Category Archives: Writing

Battle of Missionary Ridge by Douglas Volk
Feb 22 2012

Did he fight at Lookout Mountain or dine with the colonel?

The Lybarger family legend about my great-grandfather’s experience at Missionary Ridge in 1863 makes an exciting story — but what really happened is even better.

In the 1990s, my aunt wrote a “Biographical Sketch of Hon. Edwin Lewis Lybarger,” recounting his service in the Forty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, and his many accomplishments after the war. Presumably from the stories her father told her about her grandfather, she wrote:

“Lybarger participated in the battle of Missionary Ridge in the Chattanooga campaign. He notes in his diary that those in his company knew the battle of Lookout Mountain (the “Battle Above the Clouds”) on November 24, 1863, was in progress across the valley. They could hear it and see the smoke, but the clouds were so thick they could not tell whether the Union troops were succeeding or failing. The next day, under General Grant’s command, they stormed the heights and took Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863.”

A decade later, in a box of Civil War papers and memorabilia unopened for years, I discovered the first clue that this account might not be true: a 4″x6″ thin, single sheet of paper with a handwritten invitation from Col. Wager Swayne, commander of the 43rd OVI.

Headquarters 43rd O.V.I., Nov. 25th 1863

Lieutenant, Will you do me the favor to dine with me tomorrow at 2 P.M.

Very respectfully, Your obedient servant

Wager Swayne, Co. 43rdOhio

I knew that my great-grandfather revered Col. Swayne, since he named his only son Harry Swayne Lybarger, and they corresponded for years. But why would he keep a dinner invitation for the rest of his life?

The letter was written from “Hdqts, 43rd OVI,” on Nov. 25, for a dinner to be served on Nov. 26, a Thursday. The fourth Thursday of November.

I remember shivering with the thrill of discovery — that this date was the first official Thanksgiving Day. The colonel was gathering the regiment’s officers to comply with President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, issued Oct. 3, 1863. I felt like I was almost touching a paper that Lincoln had touched.

But if the 43rd OVI was calmly in headquarters in Prospect, Tennessee planning a Thanksgiving dinner, it couldn’t have been in battle the next day, 300 miles away in Chattanooga.

Entries in Edwin Lybarger’s daily journal for 1863 confirmed my conclusion:

Nov. 17: In camp at Prospect, Tenn. Heavy details at work repairing rail road bridge.

Nov. 18: Nothing of importance going. Have plenty to eat and nothing much to do but write letters and study logic.

Nov. 25: Two years in the service today. Received in invitation to dine with Col. Swayne tomorrow. Accepted.

Nov. 26: “Thanksgiving day.” Dined with Col. Swayne together with all the officers of the 43d. & Col. Fuller our brigad[e] commander. Had a splendid dinner, served up in good style, to which I think I did ample justice.

I don’t know if my aunt heard the Missionary Ridge story from my grandfather, or read it in another account of the war. In any case, Edwin Lybarger participated in numerous Civil War battles, but not the one on Lookout Mountain.

In a biography for his children, my grandfather Harry Swayne Lybarger wrote:

“My father never said much about his war experience, but he kept a diary in four little books, which are in the safe and should never be destroyed. They are very matter of fact and he didn’t seem to yield to any literary flaire. He did not hate the South but he felt pretty keenly the injustice of the war that the south began, and never visited it again.”

Late in life, my aunt remembered the diaries, but not where they were, perhaps loaned to someone and never returned. By accident, cleaning out her closet, I found four small black books lying in the bottom of a cardboard box. Eureka. I also found my aunt’s start at transcription, unfinished. Grumbling that my great-grandfather’s a’s and o’s all looked like u’s, and that the crossing of a T never matched the upright, I nevertheless managed to transcribe all four diaries. I think I must have been the only member of the family to actually read every entry. And I loved the discovery that when he published “Leaves from my Diary,” containing his account of the March to the Sea and war’s end, he edited out any disparaging remark he made about the conduct and discipline of fellow soldiers.

Facts to fiction:

Read an excerpt of Jennifer Wilke’s historical novel-in-progress, The Color of Prayer,

inspired by these historical facts and Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries.

Sophronia in 1863
Dec 30 2011

“I shall send you my likeness once you send me yours.”

During the Civil War, it could be risky business for a young lady to give her photograph to a soldier, who wanted it for company, for the memory of home, to keep his hope of returning to her. The romantic implications were serious, implying a promise or even an engagement. And should romantic fancies fade, as they so often do, a girl’s reputation might be seriously tarnished if her unreturned photograph was in the possession of a less than scrupulous man.

A solider had his “likeness” or “shadow” taken in uniform, by photographers and in studios as he could find them. Many men had a new photograph taken with each rise in rank. A respectable young lady had her photograph taken in studios with backdrops and furniture, in genteel poses. Less respectable young ladies were photographed wearing only a smile, a furtive photographic pleasure for many a soldier far from home and the watchfulness of nice girls.

Out of fashion by the mid-1850′s, daguerreotypes were images made on a copper plate. Delicate to preserve, they were usually kept in small hinged, velvet-lined padded cases, with protective glass cover.

In the 1850′s and through the war, ambrotypes were made on glass plates, the image looking like a negative until blacking was painted onto the glass, the reflecting silver making it a positive image. These were often hand-tinted. Tintypes, on a metal plate, made an image with a dim tone and grey highlights, but they were more durable and cheap, and were sturdy enough to put into an envelope and mail.

Invented in 1851, the wet collodion photographic process gradually replaced the other types of photography. This process produced a glass negative and a beautifully detailed print. Given the quality of the prints and the ease with which they could be reproduced from the glass plates, the method thrived from the 1850s until about 1880.

Popular from 1860 on, a carte de visite was an albumen print, a 2-1/2″ x 4″ print on cardboard. The camera could make 8 separate negatives on single plate, so these images were faster to process and cheaper to buy. “Cardomania,” they called the fad, as it became popular to give away one’s portrait. Cartes de visite were also sold of celebrities: President Lincoln, General Grant, Queen Victoria.

Demonstration of wet plate collodion photography.

Gen. Wm. T. Sherman, Army of the West
Jan 25 2011

Sherman broke her heart, twice

On May 5, Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson sent a message to his troops in Chattanooga to encourage them for the new campaign. My great-grandfather was a 1st lieutenant in the Army of the Tennessee, and kept a copy of that inspiring and prescient circular:

We are about to enter upon one of the most important campaigns of the war and to measure our strength on the battle-field against a large and well commanded foe…Stand firmly by your posts…the successful issue of the battle may depend upon your individual bravery and the stubbornness with which you hold your position. –Maj. Gen. Jas. B. McPherson   

On July 22, Atlanta still untaken, McPherson was meeting with Sherman when they heard cannon fire from an unexpected direction. McPherson rode out to investigate the source, taking only a few other officers with him. They rode into a party of the Fifth Confederate Tennessee regiment sneaking through the woods, in a break between the Union’s 16th and 17th Corps. McPherson wheeled his horse to try to escape but was shot by a Confederate corporal. The ball found his heart.”I have lost my bower,” General Sherman grieved. He wrote again in regret and sympathy to Miss Hoffman. Upon hearing of her fiance’s death, the lovely Miss Hoffman went into her room and remained there for a year. She never married.

Nancy Rhoades was notified on her 90th birthday that Swallow Press would publish the Lybarger letters she had found & transcribed.
Sep 22 2009

Aunt Nancy’s 90th birthday brought the good news

On Sept. 17, 2005, her 90th birthday, Nancy Lybarger Rhoades received the news that Swallow Press at Ohio University would publish the Lybarger Civil War letters, a project she had nurtured for many years.

Nancy Rhoades (1915-2007) was the granddaughter of Edwin Lewis Lybarger (1840-1924), who served in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865. In 1991, in a trunk in her attic, she discovered 168 letters written by several dozen women family members, friends, and sweethearts to Edwin throughout the war.

Nancy transcribed these letters, and they were published in 2009 by  Ohio University’s Swallow Press, with a social commentary by Lucy E. Bailey, on the significance of women’s war work in the North during the Civil War.

WANTED–CORRESPONDENCE: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier

Edited by Nancy L. Rhoades and Lucy E. Bailey

Fact to Fiction:

Aunt Nancy let me read the transcripts in 1996, and I read late into the night. By morning, I felt committed to writing about this family history. Since we didn’t have Edwin’s letters, only those he received and saved, I determined to write a novel in order to tell his story too.

My aunt was always the keeper of the family flame, and had been a reference librarian most of her life. It took me several years to gain her permission to write Edwin’s story as fiction. In addition to the letters, she trusted me with Edwin’s other war papers, and I made some great discoveries.

My best discoveries were Edwin’s daily journals, which Nancy thought had been lost, loaned to someone and never returned. But when I saw four small bound notebooks in the bottom of a box, I knew immediately what they were. They were written over four years, 1862 through 1865, a mainly straightforward log of his whereabouts each day. I spent several months transcribing them, my progress impeded by Edwin’s often illegible handwriting. But the ink was durable, I was persistent, and I eventually succeeded in discovering Edwin’s day by day itinerary throughout the war. This became the accurate bones for my novel.

Some years have passed since I first read the Lybarger letters, but after extensive research and several revised drafts, I have completed a novel that is based on Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries and letters. The title has evolved from Civilities to The Arithmetic to The Color of Prayer.

 I hope Aunt Nancy would be pleased.

 
CU JH Rhodes, 43rd, Co. K
Jun 23 2009

Capt. John H. Rhodes, Co. K, 43rd OVI

After the April 1862 resignation of Capt. William Walker, John H. Rhodes became captain of Company K, 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, a position he held for virtually the rest of the war. When Company K Private Edwin Lybarger was promoted to 2nd sergeant, he began studying military tactics., and Rhodes sketched him in the act.

Battle of Corinth, Oct. 4, 1862

Company K and the 43rd OVI fought in the Battle of Corinth on the second day, Oct. 4, 1862, in fiercely fought defense of Battery Robinet. Edwin was severely wounded, but recovered and rejoined Company K the following January. Eight other Company K men died of their wounds at Corinth. The injury affected Edwin for the rest of his life, according to his son Harry Swayne Lybarger: “A minnie ball went through Father’s knee, and while he was able to return and finish the war, he was always slightly lame, and as a boy, I could always outrun him. From the time I first knew him he carried a cane frequently.”

Battle memories still vivid after 50 years

John Rhodes wrote to Edwin on Oct. 4, 1914:

My dear old comrade: I don’t forget fifty-two years ago to-day – nor will you or any other of our comrades who participated with us in that fierce little battle of Corinth, Miss. Not as large as many other battles of that war but few of them excelled it in close contact and fierceness. Hand-to-hand fighting at the right of our regiment at battery Robinet but I don’t remember that it extended to the left as far as our Co. K. I do remember that it looked at one time as if it would reach us and changing my sword from my right hand to my left I got a little Colt revolver I had carried into my right to be ready but I don’t think I fired a shot. I have no recollection of the revolver since. That Oct. 4 was…a nice bright warm day I remember, perhaps not as warm as to-day, it was certainly hot enough while the engagement lasted.

Facts to Fiction:

Read an excerpt of Jennifer Wilke’s historical novel-in-progress, The Color of Prayer,

inspired by these historical facts and Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries.

CU Dr. Francis Rose, 43rd OVI surgeon
May 30 2009

Dr. Rose saved great-grandfather’s leg

with special thanks to Jim Schmidt for his guidance in matters of Civil War medicine and avoiding the caricatures of Army surgeons. See his blog on Civil War medicine: http://www.civilwarmed.blogspot.com.

Dr. Francis M. Rose, surgeon of the 43rd OVI, saved my great-grandfather Edwin Lybarger’s leg, if not his life, after he was shot by a minie ball at the Battle of Corinth on Oct. 4, 1862.

Dr. Rose was assistant surgeon to the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry from late 1861. By April 1862, two months after the regiment left Ohio to fight in Missouri, he became the head surgeon, and served in that capacity for the duration of the war. He mustered out with the 43rd on July 13, 1865. After the war, my great-grandfather included Dr. Rose’s photograph in his album.

The 43rd OVI and three other regiments of the Ohio Brigade defended Battery Robinet at the (2nd) Battle of Corinth. Edwin was shot in the knee at 11:00 a.m. on Oct. 4, 1862. His diary records that he was soon taken from the field to an Army hospital in Corinth. The immediate attention of Dr. Rose helped to save Edwin’s leg from amputation. Spared any deadly infections, Edwin spent two months in a Paducah, Kentucky hospital convalescing and rejoined his regiment in early 1863. Although my great-grandfather’s life was spared, the other 8 Company K men wounded at Corinth all eventually died of their wounds.

The Western Army’s medical department, under the direction of Dr. A. B. Campbell, Surgeon, USV, Medication Director of the Army of the Mississippi was well-organized in advance of the battle for treating wounded soldiers as soon and as efficiently as possible near the battlefront. Robert E. Denney’s 1995 Civil War Medicine: Care & Comfort of the Wounded, includes excerpts of Dr. Campbell’s reports:

“In anticipation of an engagement with the enemy on October 3d . . . I selected the large building recently constructed for a commissary department, as the place best protected by the nature of the ground and the safest for hospital purposes. The men furnished by the quartermaster worked expeditiously, and everything was prepared, medicines, instruments, costs and buckets of water were ready before the first wounded man was brought in.

Oct. 3, 1862: It became evident, in a short time, that the building, although a very large one, would be altogether too small for their accommodation. I then took possession of the Tishomingo Hotel and of the Corinth House . . . All of the surgeons worked diligently . . . and by six o’clock the wounded were all comfortably disposed of and their wounds dressed.

Oct. 4, 1862: At three o’clock in the morning I was ordered to remove all the wounded to Camp Corral, and by six o’clock a.m. they were all collected into the new hospital. The ambulances then went to the scene of the action to bring off those recently fallen . . . I found upon the railroad platform a large number of tents, which I took and used. The battle ceased just before noon, and by night all the wounded were under shelter, provided with cots, and their wounds dressed.”

By Jennifer Wilke • Posted in Writing
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Battle of Corinth, 1862
May 29 2009

“No regiment had a hotter place than the 43rd Ohio at Corinth.”

The 2nd Battle of Corinth, Oct. 3-4, 1862

On Oct. 3rd, Col. John Fuller’s Ohio Brigade, including the 43rd OVI, arrived at Corinth, Mississippi after fighting had ceased for the day. They waited all night on the hill surrounding Battery Robinet for the battle to resume at daylight. The Confederates, amassed in the woods at the bottom of the hill, opened artillery fire before first light.

The fierceness of the battle on Oct. 4th was vividly summarized in Col. Fuller’s official report of his brigade’s impassioned defense of Battery Robinet: “…and every rebel who showed his head above the parapet of the fort, or attempted to enter it by the embrasures, got his head shot off.”

The battle was searingly remembered 52 years later by participant John H. Rhodes, then captain of the 43rd’s Company K, writing to Edwin Lybarger, then a sergeant in Company K. Shot in the knee, Lybarger was one of nine Company K men wounded that day, and the only one to survive his wounds.

“No regiment had a hotter place than the 43d Ohio at Corinth.”

At the reunion of Fuller’s Brigade held at Marietta, Ohio on Sept. 10, 1885, Edwin Lybarger delivered an address recounting the battle and the brigade’s role in the Union victory:

The battle of Corinth, fought Oct. 3d and 4th, 1862, was perhaps one of the most sanguinary, as well as one of the most decisive, battles in which the Ohio Brigade participated.

Our line of battle covering the town on the morning of Oct. 4th was that of a semi-circle, protected on the right flank by Forts Powell and Richardson and on the left by batteries Robinet and Williams. The 43rdOhio was on the left of Fuller’s Ohio Brigade, with the right resting against Robinett and the left extending to the railroad cut under the guns of battery Williams, and almost at right angles to the main line of battle.

Before daylight on the morning of the 4th the enemy opened fire with shell and shot from a field battery in front of Robinet and not more than three hundred yards distant. This battery was soon disabled, or at least silenced by our heavy guns, and one of the pieces subsequently hauled in by the 63d Ohio. After which everything was quiet until about 10 o’clock a.m., when the enemy made an impetuous and almost simultaneous attack along our entire line with the evident expectation of carrying every thing before him.

The 43d Regiment was so situated, the ground descending to the right, that we could look over the whole field. The left and center of the enemy emerging from the woods before and a little in advance of his right we had the opportunity, for a few minutes, of witnessing one of the most terrific scenes of blood and carnage that it was my lot to behold during the war.

The rebel lines massed in columns, moved forward with the steadiness, if not the precision of regiments at drill, whilst one of the most destructive and terrible fires over delivered on the field of battle, was being poured from artillery and musketry straight into their faces. The shell and shot from our batteries plowed through their ranks, making great gaps, literally mowing men down by hundreds, still their formation was preserved, their broken ranks quickly closed up, and on, on they come! But we who had been watching this scene from the left had not long to gaze upon so grand a panorama of war, for our attention was soon called to our immediate front. A desperate charge was coming and a determined effort to capture Robinet immediately followed.

The 43d changed front, on first company by a right half wheel, and gained the crest of the hill before the enemy, and poured a most effective and destructive fire into the advancing columns. It was the 43d and 63d Ohio that received the severest shock of this fierce onset, which was so promptly met and handsomely repulsed by the Ohio Brigade. The enemy was hurled back at this point into the woods in disorder only to reform and renew the attack with still greater vigor and determination.

The second assault was led by a brigade of the steadiest infantry of Price’s army, commanded by the brave and impetuous Col. Rogers, of Texas, who at the head of the assaulting column waving his word and encouraging his followers, fell dead under the very mouths of the guns of Robinet. I have always regretted that so intrepid a soldier, though a dangerous enemy, was doomed to die; and I doubt very much indeed if ever greater bravery or daring was displayed upon the field of battle by any Field Marshal of France, under the eye of the great Napoleon than was exhibited by Col. Rogers in his assault on Robinet, not excepting McDonald at Austerlitz, or the indomitable Ney, whose heroism attested on a hundred hard-fought fields, earned for him the proud distinction of “the bravest of the brave,” and who led the Old Guard in its last charge at Waterloo.

The fighting in front of Robinet was desperate in the extreme. Many of the gunners from the 1st Infantry were disabled, and when the canon ceased to belch forth its leaden hail, it was soldiers from captain Spanglers’ Co. A, 43rd Ohio who sprang into the fort, and assisted in manning the guns until the close of the struggle. It was during this last assault, and near its close, that the gallant 11thMo. Went into action and rendered such material aid. The terrific fire delivered from our musketry and the deadly missiles hurled in such rapid succession from our heavy guns soon settled the matter. No human courage could long withstand such fearful carnage as our guns were making, and again the enemy was compelled to fall back; this time in utter rout and disorder.

The loss of life on our side at this point, if not as great as that of the enemy, was very severe. The 43d Regt., according to my own diary, lost ninety-seven men in killed and wounded, but according to Comrade David Auld (now of Cleveland, Ohio) was one hundred and twenty-three. Comrade Auld was on the field from the beginning to the close of the engagement in the capacity of stretcher-bearer, and claims to have made an actual count of our loss, and his statement I consider entitled to great credit.

Among the gallant souls who fell that day was the accomplished and lamented Col. J. L. Kirby Smith, “whose sword shone as brightly and whose plume waved as proudly” on the field of battle as that of any soldier of the Army of the Mississippi.

The contest was sanguinary and raged fiercely on every part of the field. So terrific, indeed, was the onslaught on the right and center that our first line appeared to waver and give back and the elated rebels pressed forward, entered the suburbs of the village where they were promptly met by the reserves who sent them staggering to the rear. Being thus met and repulsed at every point, the enemy retired from the contest and retreated with his torn and bleeding columns, and decimated ranks, leaving his dead upon the field, and victory perching upon the stars and stripes.

Such is the idea I then had, and still have, of the battle of Corinth, without regard to historians or information from any source except my own diary; and whilst I would not knowingly detract one iota from the glory that belongs to every regiment that composed the Army of the Mississippi, I nevertheless, most confidently assert, that no regiment of that magnificent army had a hotter place, or maintained its position more courageously and heroically than the 43d Ohio at Corinth, nor was there any regiment of Stanley’s division whose casualties were half as great, except the 63d Ohio whose loss exceeded ours.

Route of Morgan raid in Ohio, July 1863
May 24 2009

“I guess he has not accomplished very much, and good riddance.”

Confederate raider John Morgan and a thousand cavalry invaded and raced across Ohio in July of 1863. The account of his capture that was published in the Mt. Vernon Republican, a weekly newspaper, gives hearty contradiction to the opinion that Ohioans were terrified of the brazen marauder:

Capture of Morgan and the Remains of his Band

These are the particulars of the closing scene of John Morgan’s great steeple chase through the Buckeye State. On Saturday evening, July 25, at Springfield, the militia were stationed on a hill overlooking a road which Morgan was expected to traverse. A regiment of Pennsylvania infantry, under command of Col. Gallagher, were posted on some rising ground with orders to prevent Morgan’s passage. The houses were closed, doors and windows locked and barred, and women and children stampeding into the country with whatever portable property could be carried along. The men who had weapons and courage turned out to resist the progress of the dreaded rebel.

In a short time the expected rebels made their appearance around a bend in the road. On catching sight of the infantry, they halted and turned their horses’ heads in another direction. Before they could get out of the trap they found themselves in, Major Way, with 250 men of the 9th Michigan Cavalry, dashed among them. The rebels made but a brief resistance.

Morgan himself was riding in a carriage drawn by two white horses. He jumped out, leaped over a fence, seized a horse and galloped off as fast as horse-flesh, spurred by frightened heels, could carry him. In the buggy was found his “rations,” of a loaf of bread, some hard boiled eggs, and a bottle of whisky, along with several thousand dollars in stolen Greenbacks.

Morgan and the remainder of his scattered forces pressed three citizens of Salineville into their service as guides, and continued their flight on the New Lisbon Road. On Sunday, July 26, by two o’clock in the afternoon, the rebels were driven to a bluff. Thus cooped, Morgan concluded that “discretion was the better part of valor,” and came down gracefully, he and the more than 350 remaining in his gang surrendering to Col. Shackleford. Nearly 400 spent horses were also captured.

Morgan’s men were poorly dressed, ragged, dirty and badly used up. They were very much discouraged at the result of their raid, and the prospect of affairs generally, but Morgan himself appeared quite unconcerned at his ill luck, giving him a most fitting resemblance not to an errant knight of the confederacy but to the madman he has proved himself to be.

Thus is the termination of the thieving Morgan raid and the commencement of Prison Life for its heartless perpetrators. Its end bespeaks the lasting gratitude of the patriotic people of Ohio to the heavenly rains that swelled the Ohio River beyond its fords and bridges, trapping the raiders among the Buckeyes, who are ever vigilant and loyal to the greatness of the Union.

In the words of one loyal witness to Morgan’s capture, “I guess he has not accomplished very much, and good riddance.”

~ ~ ~ ~

An excerpt of THE COLOR OF PRAYER, a novel

based on the Civil War diaries of Edwin Lybarger:

Near the end of the week, Papa told them the raiders had crossed into Muskingum County, only sixty miles away. Sophronia feared that Morgan could ride that distance in a single day. But Papa asked them to think of one good reason why the raiders would bother riding north when their only hope of escape was to the south. When they couldn’t think of any, he got them smiling again when he suggested that it might be time for Sophronia and Josephine to have new summer dresses.

The next afternoon, Sophronia sent Mama and Josephine to the Mercantile for the dress yardage, promising to be pleased with anything they chose for her. She liked having the house to herself. After she took the berry pie out of the oven and carried it on the windowsill to cool, she sat by the open window to read her novel while the bread dough finished rising. The heroine Fanny, disguised as a pirate to free her kidnapped lover, had just brandished her sword to fight the pirate ship’s captain.

The kitchen door burst open.

“This is a raid,” a harsh voice called out. “Give us that pie.”

Sophronia’s heart stopped. Two figures loomed in the doorway in riding boots and gray, hooded cloaks. She couldn’t make out their faces. As the first one stepped across the threshold, she threw her book at him.

“Ow,” the victim hollered. “Criminy, Phrone.” Holding his head he stumbled back and the other intruder caught him.

Their hoods fell and she saw Jeremy and Mordecai Jessup dressed up like Confederate raiders. Jeremy was only fourteen, but thin as a rail and tall as any man, and the younger Mordecai was nearly his brother’s height. They made believable raiders. Her heart still thudding, anger found her tongue.

“That’s the meanest thing,” she scolded, “scaring me on purpose. Shame on you.” She retrieved her book from the floor, annoyed to have lost her place.

“He’s hurt,” Jeremy said.

Blood trickled through Mordecai’s fingers and dripped onto his cheek. Sophronia’s first thought was that it served him right.

“Put your head back, Mordecai,” she ordered, pointing to the rocker. “Sit.” She pulled a tea towel from the rack and folded it for a bandage. “Let me see.”

Mordecai lifted his hand away, his eyes never leaving her face. The cut on his forehead was shallow and nowhere near his eye, but it was several inches long and a bleeder. She pressed the towel down on it and raised Mordecai’s bloodied hand.

“Press it down,” she said.

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Jeremy said. “We just wanted a piece of pie.”

 

By Jennifer Wilke • Posted in Writing
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U.S. Senate in 1864
May 20 2009

The Prayer of 100,000

In 1863, women in America could not vote, but every U.S. citizen had the Constitutional right to petition Congress for a “redress of grievances.” The Woman’s National Loyal League, at Lucy Stone’s urging, collected signatures on an Emancipation Petition requesting the U.S. Congress to abolish slavery by Constitutional Amendment.

Signed petitions from each state were rolled up separately in yellow paper, and tied with the red tape, with the number of men and women who had signed endorsed on the outside. On Feb. 9th, 1864, the first 100,000 signatures, in two trunks, were carried by two black men to Sen. Charles’ Sumner’s desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

At Sen. Sumner’s request in Jan. 1864, the Senate had established a Committee on Slavery and Freedmen. His remarks in accepting the first installment of the petitions came to be called “The Prayer of 100,000.”

From the Congressional Record:

Mr. SUMNER: Mr. President: I offer a petition which is now lying on the desk before me. It is too bulky for me to take up. I need not add that it is too bulky for any of the pages of this body to carry. This petition marks a stage of public opinion in the history of slavery, and also in the suppression of the rebellion. As it is short I will read it:

“To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States. The undersigned, women of the United States above the age of eighteen years, earnestly pray that your honorable body will pass at the earliest practicable day an act emancipating all persons of African descent held to involuntary service or labor in the United States.”

This petition is signed by one hundred thousand men and women, who unite in this unparalleled number to support its prayer. They are from all parts of the country and from every condition of life. They are from the sea-board, fanned by the free airs of the ocean, and from the Mississippi and the prairies of the West, fanned by the free airs which fertilize that extensive region. They are from the families of the educated and uneducated, rich and poor, of every profession, business, and calling in life, representing every sentiment, thought, hope, passion, activity, intelligence which inspires, strengthens, and adorns our social system. Here they are, a mighty army, one hundred thousand strong, without arms or banners; the advance-guard of a yet larger army.

But though memorable for their numbers, these petitioners axe more memorable still for the prayer in which they unite. They ask nothing less than universal emancipation; and this they ask directly at the bands of Congress. No reason is assigned. The prayer speaks for itself. There is no reason so strong as the reason of the heart. Do not all great thoughts come from the heart?

I ask the reference of the petition to the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedmen.

After earnest discussion, the measure was referred as Mr. Sumner proposed. The Thirteenth Amendment passed in the Senate on April 8, 1864 but did not pass the House of Representatives until Jan. 31, 1865. On Dec. 6, 1865, the amendment was approved by the necessary majority of 27 states and became law.

~ ~ ~ ~

Facts to fiction:

Read an excerpt of Jennifer Wilke’s historical novel-in-progress, The Color of Prayer,

inspired by these historical facts.

By Jennifer Wilke • Posted in Writing
0
horse-drawn street car
May 18 2009

A streetcar, a major, and a senator

Part 2 in the experiences of Dr. Alexander Augusta during the Civil War.  See also Part 1.

~ ~ ~ ~

This letter from Dr. Alexander Augusta, a U.S. Army major and surgeon to the 7th U.S. Colored Troops, was read into the Congressional record by U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts):

Feb. 1, 1864.

Capt. C. W. Clippington

Judge Advocate

Sir:

I have the honor to report that I have been obstructed in getting to the court this morning by the conductor of car No. 32, of the Fourteenth Street line of the city railway.

I started from my lodgings to go to the hospital I formerly had charge of to get some notes of the case I was to give evidence in, and hailed the car at the corner of Fourteenth and I streets. It was stopped for me and when I attempted to enter the conductor pulled me back, and informed me that I must ride on the front with the driver, as it was against the rules for colored persons to ride inside. I told him I would not ride on the front, and he said I should not ride at all. He then ejected me from the platform, and at the same time gave orders to the driver to go on. I have therefore been compelled to walk the distance in the mud and rain, and have also been delayed in my attendance upon the court.

I therefore most respectfully request that the offender may be arrested and brought to punishment.

I remain, sir, your obedient servant.

A.T. Augusta, M.B., Surgeon, Seventh U.S.Colored Troops

After reading the letter, Sen. Sumner introduced a resolution that a Senate committee with responsibility for the District of Columbia consider prohibiting the rail company in the nation’s capital from barring Negro passengers.

Dr. Augusta was in his uniform, his rank clearly visible, entered a rail car to go to the hospital he was in charge of, was refused admittance into the car with white passengers and told he’d have to ride in the front, an unprotected area on a cold and rainy day. When Dr. Augusta refused, he was pushed off the car.

In his remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Sumner called it an outrage and insult. Another Senator was incredulous that Dr. Augusta could in fact be a doctor and be serving in the Army. Extensive debate ensued in the Senate, over the concern that guaranteeing blacks the right to ride with whites would lead to social and political equality for blacks, an idea several Senators assured their listeners, their constituents at home were not willing to accept. Everyone in the U.S. Senate at this time was, of course, white and male.

Sen. Sumner’s resolution passed, 30 yeas to 10 nays, and shortly Congress did pass a law that prohibited discrimination against anyone riding the street cars in the nation’s capitol (over which Congress has direct jurisdiction).