June 25, 1865---"The Sunday Showdown"

JUNE 25, 1865:          

The C.S.S. SHENANDOAH positioned herself between the Siberian mainland and St. Lawrence Island at the southern approach to the Bering Sea, and took (and mostly destroyed) the whaleships GENERAL WILLIAMS, NIMROD, WILLIAM C. NYE, CATHARINE, GENERAL PIKE, ISABELLA, and GYPSEY within a 24 hour period. Although several of the Yankee skippers protested that the war was over and showed SHENANDOAH’s Master newspapers confirming the fact, the papers were dated and included Jefferson Davis’ vow to fight on. And so SHENANDOAH did.

June 24, 1865---"Making haste slowly"

JUNE 24, 1865:         

The Editors of Harper’s Weekly publish an editorial, Our Duty In Reorganization, openly critical of President Johnson’s “Restoration” plan and the disenfranchisement of Freedmen thereunder:

Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Winfield Scott meet again at war's end

“Peace,” said Edmund Burke, “may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear, and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, while they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.” What this country needs to secure peace is the firm application of a plain principle. The principle of State rights, like that of country rights and town rights, is a good one. But the principle of national rights is the paramount and essential principle of the present situation. All subordinate rights whatever must bend to the national necessity of a local government in every State based upon the consent of the whole body of loyal freemen.

The national authority is fully competent to secure that government. There is no reason whatever why the nation should delegate its authority to secure such State governments in the South to a part of the loyal freemen resident there. At this moment no one loyal freeman of North Carolina has any right to a voice in reorganizing the State which every other does not equally possess. There is no more reason, except in an imaginary view of policy, why the national Government should authorize white loyalists alone to reorganize the State government of North Carolina because the voters in that State were formerly white than that it should authorize the colored loyalists alone to reorganize it because they have been always faithful to the country. As a question of policy merely, it is clear that if any class of loyalists object to reorganize the State upon acknowledged democratic republican principles that is not a class to which the reorganization can be safely intrusted. It is better policy to govern the State directly by the national authority than to relinquish it to such a class.

A second editorial, Making Haste Slowly, is likewise snidely critical of the uncertain path that Johnson seems to be treading in regard to Reconstruction overall:

The President's reply to the Committee from North Carolina, begging him to recognize that State as fully restored to the Union, and to ask from Congress a repeal of the test-oath, confirms what we said last week of his views in regard to the unorganized States.

The President replied courteously that the North Carolina Legislature had not yet adopted the constitutional amendment, which was an essential condition of restoration, and he declined to answer specifically the other questions asked, saying only that Governor Holden would continue to act as Provisional Governor until relieved from Washington, and not by the result of the election ordered by the Provisional Convention. In a word, said the President, “My action must depend upon events.”

The Secretary of State, by the President's order, has also informed Provisional Governor Perry of South Carolina that he will learn from Washington when he is relieved, notwithstanding the election of Mr. Orr; that the adoption of the emancipation amendment “is deemed peculiarly important,” and that “it is impossible to anticipate events.”

These things all show that the measures adopted by the President are experimental. He is testing the condition of the unorganized States. He is ascertaining whether they faithfully accept the situation. Therefore he can not anticipate events. While he sees that South Carolina merely repeals the ordinance of secession, and does not repudiate the rebel debt, and does not voluntarily adopt the amendment; while he sees Georgia refuse to repudiate her rebel debt, notwithstanding his plain instructions to Governor Johnson; while he sees Mississippi elect an unpardoned rebel for Governor in place of a technical Unionist, and in North Carolina the Union candidate defeated; while he sees every where in the Southern States an animosity toward the freedmen which warns him and the country not to abandon them to the mercy of State laws, the President very naturally says to Mr. Reid of North Carolina that his action must depend upon events.

Meanwhile it is pleasant to know that the policy of the President receives the unqualified support of the remains of the late unfortunate Democratic party. Supported thus by his opponents, as well as his friends. the era of good feeling must be at hand.

June 23, 1865---The Surrender of General Stand Watie C.S.A.

JUNE 23, 1865:          

General Stand Watie, the highest-ranking Native American Confederate General, surrenders his troops in the Indian Territory.

Although most historians consider Stand Watie’s surrender to have put a final imprimatur on the Civil War, like so many other “lasts” of the Civil War this “last” is only the beginning of a series of occurrences. Over the next several weeks, other groups, bands, and tribes of Indians lay down their arms. 

Though the word “surrender” is used to describe Stand Watie’s action this day, his decision to cease fighting (and other similar decisions taken by other Native American leaders subsequently) is more complicated than a simple “surrender.” It should be remembered that the Indian Tribes were not generally units of the Confederate military but were allies of the Confederacy. Their “surrenders” took several forms (or combinations of forms):

1.  Small groups or bands of men would present themselves to a Federal Indian Agent and lay down their arms and / or battle flags.

2. Larger bands or tribes would meet in council and vote to abrogate their treaties with the defunct Confederacy, electing to reinstate their preexisting treaties with the United States, at which point Federal Agents were so advised.

3.  Tribes would renegotiate new treaties with the United States. Since any new treaties had to be ratified by Congress, a technical state of war continued to exist between the U.S. and the tribe until such ratifications were finalized. This process could take months, and so the Civil War did not end de jure until 1866.

Among the tribes were those that continued to fight. Whether they were fighting for the Confederacy or for themselves made little difference in a practical sense. Although this is an interesting historical niche question, such ongoing conflicts were described by Federal troops as actions by “renegades” and were subsumed under the rubric of the “Indian Wars” even when individual Indian soldiers wore gray or flew their Confederate battle flags.

June 22, 1865---Arctic Warriors

JUNE 22, 1865:         

Off Siberia’s Cape Navarin, the commerce raider C.S.S. SHENANDOAH, on war patrol and unaware of recent developments, takes the U.S. Merchant Marine whaling ships WILLIAM THOMPSON, EUPHRATES, MILO, SOPHIA THORNTON, JIREH SWIFT, and SUSAN ABIGAIL as prizes in a 24-hour period, burning most of them to the waterline. It is the beginning of a week-long rampage that permanently cripples the U.S. whaling fleet. 

June 21, 1865---Citizen Bobby Lee

JUNE 21, 1865:          

Although Robert E. Lee (along with the other Confederates under indictment) was never tried for treason, the indictment handed down by the Virginia Federal Court was never quashed, as Grant recommended. Instead it remained in force but unenforced.

This unusual legal maneuver has led some historians to speculate that perhaps indeed Robert E. Lee (and others) were tried for treason in a kind of Chambre Ardente affair. If this was the case they were almost all certainly convicted  in absentia and sentenced. Perhaps the sentences were suspended by circumstance --- the indictment and impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, or some other political machination --- until the sentences were rendered dead letters.

Though this seems unlikely, it should be remembered that the national mood in the summer of 1865 was a particularly ugly one. We need only look at the procedural and substantive abuses of due process suffered by the Lincoln assassination conspirators to imagine that almost any miscarriage of justice was possible at the time.

Though this is all largely speculation, several fascinating books exist on the subject. 

In the event, Lee was never pardoned despite his articulate letter and General Grant’s endorsement of it.  Although Lee had filed the correct paperwork and had taken the required Amnesty Oath (on October 2, 1865 the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia), the U.S. Government never acted on the submission.  Although Lee was encouraged to resubmit the papers, he refused, assuming that the United States had denied his request. He died a U.S. national but not a U.S. citizen, and unpardoned.

 

In 1970, a State Department archivist discovered Lee’s paperwork among William H. Seward’s papers. The Secretary of State had apparently kept Lee’s documents as souvenirs and never bothered to submit them to the appropriate department.

In 1975, a full century after Lee had submitted his application, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution retroactive to June 13, 1865, the date of Lee’s letter to Grant.

At the August 5, 1975, signing ceremony, President Gerald R. Ford acknowledged the discovery of Lee's Oath of Allegiance in the National Archives and remarked:

General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride."