Reaction to the Assassination of President Lincoln

Second Lieutenant Warren Goodale (1825-1897) of the 114th U.S. Colored Infantry describes in a letter to his family his reaction and feelings on learning of the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Monday afternoon [April 17, 1865] we were shocked and amazed at a rumor that spread thro’ the camp yesterday that our good President Secretary Seward and son had been assassinated at Washington. I never saw such feeling as was shown by our officers. All tried to believe it untrue and were disposed to treat it as a camp story. And still, all the afternoon & till late in the evening it was almost the only topic.

It aroused all the hate & passion the officers could hold & express. To think that such heads of the nation should be struck down thro’ the rebels, whom they of all others were treating with so much kindness, and were the first for forgiving. To show the feeling, one Colonel swore that if any of his men were ever after guilty of taking and bringing in a rebel prisoner he would shoot them both.

I believe all this kindness to the rebels to be a great mistake and wrong. I did not come away from you to fight the wicked men so gently. Why, as we marched thro’ Petersburg the other day, we saw a great many rebel officers, who have been taken prisoners, and paroled walking about with their side arms swords and pistols on, gentlemen of leisure, while we only a few miles from the city, have had an order today that we cannot get permission to visit it, must not enter any house here, without first telling our name rank & regiment, and the men cannot leave the camp. The next night after we passed thro’ Petersburg, a plot was found out to burn the Danville depot.

Toward night we heard that Genl Grant was missing!! If this be so, I would keep all his promises to Lee & his Officers, but would have the Govt follow Jeff Davis, Breckenridge, Trenholm & Benjamin, Johnson, Dick Taylor Maury and 20 others to the ends of the earth, bring them back and hang every one of them, and let them set on their gallows. All these besides the assassins. Such punishment may seem cruel but in the end it would be kindness for it would deter other bad cruel men from treason, rebellion, and murder.

This excerpt is part of a letter in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Goodale, of Marlboro, Massachusetts, served as a private in the Eleventh Independent Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery, before joining the 114th in March 1865.

National Archives Staffer Goes Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

I was caught off guard a couple weeks back after an unexpected package arrived from the National Archives. Inside I found photocopies of the military service record for a soldier who served in the Fifty-sixth U.S. Colored Infantry.

A few weeks earlier, I had requested his file only to learn that the MSRs from his regiment are part of an eighteen regiment group (Forty-seventh to Sixty-fifth) of files currently closed to researchers because Archives staff is microfilming them. A supervisor in the Archives library asked me to leave my address in the event that they might be able to help. While I appreciated her proactive suggestion, her tentative manner lowered my expectations and convinced me that nothing would come of my request. I resigned myself to the reality that it might be years before the file would appear in microfilm.

The arrival of the package surprised and delighted me. It also encouraged me to make a new request for the file of another soldier in the closed group — a sergeant from the Sixty-second. On Friday, I stopped by the Archives library and filled out the appropriate form. By coincidence I met the very person who mailed me the package, Dennis Edelin. He instantly recognized my name and asked me if there were any problems with the package he sent. Dennis promised to pull the file of the other soldier and send it to me.

The Archives staff could have easily rejected my request and forced me to wait for microfilming to finish — a scenario that would likely have prevented the stories of these two soldiers from ever making it into the book. But thanks to Dennis Edelin, their stories will be told and their images seen.

Thank you, Dennis.

A Memorial and Visitor Center for New Market Heights

Received an email from my friend and former co-worker Lauren Burke, who has been involved in an effort to secure funds for a memorial and visitor center on the battlefield of New Market Heights, where, in 1864, an assault on the Confederate entrenchments by U.S. Colored Troops earned fourteen African American infantrymen the Medal of Honor. Lauren has teamed up with a friend, who works for U.S. Congressman Bobby Scott. Rep. Scott, who represents Virginia's Third District, has this item listed in his FY2010 Appropriations request list:

Henrico County, Virginia
P. O. Box 90775
Henrico, VA 23273-0775

$10,000,000 - New Market Heights Memorial & Visitors Center - The Battle of New Market Heights fought on September 29, 1864, remains among the lesser known engagements of the Civil War. Its significance, in American military history and African-American history deserves recognition. 14 Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to African-American-American soldiers who fought in the Battle of New Market Heights. The funds will be used for land acquisition, site preparation and toward construction of a memorial and visitor’s center at New Market Heights, adjacent to the Richmond National Battlefield Park in Henrico County, Virginia.

Lauren, a Washington, D.C.-based photographer, is collecting images of the fourteen men who received the Medal of Honor. Check out her Flickr photostream on the subject. She is looking for photos of these four men:

Alfred B. Hilton
Sergeant, Company H, 4th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date. At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:------. Birth: Harford County, Md. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: When the regimental color bearer fell, this soldier seized the color and carried it forward, together with the national standard, until disabled at the enemy's inner line.

Miles James
Corporal, Company B, 36th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at: Norfolk, Va. Birth: Princess Anne County, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Having had his arm mutilated, making immediate amputation necessary, he loaded and discharged his piece with one hand and urged his men forward; this within 30 yards of the enemy's works.

Charles Veale
Private, Company D, 4th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Portsmouth, Va. Birth: Portsmouth Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Seized the national colors after 2 color bearers had been shot down close to the enemy's works, and bore them through the remainder of the battle.

Edward Ratcliff
First Sergeant, Company C, 38th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ------. Birth: James County, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation. Commanded and gallantly led his company after the commanding officer had been killed; was the first enlisted man to enter the enemy's works.

Transformation

Ulysses S. Grant's transformation between 1861 and 1869 from an alcoholic ex-soldier and failed farmer to lieutenant general and commander of all the Union armies and President of the United States is the classic rags to riches American success story. And one that captivated me in my youth and inspires me today.

Grant's whirlwind adventure ends on a positive note. Even after his post-presidency years were tarnished when a swindler bilked him out of his savings and terminal cancer consumed his life, he mustered his last remaining resources to write his memoirs, which, with the help of Mark Twain, became an international bestseller that provided his family with financial support after his death.

Now I am discovering other stories of transformation that rivaled Grant's for their rapid and steep ascent to glory. But these stories end tragically.

Take William Wright, an African American born a slave in Kentucky and the current subject of my research. During a three year period, from 1864 to 1870, his life forever changed when he became a Union soldier and free man, then a farmer living for the first time in control of his own affairs and having the ability to pursue his dreams.

There are few instances in history where hope radiated with such brightness and warmth over humanity than in America during this time. The collapse and fall of the Confederacy and the end of a bloody Civil War. The freedom of an enslaved race of people. Three amendments to the Constitution establishing equality for all. During this brief period along our nation's timeline, hope seemed eternal. The dawn of a new age lay before us.

And yet the hope that burned so brightly dimmed quickly as Reconstruction failed. Civil rights were trampled and within a short time African Americans found themselves in a new slavery fueled by racism. And it would last for more than a century, until a new civil rights movements in the 1960s would rekindle the almost extinguished flame of hope.

William Wright would never see the flame rekindled. Driven from his farm in 1871 by what he called "Night Riders," he and his family fled to Iowa, where he lived a modest life as a farmer in a quiet corner of the country. He died in 1901.

Rare Artistic Pose of a Union Artillery Officer

Securing image scans and permissions, and researching and writing about African Americans who participated in the war is my top priority. However, I remain an avid collector of cartes de visite. A recent addition is this image of John Aiken Millard Jr., photographed in the studio of Pine & Bell of Troy, New York.

Millard's artistic pose in certainly unusual for the period. He reclines against a fabric and tassel covered box surrounded by the trappings of an officer: Binoculars and case, sword and scabbard. A leather bound journal lay open, leaning against his forage cap. On the page most visible to the camera appears to be writing. Upon closer examination, the "writing" is nothing more than wiggly lines added in ink by the photographer or an assistant. The presence of the book is perhaps symbolic of an man of letters. Millard's well-tailored uniform, cuff links, and lace handkerchief suggest he hails from a family of privilege and wealth.

The ink inscription in the upper left of the print area identify the sitter as "Lieut Millard 1 Reg Art'y A.P." He officially served as a second lieutenant in Battery H of the First New York Light Artillery, part of the the Army of the Potomac. On the right side of the image is stamped a large letter M, and is written the date, Nov. 29, 1864. Millard officially mustered in to the First a month later. He survived the war and left the army in June 1865.

Cartes de visite like this are rare. I am aware of only one other like it. Check out a larger version on Flickr.

Ghostly Phantoms at Petersburg

Captain Ludlum Crossman Drake (1839-1924) wrote a twenty-page account of his Civil War experience titled War Reminiscences, a memoir of his service with the Eighteenth Michigan and the 114th U.S. Colored Infantries. This document is part of the Survey of State and Local Historical Records by the Works Progress Administration. It was filed on June 2, 1937. The handwritten narrative is undated. A reference to Spanish American War veterans indicates Drake wrote it in 1898 or later.

One of the highlights is the following paragraph, in which Drake describes Union POWs at Petersburg, Va., in early 1865.

I never can forget some exchanged prisoners brought into our lines as they went staggering by. Those once strong men with eyes like eagles and nerves like steel. Men who had stood by Grant in the Wilderness and by Thomas at Chicamauga. Men who had rode with Sheridan in that wild hurricane which swept the Shenandoah. Men who had helped Grant take Vicksburg and Sherman capture Atlanta, now slowly and scientifically starved till the marrow had rotted from their bones and the light of reason gone out. Ghostly phantoms belonging to neither this world nor the next. Their wasted forms and idiotic features haunt me to this day.

— Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Michigan Commandery Records, 1885-1951. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

These few lines convey the shock Drake still felt four decades after seeing these human skeletons, and remind us today that the horrors of war are as real today as they were a century-and-a-half ago.