August 2, 1865---The Last Flags*

AUGUST 2, 1865:

Somewhere off the western coast of Latin America, the C.S.S. SHENANDOAH met the H.M.S. BARRACOUTA. Although the BARRACOUTA was authorized to seize the commerce raider as a prize, the captain of the BARRACOUTA instead let SHENANDOAH sail on after he had informed Captain Waddell that the Civil War had indeed ended in the Spring. The BARRACOUTA’s Master also advised Waddell that SHENANDOAH had been declared a brigand vessel under the Law of The Sea, and was now being hunted by several nations for a rich cash prize. 
 

Waddell, who had ignored rumors about the end of the war for many weeks, decided this time to believe the British Captain. He ordered the Confederate Navy Jack struck as the two ships parted company.

Although the hunted ship could have safely and easily put into any port on the western coast of South America within days, Waddell decided (against explicit orders and against all measures of sanity) to sail back to England. Waddell chose to dare the Roaring Forties, sail into the teeth of the Austral winter, round the Horn, and sail 17,000 miles back to Britain rather than merely head east for Callao or Valparaiso in order to complete a circumnavigation and enter the history books.

As an outlaw vessel, SHENANDOAH could not put into port for supplies or repairs and could not take any more prizes without courting piracy. Already in dire straits when Waddell made his seemingly irrational decision, SHENANDOAH became “a perfect hell afloat.”

Her last prize dated back to late June. By this day in August, stores were running low. The ship was severely overmanned with its own crew to feed, plus the crews, officers, and other passengers of its prizes. Despite saner options Waddell turned the once-proud vessel into a prison ship, even a floating madhouse as it traveled onward, back to its beginning.

The Order was given and the Colors came down. SHENANDOAH was doomed to travel Stateless, hoping not to cross the paths of any U.S. Navy ships actively seeking to sink her. Against all odds, she reached her destination.

The Confederate Jack rose and fell one last time when the battered craft docked at Merseyside on November 6, 1865.

Even as SHENANDOAH struck her colors in the Pacific, a half a world away in the heart of the North American continent, glum-faced Confederates gathered in front of the Caddo Parish Courthouse in Shreveport, Louisiana to watch as at noontime the last Blood-Stained Banner, faded and dusty, lowered to the ground, was carried off by a soldier wearing blue, ultimately to become a memento of a time gone by.

They said nothing as the flag of the United States of America fluttered up the flagpole for the first time since 1860, there to remain forever.



*This blogpost of August the second 1865 is the last regular daily post of the ONCE A CIVIL WAR blog. Future entries will not be on a day-by-day basis but will commemorate specific dates and occurrences. It has been a pleasure "walking through the war" with you all.

August 1, 1865---The Inevitable Events: "As we have fought like men, like men we will make peace."

AUGUST 1, 1865:       

By the height of the Summer of 1865, the Civil War was passing into history.  Throughout the North, men were being mustered out of units wholesale, and being sent home to anxious, prideful families. 

The great Armies of the United States --- The Army of The Potomac and The Army of The Tennessee --- vanished virtually overnight, and the lesser Armies --- of The James, of The Ohio, and the others --- shrank to fractions of their former size. 

By the end of the summer, the U.S. Army as a whole would contract from 1,300,000 men to only one-tenth that size, 137,000 men. And yet, the remnant would still be nearly ten times the size --- 16,000 --- of the Army in 1860, a sign that things had not, and never would, return to how they had been. The power and presence of the Federal Government, limited to the Post Office Department in 1860, would be a daily presence in the lives of most Americans from this point forward.

This would particularly be the case in the South, where, for the next decade,  Federal troops would be garrisoned, guaranteeing the rights of Freedmen.

The arrival of “Union” troops in many areas previously inviolate disturbed most white Southerners, and spurred some to further resistance. For though the “war” was over, the fighting went on in momentary flashes. 

Throughout the former Confederacy, in backwoods pockets and in the hill country, groups of men, reduced to outlawry like Jesse James, continued to resist. Most of these holdouts, rebels with no cause left, would not last the winter. But others would, and brief wars with forgotten names went piecemeal until the early 1880s.

In the borderlands of West Virginia and Kentucky, the Hatfields and the McCoys shot at each other in a private Civil War that had become a family affair. 

In Missouri, Archie Clement continued to lead the remnant of William Quantrill’s battalion in pointless burn-and-plunder raids against fellow Show Me Staters, and would until he died in a gun battle with a Federal force in December.   

Other Missourians fought little wars of personal vengeance against each other for crimes committed during the war.

In Tennessee and Kentucky, and in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and in Texas, scores were being settled by the score, often with ropes, whips, chains and guns.  Unionists hunted Confederates who had rewards on their scalps.  The insurgency that Lincoln, Grant and Sherman feared came to pass, though it was shriveled and the end was never in doubt.

Tens of thousands of paroled Confederates refused to take the Loyalty Oath to the United States, and would until October 2, 1865, when Robert E. Lee signed his own. 

And more than a few ex-Confederates greeted the “Yankees” enthusiastically, seeing in the reach of Federal power a road toward normalcy. Desperate for stability, and looking toward a more meaningful future, many local Confederate leaders joined with the Union garrison forces to find and disarm the holdouts, either through rational argument or through more violent means. 

The lesson was clear:  Raiding, bushwhacking, and outlawry were not going to be tolerated in civilized climes. 

Slowly and painfully, the irredeemable among the remaining men under arms were pushed west to the frontier where, out of violence, they created an era of American legend.  

In the northwestern corner of Louisiana, in Bossier and Caddo Parishes, though, it was as if nothing had changed.

Bossier Parish had been the first organized governmental unit of the United States to secede on November 26, 1860, as soon as word of Abraham Lincoln’s election reached the area. That very day, they authorized what became the first Confederate military unit, the Bossier Minutemen.

In neighboring Caddo Parish, they burned Robert E. Lee in effigy after Appomattox.  

When the eastern Confederacy collapsed, the Confederate Governor of Louisiana, Henry W. Allen, a wounded Civil War veteran, declared his Capital City-in-Exile, Shreveport, the Capital of the Confederacy. With the capture of Jefferson Davis on May 10^th, Governor Allen became, for all intents and purposes, the Acting President of The Confederacy.   

Though General Edmund Kirby Smith’s surrender of the Trans-Mississippi included Shreveport, and specified the removal of Governor Allen from office, neither Allen nor his Confederate allies chose to abide by the agreement made in Galveston, an agreement they had had no part in creating. 

Smith’s disorderly “sham surrender” left northwestern Louisiana in a netherworld between peace and war. For two full months, the residents of the region remained defiant, living under the Blood-Stained Banner with the Bossier Minutemen at the ready.

Hearing of the capitulation of Austin, Texas on this day, Governor Allen at last read the writing on the wall. Appearing in front of Shreveport’s City Hall (his Capitol building), Allen addressed his Confederacy:

We must, he began, “submit to the inevitable” and “begin life anew.” These words drew boos from the crowd, but Allen continued,

"My countrymen, we have for four long years waged a war we deemed to be just in the sight of high heaven. We have not been the best, the wisest, nor the bravest people in the world, but we have suffered more and have borne our suffering with greater fortitude than any people on the face of God's green earth. Now let us show the world that as we have fought like men, like men we will make peace. Let there be no acts of violence, no heart burning, no intemperate language, but with manly dignity, submit to the inevitable events." 

Allen left the podium, weeping, to the sound of cheers. That afternoon he departed for Texas, and thence to Mexico, where he died in honor in 1866.

 
Only a few hours after Allen’s departure, the first Federal troops entered Shreveport. Most of the local Confederate militia laid down their arms without a fight.

July 31, 1865---"Final surrender"

JULY 31, 1865:                    

Robert E. Lee writes to his former aide Walter H. Taylor about compiling the history of  The Army of Northern Virginia:

My dear Colonel:

I am desirous that the bravery of the Army of N. Va shall be correctly transmitted to posterity.  This is the only tribute that can be paid to the worth of its noble officers & soldiers, & I am anxious to collect the necessary data for the history of the campaigns in Virginia from the commencement of its organization to its final surrender.

July 30, 1865---The Powder River War

JULY 30, 1865:          

The Powder River War begins in Wyoming Territory between the United States and combined bands of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe Indians. The purpose of the war is to destroy the Native American populations of the region to allow settlers free transit of the Bozeman Trail. 

July 29, 1865---The selling of Abraham Lincoln

JULY 29, 1865:          

The American mercantile spirit, ever restive, finds a way to exploit the death of President Lincoln: 

W.M. Raymond and Company begins an advertising campaign based on their provision of a casket for the beloved former President during his homeward journey.

The Anti-Tobacco League soon after finds itself posthumously “endorsed” by the late President.  

Raymond's Casket Company and the Anti-Tobacco League are two of the earliest examples of marketing-by-association with the fallen President. 

As time passes and memory fades, Lincoln's name becomes a catchword,  implying the high moral fiber and honesty of financial houses, insurance companies, and carmakers. President John F. Kennedy is riding in a Lincoln when he is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.  

Nebraska names its capital for the Railsplitter, and a children's toy allows youngsters to build a log cabin much like the one the  President was born in. 

July 28, 1865---Circular # 15

JULY 28, 1865:         

“Circular # 15” specifying new rules for the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, And Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau), is published:

I. Circular No. 13, of July 28, 1865, from this bureau, and all portions of circulars from this bureau conflicting with the provisions of this circular, are hereby rescinded.

II. This bureau has charge of such " tracts of land within the insurrectionary States as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise," and no such lands now in its possession shall be surrendered to any claimant except as hereinafter provided.

III. Abandoned lands are defined in section 2 of the act of Congress approved July 2, 1864, as lands, "the lawful owner whereof shall be voluntarily absent therefrom and engaged either in arms or otherwise in aiding or encouraging the rebellion."

IV. Land will not be regarded as confiscated until it has been condemned and sold by decree of the United States court for the district in which the property may be found, and the title thereto thus vested in the United States.

V. Upon its appearing satisfactorily to any assistant commissioner that any property under his control is not abandoned as above defined, and that the United States has acquired no title to it by confiscation, sale or otherwise, he will formally surrender it to the authorized claimant or claimants, promptly reporting his action to the Commissioner.

VI. Assistant commissioners will prepare accurate descriptions of all confiscated and abandoned lands under their control, keeping a record thereof themselves, and forwarding monthly to the Commissioner copies of these descriptions in the manner prescribed in circular No. 10, of July 11, 186.5, from this bureau. They will set apart so much of said lands as is necessary for the immediate use of loyal refugees and freedmen, being careful to select for this purpose those lands which most clearly fall under the control of this bureau, which selection must be submitted to the Commissioner for his approval. The specific division of lands so set apart into lots, and the rental or sale thereof, according to section 4, of the law establishing the bureau, will be completed as soon as practicable, and reported to the Commissioner.

VII. Abandoned lands held by this bureau may be restored to owners pardoned by the President, by the assistant commissioners, to whom applications for such restoration should be forwarded, so far as practicable, through the superintendents of the districts in which the lands are situated.

Each application must be accompanied by—

1st. Evidence of special pardon by the President, or a copy of the oath of amnesty prescribed in the President's proclamation of May 29, 1865, when the applicant is not included in any of the classes therein excepted from the benefits of said oath.

2d. Proof of title.

Officers of the bureau through whom the application passes will endorse thereon such facts as may assist the assistant commissioner in his decision, stating especially the use made by the bureau of the land.

VIII. No land under cultivation by loyal refugees or freedmen will be restored under this circular, until the crops now growing shall be secured for the benefit of the cultivators, unless full and just compensation be made for their labor and its products, and for their expenditures.

July 27, 1865---"Little more than a first-rate clerk."

JULY 27, 1865:                    

General Henry “Old Brains” Halleck is appointed to lead the new Military District of The Pacific. A timid combat commander, once U.S. General-in-Chief and then Army Chief of Staff, Halleck’s transfer to the far west effectively rids Grant and the Administration of the man President Lincoln once described as “little more than a first-rate clerk.”