Conference smurf::civil_war

from the Albuquerque Journal, 20 Oct., 1991, p.F1
    
    
		WINNER AT GLORIETA UNCLEAR AFTER 129 YEARS


By Richard Benke - AP

The Battle of Glorieta Pass is still being fought nearly 130 
years after the bloody Civil War encounter - historians can't
agree who won.

One outcome is clear.  In Congress, the National Park Service
is a winner, getting funding from Congress to acquire the battle-
ground at Pigeon's Ranch and related sites a year after President
Bush signed the bill creating the Glorieta Unit of the Pecos
National Historical Park in northern New Mexico.

But who won at Glorieta on March 28, 1862, in the so-called
Gettysburg of the West?  [Actually, we out here like to think
of that affair in Penn. in '63 as "The Glorieta of the East." WAR]

The battle was significant because it was as far as Confederate
troops got in a grand plan to conquer the gold and silver fields
of Colorado, Nevada, and California and to seize the ports of 
Los Angeles and San Diego.

Their advance halted that cold day in a little valley less than 20
miles east of Santa Fe among rolling hills bisected by the Santa Fe
Trail, now N.M. 50.  At the time, the land was owned by rancher
Alexander Valle, a Frenchman nicknamed "Pigeon."  Valle's abode 
still stands beside the road.  [Actually, it is one of his barns,
but the building was standing during the battle, less than 10 feet
from a Federal battery.  WAR]

Marc Simmons of Cerrillos, author of 25 books on New Mexico history,
says the Union forces retreated that day, leaving the battlefield to
the Rebels.

"Whoever holds the battlefield after the battle is the victor," Simmons
says.

"Yes, but," says historian Don Alberts, author of "Rebels on the Rio 
Grande."

"The case could be made that the reason the Union guys went back to
their camp is that's where their food was," Alberts says.  "Certainly
the Texans weren't defeated at the main Pigeon's Ranch battle, but
it's hardly a victory either.  Therefore, it's a drawn engagement as
far as I'm concerned."

And many believe the Battle of Glorieta Pass was really decided three
miles west of Pigeon's Ranch, where a Union flanking force of about
300 men destroyed a Confederate supply convoy of 70 to 80 wagons.

"They lost everything they owned," Alberts says.

"You don't retreat a thousand miles after a great victory.  They
[the Confederates] did well (at Pigeon's Ranch), but it wasn't a great
victory.  It was a draw between two parties that were pretty closely
matched," Alberts says.

Casualties on each side were 46 to 48 solders killed and nearly 100
wounded.

Wearing gray that were four Texas regiments under Maj. Gen. Henry
Sibley.  [Lt. Col. Wm. R. Scurry was in command in the field that 
day.  WAR]

In blue were regular Army troops from the Fort Union garrison joined
by the 1st Colorado Volunteers under Col. John Slough, who hurried
south to cut off the Texans' thrust toward Fort Union.  The now-
crumbling fort 60 miles northeast of Glorieta was the largest
Union supply depot in the Southwest.

Wess Rodgers of Albuquerque counts himself as a loyal Southerner.
But he says the Confederates were clearly defeated at Glorieta 
Pass and there's no way to say the flanking force was not part of
the overall battle.

"Those Yanks fought like panthers, no doubt about it," Rodgers says.
"A couple of fellows have accused me of disloyalty.... It has come
down to public name-calling and sneers in public."

"I don't think giving Glorieta to the Federals reflects badly at 
all on Johnny Reb,"  he says.  "They were fighting a very well
trained foe, better armed and equipped and fed."

But taking the Pigeon's Ranch battle by itself, he says:  "The
Federals were driven from the field on a dead, bloody run.  That
phase of the battle was very clearly a Confederate victory."

Texas-born Thomas Edrington, a weapons evaluator at Sandia Nat-
ional Laboratories, says that even with the loss of the wagon train
the Confederates won at Glorieta.

"I suspect it was significant," he says of the supply train fiasco,
"but it was not a real show stopper."

He says Sibley ordered the subsequent retreat not because of Glor-
ieta, but because Col. Edward Canby had moved his Union forces north 
from Fort Craig, N.M, to challenge the Confederates.

But Alberts says Sibley had to withdraw when he couldn't resupply.

"If they had found food and ammunition and clothing in Santa Fe,
they would likely have continued the campaign, very likely....  
But New Mexico didn't have those kinds of supplies," Alberts says.

Edrington, whose great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy, says
he doubts the South ever had the resources to conquer the West as
Sibley planned.

"To somehow imagine that with 2,500 troops all these things would 
fall into place and that he could occupy the entire West was a pipe-
dream," Edrington says. [Sibley had over 3,000 men.  WAR]

Glorieta, however, was a day of glory for the South, he says.

Chuck Counts, whose ancestors were Union soldiers in Indiana, says
he, like Alberts, regards Glorieta as a "Tactical draw."

"I know at the end of the battle, the Confederates were pushing the
Federals," Counts said in a telephone interview from Aurora, Colo.,
"But I know Colonel Slough felt he had accomplished his orders,
which were to slow (the Rebels) down and prevent them from getting
to Fort Union.  So he was withdrawing his men, much to their chagrin.
They wanted to continue the battle."

Counts is a member of the modern 1st Colorado Volunteers, which
annually participates in the Glorieta reenactment.  Plans are under
way for a 130th anniversay reenactment next March 28th, he says.

Rodgers and Edrington say the Civil War wasn't really about slavery
but about state's rights to secede.

"Had it been a war about slavery, I might say the right side won,
but it wasn't," Rodgers says.

It's common, Alberts warns, for amateur historians with preconceptions
to take details out of context or to read flowery field reports too
literally.

"The legitimate use of history is not as propaganda, yet that's its
most popular use," he says.

The planned conquest of the West reflected such wishful thinking, he
says.

"It had rich potential, but the potential wasn't realizable," Alberts
says.  "The Confederacy never again came here.  This always remained
Union Territory.

"But there was a chance - very slim - of this whole Southwest becoming
the westward extension of the Confederacy to the Pacific, and with
it rich mines, transcontinental rail routes, and warm water ports."


                            

                         Julia Preston
    	Stonewall Jackson Granddaughter, 104
    
    	Julia Jackson Christian Preston, a granddaughter of Thomas Jonathan
    (Stonewall) Jackson, the legendary Confederate General, died Sept. 15 
    at the Presbyterian Home in High Point, N.C. She was 104 years old.
    	Mrs. Preston was born in San Diego on June 5, 1887. Her mother,
    Julia Thomas Neal Christian, died when Mrs Preston was a child and she
    was reared by her grandmother, Anna Morrison Jackson, General Jackson's
    second wife and widow.
    	She is survived by a son, Thomas Preston, of Silver Spring, Md.;
    three daughters, Mrs. Anna Shaffner of Fleetwood, N.C.; Mrs. Cortland
    Creech of Winston Salem, and Mrs. Julia McAfee of Jacksonville Beach,
    Fla.; 15 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.
    
    
    	New York Times   9/21/91
    
    
    					The Alabama Slammer
    

    
    	Martha Goodrich was born in Fitchburg, Ma., Aug. 4, 1820, the
    daughter of Joshua and Hannah (Fuller) Goodrich. Her Grandfather,
    Abijah, came to Fitchburg from Lunenburg, Ma. in 1780 and established
    himself as a farmer in South Fitchburg. Martha grew up in the house
    built by her grandfather on the old Leominster Road.
    
    	We have no record of Martha's early life. She probably grew up like
    other girls of her generation, attending Elementary School No. 2  in
    Fitchburg, where she learned the three R's - reading, writing and
    arithmetic, and learning from her mother at home how to run a house
    and take of a family.
    
    	In 1862, Martha was living in Charlestown, then, as now, a part of
    Boston. Dorothea Dix, well known for her work among prisoners and
    founder of 30 mental hospitals across the country, had been named by
    President Lincoln at the outset of the Civil War as superintendent of
    Army nurses. Martha and a friend in Charlestown, Catherine Kimball,
    responded to the call for nurses and were accepted.
    
    	Miss Dix preferred to have mature women and if they were of plain
    of feature, they were more welcome. Martha could qualify. At the age of
    42, she was a tall, thin, plain Yankee and a woman of few words.
    
    	The field nurse's uniform did not improve any nurse's appearance.
    A long-sleeved tunic blouse, trousers partially covered by a brief 
    skirt, with a long, dangling sash tied around the waist, was the usual
    wear.
    
    	Her first assignment at Mount Pleasant Hospital in Washington,
    D.C., gave Martha a taste of what her duties would be, but it lasted
    only two weeks. In September 1862, she was sent to the battlefield
    hospital at Antietam. Following that bloody battle, Martha's face may
    have been plain, but her steady hands and nerves were a source of
    comfort to the wounded men who were often operated on without
    anesthesia to ease the agony of probing for a bullet, or amputation.
    
    	Following her experience at Antietam and its aftermath, Martha
    found herself assigned to Gettysburg after the 1863 battle. She was
    sent to the hospital at Point Lookout, Pa., a prisoner of war camp
    for captured Southern soldiers. She worked there for an entire year.
    
    	During the Civl War, there were no central sources of hospital
    supplies such as we have today. Men's and women's groups at home
    constantly sent wagon-loads of food, clothing and hospital supplies
    to soldiers from their areas. Very little could come through the Army
    lines for these wounded Confederate POWs.
    
    	Knowing of the work of the Fitchburg groups, Martha decided to 
    appeal to the Ladies Aid of her hometown. The tired members of the
    society must have felt a shock as her appeal came. Why should they
    make their enemies comfortable? Their own men and boys were being
    mistreated at Libby, Andersonville, Danville and other Confederate
    prisons. However, on Sept. 25th, 1863, they sent Martha a gift of
    cash, shirts, drawers, dressing gowns, towels, needles and pins, rolls
    of linen - and four checkerboards.
    
    	After a year at Point Lookout, Martha served a year in a Washington
    hospital and six months in Winchester, N.C. Then the war was over.
    
    	But suffering remained. Martha did not come home in 1865. She was
    needed in Andersonville, where she helped to care for the tired,
    hungry survivors as they made ready to go home. Then she returned home
    to Fitchburg, where she lived with a sister on Academy Street.
    
    	In 1874, a group of women decided that their town needed a
    hospital. They bought a building and began looking for an
    administrator. A doctor in Boston, where they went for help,
    recommended Martha Goodrich as an able leader. Martha was approached,
    and agreed to help.
    
    	From 1875 through 1881, Martha ran the cottage hospital. At times
    she was matron, head nurse, ward nurse and orderly - all at the same
    time. The work took its toll and in failing health, she returned home.
    
    	Martha and her sister, Mrs. Sarah Beckwith, continued to share a
    home. Martha was active in Civil War veterans' groups, in her church,
    the Calvinistic Congregational, now Faith United, and in other city
    activities. She died on Dec. 17, 1910, at the age of 90. Her obituary
    was titled, "Useful Life Comes to Close", a fitting epitaph	for all she
    had done for others.
    
    By Eleanora F. West
    The Montachusett T&G
    
    						The Alabama Slammer

    
    
    
    	A story appeared in the 1/20/92 Atlanta Journal that had more
    of a local interest twist, but I'll let you guys in on the jist of
    it.
    
    	It seems an eighteen year old Illinois kid left the farm in
    1863 to fight for Illinois and the Union.  He came from a town
    called Olney.   The Army to which he belonged attempted to ford
    the Chattahoochee during a violent thunderstorm in 1864 and he
    was drowned near the city of Roswell.
    	His comrades recovered his body and buried him beside the river
    under a pile of stones.  Clearly these fellows had other things on
    their minds (the Atlanta siege) so his grave was forgotten after the
    battle. 
    	Last week, a Roswell police officer and amateur historian found
    the pile of stones.  He alerted the appropriate historical authorities
    and the connection was made to the eighteen year old from Illinois. 
    The body has not been exhumed.  A group from Olney, Illinois has made
    a great deal of fanfare over it since there is a monument dedicated to
    him in the town.  
    	Incidentally, the grave was about 1.5 miles from my home!  Illinois
    has a large monument at Cheatham Hill (part of Kennesaw Mountain) where
    Illinois lost about 900 men before the Confederates mysteriously with-
    drew.  Cheatham Hill is about 3 miles from my parents home; Kennesaw
    about 10.
    
     2
    R

I heard a report on the radio yesterday that the remains of three
Confederate soldiers were recently found near Richmond(?), and were
honored in Washington, DC, before burial.

Does anyone have more details?


Ben

    The Atlanta Journal: Tuesday, March 10, 1992
    
    
    The newspaper has a phone number for readers to record requests
    for additional details on the news.  The newspaper prints some
    of the more interesting questions in a section on A2 called
    Q&A on the News.  This was one of them from today:
    
    
    Q: How long were white Southerners denied the right to vote after
       the Civil War?
    
    A: It varied from state to state according to historian Webb Garrison.
       He explains that different military governors took different actions
       regarding the reenfranchisement of Confederates.  If they took the
       oath of allegiance to the Union, (which most of the didn't), they 
       didn't lose the right to vote at all.  By 1877, most former
       Confederates could vote again.
    
    Reproduced sans permission...
    
     2
    r
    

     The following article appeared in our local paper recently.  I found
     it interesting and copied it for the benefit of those who might have
     missed it.

          	MANUSCRIPT BY LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN IS DISCOVERED
     			by Herbert Mitgang (The New York Times)


     	In December 1860, more than four years before John Wilkes Booth
     assassinated Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater in Washington, the
     actor wrote a 21-page manuscript that showed his sympathies for the 
     Southern secessionist and his association with the historical 
     characters he portrayed in Shakespeare's plays.
     	In the view of Lincoln scholars, had these sentiments been known to 
     officials responsible for guarding the president, it is possible that 
     Booth would not have had such easy access to the theater on April 14,
     1865.
     	The manuscript, written in Philadelphia, was intended as a speech, 
     but it was never delivered.  Nor has it ever been published.
     	It was discovered last year in the theatrical archives of the
     Private Players Club at 16 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan, the 
     former home of Edwin Booth, the assassin's older brother, who was a 
     better-known actor at the time.
     	"I think the JWB manuscript is a fascinating document," said David
     Herbert Donald, a Harvard historian, who is now writing a major 
     Lincoln biography.  "The 'speech' is revealing both of Booth's views
     on the secession crisis and of his disorderly, incoherent state of
     mind in this time of great emotional turmoil."
     	An undated note appended to the manuscript, written by Edwin 
     Booth, reads: "This was found (long after his death) among some old
     play-books and clothes left by JWB in my house."
     	After sorting through the contents of his brother's trunk some
     time in the 1870's, Edwin Booth burned the costumes and clothes but
     saved the manuscript.
     	The manuscript, which is now being made accessible to scholars
     for the first time, was found by Robert Giroux, the editor and 
     publisher at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, while he was combing through
     old documents at the Players Club.
     	"I had a bit of a shock when I realized that the initials JWB
     stood for John Wilkes Booth," Giroux said as he sat behind Edwin
     Booth's desk in a study overlooking Gramercy Park.  A plaque in the
     room notes that Actors Equity was founded there in 1913.  "Even
     though he was a rabid sympathizer with the secessionists, he believed
     he was defending the Union."
     	The manuscript is scrawled in heavy black ink, in rather erratic
     handwriting, with crossed-out words, misspellings and grammatical
     errors.  It was written in the house of his sister, Asia Booth Clarke,
     in Philadelphia, where Booth and his mother were spending the 
     Christmas holidays.
     	In the rambling manuscript, booth calls himself "a Northern man"
     who intends to "fight with all my heart and soul - even if there's
     not a man to back me" - for equal rights and justice for the South
     as well as the North.
     	Referring to the secession of South Carolina, he says that "she is
     fighting in a just cause with God Himself upon their side."  But he
     adds, "I don't believe that any of us are represented truly in 
     Washington" because the men there are "Abolitionists."
     	Booth blames the cause of disunion on "nothing but the constant
     agitation of the slavery question."  He claims that the South has "a
     right, according to the Constitution," to keep and hold slaves.
     	Furthermore, he says that the institution of slavery brings 
     "happiness for them."  True, he concedes, "I have seen a black man 
     whipped but only when he deserved more than he received."
     	Attacking the "free press," he writes, "Is it not (what Shakespeare
     says of the drama) to hold as it were the mirror up to nature?"  He
     accuses newspapers of telling "a hundred lies calculated to lead 
     mankind into folly and into vice."
     	Somehow twisting the words of Lago in "Othello" to fit his own 
     views on states' rights, he writes: "But he who steals my purse 
     steals trash.  It does more than that.  It filches from me my good
     name.  It induces my very servant to poison me at my meals, to murder 
     me in my sleep."
     	In the most personal sentence in the manuscript, Booth says, "I 
     saw John Brown hung and I may say that I helped to hang John Brown."
     	Giroux notes that, according to Booth's sister, Asia, the actor 
     had briefly joined the Richmond Greys, a unit of the Virginia state 
     militia, which helped to pursue and capture the revolutionary
     abolitionist after the insurrection and killings at Harpers Ferry in
     1859.
     	At no point in the manuscript does Booth mention the president-
     elect's name.  Lincoln had been elected a month before the Philadelphia
     meeting and was still in Springfield, Ill.
     	Giroux says booth began to write feverishly just after South 
     Carolina seceded on Dec. 20, 1860.
     	Why did Edwin Booth preserve the fiery "JWB" manuscript?  Giroux,
     who is president of the club's library and Raymond Wemmlinger, the 
     club's curator and librarian, believe that he recognized its future 
     historical significance.
     	"Perhaps he thought the manuscript might help posterity to 
     understand his brother's tragedy better," Giroux said.
     	John Wilkes Booth's manuscript is not mentioned in the latest 
     historical study, "Assassin on Stage: Brutus, Hamlet and the Death
     of Lincoln" by Albert Furtwangler (University of Illinois Press, 1991).
     	But Furtwangler, a professor of English at Mount Allison University
     in New Brunswick, Canada, theorizes that Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"
     and "Hamlet" - plays in which John Wilkes Booth and Edwin Booth often
     starred - influenced his thoughts and actions on the fateful night.
     	The manuscript shows that Booth in part patterned his speech after
     Marc Antony's funeral oration in "Julius Caesar."  When Booth leaped
     on the stage after firing his derringer, he reportedly faced the 
     audience for a moment and said, in a clear allusion to Brutus, 
     Caesar's assassin, "Sic semper tyrannis!" - thus be it ever to tyrants.
     	The speech clearly lends new credence to the idea that the 
     theatricality of Shakespeare's characters, and their acts of 
     tyrannicide on stage, infected John Wilkes Booth's mind and led to his
     final performance.

Here's an article that appeared in the July 26, 1992 edition of the Times
Argus.  Some might find it interesting.

Headline:	ARMY REJECTS FAMILY'S BID TO CLEAR ANCESTOR 
     		CONVICTED OF HELPING BOOTH
     		By Edward Colimore

     	His name is still Mudd.
     	One hundred and twenty-seven years after a military commission found
     him guilty of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham 
     Lincoln, Dr. Samuel Mudd's conviction stands, the Army said Friday.
     	Acting Assistant Army Secretary William D. Clark rejected the Mudd
     family's longtime efforts to clear their ancestor of the charges that
     he helped Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth.
     	Clark also ignored an Army board's recommendation that the
     conviction be set aside because the military commission that found
     Mudd guilty had no jurisdiction over civilians.
     	"My denial of that recommendation should not be taken as a 
     determination of either guilt of innocence of Dr. Mudd," Clark said 
     in a memorandum released by the Army.
     	"It is not the role of the (Army board) to attempt to settle
     historical disputes."
     	The Army's action came as a great disappointment to Dr. Richard 
     D. Mudd, 91, a grandson of Samuel Mudd, who has tried to exonerate him
     for more than 70 years.  His ancestor's role in the tragedy gave birth
     to a peculiar American epithet, "Your name is Mudd."
     	I got a call one minute before 12 and it spoiled my lunch," Richard
     Mudd, a retired Saginaw, Mich., physician, said in a telephone interview
     Friday.  "I didn't feel the full effect of the whole thing for a couple
     of hours.  Justice has not been done.
     	"In a democratic country, the rights of a single person are extremely
     important and Dr. Mudd's rights have been violated.  I'm extremely 
     disappointed."
     	But Mudd said he would continue his fight.
     	"We're going to appeal it to the secretary of defense, and if we get
     no satisfaction there, we'll appeal to the president," he said.  "If
     we get no satisfaction there, we'll appeal to the Supreme Court."
     	Maj. Rick Thomas, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said Mudd has
     exhausted the appeal process within the Army.
     	"From the Army's standpoint, this is the end," he said.  "There is
     no other appellate chain for correcting records."
     	In January, Richard Mudd testified during a hearing before the
     Army Board for Correction of Military Records (ABCMR).
     	"The board makes recommendations and the final decision is with
     the Secretary of the Army," Thomas said.
     	Army Secretary Michael P.W. Stone turned the case over to Clark, 
     who is acting assistant of manpower and reserve affairs.  Clark said
     two proceedings, one before the chief justice of the Supreme Court and 
     the other before a U.S. District Court, had already decided the 
     jurisdiction of the military commission.
     	"The effect of the action recommended by the ABCMR would be to
     overrule all those determinations," Clark said in his memo.  "Even
     if the issue might be decided differently today, it is inappropriate
     for a nonjudicial body ... to declare that the law 127 years ago was 
     contrary to what was determined contemporarily by prominent legal
     authorities."
     	For decades, Richard Mudd has taken his grandfather's case to
     presidents, members of Congress, anyone who would listen.  He said
     Samuel Mudd set Booth's broken leg when the man showed up at the
     physician's farmhouse near Bryantown, Md., on the morning after
     Lincoln's assassination.  but he did not realize that Booth has 
     killed Lincoln until the next day.
     	"I'm 91 and a half, but we will go on," said Richard Mudd.  "This
     is never going to end.  The plight of a 32 year-old doctor 
     (Samuel Mudd) and his family has caught the interest of the world".

    Atlanta Journal
    August 13, 1992
    South In Brief
    p.A3
    
    Wilmington, North Carolina--The Sons of the Confederate Veterans,
    convening in Wilmington, North Carolina have voted to formally thank
    blacks who fought for the Southern cause and to renounce the Ku Klux
    Klan and other hate groups.
    
    r�  Reproduced ENTIRELY without permission--so there...