Our One Common Country (44 page)

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

In the fall of 2008, the late David Herbert Donald, the eminent Lincoln historian, took the time to prepare a thoughtful answer to my letter inquiring whether a book on the Hampton Roads Peace Conference might be worth writing, since no one had done it before. I hope it is worthy of his encouragement.

Alice Martell, my brilliant literary agent, believed in this project from the start, made
me
believe in it, and brought it to fruition. These are debts I cannot repay. The editor of this book, Janice Goldklang, recommended it to her editorial board, labored over its ponderous early drafts, and guided my efforts to make it better. I am grateful to her; to Lyons Press; to Meredith Dias and Lauren Brancato, the book's accomplished project editors; to Sharon Kunz, its diligent publicist; and to Melissa Hayes, its meticulous copyeditor.

Most of the book was researched at the Boston Athenaeum, a stunning place in which to work and write, with a uniformly helpful and knowledgeable staff. I owe particular thanks to Chloe Morse-Harding, who assembled many books and materials from the Athenaeum's collection and other libraries. The staffs of the Manuscript Reading Room at the Library of Congress, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the libraries of Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Emory University, and Duke University were unfailingly courteous and helpful.

I am grateful to my law partners for looking the other way as I worked on this project. My secretary, Karalee Hart, was as helpful and attentive as she always is.

My parents gave me a deep love of history and a lifelong ambition to contribute to it, in which this book has its origins.

My daughter, Erin Hennessy Conroy, read the book's first draft, improved it with incisive questions and comments, proofread the final draft, helped gather the illustrations and their attributions, and inspired me as she always has. By coauthoring a successful book of his own at the age of twenty-six, my son, Scott Conroy, shamed me into writing this one, introduced me to Alice Martell, and contributed many thoughts and much encouragement after reading early drafts.

My wife of forty years, Lynn Conroy, put up with me and my absence, physical or mental, on weekends, nights, holidays, and vacations for the four and a half years that this undertaking consumed (significantly longer than it took to fight the Civil War), and served as a resonant sounding board. Without her, neither
Our One Common Country
nor its author would have amounted to anything.

N
OTES

 

(Page numbers refer to the printed book)

 

PROLOGUE

xvii.
Lincoln's departure from the White House and his trip to Hampton Roads:
See chapter 17.

xvii.
The military situation in the winter of 1865:
e.g., Mark Grimsley, “Learning to Say ‘Enough' ” in Mark Grimsley and Brooks Simpson,
The Collapse of the Confederacy
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) (“Grimsley and Simpson”), pp. 40–79; Shelby Foote,
The Civil War: A Narrative,
3 vols. (New York: Random House, 1958–1974), vol. 3,
Red River to Appomattox
(“Foote”), pp. 735–70; Alfred Hoyt Bill,
The Beleaguered City, Richmond 1861–1865
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946) (“Bill”), p. 266 (50,000 men under Lee versus 110,000 under Grant).

xvii.
General Robert E. Lee was praying for their success:
See, e.g., Robert E. Lee,
Lee's Dispatches
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915) (“Lee's Dispatches”), pp. 305 and 331; John B. Gordon,
Reminiscences of the Civil War
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905) (“Gordon”), pp. 389–93; Jefferson Davis and Dunbar Rowland, ed.,
Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches,
10 vols. (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923) (“Rowland”), vol. 8, pp. 30–31; Josiah Gorgas and Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, ed.,
The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857–1878
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995) (“Wiggins”), p. 136; Jefferson Davis and
Hudson Strode, ed.,
The Private Letters of Jefferson Davis, 1823–1889
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966) (“Strode”), pp. 469–70; Robert McElroy,
Jefferson Davis: The Unreal and the Real,
2 vols.
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937) (“McElroy”), pp. 424 and 435;
and Alan T. Nolan,
Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) (“Nolan”), pp. 112–33.

xviii–xxii.
Life on the siege line and the peace commissioners' arrival:
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,
73 vols. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1880–1901) (“
OR
”) ser. 1, vol. 46, part 2, pp. 290, 317, and 347; Hezekiah Bradds, “With the 60th Ohio Around Petersburg,”
National Tribune
(Washington, DC: April 8, 1926) (“Bradds”), p. 5; William J. Bolton and Richard A. Sauers, ed.,
The Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 51st Pennsylvania
(Conshohocken, PA: Combined Pub., 2000) (“Bolton”), pp. 242–44; Orlando B. Willcox and Robert Garth Scott, ed.,
Forgotten Valor: The Memoirs, Journals & Civil War Letters of Orlando B. Willcox
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999) (“Willcox”), p. 604;
War Papers
(Portland, ME: Lefavor-Tower Company, 1902) vol. 2, pp. 105–07; George H. Allen,
Forty-Six Months with the Fourth R.I. Volunteers in the War of 1861–1865
(Providence: J. A. & R. A. Reid, 1887) (“Allen”), pp. 322 and 334–36; William P. Hopkins and George B. Peck,
The Seventh Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers in the Civil War 1862–1865
(Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1903) (“Hopkins and Peck”), pp. 232–33, 241, and 273; Régis de Trobriand,
Four Years with the Army of the Potomac
(Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1889) (“de Trobriand”), pp. 639–40; Joseph Gould,
The Story of the Forty-Eighth
(Philadelphia: Alfred M. Slocum Co., 1908) (“Gould”), pp. 280–81 and 285; Sumner Garruth et al.,
History of the Thirty-Sixth Regiment Massachusetts
Volunteers
(Boston: Mills, Knight & Co., 1884) (“Garruth”), pp. 278 and 319; Thomas H. Parker,
History of the 51st Regiment of P.V. and V.V.
(Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1869) (“Parker”), pp. 601–04 (No other source confirms Parker's tale that two of the peace commissioners met him in no-man's land, and the other evidence refutes it); DeWitt Boyd Stone, ed.,
Wandering to Glory: Confederate Veterans Remember Evans's Brigade
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002); Theodore Lyman and George R. Agassiz, ed.,
Meade's Headquarters, 1863
–
1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922) (“Lyman”), p. 181; George C. Eggleston,
A Rebel's Recollections
(New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1870) (“Eggleston”), pp. 239 and 242; Julia Dent Grant and John Y. Simon, ed.,
The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant
(New York: Putnam, 1975) (“Julia Grant”), p. 141; Sara Agnes Rice Pryor,
My Day: Reminiscences of a Long Life
(New York: Macmillan, 1909), p. 213; Sara Agnes Rice Pryor,
Reminiscences of Peace and War
(New York: Macmillan, 1905) (“Pryor,
Reminiscences
”), p. 328; “In a Charge Near Fort Hell” (“Charge Near Fort Hell”) at www.angelfire.com/ca4/forthell and www.craterroad.com/Christmas.html. W. R. Scott's dark rendition of the peace commissioners' arrival can be found at http://dmna.ny.gov/historic/reghist/civil/artillery (“Scott”); Bill, p. 265; Noah Trudeau,
The Last Citadel: Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864–April 1865
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991) (“Trudeau”); Earl J. Hess,
In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications & Confederate Defeat
(Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2009);
Boston Daily Evening Transcript
, February 1 and 2, 1865;
The
Daily Constitutional Union,
February 3, 1865;
The New Orleans Daily Picayune,
February 12, 1865;
The
New York Times
, February 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8, 1865, and December 31, 1916, p. E2;
The
New York Herald
, February 4, 1865;
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
February 2, 1865; and
The
Petersburg Express,
February 2, 1865.

xviii.
Contemporary photographs of Fort Hell and other fortifications on the siege line:
Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War
(Washington, DC: Philip & Solomons, 1865–66) and at www.craterroad.com/fortphotos.html.

xxiv.
Meade's letter to his wife: George Meade and George Gordon Meade, ed.,
The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General of the United States Army,
2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913) (“Meade”), pp. 258–60.

xxiv.
“
Sanguinary war”: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
, 2 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster, 1885–1886) (“Grant”), vol. 2, page 119.

xxiv.
old at fifty-five:
William O. Stoddard and Michael Burlingame, ed.,
Inside the White House in War Time: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln's Secretary
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) (“Stoddard”), p. 149.

xxiv.
Lincoln's distress during the Wilderness Campaign:
F. B. Carpenter,
The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894) (“Carpenter”), p. 30. For Lincoln's persistent sadness, see also
id.,
p. 218.

xxiv.
Casualties:
Civil War casualty figures are imprecise, especially on the Confederate side. The classic battle-by-battle estimates are in Thomas L. Livermore's
Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861
–
65
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900) (“Livermore”). The 95,000 figure for Union casualties incurred in early May through early July 1864 is in James M. McPherson,
This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) (“McPherson”), p. 170.

CHAPTER 1

Much of this chapter is drawn from Paul D. Escott,
After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994) and professor Escott's more recent book,
“What Shall We Do with the Negro?”: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009) (“Escott”); William C. Davis,
Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991) (“Davis,
Davis
”); William James Cooper Jr.,
Jefferson Davis
,
American
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) (“Cooper”); Brian R. Dirck,
Lincoln & Davis: Imagining America, 1809–1865
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001) (“Dirck”); Jay Winik,
April 1865: The Month that Saved America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001) (“Winik”); and Varina Howell Davis,
Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir by His Wife,
2 vols. (New York: Belford, 1890) (“Varina Davis”).

2.
Russell's interview with Davis:
William Howard Russell,
My Diary: North and South
(London: Bradbury and Evans, 1863) (“Russell”), pp. 249–50.

2.
Davis's antebellum career:
A chronology of Davis's life, followed by a brief autobiography, is in Rowland, vol. 1, pp. xiii–xxxi.

2.
Ambitious as Lucifer and cold as a lizard:
Foote,
Civil War
, vol. 1, p. 13.

3.
A superstitious reverence:
Rowland, vol. 1, p. 379.

3.
no risk of Pollard overlooking it:
E. A. Pollard,
Life of Jefferson Davis
(Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1869) (“Pollard”), p. 52. John S. Wise,
The End of an Era
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899) (“Wise”), p. 402 (
Examiner
tortured Davis).

3.
its president grasped the need; peals of public outrage:
e.g
.
, George C. Rable,
The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994) (“Rable”),
passim;
Dirck, pp. 84–87.

3.
A Virginian expressed the common view:
Frank Ruffin, quoted in the introduction to Robert Garlick Hill Kean and Edward Younger, ed.,
Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1957) (“Kean”), p. xxxi. See also Stephen Russell Mallory, “Diary and Reminiscences of Stephen R. Mallory” (Typescript), Wilson Library, University of North Carolina (“Mallory”), vol. 2, pp. 205–07.

3.
devotion to General Braxton Bragg:
Grady McWhitney, “Jefferson Davis and His Generals,” in Grady McWhitney,
Southerners and Other Americans
(New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 93.

4.
The South's dire condition: Rable,
passim;
Grimsley and Simpson,
passim;
William W. Freehling,
The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) (“Freehling”), pp. 188–95; James G. Randall and Richard Current,
Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955) (“Randall and Current”), pp. 322–23; Bill, pp. 244–51 and 256–61; Edward C. Kirkland,
The Peacemakers of 1864
(New York: Macmillan, 1927) (“Kirkland”), pp. 207–08 and 213–22.

4.
One tubercular draftee:
Bill, p. 235.

4.
eat rats; twelve- and-fourteen-year-old-sons:
John B. Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk's Diary of the Confederate States Capital
, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1866) (“Jones”), vol. 2, p. 175.

4.
“born to command”:
Pollard, p. 66.

4.
dealt Jeff a sibling:
Dirck, pp. 19–23 and 66.

4.
“repellent manner”:
Varina Davis, vol. 2, p. 163.

4.
husband was easily persuaded: Id.,
vol. 2, p. 921.

4.
“could not comprehend”: Id.,
vol. 1, p. 171.

4.
“consciousness of my own rectitude”:
Rowland, vol. 1, p. 378.

5.
“path of safety”:
Pollard, p. 41.

5.
his military genius:
Mallory, vol. 2, p. 205.

5.
“to bear the criticisms of the ignorant”:
OR, ser. 1, vol. 29, pt. 2, p. 639; Strode, p. 132.

5.
excuse himself to his study:
T. C. De Leon,
Four Years in the Rebel Capitals
(Mobile, AL: Gossip Print Co., 1892) (“De Leon”)
,
pp. 153–54.

5.
capable of grace and a winning smile:
Wise, p. 400; Elizabeth Keckley,
Behind the Scenes
(New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1868), pp. 68–69.

5.
“full of tags”:
Varina Davis, vol. 2, p. 919.

5.
“he would let me be bad”:
Dirck, p. 18.

5.
“Poor creature”:
Varina Davis, vol. 2, p. 921

5.
“death in life”: Id.,
vol. 2, p. 5.

5.
final speech to the Senate
: Congressional Globe,
January 21, 1861, p. 487; Varina Davis, vol. 1, pp. 697–98; Dirck, pp. 175–76.

5.
Davis and his slaves:
Escott, pp. 183–84; and Winik, p. 326; Cooper, pp. 50, 78, 229, and 235–36; Dirck, pp. 66–67.