Chapter 15: Rising Men (who nearly needed God)
Supplement to Endnotes
Endnote 5) The self-made narrative ran deeply in antebellum political discourse, from Benjamin Franklin to Henry Clary to Abraham Lincoln. The “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” presidential campaign in 1840, for example, demonstrated how antebellum men of means would need to emphasize links to poverty if they wanted to win at the ballot box. By emphasizing his connection to the rough-and-tumble West, his pummeling of Indians in Tecumseh’s War, and his meager beginnings, William Henry Harrison won the presidency. Glossing over the fact that the candidate came from a prominent family in Virginia, Harrison’s campaign roundly defeated Martin Van Buren, who Harrison men painted as a child of city privilege. Even Daniel Webster, an established and seasoned Whig, would claim that though he just missed such virtuous origins, his older siblings were born in a log cabin; anyone who slandered him as an aristocrat was “not only a LIAR but a COWARD” itching for a fight.
Webster quoted in: Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American life (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1963), esp. 145-171. Hofstadter sees this process as more of a conscious rejection of gentlemen as demanded by democratic politics, more than an attempt to recover a world of merit as promised by the American Revolution. For constructing manhood through war, see: Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor and Manhood in the Union Army (NYU Press, 2010); Stephen W. Berry II, All that Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press, 2003); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting For American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars (Yale University Press, 2000); Eleanor Hannah, Manhood, Citizenship, and the National Guard, 1870-1917 (Ohio State University Press, 2007).
Endnote 8) Concerning George Cole’s various military records -- pensions, compiled service, etc. I have found nothing to suggest he started below the grade of captain. In fact, in a war letter from him to his superior, where Cole argues that his captaincy took precedence over that of other captains in the regiment, Cole writes, “I was commissioned while capt. in infantry dated May 1, 1861,” meaning that he started in the 12th NY with his commission. See: George Cole's Compiled Service Record, Letter to Genl Foster, New Berne, 7/18/1862. Also see his letter of attempted resignation and the original muster roll where he is listed as captain on May 13th, the day the Twelfth New York was “called into service,” in Smith-Cole Family Papers, US Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, PASCFP, Cornelius Cole folder.
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Endnote 12) On the confusion of rank, grade and military titles: For example, four decades before William McKinley became America’s president, he worked his way up to the grade of Captain in the Civil War. Yet, for the rest of his life he preferred to be called “Major”-- his breveted title. See: Eric Rauchway, Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s American (New York, 2003), pp. 156, 182.
Rank was confusing too. One military historian claims that nearly one quarter of all Union Army rankings do “not appear to follow the guidelines for the determination of rank.” See: John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p.33. This entry from Civil War High Commands cites an essay in the Civil War Times, the “Problem in Rank” by C.F. Eckhardt (1992). At the time of writing this supplement I have not been able to track down Eckhardt's piece.
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Endnote 13) More on rank and command-- George Cole's promotions: The organizational differences between “regular” and “volunteer” commands introduced the first layer of fog. Compared to commissions in the Regular Army, promotion in volunteer regiments, brigades and armies seemingly fell from the trees like ripe fruit. (And promotions in the Colored Troops was seen by many as scavenging fruit from the ground.) Promotions were seemingly the clearest way a man could be measured against others. Yet, an officer could claim as many as four grades at once: his “full” grade in the Regular Army, a different grade in the Volunteers, and an inflated brevet grade in both armies. For prisoner Cole, this had brought confusion in his regiment over seniority and promotion—even more for his civilian peers.
When post-war soldiers returned to the dense ranks of the Regular Army, officers climbed back down the ladder into significantly lower ranks. Though George Custer had obtained the grade of major general in the Volunteer Army, he returned to the duty of captain in the Regular Army after the war. John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands, p. 196.
On George Cole's promotions: The first promotion retroactively started in late February of 1865; The second started retroactively two weeks later, on March 13, 1865. According to Cole’s Compiled Service Record, on May 26, 1865, he was appointed to Brigadier General in the Volunteer Force, by brevet “to date from Feb. 25th, 1865.” Yet on April 21st, Cole signed off one of his general orders with the title “brevet Brig. Genl, US Volunteers.” Officers were forbidden from dropping “brevet” from their titles in official military correspondence.
Endnote 15) On the flood of promotions: Consider this. The Union Army awarded more than 2,500 generalships on paper, of which merely 139 of them were non-brevetted, or “actual” major generals. And of these “actual” major generals, only eleven obtained this grade within the Regular (not Volunteer) Army. These eleven generals formed the war pantheon that northerners associated with the pinnacle of military power -- household names like Sheridan, McClellan, Sherman, Grant, Meade, and Hancock. Some 1,900 men became “Brigadier Generals” though the Union effort -- by the numbers, at least -- should have demanded somewhere between 400 and 600 of them. There were only 2,000 (2,047) Union regiments formed during the conflict. And Brigadier Generals (the lowest grade of general) headed up between four to six regiments in a standard brigade. The contingencies of war, the attrition of armies, death and resignation, merging of regiments, all complicate prescriptive claims based on handbooks and policy. For example, because of the political benefits of handing out officer’s commissions, state politicians often created new regiments rather than send recruits to dwindling ones in the fields. By 1864 this created depopulated regiments. Brigades, therefore, sometimes drew from nearly a dozen drained regiments rather than the standard four or five. Regardless of the standard brigade sizes and regulations, nearly 600 officers in fact received the “full grade” of Brigadier General. Many more men came home bearing the title of general. See: David Stephen Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social and Military History (New York: 2000), 110-114. For a list of general officers in the Union Army see: Phisterer, Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States, 247-316.
Endnote 17) This confusion surrounding promotions was revealed when George’s older brother, Gilbert, thirty years after the war, sought specific information about George’s generalship. Gilbert had a neighbor who was compiling a book about Union generals. He told Gilbert how records from the war lacked vital information and wanted to know when George was appointed to brigadier general and major general. Gilbert did not know if the appointments were federal or from the state -- or commissioned for the Regular or the Volunteer Army. Unsure, Gilbert reached out to Cornelius for more information. Cornelius wrote: “You describe your uncle as a Brig. Gen’l. It seems to me that is not quite the thing. I am sure he was a Major-General” and refers Gilbert to book called “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.” See: Cole Family Papers, UCLA, Gilbert Cole to Cornelius, 6/16/1889 and Smith-Cole Family Papers, US Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Chas. H. Stewart to Cornelius Cole, typed manuscript, p. 19.
Endnote 24) On Canfield: The minister had a consuming fascination for history and felt particularly drawn to Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan of the English Civil War who tried to cleanse his nation with sword and faith. A close friend recalled that when Canfield first started preaching, his motto was “Let me please God, and, if men are pleased, well; if not, well.” At the pulpit he had made it a point to pronounce words with flawless diction. He fussed over the ways that crucial words from the Bible had changed in the fickle mouths of common disciples.
In the 1830s, when he was an upstart pastor in Ohio, he had once helped pen a tract denouncing Oberlin College and Charles G. Finney (the Vatican and pope of perfectionist Christianity). Canfield, a graduate of Yale, had built a reputation for his cold and reserved manner and his love for intellectual rigor.
But Canfield’s Cromwellian energy faded. After his wiry body began to fail him, he took a short leave from his Syracuse pulpit and convalesced in Europe. Upon returning, his ailments began hounding him again. His friend recalled that sometime after he experienced this physical breakdown something changed inside the preacher. He began retreating from his fight against what he had long seen as a soft piety that skirted the reality of innate evil. As his wiry body had begun to fail him, so did his theology of the fallen man. In other words, sometime before the murder, Canfield made peace with a more commodious Christianity less focused on the innate depravity of humanity.
Endnote 26) As one of Mundy’s friends eulogized, “He was radical and I was conservative; novelties and difficulties interested him, while I clung to settled opinions and old truths....” Another friend reflected on Mundy’s sermons to his Syracuse congregation: “Mr. Mundy’s sermons...were never dogmatic or doctrinal....They were Art and Poetry and Science, a simple philosophy of good living, a feeling after the truth if haply it might be found.” See: Ezekiel Wilson Mundy: A Book of Loving Remembrance by His Friends (Syracuse Public Library, 1917), pp. 16-17, 32.
Endnote 27) Henry Ward Beecher had performed the marriage ceremony for a woman still legally wed to another man; in the other scandal, he was accused of having sexual relations with a married woman in his congregation. It was not that Dimmock or his fellow liberal Christians turned a blind eye to adultery. Those that did were a heretical few. But in the cultural tensions of the day, Congregational pastors like Mundy, Dimmock, and Beecher helped form the front lines in advocating personal freedoms and rights: the abolition of slavery; universal male suffrage, female suffrage, and liberalized divorce laws. These liberties could be entrusted to humans partly because, they felt, if left to natural impulses of the heart, humans tended toward virtue.
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Endnote 28) Some of Dimmock’s health problems can be found in a piece he published a year later -- a testimonial for a new treatment for his disorder: “Oxygenized Air” in Gazetteer and Business Directory of Onondaga County, New York, 1868-1869. Compiled and published by Hamilton Child. p. 162.
Endnote 30) I doubt that Dimmock would condone the scandalous experiments with marriage and family regularly debated and even sometimes defended in the pages of the New York Tribune, the most widely read newspaper of its day (and the lead paper of Republicans). Yet, it was “loose” preachers -- like Dimmock perhaps -- who couldn’t see that George Cole, in killing Hiscock, had risked his freedom to brace up a moral world that seemed to be on the brink of collapse. See: Adam Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune: Civil War-Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), esp. Chapter 5 on marriage, family, and the social order; The Albany Argus quoted in New York Tribune, June 7, 1867.
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Endnote 31) Of course, only those rare individuals outwardly sympathetic to Free Love, and the binding law of the human bosom over law and tradition, would see both Mary and Luther as innocent. And then, only if they first believed that their feelings were mutual. More commonly, commentators painted Mary as a Jezebel and blamed her entirely for tempting Luther. These attacks in the press seemed to come from Luther’s close friends who wanted to save the murdered man (and his children) from further ignominy.
The Albany Argus blamed the entire drama on “two influences” at work. The first was the hyper-sensitive philanthropy that abolished capital punishment for some crimes. “Capital punishment is abolished, go forth and slay!” The other force came from the “yellow-covered literature of the day to which loose divines contribute.” This looseness, they claimed, enforced “the doctrine of Free-Love. Thus the flame of passions is freed from the constraints of law.” See newspaper clipping from Hiscock/Cole File, entitled “Philosophy-Honor,” from Onondaga Historical Association.