Lincoln Looks to Johnson for a Champion

While researching the origins of the Corps d'Afrique, I came across this private letter written by President Abraham Lincoln to then Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Lincoln's hope for a quick end to the war by raising regiments of black troops, and his desire to find prominent white leaders to make it happen, is evidenced by its contents:

Executive Mansion
Washington, March 26, 1863

Hon. Andrew Johnson:

My Dear Sir: I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability and position to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave State, and himself a slave-holder. The colored population is the great available, and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it, please do not dismiss the thought.

Yours, very truly,
A. Lincoln

From The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume III, p. 103.

Do Unto Others

The Thanksgiving holiday brought to mind an excerpt of a speech given in 1871 by Lt. Col. David Branson (1840-1916) of the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry. He spoke on occasion of the dedication of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Mo. He and his comrades contributed money and helped found the school known today as Lincoln University of Missouri.

In his brief comments, Branson spoke to the value of education and religious freedom in the Reconstruction era, as Americans struggled to deal with a new political, economic and social order as a result of the Civil War and the end of slavery. He states:

The future peace of our country is threatened more by the unwise zeal of religious men than by anything else, unless it be ignorance itself; and ignorance is the tool of such unwise zealots. Inquisitions, burnings at the stake, and hanging of the best men and women of their time, have been their work in the past, and will be in the future, unless prevented by just such schools as this, managed by liberal-minded men like Prof. Foster here, who, while holding strong religious convictions of his own, fully recognizes the right under our glorious Constitution of the United States, of every man, be he Christian, Jew or Mahomedan, to his own creed, untrammeled by any law whatever. And right here I cannot refrain from denouncing those men who are trying to insert a religious amendment in the Constitution of the United States.

A well-known author and close observer of events has well said that "It is the point of a wedge whose butt end is an established Church;" and an established Church in England has produced great wars in the past, and I will venture to predict, will deluge the British Isles in blood during the next generation.

But some may ask. Are we to have no religion? no morality? I have this to answer, on the best authority ever given us, and it is the sum of all the commandments, based on justice, tempered with mercy, and adorned by love: "Whatsoever ye would that men do to you, even so do ye unto them."

When we are able to live up to that law, then it will be time to think of teaching creeds and theologies in our public schools; and then they will not be needed or thought of. The future of our own free government depends on us who have the advantages of education. Whether we wish it or not, we must educate the masses pouring in from Europe on the East and Asia on the West, or they will destroy our free government and render despotic government a necessity.

It is our destiny to lift up the races that are down, and we need not be dragged down in the work, but rather buoyed up to a still higher level. Let us then each and all do what lies in our power for the elevation and happiness both of ourselves and others; and so living we shall not, when called from this world to the great unknown, fear to meet the spirits gone before; but rather approach it as we do a new country, whither our friends have preceeded us to enjoy greater happiness than in the land of our birth.

I find Branson's message as appropriate today as they were almost 140 years ago. Read the full speech.

"Preparing for This New Time"

By January 1866, only 200 of the original 1,000 men who enlisted in the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry remained in the ranks. The War Department ordered the ten companies consolidated to four and the reduction of the regiment’s officers.

Two of the discharged officers, Capt. Richard B. Foster and 1st Lt. Aaron M. Adamson, had served in Company I.

According to Capt. Foster, soon after he learned that he would be mustered out of the army, “Lieutenant Adamson was one day talking with me, as comrades about to part will do, of the past and future, when, referring to the fact that many of the enlisted men had learned to read and write, imperfectly of course, while in the service, I remarked that it was a pity these men should find no schools when they returned to Missouri,” from where they had enlisted in 1863.

Both men reflected on the transformation of the enlisted men with whom they served. “No more shall the auction block be mounted by human chattels. No more shall education be forbidden and virtue be impossible for any part of our population. The fugitive slave law is behind us. Universal suffrage is before us.”

The conversation brought to the surface a question that burned within Foster: “Have I any special work to do, however humble, in preparing for this new time?”

1st Lt. Adamson supplied the answer: “If our regiment will give money enough to start a school in Missouri, will you take charge of it?”

Foster eventually answered in the affirmative. The officers and men raised $1,379.50, and Foster went on to establish Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. Today, it is known as Lincoln University.

Read Foster's historical sketch of the founding of the school.

On a Rant About Time Off and Pay

Like many Americans throughout history, the Civil War soldier had his frustrations with government. Leroy D. House was no exception. A clockmaker from Bristol, Conn., House served as a captain in the 108th U.S. Colored Infantry. On duty guarding Confederate prisoners at Rock Island, Ill., during the holidays, he made the best of life far away from the front lines in sub-zero temperatures — but couldn't resist venting in this excerpt from a letter penned on Dec. 24, 1864, to friends at home in Connecticut:

"Congress has adjourned over the holidays, and the members have gone home to receive their Christmas & New Years Presents. They ought to give the army power to adjourn over the Holidays and let the soldier go home. But we do not expect the same privileges as citizens. A member of Congress when he thinks his pay is insufficient can vote himself more, while the soldiers must wait with patience for Congress to do him justice. We expect an increase of pay before Congress adjourns in the spring. We view it as an act of justice, but if the powers that be do not see fit to do it, we shall not find fault with Uncle Sam, but try to bring our expenses within our means. Nearly all Civil officers of the government as well as all clerks and Provost Marshals have had their pay raised since the commencement of the present war, while the officers in active service receive no more to day than he did four years ago when all of the necessaries of life cost but little more than one third the present price."

This letter is part of the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society.

Book Review: A Deeper Look at the Confederate Soldier

"Faces of the Confederacy is an indispensable new window on the Civil War and the society that fought it," writes Dr. John L.S. Daley in a review of my book that has just appeared in the Civil War Book Review by the Louisiana State University Libraries' Special Collections.

Daley, an associate professor of history and chair of the Department of History at Pittsburg State University in southeastern Kansas, mentioned a number of details that other reviewers passed by, including this opening line: "Consciously taking cues from Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, Ronald S. Coddington has presented history as a sum of individual experiences in this collection of seventy-seven short biographies of Confederate soldiers..."

Daley compares the book to Bell J. Wiley's classic, The Life of Johnny Reb (1962), and adds a paragraph that accurately reflects my research: "The Internet and Interlibrary Loan have allowed Coddington to tread where Wiley and other predecessors could not. While awaiting responses to his Civil War Message Board Portal and GenForum.com queries, he mined Ancestry.com, digitized Library of Congress records and pension files in state archives. On-site research in the Library of Congress and National Archives turned up service records, as did the Southern Historical Society Papers, newspapers and regimental histories. Even with internet help, it took him an average of two months to piece together each life.

I am particularly pleased with this review. You can read the complete version on my web site, or view the original on the Civil War Book Review.