Epilogue

Supplement to Endnotes​
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Endnote 6) In his closing comments during his 1864 court martial, Edwin Fox stated something curious and patently false:

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The men of that regiment are from the free black men of the south, the very worst and most mutinous men I have ever known. It was only by the strongest endeavors that we could keep them in their places. I considered myself doing my duty while making him obey orders.

 

The soldiers in Cole’s regiment were not “free black men” of the South, but men who had escaped slavery during the war. And as we learned from Robert Dollard's delusions, the soldiers did not behave like loyal, obsequious Uncle Toms. Many of them experienced a kind of slavery that defied northern depictions. Many of the men had learned crafts and trades.

      I wonder, though, if the men claimed that they had been free. There would have been motives to claim that they were free men. Doing so would give them a narrative to dispute ex-masters who were intent on reclaiming their slaves. More compellingly, the men would benefit from a new wartime policy. In June 1864 Congress agreed to pay arrears to all soldiers who had been free men before April 19, 1861. Men who were slaves at that time would not qualify for the retroactive pay. On August 18, 1864 Stanton released the general order, Circular 60, which directed commanders to secure solemn oaths concerning each soldier’s status before the war.  Fox killed Edwards in early August, and made this statement late that month, just as the crucial story behind every soldiers’ status as free men or ex-slaves became critical.( Fox court Martial, page 31, typed copy of trial.----On timing of order, policy shift concerning date of freedom, see Cornish, The Sable Arm, 191-193.

o::: see explanation of how black soldiers could claim they were free to increase their bonuses—may have been encouraged to lie, even by recruiting agents….

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STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION: THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE

Endnote 7) --  CLEAN THIS UP: They decried Republicans’ use of the war--“waving the bloody shirt”—to secure veterans’ and freedmen’s votes.  XXXXXButler paid out of pocket for 200 medals for black soldiers; broken up a social condition- that was somewhat tolerable into one in which his existence “is an utter impossibility”—quotes from Brian M Jordan

XXXXXXX. Boss Tweed’s legendary plundering in New York (which supplied jobs, appointments and firewood in exchange for votes), rising taxes to feed growing governments, and reports of corruptions of Reconstruction governments divided the Party into those who believed the state should intervene and protect the weaker classes, and

.  populationsRepublicans, in otherHAVE TO FOOTNOTE TUCHINSKY HERE>>>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OK9tCB6MfKAQZtL-ZJHrAx9WGhucIYFcawBUzBgTEyM/edit?usp=sharing

Notes from Butlerism: Whether girls if Lowell mills, black soldiers, those committed to insane asylums in Mass: mentally insane,

XXXXXButler’s critics winced at the cloud of corruption that followed him during and after the war. His corruptions dovetailed with his conspicuous support of women’s suffrage, eight-hour workdays, Irish nationalism, communist uprisings across the Atlantic, and his willingness to see Reconstruction through at almost any cost. Tainted by accusations of personal corruption, he also proved himself one of the most committed defenders of the interests of America’s dispossessed.

Mallam, William D. 1960. “Butlerism in Massachusetts.” The New England Quarterly 33 (2): 186–186. https://doi.org/10.2307/362899. BIM: BB made political connections with his war staff: Major Roland G. Usher (of Lynn)—who received many offices and appointments after the war; Edgar J. Sherman, member of Butler’s staff: helped BB get appointed to Major General of the state militia after the war: “From that time General Butler became my friend…”; Jonas French, served w Butler in New Orleans (rumored that he and Butler’s brother, Andrew profited from trade with the enemy. (After war president of a granite company that profited much from lucrative contracts; Major Joseph H. Chadwick—owner of lead works in Boston; William A. Simmons—because a henchman, Collector of the Internal Revenue, Collector of the Boston Port--- These five formed the machine that challenged the leadership of the Brahmins. Customs houses, assessors; postmasterships. Internal revenue posts, the Navy Yards (especially jobs for laborers at Boston Navy Yard—especially hundreds of jobs around election time), Clerkships Butler kelp a book of his Butlerites. Joining the “Grant Club”—and forming “Butler” clubs.  Butler drew votes (traded for rewards) with three blocs: veterans; the Irish; and underprivileged mill-workers. Wide-awake political lieutenants; when federal posts in the State opened up, Butlerites were rewarded. “all confirmed Butlerites were expected to be continually at work converting voters and stimulating enthusiasm for their leaders. In return for service rendered, the General provided generous rewards.” Butler helped secure federal patronage for friends through his cooperation with Rad Republicans like Ben Wade, President Grant, and Edwin M. Stanton. While in Congress he looked after veterans: defending pension claims, veterans’ claims to Civil Service, and legislation that benefitted former soldiers. He lauded Irish veterans in particular, showed support for the Fenians, and reminded constituents of his own Irish blood. He was quick to back Labor petitions to Congress. Hailed as the “leader of the industrial classes.” Hard-money advocates, Brahmin aristocrats, and the conservative press blasted him for his fight for working classes. He sided with women’s rights, blacks in Massachusetts, and had much support from younger voters. “After 1868 it became increasingly clear that Butler’s ambitions knew no limits and that he had organized powerful political support within the Republican Party from among the lower classes.” Butlerism was dead with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, a political reformer who threatened Butler’s hold on patronage. (Grant had stayed true to Butler.)

Some, like Butler, insisted that classes of dispossessed Americans only proved that further intervention and protections from government were necessary. In the eyes of many Republicans, Americans who seemed stuck in their poverty, gave the lie to Lincoln’s free-labor vision of America’s downtrodden—once they were given freedom and equality before the law—naturally rising in circumstances. A teeming postwar population of urban poor in the North, labor strikes, the specter of communist revolts in Europe, and the corruption of Democratic machines caused a split among Republicans.

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Endnote 12) --  A “personal friend” had written a glowing biographical essay about George and published it just before his death in a beautifully bound book of sketches about “Prominent Persons of the 19th Century.” Destined to be shown on hardwood bookcases, the book was apparently marketed to friends and family of those men praised in its pages, designed by a striver to make money off striving men and their circle of kith and kin. (It was a true genre of American literature.) The collection included a few household names, to give more credibility to the book, along with dozens of more obscure men who had made their mark in some limited sphere. These were all men, the introduction promised, who “by their own unaided talents and efforts” had risen from humble beginnings to the “highest and most responsible places in the republic.” They had not been born with luxury or privileged education. Such men were “really the bone and sinew of this great republic.” See: UB, Sketch no. 14, pp. 1-6.

 

@ at 12 or so: on Butler’s Mass patronage: He masterfully distributed patronage to loyal allies, rewarding friends—especially the downtrodden—with places: collectorships, posts at customs houses, clerkships, postmasterships, and hundreds of jobs at the Navy Yards, especially in election season. See BIM

 

 

@????----wherever the part about Henry Adams goes:-- How the enslaved family learned of the murder is unclear. They may have not known its true details for many years later, when Edwards’ impoverished father applied for a father’s pension. In that pension, the parents seemed to not know for sure the month Edwards was shot, or even that he was murdered by his own commander.

Apparently, Henry Sr. learned the exact day, and perhaps even the details, some thirty years later, when as a half-blind, impoverished farmer, he applied for a father’s pension. He marked an “X” for his signature.

Eventually, with the help of his agent, the true date and circumstances were attached to the death. But in other places the death was reported to be in July (instead of August), in the wrong place, and, in one case, on the battlefield of “Cedar Point” instead of in camp. (Strangely, this testimony came from one of Henry Edwards’s comrades, Gary Norfleet. Gary Norfleet testified in June 1895 that Edwards was killed in the battle of Cedar Point. (or somewhere near Deep Bottom); that September he said it was on Aug 2.

The father stated on page 5 of the pension that, “I never received any aid from soldier owing to the fact that he was a slave and had to work for his master.” This must have meant aid before the war.

Henry Edwards’ enslaved parents labored on a plantation in North Carolina who had taken up as husband and wife about twenty years before the war. Their son’s meager pay had helped them partially compensate for what the master failed to provide for Henry’s five younger siblings -- two sisters, Margaret and Lizzie, and three brothers, Solomon, Drew, and Jack. Henry Gaitling (father) and his wife Hannah were legally married immediately after the war, May 1865. This sketch of Edwards’s family has been gleaned from the pension application of Henry Gaitling, Henry Edwards’s father. Pension File for Henry Gaitling, father of Henry Edwards. #614.062 

 

@14 -- I was selected as a finalist at several prestigious universities and was surprised as anybody that my off-beat work garnered attention at places where I never figured I belonged. Nearly the entire night before one Ivy-League interview I fretted that the hiring committee would see through me. They would sniff it out that I had only read parts of Foucault. I would bastardize Marxist theory or unwittingly reveal that I had not read the latest groundbreaking book in my field. Would I have to pretend that I understood the genius of Thelonius Monk? I worried about letting my past slip from my mouth by saying things that I learned at my childhood dinner table: “I walked acrossed the street.” “I was readin’ her book….”

I felt I was a suburban yokel, from tract housing, who was asking brilliant and powerful people to let me into their fold. And I was smitten by my own arc of self-making. It went something like this. I had barely graduated from public high school. My father had no college degree. My mother and I worked an early morning paper route to help ends meet. “Son of a tire salesman turned professor at Princeton.” I relished the thought. The stakes of meritocracy make success so desirable because achievement, upward mobility, winning--they all convey something deeply right about the self.