Robert E. Lee, Gentleman & George McClellan, Jerk

by Stephen J. Gertz

Two signed autograph letters by the American Civil War's commanding generals, Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army and George B. McClellan, commander of the Union Army at the war's onset, are coming to auction at Swann Galleries Autograph sale, November 26, 2013.

The Lee letter, dated March 13, 1855
, is estimated to sell for $25,000-$35,000. The McClellan letter, composed May 14, 1854, is estimated for $100-$200. Both were written to Captain George W. Callum (1809-1892), a supervisor in the Corps of Engineers and instructor of engineering at West Point.

Each is indicative of their personalities. Lee is humble and gracious; McClellan is stilted, egotistical, and condescending, deigning to accept an offer.

Lee, a colonel at the time and Superintendent of West Point, expresses regret at his departure from the Corps of Engineers to accept an appointment as Lt. Colonel of the 2nd Cavalry, stating his preference for Engineer duty to that of Cavalry during peacetime, and remarking on West Point business including his assurance to Callum that he will continue his work on the Register of [the Officers and] Graduates.

...I assure you my separation from the Corps of Engrs is attended with bitter regret…


While acknowledging the compliment bestowed on me by the Pres: as unexpected as undeserved, I confess my preference in time of peace for Engr duty over that of Cavalry; But so long as I continue an Officer of the Army, I can neither decline promotion or service...


...The item introduced into my estimate for the Register of Graduates has been granted. I shall give to my successor your Mem: & inform him of our understanding as to your undertaking its preparation…


"Mr. Newlands has not yet been able to finish the record of changes in the Register he loaned us. I will endeavor to have it completed and returned to you before I leave...

I am as yours,

REL

McClellan, then a lieutenant and writing from Philadelphia, was bored to tears with peacetime service. He commanded an engineering company while serving at West Point. In 1853, at the behest of Jefferson Davis, then U.S. Secretary of War, he was assigned to survey an appropriate route for the nascent transcontinental railway. He flubbed the job, overlooking three hugely superior routes. He was insubordinate to political figures: when the governor of the Washington Territories ordered McClellan to turn over his expedition logbooks so he could determine just what the hell had happened, the short in stature, long on ego lieutenant refused. It is believed that he did so because of embarrassing comments he recorded throughout the log.  He had a big mouth.


After mature deliberation upon the testimony adduced I have come to the conclusion that if you still want my very valuable assistance at the Assay office I am perfectly willing to accede to your offer. It is desirable for me, for many reasons, to be in the East for a while. I would be glad if you would move in the matter as soon as possible, for should this project fail I will apply for a leave of absence for six months [...] before I am bagged for any out of the way service...

Sincerely your friend,

Geo B. McClellan

Translation: "After condescending to think about it I've decided that if you still require the wonderfulness of myself and all that my majesty can contribute, I will deign to accept your request."

McClellan's desire to to stay in the East (Philadelphia) for a while refers to his courtship of Mary Ellen Marcy, his future wife. The reference to applying for a six-month leave "before I am bagged for any out of the way service" was prescient. In June 1854, a month after this letter was written,  he was bagged for out of the way service by Jefferson Davis, who ordered him to embark on a secret reconnaissance mission in Santo Domingo in Haiti. Jefferson Davis saw something in McClellan that others failed to observe, and in 1855 McClellan was promoted to Captain.

The estimates for the letters reflect the value and esteem that collectors (and history) have placed upon these two major figures. Robert E. Lee is considered to be one of the greatest generals of all time. His brilliant, often audacious maneuvers and battlefield instincts led to victory after victory - as long as George B. McClellan commanded the Union forces.

McClellan knew how to build an army but was reluctant to use it. Insecure behind a facade of confidence, he was loathe to admit mistakes and accept responsibility; he offered President Lincoln nothing by excuses for his inaction and timidity, and he never hid his disdain for his Commander-in-Chief. Until Lincoln relieved him of duty, the position of the Union army was dire.

How badly has McClellan fared in the marketplace? The letter offered above is one of two being offered in the same lot estimated at $100-$200. Only his Civil War correspondence fetches decent prices but compared to Lee, Grant, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and other War Between the States luminaries, prices for McClellan letters are lame. According to ABPC, $8,500 is the top price paid for a McClellan ALS within the last thirty-seven years (To Gen. Ambrose Burnside on May 21, 1862, expressing pride in his past victories & preparing for battle at Richmond). In 2004, a McClellan autograph letter signed fetched $3,200. Two years later, in 2006, the same letter sold at auction for 3,000.

In 2011, a signed copy of Robert E. Lee's farewell letter to his troops ("General Order #9), dated April 10, 1865, sold at Christie's for $80,000. "After 4 years of ardous service...I bid you all an affectionate farewell. [Sgd] R.E. Lee Genl.

McClellan never seemed to accept responsibility for his failures; he blamed others. Lee, in contrast, wore his shortcomings - such as they were - heavily. When Robert E. Lee was appointed Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia he accepted with solemnity. When George B. McCellan was promoted to Commander of the Army of the Potomac he reveled in his newly acquired power and fame.

One was a gentleman, the other a jerk.

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Images courtesy of Swann Galleries, with our thanks.
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Long Lost U.S. Senate Records Discovered by Rare Book Dealer

by Stephen J. Gertz

If you, concerned citizen, like I, wonder how the government was spending our money during the years 1879 - 1909 but have thus far been stymied in your efforts to get to the bottom of things, wonder no more. Fascination awaits.

The hand-written  ledgers, bound into five volumes, of the United States Senate Appropriations Committee covering those years and AWOL for who knows how long, have been found by a Northern California rare book dealer.

The ledgers, written almost exclusively in pen - both black and red ink – with some entries and notations in pencil, enumerate the annual appropriations for:

 I. Agriculture, Army, Fortifications, Pensions, Post-Office, 1870-1909.
II. Diplomatic, District of Columbia Appropriations.
III. Legislative Appropriations, 1870-1901.
IV. Military Academy, Naval Appropriations, 1870-1909.
V. Sundry Civil Appropriations, 1870-1901.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, arguably the most powerful committee in Congress, formally came into being during 1867,  its purpose to help divide the labors of the Finance Committee into the separate tasks of tax collection & disbursements.  The challenge then, as now, was keeping track of the funds when issued. In other words, who got what, where's the beef, where's the pork?

The entries are listed in exquisite detail, each volume collating to 546 - 896 pages divided into numbered double-page spreads. A note within the Diplomatic ledger indicates that there was a sixth volume, alas, missing, concerned with Indians and Deficiencies.

Some interesting entries:

• The President was paid $25,000 annually between 1870 and 1873. In 1874 that figure jumped to $50,000. The Vice-President was paid $8,000, the same as the Secretaries of State, Treasury, War, Navy and the Interior.

• $85,000 was allocated for wrapping-twine in 1886, an increase of $30,000 over the previous eight years. The wrapping-twine industry lobbyists were, apparently, busy that year. Or, the Senate was unusually active wrapping Christmas gifts during the holidays.

• Between 1894 and 1901, $25,000 was allocated for payment of rewards for the detection, arrest, and conviction of post office burglars and robbers - the good ol' days when "going postal" referred to miscreants, not employees.

• $10,000 was allocated for the “purchase of certain books and records of the late, so called, Confederate Government.”

•  $30,000 was allocated to investigate “alleged outrages in the Southern States” - presumably lynchings but the notes are unclear - and $50,000 to investigate senatorial elections in Kansas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

• Pension allocations for veterans of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, bronze medals for the veterans of the Spanish-American War, the erection of cemeteries and monuments for these wars. Curiously, none are noted for the Civil War, perhaps too close in time and painful memory.

• In 1882-83 $5,000 was allocated for an experiment lighting naval vessels with electricity, and allocations were made in 1898-99 for the purchase of modern electric machinery and appliances at West Point.

•  Between 1886 and 1893, $15,000 was allocated to turn cast-iron ordnance into steel-lined, breech loading, torpedo howitzers for throwing high explosives. $250,000 was allocated in 1897 for “testing methods of throwing high explosives from guns on ships.”

• In 1906  $20,000 was budgeted to mark the graves of soldiers and sailors buried on the isle St. Michel, known as ‘Crab Island’, Lake Champlain, who died at the Battle of Plattsburgh, September 11, 1814.

• $385,000 was allocated for building the naval station at Guantanamo, Cuba in 1904-05; $735,000 for the naval station at Cavite, Philippine Islands; and $862,395 for the station at Olongapo, Philippine Islands.

• But only $23,500 was allocated for government costs associated with annexing Hawaii on July 7, 1898.

• There is a curious allocation [Ledger III, O307] of $2,000 for the Committee on Alcohol in the Arts. Not quite funding for NPR but nice to know that Congress was paying attention to cultural affairs - though probably via artful showgirls and free-flowing champagne. It was undoubtedly  a popular and coveted committee assignment.

• Entry O197 in Ledger III notes an indefinite sum to be allocated for the “Suffering Poor of India," which, bizarrely, was a part of Naval appropriations. I smell a buried earmark to thwart the Anti-Suffering Poor of India bloc.

• Ledger IV, Diplomatic Appropriations, notes $1,929,819 allocated to pay British subjects as  guaranteed by the treaty of May 8, 1871 between the U.S. and Great Britain.

•  Ledger IV also enumerates expenses and allocations for running the District of Columbia, including $240 allocated for the annual salary of a florist at the reform school, pollen, apparently, a necessary adjunct to the rehabilitation of incarcerated juvenile delinquents; and $5,000 allocated to the Women’s Christian Association. Other religious charities, Catholic, Christian, etc. were also funded. The wall separating church and state was porous in those days.

It would be impossible to list every interesting or odd entry.  Suffice it to say that the ledgers contain a remarkable degree of detail and an exquisite amount of information. Here are the minutiae that we taxpayers have paid for over the years – from the $326 allocated to repair cooking utensils at the Military Academy in 1890-91 to $111,820 allocated to publish the laws of the 3rd Session, 42nd Congress, 1876 and an additional $100,000 to fold those printed laws.

In short, there's enough red meat in the ledgers to keep the the modern Right and the Left chattering for years to come about Small v. Big government, waste, pork-barrel earmarks, and all manner of spending by the U.S. government during the period the ledgers cover.

The volumes were accidentally found by Vic Zoschak, proprietor of Tavistock Books in Alameda, CA.

Says Zoschak, "It has been said of eBay that almost anything can be found there at one time or another.  After my purchase of these 5 ledgers last January, 2010, I can't help but give that statement some credibility.  The seller listing them really didn't recognize them for what they were, but to be honest, nor, at the time, did I.  They just sounded 'neat', and like something on which I thought I could make a profit."

Vic Zoschak, Jr., of Tavistock Books.

His cataloger, after close examination and research, realized what a treasure the ledgers represented and suggested that Zoschak contact the National Archives. The National Archives, however, had no clue that the ledgers were missing, or indeed, that they existed in the first place.

Zoschak, a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), is in the process of donating the trove to the Library of the Senate, exactly where it should be placed, for the benefit of scholars and posterity.

In the end, perhaps the most telling ledger entry of all confirms our worst fears and reminds us that what's going on in Washington today is no different than what went on 1870 - 1909 and that climate change stops at the borders of the District of Columbia:

• $2,000 allocated for “Writs of Lunacy” in Washington, D.C.

It was surely nowhere near enough. But if a writ of lunacy were issued for every member of Congress it'd be standing room only in the asylum and nothing but room at the Capitol.
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The Sex Lives of Civil War Soldiers

Johnny Reb and Billy Yank had a secret life, one that they and their families tried to hide from posterity and Ken Burns.

They largely succeeded. Most men left no record of their sexual activities, or if they did, their survivors expurgated or expunged the record through destruction; the reality was a bit too seamy for pure sensibilities, legacies needed to be protected. Reports of wild times and venereal disease were not likely to be appreciated by descendants.

Thus the Civil, our most holy, War, ennobled at the time and forevermore as a moral cause by both sides, has been stripped of that most human and earthy dimension and instinct. War is a rite of passage for all young boys and men, and leaving home for the first time, to a large degree innocent and inexperienced, they often become unmoored from traditional, peacetime standards of moral behavior and drift into those of wartime, which is to say, the world turned upside down and violently shaken.

But in a volume that might otherwise be buried deep within the annals of weird books, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War (Stackpole, 1994), Thomas Lowry, M.D., addresses and fills, through diligent, original research that at the time of the book's publication unearthed a wealth of new material, that lacuna in the military record. Collectors of general military history, Civil War, or sexology literature should consider adding it to their shelves.

“There is a whole city of whores. Yes, father, a whole city. They have laid out a village to the east of where the railroad bends to the docks” (Young worker in the Sanitary Commission, City Point, Virginia, 1864).

“This section of the country seems to abound in in very bad women” (Sgt. A.L. Vairin, Dec. 27, 1862, near Weldon, NC).

“There has been a bonfire in the rear of my tent, burning up a large quantity of obscene books, taken from the mails” (Marsena Patrick, provost marshal general of the Army of the Potomac, June 8, 1863).

Those who follow modern shenanigans within shorts inside the Beltway will be unsurprised to learn that, according to file Volume 298, RG 393, Register of the Provost Marshall, 22d Army Corps, in 1864-65 there were seventy-three bawdy houses in Washington D.C. to service our servicemen. The register notes names, addresses, number of “Inmates,” and “Class,” i.e. 1 is best, 2 is fair, 3 is poor, and “low” is bad. Most houses had from 1-5 women in their employ, and earned a “1`” or a “2.” Mary Taylor, however, had six girls working for her; her brothel was, however, rated “”low.” One house stands out amongst all the others. Elizabeth Harley, at 4 Maryland, Island, ran a #1 rated brothel, apparently the city’s high-end, big-box flesh retailer, featuring eighteen women.

The register also lists "coloured" bawdy houses. Of the twelve noted, only two brothels were rated #1, with two and five workers. Four were rated "low," one of which, Josephine Webster's Fighting Alley, employed twelve; a cheap crib house that earned its name.

Poor John B. Fletcher. In his diary we learn that, headed north to home by steamboat in 1863, he is waylaid by temptation in Memphis; her name is Woman. His resolve to get back home as soon as possible is foiled by too much funnin'.

Dec. 14th. Dwight and myself went to the theatre last night. Had a good time. I hardly know when I shall start up the river.

Dec. 15th. It’s a pleasant kind of day. Indeed I must start up today or tomorrow without fail.

Dec. 16th. I’m still with Dwight. I am enjoying myself very much.Dec. 17th. A very cold kind of morning. Dwight and myself went to the theatre last night. Had a first-rate time. I should go up the river in two or three days.

Dec. 18th. It’s a very pleasant morning. I intend to leave here tomorrow without fail. Had an introduction to Miss Annie Renney.

Dec. 19th. I have not gone yet. Shall go on the first boat. Spent the afternoon with Annie Renney. FXXXX good. Had a first-rate time.

Dec. 20th. I had a first-rate time last night with Annie. FXXXX good. I do hope there will be a boat going up today. I am very anxious to get north.

Of course he is. One more night with this war's Memphis Belle and the poor guy's a goner.

On June 27, 1863, the 14th North Carolina Regiment captured a large supply of Yankee whiskey at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A musician in the regiment’s band (band musicians, then as now, traditional suspects in matters of vice) reported that “some of the Pennsylvania women, hearing the noise of the revel and the music, dared to come near us. Soon they had formed the center of attention and joined in the spirit of the doings. After much whiskey and dancing, they shed most of their garments and offered us their bottoms. Each took on dozens of us, squealing in delight. For me it was hard come, easy go.”

Prostitution and war are nothing new. It is comforting, however, to discover that the years 1860-1865 in the U.S. were not simply a long, bloody exercise in ideals and righteousness, however justified.

There are virtually no records of homosexual offenses being prosecuted in the military at the time simply because the word “homosexual” did not exist in the English language until 1895. Yet homosexual behavior did occur; statistically, it was inevitable. Lowry discusses it at length.

Lowry, a doctor and historian who earned his M.D. at Stanford, served in the U.S. Air Force, and was on staff at the Masters and Johnson clinic 1972-73, also discusses the incidence of rape, venereal disease, contemporary pornography, officers who were not gentlemen, and other aspects of sexuality during the war.

No social (history of the United States would be complete without a look at the clergy down and dirty. Modern examples of moral hypocrisy within the ranks of religious authority figures are found in abundance, with the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” taken to extremes much appreciated by late-night comedians. Lowry recounts the stories of a few clergymen who notoriously tended to their flock with their pants down.

You are forgiven if you’ve never heard of the Very Reverend James Cook Richmond, an Episcopal priest, evangelical, and chaplain to the 2d Wisconsin Regiment of Infantry Volunteers. He was in the public ai ai ai! in 1863.

Seems he developed an obsessive erotomania for Miss Rosa Bielaski, a copyist working in the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., and sent her a series of letters that became increasingly and compulsively obscene. Beginning in April, by May the unwelcome missives had become desperate epistles with four-letter pleas to wet his whistle, written in a frantic scrawl and illustrated with exceedingly graphic sexual imagery.

A military investigation concluded that Rev. Richmond was “a really wicked, lewd man and probably insane,” and recommended that he be dismissed from the Army and placed in ”an insane asylum.” Yet he, like so many modern members of Congress of similar temperament and mental state, was simply asked to leave the shining city upon a swamp. Only a week later, he spoke at a rally of his work in “driving the devil out of Washington”; he did not, apparently, require the services of a chauffeur. But the lesson was not learned: Three years later, Rev. Richmond was murdered by the sharecropper who worked his farm. Richmond’s offense? In yet another ongoing fit of erotomania, he had called the man’s mother and sister black strumpets and whores; he had, it seems, experienced their reluctant charms.

It would be a mistake to conclude that all sexual matters during the Civil War were seamy. There is much tenderness and depth of feeling in much if not most correspondence between soldiers and their wives or betrothed. It sometimes belies the notion that decent, God-fearing 19th century middle class American women were not capable of sexual passion and satisfaction.

In a letter dated November 25, 1863 to her “dear and intended husband,” Julia Higgins of Mills Springs, VA writes with great yearning for her fiancé:

“I love you with all my heart and with all my mind and long to see you Dear Jim. My mind dwells on the treasures we will have when you come back, embracing each other on the sofa and bed. I never felt so good as I did the first time I laid on the sofa. I wish it would last - always it is my daily thought to think of you and the good feelings we will have when you come home. You must not let anyone see this letter. Lay it next to your heart.”

It is a letter that stands as testimony to the foolish reasons men go off to war and the only noble goal that remains after ideals are shattered by grim reality: To get home alive and in one piece to rest in the warm, naked embrace of one’s love. It is a tender, aching, intimate battle hymn of the republic.
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