder. https://bit.ly/2yRDMf4. If you are looking for a playbook for this approach, research the story of Judge Waties Waring https://bit.ly/3dnRMMt

John Brown's Body

Stumbled upon this historical marker in Elizabethtown, NY.

Hockey and History

The Atlanta Flames were an NHL hockey team from 1972 until 1980. The franchise was named the Flames in homage to the burning of Atlanta by U.S. Army general William Sherman during the American Civil War. They kept the name when the franchise moved to Calgary.

The View From Here...

History Bookshelf

Just finished Elizabeth and Hazel by David Margolick. This book will change your perspective on the infamous 1957 Will Count's photograph

APUSH Game Day 2020

This year, some 3.4 million students are registered to take AP Exams, which are designed to test high school students’ understanding of college-level material. Good luck to all the APUSH students taking the national exam this afternoon!

Copperheads

In the 1860s, the Copperheads were a vocal faction of Democrats in the Northern United States of the Union who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

In a rural community upstate New York in 1862, farmer Abner Beech is a Northern antiwar Democrat. While his neighbors take up the Union cause in the ongoing American Civil War, Beech believes that coercion in resisting the secession of the southern states is unconstitutional, and gradually becomes more and more harassed for his views, derisively called a "Copperhead". His son, Thomas Jefferson Beech, enlists in the Union Army. Beech also arouses the ire of militant abolitionist Jee Hagadorn, whose daughter Esther (Lucy Boynton) loves Jeff.

Mulligan's Brigade

One of the best known scenes in Martin Scorcese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York is that which depicts the enlistment of Irish emigrants ‘straight off the boat’ into the Union army. The seemingly unsuspecting men are quickly dressed in uniform and packed off for the front, even as those unfortunates who have gone before are brought back in coffins. This scene is one of the most influential in dictating modern memory of Irish recruitment into the Union army. The popular image of thousands of Irishmen, ignorant of what they were getting into, joining up the moment they stepped ashore is one I encounter frequently. But how true is it?

The more I investigate the Irish experience, the more apparent it is that the type of incident portrayed in Gangs of New York rarely, if ever, occurred. Far from being duped, it was much more likely that many of these men had travelled to the United States with the express intention of joining the military, in the hope of benefiting from the financial rewards available for doing so. This was the primary motivation for Irish enlistment in the Union Army from at least 1863 onwards. These men were not stupid- they came from a country where enlistment in the British Army for economic reasons was commonplace, and they came informed about the Civil War.   SOURCE LINK: Irish American Civil War; Mulligans Brigade

Draft Riots and $300 Men, 1863

In 1863, Congress issued a Conscription Act to draft more people into the army to fight the Civil War. The draft law also included a provision that allowed wealthy men to pay $300 to a substitute (over $6,000 in today’s money) , thus avoiding military service. In response, in New York City protesters led four days of violent attacks against African Americans, draft officials, wealthy businessmen, and Protestant missionaries.

Notable $300.00 men who avoided the Civil War Draft

The Conscription Act of 1863

Context: Why do we need a draft ? 
 President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers in April 1861. Lincoln gave a second call for an additional 42,000 men in May 1861.  In July 1861, the U.S. Congress sanctioned Lincoln's acts and authorized 500,000 additional volunteers. As the war dragged on and Battle casualties increased a formal draft become necessary

Conscription Act of 1863 The first instance of compulsory service in the federal military services. All male citizens, as well as aliens who had declared their intention of becoming citizens, between 20 and 45 were at risk of being drafted. No married man could be drafted until all the unmarried had been taken.  Two methods of evading the draft were available. A man could hire a substitute who would serve in his place, or he could simply pay $300 to get out of the obligation.   Of the more than 750,000 drafted in 1863 and 1864, only roughly 46,000 ever saw the battlefield.

Consequences: The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863) were violent disturbances widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots remain the largest civil and racially-charged insurrection in American history, aside from the Civil War itself

Young Men Go to War

“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to.This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.”

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Battle of Antietam, 1862

"No single battle decided the outcome of the Civil War. Several turning points brought reversals of an apparently inexorable momentum toward victory by one side and then the other during the war. Two such pivotal moments occurred in the year that preceded Antietam. Union naval and military victories in the early months of 1862 blunted previous Southern triumphs and brought the Confederacy almost to its knees. But Southern counteroffensives in the summer turned the war around. When the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River into Maryland in September, 1862, the Confederacy appeared to be on the brink of victory. Antietam shattered that momentum. Never again did Southern armies come so close to conquering a peace for an independent Confederacy as they did in September 1862. Even though the war continued and the Confederacy again approached success on later occasions, Antietam was arguably, as Karl Marx and Walter Taylor believed, the event of the war."

Historian James McPherson Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (2002)

Battle of First Bull Run, 1861

Contest: Gen. McDowell leads 30,000 men against Gen. Johnston's 22,000 Southern troops in an attempt to crush the rebels and go "On to Richmond." South scores victory as Union troops flee back to Washington in disarray. McDowell replaced by Gen. McClellan.

 "There They Waited" (2:53)

 First Bull Run Scene - From Gods and Generals 

 "The Great Skeedadle" (4:29) 

 Causalities and Loses:  

Union: 481 killed; 1,011 wounded;  1,216 missing TOTAL: 2,708

Confederacy:  387 killed;  1,582 wounded;  13 missing) TOTAL: 1,982

Consequence: The Union army's defeat made it painfully clear that the war would last much longer than 90 days and be harder fought than anyone had expected. It certainly would be no picnic.

Sullivan Ballou , 1861

Ballou was born the son of Hiram and Emeline (Bowen) Ballou, a distinguished Huguenot family in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He lost both of his parents at a young age and was forced to fend for himself. In spite of this, he attended boarding school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Following his graduation therefrom, he attended Brown University, where he was a member of Delta Phi, and went on to study law at the National Law School, in Ballston, New York. He was admitted to the Rhode Island bar and began to practice in 1853.

Ballou was active in public service. Shortly after being admitted to the bar, he was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives, where he served as a clerk, and later as the speaker. He was a staunch Republican and supporter of Abraham Lincoln.  When war broke out, Ballou immediately left what appeared to be a promising political career and volunteered for military service with the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry. In addition to his combat duties, he served as the Rhode Island militia's judge advocate.

Ballou and 93 of his men were mortally wounded at Bull Run. In an attempt to better direct his men, Ballou took a horse mounted position in front of his regiment, when a 6-pounder solid shot from Confederate artillery tore off his right leg and simultaneously killed his horse. The badly injured Major was then carried off the field and the remainder of his leg was amputated. Ballou died from his wound a week after that Union defeat and was buried in the yard of nearby Sudley Church. After the battle the territory was occupied by Confederate forces. According to witness testimony, it was at this time that Ballou's corpse was exhumed, decapitated, and desecrated by Confederate soldiers possibly belonging to the 21st Georgia regiment. Ballou's body was never recovered.

 In place of his body, charred ash and bone believed to be his remains were reburied in Swan Point Cemetery, Providence, Rhode Island. His wife, Sarah, never remarried. She later moved to New Jersey to live out her life with a son, William. She died in 1917 and is buried next to her husband. Ballou married Sarah Hart Shumway on October 15, 1855. They had two sons, Edgar and William. In his letter to his wife, Ballou attempted to crystallize the emotions he was feeling: worry, fear, guilt, sadness and, most importantly, the pull between his love for her and his sense of duty.

The letter was featured prominently in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, where it was paired with Jay Ungar's musical piece "Ashokan Farewell" and read by Paul Roebling. However, the documentary featured a shortened version of the letter, which did not contain many of Ballou's personal references to his family and his upbringing. It has been difficult to identify which of the several extant versions is closest to the one he actually wrote, as the original seems not to have survived. The following is an extended version:

An Offer Declined, April 20, 1861

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln pages 349-350
Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the U.S. Army  April 20, 1861

The day after Virginia seceded, Francis Blair, Sr., invited Colonel Robert E. Lee to his yellow house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  A graduate of West Point, the fifty-four-year-old Lee had served in the Mexican War, held the post of superintendent at West Point, and commended the forces that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry.  General Scott regarded him as “the very best soldier I ever saw in the field.”   Lincoln had designated Blair to tender Lee the highest-ranking military position within the president’s power to proffer.

I come to you on the part of President Lincoln,” Blair began, “to ask whether any inducement that he can offer will prevail on you to take command of the Union army?”  Lee responded “as candidly and as courteously” as he could: “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy.  If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?”

When the meeting ended, Lee called upon old General Scott to discuss the dilemma further.  Then he returned to his Arlington home to think.  Two days later, he contacted Scott to tender his resignation from the U.S. Army.  “It would have been presented at once,” Lee explained, “but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed.  During the whole of the time, more than 30 years, I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors and the most cordial friendship from my companions. . . . I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to me.”

That same day, a distraught Lee wrote to his sister: “Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing.”  Though he could apprehend “no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed,” he was unable, he explained, “to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.  I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State (with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed) I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword.”  Shortly thereafter, Lee was designated commander of the Virginia state forces.

An Incompatibility of Temper

The North was no longer like the south. It becomes US vs THEM We no longer shared the same values and beliefs.  "We separated because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced,  North from South, because we hate each other so much."    Mary Chesnut, 1861

Charles Sumner - Paris 1838

The Greater Journey – Americans in Paris
by David McCulloch

Charles Sumner [page #131]

On Saturday, January 20th 1838, as he recorded in his journal, Charles Sumner attended a lecture at the Sorbonne on Philosophical theory delivered of Heraclites by Adolphe-Marie duCaurroy, a distinguished grey haired scholar that spoke extremely slow. Sumner began looking around the hall. He had quite a large audience, “Sumner wrote, “among whom I noticed two or three blacks, or rather mulattoes – the-thirds black perhaps- dressed quite a la mode and having the easy, jaunty air of young men of fashion…”… He watched closely. The black students were well received by the other students, he noted.

It was for Sumner a stunning revelation. Until this point he was not known to have shown any particular interest in the lives of black people, nether free blacks nor slaves. On a trip to Washington a few years earlier, traveling by rail through Maryland, he had seen slaves for the first time. They were working in the fields, and as he made clear in his journal, he felt only disdain for them. “They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh, unendowed with anything of intelligence above that of brutes.” He was to think that way no longer.

It would be a while before Sumner’s revelation – that attitudes about race in America were taught, not part of “the nature of things”-would take effect in his career, but when it did, the consequence would be profound.

Rescue of Charles Nalle

On April 26, 1860, escaped slave Charles Nalle was kidnapped from a Troy bakery and taken to the District Circuit Court at State and First Streets, in Troy where he was to be sent back to Virginia under the Fugitive Slave Act. Hundreds of people, including Harriet Tubman, rushed to the site where a riot ensued, allowing Nalle to escape across the Hudson to West Troy and ultimately to freedom. Ultimately, money was raised to buy his freedom for $650. That was in effect his fourth liberation.