Posted on 08/01/2016 5:21:21 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed. To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.
During this period Harper’s issues were fairly long. This month’s is over 140 pages. I have prepared less than a quarter of that for posting. Keeping with the policy I used during the WWII series I will post the lead article in its entirety. I will also print the current events section, which seems to run about 3-5 pages. It seems like the next to last piece in each issue is a humorous pictorial sequence. God knows we need more humor, so that is in. I might as well finish with the concluding fashion pages, although the dresses I have seen so far all resemble giant elaborate lamp shades.
Beyond these standard items I will scour the rest of the magazine looking for items that might interest a few twenty-first century readers. The magazine contains a big selection of travel articles, literary reviews, fiction, poetry, science, and so on. In the middle of the magazine is a series sections named Editor’s table, Editor’s easy chair, and Editor’s drawer. Don’t ask me. Anyway, in the August Editor’s table I found a section about mechanical inventions of recent years that seemed interesting.
The cover of our August edition is a picture of Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, which leads into a 14-page account of a pleasure trip beside the Connecticut River, beginning at Springfield, MA and proceeding straight north along the present day path of Interstate 91 to Windsor, VT. Along the way, as well as marveling at the wondrous scenery, we vicariously visit a musket factory and armory, a button factory, a school for ladies, and the Vermont Lunatic Asylum. I found it of interest that, during the visit to the armory, the tourists discovered that security for the 150,000 new muskets was practically nonexistent. The armory is in the middle of Massachusetts – hotbed of abolitionist activism – when arms are being smuggled into Bleeding Kansas by the crate load. I think I know where some of them come from.
The writing style took a little getting used as the language seems impossibly flowery, if that’s the word. I tried mentally translating it from 1856 English to 2016 English to better understand the literal meaning. That worked, but made me realize we may have lost something by going putting such a high value on economy of words and foregoing more creative use of the language. I guess we don’t have time for that now, what with the internet and being the most important generation ever to walk the earth and all. All the same, I suggest it is important to gain familiarity with the journalistic style of the period to better understand our American ancestors.
Current Events begins with a report on the results of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia on June 17. The platform is summarized and the vote that resulted in the nomination of John C. Fremont of California and William L. Dayton of New Jersey as the presidential ticket is described. The American and Democratic Party nominees, Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan, respectively, think the Republican position on the extension of slavery in the territories is a bad idea.
Then follows a report from the House Kansas Investigation Committee and an update on events in that territory. It’s a mess. A Vigilance Committee is working to get rid of the riff-raff in San Francisco. (More on that in a couple days.) Mexico is working on a new constitution and may have a war with Spain. Costa Rica suffered greater than reported losses in its invasion of Nicaragua.
England has a new government and something going on with Central America. A peace treaty was concluded on Queen Victoria’s birthday. Palmer the poisoner was convicted and executed. France is suffering from severe flooding and their new Imperial Infant was baptized.
The Editor’s Table discusses American inventions in the context of a nation’s obligation to do its fair share of contributing to the global good. ET leads off with the lightning rod and the steamboat as two of the earliest. It goes on in detail, but let me just quote the penultimate paragraph:
To sum up, therefore, the United States, during the last eighty years, have endowed the world with the lighting-rod, the steamboat, the photograph, the electric telegraph, the discovery of the use of inhaled ether, the sewing machine; the best and cheapest farm implements, the best carpenters’ tools, the best locks fire-engines, nails, spikes, screws, and axes; the best fire-arms, the cheapest clocks, the fastest steamers and sailing vessels, the cheapest railroads, the lightest wagons, and many of the most useful labor-saving machines in almost every department of industry. If any nation, during the same eighty years, has done more, or as much the fact is not generally known.
The Harper’s post ends with the humor feature, Experiments in Photography, and the fashion pages.
Get jealous over those Connecticut River towns!
I first heard of George Templeton Strong on the Ken Burns Civil War series. His diary entries are featured throughout. It turns out he added to his diary “most days from 1835 to 1875.” I got a copy of the abridged diary from amazon and found that it is so abridged that it leaves out entire years, two of which are 1857 and 1858. That leaves me hankering to get the unabridged 4 volume set. That is kind of pricey ($200+) so it will have to wait a while as I ponder the situation. Meanwhile, I will present the surviving entries for 1856.
From the back cover:
Strong was an attorney by profession, and his diary reveals much about the practice of law in New York City, but he was also a trustee of Columbia University, a vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church, a close follower of local, state, and national politics, and a lover of music who seems to have attended virtually every concert held in New York. His diary reflects all those interests and more. He comments on the accession of the young Queen Victoria to the British throne in 1837, just as he records the sufferings caused by the economic recessions, or his reaction upon reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1860, and his impressions when he meets Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Strong’s diary is of particular interest and value for his comments on the relations between North and South, and blacks and whites, since his changing opinions reflect closely the changing opinions of the majority of white Northern voters as registered in the elections of the era of Civil War and Reconstruction.
From the preface to the original edition (1952):
Fidelity to the text has, of course, involved the retention of many outspoken passages. Strong had a way of indulging, sometimes semi-humorously, sometimes quite seriously, in heated attacks on individuals, groups, and societies; he used the diary now and then to blow off steam. His violent assaults upon Yankees, Negroes, Southern rebels, Britons, Irishmen, Frenchmen; his scathing remarks about conservative Columbia trustees, Roman Catholics, Low-Church Episcopalians, Jews, Unitarians, Presbyterians, and other sects; his contemptuous excoriation of many of the cruder manifestations of social and political democracy – all this gives salt to the great document he left. Sometimes the salt may seem a little stinging. But if hasty and unfair judgments are included, it is not because the editors approve them, but because they have historical value. . .
After all that our first entry may seem tame and anticlimactic. Strong describes how he provided negative assurance a (as I used to call it in the CPA business) after a bank examination.
August 1. Spent most of a day in the Trust Company with Ludlow and Moses Taylor, as a Committee of Examination. All correct and prosperous as far as we could discover, but such an investigation is little more than a formality. Six months’ hard work over ledgers and vouchers might enable us to report positively that Kearny and David Thompson had not cheated the company out of $100,000 or so but no less amount of labor is of any real use.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
Of the few biographies I have now begun, I rank James L. McDonough’s of William Tecumseh Sherman below David Herbert Donald’s ‘Lincoln,’ Jean Edward Smith’s ‘Grant,’ and William J. Cooper Jr.’s ‘Jefferson Davis, American.’ I won’t compare it to the Douglas Southall Freeman bio of Lee because that one is an abridgement. I don’t give ‘William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country’ low marks because of the scholarship. That seems to me perfectly adequate. It is because the author presents his information in a way that doesn’t flow as well as it does in the other. I suppose I could sum up my opinion by saying that McDonough is not as talented a writer as the other authors. I might not have arrived at that conclusion except that McDonough occasionally injects his opinions on matters not related to the subject as a way of explaining some point or other. I was relieved to learn that this tendency is mostly restricted to the early chapters.
That does not include the prologue. McDonough first introduces us to Sherman at the conclusion of the first day of the battle at Shiloh in April 1862. He describes briefly how Sherman made a serious mistake in allowing himself to be surprised by the confederate attack, but then rallied and took the steps necessary to prevent a union defeat that day. McDonough repeats the celebrated exchange between Sherman and Grant that night:
“Well Grant,” said Sherman, “we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” “Yes,” replied Grant; “lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”
The author explains that Grant was not just exhibiting bravado or attempting to shore up his subordinate’s morale, but was giving a cool estimate of the situation based on the facts.
This may have been the first time I have read a detailed historical account of a civil war battle, and the way McDonough does it had me hooked from the beginning. I may yet find myself tramping around an old battlefield or two looking for familiar landmarks and retracing the action. That gives me some confidence that McDonough will stick to business when we get to the war years and he can focus on his true area of expertise.
Sherman was born February 8, 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio to Charles Robert and Mary Sherman. His father named him Tecumseh – without the William – because he was an admirer of the Shawnee warrior. The William was added at either one of his two baptisms; the first Presbyterian and then as a Roman Catholic. (As far as RC doctrine goes, the second one was redundant.) Sherman’s young siblings pronounced Tecumseh as “Cump,” and that became his enduring family nickname. Sherman’s father died when he was 9 and the boy was raised by Charles Sherman’s close friend Thomas Ewing. Ewing was influential in national Whig politics and would become Treasury Secretary in the administration of William Henry Harrison. 20-year-old William T. Sherman found the election of 1840 so unsavory that he was permanently turned against politics as a career and politicians in general. He harbored similar opinions about lawyers and bankers. Ironically, he would eventually work as a banker and in a law firm.
Ewing helped Sherman get an appointment to West Point, where he graduated high in the class of 1840. His pre-Civil War military career did not proceed like those of the other West Point Grads I have read about. He spent no time on the north or northwestern frontier centered around the Mississippi River Valley. Instead he stayed in the southeast for an extended period. His first assignments were to Florida bases, where he took part in a sluggish guerrilla war against aimed at displacing the Seminole Indians from their homeland in the Florida peninsula and moving them to the west. He then served in coastal defenses at Mobile Bay and in June 1842 at Ft. Moultrie in Charleston Harbor. In the latter he was attached to Co. G, 3rd Artillery, commanded by Capt. Robert Anderson. Sherman considered that type of duty tedious and was relieved when hostilities with Mexico commenced and he was ordered to California.
Sherman sailed from New York in July 1846 and after a grueling 6-month journey arrived at Monterey, California in January 1847. He was devastated to learn that there was no fighting going on in California. At this point the biography developed into local news for me. Sherman spent over a year in Monterey and did a lot of exploring in the region. He kept horses for hunting expeditions in the hills around the Carmel Valley and once rode with an army friend to San Juan Bautista to view the mission there. (Mrs. Homer will be dining with friends in San Juan Bautista this [July 31] evening.) When gold was discovered in 1848 Sherman was sent to Sutter’s Fort near Sacramento to appraise the situation in the gold fields. In January 1850 left on a mission to report to General Winfield Scott in New York. The return trip only took a month because he crossed the isthmus of Panama rather than going around Cape Horn.
All during Sherman’s time at West Point and throughout his army career he kept up an intense correspondence with his foster sister, Ellen Ewing. Even though he greatly enjoyed the company of ladies and was a keen observer of feminine charm he never (that we know of) became involved in romantic affairs. He and Ellen developed an understanding that they would wed at some point. That finally happened on May 1, 1850. It was quite a notable Washington affair. Guests included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and President Zachary Taylor. Nevertheless, if Sherman had asked me I would have advised against it. He and Ellen had little by way of common interests. She was devoted to her family in Ohio. She was obedient to her highly influential and wealthy father. She shared her mother’s intense Roman Catholic faith. She disliked Sherman’s choice of a military career and loathed California, preferring to remain at the Lancaster, Ohio homestead. Sherman, on the other hand was determined to stay out of his father-in-law’s shadow and make his own way. He was irreligious. He loved the army and came to feel much at home in California. Another consideration was the fact that the couple, while not actually brother and sister, had something of that same kind of family relationship. So her parents never lost a proprietary feeling towards their daughter or their grandchildren, when those began to arrive. Finally, Ellen was never persuaded that she shouldn’t have her own way on any point of disagreement. So William T. Sherman suffered a great deal of anxiety over his marriage.
In September 1850 Sherman received a long-awaited promotion to Captain and was sent to Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, where he reported to Captain Braxton Bragg. Shortly thereafter he went to New Orleans in order to clean up corruption in the commissary department there. It was there he was offered a job with a banking concern that wanted him to open a branch in San Francisco. He accepted the offer and on September 3, 1853 he resigned from the army. He moved with his family (except for a daughter who remained with the Ewings in Ohio) to San Francisco and became a banker. According to this account he was good at it and his operation prospered. He became a well-known and respected citizen of San Francisco, even becoming Vice President of the company that built the first railroad in the state of California, east from Sacramento to the Sierras, eventually to become part of the Central Pacific Railroad. His major problem during these years was severe asthma, which got so bad he thought it would cause his death. The author speculates that it was at least partly due to stress related to his tense marriage.
That is where the first excerpt from the biography takes up. Things are going fairly well for the future general but trouble is looming.
James Lee McDonough, William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country, A Life
Too bad they’re in Connecticut, one of the more messed up states, politically, in the country.
>>Strong was an attorney by profession, and his diary reveals much about the practice of law in New York City, but he was also a trustee of Columbia University, a vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church.
He would likely be horrified by what has become of his church. They were major logistics supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Long after the occupiers were ejected by the city from Zuccotti Park, they were allowed to camp out and maintain their protest on church grounds. Long after, like a year later, IIRC. We walked by them on a trip up there.
If they are photos of places along the Connecticut River as described in the Harper’s article they are in Massachusetts or, more likely, New Hampshire.
Do’h. Vermont, not NH. One of those little tall skinny states.
Looking at the views of Connecticut makes you realize how undeveloped the United States was in the 1850s. And the ads; just like the World War 2 threads I love the ads. This time it’s the ladies’ “nightwear.” How did they ever have kids?
I don’t think that is an ad. They seem to end each issue with the fashion feature. In fact, they must have subsisted on subscription and news stand sales because I haven’t seen any advertising at all.
I’d like to continue with the excerpts of Sherman’s biography. By the end of the Civil War, he may have been the best field commander on either side.
War criminal you mean.
That is the plan, but they will be few and far between for a few years.
It is good that war is so terrible lest we grow too fond of it. War is hell.
If a modern day field commander in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam had done a tenth of what Sherman’s bummer were order to do they would have been arrested and face a court martial.
Like Curtis LeMay and Arthur Harris. I wanted Sherman in command in Afghanistan. We wouldn’t have been there so long, spent as much money, or cost as many American lives.
War is not some sort of chivalrous adventure. It naturally begets a progressive cycle of increasing brutality.
Bttt.
5.56mm
My links were NH - VT is Mongolia to me. NH is an absurdly awesome place.
August 4, MONDAY. Our brethren of the South are surely mad. Think of the Virginian Wise telling Mrs. Ritchie (Mowatt)* who told Mr. Ruggles, who told me, that “if Fremont were elected, he would never be permitted to reach Washington.” Their brag and bluster can’t well be paralleled, unless by a Chinese edict meant to intimidate the foreign barbarians. One thing is very clear and very important, that in Kentucky and Missouri and possibly in Virginia itself, there are germs of insurrection among the “poor trash,” the plebeians who don’t own niggers. Such a movement once formed and recognized must triumph sooner or later, and nigger emancipation and the downfall of the nigger-breeding (and mulatto-breeding) aristocracy of those states must follow.
Poor Edward Curtis is dead, after two years and a half of seclusion in the Flushing Asylum, during which there has never been any hope of his restoration or material improvement.
*Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia 1856-1860, and a man of fire-eating propensities; Anna Cora [Ogden] Mowatt, the noted actress, who in 1854 married William F. Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Enquirer.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.