Beaufort Skedaddle Day

(This post was originally published one year ago today on the 150th anniversary of the Great Beaufort Skedaddle.)
 
They were at church when the word came. In the pews of Saint Helena’s in Beaufort, South Carolina, master and slave alike heard that an enormous Yankee fleet was massing off Point Royal Sound a mere ten miles away. If Confederate defenses didn’t hold, the town would have to evacuate in a matter of hours. It was time to pack and to pray.

View of Beaufort, Dec 1861

In 1861, Beaufort was one of the wealthiest, most cultured cities in America. The town boasted not only a library of three thousand volumes but also some of the most erudite, educated men in the South. Having built their elegant Greek Revival mansions with ballrooms, chandeliers and two-story piazzas, planter families gathered here each summer to escape the heat and ague of their Sea Island plantations, as well as socialize and talk politics.  Secession politics. For more than a dozen years cries for secession had risen from Beaufort, much of them led by its native son, rabble-rousing, fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett, remembered as the “Father of Secession.”

The Confederacy knew full well that Port Royal might be a target for a Northern base, but they couldn’t be sure other sites weren’t also in the running and so were somewhat lackadaisical in establishing defenses for Port Royal Sound. During the summer of 1861, local plantations reluctantly provided slaves to begin construction of two forts to guard the Sound’s entrance: Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island and Fort Beauregard on Phillips Island. But not only were the forts still incomplete by November, the artillery installed fell far short of what was originally proposed and even farther short of what was needed when the Yankees came calling.

Plans had been underway in the North to take a Southern port since early summer, with Lincoln himself involved in the selection. After all, to implement the “Anaconda Plan”—a tight blockade of the Southern coastline intended to cripple the Confederate economy—U.S. Navy warships needed a place to refuel with the coal that gave them power. Port Royal was one of the choicest deepwater ports on the Southern coast. That a massive Northern fleet was poised to sail was common knowledge to anyone who could read a newspaper once The New York Times published the details in the article, “The Great Naval Expedition,” on October 26^th. The only unknown was the destination, a secret that, remarkably, was successfully kept.  It wasn’t until they were at sea that the captain of each vessel opened a sealed envelope telling him where his ship was headed.

The Great Naval Expedition en route

The fleet that set out on Oct 29^th would prove to be the largest U.S. naval and amphibious expedition in the entire nineteenth century.  It included 17 warships, 25 colliers, 33 transports, 12,000 infantry, 600 marines, and 157 big guns. Port Royal, with its two cobbled-together forts supplied with only 2500 men, 4 gunboats, and 39 guns between them, didn’t stand a chance.

Bombardment of Port Royal

Nature came to the South’s aid in the form of a storm that sank some of the Northern fleet along the way, and then rough water delayed the day of the final attack. But when November 7^th dawned clear and calm, the water so still it was glassy, enough of the North’s warships were available to commence battle. Union ships concentrated their enfilade on Fort Walker. To the soldiers inside, the sound of artillery was deafening. By noon, only three of Fort Walker’s water battery guns were still operational; by 2:30 p.m., all powder was gone. The time had come to abandon the fort. The command at Fort Beauregard, concerned about being trapped on Phillips Island with no line of retreat, quickly followed suit. Thankfully, casualties on both sides were light. Accounts vary, but the Confederates finished the day with between 11 and 59 killed and an equivalent number wounded or missing, while the Union fleet saw 8 dead and 23 wounded.

Even with the enormous attacking naval force, Sea Island planters had been so confident in the defending forts manned with recruits from their very own Beaufort Volunteer Artillery that many watched the battle from shore on nearby Saint Helena Island. But when Confederate cannons grew silent and cheers reverberated from the Northern ships, they knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. They hurried home to evacuate, no doubt pained to leave bolls of valuable Sea Island cotton still unpicked in the fields.

When news of the battle’s outcome reached Beaufort, a kind of panic ensued. Facing an invading army of Yankees was too dreadful to contemplate; flight was of the essence. But what to take, what to leave behind? The daguerreotypes? The silver? Of course the family bible must be packed. Some loaded up carriages, hoping to stay ahead of the Yankees on the long overland route to safety. But Beaufort was lucky that day—there was a steamer anchored in the river that could take hundreds swiftly to Charleston. However, it had only so much room. Furniture, clothing, horses, and the vast majority of their most valuable property—slaves—would have to be left behind. In the tumult, even food and dinner dishes were abandoned on dining room tables, testament to the haste involved. That evening the steamer departed overflowing with Beaufort’s white citizenry along with every jewel and sentimental item they could squeeze on board. Legend has it that when Yankee forces arrived two days later to occupy the town, they found just one white man remaining in Beaufort, and he was dead drunk.

What must the deserted slaves, who spoke Gullah, their own Sea Island patois, have thought as the laden steamer chugged away from Beaufort’s dock? Did they realize that history had unexpectedly turned a corner right in front of them, and that now, after centuries of captivity as a people, they were suddenly free? Perhaps the political ramifications didn’t sink in that night, but before the first Yankees arrived, clothing and other finery had been looted (liberated?) from the grand homes, and food and liquor thoroughly consumed in an understandable celebration of events. 

Five generations now free (1862)

It is estimated 8-10,000 slaves were left behind in the Sea Islands when the white population fled. They were soon joined by thousands of others who escaped to the region once they realized that Northern occupation meant freedom.  They all needed food and shelter, and since the Emancipation Proclamation had yet to happen, their legal status, beyond being “contraband,” was unclear. The Army asked for help and received it in the form of the Port Royal Experiment. Financed and organized by Northern abolitionist charities, the Experiment worked as a test case to create self-sufficiency among the former slaves. Its success points to what Reconstruction might have been if less corruption and more competence had been at its helm.  Northern missionaries and teachers flocked to the Sea Islands to create schools and aid societies. Former slaves were allowed to farm the confiscated plantations and were paid $1 per 400 lbs of cotton they were able to harvest.  The Penn School on St. Helena Island was one of the earliest schools established for freed slaves and can be visited as part of the Penn Center today.

Yankees at home on a Beaufort piazza (1862)

The Union Army found Beaufort a pleasant setting for officer’s quarters, administrative offices and hospitals.  Because the Army occupied Beaufort until the end of the war, the fine mansions, while suffering damage, were not burned to the ground like so many other Southern towns and surrounding Sea Island plantations. To this day Beaufort’s centuries-old live oaks and antebellum charm remain. Port Royal turned out to be as advantageous a harbor as the Union had hoped and did much to strengthen the potency of the blockade. After the war, most planter families—their sons dead, their plantations burnt, their Beaufort homes sold in government auctions for back taxes (often without their knowledge)—never returned. The civilization that was antebellum Beaufort vanished into the night with that last steamer.

It is rare that the wheel of fortune spins as violently as it did on November 7, 1861. The town that had advocated so fiercely for secession was the first to feel the brunt of an occupying army. A people remarkable for their wealth lost almost everything in a matter of hours. A region that so defiantly insisted that its way of life—slavery—was non-negotiable ended up being the first to have a colony of former slaves experiment with what it meant to be free. The Great Skedaddle indeed.

Photos above are from (in order):  Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Harper's Weekly 11/9/1861, Harper's Weekly 11/30/1861, Library of Congress, Library of Congress. 

Ulysses S. Grant--Out of Love But Still Very Fond

The Man

This a sequel to my previous post, I Am In Love With Ulysses S. Grant, written just as I began the perusal of his memoirs.

Ah, Ulysses. Hiram Ulysses, actually. During his appointment to West Point, his middle name got mixed up as his first, and when he got to the Academy, he didn’t argue about it. Sign of a good solider, I suppose, take what comes. Put up and shut up. Except Grant’s genius was that during the Civil War, “do what you’re told” was not what he did.

Grant was a math guy. In the Mexican-American War he was a quartermaster—the officer in charge of supplies, rations, clothing, and shelter.  Though I still don’t understand how someone good at supplying an army (and later commanding an army) could be so hideously bad at running a small business as Grant, his memoirs show that logistics was indeed a key strength. He was always considering how to get supplies to his army or cut them off from the enemy, either by choking off supply routes or destroying the supplies themselves. (Sometimes the enemy’s supplies were still in the fields and smokehouses of the Confederate citizenry. As Grant saw it, this was what Sherman’s march to the sea was all about.) Looking at the state of Lee’s army at Appomattox, this strategy appears to have worked, though the terrible casualties, the noose of Grant’s forces preventing escape, and the desertions due to low morale no doubt contributed as well.

Raring to vanquish

Grant’s other great strength was his tremendous impatience, almost fury, to trounce his opponents. While out west, often cut off from communication with Washington and his higher ups, Grant took the initiative and attacked when and where he thought he could win. (When your superiors are terrified to act for fear of blame, doing first and informing later is an effective tactic as long as the result is a success that your superiors can take credit for.) He rose through the ranks through sheer nerve and competence when such qualities were scarce.

Go-Getter Sheridan

Once Grant was promoted to general-in-chief of all the Federal forces and had to operate out of the east, you could palpably feel his frustration with the idiotic interference of Stanton and Halleck (be cautious! be defensive!) who would change Grant’s direct orders without his knowledge. And you can understand his vexation when his subordinates failed to follow orders or followed them too late to be of use. Grant loved Sherman and Sheridan because they could get their men marching off before most other commanders could put one leg out of bed.

Reading the memoirs I was amazed at how often the Federal troops made very early morning (3:30 am!) or all night marches. In the west, Grant was often able to use his predilection for early movement to surprise his opponent. It worked less well with Lee because Lee started doing it, too.  Perhaps Lee heard about Grant’s tactics in the western battles and adjusted accordingly?

Hasty military bridge--Chickahominy, Virginia

Cut those supply lines

Another aspect of the war that astounded me was how often railroads were ripped up and then laid right back down. To disrupt the other side’s supply lines and troop transport, each army had a small army constantly burning ties and twisting rails into curlicues. Then when the other side gained back control of the area, they would put down new ties and unbend the steel. Bridges were also constantly destroyed and rebuilt, although Grant’s army did often carry around pontoons with them to get over rivers in a pinch. And all this was done incredibly rapidly, without backhoes, chainsaws or cranes.

Loathed

Though I still admire Grant, I have to say my infatuation has faded, as infatuations are wont to do. He was more of a black-and-white guy than I like, though I realize seeing the grey in things does not a good general make. In a war, there are only two sides: yours and the enemy’s. Grant was clear why he was fighting, what needed to be done, and what sacrifices were worth making. Though he didn’t like his men dying, he accepted the deaths and maiming as the cost of winning. He acknowledged the valor and tenacity of the Confederates but believed them wrong, wrong, wrong. He respected Lee, admired Lincoln (though pooh-poohed him when he put his pretty civilian head towards military strategy) and despised the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis.

In the first half of Grant’s accounts, before he became commander-in-chief of the Northern army, I got more of a sense of thoughtfulness, more wry acknowledgement of the twists and turns that fate throws us mortals. Perhaps in the second half Grant became more cut and dried because he was growing very ill and felt the need to make the case for his version of history before his time was up. He seemed defensive that people claimed Lee was the better general, he didn’t really acknowledge the terrible destruction done to the South by Sherman and other Northern forces or later during the Reconstruction. (He doesn’t go much into his presidency at all.) He sincerely believed slavery was wrong but didn’t mention that both he and his wife owned slaves for a time. He didn’t believe in social equality between blacks and whites.

The Surrender

Grant was a great general who rose through the ranks of the Northern army because no one else could or would do the job in an even halfway effective fashion. Since he wasn’t a political appointee or career military, he had little to lose in terms of salary or position and so was willing to take risks. Poor, poor Lincoln to have such miserable, pathetic generals who refused to do much of anything. Grant was so young, only 41, when he became commander-in-chief. This in itself is a measure of how desperate Lincoln was. There is a hysterical telegram from Lincoln (in Washington) to Grant (on the battlefields) that beautifully sums up what Lincoln was going through:

"The Peacemakers"--Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, Porter

“I have seen your despatch in which you say ‘I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put himself South of the enemy, and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go also.’ This I think, is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may have received from here, even since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here, of ‘putting our army South of the enemy’ or of following him ‘to the death’ in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.”

Basically Lincoln is flat out telling Grant that everyone associated with the war in Washington was a useless, incompetent viper and that he himself couldn't do much about it.

What might he have done?

Grant wasn’t a man who had the patience or finesse for politics, and he was inclined to assume people would follow orders correctly rather than suspect they would screw up (which happened with disheartening frequency.) He seemed to feel that since Southerners caused the war they deserved a certain amount of retribution—especially South Carolina. He indicated that President Johnson’s accommodations of the South immediately after the war were what prompted the drastic measures of the Reconstruction. From everything he writes of Lincoln, it is indeed a great tragedy that Lincoln was assassinated. Lincoln was the one man who would've had the patience, compassion, political skill, and credibility to knit North and South back together with an even hand. Reconstruction certainly made advances for African Americans and gave them a brief spot in the sun in terms of political power, but all those advances were soon washed away and replaced by a heavy hand for over a hundred years. Less retribution, more healing, and a firm commitment to education, economic opportunity, and enfranchisement of African Americans over the long haul would have been so much better.

Are Grant’s memoirs a literary masterpiece? Well, they have immense value and are, by and large, highly readable. They’re more oriented towards military history than I had expected (though he does spend time on his childhood and cadet years) and my eyes did glaze over from time to time as each creek, swamp and bayou crossed was discussed in detail. Even so I got a lot out of the work. Grant’s voice speaks to us from another place and time with a freshness that is remarkable. Though I don’t know if he was always honest with himself (he never mentions his drinking), he does write with a candor and integrity I have rarely found in memoirs. I got a great sense of what it was like to be him, in his shoes, directing troops, fretting about an enemy’s retreat or how to feed the army's horses before the grass is growing again in the spring. I love how after a week of battle he found a borrowed change of clean underwear extremely pleasant; I wonder at how he only mentions in passing that his son nearly died of illness while he was holding Vicksburg under siege.

Was he a great man? I believe so, though some of this was due entirely to his unique response to a unique demand of history. Was he moral? I would say close, but since I have a few reservations he doesn’t quite win the cigar for that in my estimation. Do I know all his demons, did I plumb his soul? Unfortunately, no. The memoirs don’t go that far, and I can’t say I blame Grant for his reticence. Who wants their soul plumbed a hundred and thirty years after they’ve left the earth? But he left us his voice, his intelligence, and his understanding of his place in history, and I am glad to know the man and my country better because of it.

I Am in Love with Ulysses S. Grant

The Man

I realize this infatuation may only be a passing fancy, but I have begun reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. It is a two-volume set, consisting of 552 pages (although I’m reading it on a Kindle which results in never having a true feel for where you are in a book.) In any event, I’ve set out on a journey to plumb this man’s soul. It’s nice to have a long read to look forward to. 

Grant wrote these memoirs at the very end of his life, as he was dying of throat cancer. Seems to me a meaningful vantage point from which to ponder one’s place in history. A man of humble beginnings, Grant had enormous successes and enormous failures. Some of these would alter the fate of a nation; others the fate of a people. Some brought him shame and financial ruin.

Grant Booster

Mark Twain characterized Grant’s account as “a great, unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece,” a war memoir comparable in stature to Julius Caesar’s.  (There’s hyperbole for you, to be expected since Twain was involved in publishing and selling the book.) Fifty years later, holding court underneath her Picasso’s, Gertrude Stein claimed Grant’s book to be one of the greatest written by an American. Walt Whitman said of Grant, “In all Homer and Shakespeare there is no fortune or personality really more picturesque or rapidly changing, more full of heroism, pathos, contrast." (I cannot resist also including this quote from Whitman, just because it makes me smile: "I do not value literature as a profession. I feel about literature what Grant did about war. He hated war. I hate literature.")

Of course not everyone was a fan of the man. Henry James sniffed that Grant’s prose was “hard and dry as sandpaper.” Matthew Arnold held that Grant’s use of English was “without charm and without high breeding.” But let them say what they like. Dying and nearly destitute, Grant clung to life and churned out up to fifty pages a day so that profits from the book might provide for his family. He finished the manuscript and died five days later.

A curious man. I am in love with his voice. It was anti-Victorian, not flowery and verbose but spare, direct, even acerbic. Yet not cynical, at least not by modern standards. The amusement and wit is gentler, forgiving, and always demonstrating a clarity and intelligence that I admire. 

At his best?

They say Grant had great courage and coolness under fire. It certainly showed during the Battle of Fort Donelson. It was while researching the performance of Gideon Pillow (perhaps the worst general in the Civil War) in that battle that I first ran across Grant’s wry recollections. It was no doubt what set me on a course, six months later, to delve into his memoirs.

My question at the moment: how does an aware, intelligent man of his caliber, a great strategist and imperturbable tactician (unruffled by bolting horses or bullets flying  overhead), make such astonishing, bonehead errors of judgment? His presidency was one of the most corrupt on record, and some of the worst excesses of the Reconstruction happened on his watch. He went on to end his life in financial ruin due to lax oversight and further poor judgment. And yet he says this about the Mexican-American War (with which I am in complete agreement):

“I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”

I cannot but believe Grant was a moral man. Moral in, I suppose, my complex, rather torturous definition of the term. (You have to see all the complexities, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, and all the murky grey areas in between where things are never clear and people try and fail, and maybe don’t try so hard and fail but have to be forgiven anyway because, in the end, kindness is the only true religion. And with all this, knowing the tragedies and the pettiness and the failures and the sadness, knowing your own failures and the reefs you’ve foundered on, you still most days attempt the right thing, that which will cause the least suffering and most well-being for all. You strive for what your conscience can best live with, because there is, in the end, no other choice. And if you can do all this without bitterness, with even a sense of humor, by god, you’re a saint.)

(I have not often managed to live up to this definition.)

I wish Lincoln had lived to write his autobiography. He could be hysterically funny and I’m sure such a book would be a rollicking good time (not unlike Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography which is a hoot.) I’m also a fan of Robert E Lee and wish he’d written memoirs so I could hear his voice without all the mythologizing and interpreters, though in his writing Lee is invariably such a gentleman and so circumspect that perhaps little of his inner personality might have shown through.

But what is left to posterity, mostly due to a pressing need for cash, is the account of a man who, as a West Point cadet, just wanted to become a math professor and who probably would’ve been happier, when all was said and done, had that happened. But his soul, his demons, his moral center? Does the arc of the universe indeed bend towards justice, kindness, redemption? Ah, that’s why I read. And why I write. To find out.

The Great Beaufort "Skedaddle"

They were at church when the word came. In the pews of Saint Helena’s in Beaufort, South Carolina, master and slave alike heard that an enormous Yankee fleet was massing off Point Royal Sound a mere ten miles away. If Confederate defenses didn’t hold, the town would have to evacuate in a matter of hours. It was time to pack and to pray.

View of Beaufort, Dec 1861

In 1861, Beaufort was one of the wealthiest, most cultured cities in America. The town boasted not only a library of three thousand volumes but also some of the most erudite, educated men in the South. Having built their elegant Greek Revival mansions with ballrooms, chandeliers and two-story piazzas, planter families gathered here each summer to escape the heat and ague of their Sea Island plantations, as well as socialize and talk politics.  Secession politics. For more than a dozen years cries for secession had risen from Beaufort, much of them led by its native son, rabble-rousing, fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett, remembered as the “Father of Secession.”

The Confederacy knew full well that Port Royal might be a target for a Northern base, but they couldn’t be sure other sites weren’t also in the running and so were somewhat lackadaisical in establishing defenses for Port Royal Sound. During the summer of 1861, local plantations reluctantly provided slaves to begin construction of two forts to guard the Sound’s entrance: Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island and Fort Beauregard on Phillips Island. But not only were the forts still incomplete by November, the artillery installed fell far short of what was originally proposed and even farther short of what was needed when the Yankees came calling.

Plans had been underway in the North to take a Southern port since early summer, with Lincoln himself involved in the selection. After all, to implement the “Anaconda Plan”—a tight blockade of the Southern coastline intended to cripple the Confederate economy—U.S. Navy warships needed a place to refuel with the coal that gave them power. Port Royal was one of the choicest deepwater ports on the Southern coast. That a massive Northern fleet was poised to sail was common knowledge to anyone who could read a newspaper once The New York Times published the details in the article, “The Great Naval Expedition,” on October 26^th. The only unknown was the destination, a secret that, remarkably, was successfully kept.  It wasn’t until they were at sea that the captain of each vessel opened a sealed envelope telling him where his ship was headed.

The Great Naval Expedition en route

The fleet that set out on Oct 29^th would prove to be the largest U.S. naval and amphibious expedition in the entire nineteenth century.  It included 17 warships, 25 colliers, 33 transports, 12,000 infantry, 600 marines, and 157 big guns. Port Royal, with its two cobbled-together forts supplied with only 2500 men, 4 gunboats, and 39 guns between them, didn’t stand a chance.

Bombardment of Port Royal

Nature came to the South’s aid in the form of a storm that sank some of the Northern fleet along the way, and then rough water delayed the day of the final attack. But when November 7^th dawned clear and calm, the water so still it was glassy, enough of the North’s warships were available to commence battle. Union ships concentrated their enfilade on Fort Walker. To the soldiers inside, the sound of artillery was deafening. By noon, only three of Fort Walker’s water battery guns were still operational; by 2:30 p.m., all powder was gone. The time had come to abandon the fort. The command at Fort Beauregard, concerned about being trapped on Phillips Island with no line of retreat, quickly followed suit. Thankfully, casualties on both sides were light. Accounts vary, but the Confederates finished the day with between 11 and 59 killed and an equivalent number wounded or missing, while the Union fleet saw 8 dead and 23 wounded.

Even with the enormous attacking naval force, Sea Island planters had been so confident in the defending forts manned with recruits from their very own Beaufort Volunteer Artillery that many watched the battle from shore on nearby Saint Helena Island. But when Confederate cannons grew silent and cheers reverberated from the Northern ships, they knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. They hurried home to evacuate, no doubt pained to leave bolls of valuable Sea Island cotton still unpicked in the fields.

When news of the battle’s outcome reached Beaufort, a kind of panic ensued. Facing an invading army of Yankees was too dreadful to contemplate; flight was of the essence. But what to take, what to leave behind? The daguerreotypes? The silver? Of course the family bible must be packed. Some loaded up carriages, hoping to stay ahead of the Yankees on the long overland route to safety. But Beaufort was lucky that day—there was a steamer anchored in the river that could take hundreds swiftly to Charleston. However, it had only so much room. Furniture, clothing, horses, and the vast majority of their most valuable property—slaves—would have to be left behind. In the tumult, even food and dinner dishes were abandoned on dining room tables, testament to the haste involved. That evening the steamer departed overflowing with Beaufort’s white citizenry along with every jewel and sentimental item they could squeeze on board. Legend has it that when Yankee forces arrived two days later to occupy the town, they found just one white man remaining in Beaufort, and he was dead drunk.

What must the deserted slaves, who spoke Gullah, their own Sea Island patois, have thought as the laden steamer chugged away from Beaufort’s dock? Did they realize that history had unexpectedly turned a corner right in front of them, and that now, after centuries of captivity as a people, they were suddenly free? Perhaps the political ramifications didn’t sink in that night, but before the first Yankees arrived, clothing and other finery had been looted (liberated?) from the grand homes, and food and liquor thoroughly consumed in an understandable celebration of events. 

Five generations now free (1862)

It is estimated 8-10,000 slaves were left behind in the Sea Islands when the white population fled. They were soon joined by thousands of others who escaped to the region once they realized that Northern occupation meant freedom.  They all needed food and shelter, and since the Emancipation Proclamation had yet to happen, their legal status, beyond being “contraband,” was unclear. The Army asked for help and received it in the form of the Port Royal Experiment. Financed and organized by Northern abolitionist charities, the Experiment worked as a test case to create self-sufficiency among the former slaves. Its success points to what Reconstruction might have been if less corruption and more competence had been at its helm.  Northern missionaries and teachers flocked to the Sea Islands to create schools and aid societies. Former slaves were allowed to farm the confiscated plantations and were paid $1 per 400 lbs of cotton they were able to harvest.  The Penn School on St. Helena Island was one of the earliest schools established for freed slaves and can be visited as part of the Penn Center today.

Yankees at home on a Beaufort piazza (1862)

The Union Army found Beaufort a pleasant setting for officer’s quarters, administrative offices and hospitals.  Because the Army occupied Beaufort until the end of the war, the fine mansions, while suffering damage, were not burned to the ground like so many other Southern towns and surrounding Sea Island plantations. To this day Beaufort’s centuries-old live oaks and antebellum charm remain. Port Royal turned out to be as advantageous a harbor as the Union had hoped and did much to strengthen the potency of the blockade. After the war, most planter families—their sons dead, their plantations burnt, their Beaufort homes sold in government auctions for back taxes (often without their knowledge)—never returned. The civilization that was antebellum Beaufort vanished into the night with that last steamer.

It is rare that the wheel of fortune spins as violently as it did on November 7, 1861. The town that had advocated so fiercely for secession was the first to feel the brunt of an occupying army. A people remarkable for their wealth lost almost everything in a matter of hours. A region that so defiantly insisted that its way of life—slavery—was non-negotiable ended up being the first to have a colony of former slaves experiment with what it meant to be free. The Great Skedaddle indeed.

Photos above are from (in order):  Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Harper's Weekly 11/9/1861, Harper's Weekly 11/30/1861, Library of Congress, Library of Congress. 

The Civil War--A Rough Beast Slouches

In 1849 things were good in Beaufort, South Carolina and about to get better. Over the next decade Britain’s demand for Sea Island cotton would go through the roof with prices to suit.  From 1850 – 1860 a great many of Beaufort’s grand houses were built as the money flowed in. Though friction with the North was increasing and inflammatory talk about secession was escalating, they were adamant  that their way of life was not negotiable. What was just around the corner for the white population of Beaufort—collapse, calamity and ruin--no one saw coming.

Conundrum

The seeds for the Civil War were sown long before 1861.  Even our founding fathers knew they’d embedded a desperate conundrum into the Constitution with its express protection of both human rights and slavery in the same document.  Benjamin Franklin foresaw much when he said, "Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils."  Thomas Jefferson knew trouble lay ahead when he said about slavery, “We have the wolf by the ear and feel the danger of either holding on or letting him loose.”  Patrick Henry wrote, "I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

The Triumvirate at Work

Pity their descendants as they might, the problem that was too thorny for these great men to solve was left for a future generation to suffer through. Two economic systems fought for dominance—the South’s agricultural economy made possible by slave labor and the North’s industrial economy with its denser population and huge influx of immigrants.  Both wanted to expand into the western territories, the South to preserve the delicate balance of power in Congress, the North to populate the vast plains and the west with their burgeoning population. The entire first half of the 19^th century was spent in compromise to prevent these two forces from tearing the country apart.  The great triumvirate of Webster, Clay and Calhoun plied their wiles in the Senate year after year to preserve the young nation. But in the end the internal contradictions of the competing ideologies and economic systems were too much. The center could not hold. As Yeats notes so often happens with war, “a blood-dimmed tide” was loosed upon the world. 

The Wages of Rhetoric

Did antebellum Beaufort have no inkling as events began to spin in an ever-widening gyre? Could they not see that the rhetoric they cheered would turn into fields of blood and mud? Perhaps no one, Northerner or Southerner, could have anticipated half a million lives would be lost. Indeed both sides expected the conflict to end in a matter of months. Perhaps Jefferson was right that  both holding on to slavery or letting go involved disaster. But could the South have transitioned away from a slave economy in a way less catastrophic and destructive? Could they have avoided the rough beast slouching towards them? This is what Beaufort 1849 explores.  

Those who believe their way of life is not negotiable may find, indeed, that history does not negotiate.

  

THE SECOND COMING (William Butler Yeats)
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Spitting in the Wind, Past and Present

To spit in the wind is to attempt the impossible, a waste of one’s time and energy, even if for a good reason or cause. In Beaufort 1849, Spit Jim accuses Jasper of this when, after reading an enlightened letter to the editor in the Charleston Courier, Jasper perceives a faint chance that the South might voluntarily transition away from a slave economy. Jim, justifiably antsy to leave the South, doesn’t believe it for a second. “No one gives away wealth and power just because someone writes something sensible in a newspaper once in a while,” he tells Jasper caustically and urges him to leave both the South and this futile hope behind as soon as possible.

But Jasper sees the tragedy that lies ahead if the South doubles down to defend its way of life. At the dawn of what is now known as the Second Industrial Revolution, he’s aware that not only is public sentiment in the North and in Europe growing against slavery, but that the wealth and power of the world is beginning to swing heavily towards mechanization, industrialization, and energy supplied by coal. Try as it might, there will be no way for an agricultural South to maintain its economic and political parity with an industrialized North. Flush with immigrants and a growing middle class, the North is already vying for its economic system to prevail in the new territories and states as the nation expands. Further, as cries for secession mount in Beaufort, Jasper foresees the sheer impossibility of the North letting the South become a separate, hostile, militarily-powerful country stretching along its entire southern border, competing to annex land and resources. Because the South will be on the wrong side of economic (not to mention moral) history, Jasper realizes that in the coming fight for dominance the South is likely not only to lose the battle but to have its entire civilization crushed in the process.

Jim, born and raised a slave, is just fine with the prospect of the South’s destruction. Jasper, however, argues that given the suffering that will likely result, they should try to head off the brewing violence by advocating for reform. And so he begins his impossible task of convincing Southern planters to voluntarily give up a portion of their wealth and control, turn slaves into citizens and willing participants in the economy, begin mechanized farming, and industrialize by creating mills to manufacture cotton into cloth for local markets. (The South will eventually do some approximation of all of this, but not until enduring great suffering, death and hardship, and even then the collapse of the Southern economy and widespread poverty will endure several generations.)

I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that Jasper does not succeed in preventing the Civil War. Was he a fool even to try? Indeed, what are the odds that any one man could change the mind of an entire civilization? The reader of Beaufort 1849 knows Jasper is spitting in the wind from his very first attempt.

But if Jasper foresees disaster for the people he loves, isn’t he morally obliged to do what he can to avert it? How hard should he persevere, how much should he sacrifice?

Imagine if you were to visit a beloved cousin you hadn’t seen for a number of years. When you arrive, though he and his family appear quite prosperous, it soon becomes evident that the family is living beyond their means and that their prosperity is fueled by debt—credit cards, home equity withdrawls, no interest balloon payment loans, etc. As you hear about their recent Caribbean cruise, admire their remodeled kitchen, see the four new cars parked in the driveway, your feeling of impending doom for these people you love grows heavier and heavier. What do you do? Perhaps have a quiet talk with your cousin. And what will be the outcome? Most likely denial and perhaps a testy, “Mind your own business, everything’s under control.”

And what if your cousin lives in an entire town of people relying on ever-growing amounts of debt to maintain their lifestyle? What would your obligation be to change their behavior that is bound to make them poor, angry, unhappy and even desperate in the long run? If we like arguments, perhaps we might get into a few heated ones at a BBQ and make ourselves none too popular. For a subtler approach, we might offer hints that fall upon deaf ears. Perhaps we will be told that this way of life poses no problem, and how can we argue because, after all, it’s worked up until now? Perhaps we are indeed Cassandra’s, doomsters who want to frighten everyone into being miserable and giving up the good life because we can’t stand to see others enjoying themselves.

Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Now what if your cousin made his living strip mining coal or marketing cigarettes? What if your cousin lived in early Nazi Germany and didn’t seem troubled by the murders and disappearances because his mercantile trade was finally booming again? What if your cousin imported goods from Asia made by children and young teens for wages that barely kept them fed? Or what if your cousin lived in a slave economy, all his friends and neighbors owned slaves, and he used slaves to farm his fields?

I first saw the phrase, “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” on a button worn by a NA (Narcotics Anonymous) member out with a bunch of compatriots on a day trip to Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The support and camaraderie that this group (who had likely been through hell) were giving each other was important, but so was the acknowledgement that change only occurs when one is willing and open to it. After one has identified and admitted the problem. People who don’t believe they have a problem are unlikely to change. And people whose wealth and ease depend on a particular way of life are likely to defend that way of life rather than perceive problems with it. In fact, they are most likely to perceive problems with the person criticizing it.

Now, what if the town living an unsustainable way of life (along whichever measure you wish—economic, moral, environmental, resource consumption, etc.) is not your cousin’s but your own? What if it is not your town that is on a dangerous path, but your entire country? Your planet? Jasper has the option of leaving the South, and due to his struggles with alcoholism and commitments he’s made to Jim, he knows he can’t linger in Beaufort for long. In contrast, though most of us could probably change towns, countries would be difficult, and the planet impossible. Is pressing for change then more imperative even if deaf ears and anger seem to be the only result? Or is it wiser to hunker down, accept that the worst may indeed come, and put our energies towards preparing our families and those we love as best we can? As Dmitry Orlov observes, “Big changes happen slowly at first, then all at once.” There may be less time to prepare than we think.

But what if “the worst” means the suffering and death of millions if not billions through drought and famine? What if “the worst” means our children will have available only a fraction of the energy and natural resources we currently enjoy? What if “the worst” means that half of all species currently on the planet will be driven to extinction? How bad does the future have to be to make inaction unbearable? Or is it all too clear that any attempt is simply spitting in the wind. A waste of time and energy. Pointless.

I don’t have an answer to this quandary. Anyone who understands compound interest, can interpret charts and graphs, and has a basic understanding of science will have to weigh their ethical obligations against the practical realities of their lives. I have no doubt that each of us will feel called to different actions depending on our temperaments and life situations.

All stories involve problems. In comedies, through courage, ingenuity, cooperation, dramatic epiphany or perhaps plain luck, people manage to overcome their predicaments. In tragedies, they fail. The antebellum South was a tragedy. Rather than adapt to the demands of the time, the white populace risked everything to preserve an unsustainable way of life. The result was economic ruin and the collapse of their civilization.

Which are we living right now, comedy or tragedy? Do we need pluck, gumption and courage to heroically prevail against impossible odds? Or should we cultivate our ability to accept and adapt to the inescapable forces that history is already winding up to throw at us, however dreadful and harrowing they may be?  I just don’t know.

(A note on the first cartoon above: when occupying New Orleans in April of 1862, Major General Benjamin F. Butler issued a proclamation indicating that any woman who harassed a northern soldier by any show of contempt would be arrested as a prostitute. This didn’t make him very popular in New Orleans, but it did cut down on the spitting.)

Gideon Pillow: Coward, Liar and Scoundrel for the Ages (But, Oh, What a Name!)

The Glory of a Great Name

In the movie Shakespeare in Love, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are discussing Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter when Marlowe suggests the character Mercutio.  Later, Viola outlines the idea of Twelfth Night with a Duke Orsino.  “Good name,” Shakespeare says both times with admiration and a little envy, and I can entirely relate. As a writer, a good name can fill me with admiration, elation, and downright covetousness.  And so it was when, researching the Civil War, I stumbled across the perfidious Gideon Pillow.

As I pondered the near perfection of the moniker I could only sigh deeply. Since the real Pillow could not be incorporated into Beaufort 1849, and since naming a fictional character after a real person alive at the time could cause confusion, there was no way to include the glorious name in my book. I had to be satisfied with calling one of my characters Gideon Pickens, a weak echo at best. But there is more to Mr. Gideon Pillow than just his name! As Henry Birch says in Beaufort 1849, “My, my. We have a complete bounder on our hands.”

Born in Tennessee in 1806, Gideon Pillow practiced law in his home state as the partner of future president, James K Polk. Through his connections with Polk, he served as Brigadier General of the Tennessee Militia. Ten years later, when the Mexican-American War started up, Pillow deftly used political patronage to join the U.S. Army as a brigadier general. And then in 1847 President Polk promoted him to major general!  Lesson learned: make friends with those who will ascend to high places.

So far, so good. At the age of 41, Pillow appeared to be a rising star in the military. But then he made the mistake of crossing General Winfield Scott, commander of American forces in Mexico.  Now, “Old Fuss and Feathers” Scott is considered by many historians to be one of the ablest generals in American military history. (He was also responsible for at least a portion of the terrible human toll during the Cherokee removal from Georgia, but that’s another story.) After the major action of the war--action during which Pillow had altogether shown a great deal more incompetence than competence--Pillow felt he hadn’t received enough recognition and glory. So under the pseudonym “Leonidas,” he sent letters to the New Orleans Daily Delta and Picayune newspapers, as well the American Star and the Pittsburgh Post, crediting himself for recent American victories at Contreras and Churubusco. (Interesting to see that even in that day and age people worked the news media spin.)

Can't beat the caption above

Scott, however, knew very well that Pillow had done next to nothing to achieve those victories and that others deserved the credit.  When the dastardly letters were exposed as Pillow’s handiwork, Scott arranged for a court of inquiry into the matter.  Believing Scott’s actions politically motivated, President Polk came to the defense of his former law partner and recalled Scott to Washington. During the court of inquiry investigation, Pillow persuaded Major Archibald Burns to claim authorship of the letters and publicly take the fall for him. It was not widely believed however, and Pillow was discharged from the army all the same.

Said Scott in his memoirs, Pillow was "amiable and possessed of some acuteness, but the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty:—ever as ready to attain an end by the one as the other, and habitually boastful of acts of cleverness at the total sacrifice of moral character.”

Always ambitious, Pillow went on to try for the nomination for vice president but failed twice, in 1852 and again in 1856.  His next shot for public glory would be the Civil War. 

When the war began, Pillow joined the Confederate army as a brigadier general in the Western Theater.  He is best remembered for two battles, the first being the Battle of Fort Donelson.  Fort Donelson was a Confederate stronghold in Tennessee that protected the vital manufacturing and arsenal city of Nashville.  The battle turned out to be Ulysses S. Grant’s first big success, and indeed was a vital victory for the North at a time when the Union army was showing little progress at all.

Now Fort Donelson was under the command of Brigadier General John B. Floyd, a political appointee who, although he had been Secretary for War for the United States right up until nearly the Secession, had no actual experience in conducting war.  Second-in-command was our friend, Gideon Pillow, who in theory had experience in the Mexico, but as we know was really a fraud who tended to talk big and do little.

Confederate troops at Fort Donelson numbered 18,000, whereas Grant had about 25,000 Union troops at his disposal.  To capture a fortified position generally took a three to one advantage in numbers, so you can see Grant had almost no business even considering attacking Fort Donelson.  But fresh from his victory over nearby Fort Henry (mostly due to the badly-engineered Fort Henry conveniently flooding the Confederates out) Grant was confident of success at Fort Donelson as well.  It turns out this confidence was largely due to his knowledge that Gideon Pillow was in command inside that fort.  Said Grant in his memoirs:

Pillow deflator

“I had known General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any intrenchments he was given to hold. I said this to the officers of my staff at the time. I knew that Floyd was in command, but he was no soldier, and I judged that he would yield to Pillow’s pretensions.”

And Pillow did not disappoint! And yet to be fair, Pillow did actually achieve success in battle before he managed to completely screw it up.  With the fort surrounded in large part by Union troops, the Confederate officers knew things looked bad for them, so at dawn Pillow directed an assault of 10,000 men into the unprotected right flank of the Union line in an attempt to open up an escape route.  This way they would cede the fort but not lose the men.

Surprisingly, luck went with him. Pillow had a massive force filled with talented men, among them Nathan Bedford Forrest, and he had the advantage of surprise. Not expecting the Confederates to take action that morning, Grant was away consulting with a gunboat officer too wounded to come and make a report to him.  Other than telling his underlings to stand their ground, he didn’t leave much in the way of instructions, so when Pillow’s forces attacked, they found unorganized resistance, brigadier generals unwilling to help each other without explicit orders from Grant, and troops who were curiously clueless about how to resupply themselves with ammunition even when there was plenty lying about in boxes on the ground. 

After a few hours of heavy fighting, the Confederates pushed through and the escape route was clear!  The Confederate troops fought with backpacks of three days provisions on their backs.  They were ready to head to south to safety.

The heat of battle

It was right about then that Grant returned from his visit to his wounded officer.  Much to his surprise he found a battle going on, a battle in which his side was being routed. Wounded and demoralized men were everywhere; noise, smoke and chaos abounded.  Characteristic of Grant, he didn’t freak out.  (No matter how bad things were, Grant never freaked out, a good quality in a general.)  He quickly figured out that the Confederates were pressing for escape not a combat victory, he determined where they would be weakest, and he started giving orders.  From his memoirs:

 “I directed Colonel Webster to ride with me and call out to the men as we passed: ‘Fill your cartridge-boxes, quick, and get into line; the enemy is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so.’  This acted like a charm.  The men only wanted some one to give them a command.”

He had one general attack the enemy's west side, the other the enemy’s east.  And then Grant had his turn of luck in the expected form of Pillow’s bad judgment.  Just when the Confederates had created their escape route, and indeed, were halfway to leaving, for some incomprehensible reason Pillow decided to regroup and resupply his troops before pushing forward.  To the amazement of all he ordered his troops back into their trenches, and all advantages gained by the Confederates that morning were lost. Grant quickly exploited the opening given to him, and by the end of the day the Union army was poised to take the fort.

That night was a bad one for the Confederate leadership.  General Floyd was edgy. Having committed what amounted to treason as U.S. Secretary of War (shipping arms from northern armories to southern ones to better position the South when Secession came was just one example of why the North might like to hang him), he decided to skedaddle out while the going was good and offered the command of the 18,000 troops to his second-in-command, Gideon Pillow.  But Pillow then decided that it was also too dangerous for him to be captured for reasons known only to himself.  So he handed the command to third-in-command, Brigadier General Simon P. Buckner who accepted responsibility for the welfare of the troops, and Floyd and Pillow fled in the dark of night.  Nathan Bedford Forrest, furious at the general level of incompetence and stupidity, said, “I did not come here to surrender my command,” and stormed out.  He also left during the night, escaping with his cavalry of 700 by mucking through swamps and fording swollen creeks to the south.

Though the next morning Grant would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from Bruckner, he and Bruckner were old buddies from West Point and the Mexican war.  They discussed Pillow’s flight the previous night, and how Pillow had expressed concern that his capture would be a disaster for the Southern cause.

"He thought you'd rather get hold of him than any other man in the Southern Confederacy," Buckner told Grant.

"Oh," replied Grant, "if I had got him, I'd let him go again. He will do us more good commanding you fellows."

The fall of Fort Donelson and the loss of so many men was difficult for Pillow to spin, though he did try.  But his next battle, the Battle of Stones River, where Major General Breckinridge found Pillow cowering behind a tree and had to order him forward, spelled the end for Pillow’s combat assignments.  Though he went on to administrative positions in the Confederate army (where he could do less damage), he had successfully earned for all time the distinction of being one of the worst generals in American history.