Chapter 13: Homecoming
Supplement to Endnotes
Endnote 1) For glimpses into the difficult post-war lives of the black soldiers who served under George Cole, see 13.1 here.
Endnote 2) On the backlash toward troubled soldiers after the war: In an article about the Albany jail, it says that while Cole was there, the number of prisoners was down: “There is a small number relative to the population of the city, and is less than one-half what it was two years ago, when the disbanded army occasioned so many arrests.” (See Albany “Express” clipping dated “…er 8, 1867.” Cole Family Papers, UCLA.)
Some employers, especially in the cities, doubted that rough-and-tumble soldiers could suddenly walk the line for their bosses. More than a year after the war, The Soldier’s Friend, a popular monthly among veterans, published an anonymous letter from New Hampshire in which a veteran cried, “there is no disguising it, boys; the people are afraid of us!” The veteran reported that potential bosses -- swamped by the returning throngs of men who had adopted rough manners or a penchant for drinking and gambling -- asked themselves: “Shall we admit them into our families, and allow them to mingle with our friends and our little ones?” The Soldier’s Friend quoted in Dixon Wecter, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Boston: Houghton Mifflin company, 1944), p. 184.; Megan J. McClintock, “The Impact of the Civil War on Nineteenth-Century Marriages," in Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front : Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments, eds. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), pp. 368-69. James Marten, “Nomads in Blue: Disabled Veterans and Alcohol at the National Home,” in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David A. Gerber (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), esp. pp. 275-76.
Endnote 4) During the war Mary bought and sold dozens of properties. She sometimes included George on the deed. Many times she did not. Various sources say that Mary bought the house. But in one of the reports of the trial, Raynor seems to suggest that after returning home Cole bought the house from him directly. See: Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868.
About the black man working with George Cole: It was likely a certain man whom George had once talked about to a friend. During an expedition, probably in North Carolina, Confederates had ambushed his troops and overpowered a beloved black guide or servant. George and several others risked their lives by charging back into the enemy to rescue him. See: Testimony of George Raynor, Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868 and Remarkable Trials p.249; Part about rescuing black man in testimony of Guy Davis, Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868 and Remarkable Trials, p. 248;
Shortly after returning home, George told a friend about this man, claiming that he “had a colored man” who “he thought much of and would give his life to save him.” This “man” and the “boy” may have been the same person. George's contemporaries -- and likely his neighbor, who recounted the story about the General working alongside a black boy -- had the habit of referring to black men as “boys.” We are left to guess what George Cole and his friend meant by this language, “he had a colored man.” Not just because Cole’s friend did not elaborate but because black soldiers were often forced to be servants to their officers.
Sending men or boys home was not unusual. As a soldier from Albany wrote to his sister from his camp outside Richmond, “I have at last got a little contraband, about twelve or thirteen years old. He is jet black, a good looking little ‘dark,’ and answers to the name of ‘Carter.’ I will bring him home, if I can, and he will stay with me.” See, Colonel John Wilson to his sister, May 11, 1862 in Rufus Wheelwright Clark, The Heroes of Albany: A Memorial of the Patriot-Martyrs of the City and County of Albany... (S.R. Gray: Albany, 1867), pp. 150-51.
Endnote 5) Cole clearly had a fondness for young boys. My guess is that for Cole, they were an innocent cohort of who largely idolized his exploits. The jobless veteran likely felt less troubled when frolicking with them. I wonder if his active efforts to gather the boys and engage in a “general conversation” was a way for him to feel honored and loved. See testimony of George Raynor, Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868 and Remarkable Trials, p.249
His neighbor didn’t feel a need to elaborate about the games. But asking about them suggested that there was something strange about a decorated soldier playing games with neighborhood children. The children likely idolized him. During the Civil War, children of middle-class families, far from the battlefront, learned about and imagined battles and officers through dime novels, children’s magazines, board games, and cards decorated with prominent generals. From the war’s beginning children on both sides of the Mason-Dixon converted broomsticks, branches, house knives, and whatever they could transform into toy weapons of war. See: James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000); also see, Faust, Mothers of Inventions: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 129-130.
Endnote 7) The bullet that Cole did receive in the war, according to his service records, happened in North Carolina. Though there is some suggestion that he also was shot earlier in the war. Most likely, Frank Garrett misremembered; he got the right body part but the wrong state. See: Syracuse Journal, July 30, 1862.
Endnote 8) During the prisoner’s days awaiting trial, one of its machinists left to work for a competitor in New York City and brought with him patented improvements that he believed legally transferred with him. Both companies slugged it out in the courts. In one annual report the capital stock was reported at one hundred thousand dollars, “of which fifty-three thousand” dollars had been “paid in.” The amount of its debts amounted to over seventy-five thousand.
Endnote 14) The war, and the victory of Republicans, magnified an era in American politics when from at least 1840 until the century’s final decade, American men dedicated impressive energy and time to political parties, partly because of the promise of patronage. Presidential election turnouts, for example, regularly exceeded seventy percent of eligible voters, partly because men believed that party victory led directly to personal advancement and security.
Stuart Blumin and Glenn Altschuler have challenged the conventional narrative that holds that from the election of 1840 until the close of the century, enfranchised American men participated in politics at levels nearly double what we witness today. Blumin and Altschuler explain away the nearly 80% turnout for elections by claiming that partisan politics was merely a cosmetic part of male culture—having more to do with getting drunk, brawling, social gatherings, and of course patronage. These two authors contend that Americans’ thoughts were much more consumed by grass-roots, personal, inward-looking concerns.
The story I am trying to tell here depicts this inward-looking worldview and the manly rituals of drink and camaraderie as both private and deeply political at the same time. That men viewed politics as a way to cement relationships and jobs was at once an expression of male intimacy, while embodying a larger view about gendered politics, jobs for the talented, merit over blood, and personal and national “improvements.” See: Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). For works that see deeper connections between partisan politics and ideology, see: Richard L. McCormick, “The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis," Journal of American History 66, no. 2 (1979), pp. 279-298; Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, p. 353; William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Perhaps Mark Neely’s work is the best middle ground as he shows the ways in which material artifacts like newspapers, political lithographs, campaign buttons, and partisan musical sheets bridged the space between high politics and the private parlor: Mark E. Neely, The Boundaries of American Political Culture in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
Endnote 21) Interestingly Raynor recalled seeing Cole prostrated inside another hotel in Syracuse, the St. Charles. Peter Burns noted how Cole had not even recognized Burns though he stood before him for a few minutes, in Sweeney Hotel in New York City. Roberts and some others claimed Cole showed these signs starting in the middle of the war while at home on leave. Some comrades noticed a similar thing in the fields. See, Remarkable Trials, passim.
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