National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Chancellorsville, Part Two: The Confederacy’s Pyrrhic Moment

A Pyrrhic victory is one that arrives at a great cost, and is named in tribute to King Pyrrhus (318–272 BCE) of Epirus. Plutarch records that while the king achieved a great victory over the Romans at Asculum, he sustained great losses in the effort. Robert E. Lee’s victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville is widely characterized as such a victory.

The plan seemed like it was a sound one. General Joseph Hooker had led his men across the Rappahannock in late April 1863 in order to catch Lee off-guard. Hooker’s plan was to take Lee’s army from two sides and envelope him.

Lee, however, split his troops and went around Hooker’s flank, and at the end of the day on May 2, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (above)—Lee’s partner in this highly unorthodox plan—urged his own soldiers to press the advantage. Hooker’s plan to crush Lee between two mighty arms of the Union army had backfired, and instead Hooker and his 70,000 men were about to be crushed between two substantially weaker Confederate forces.

As Jackson reconnoitered the Union positions early in the evening on the second of May, his own troops mistook him for the enemy and fired upon him. Jackson was wounded and would die several days later, though every attempt was made to save him, including amputating his left arm.* For the next two days, the Confederate troops pushed Hooker and the Union army back across the Rappahannock.

Historian E. B. Long notes, “Lee had triumphed over numbers and . . . had made Chancellorsville a battle that would be studied the world over.” Lee had won the battle, certainly. Confederate losses, however, told another story. In securing the southern position between Washington and Richmond, Lee had lost about 20 percent of those troops available to him in northern Virginia. Unlike the northern army, which was replenishing its numbers with fresh recruits daily, the South could not suffer such casualties.

Coupled with the loss of Jackson, Lee’s strategic gem was tarnished by the grim fact of wartime attrition—deaths, injuries, and men gone missing were hurting the South, and the status quo of occupying Virginia was rapidly becoming a defensive liability. As he had done in the summer of 1862, Lee decided to go on the offensive; he took the token of a victory he had in his pocket and set his eyes toward Pennsylvania. Inside of two months, the great armies would converge once again, this time at a little-known hamlet called Gettysburg.

*Jackson’s arm would receive its own burial plot. Retrieved from a pile of limbs outside the battlefield hospital, it was buried in the family cemetery at Ellwood Manor near Chancellorsville, and is marked by a stone.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Photo by Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery

Cited:
E. B. Long, The Civil War, Day by Day (New York: De Capo, 1971).

 

Thomas Jonathan Jackson, / Adam B. Walter, Copy after: Nathaniel Routzahn, / Mezzotint on paper, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Behind the Scenes of “Bound for Freedom’s Light”

The third in a series of exhibitions marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, “Bound for Freedom’s Light: African Americans and the Civil War,” opened at the National Portrait Gallery on February 1. The installation uses vintage photographs and historic prints to focus on the roles that individual African Americans played during the course of the conflict.

According to Ann Shumard, NPG’s senior curator of photographs and the exhibition curator, the starting point for the show was the desire to “highlight the richness of NPG’s own collection,” rather than borrow the majority of works from other institutions.

The exhibition includes images of well-known individuals such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth (right). Rather than highlighting their familiar prewar abolitionist activities, however, the images and accompanying label text in this installation draw attention to the sitters’ wartime efforts, such as Douglass’s pressuring Lincoln on the question of emancipation, Tubman serving as an army scout and spy, and Truth assisting refugees from slavery and recruiting black men to join the Union army.

The exhibition draws its title from the lyrics of a song that Truth performed at recruiting meetings as a tribute to the First Michigan Colored Regiment, in which she proclaimed,

We are going out of slavery, we are bound for freedom’s light;

We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight!

While these famous figures certainly merit a place in the exhibition, Shumard felt that it was crucial to have less recognizable names included as well. As she explains, “the focus here needs to be on the experience of ordinary people, the less well-known figures who both affected and were affected by the events of the era.”

Perhaps the most riveting image in the show is that of Gordon (right), who escaped enslavement on a Louisiana plantation to join a black regiment and whose scarred back became a powerful testament to the brutality of slavery. Also represented in a photographic portrait is Robert Smalls, the South Carolina bondsman who freed himself and his family by seizing control of a Confederate ship and delivering is safely into Union hands.

The NPG collection even turned out to contain a fascinating story that was unknown to our staff. While sorting through some photographs for a different purpose, Shumard happened across a carte-de-visite photograph of an African American man known as Abraham. The portrait had been acquired some years ago in an album of cartes de visite but had not been individually researched.

When Shumard investigated, she discovered the amazing story of a slave literally blown to freedom. Union soldiers tunneling below Confederate defenses in the siege of Vicksburg (1863) had detonated powerful explosives that buried in debris seven enslaved workers used by Confederates to dig countershafts, but lofted an eighth—identified only as Abraham (below)—clear across the Union lines, where he recovered from his injuries and joined the Union war effort.

Moving beyond these amazing biographies, Shumard discovered that there were some facets of the African American experience that could not be told using conventional portraiture. To cover these aspects, she turned to historic prints that portray a scene or series of events.

One of Shumard’s favorite pieces in the show is a print called (in the parlance of the era), Stampede among the Negroes in Virginia—Their Arrival at Fortress Monroe.(below). While researching this exhibition, Shumard read a New York Times Magazine article about the fugitive slaves who were granted protection as “contraband of war” by General Benjamin F. Butler at Union-held Fort Monroe in Virginia beginning in May 1861.

The article mentioned that a print had appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in June of that year showing vignettes of refugees from slavery arriving at the fort. Shumard was delighted to discover that such a print existed and was available for acquisition, as she had been struggling with how to include the events at Fort Monroe in the exhibition. “We have a carte de visite of Butler in our collection, but that’s a poor way to tell this particular story, with just a picture of a white Union officer. And there were no formal portraits made of the Fort Monroe ‘contrabands’ themselves.”

Similarly, the story of the July 1863 draft riots in New York could only be told through periodicals, rather than traditional portraiture, as the participants were generally anonymous. This gruesome and little-known chapter of the Civil War era, when antidraft rioters looted and burned the Colored Orphan’s Asylum and attacked African Americans in their homes and on the streets, is represented in the exhibition by a wood engraving from an August 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly.. “The image [in the engraving] of a man being lynched is grim,” explains Shumard, “but we needed to include it in order to convey the African American experience more fully.”

There were just a few stories that Shumard was not able to tell with images from the NPG collection, such as the heroic performance of the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, the first black regiment to be organized in a northern state. According to Shumard, “we have a carte de visite of the commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, but that doesn’t capture the experience of the African Americans who served with him.”

Shumard was able to secure a loan from a private individual of a chromolithograph showing the regiment’s storming of Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Other loans to the exhibition include a group portrait of emancipated slaves that was sold to raise funds for their education; a print entitled Come and Join Us Brothers that was used to recruit black soldiers; and a reproduction of a photograph of an unidentified slave/body servant in Confederate uniform with a Confederate captain, which Shumard included to broach the controversial and historically inconclusive topic of black participation in the Confederate cause.

In putting together this exhibition, Shumard tried to find a balance between the content she wanted to include in order to paint as complete a picture as possible and the objects that were available. “Obviously we can’t be encyclopedic in an exhibition of this size,” she reflects, “and we can’t cover every aspect of the African American experience. But I am pleased that we were able to find such compelling representations to flesh out this fascinating story.”

—Miriam Szubin, NPG Department of Education

Images:
Sojourner Truth / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1864 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Gordon / Mathew Brady Studio, Copy after: William D. McPherson Copy after: Mr. Oliver / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham / Unidentified Artist / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

“Stampede Among the Negroes in Virginia” / Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper / Wood engraving on paper, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Ann M. Shumard

The Death of the Gallant Pelham

March 17 marks 150 years since the death of Confederate artillery officer John Pelham at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia. 

Young men from both sides of the conflict hurried toward the war, that they might fight and achieve the glory they had sought so desperately since they first read Ivanhoe, perhaps, or Morte d’Arthur.  Some left farms, some left shops in the city, many left wives and children, and a few left school, in an age when eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year old men were more likely to be employed than still about their studies.

The class of 1861, West Point, was a different case altogether.  Some were sons of the Confederacy, others sons of the Union, but they all wanted to enter the fray and make their mark immediately.  The choice to leave or to finish their studies at the United States Military Academy was not an easy one.  The West Point education—an automatic ticket to the upper echelon of American military leadership— was not an opportunity to forego lightly.

John Pelham of Alabama was one of the young men forced to make such a difficult choice.  Pelham was to graduate West Point with the class of 1861 when the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter.  Among Pelham’s classmates was George Armstrong Custer, a brave if not excessively vain young fighter who would rise through the ranks quickly, only to be outmatched and cut down at Little Big Horn.  Of those in that class of 1861, Custer did not have a monopoly on bravery and flair.  John Pelham was certainly Custer’s equal, if not in many ways his better.

Pelham had been one of the wonder cadets at West Point, excelling in many areas of study.  He also brought with him no small amount of charm.  In his history of that famous academy class, Sacred Ties, From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War, Tom Carhart notes, he was “an excellent horseman… and was quite the dancer.”    

Leaving the military academy without waiting for graduation, Pelham joined the rebel army; his service was duly noted, especially his performance at the battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862.  Fighting an overwhelming number of oncoming federal forces, Pelham, himself, with the aid of his few surviving artillery men, successfully held the ground and stalled a Union incursion.  At the site of the battle, Robert E. Lee stated, “It is glorious to see such courage in one so young.”

Fredericksburg was a great victory for Lee; it was the first of two of Lee’s successive strikes against the greater Union army.  The fight at Chancellorsville, in late April and early May of 1863, would be Lee’s second successful initiative against Union opposition during this phase of the war.  In the larger battle at Chancellorsville, Lee would lose one of his key advisors and strategists, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  Before that battle, in a bit of a less tempestuous fray at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia, on March 17, Lee would also lose one of his significant operatives.

Carhart describes the scene of John Pelham’s final fight:

When Pelham arrived on the scene of the battle, his artillery had not yet come up, though he had sent for it.  The most commonly told story of what followed has the 3^rd Virginia forming up for attack, and Pelham staying by them or riding with them, standing up in his stirrups, waving his hat or his sword and cheering them on:  “Forward! Forward!” But soon after those words left his lips, a Yankee shell exploded above and behind him, and a piece of shrapnel, later said to be the size of the end of one’s finger, pierced the back of his head at the hairline.  The charge by the 3^rd went on as Pelham fell from his horse.

The gallant Pelham never knew and never awakened.  He would be mourned by thousands as he lay in state in Richmond, and from there he would be taken home to Alabama where he would be buried in his home town of Jacksonville.  Young girls from Virginia and Alabama would weep at the loss of this brave and handsome southern officer, while the Confederate leadership would view this loss as a significant one.  Major John Pelham’s star had burned brightly, but briefly for his cause.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

John Pelham / Mathew B. Brady / Half-plate ambrotype, 1858 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Carhart, Tom.  Sacred Ties, From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War.  New York: Berkley Caliber (a division of Penguin Books), 2010.

150 Years Ago Today, January 1, 1863

Emancipation Proclamation

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

 

Image: Abraham Lincoln by Thomas Le Mere (Mathew Brady Studio, active 1844-1894).  Photograph (1863) from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

 

The Battle for Fredericksburg, Part II

It was not so much about the number of men as it was about the lay of the land.  Had the battle of Fredericksburg been about the numbers, the Union army would have easily won the day.  Geography, however, provided the advantage for the Confederate army.  On December 13, 1862, Robert E. Lee’s army would be outnumbered by at least thirty thousand men, though rebel fortifications atop Marye’s Heights and adjacent hillsides south of the town would give them a keen strategic advantage.

More soldiers were at Fredericksburg than any other battle of the Civil War.  About 200,000 men—slightly less than today’s population of Richmond, Virginia—fought in this battle, and the Confederate victory stopped Ambrose Burnside’s march to Richmond.   Abraham Lincoln, seeking a success before the onset of winter, was disappointed in the sorry conclusion to a difficult year.  Both sides would use the months until spring to regroup forces and plan for the next campaign.

As with so many battles in this war, Fredericksburg saw the contributions of many skilled officers and courageous soldiers.  One of the stories to emerge from the battle was that of Confederate major John Pelham (right) who would survive this battle, only to fall a few month’s later at Kelly’s Ford.  Civil War historian Herman Hattaway writes of Pelham, “He was a favorite of General Lee’s who had nicknamed him the Gallant.  Now… with two artillery pieces, Pelham held the Union thrust in check for a critical thirty minutes.” 

Pelham’s immediate commanding officer, JEB Stuart, ordered the young man to retreat with his artillery, but Pelham held his ground until one cannon was disabled by Union fire and the other ran out of ammunition.  General Lee commented at this moment, seeing Pelham’s stand against two dozen large federal artillery pieces, “It is glorious to see such courage in one so young.”

The Union general who met with the most success that day was George Meade (right), whose division managed to partially penetrate Stonewall Jackson’s command within the Confederate line until, as Hattaway again notes, “Inadequately supported… they could not hold the ground they took, which was regained by a counterattack under the leadership of Brigadier Generals Jubal Early and A. P. Hill.”  Beyond Meade’s thin moment, the northern forces were left with nothing to celebrate at the battle’s conclusion.

The Battle of Fredericksburg is also responsible for bringing the voice of Walt Whitman (below) into the war.  Arriving from New York after the battle, Whitman searched for his brother, George, who was wounded during the conflict.  It was then that Whitman chose to stay in the area, settling into Washington and volunteering his time at the military hospitals of the city, among them the hospital in the Patent Office building, now the home to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum.  His work brought him face to face with the soldiers who were wounded and dying from both sides of the fight. 

Whitman, it is thought, visited with more than 100,000 men in his volunteer time, and these visits and these men’s experiences are the subject matter for much of his Civil War journals and poetry.  The war evoked much passion from Whitman and his time in Washington provided him with another subject for his work; Whitman was fascinated with Abraham Lincoln and his most well known works of poetry would serve to commemorate the sixteenth president.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Robert E. Lee / Edward Caledon Bruce / Oil on canvas, 1864-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Pelham / Mathew B. Brady / Half-plate ambrotype, 1858 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

George Gordon Meade / Unidentified artist / Albumen silver print. c. 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Walt Whitman (31 May 1819 - 26 Mar 1892) / Samuel Hollyer (1826 - 1919), Copy after:  Gabriel Harrison, (1818 - 1902) /Stipple engraving on paper,  1854-1855 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

 

Cited:
Hattaway, Herman.  Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War.  Columbia (Missouri): University Press, 1997.                 

The Battle of Fredericksburg, Part I: Burnside and the Road to Richmond

General George McClellan spent a lot of time fretting about how to get at the Confederate heart in Richmond in the spring and summer of 1862, but his campaign failed. Antietam, though not a setback, was certainly not the great victory for which President Abraham Lincoln had hoped. Lincoln, dissatisfied with the general’s performance, bid goodbye to him in October of 1862 and replaced him with Ambrose Burnside; Burnside had no intention of his mission being misinterpreted. Burnside wanted to take Richmond.

Cooked into his notions of taking the Confederate capital was also some hope of recovering his reputation from a slippery performance at Antietam. Burnside planned to plow the distance between Washington and Richmond with his McClellan-trained Army of the Potomac. Halfway between these two cities Richmond lay embedded his one big obstacle—the Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of Robert E. Lee. With well over 100,000 men, Burnside had a head of steam and was prepared to confront Lee until he came to his first great challenge—the Rappahannock River, which ran west-to-east on the north side of Fredericksburg.

Although the Rappahannock was by no means a large river, it was sufficiently cold and sufficiently deep to heel the momentum of such a large force. The river cost Burnside time, and this would figure greatly into the outcome of the battle. While Burnside was compelled to fritter away valuable hours and days attempting to conduct his troops across the water, Lee had a surfeit of time to entrench his own men into what would be the best strategic defensive position he would ever enjoy.

Burnside, handpicked by Lincoln to conduct, and if possible, to close out the war, found himself stopped in the cold early December of 1862, waiting for his engineers to provide him with pontoons for crossing the Rappahannock. As Burnside waited, imagining a decisive victory at Richmond in the weeks to come, Lee’s army, some 70,000 rebels, dug in behind stone walls, mounted artillery on hillsides, and prepared to sacrifice the growing trade town of Fredericksburg in order to prevent the loss of the Confederate capital.

As an aside to all this, a young officer in the Union army, George Washington Whitman, the brother of a poet from New York City, would play a tangential role in bringing that brother into the forefront of the war’s service, the war’s journals, and ultimately, into the way the United States would memorialize the war through poetry. This battle would also lead the young poet into the building that would later come to contain the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum.

—E. Warren Perry Jr., Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Ambrose Everett Burnside / Manchester & Brother Studio / Ninth-plate ambrotype, c. 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

An Angel, a Bridge, and an Emancipation: The Aftermath of Antietam

The third in a three-part series on the 150th commemorative anniversary of the Battle of Antietam

Burnside's Bridge, Antietam National Battlefield, Photo by Warren Perry

The battlefield at Antietam is spread out over a dozen square miles, and at irregular intervals there are markers where men from different parts of the United States, north and south, fought and died.  There are markers and monuments where Robert E. Lee pitched his tent and where men from both sides struggled at the place now called “Bloody Lane.”

There is also a monument on the field where Clara Barton (left) served, noting that she “brought supplies and nursing to the wounded.”  The inscription also reads, “This act of love and mercy led to the birth of the present American National Red Cross.”

Clara Barton was not the only one who served the troops that day, September 17, 1862.  Future American president William McKinley was a commissary officer during the battle of Antietam.  McKinley was tasked with providing meals and drink to the federal forces under fire at the site which would eventually become known as Burnside’s Bridge. 

This bridge over Antietam Creek was at the center of fire between Confederate defenders on the west and Major General Ambrose Burnside’s (below) troops on the east; early in the afternoon, the bridge fell to Union control.

Though the battle concluded with no distinguishable victor, Antietam would assume even greater resonance in later years; the horror of Antietam gave Abraham Lincoln the impetus to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which subsequently linked the war directly to the plight of the slaves.  The preliminary Emancipation was issued on September 22, 1862, just five days after the battle. 

As Civil War historian and Antietam park ranger John David Hoptak notes, no less than eight American presidents are connected to the battlefield.  Both McKinley and Lincoln were serving the nation as, respectively, soldier and president during their time on the field, while the remaining six visited the site in tribute.  John F. Kennedy toured the site in the spring of 1963, viewed Burnside’s bridge, and re-dedicated the American purpose of freedom there on the battlefield.  Jimmy Carter was the last president to see Antietam on an official visit in 1978.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Clara Barton / John Sartain, / Engraving on paper, 1882 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Ambrose Everett Burnside,/ Unidentified Artist / Hand-colored steel engraving (proof), undated / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:
The 48th Pennsylvania Infantry. . . An On-Line Journal Dedicated to a Civil War Regiment

Antietam: The Worst of Days, September 17, 1862

The second in a three-part series on the 150^th commemorative anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.

Antietam National Battlefield, photo by Warren Perry

The discovery by Federal soldiers of Robert E. Lee’s primary directive of troop movements would have been a calamity had it been discovered by soldiers under the command of anyone other than George McClellan. However, McClellan, typically, was lethargic and cautious, giving Lee sufficient time to avoid the disaster that would ordinarily have been the result of such error.

At South Mountain on September 14, McClellan was able to deliver a blow that would force Lee to stand at Sharpsburg rather than continue his northward operation. This was by no means the final punch McClellan could have struck, had he acted with greater haste.

As the battle developed from early on the morning of September 17, Antietam rapidly turned into a large-scale horror, eventually claiming the lives of more than 3,600 men from both sides, with the count of wounded and missing totaling another 19,000 men.

The generals McClellan had in place to halt Lee’s progress formed a roll call of the most recognizable leaders in the Army of the Potomac. Early in the day, large commands under Major Generals Joseph Hooker (above), Joseph Mansfield, and John Sedgwick (right) swept in from the north and east. Mansfield would be killed by Confederate fire before the morning was over; Sedgwick would also be taken down by a Confederate bullet, but not until spring of 1864.

It was a long, bloody, and difficult day; there had been many such days in the war, but this one was particularly savage. Per Civil War scholar Bruce Catton:

Tactically, the battle was a draw. The Federals attacked savagely all day long, forcing the Confederates to give ground but never quite compelling the army to retreat, and when Lee’s battered army held its position next day, McClellan did not renew the attack. But on the night of September 18 Lee took his worn-out army back to Virginia. Strategically, the battle had been a Northern victory of surpassing importance. The Southern campaign of invasion had failed. The Federals had regained the initiative. Europe’s statesmen, watching, relaxed: the time to extend recognition had not arrived, after all.

One year and five months after the war’s beginning at Fort Sumter, with thousands of lives taken, the nation remained divided and at a draw. Each side, however, had a few cards to play before it folded. Robert E. Lee had one more trip north in his future, while Abraham Lincoln, more immediately, planned to issue a proclamation that would have more impact on the future of America than any document since the Declaration of Independence.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Joseph Hooker, / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Sedgwick / Mathew Brady Studio / Wet-collodion negative, 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection

Cited:
Bruce Catton, The Civil War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1960).

Going to Antietam: Invading a Peaceful Place

The first of a three-part series on the Battle of Antietam.

The verdant, rolling hills of Maryland gave way to the mountains of Appalachia in a region occupied by tiny hamlets and large fields, by farmers and families who mostly wanted to straddle the geopolitical fence that had become the line between the North and the South—the Mason-Dixon Line. Like so many people across the divided nation, they were also divided, living in a slave state but not wanting to secede from the Union. And though they tried to avoid the war, in September of 1862 the war came to them.

After his victory at Manassas in late August, Robert E. Lee (right) marched his men north. Lee wanted to take the war out of Virginia, a state that had played host to most of the fighting in the east. He also sought provisions for his men; Maryland and Pennsylvania, he thought, were more likely to yield succor than his strapped homeland.

This Confederate effort had embedded within it political goals as well—there were hopes of shaping the 1862 elections in the North such that a new Congress would sue for peace. The South also sought recognition from England as a sovereign state, and a major victory over the North might hasten that event.

The Army of Northern Virginia under Lee and the Army of the Potomac under General George McClellan once again prepared to do battle, this time in western Maryland, near a small town named Sharpsburg, by a creek called Antietam.

Lee’s plan was complex, as he divided his army and sent it off into several directions. The army had been encamped at Frederick, Maryland, since September 7 and found nothing of assistance to its cause—either volunteers, food, or other supplies.

Special Order 191—one of the most famous orders in American military history—was issued on September 9. Historian Frederick Tilberg writes of that order:

Lee decided to accomplish this mission by boldly dividing his army into four parts. . . . Briefly, it directed Major General James Longstreet and Major General D. H. Hill to proceed across South Mountain toward Boonsboro and Hagerstown. Three columns under Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson were ordered to converge on Harpers Ferry from the northwest, northeast, and east. En route, the column under Jackson’s immediate command was to swing westward and capture any Federals remaining at Martinsburg. Major General Lafayette McLaws, approaching from the northeast, was to occupy Maryland Heights, which overlooks Harpers Ferry from the north side of the Potomac. Brigadier General John Walker, approaching from the east, was to occupy Loudon Heights, across the Shenandoah River from Harpers Ferry. Major General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry was to screen these movements from McClellan by remaining east of South Mountain.

And as Tilberg precisely describes the plan, so went Lee’s order—have the army split into four prongs, with three of those groups sweeping into Harpers Ferry from almost every cardinal point. After this, they were to capture the men and supplies at Harpers Ferry and move north to support Longstreet (right) and Hill, who by now would be occupying Hagerstown, just south of the Pennsylvania state line.

It was a good plan; it truly was. And once his forces had been augmented by provisions and reinforcements, there would be battle—battle again with McClellan, a man whose deliberation and tardy approach to war Lee counted on for a mighty southern success in this expedition.

There was, however, one thing that General Lee did not count on.

Robert E. Lee did not count on General George McClellan’s men finding a copy of Special Order 191.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

James Ewell Brown Stuart / Unidentified artist, copy after: Vannerson & Jones, (Photographer) / Engraving on paper, c. 1861-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Stonewall Jackson / Adam B. Walter copy after: Nathaniel Routzahn, 1828 - 1908(Photographer) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Robert Edward Lee / Edward & Henry T. Anthony & Company / Albumen silver print, c. 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

James Longstreet / J. L. Giles / Lithograph with tintstone on pape, c. 1868 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:
Antietam (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service Historical Handbook Series, 1960).

 

August 28-30, 1862: Return to Manassas, Prelude to Antietam

The summer of 1862 was a violent game of chess. Each army was vying for the best position to threaten and, eventually, to suppress the other. Stonewall Jackson kept the Federal army occupied in the Shenandoah Valley while George McClellan’s presence in the East took a mighty toll on the Confederate forces protecting Richmond. Meanwhile, large divisions of both armies also sought to outmatch each other in northern Mississippi and other places in the western theater of the war.

More leaders and personalities emerged from these clashes. The southern cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, had led 1,200 troops in an epic scouting mission around McClellan’s army during June 1862, and he was already part of the increasing southern lore. The master strategist Stonewall Jackson was also assuming his place in the myths emanating from the conflict. Jackson’s stand at Manassas the previous year had earned him his nickname “Stonewall,” and his ability to elude those in pursuit during the Shenandoah Valley campaign further ensconced him in the southern legacy.

Beginning in mid-August, the Confederate forces began positioning themselves again in the areas west of Washington, occupying places familiar to both armies—the fertile Virginia farmlands north of the Rappahannock and east of the Shenandoah Valley. The fight that was about to commence would culminate on grounds which had only the previous year served to host the initial large-scale hostilities in Northern Virginia. The blood on the fields at Bull Run was dry by August 1862, but the sacrament was about to be renewed.

The Union forces in Virginia included two main armies, one under the command of John Pope to the west of Washington and another under George McClellan to the south. Pope (right) was being pursued by Robert E. Lee’s troops, while McClellan’s Army of the Potomac moved toward Washington, having failed in its attempt to take Richmond during the course of the summer.

Beginning with skirmishes on the perimeter and then concluding on the fields at Manassas proper, Pope’s army fought for two days in late August, only to surrender the field to Lee in a conflict that involved 125,000 men. At the conclusion of the second engagement on this field, more than 3,000 men from both armies were killed, and as Civil War historian E. B. Long notes, “Once more, Confederate armies stood near Washington.”

Robert E. Lee (top), the victor on this day, would now begin to think in terms of a military offensive onto his enemy’s soil. His subsequent invasion of western Maryland in September of 1862 would conclude in the most visceral action of the war at a little-known creek in Maryland—Antietam.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Robert E. Lee / Edward Caledon Bruce / Oil on canvas, 1864-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Pope / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:
Long, E. B.  The Civil War Day by Day.  New York: De Capo, 1971.  

 

Robert E. Lee: Early Victories, Raising Confederate Hopes

The South was outgunned from the beginning of the war. The victory at Bull Run in late summer of 1861 had given way to discouraging moments at Forts Donelson and Henry in February of 1862, and later that spring at Shiloh. However, by the summer of 1862, Stonewall Jackson had successfully given the Federal army a severe runaround in the Shenandoah Valley, and Richmond had survived a sustained attack by General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.  Also, as of June 1, the Confederate forces in Virginia had a new commander—Robert E. Lee.

Lee was a trained soldier, having graduated second in his class at West Point; he was also a golden child of Virginia, born into the family of an American Revolutionary War hero and wed to Martha Washington’s great granddaughter. The chronicler of Lee’s memoirs, A. L. Long, writes of Lee’s character:

In the year 1829, at the completion of his four years’ course, he graduated, bearing off the second highest honors of the institution. During his whole course he never received a demerit for any breach of rules or neglect of duty. He was highly esteemed by his comrades, and was noted for studious habits and commendable conduct. He avoided tobacco and intoxicating liquors, used no profane or immoral language, and throughout his whole student life performed no act which his pious mother could not have fully approved.

Lee was the archetypal southern gentleman, complete with the damning flaw of many southern gentlemen of his day—slave ownership. Entering the service of the United States, Lee served gallantly during the Mexican War and later would become superintendent of the United States Military Academy (1852–55). It was at the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South that Lee made the decision to back Virginia and the Confederacy over the United States.

After he assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s first task was to put down McClellan’s drive toward Richmond. And though ultimately McClellan failed, the casualties on the southern side were great. Still, as E. B. Long notes in his tome The Civil War Day by Day, by July 1861 “The war had changed sharply. . . . The string of Northern victories had ended. While the South was still in a sense at bay, there was more cause for hope.”

Indeed, the remainder of 1862 provided the Southern cause with major victories at Second Bull Run in late August and at Fredericksburg in mid-December. Lee’s major setback during this time was at Antietam in September, as he tried to take the fight onto Union soil by entering Maryland.

The victory at Fredericksburg provided Lee’s army with momentum as it entered 1863, and Lee would once again fight his way onto Union lands; however, if Fredericksburg was the zenith of Lee’s leadership and genius, what awaited him at Gettysburg in July of 1863 would prove to be his nadir.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

 

Robert E. Lee / Edward & Henry T. Anthony & Company / Albumen silver print, c. 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:
A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (Secaucus, N.J.: The Blue and Grey Press, 1983).

E. B. Long, The Civil War Day by Day (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971).

 

Stonewall Jackson and the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862

Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a warrior. Prior to the Civil War, he had taught the science of war at the Virginia Military Institute. As a leader of warriors from the beginning of the Civil War until his death in May 1863, Jackson was intelligent and respected. He had earned his nickname “Stonewall” at the first Battle of Manassas, where his troops held the field at a pivotal point in the battle.

Jackson was also a spiritual man. He believed in the holiness of his cause, as evidenced in his letter to the Reverend Dr. Francis McFarland in July 1862. Only weeks after his tactical successes in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, Jackson wrote, “Please continue to pray for me and for the success of the troops entrusted to me. It cheers my heart to think that many of God’s people are praying to our very kind Heavenly Father for the success of the army to which I belong.” Jackson continued, imploring the reverend, “I trust that you will under God’s direction do what you can in securing the prayers of His people for the success of our arms” and noted that his trust was “in God for success.” And although he did so when his hand was forced, Jackson did not believe in fighting on Sunday.

Stonewall Jackson, warrior and Christian, was a simple man on the surface, but his way of war was anything but simple. In the spring of 1862, Jackson and his troops punched and hammered away at the Union army. The recalcitrant Jackson eluded the federals sent to subdue the Shenandoah Valley, and he simultaneously provided a diversion that occupied northern troops who were needed in General George McClellan’s attack on Richmond. Historian John S. Salmon describes Jackson’s dramatic impact on the southern war effort:

During a period of about five weeks, Jackson and his 17,000-man “foot cavalry” defeated three Federal armies totaling 52,000 troops. He inflicted about 7,000 casualties while suffering about 2,500. He and his men marched roughly 650 miles and fought several battles, Jackson upset Lincoln and McClellan’s plans, made his name famous throughout the country, and aided the Confederate defensive effort at Richmond. Luck and skill had combined to give him a brilliant strategic victory.

 At Kernstown, Front Royal, Winchester, and Port Republic, Stonewall Jackson’s efforts breathed new life into the Confederacy, which had suffered recently in the West at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, and Shiloh. With speed, resilience, and knowledge of the Shenandoah Valley terrain, Jackson further proved himself to be one of the South’s most capable and courageous generals.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Thomas Jonathan Jackson / J. W. King, copy after:  George W. Minnis / Oil on canvas, 1864 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; given in memory of Lieselotte Richardson

Thomas Jonathan Jackson / H. B. Hull / Sixth-plate daguerreotype, 1855 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Letter of Thomas Jackson, July 31, 1862, to the Reverend Dr. Francis McFarland, from the Virginia Military Institute digital archives, cited at http://www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=9317

John S. Salmon, “Land Operations in Virginia,” in Virginia at War: 1862, ed. William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007).

The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862

Like so many of our nation’s battlefields that have been preserved and maintained by the United States National Park Service, Shiloh, located in southwest Tennessee, is a place of great beauty and peace. However, like all battlefields, Shiloh is a place where armies were embroiled in an awful and bloody struggle, where men fought close and died close, and where many men and boys gathered their last views of life amidst smoke, screams, and horror. For all of the peace and the pastoral beauty that Shiloh exudes today, it is difficult to believe that for two days in 1862 it was a hellish place.

For his victorious work at Forts Henry and Donelson, General Ulysses Grant (above) was given a large command, and while waiting for troops under General Don Carlos Buell to reinforce him, he began to occupy the site at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. A small country church nearby was named Shiloh, from whence the ensuing battle derived its name. On what would have otherwise been a typical coupling of sunny and rainy spring days in a verdant southern setting, many soldiers and officers of immense talent were deployed on a battlefield that would yield almost 24,000 casualties—killed, missing, and wounded.

Confederate generals Albert Sidney Johnston (right) and Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard jointly attacked Grant’s forces early on the morning of April 6. While the initial assault on the Federal troops camped at Pittsburg Landing came as a surprise, Grant’s troops were able to hold off the Confederates until the following day, when Buell’s troops arrived to reinforce Grant and his men. Before the day was done, Johnston would bleed to death from a bullet to his right leg.

Among Grant’s generals on the field at Shiloh were two Wallaces—no relation—W. H. L. Wallace, and Lew Wallace. W. H. L. Wallace would lose his life as a result of wounds from the battle, while Lew Wallace, failing to reinforce William T. Sherman’s troops in a timely fashion, would be partially blamed for Union losses on the battle’s first day.

Lew Wallace (left) would serve the United States government for many years after Shiloh, both as a diplomat and statesman. He never received full credit for his generalship, however, even though a strong possibility existed that he had received nebulous orders from General Grant that caused the errors on the battlefield. However, Lew Wallace is not so much remembered for his service to his country as he is for his single great literary accomplishment: Wallace authored the historical novel Ben Hur.

Another participant of note in the Battle of Shiloh was the young schoolteacher John Wesley Powell. Powell was an anomaly among the troops of either army. He could read and write, and he was also schooled in Latin and Greek. Powell was hit in the right arm while commanding a battery of cannon, and W. H. L. Wallace, doomed to be struck down that afternoon, gave his horse to Powell in order for him to seek medical aid.

Powell later explored the American West, led the United States Geological Survey, worked as an ethnologist for the Smithsonian, and co-founded one of Washington, D.C.’s most famous intellectual institutions, the Cosmos Club. Powell accomplished all of this with a stunning impediment; his right arm was amputated as a result of the wound he received at Shiloh..

With reinforcements at hand, Grant was able to overturn the southern advances made on April 6 the next day and secure a bloody victory, if only because the southern army was compelled to leave the field and retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. Civil War historian Shelby Foote summarizes the battle:

Union losses were 1754 killed, 8408 wounded, 2885 captured: total, 13,047—about 2000 of them Buell’s. Confederate losses were 1723 killed, 8012 wounded, 959 missing: total, 10,694. Of the 100,000 soldiers engaged in this first great bloody conflict of the war, approximately one out of every four who had gone into battle had been killed, wounded, or captured. Casualties were 24 percent, the same as Waterloo’s. Yet Waterloo had settled something, while this one apparently had settled nothing.

And while this fight may have settled nothing immediately, this thin victory and southern capitulation would provide the Federal army with a keen path toward the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the summer of 1863, at which time the western theater of the Deep South would be effectively removed from the war.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Ulysses Simpson Grant / Barr & Young / Albumen silver print, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Albert Sidney Johnston / Edward Anthony / Albumen silver print, 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution 

Lewis Wallace / Charles DeForest Fredricks / Albumen silver print, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. F.B. Wilde 

John Wesley Powell and Tau-Ruv / John K. Hillers / Albumen silver print, 1874 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (New York: Random House, 1958). 

February 6–16, 1862: The Rise of Ulysses Grant and the Fall of Forts Henry and Donelson

Ulysses S. Grant (above) began life as Ulysses Hiram Grant, but because of a mix-up on his West Point application and acceptance, he would afterwards be known as Ulysses S. Grant. It was simply a mistake on the part of the recommending congressman, but it would stay with Grant the rest of his days. His heroics would be recorded under that name—Ulysses S.—and not his given name. The chapters in his life beginning with February of 1862 were to yield another moniker altogether: “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

Early 1862 brought the need for action to the federal armies in the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys. In February, General Henry Halleck ordered Grant to reduce Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson, a much more defendable entity, on the Cumberland River, both in northwest Tennessee. On February 6, Grant brought the war to the poorly prepared Fort Henry and it was taken in less than two hours, mainly by the actions of United States Navy Flag Officer Andrew Foote (right).

Over the next ten days, Grant brought 15,000 troops east to Fort Donelson (the sister fort of Henry—some dozen miles away by the thin strip of land separating the two rivers) and the battle for it began on February 13. After being reinforced with several thousand more troops, Grant was able to take Fort Donelson; the terms of capitulation were simply “unconditional and immediate surrender.”

Fort Donelson, photograph by Warren Perry

Grant’s army would fight one of the bloodiest battles of the war at Shiloh within two months of this victory at Donelson. They would be at Vicksburg to lay siege to that city in the late spring and early summer of the following year. The last sword to be handed to Grant in unconditional surrender would be yet another three springs beyond that upcoming season of war in 1862.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Ulysses Simpson Grant / Ole Peter Hansen Balling / Oil on canvas, 1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Andrew Hull Foote / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

1862: Bloody Momentum

What Abraham Lincoln could never know, as 1861 closed its curtains, was what the second act of the Civil War would bring. The characters and the scenery would change rapidly in the coming year. The two generals whose signatures would conclude the war at Appomattox—Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee—would each make substantial contributions to their respective causes in 1862.

In the first six weeks of the new year, Grant (above) would begin his ascent up the ladder of command by vanquishing the Confederate forces at Forts Henry and Donelson in west Tennessee. Lee would be made commander of the southern army on June 1, 1862, and he would conclude the year with an impressive victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Grant and Lee added to the roster of talented West Point graduates embroiled in the fight. And while Grant had never achieved much of merit outside of the military, Lee (below) had a fortune and a family name. Lee was taller than Grant, but Grant, at five feet eight inches, was not a short man for his day. Lee is credited with being more elegant and handsome, though, as Harold Holzer notes, “Lee had by this time lost much hair, and what remained had turned grey.” And though both men have been immortalized in equestrian statuary, Grant’s horsemanship is thought to have been one of his strongest assets.

Of Robert E. Lee's military pedigree, his general and memoirist A. L. Long writes:

From the date of its origin members of the family have gained distinction as warriors, until, through Launcelot Lee, Lionel Lee, and "Light-horse Harry," the culminating point is reached in Robert E. Lee, the greatest commander of modern times, and a military genius who may fairly be placed in comparison with the noted captains of the world as in some respects the noblest and ablest of them all.

Adjectives like “noble” are usually not assigned to Ulysses Grant. Often comparisons are made between Lee and Grant as they appeared at Appomattox; Lee is usually described as resplendent while Grant is pictured as grizzled and war-torn. How Ulysses Grant is depicted by historians matters significantly less than the single word that describes him at the end of the war: victorious.  

The war picked up speed and intensity in 1862, and as it did, both generals' roles would be increased. After Forts Henry and Donelson, large and horrible battles would be fought at Shiloh, Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. The war, by the end of 1862, was fought from Maryland to Missouri and from the Gulf Coast to the Shenandoah Valley.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Ulysses S. Grant / Samuel Bell Waugh / Oil on canvas, 1869 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Robert E. Lee / Edward Caledon Bruce / Oil on canvas, 1864-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Harold Holzer, "Virginians See Their War," in Virginia at War: 1862, ed. William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007)

A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History (reprint; Secaucus, N.J.: Blue and Grey Press, 1983).

The Atlantic Commemorative Civil War Issue, Featuring Portraits from NPG

“Lincoln is a president I turn to often…” begins President Barack Obama’s essay in the current Atlantic Civil War commemorative issue.  This edition, to released today, features a special partnership with the National Portrait Gallery in which NPG Civil War images, as well as images from other Civil War collections, are paired with original Atlantic features by such writers as Mark Twain, Charles Francis Adams, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Of the many excellent moments in this journal, the first is a short essay by President Obama in which he discusses one of the NPG’s prize works, the portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner in which the photographic plate is cracked.

NPG Historian David C. Ward and Associate Curator of Photographs Frank Goodyear selected the images and worked with the editors of The Atlantic to place them in historical context. Ward and Goodyear note, “In the writings from The Atlantic and photographs from the National Portrait Gallery . . . one can see a people grappling to make sense of life in the cauldron of war. And one can see, in hesitant and undeveloped ways, the emergence of the modern United States of America.”

In late 2010, Ward gave a tour of the NPG “Hide/Seek” exhibition to the Atlantic editors (Ward was a co-curator of the exhibition). Members of The Atlantic staff returned for a visit to the Patent Office Building and the NPG collections.

“That tour sparked the idea of a cooperative venture in which the magazine drew on the NPG’s intellectual and artistic resources in publishing its commemorative issue on the Civil War. Both sides are very pleased with how things worked and hope to do more of this kind of collaborative programming and publishing in the future,” Ward said.

The 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War is being remembered by institutions across the nation in many ways. Few of them, however, have the memory of the Smithsonian or the Atlantic; fewer still have visual and written archives of America’s most divisive years.

Since the magazine’s inception in 1857, it has documented and commented on America’s progress, status, and past, while the Smithsonian’s mission—“the increase and diffusion of knowledge”—and its collections, such as the Civil War holdings, tell the story of the country’s past through its material culture.

Perspectives in this commemorative issue and the accompanying images are diverse and resonant, and many of the photographs—the scars on the back of the beaten slave, the bodies of dead soldiers in the field at Antietam—implore the viewer to seek out a higher meaning in the horror. President Obama characterizes Abraham Lincoln in terms of this imperative when he writes, “But Lincoln saw beyond the bloodshed and division. He saw us not only as we were, but as we might be. And he calls on us through the ages to commit ourselves to the unfinished work he so nobly advanced—the work of perfecting our Union.” 

 

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1865/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Gordon / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Lincoln and McClellan: An Army Ready for War

The Grand Review of the Troops, November 20, 1861

The Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac in November 1861 was the culmination of months of recruitment, training, and effort.  Recently, we spoke with National Portrait Gallery historian James Barber concerning the massive parade of troops.

Q: What was the significance of the Grand Review of the Troops on November 20, 1861?

A: In an effort to rebuilt the shattered Union army after its demoralizing defeat and chaotic retreat during the First Bull Run campaign, President Abraham Lincoln in the late summer and fall of 1861 appointed General George B. McClellan general and chief of all Federal armies, replacing the venerable Winfield Scott.

Energetic and supremely self-confident, McClellan, 34, set to work, and after nearly four months he was ready to show the president and the nation the fruits of his organizational prowess. On the afternoon of November 20, McClellan presided over a Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac in the northern Virginia countryside near Bailey’s Crossroads.

For three hours some 70,000 polished troops marched passed the reviewing stand, where the president, members of his cabinet, and Washington dignitaries were in attendance. It was the largest military assemblage up to that time in North America.  “The Grand Review went off splendidly,” wrote McClellan that night in a letter to his wife, “not a mistake was made, not a hitch. I never saw so large a Review in Europe so well done—I was completely satisfied & delighted beyond expression.”

Q: How does Julia Ward Howe tie into this event?

A: Among the 20,000 spectators to witness the Grand Review was the poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, who was visiting the Washington area with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.

After leaving the review, during the carriage ride back to Washington, she heard troops singing the song “John Brown’s Body.” A companion suggested that she should write new lyrics to the song, the melody of which lingered in her mind that night in her room at Willard’s Hotel in Washington. She awoke “in the gray of the morning twilight” with the song still in her head and “the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.” She arose quickly and in the dimness of the early hour she began scribbling the verses on stationery “almost without looking at the paper.”

Her poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was first published in The Atlantic Monthly on February 1862; the magazine paid her five dollars. Soon thereafter her verse was set to music and her inspirational song became a wartime favorite, and is still popular today.

Julia Ward Howe / Sarah Choate Sears / Photogravure, 1907 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Champions of the Union / Currier & Ives Lithography Company / Lithograph with tintstone on paper, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

A New Man in Charge: George B. McClellan (Part 3)

McClellan at War with the South, and with Lincoln

George Brinton McClellan ascended to the command of the Union army partially as a result of his own self-promotion, but mostly due to General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s trust in his former protégé. McClellan biographer Stephen Sears notes, "It was . . . no surprise that with the firing on Fort Sumter George McClellan quickly became the most sought-after former officer in the North. By the time the war was a month old he was . . . outranked in the United States service only by the general in chief himself."

Winfield Scott’s service to the United States was meritorious, and his judgment was widely respected. McClellan had served under Scott during the Mexican-American War, wherein—as C. J. Prime writes in the introduction to McClellan’s autobiography, McClellan’s Own Story—“he was brevetted first lieutenant for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, captain for Chapultepec.”

McClellan was a young star arcing toward the zenith when he served in Mexico; he then served the army by instructing at West Point (1848–51), working on a survey team in the far western United States (1852–54), and monitoring and recording the status of several European armies while on the Delafield Commission (1855–56).

As an observer on that venture, McClellan and two other soldiers witnessed action in the Crimean War. Upon their return, they provided the United States Army with information on the behaviors of those European armies. One of McClellan’s more impressive academic feats took place in the assembly of his report. Stephen Sears records:

His colleagues were to focus on their specialties . . . while he dealt more generally with the organization of Europe’s principal armies, paying particular attention to engineer troops and cavalry. He had brought back with him from Europe nearly a hundred books and manuals on topics ranging from field rations to veterinary medicine. With his facility for languages, those in French and German posed no problems; for those in Russian he simply set out to teach himself the language. . . . Less than three months after embarking on his study, he had translated on 300-page Russian volume and was starting on a second. As a result, his description of the Russian army was the most comprehensive available to American readers.

George B. McClellan was a smart man.

In the years just before the war, he had left the army to become a railroad executive, but then the call to duty brought him back to serve his country. It was only a matter of time before he would rise to supplant his old boss.

McClellan was young—thirty-four at the war’s onset—as well as talented and ambitious. Scott (right) was much older—seventy-four when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter—and was, as accounts say, too fat to ride a horse. Winfield Scott had had his day. Actually, he had had many days, as he had served in the United States military since Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.

McClellan’s thinking seemed to be that if ever it was time for the young to put the old under a shawl and into a porch chair, this was it. Scott retired on November 1, 1861; McClellan then became general-in-chief of all federal armies.

McClellan then went to war on two fronts. First, and less effectively, he was the agent responsible for conducting the Civil War against the Confederate army. Second, and more bizarrely, he fought against the powers of state in Washington. He treated President Lincoln with unmitigated scorn. Military historian Edward H. Bonekemper III writes:

All too soon, McClellan began openly showing disrespect for the president. When Lincoln arranged a conference with Governor Dennison of Ohio, a Union general, and McClellan, the commanding general chose not to appear. . . . That event was followed in mid-November by an even more blatant snub of the president. On the evening of November 13, the president, [Secretary of State William] Seward, and John Hay came to McClellan’s home to confer with him. After they had waited an hour because McClellan was out, the general returned, went straight upstairs to his room and ignored their presence. When, a half hour later, the three visitors asked the servant to tell him they were waiting, the servant responded that the general had gone to bed.

George B. McClellan chose to answer to no one.

However, he was not unaware of the personalities running the rest of the American government. Bonekemper notes that McClellan’s senior intelligence officer, Allan Pinkerton, kept the general informed of political upheavals inside the capital, “using his lead spy to track events in Washington,” although “a better use of Pinkerton would have been to adequately scout the enemy.”

Time and time again, when Lincoln (right) urged him to attack, McClellan would hesitate or fail altogether to act under the excuse that Confederate numbers were greatly superior or that the time and conditions were not right for an offensive.

Bonekemper’s summary of McClellan’s character is damning, noting simply, “There is nothing in McClellan’s Civil War record to demonstrate that he had the intestinal fortitude to undertake an all-out offensive with his available troops.”

On March 11, 1862, he was relieved of command of the entire Union effort and reduced to the command—no small task—of the Army of the Potomac. Still, the need to prosecute an aggressive war was lost on McClellan.

McClellan’s failure to reinforce in a timely way the Union efforts at Second Bull Run in August 1862, and his failure to strike down Robert E. Lee’s staggering army after the bloody fighting at Antietam in September 1862, paved the way for his dismissal on November 5, 1862.

One year and four days elapsed between McClellan’s assumption of the entire command of the Union army and his complete dismissal. Stephen Sears notes, “Lincoln was straightforward and consistent in stating the military failings for which he dismissed George McClellan, and frequently considered dismissing him earlier: he was the general . . . who would not fight.”

McClellan, for all his education and experience and his efforts at assembling a war machine, would prove to be a nemesis to Abraham Lincoln, not just during the tenure of McClellan’s commands, but also as the opposing candidate for president of the United States in the 1864 election.

—Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery, Catalog of American Portraits

 

George Brinton McClellan / Mathew Brady Studio, undated / Modern albumen print from wet plate collodion negative / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Winfield Scott / Mathew Brady Studio, 1861 / Albumen silver print/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1861/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:

Edward H Bonekemper III, McClellan and Failure (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007).

George B. McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (New York: H. J. Hewitt, 1886).

Stephen W. Sears, George McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988).

A New Man in Charge: George B. McClellan (Part 2)

Part II: Young Napoleon Builds an Army

 

When Abraham Lincoln placed George McClellan in charge of the Army of the Potomac in the summer of 1861, Lincoln and others at the seat of power in Washington believed that McClellan had scored victories over the Confederate forces at several engagements in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Those parties also believed McClellan to be the man for the job of marching the Federal army into Richmond. In truth, McClellan was neither the victor they believed him to be, nor the man who would eventually put down the rebellion. McClellan was the right choice, however, to assemble the mightiest army ever to march in the Western Hemisphere.

In the early days of the war, it is generally agreed that McClellan received battlefield credit for victories he did not administer or engineer. Still, in his reports to General Winfield Scott, the ancient soldier in charge of all Union armies, McClellan served himself quite favorably, so much so that he was summoned to Washington to replace Irwin McDowell after the flawed efforts at Manassas.

Military historian Edward H. Bonekemper III writes, “The dearth of Union victories elsewhere and McClellan’s successful claim of credit for the victories at Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Corrick’s Ford catapulted him to senior command in the East.”

So George McClellan came east. On July 26, 1861, he noted that when he entered the city to take command, “Not a regiment was properly encamped, not a single avenue of approach guarded. All was chaos, and the streets, hotels, and barrooms were filled with drunken officers and men absent from their regiments without leave—a perfect pandemonium.”

He formally took over the Division of the Potomac on July 27, 1861, and, again, in his own words, “I assumed command and lost no time in acquainting myself with the situation and applying the proper remedies.”

By early November 1861, McClellan had assumed command of all the Union armies by order of President Lincoln. Less than one month later, as Stephen Sears records in George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon, he paraded the army he had built, drilled, and outfit in the four months since he had taken command:

The grandest of the grand reviews was held on November 20. Seven divisions, some 65,000 men, wheeled through their maneuvers in a scene that Harper’s Weekly called “brilliant beyond description.” It was the review of the French Imperial Guard McClellan had seen in the Crimea, multiplied many times over. Bands played and fifteen batteries of artillery crashed out salutes and massed cavalry thundered past. President Lincoln, Cabinet secretaries, and the diplomatic corps headed the dignitaries in attendance. Newsmen estimated the spectators at 30,000.

The Union now had an army; the question that was asked often in President Abraham Lincoln’s office was, “When will George McClellan go to war?”

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

Next week: Part III: McClellan at War with the South, and with Lincoln

George Brinton McClellan / Currier & Ives Lithography Company / Hand-colored lithograph on paper, c. 1861-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

George Brinton McClellan,/ Unidentified artist / Painted wood relief, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Edward H Bonekemper III, McClellan and Failure (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007).

George B. McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (New York: H. J. Hewitt, 1886).

Stephen W. Sears, George McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988).

A New Man in Charge: George B. McClellan (Part 1)

Part 1: Fooled by the Guns at Munson’s Hill

The Union army first came to occupy Munson’s Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia, on September 28, 1861.

Entering the fall of 1861, the Union army’s setback at Manassas provided the impetus for a change in leadership. One of the key figures to emerge from this shake-up was George B. McClellan, a career soldier who—like so many of his contemporaries, both northern and southern—was trained at the United States Military Academy.

As the armies jostled for position in northern Virginia after Manassas, McClellan began building and training his large number of recruits, many of whom had never experienced life away from home. McClellan inspired these young men and turned them into a significant army. By the time he paraded his troops before President Abraham Lincoln on November 20, 1861, his force was 70,000 strong. It was and still is the largest military parade on American soil.

McClellan is something of a paradoxical figure in U.S. military history. While he was clearly talented and charismatic, he was also reluctant to fight. He listened to his chief spy, Allan Pinkerton, to a fault. Pinkerton’s information was sometimes incorrect, and McClellan, in response to the information, often hesitated or failed to act aggressively enough for Lincoln.

One of McClellan’s poorest episodes took place in late September 1861, just outside of Washington, D.C. The incident at Munson’s Hill was so bleak that McClellan falsely accounts for it in his memoir, McClellan’s Own Story. McClellan wrote, “Towards Manassas the very important advanced points of Upton’s and Munson’s Hills were held by strong works, with some small batteries near by.”

Later, after the Confederate forces removed to another position, McClellan described the Union takeover of these locations, stating, “The maneuvering in advance by our flanks alarmed the enemy, whose center at Munson’s and Upton’s was much advanced. As soon as our pickets informed me that he had fallen back I rushed forward and seized those very important points.”

The facts of the matter, however, eluded McClellan in his autobiography, probably out of shame. Military historian Jon Latimer succinctly describes the entire episode in his tome on military legerdemain, A History of Bluff in Wartime:

At this time the Union intelligence service was run by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded by the ex-Glaswegian Allan Pinkerton, which later became renowned throughout the West. As a military intelligence bureau, however, it was hopelessly inadequate and provided wildly exaggerated reports of rebel strength in the area immediately south of Washington. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Pinkerton reported Confederate forces at totaling 270,000 men, with 150,000 within striking distance of Washington. [McClellan] refused to move until he had 270,000 men of his own. . . .Then, in September rebel pickets were driven surprisingly easily from a position they had occupied within a few miles of Washington, revealing that the guns McClellan’s spies had assured him were trained on the capital were nothing more than stripped logs, painted black with wagon wheels tacked onto the side: one scornful reporter christened them “Quaker Guns.”

In the two months and one week since the Battle of Manassas, the Union army had been kept in place, at least in this little field in northern Virginia, by so many harmless sections of tree trunks and archaic wagon parts. Sadly, McClellan would fall victim to this “Quaker Gun” strategy more than once, as it was an easily deployed measure for a Confederate army that had significantly less artillery than its opponent.

Such encounters with make-believe weapons and inflated interpretations of the enemy’s numbers would take a toll on McClellan’s reputation during the war, and give McClellan's detractors ammunition to use against him.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

Next week—Part II: Young Napoleon Builds an Army

 

George Brinton McClellan / Julian Scott / Oil on canvas, 1888 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; bequest of Georgiana L. McClellan, 1953

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, August 10, 1861: The Death of a General

The American Civil War was replete with educated men to conduct it. Generals on both sides of the fight graduated from West Point—the United States Military Academy—and the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was also an alumnus. Robert E. Lee, destined to command the southern armies, was not only a West Point graduate but also the former superintendent of the school.

Among other notable academy alums were Ulysses S. Grant (1843); William Tecumseh Sherman (1840); Leonidas Polk (1827); George Meade (1835); John Sedgwick (1837); Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, George Pickett (all 1846); and George Armstrong Custer (1861). If there was a single institution responsible for the sophisticated administration of the war both on and off the battlefield, it was West Point.

Because of the nature of the school, West Point also lost many of its former students in combat.

Early in the war, this attrition commenced. Nathaniel Lyon (above), brigadier general and 1841 West Point graduate, had proven his merit during the Mexican American War. Though brave, Lyon was also a man with a severe personality and a penchant for doing things his own way. Writer and Civil War historian Shelby Foote describes Lyon in a bizarre and almost comedic episode that took place only three months before the general’s final fight:

…disguised in women’s clothes, including a bonnet and veil to hide his red hair and whiskers, [Lyon] had ridden in an open carriage to reconnoiter a secessionist camp. Afterwards he surrounded the place, forced its surrender under the muzzles of his guns, and marched the would-be Confederates off to prison, shooting down two dozen civilians when a crowd on the streets of St. Louis attempted to interfere.

Lyon was not one to back down from a fight, and his belief in the cause of the Union was strong. When he was assigned to his Missouri post, Lyon set out to subjugate the rebellion in the region.

By early August 1861, he found his army greatly outnumbered by rebel troops near Springfield. At Wilson’s Creek, early on August 10, General Lyon divided his army and attempted to defeat the much larger Confederate force by striking at them from both the north and the south of their position.

Like the battle at Manassas only a few weeks before, the chief strategy was savagery; complex battle plans gave way to simple killing. “Far from resembling panoplied war,” Foote writes, “It was more like reciprocal murder.” Trying to rally his troops against the greater contingency, Lyon was wounded several times before falling dead to a rebel bullet. He was the first Union general to be killed in the war. Many more from both his country and his alma mater would follow.

—Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery, Catalog of American Portraits

 

Nathaniel Lyon / Unidentified Artist / Albumen silver print, c. 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Sources:
Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative (New York: Random House, 1958).

United States Military Academy at West Point, Notable Grads

 

The 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run

Neither Irvin McDowell (above) nor Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard could have predicted the outcome of the battle in which they were about to engage on the morning of July 21, 1861.  The soldiers were untested.  Many of the officers were untested.  Also, the soil of Virginia had not seen large scale combat since the British sailed down the Chesapeake after torching Washington, D.C. in 1814, an event that occurred well before the lives of most of those involved in this action.  After almost a half-century of peace, Virginia would again play host to war.

McDowell commanded the Union Army of the Potomac, and his intention was to march west to where a large contingency of rebel troops were encamped at Manassas, Virginia, through which ran a small stream called Bull Run.  The thin few miles—less than thirty—from Bull Run to the White House provided the reason for an urgent campaign against the Confederate occupancy. 

Other than his participation in this coming battle, Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard (right) of the Confederate army had two things in common with Irvin McDowell.  First, they had both served in the Mexican War.  Prior to that, and perhaps more important, they were both graduates of West Point, both class of 1838.  Though both armies were, for the most part, inexperienced, their leaders were not. 

Historian Shelby Foote writes of the battle plans:

. . . Beauregard and McDowell, on opposite sides of Bull Run, had more or less identical plans, each intending to execute a turning movement by the right flank to strike his opponent's left.  If both had moved according to plan, the two armies might have grappled and spun round and round, like a pair of dancers clutching each other, and twirling to the accompaniment of cannon.

July 21, 1861 was a Sunday, and locals of the Manassas area were either in church and or just leaving church as the battle developed.   At first, they heard the sounds of a Union victory falling into place as the rebels fell back from their initial positions, but later, as the southern side was reinforced, the day grew long for McDowell's men.  One southern brigadier general, Thomas J. Jackson (below), earned his nickname "Stonewall" during the afternoon as he held his men steady in the face of the Union fire at Henry House Hill. 

Toward the end of the day, the Confederate forces changed their posture from defensive to offensive, and in so doing, sent the Union Army of the Potomac over Bull Run again, this time in retreat.   As Walt Whitman recorded, "The national forces at the last moment exploded in a panic and fled from the field."  In the disarray following the disaster, the Union army regrouped weakly in Washington, according to Whitman, "…baffled, humiliated, panic-struck."       

Over sixty thousand men fought in this first large battle of the war, with the total killed, wounded, and missing coming to almost five thousand.  The casualties were massive, but that number would be few compared to the battles to come.

—Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery, Catalog of American Portraits

 

Irvin McDowell / Mathew B. Brady / Photograph, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. F.B. Wilde

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard / Unidentified artist, Copy after:  Charles DeForest Fredricks / Engraving on paper, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Stonewall Jackson / M. & N. Hanhart Lithography Company, active 1855 –1863 / Lithograph with tintstone on paper, c. 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:

Foote, Shelby.  The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume One, Fort Sumter to Perryville.  New York: Random House, 1958.

Whitman, Walt.  Poetry and Prose.  ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Literary Classics of the United States (Penguin Putnam), 1982.

From Fort Sumter to Bull Run

The Death of Ellsworth by Alonzo Chappel, 1862

By the end of June, 1861, much of the dirty work necessary to start a mighty civil war had been accomplished.  Fort Sumter had been fired upon the previous April.  The southern states, beginning with South Carolina in December of 1860, and then Mississippi less than a month later, had begun to secede.

Virginia and Tennessee—the states wherein the most battles of the war would be fought—were the final two states to leave, with Virginia abandoning her claim to the union in late May, 1861, and Tennessee on June 8.  Like the rest of the states, both north and south, Tennessee and Virginia would pay dearly, as tens of thousands of their sons would be lost in battle.

Tennessee and Virginia also suffered the additional burden of playing host to many of the most horrible moments of the war—Tennessee would see Shiloh and Stones River, as well as battles up and down the rivers that run the length and the width of the state, while Virginia provided the fields for First and Second Bull Run (Manassas), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and, ultimately, the surrender at Appomattox.

Also, by June of 1861, many of the leaders who were so integral to the war had assembled and had begun to prepare for a fight.  The impending war was becoming infused with its personalities.  The leadership in the north formed around the chief executive, Abraham Lincoln, whose election pushed the issue of secession to the front of the southern agenda.

The southern cause rallied around its own president, Jefferson Davis (right), a planter from Mississippi whose politics had carried him to the highest echelons of the American military prior to his arrival at the presidency of the confederacy.  Each of these men organized their needs around the strengths and potentials of their followers. Often, they chose wisely; almost as often, their choices disappointed them.

At the beginning of the war, the man in charge of the Union army was General Winfield Scott (above), an individual who was not much younger than the nation, itself.  Scott, born in 1786, was a soldier who had seen his more profound and active days.  By the summer of 1861, his advice was still good, but he was in no condition to command an army in the field.  After the first battle at Bull Run, Scott yielded his position to George McClellan, a man who would test Abraham Lincoln’s patience many times, eventually going so far as to oppose Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election.

In the south, Joseph Johnston was commander in chief of the rebel army of Northern Virginia until he was wounded and replaced by Robert E. Lee (right) in June, 1862.  Ironically, Lee had been Winfield Scott’s choice to take control of the Union army upon Scott’s retirement.

And even though the highest ranks on each side were filled with enough interesting and disparate personalities to launch the Trojan War, the American Civil War’s first major battle at Bull Run was preceded by a much smaller battle in Alexandria, Virginia, a battle that would provide each side a martyr and give the war further unneeded emotional impetus to begin.  Historian E. B. Long chronicles the events of May 24, 1861 in his tome, The Civil War: Day by Day:

As stealthily as partially trained troops could move, the Federals advanced across the Potomac at Washington and occupied Alexandria, Virginia . .  .  Added to the strategy and the thrill of the first advance, was tragic, dramatic death of youthful Elmer Ellsworth.  Twenty-four, organizer of a famous Zouave drill team, Ellsworth led the First Fire Zouaves, or Eleventh New York.

Colonel Ellsworth with a few companions rushing toward the center of Alexandria saw a secession flag flying from the Marshall House.  Ellsworth and two others dashed in to haul down the enemy flag.  Descending the stairs with the banner, Ellsworth was confronted by the hotel keeper, James Jackson.  Jackson blasted Ellsworth with his shotgun; Jackson was immediately fatally shot by Private Francis E. Brownell.

Ellsworth’s death plunged the North into a patriotic spasm of grief; the body lay in state in the White House.  A friend of the President, Ellsworth became a martyr for the Federal cause.  As the tears and cries of rage spread through the North, so, too, did Jackson become a martyr to the South.

Unlike the somewhat innocuous and blood-free fight at Fort Sumter, the clash at the Marshall House told the nation that the larger, imminent war would be viciously partisan, fierce, and horrible.  That larger war would begin at Bull Run.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

   

 

The Death of Ellsworth / Alonzo Chappel / Oil on canvas, c. 1862 / Chicago History Museum / Charles E. Gunther Collection

Jefferson Davis / Mathew Brady Studio / Modern albumen print from wet plate collodion negative, undated / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Winfield Scott / Mathew B. Brady / Albumen silver print, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Robert E. Lee / Edward & Henry T. Anthony & Company / Albumen silver print, c. 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

 

Is it Washington's or Lincoln's DC?

Photo by Warren Perry.

As the nation moves further into the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War, one name appears more than any other in papers, symposia, and discussions—Abraham Lincoln.

Washington, D.C., is a city of Lincoln echoes. The capital, named for the first president, contains perhaps a greater presence of Lincoln than it does of the Founding Father. Abraham Lincoln is credited with saving the nation and its capital during the most trying days of the Union’s existence, and Lincoln tributes in Washington are as commonplace as half-smoke vendors.

Photo by Warren Perry.

In addition to the obvious—Ford’s Theatre and the Lincoln Memorial (both shown above)—smaller monuments and markers are everywhere in Washington. The National Historic Landmark building that now houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum was built as the Old Patent Office Building and played host to Lincoln’s second inaugural ball in 1865. The White House has the Lincoln bedroom. A plaque on E Street Northwest marks John Wilkes Booth’s escape route, while a plaque on H Street Northwest denotes the Surratt House, home of several of the convicted Lincoln conspirators.

Washington is also the final resting place for the two most famous Lincoln photographers, Alexander Gardner (Glenwood Cemetery) and Mathew Brady (Congressional Cemetery), as well as the home of the most famous photograph of Lincoln, Gardner’s “cracked plate” from early 1865, at the National Portrait Gallery (below).

Both ends of the axis that includes the National Mall are capped with Lincoln tributes—the Lincoln Memorial by Daniel Chester French seals off the west end, while East Capitol Street, the extension of the line that bisects the United States Capitol, has as its penultimate monument site the public space of Lincoln Park, within which is contained a statue of Abraham Lincoln emancipating the slaves (below).

Other large monuments to Lincoln in the district may be found at the United States Capitol rotunda, the White House, Fort Stevens, and the National Cathedral.

Photo by Benjamin Bloom.

Of course, one needs to look no further than one’s own pocket to understand America’s love for Lincoln; he has his own penny and five-dollar note. And though Lincoln does not have a cherry tree legend to his attribution, he does have a set of child’s building logs. The case for Lincoln’s endearment to America continues to be made every day in many different forms. After all, Ford did not build a Ford named Washington; Ford built a Ford named Lincoln.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Abraham Lincoln / Alexander Gardner, 1865 / Albumen silver print / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

A Quick and Effective Change: Cameron to Stanton, and Administrating the Civil War

Simon Cameron (above) was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war when hostilities began in 1861. Cameron, however, was a somewhat corrupt and poor administrator; President Lincoln sent him to Russia to serve as minister in 1862. Cameron’s replacement did not necessarily engender positive feelings in everyone he met either, but he performed his job to the highest degree, which was the service Lincoln required.

Edwin Stanton (above) is generally described as short in physical respects, but he was long on character and spirit. And though small in stature, Stanton himself might have thought that the six-foot, two-inch-tall Kevin Kline was appropriate, if not a little diminutive, in his role as the secretary of war in Robert Redford’s current film, The Conspirator.

General William Emile Doster, who served as provost marshal for Washington during the early part of the war, attested that Stanton was a difficult man, but also that he performed well in an environment that needed his talent and ethics.

To relieve McClellan, court-martial Porter [Fitz John Porter, accused of insubordination and failure to obey orders at Second Bull Run], and eliminate all traces of West Point class traditions, uniting by nicknames, I consider victories as important as Appomattox, and [none] but the wooden and numb audacity of Stanton dared to achieve.

Secretary of War Stanton was ornery and direct, parceling out no partiality and having little respect for anyone. He is portrayed in drawing and sculpture as plug-like, and historian Shelby Foote described Stanton as “thick-set, bouncy on short but energetic legs. His voice, which was deep in times of calm, rose to piercing shrillness in excitement.”

In his journals, Walt Whitman recorded seeing Lincoln and Stanton together on one of the president’s excursions:

Sometimes the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out evenings . . . he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of War, on K street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits in the vehicle and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony.

Stanton administered the war to the end and beyond. He was at President Lincoln’s bedside on the early morning of April 15, 1865, as the president succumbed to the gunshot of the previous night. Stanton said at the president’s passing, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Andrew Johnson, ascending to the presidency upon Lincoln’s death, did not agree with Stanton about the implementation of reconstruction. Johnson’s attempt to fire Stanton resulted in Johnson’s impeachment; upon the president’s acquittal, Stanton resigned.

President Ulysses Grant eventually appointed Stanton to the Supreme Court, but Stanton did not live long enough to take the oath and is therefore not listed in records as having served on the Court. Edwin M. Stanton died in 1869 and is buried in Washington, D.C., the city he richly served until the end of his days.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Simon Cameron / John Dabour, 1837-1905 / Oil on canvas, 1871/ National Portrait Gallery, gift of G H Chase

Edwin McMasters Stanton / Henry Ulke, 1821-1910 / Oil on canvas, 1872 /National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of Sophy Stanton to the Smithsonian Institution, 1923

Death Bed of the Martyr President / Currier & Ives Lithography Co.,/ Lithograph on paper, 1865 /  National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Dr. Fred W. Hicks, III