Chapter 10: The Resurrectionists
Supplement to Endnotes
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Endnote 1) In March of 1864, George Cole wrote to his superior in the Army of the James asking: “Is it the intention of Genl Butler that Colored Cavalry be brigaded with white Cavalry? Is my Regt considered volunteer and thus come under the amendment to P9 Army regulations, or, does an officer in my Regt rank one receiving his commission from a state?” See Compiled Service Record of George W. Cole, 2nd USC Cavalry. Letter to Maj Davis AAG, March, 1864, (Microfilm #M1817), NARA.
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Endnote 5) “Still," George wrote, “history will carry names of gens. Paine, Ludlow, Draper, Duncan and lots of others, who were home and making money while I was fighting the hardest two first years of the war.” Butler had recommended them for promotion. Colonel Ludlow, who eventually obtained the desired full promotion (not just brevet) had also shown composure under fire as he and his black troops were picked apart at Dutch Gap Canal -- as we will see, an ill-informed project of Butler’s to dig a massive canal between the hairpin bends of the James River. See: OR, Series 1, Volume 42, Part III, pp. 97-98; Jones, Historical Dictionary of the Civil War, p. 442.
It is not clear how much money any of Cole’s counterparts made while at home. While it is true that none of these men enlisted as early as Cole, all of them began their service before the close of 1861, placing them in the army during Cole’s “hardest two years of the war.” Cole wrote letters and probably asked around to find out when his fellow officers began their service. Ludlow, who got the brigadier generalship, was cousins with Cole’s fellow colonel Jeptha Garrard, and a brother-in-law to Salmon Chase, Secretary of Treasury. See: John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 214, 217, 356, 412-13.; George Cole to Cornelius Cole, no date [approximately fall of 1864], Cole Family Papers, Collection 217, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles..
Also, for a strongly worded letter against Ludlow, see letter from George Cole to Cornelius, 12/7/1864, in Cole Family Papers, BOX 15.
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Endnote 8) Butler had grand visions of taking Richmond. His closest friends fanned his ambitions. See, 10.8 here.
Butler was not supposed to attack Richmond. He apparently had plans, nonetheless. From Fortress Monroe, Sarah Butler wrote her corked husband that she had already purchased a white velvet hat with a long white feather in order “to grace the taking of Richmond.” With the sudden reversal, though, she promised to immediately send it back to Massachusetts and order it “put in the darkest closet in the attic.” See: Mrs. Butler to General Butler, 5/21/1864, in Benjamin Franklin Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 4, March 1864-August 1864 (Norwood: Plimpton Press, 1917), Volume 4, pp. 244-45.
After his stinging failure, Butler began purging his highest officers whom he felt had sabotaged his generalship. His two corps commanders, who shared deep doubts about his strategy for taking Richmond, stalled and all but ignored some of his orders. (This tension was part of a larger rub between professionally trained officers and “political generals” who claimed that training alone did not qualify a man for leadership.) He made uninvited visits to Grant’s headquarters, pressed the War Department, and had an agent in Washington read a letter to nine key Senators, asking them to quash the nominations for promotion already afoot for subordinates-turned-enemies. He asked a personal favor of the Senators to remove “the nuisance” altogether by transferring the unwanted officers. See: Thomas Joseph Goss, The War within the Union High Command: Politics and Generalship during the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), pp. 118-121, 300.
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Endnote 9) The regimental records only partly reveal the actions and experiences of its soldiers. Frequent detachments, where only a company or two would be subsumed under the command of another command, temporary assignments, and incomplete record-keeping further muddied the records. If read closely, the pensions tell a different story. See, for example, the 2nd Colored Cavalry pensions of: John Gardner, whose daughter testified that her father was injured at Dutch Gap on October 3, 1864; Anthony Hopkins (a.k.a Hawkins) who reported that he spent the winter at the project; Francis Hyman, who came from the town of Tarboro where Cole had once raided; Richard R. Johnson; and Landon Squires, among others.
Endnote 10) For a short period, Butler trotted out Rebel prisoners to the fired-upon grounds in retaliation for the reported use of captured black soldiers in Rebel projects heavily shelled by Union batteries. When Lee wrote directly to Grant to protest the use of Rebel prisoners at Dutch Gap and to deny that black prisoners were used as cannon fodder, Grant pushed Butler to remove the Rebel prisoners from Dutch Gap. William A. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army, Center of Military History, 2011), pp. 1010-1012.
Endnote 16) Chester singled out Ludlow, a low-level officer, for trapping black canal workers in pens and allowing them to be swindled of earnings. He sarcastically predicted that Ludlow would be promoted for his work, revealing a biting -- though unexamined -- critique of promotion in the Army of the James. (See supplemental nots for #5 above. George especially despised Ludlow. This is why I wonder if Cole had alerted Chester to the probable promotion. After all, the second part of the report shifts suddenly to Cole’s great promise, delayed only by his injuries.)
Chester lauded other officers who, upon closer inspection in this story, proved to be callous toward black soldiers and the suffering of their families. For example, Chester praises General Edward O.C. Ord for having taken personal concern for the well-being of the black soldiers. In realizing how essential the black troops would be to the preservation of the Union, Ord “has risen above all prejudices and partiality.” Later, Chester seems to notice that Ord is overly gracious to staunch Confederates after the war ends. But he does not condemn him for it. In another passage, he praises two regular army officers, Generals Kautz and Edward Wild, adding that assigning such great officers proved the egalitarian commitment that the Army had to black soldiers. Chester was right that Wild was a diehard abolitionist. But Kautz, it is clear, was a hardened racist who despised his black soldiers. See: Thomas Morris Chester, Black Civil War Correspondent: His Dispatches from the Virginia Front (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991 ), pp. 256, 287. On Wild and Kautz, see p. 338, etc.
Endnote 20) At the close of the war, General Ord wrote the Secretary of War to suggest that the ragged tents captured from Confederate camps and condemned wagon covers be used to make clothing for black refugees. He wanted female refugees to do the work of converting tattered, mildewed, and sun-baked canvass into clothing for freedmen and women. Ord’s request did not emanate from some deep concern for women and children in the refugee camps. He wanted to liberate his department of what he saw as dead weight and to purge his command of dependency.
Ord bristled at Butler’s promises, made at enlistment to black recruits, that the U.S. would clothe and shelter their families. He threatened that if he couldn’t terminate the rations for black soldiers’ children and wives, he would “gather [them] into buildings and open a grand general washing establishment” for the city where they would wash citizens’ clothing for free. When Ord -- the commanding officer of the largest contingency of black soldiers in the U.S. Army -- looked upon the wives and children of soldiers and refugees in general, he saw parasites. “A little hard work and confinement,” he wrote, “will soon induce them to find employment....” See: General E.O.C. Ord to Secretary Stanton in: OR., Series 1, Vol.46, part III, p. 1116; Berlin and Rowland, Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era, pp. 121-22.
Endnote 29) Though Butler may have grown tired of Cole’s pleadings for promotion, he seems to have made some effort to work on Cole’s behalf. If letters were intercepted, they must have been cut off by officers below Butler. As early as the spring of 1864, Butler was already trying to find a way to get Cole promoted in some way. To Secretary Stanton, he wrote, “Sir as you are aware I have two (2) regiments of cavalry and a battery of horse artillery, colored. I wish to get a Brigadier General for them and yet I do not desire to add to the list of Brigadiers. What is the difficulty under the Act of Congress of giving brevet rank? May I ask therefore that you will give the brevet rank of Brigadier to Colonel George W. Cole, 2nd US Colored Cavalry, although second in rank, yet he ought to be first in command and I see no other way to do it. Colonel Cole is the brother of the Hon Mr Cole, member of Congress from California and is a Cavalry officer of fifteen years experience.”
To this, Butler received a response from Stanton’s assistant secretary, Colonel James A. Hardie: “letter is referred….The Secretary of War is not to make any special recommendation for brevet in advance of the general list.---Jas Hardie.” There is no reason to doubt that this rejection aligned with Stanton’s wishes, but Colonel Hardie certainly had his opinions about the race for generalships, as his own commission to Brigadier General was revoked a year earlier in January of 1863. See: Benjamin Butler to Secretary Stanton, April, 21st 1864 & response, April 26, 1864. M1064, in Letters received by the Commission Branch of the Adjutant General Office, 1863-70. Microfilm #B640CC1864, National Archives, Washington DC. About Hardie, see: John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 279.
Endnote 30) About the crossing of paths of George Cole and General Edward A. Wild: Genuinely concerned about where Cole’s vitriol was heading, and probably reluctant to see a committed anti-slavery officer quit the war, Wild returned the letter to the outraged Colonel, warning that it would lead to Cole’s dismissal instead of honorable discharge. “But that is a grievous error,” warned Wild, who had struggled to maintain his own reputation after having been repeatedly court-martialed and demoted by his superiors. See: Enclosed letter from Wild to Cole in George Cole to Cornelius Cole, January 3, 1865 (private), Cole Family Papers, UCLA. There is another resignation letter from early January 1865 that seems to be the original or a milder version of the original resignation. See: “Smith-Cole Family Papers” in US Army archives, Carlisle, PA.
The one-armed General Edward Wild scandalized many Americans with his brash actions like taking confederate wives prisoner and publicly lynching dubiously accused Confederates. In one raid into Rebel territory, he urged slaves to whip the backs of their recently captured masters. In this respect, Wild out-Butlered Butler in pushing blacks and race into the war’s center, often making Butler appear rather tame in comparison. Wild had been sent to the Invalid Corps but pushed his way back into the regular Army. See: Frances Harding Casstevens, Edward A. Wild and the African Brigade in the Civil War (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003).
Endnote 32) Later in 1865, Draper would stroke Butler’s ambitions, telling him that he (Draper) would take the stump for Butler’s campaign for the presidency. See: James Kenneth Bryant, “The Model 36th Regiment: The Contribution of Black Soldiers and Their Families to the Union War Effort, 1861-1866." (N.p.: University of Rochester, 2001), pp. 330-31.
Endnote 33) George Cole and his officers worried about making money after having spent years making war. They debated traveling to Mexico to fight against the French imperial army in Mexico’s civil war. “Several of my officers wish to go to Mexico on my leaving,” he informed his brother. “What are the chances? Write what you know about it, couldn’t a man make money soldiering there?” He said that he would cut straight for Mexico “filibustering” if he could be sure it would pay, “for I am rather poor to suit me.” Cole was half-serious about the money as he had business debts awaiting him after the war. Regarding Mexico, he could easily justify the war against French soldiers and conservative Mexicans as an extension of the war he was fighting against America’s aristocratic slave drivers. See: George Cole to Cornelius Cole, January 2, 1864 [actually 1865], and January 12, 1865. Cole Family Papers, UCLA. Cole wrote “on my leaving” which suggests that he had told his officers that he planned on resigning from the army.
Endnote 34) On Ben Butler's crimes and corruption during the war: Cole wanted to push further the accusations about Butler’s supposed stealing of private possessions from Southerners’ homes, taking kickbacks from competing contractors, and trafficking in illegal trade with Confederates. Butler, who had received Lincoln’s permission to trade plows and agricultural equipment to friendly farmers in the occupied regions, had created new suspicions that he had been trading with (and abetting) the enemy in North Carolina and Virginia. From this, his relatives and fellow Massachusetts men reaped enormous profits.
Butler was not unusual in exploiting opportunities. The Civil War provided lucrative possibilities for enormous numbers of Americans from both sides. Due to the Union embargo, southerners suddenly found themselves with excesses of cotton and shortages in foodstuffs, clothing, salt, medicine, shoes, etc. Meanwhile, northerners began paying several fold more for cotton and had also lost previous southern markets for foodstuffs, clothing, etc. Thus, along the borders and especially in occupied territories, soldiers and speculators took advantage of the distorted supply and demand caused by the war. Because New Orleans was cut off both from transatlantic trade and by blockaded rivers, the occupied city was vulnerable to corrupt trade. Not all trade with the enemy was illegal, however, as the administration believed that trading with occupied regions would create allegiance to the Union and reduce civilian suffering. The problem, though, arose in preventing “legal” trade with locals from spilling over into “illegal” trade with Rebels who posed as loyalists and locals. Trading with or purchasing cotton from them often meant providing the rebel forces with uniforms and guns.
It was never proven that Butler abused his administrative powers in this regard.
Still, earned suspicion lingers. George Denison, who tried to defend Butler, admitted to Salmon Chase that in post-Butler New Orleans, General Phelps was respected for his “integrity and disinterestedness.” Many soldiers and citizens believed Butler to be “interested in the speculations of his brother (Col. Butler) and others.” Denison confessed that Butler looked suspicious. But after listening to Butler’s defense of himself, the “suspicion almost entirely disappears. I have never been able to discover any good proof that Gen. Butler has improperly done, or permitted, anything for his own pecuniary advantage. He is such a smart man, that it would, in any case, be difficult to discover what he wished to conceal.”
Butler’s own brother, Andrew, grew extremely wealthy from the so-called legal trade. Union men and speculators regularly purchased “confiscated” goods at rock-bottom prices. Speculators were also allowed (by greasing palms) to pass into enemy territory to secure cotton at advantageous prices. Butler never denied growing rich off the cotton trade, but instead claimed that it was a necessary part of reconstructing New Orleans. But the cotton he did purchase—legitimately or otherwise—was overwhelmingly sold back to his home region where Butler created a dependent clientele which promised political advantage for Butler after the war: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, pp. 620-25; George S. Denison to Salmon P. Chase, September 9, 1862, in Butler, Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War. Vol. 2, June, 1862-February, 1863, pp. 270-71.
Michael Smith argues that Butler came to embody the centrality of corruption and the obsession with manliness in the North during the Civil War era. See: Smith, The Enemy Within: Corruption and Political Culture in the Civil War North., pp.1-91. For a good summary of the accusations and investigation concerning Butler’s activities in Virginia throughout 1864, see: Bernarr Cresap, Appomattox Commander: The Story of General E.O.C. Ord (South Brunswick: A.S. Barnes; Tantivy Press, 1981), pp. 147-57; Holzman, Stormy Ben Butler, pp. 142-46.
Endnote 37) The archives dated the letter January of 1865, but it appears to be several weeks later. Because he was near Norfolk the letter must have been written after his men were transferred there from Richmond. I estimate that it was written just before spring, mid-March.
Endnote 38) Mary and her contemporaries regularly used literature to broach problems and issues in personal relationships. Curiously, she likened herself to a struggling husband whose blind hope she could not match; she did not have the courage, it seems, to invoke Micawber’s equally legendary wife, Emma, a woman from a family of means that resented her marriage to Mr. Micawber. Comparing herself to Emma would have made a stronger statement, but maybe it was more than Mary could honestly say. In the story, Emma is worn thin from her husband’s financial missteps. But even with the humiliation of indebtedness, and after her kind spouse turns “morose,” “severe,” and “estranged” from his children, she continues to make and keep her oft-repeated oath that “I ne--ver--will--desert Mr. Micawber!” Because of her sexual encounters with Luther, and extra burden placed upon women for sexual purity, Mary may have felt that she had already deserted George. She was no Emma, in other words. See, for example: Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850), pp. 122-123, 185, 375, 442; Cole, Memoirs, p. 216. The phrase about “turning up” was popular enough for it to have been nothing more than a trite way to say she was tired of waiting.
Endnote 39) On Butler's ambitious plan to take black soldiers to Latin American: According to Butler, in the last few days of the war, he had come up with another plan for black veterans. As Butler told the story, he convinced Lincoln to consider a spectacularly quixotic mission to lead thousands of black soldiers to colonize Latin America where they would dig a canal across the Columbian isthmus. Butler claimed that Lincoln entertained the idea because he feared the return of thousands of black soldiers, accustomed to handling weapons, to their southern towns and villages. Lincoln -- Butler claimed -- was murdered before he could act on the plan.
If Butler can be trusted, he almost did it in the way that Sherman thought impossible -- with lowly black soldiers figuratively shoveling him from his army grave. And Butler fittingly hoped to do it, once again, by literally putting shovels in their hands.
As he recalled (many years later), even after Fort Fisher, he still “retained the full confidence” of Lincoln. Just before the close of the war, Butler called on Lincoln, who privately admitted that he was concerned about what to do with the tens of thousands of armed black men still in uniform. He worried about their provocative return to the war-ravaged South. Butler claimed that Lincoln, fearing a race war, suggested the black soldiers be shipped off to a more hospitable country. The ousted General returned the next day, telling Lincoln that the entire black population could not be exported to the island of San Domingo “half as fast as negro children will be born.” As for the soldiers, most of them still had over a year left on their original three-year enlistment. Butler reminded him that because the war had not been officially declared over, the president could rightly order them anywhere.
“Now I have some experience in digging canals,” Butler told Lincoln, in what was, at best, an attempt at broaching the Dutch Gap fiasco with humor. He assured the president that since black soldiers had spent a large portion of their time mucking in the dirt, they would be well suited to shovel out a thirty-mile canal across the Colombian isthmus. “If you will put me in command of them, I will take them there and dig the canal.” He promised that it would cost the government nothing but food and military pay.
Lincoln wanted him to pitch the idea to his Secretary of State. As Butler told it, the president took the idea into serious consideration but was murdered days later before he could act on the plan. Given Butler’s inflated sense of himself and his penchant for exaggeration, there is disagreement about how accurate this story is. Some scholars have (wrongly) concluded that Butler couldn’t have met with Lincoln, but this is based on Butler’s faulty recollection of exact days. There is proof, however, that Butler did meet with Lincoln at the White House on April 11, 1865. What the two men discussed remains a mystery. But there is plenty of evidence that even though Lincoln had begun to talk about citizenship for black veterans, he held interest in his long-embraced plans for shipping off emancipated Americans to prevent racial violence. See: Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler, pp. 902-08; Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2011), pp. 118-128; Phillip W. Magness, “Benjamin Butler's Colonization Testimony Reevaluated,” in Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 29, Issue 1, Winter 2008, pp. 1-28.