"Luke :STOP" "I am your father :STOP"

Source: National Archives

One of my favorite primary sources are telegrams. I think part of that is that they seem so exotic. By the time I understood what they were, they were not all that common. You would see them in movies and it looked cooler than they prbably did when they were the primary form of communication.

Mostly though, its the direct manner information is communicated. Words came at a cost and so talk really wasn't cheap.

What's brought this on is that I showed the kids the telegram above. It is the form Robert E. Lee submitted telling the Confederate War Department that Stonewall Jackson was dead. "It is my melancholy duty..."

The one below is the telegraph sent to the Union War Department by Maj. Robert Anderson acknowledging that he had surrendered Fort Sumter.

Source: National Archives



Here are a couple non-Civil War Related telegrams:

This is one of the first telegrams sent after the iceberg hit the Titanic. Obviously Bruce Ismay was wrong!
Source: US Postal Museum

Ok, this one isn't historic but the advice should have been heeded. The single most cringeworthy thing Mark Hamill does (and there are a few).

Winning means never saying 'Manassas"

Battle of Bull (Virginia Historical Society)

Today we are in the first few years of the Civil War.

• Fort Sumter
• Battle of Bull Run
• Anaconda Plan
• Lincoln v. Davis

One of the things kids always find interesting is that the Civil War battles often had two names. For example.

• Bull Run (North) = Manassas (South)
• Anteitam (North) = Shaprsburg (South)

The North cued off of bodies of water or significant terrain feature while the South named the battle based on the city closest. One historian suggests that the reason is that the 'urban' Northern named them for land features noteworthy and the 'rural' South found the city the more noteworthy feature. I'm not sure I accept his premise but it is one way of explaining it.

Most people were taught the Northern names in history class. Winning has its perks I suppose.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule:

• Pittsburg Landing (North) = Shiloh (South)

Henry Bill. The First Battle between “Iron” Ships of War, 1862. Lithograph with hand-coloring.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The most confusing of the naming conventions for my kids is the Monitor and the Merrimack. The two ironclads are the first to battle each other in the Battle of Hampton Roads in  March of 1862. The confusion comes in the fact that it is the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia which battle each other. When the South takes control of Charleston Harbor (The firing on Fort Sumter), they find the USS Merrimack seriously burned/and damaged but salvagable. The South uses the shell of the Merrimack to fashion its first iron clad ship which they christen CSS Virginia. It is the CSS Virginia which battles the USS Monitor at Hampton Roads and it is the CSS Virginia which will be sunk by the Confederates in order to order to avoid its capture by advancing Northern troops in 1862. But we are taught Merrick. Go figure.

Since we're talking about Southern and Northern interpretations of naming, how about a few suggestions for the Civil War itself:

• Second Americn Revolution (Southern)
• War for the Union (Northern)
• War of Norther Aggression (Southern)
• War of Southern Aggression (Northern)
• War for Southern Independence (Southern)
• War of the Rebellion (Northern)
• War of Secession (Sourthern)

One of my favorites is the most quintessentially Southern (I can't say it without affecting a dripping southern accent):

• This Recent Unpleasentness, or,
• This Late Unpleasantness

John Brown--DOMESTIC TERRORIST..and hero?

Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry, mural at the Kansas Statehouse, Topeka. (Source: Kansas Historical Society)

My students will tell you that I am not a fan of John Brown. I don't let my opinion of historical subjects be known that much but I can't mask my feelings for John Brown. He was one the right side of an issue but determined that 'right' was more important than 'life'.  Several students have taken on Mr. Brown in their research. They want to prove he wasn't a domestic terrorist in my mind. I love the challenge they undertake. The have forced me to reconsider Brown each year. While they haven't weakend my feelings for John Brown, they have tempered my off-handed disgust. Brown is important for reasons beyond the Pottomatomie Massacre.

 

One thing which has challenged my interpretation of John Brown is his oration at his trial after Harpers Ferry. An except follows:

 

"[T]he New Testament teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them....I have endeavored to act on that instruction.  I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons.  I believe that to have interfered, as I have done,...in behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong, but right.  Now,  if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood farther with the blood of my children and the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say let it be done."

 

I am slowly warming to the idea that I can still think him a terrorist but can also acknowledge why Thoreau would plead for Brown's life and Benet would, using some of Brown's own words, memorialize his death:

 

"Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my

life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle
my blood further with the blood of my children
and with the blood of millions in this slave country
whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and
unjust enactments, I say, let it be done."



Harpers Ferry (from near the Engine House)

 

Engine House at Harpers Ferry

Engine House

1855...when 791 + 5,427=2,905 ...only in Kansas!

We have moved on to Bleeding Kansas and I get to show one of my favorite primary sources!

Absttract-Kansas Voting Ledger 1855 (National Archives)

This ledger is the Abstract of Census and Returns of Election for the first territorial election in Kansas. The territorial governor had already been appointed by Pesident Peirce so the election is for the teritorial delegate to Congress. Look at the bottom of the ledger. According to the abstract, there were 5,427 votes for the pro-slavery candidate and 791 votes for the Free State (anti-slavery candidate).

5427+791=6218, right? Well, according to the census prior to the vote, there were only 2,905 elegible voters in the territory but more than 6,000 actual voters.

I love that there is a column in the ledger for illegal votes. Look at Leavenworth (#16). The number of illegal votes is more than double the number votes even possible. Leavenworth was a solidly proslavery town but it even happened the bastion of the Free State movement, Lawrence (#1)! There are 269 elegible voters and it is logical that more than 250 of the votes were for the Free State candidate. Then there are the almost 500 voters who cast a pro-slavery vote in Lawrence.

The answer is one of the reasons for the Border War between KU and Mizzou. At election time thousands, of Missouri residents cross the border to vote in the election. All they had to do was state they were intending to take residency and they were allowed to vote.

Letter to E. Thayer by Charles Robinson, 1855 (Source: Kansas Historical Society)

Future governor of Kansas, Charles Robinson wrote to a friend back east:

 

For E. Thayer

This is sent to Mr Rice to avoid opening & [xxx] [xxx].

Lawrence April 2 1855

Dear Sir

 

Another election in Kansas Territory has passed & like the first was controlled entirely by Missourians. A few days before the election I was travelling in the Southern & eastern part of the territory & met hundreds of people from Missouri on their way to the different voting precincts in the Territory. Encampments were formed in the vicinity of the polls varying in size according to the number of voters required in the several districts to secure their end - The grand rendevous was at Lawrence where they had reinforcements stationed for all parts –

 

At Tecumseh two of the judges of election refused to take the oath prescribed by the Governor & the third refused to proceed when the mob, after snapping pistols at the antislavery judge & threatening to destroy all the judges if they did not leave, proceeded to choose judges of their own & go on with the election - The free state men accordingly abandoned the polls & did not vote - At Douglas the judges attempted to conform to the law & instructions of the Gov. when they were mobbed & driven off. No antislavery voting was consequently done at that place

It will take two concurrent state legislature (one Free State and one "Bogus"), John Brown's Potawotomi Massacre, the sacking of Lawrence, four state constitutions, and a Civil War to get Kansas in the union. Kansas was a mess. Some things never change! ;)

Have a great weekend.

"A strange little document..."

Transcription: This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.
A. Lincoln [signed on the reverse: William H Seward, W. P. Fessenden, Edwin M Stanton, Gideon Welles, Edwd. Bates, M Blair, and J. P. Usher]
Dr. Pinsker showed us this document today and I am intrigued. The memorandum was written by Lincoln in August 1864. It was then folded and his cabinet was instructed to sign the back of it without ever having seen its reverse. Seven do.

The memo is pretty straightforward: Lincoln has reconciled the fact that he will probably not win re-election. He acknowledges that the new president can not, in all reality, continue the war as it is currently being fought. Lincoln has from election in November 1864 to inauguration in March 1865 to complete the war and is enlisting his replacement to assist in the endeavor to "save the Union." If the two leaders can partner together to end the war before the new President's innauguration, the new administration can manage peace and not the end of a predacessor's conflict.

I am smitten with the document.
I like the covert aspect: written, folded, blindly signed on the reverse. As a teacher, I can see that action being recreated for my students–I wonder if they will sign blindly like the cabinet or blanch at the uncertainty of it.
I like the emotion of it: Lincoln is agonizingly honest and you can sense the distress.
I like the dissonance it will create for my students. On this side of history, we know Lincoln wins in 1864 handily and Lincoln’s worries will be unfounded.  It is helpful, however, to help our young women and men see that history is lived ‘in the moment’ and Lincoln’s moment in August 1864 looks bleak.
That “in the moment” aspect can help make history come alive for my students. When you don’t know how it will turn out, it makes the action more honest, makes the action more profound, more brave.