The Other Adams Woman: Louisa Catherine Adams

Despite her husband’s inevitable protest, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams applied rouge to her cheeks in their Berlin apartment.  She rehearsed her defense as she admired herself in the mirror.  

“Do you want me to look a fright in the midst of Splendour?” she whispered, imagining John Quincy standing in front of her with a disapproving look.¹

This portrait of Louisa Adams was painted by Charles Robert Leslie in 1816 in London. 

The night before, when the Prussian Queen had offered her the rouge, John Quincy had insisted that she refuse.  At first, Louisa had dutifully done as he commanded.  She began to have second thoughts, though, when saw her reflection in a darkened window.  Her face was rather pale.   While John Quincy was occupied, she sought out the Queen and accepted her offer.  After some convincing, she knew her husband would understand.  She was, after all, the wife of the Ambassador to Prussia and the daughter-in-law of the President of the United States, and rouged cheeks were expected of her in Berlin’s court society.

Louisa stood up, checking herself one last time in the mirror.  No one could deny that her brightened face livened her dull homemade dress.  John Quincy walked into the room, and Louisa reached up to dim the light in an attempt to hide her face.  Just as she thought she had escaped his notice, John Quincy pulled her close to the light.  She saw the rage in his eyes as he demanded that she wash her face.  But instead of complying, Louisa “with some temper refused.”² In a surge of anger, John Quincy left for the party without her.  But Louisa didn’t let that discourage her.  With her face still decorated, she arrived at the party on her own and ended up making quite an impression on the king and queen of Prussia.  

If Louisa ever regretted defying her husband, she never let it show.  Based on her parents’ relationship, she believed “it was necessary for her own self-respect...to remind her husband from time to time that she was not the conventionally submissive helpmeet that middle-class Americans seemed to admire in their wives in the early nineteenth century.”³

Louisa’s childhood had been filled with encouragement and opportunity, which turned out to be both her blessing and her curse.  Born in London in 1775 to an American father and an English mother, Louisa attended school in France, where she became so fluent in French that she had to relearn English when she returned to London.  Since French was the language of diplomatic society at the time, Louisa was able to hold her own in the courts of Europe even though John Quincy would have preferred to control his wife’s tongue as much as possible.⁴  

Louisa and John Quincy met and married in London in 1797.  They were an unlikely pair from the start; everyone suspected that John Quincy would marry one of Louisa’s older sisters.  Louisa, who “foresaw women taking a vigorous role, one of equal importance to that of men”⁵ was not the most obvious choice for a man like John Quincy, who, with his short temper and severity, was determined to bow to no woman.  

Like many men during his time, John Quincy would tolerate only the most passive female, which would seem unlikely considering the relationship between his parents.  With a mother like Abigail Adams, it would only seem logical for John Quincy to marry a woman like Louisa.  But John and Abigail Adams had reservations about the Johnson-Adams marriage.  In fact, Abigail thoroughly disapproved of her son’s wife at first, mostly because she judged Louisa as a foreigner and “anti-american.”  With their son’s political career in mind, “they often fretted about [Louisa’s] ability...to measure up to the rigorous family standards.”⁶ Louisa eventually proved herself to her in-laws, and they welcomed her into their lives and hearts.

The same could not be said for John Quincy.  As his parents grew more fond of Louisa, he grew more distant.  Time would prove that John Quincy “never saw in marriage the partnership arrangement advocated by his parents....At heart he seemed to fear the opposite sex, and eventually most of his anxiety took the form of disregarding and disobeying his wife.”⁷

But the couple’s dysfunctionality was not the only thing to plague their marriage.  Louisa had twelve pregnancies and seven miscarriages between her twenty-first and forty-second years, and as a result, “her health was wretched a great deal of the time....She once complained that ‘hanging and marriage were strongly assimilated.’”⁸

Despite everything, Louisa supported her husband’s political endeavors.  In 1824, John Quincy refused to campaign for the presidential nomination.  He expected to be nominated as “a reward for his many years of public service.”⁹  As a result, Louisa became his campaign manager.  Louisa “curried to the right congressional wives, always ‘Smilin’ for the Presidency,’ calling cards in purse.... In the election year, she hosted dinners for sixty-eight congressmen.  Every single Tuesday night between December and May, she held open house with fine wine, lavish food, and musical entertainment.”¹⁰  No doubt that John Quincy was fully aware of what his wife was doing for him, and we can only hope that he realized that without her he had little chance of being elected.¹¹

If Louisa could have seen the future, though, she might not have worked so hard to get her husband into office.  Her years as First Lady were the worst of her life.  She noted that “the exchange to a more elevated station must put me in prison.”  Furthermore, after he was elected president, John Quincy’s use for his wife ended. He became even more cold, demanding, and inconsiderate toward her, and once sniped, “There is something in the very nature of mental abilities which seems to be unbecoming in a female.”¹²

Louisa proved to be good at hiding her true feelings, though.  Harriet Upton, in an illustrated piece for the November 1888 issue of Wide Awake, described Louisa as “enjoying an existence of ‘wooings and weddings, baby life and christenings and many frolics, long old-fashioned visits from relatives, quiet hours when the President read aloud.” The article pictured a first lady who, like all right-minded women, served in a man’s world.”¹³  In truth, Louisa spent most of her time alone and ignored, and she called the White House “her prison” and a place “which depresses my spirits beyond expression.”¹⁴

Louisa spent most of her time in the White House alone in her room.  Over the years, she developed a deep depression and a breathing problem (her room was heated with burning anthracite coal, which caused choking and coughing).  Louisa wrote that her depression “passes for ill temper and suffering for unwillingness and I am decried an incumberance unless I am required for any special purpose for a show or some political maneuver and if I wish for a trifle of any kind, any favor is required at my hands, a deaf ear is turned to my request.  Arrangements are made and if I object I am informed it is too late and it is all a misunderstanding.”¹⁵

To combat her isolation and depression, Louisa ate chocolates obsessively and took to writing poems and satirical plays about the folly of society and the illnesses of females.  She also began her autobiography, which she called Adventures of a Nobody.¹⁶  In short, Louisa was angry.    She was angry about what she believed men were doing to humiliate women.¹⁷  A latent feminism emerged in her writing, which “was aroused in her bitterness over a world in which man controlled female, no matter how capable the female might be.”  Louisa resented “that sense of inferiority which by nature and by law we [women] are compelled to feel and to which we must submit is worn by us with as much satisfaction as the badge of slavery generally, and we love to be flattered out of our sense of degradation.”¹⁸

To Dr. Thomas.
___

at note last night addressed to you
was by my pen indited [sic]:
Professional alone ‘tis true
By anxious doubt incited:
Your presence eased the laboring? thought
The note aside was laid
Before, with kind expression fraught
my compliment was paid
In justice then Dear Doctor now
The pen I quick resume,
Esteem and friendship to avow,
To love I cann’t presence -
Love such as Mother to her Son
With bond affection proffer’d;
Sprung from a grateful heart alone
with pleasure may be offer’d -
of deep respect assurance kind
no proof what’ere requires
Tis the conviction of the mind
that merit aye inspires;
This silly scrawl you must excuse
A laugh its best reward
The Sentiment do not refuse;
The lines their just reward

Louisa Catherine Adams

F. Street 25 Jan 1842


Above: Louisa Catherine Adams' poetry manuscript dated 1842, from the Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College.Following his term as president, John Quincy entered Congress and became involved in the anti-slavery movement, which resulted, finally, in the couple developing a sympathetic understanding for each other.¹⁹  Louisa spent her last years dedicated to the fight for freedom of slaves and women.²⁰ Their mutual pursuit for equality at the end of their lives was the closest thing to a happy ending the couple had.Years after her death, Louisa’s grandson, Henry Adams, remembered thinking there was something exotic about his grandmother.  He wrote that he liked “her gentle voice and manner; her vague effect of not belonging there [Boston], but to Washington or to Europe, like her furniture, and writing-desk with little glass doors above and little eighteenth-century volumes in old bindings labelled ‘Peregrine Pickle’ or ‘Tom Jones’ or ‘Hannah More.’  Try as she might the Madame could never be Bostonian, and it was her cross in life, but to the boy it was her charm.”  Henry Adams knew little about his grandmother’s interior life, which had been, like many women of the time, full of severe stress and little pure satisfaction.²¹

The F Street house near the White House was Louisa’s home during many of her years in Washington and the site of her death.  Earlier, it had been the residence of Dolley and James Madison.  The property remained in the Adams family until 1884.

-- Hannah Jarrett ‘12



1. Boller, Paul F. Jr., “Louisa Catherine Adams 1775-1852,” Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 55.
2. Nagel, Paul C., The Adams Women: Abigail & Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 170.
3. Boller 56.
4. Allgor, Catherine, “Louisa Catherine Adams Campaigns for the Presidency,” Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government, University Press of Virginia, 2000, pp. 161.
5. Nagel 161.
6. Allgor 161-162.
7. Nagel 164.
8. Boller 55.
9. Boller 57.
10. Anthony, Carl Sferrazza, First Ladies: The Saga of the President’s Wives and Their Power 1789-1961, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990, pp. 107.
11. Boller 58.
12. Anthony 108.
13. Nagel 3.
14. Boller 53.
15. Anthony 108.
16. Anthony 109.
17. Nagel 4.
18. Anthony 109-110.
19. Boller 54.
20. Anthony 111.

21 Boller 60-61.

President for a Day

Washington
Jan 24th / 45

To the President of the U.S.

Sir

Mr. Aristides Welch a citizen of the State of Missouri is an applicant for the office of Purser in the Navy; I have but a slight personal acquaintance with Mr Welch, but have been informed by gentlemen in whom I have every confidence that Mr Welch is in every way worthy and well qualified for the station he seeks, I would therefore recommend with the utmost respect a favourable consideration of his claims.

Very respectfully your
obt. servt.
D R. Atchison

In this letter, David Rice Atchison (1807-1886) writes President John Tyler, recommending Aristides Welch to the office of purser in the Navy.  Fortunately, Welch was appointed a purser in the Navy on June 27, 1846, but that is not the story I want to focus on here.

At the time of this letter, Atchison served as a Senator from Missouri -- in fact, he was the first senator from western Missouri and the youngest senator at the time.  He had been appointed to fill a vacancy left by the late Lewis F. Linn, and he was re-elected in 1849 and went on to serve in the Senate until 1855.  He was instrumental role in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, but his claim to fame in American history is his day-long presidency.

 

If someone had told Atchison on that January day in 1845 he was writing to one of his predecessors, the 37-year-old pro-slavery Democrat would have laughed.  But by the end of the year, Atchison’s fellow Democrats would take control of the Senate and would choose him to be President pro tempore (and this was only the first time -- the Senate elected him for this position 12 more times during his Senate career!).  As President pro tempore, Atchison presided over the Senate when the Vice President was absent and stood in second place in the presidential line of succession.

Until the 1930s, presidential and congressional terms began on March 4th at noon.  In 1849, March 4th happened to be a Sunday, and incoming president Zachary Taylor and vice president Millard Fillmore refused to be sworn in to office on a Sunday.  So from noon of March 4th to noon of March 5th Atchison (who had once again been elected President pro tempore two days before) was President of the United States.  Of course, Taylor could have taken the oath privately and begun to execute his presidential duties on the fourth, but Atchison’s supporters claimed that the expiration of James Polk’s term and the delay of Taylor’s inauguration made Atchison the President, fair and square.  Though Atchison was never exactly sure how to view those 24 hours (he slept most of the day), he enjoyed telling the story of his “presidency,” describing it as the "honestest administration this country ever had."

But it seems that even a 24-hour administration can’t escape controversy.  Some say that Atchison couldn’t have been president because Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution states that the incoming chief executive must take an “Oath of Affirmation” before assuming duties, which Atchison admittedly never did.  Others believe that Atchison was president, but only for a few minutes rather than 24 hours.  According to this viewpoint, Atchison’s newest term as President pro tempore did not officially begin until he was sworn in on March 5th, which means his presidency ended a few minutes later when Millard Fillmore was sworn in as Vice President.

Regardless, the inscription on Atchison’s gravestone reads: “President of the United States for One Day.”

 

-Hannah Jarrett '12




Works Consulted:

Joseph H. Bloom.  “David Rice Atchison.” American History 37.6, Feb 2003.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/President_For_A_Day.htm

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=a000322

Philip M Powers' WWI Scrapbook

Wofford College received Philip Montague Powers’ scrapbook from Dick Littlejohn, but we don’t know how, where, or when he obtained it. From the scrapbook itself we were able to gather that Powers created the scrapbook during his time as an Associated Press journalist stationed in Germany. It contains material from Powers' last days in Germany before the majority of American journalists were expelled in 1917. Although the cover reads "1914/15," the scrapbook contains items dated 1915 through early 1917. The scrapbook contains 505 items written in German, English, French, Hungarian, Spanish, and Polish. Most of the items were created in Germany (57), Austria (26), or Poland (19). The majority of the items included do not contain a date or a caption.

Click graph to enlarge

In 2008, a German studies student at Wofford translated many of the articles, letters, and notes into English. Through further research, we discovered that there are eight similar scrapbooks compiled by Powers that are kept at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford. Unfortunately, the archivists at the Hoover Institution knew nothing about the provenance of the scrapbooks.

Having hit a dead end, the scrapbook was stored away and almost forgotten about until recently. At the beginning of the year we pulled the scrapbook out again in attempts to discover more about the creator and the contents. Stephanie Walrath went through each page and recorded data for each item included within the scrapbook. She also sought out more information about Philip Powers, but little was forthcoming. “Was ‘Philip Powers’ a nom de plume?” we wondered. “Maybe he was a spy” we joked. It took some time and some creative internet and database searching, but Stephanie eventually - with a little intuition and luck - unearthed Powers’ obituary from the New York Times. (We’d been performing searches for “Philip Powers,” “Philip M. Powers” and so on, but Stephanie tried the variant spelling Phillip (two Ls) and voila, the New York Times archive yielded the obituary for Philip M. Powers, his name misspelled.)

The obituary filled in some blanks and confirmed some theories. We found out that he was the son of writer Harry Huntington Powers (a suspicion we had all along because an article by H.H. Powers is in the scrapbook). Powers married Clara Janet MacKeil (possibly spelled McKeil or McKeel) in March 1913. He attended Dartmouth College and worked on the staff of the Boston Sunday Post and the Boston Herald. In January 1915, he was assigned to foreign service with the Associated Press. We were able to find very little information about Powers between his return to the States in February 1917 and his obituary, and we were unable to find any articles written by him except for the ones included in the scrapbook. Powers died at age 37 on April 18, 1921 of tubercular menengitis and had “been in ill health for a year, having suffered a nervous breakdown in February 1920.” He was survived by his parents, his wife, and his brother.¹

With these facts confirmed, we could forge a new path out of our dead end: the next search was for living relatives of Powers. Stephanie utilized genealogical records available on the internet and was able to track down Helen Powers LaMont, Powers’ niece and closest living relative. Though Mrs. LaMont had no personal memories of her Uncle Philip (he died two years before she was born), she had a few memories of Powers’ wife Clara. According to Mrs. LaMont, Clara was a “lovely lady who did not re-marry,” and she acted as a nurse and caregiver for Powers’ mother during the last few months of her life. All Mrs. LaMont could remember about Powers was that he reported from the Eastern front during World War I on an old portable Corona typewriter. The family still has Powers’ desk, bed, and typewriter, but no other memories of or connection to him.

Click graph to enlarge

This brings us to the present. Once again we have reached a dead end. We have sent an inquiry to the Associated Press, but we have not heard anything yet. Though we probably won’t find out much more about Powers or his scrapbook, we were able to uncover at least a small bit of this mysterious history. Perhaps someone will pick up the scrapbook a few years from now and find something new.


-Hannah Jarrett '12



¹ Obituary of Phillip [sic] M. Powers printed in the New York Times on April 19, 1921. Found at nytimes.com.

150 Years Later: Battle at "The Place of Peace"

Camp near Mickey’s

April 4 1862

General:
The Cavalry & Infy of the enemy attacked Colo Clanton’s regiment which was posted as I before informed you about 500 or 600 yards in advance of my lines. Colo Clanton retired & the enemy’s cavalry followed until they came near our Infy & Arty when they were gallantly repulsed with slight loss.

Very Rsply,

W.J. Hardee

Maj Genl

Genl Braxton Bragg.
Chief of Staff



This letter, handwritten in pencil by Confederate Major General William Joseph Hardee to General Braxton Bragg only two days before the Battle of Shiloh commenced, summarizes a chaotic and enigmatic event which very nearly started Shiloh before either party was prepared.

(Map of Shiloh National Military Park. Courtesy of the National Park Service. Full size here.)

The Confederate advantage in the days before Shiloh lay in their knowledge of the Union position and the Union’s failure to anticipate an attack. Even though Confederate General Johnston’s initial plan was to march on April 4th, Union General Grant thought that a Confederate attack was unlikely; just hours before being attacked on the morning of April 6th, he sent a telegram to his superior General Halleck asserting that "I have scarcely the faintest idea of an attack being made upon us.”³⁰ The Union commanders failed to realize that the skirmish referred to here, in this letter by Hardee, signaled a far worse attack to come.

In the first week of April, both Union and Confederate troops had set up camp in and around Hardin, Tennessee. After crossing the Tennessee River, Grant spread his troops out around Pittsburg Landing, covering several miles along the western shore of the river and creating several encampments around Shiloh Methodist Church (a Hebrew word ironically meaning “Place of Peace,” after which the battle is named). Meanwhile, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston stationed his Army of the Mississippi around Corinth, about twenty miles southwest of Grant’s position.

(At left, Major General William T. Sherman, commanding the 5th Division of the Army of West Tennessee. At right, Major General William Hardee, corps commander in the Army of the Mississippi.
For a clearer understanding of who was involved in this battle and on which side, click here or here.)

Yet in the days preceding battle, it was not unusual for units on the fringes of their encampments to edge relatively close to the enemy. The incident described in this letter by Major General William Hardee began when a group of Confederate soldiers were noticed in the fields within a quarter mile of a Union picket post on the morning of April 4th. A report was filed to Union General Sherman that there were armed rebels hunting for lunch within close range, but upon closer inspection Sherman decided that the rebels were “nothing more than a reconnoitering party,” and was not alarmed.²

Seemingly secure, Union troops under General Ralph Buckland began to drill around the contested area that afternoon, until shots were heard and Buckland’s eight picket guards were discovered to be missing, “either lost in the woods or captured by marauding Southern cavalry.”³ Companies B and H of Buckland’s 72nd Ohio then went to find the missing soldiers, and the remainder of Buckland’s infantry retreated back to Shiloh Church. But when Companies B and H failed to return from their search mission, Buckland assembled a hundred men and returned to the picket line, beyond which they discovered that Major Leroy Crockett had been captured and Company H was engaged in combat with nearly 200 Confederate cavalry.⁴

Hearing sounds of battle, Sherman ordered reinforcements to ride in under Major Elbridge Ricker. Ricker’s 5th Ohio Cavalry forced the retreat of Colonel James Holt Clanton’s regiment over a hill, but when a few of Ricker’s cavalry “surged over the hill...[they] reined up in shock. Ahead of them was a long line of gray infantry with three field guns.”⁵ Chaos ensued. The Confederates fired their field guns, startling Ricker’s horses and causing a frenzy in which two Confederates and one Union soldier were killed before the Buckland’s swift retreat. The five remaining Ohio cavalrymen who had witnessed the line of Confederates reported, surprised, that it consisted of 2,000 men and multiple batteries.⁶

After the debacle had ended, it seemed as though “both sides had been bloodied and appeared content to break off the contest.” ⁷ Sherman, meanwhile, had assembled multiple regiments for reinforcement and, despite the capture of a handful of prisoners, was irate that Buckland’s advance “might have drawn the entire army into a fight before it was ready.” ⁸

Hardee’s mention of the “slight loss” sustained by the Union included the young Major Leroy Crockett, who was captured in his pursuance of Clanton’s unit. The loss of Crockett seemed to have been of no object to Sherman, and even Hardee fails to mention this ranked prisoner of war in his note to Braggs. It appears that Crockett has been buried in the massive heap of Civil War History, and very little remains on record regarding Crockett other than his promotion to Colonel in November of 1862 and his death little more than a year later. After his capture, Crockett was interrogated and (apparently voluntarily) relayed information that indicated to the Confederate Generals that the Union was still completely unprepared for an attack (as indicated in Grant’s telegram). Crockett confessed that “They don’t expect anything of this kind back yonder”⁹ and upon seeing the breadth of the Confederate encampment, exclaimed, “Why, you seem to have an army here; we know nothing of it.” ¹⁰

This brief incident failed to alarm Sherman; moreover, it is unknown whether Grant was ever notified about the near-battle or the capture of Crockett for informational purposes. It appears that, having lost very few, Sherman did not take the skirmish very seriously and was more annoyed by the inconvenience than concerned about what it might portend. The Confederates, on the other hand, were delighted to have learned that, despite delaying their attack, they had retained the element of surprise. Until the morning of the attack, Sherman remained adamant that the skirmish was a fluke, and ignored the advice of commanders who warned him of an impending strike. It was April 5, the day before Shiloh began, that Sherman replied to one of his subordinates who expressed concern that the Confederates were near: “Take your damned regiment back to Ohio. There is no enemy nearer than Corinth.”¹¹

(Map courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Despite the initial advantages of the Confederates, however, the second day of battle at Shiloh proved disastrous. Johnston had suffered a fatal wound and, with his death, the coordination of the Confederate line fell apart. Their retreat back toward Corinth on the night of April 7 was followed only a little way past Shiloh Church before the spent Union soldiers returned to their own camps, declaring an anticlimactic end to this devastating battle.

- Stephanie Walrath '12

1 Timothy T. Isbell, Shiloh and Corinth: Sentinels of Stone (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 30.

2 Larry J. Daniel, Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 133.

3 Daniel, 134.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Daniel, 135.

8 Ibid.

9 Stephen Berry, House of Abraham (New York: First Mariner Books, 2007), 109.

10 Daniel, 125.

11 David G. Martin, The Shiloh Campaign: March-April 1862 (Cambridge: De Capo Press, 2003), 90

Divided Communities: The Civil War on the Southern Home Front

A depiction of "A Rebel Guerrilla Raid in a Western Town" by the NYC-based political magazine "Harper's Weekly" in their issue from September 22, 1862. This publication can be accessed through the Littlejohn Collection.

“A New Reign of Terror” Harper’s Weekly March 22, 1862

The article in the Richmond Examiner of March 3, which has been generally copied into our papers, can not be read without the same emotion which is excited by the history of the French Revolution in 1793-94. The rebellion is becoming a domestic reign of terror. Nor can any man be surprised at the result. The inexorable logic of facts explains it. In a society which has assumed that to question the most atrocious injustice is so dangerous to social existence that the questioner may be properly lynched, what can be expected when it feels itself in danger from any cause? A man who carries concealed weapons will draw them upon every occasion of danger, real or fancied. A society which is founded upon injustice is necessarily barbarous.

Southern society is composed of the aristocracy who own the laborers, and the great middle class, more ignorant than any corresponding class in the world at the present day. Wealth and distinction are in the hands of the aristocracy. The middle class are poor and wretched; but they feel their wretchedness compensated by the fact that there is a servile race beneath them, and that by virtue of color they are the peers of the aristocracy. Hence, although not rich enough to own slaves, they support slavery, and they are the ready tools of the slave lords. Passionate, ignorant, prejudiced, ferocious---bred in a society where the unbridled will of rich proprietors is practically the sole law of a subject race--here are the elements of the most remorseless mob.

And to the reign of this mob the article in the Examiner, and similar articles in papers of the Southwest plainly point. No honorable and loyal citizen of the United States but must shudder as he contemplates the present position of men who have been faithful to their country, but who are at last exposed to the pitiless crowd which has been made sullen by the defeat of its armies, and has been inflamed by the appeals of leaders anxious to divert to the heads of the innocent the punishment of their own crimes. The editors of the Richmond Examiner would rather see John M. Botts hung to a lamppost than their own office gutted and themselves swung from its windows.

The reign of terror that has long existed in the rebellious section now openly appears. As in the blackest hour of the mob despotism in Paris, men are in danger of losing their lives upon suspicion of being suspected. “Now that the Government,” says the Examiner, “appears really in earnest in the suppression of treason, it becomes every citizen who knows a man or set of men inimical to our country and cause to point them out.”

This is the very tone of French terrorism. “The more the social body perspires,” said Collot d’Herbois, “the healthier it becomes.”

Here again is the Richmond Examiner: “The universal Yankee sympathizers dangling from as many lamp-posts would have a most wholesome and salutary effect. [sic]

It is but the echo of the French terrorist Barrere: “there are none but the dead who do not return.”

Our faithful fellow-citizens now in the power of the rebels, in whom desperation breeds ferocity, are exposed to these frightful perils. Their situation is but another stern appeal for the exercise of every power that can most speedily end the rebellion and secure actual peace. Already the bad bold men of the South are drifting into the terrible necessities of their stupendous crimes against human society. And how accurately does the French historian Mignet, describing the terrorist of the 93 and 94, describe the chiefs of the rebels of to-day in Richmond and the Southwest:

“Sprung from contentions, they wish to support themselves by it. With one hand they fight to defend their domination, with the other they lay the foundation of their system. They kill in the name of their principles. Virtue, humanity, the welfare of the people, all that is most sacred upon the earth, they employ to sanction their executions, to protect their dictatorship, until they are so worn out and fall.”

The article above was published in the March 22, 1862 issue of Harper's Weekly, which can be accessed through the Littlejohn Collection. Here I briefly discuss the reality of contempt for Unionists within the South, a group of people referred to above by Union publishers as "our faithful fellow-citizens." Although we must consider that the Harper's account is mired in bias and is consequently marked by a palpable air of hyperbole, it is useful for considering the social context of the era in which it was written, and remains a topic that merits review.

At the time this article was written, the French Revolution was a relatively recent incidence of mass chaos instigated by popular insurgency, resulting ultimately in a bloody and indiscriminate civil war, which is presumably the reason the authors use the French Revolution as an analogy for the American Civil War.

Yet, as we consider the American Civil War from this angle, it is essential that we re-evaluate the traditional dualist perspective often employed for analysis. It is quite easy to polarize this conflict into “North versus South” or “free states versus slave states”; however, in reality, this perspective often results in generalizations and over-simplification. Contrary to the popular image, “neither the United States nor the Confederate States was a genuinely united nation. Each had its naysayers, peace advocates, draft dodgers, and traitors.”¹ Competing loyalties in the conflict blurred the lines of battle; moreover, that these "battle lines" were often drawn not by generals on a battlefield, but by civilians either practicing or victim to vigilantism on the home front.

While Harper’s Weekly likens the conflict to the French Revolution, a more apt comparison would be to the American Revolution, in that the central issue is drawn from a question of authority. Of course, this analogy is not one that the Union authors of Harper’s would appreciate. Putting aside the morality of the cause, it would be difficult, inciting problems of hypocrisy, for the Union to see itself as analogous to the British in this scenario. It is useful, therefore, to lay aside the issue of self-determination in this analogy and instead focus on the incidence of conservative loyalty within a “rebel” landscape. Just as eighteenth-century patriots condemned George III’s authority to pass laws presiding over them, nineteenth-century rebels condemned the power of Lincoln and of the free states in Congress. Drawing upon this analogy, we consider the treatment of Loyalists, or Tories, by the Patriots in the American Revolution. Their affiliation was, by most accounts, considered traitorous, and they were often harassed to varying degrees, from tarring and feathering to jailing to execution.² While the latter was usually restricted to acts of high treason, it was not unusual for simple distaste for the Revolution to be met with suspicion. Not necessarily marked by acts of overt treason, this “kind of covert, sullen, uncooperative disaffection...that encouraged disrespect and mocked the capacity of the government to exercise its authority” was “identif[ied] and expose[d]” as seditious.³ Sometimes by the Court, and sometimes by vigilante Patriots, these men were put in their place.

A similar environment prevailed for Unionists in the South, where “residents suspected of Union sympathies suffered violent harassment by pro-Confederate residents and Confederate officials."⁴ Various punishments, including arrests and executions, were swiftly carried out on "suspicious" civilians, some of whom were women and children.

While conflict on the southern home front was certainly more common in some areas than others, in many regions, the reality was such that “ the war did not resolve itself into a neat argument between divergent political ideals or social allegiances.” ⁵ Dividing lines were drawn with regard to issues beyond political affiliation and exacerbated through problems of “cause and character, campaigns and stratagems...gender and minorities...personal vendettas, family feuds, [and neighborhood hooliganism.” ⁶ B. Franklin Cooling demonstrates the context of this intra-state conflict through a case study of guerrilla warfare in Tennessee and Kentucky, in which “poorly defined bands and individuals...broke off from authority and waged virtually uncontrolled mayhem, often without regard to allegiance or loyalty, much less legal controls of either the Confederacy or the Union.” ⁷ A community’s political position in the conflict may have been tied up in a number of issues that had little to do with geographic latitude. Secession was by no means a unanimous decision, and each state--and the communities within it--had its dissenters.

The recognition of Union loyalties within the Confederacy became apparent very early on, and this awareness was followed by an effort within the Confederate States to monitor and control communities and objects of suspicion within them. In his analysis of guerrilla violence during this period, Sutherland found that “the Rebels employed a variety of means to keep Unionists in check, including intimidation by Confederate soldiers, militia, conscription and impressment agents, and watchful secessionist neighbors; but nothing was as effective in controlling dissidents as the threat of retaliation by Rebel guerrillas.” ⁸ Amid the chaos of the war, very little justice was uniform, and decisions about the severity of punishments were often made by individual militias or home guard units without orders pertaining to the crime committed. In southern communities, where the majority of men were deployed, there were very few control agents who had the ability to maintain order; the Confederate Home Guard, charged with this exact duty, suffered from a dire lack of communication with any government bodies and therefore often resorted to unsanctioned methods of imposing control. And “without a shred of Confederate support, the militia commanders were insubordinate, oftentimes making their own policy and countermanding orders from the governor.”⁹ Among Southerners for whom secession was a disappointment, there was a sense of fear provoked by the indiscriminate antics of the Confederacy and its allies. From the Confederacy’s inception, there was a feeling of paranoid suspicion that can now be likened to Soviet-era McCarthyism. In both cases, the anomie that resulted from desultory suspicion and libel instigated a new war of contention on the home front, into which an entire community was conscripted, and for which no uniform was required.

This type of chaos, Cooling argues, “constituted the real Civil War”¹⁰ in many cases, and illustrates a different nature of the conflict that is often forgotten.

-- Stephanie Walrath '12

1 Daniel E. Sutherland, “Introduction: The Desperate Side of War,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 7.

2 Robert McCluer Calhoon,The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 401.

3 Robert McCluer Calhoon,The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 404.

4 Lesley J. Gordon, “‘In Time of War’: Unionists Hanged in Kinston, North Carolina, February 1864,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 48.

5 Daniel E. Sutherland, “Introduction: The Desperate Side of War,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 6.

6 B. Franklin Cooling, “A People’s War: Partisan Conflict in Tennessee and Kentucky,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 114.

7 Ibid.

8 Daniel E. Sutherland, “Introduction: The Desperate Side of War,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 8.

9 Donald S. Frazier, “‘Out of Stinking Distance’: The Guerrilla War in Arkansas” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 158.

10 B. Franklin Cooling, “A People’s War: Partisan Conflict in Tennessee and Kentucky,” in Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front, ed. Daniel E. Sutherland (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 114.

CSA Patent Office and Rufus Randolph Rhodes

The Confederate States Patent Office began to take shape in the early months of 1861 after Jefferson Davis sent word to the Confederate Provisional Congress that the government was already receiving seventy patent applications a month. ¹

Rufus Randolph Rhodes, who had experience in the U.S. Patent Office before secession, was appointed Commissioner of Patents, and he moved the patent records office from Alabama to Richmond, Virginia.² The first Confederate patent was issued on August 1, 1861, and patents were issued regularly by the CSA Patent Office after that.³ The most famous invention patented by the CSA Patent Office was the Confederate ironclad ship Merrimac, which was designed by John Mercer Brooke.⁴

Above: An 1862 patent for Azel S. Lyman’s Disintegrating Process signed by Rufus R. Rhodes, Commissioner of Patents. Held in the Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College.

Azel S. Lyman’s Disintegrating Process was used for preparing flax, hemp, and other fibrous plants for textile purposes. The invention was acclaimed for its “ingenious application of the explosive power of steam to the separation of the fibers of all vegetable materials.”

To the agriculturist it presents a powerful inducement for to profitable account the vast area of western specially adapted to the growth of flax and hemp while it furnishes facilities for utilizing the thousands of tons of flax straw which have been and still are left as useless to rot the ground after the removal of the seed.⁵

Patents are granted by the government to inventors for a certain period of time. To acquire a patent, inventors must go through a application process, which includes a petition and various fees. The invention is then reviewed by government appointed patent examiners before being approved for a patent. A patent allows the inventor to “exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing into the country the patented invention for a period of time.” Essentially, patents secure a way for inventors to make money from their inventions. Abraham Lincoln stated that the patent system “added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.” ⁶

Yet the CSA Patent Office does not appear to have granted very many patents during its short existence. Between 1861 and 1864, the CSA Patent Office only issued 266 (known) patents, which is a small amount when compared to the 16,051 patents issued by the U.S. Patent Office during that same period. That is, the number of patents the south granted was less than 10% of the national total. Does that mean the South lacked inventive genius?

The lack of southern patenting compared to Northern patenting has been used to argue several things about the state of the south before, during, and after the Civil War: (1) the south was agrarian, and therefore less likely to support new inventions and patents; (2) the south was not as educated as the north in terms of technology; and (3) the south lacked mills and other industry that fostered invention. H. Jackson Knight eliminates these possibilities as major factors because they do not hold up against the reality of the South during the Civil War.⁷

Knight offers other possibilities for the lack of southern patenting: (1) there was a lack of foreign immigrants in the southern states before the war, as compared to in the northern states; (2) the practice of agriculture in the south was a rural enterprise, and there was less motivation to patent any inventions; (3) there was a lack of highly developed communication and transportation, which made sharing information about inventions more difficult; and (4) there was the war itself and the uncertainty of government protection of inventions.⁸

In the south, patents were a secondary objective unless the invention could be used to help defeat the enemy. In fact, in 1861, 32% of patents issued by the CSA Patent Office fell under the category “Fire Arms and Implements of War.” One third of the patents in 1862, the year of Lyman’s Disintegrating Process, were for inventions for use in the war. Only one patent in 1862 is recorded to be for the “Manufacture of Fibrous Substances, Including Machines,” which is the category Lyman’s invention would fall under. (Knight doesn’t mention Lyman in his book, so it is unknown if he is referring to Lyman’s invention here.) ⁹

There is perhaps a more practical reason for the lack of southern patents. Rhodes noted that patent applications dropped during the second half of 1862 because “occupation of considerable portions of the Confederate States by the Union Army” meant that the clerical force of the CSA Patent Office was reduced. In fact, by the end of the war, there was only one examiner in the CSA Patent Office.¹⁰

Also, it is important to keep in mind that the CSA Patent Office burned down in April 1865 after Confederate forces set fire to the city during the evacuation of Richmond. In June, the U.S. Commissioner of Patents sent an examiner to recover any records of the CSA Patent Office, but he didn’t find anything. The only known surviving records of the CSA Patent Office are two partial ledger books, a few original patents (such as the one for Lyman’s invention), four Annual Reports of the Confederate Commissioner of Patents, and various other printed reports. ¹¹

-- Hannah Jarrett ‘12


CITATIONS

1. Kenneth W. Dobyns, The Patent Office Pony: A History of the Early Patent Office, http://www.myoutbox.net/popch27.htm, p. 167.

2. H. Jackson Knight, Confederate Invention: The Story of the Confederate States Patent Office and Its Inventors, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011, p. 50.

3. Dobyns, p. 167.

4. Dobyns, p. 169.

5. The Friend, August 8, 1861.

6. Knight, p. 1.

7. Knight, pp. 73-74.

8. Knight, p. 90.

9. Knight, p. 122.

10. Dobyns, p. 168.

11. Dobyns, p. 169.