April 6, 1864---Milledgeville Mints Its Own Money

APRIL 6, 1864:            

The State of Georgia issues its own currency. 

Reconstructed Louisiana adopts a new State Constitution.

April 5, 1864---". . . the most marked congener of the ass is Lincoln . . ."

APRIL 5, 1864:            

Basil L. Gildersleeve was a professor of Greek and Hebrew at the University of Virginia from 1856 to 1873. In this editorial, appearing in the Richmond Examiner he criticized the motives of Northern Abolitionists:

         

In the books of the Mussulman we read that Mahomet had business in heaven one day and was at a loss how to get there. The angels offered him the usual modes of conveyance, but he refused the chariots of fire, the winged serpents, and the hippogriffs. "I am used to my ass," said he. "I don't want to change. I will either go to heaven on my ass or I will not go to heaven at all." And the conclusion of the whole matter was that he went to heaven on his ass. We must confess that the perusal of this passage has inspired us with a profound respect for the typology of Islamism, and that we cannot sufficiently admire the reach of prophetic vision, which annihilates the interval of the time between the seventh century and the nineteenth, and the distance in space between Aratia Felix and America Infelix. But every student of typology knows how much danger there is of a false application, and we acknowledge, without blushing, that at first we were tempted to make a wrong use of the significant narrative. The Paradise of the Yankees is evidently the White House; the angels are the party-leaders and the celestial chariots, the winged serpents and the hippogriffs represent the usual Yankee machinery for an elevation to the abode of the blessed.—But who is Mahomet? and who is the ass? At a hasty glance it would seem that the best antitype of the False Prophet is Seward, and the most marked congener of the ass is Lincoln; but closer study and deeper meditation have convinced us that the Abolition party is symbolized under the figure of Mahomet, and that the ass is the American citizen of African descent.

Already have the ass and his rider made one successful trip. Other jockeys had failed.—The donkey turned back with Birney and threw Fremont over his head. Lincoln entered the celestial gates in triumph, and his partizans, of course, maintain that his success was due to his superiour assmanship. Others contend that it was owing to the increased vigour of his quadruped, and are disposed to let some one else "run the machine." But all are agreed on the excellence of the mode of conveyance, and, like Mahomet, do not want to change.—The whole Yankee nation is in love with the ass, and the best of prospective provender is lavished on the poor creature. If Johannes Buridanus, the old scholastic, who first propounded the philosophic riddle of the ass and the two bundles of hay, should come to life, he would, doubtless, be amused at the way in which his theory of the will is illustrated.—Each faction is trying to make its bundle larger and more fragrant than the other, and while nibbling now at this wisp of hay and now at that, Jack will scarcely make a very hearty meal; and if he does, his food is "doctored." Mahomet's object in going to heaven was not to get his ass into good quarters, nor is it the object of the dominant party at the North, in the race for the White House, to install the negro into any other paradise than the paradise of the theatre—some shilling gallery, from which he may look down on all the brave show beneath and revel in congenial perfumes. Oh no! but they will make ample professions, and if the negro shows any incredulity, as well he may after the treatment which he has thus far received at their hands, after all the "walloping" they have given him to make him go; if he demands any "material guarantees," they will not be slow to advance him a part of the promised favour, and they will begin—nay, they have already begun—with those privileges which they are right to value least in their latitude, the privileges of social position. So long as we condescended to associate with them on terms of equality, so long as Southern gentlemen were not yet to be seen in Northern drawing-room, the Yankees were deterred by a false shame from an open reception of their coloured brethren. But now the restraint is removed, White House and Black House are synonymous. "Yellow colonels," gingerbread surgeons and "black Anglo Saxons" are the pets of every social circle; and a monstrous word of Yankee coinage, Miscegenation, a word "that would have made Quintilian stare and gasp," foreshadows the culmination of the "man and brother" theory. We wish them joy of the name and joy of the thing. The manners of the Southern dining-room servant are better than those of his Northern patrons, and Mr. Jefferson Davis' butler, after exhausting his budget of lies about the financial and political condition of the Confederacy, will do well to give the citizens of Bangor, Maine, a few lessons in the Turveydrop art of deportment. But our runaways will degenerate by social contact with the Yankees, and in no case will they make model wives and husbands for the descendants of the Puritans. Their "keep" will be too expensive, and their "emotional capacities," now so much vaunted, will exhibit themselves in such colossal proportions and in such fantastic forms that the Yankees will be frightened at the native grandeur of the new inmates of their hearts and homes. Yet, as we have said, this is the cheapest way of paying the negro off, and hence it is the first that they have tried. If, however, their African brethren wish to put to the test the sincerity of the professions which have been made so profusely, let them try, while their hands are warm from Massa Lincoln's cordial grasp, to put so much as a little finger into the Federal plum pie, and they will see what they will see. Sambo may perfume their saloons; Sambo may take to his sooty bosom their daughters and their sisters; Sambo may eat at their tables; Sambo may lord it over the Irish and the Dutch; Sambo may even buy, as at Beaufort, his old master's deserted mansion and hold it until the Confederates come again; but as for a substantial share in any of the present or future profits of the Great National Speculation, Sambo may indulge his native genius in whistling for it.

In the meantime Sambo is the favourite, and until the next election is over, every possible distinction will be showered on the winning donkey. His head will be wreathed with flowers; his sturdy frame will be covered with the lion's skin. There will be a general scramble for the seat on his back, and no small rush for a good hold on his tail. Nunc sidera ducit, as the Yankee motto hath it. Of course there are a few who grumble at this negro-worship. So, for example the renegades of Kentucky bow the knee under protest. Woolford does not like to fight for the negro and Prentice gibes at the Administration. But Woolford declaims in vain, and Prentice's bead-roll of bad jokes is nearly out. A few of the more decent papers at the North protest in the name of the "good people" of the North against this adoration of Coffee, but we will not listen to them; we ought not to listen to them. "By their fruits ye shall know them." We judge the manners of the North by their own expression, and we do well to despise them. They have no right to claim our respect on the futile plea that the best elements of their society are kept in the back-ground by the grand procession of the Festival of the Ass. It has been said by a clever English letter writer that "it is one of the stalest and sorriest devices of the Americans when a foreigner is astounded at their many madnesses, and makes their frensy public in Europe, to tell him that what he has seen or heard is held as of no account by sensible persons in America—is ephemeral, and is valueless."

That stale and sorry device is wasted on us, who have learned to know our foes but too well.

April 4, 1864---". . . measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution . . . "

APRIL 4, 1864:            

President Abraham Lincoln had been corresponding with three Kentuckians, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette, (who had protested the recruiting of black regiments in Kentucky), Albert Hodges, and former Senator Archibald Dixon. Today he responded to comments by Hodges, who was the editor of the Frankfort Commonwealth, regarding his position on Emancipation:

Executive Mansion,

Washington, April 4, 1864.

 A.G. Hodges, Esq

 Frankfort, Ky.

My dear Sir:

You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

 "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensabale means, that government -- that nation -- of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, -- no loss by it any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

 "And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth."

 I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

Yours truly,

 A. Lincoln

April 3, 1864---The Battle of Elkin's Ferry

APRIL 3, 1864:            

The Battle of Elkin’s Ferry. Union forces moving south toward Louisiana as part of the Red River Campaign are temporarily stopped at the Little Missouri River. Retreating Confederate forces have destroyed all the bridges, and the only available crossing is the ford at Elkin’s Ferry. 

The Union takes the ford with 8,500 men, but 7,500 cavalrymen under C.S. Generals John S. Marmaduke and Jo Shelby attempt to sweep the Union forces into the river. After a brief firefight with few casualties, the Southerners withdraw on the morning of April 4th, leaving the ford in Union hands.