The Whipping Scars On The Back of The Fugitive Slave Named Gordon

Runaway Slave Gordon.

From the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, "Photography changes the way we record and respond to social issues," by Frank H. Goodyear, III, assistant curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, suggests how mass produced and widely distributed images helped the abolitionist movement.

During the Civil War, photography heroicized the leading politicians and military officers, memorialized sites where the war was waged, and—remarkable for the time—revealed how violent and deadly the battles between Union and Confederate forces actually were. It also played an influential role in broadening the national debate about slavery. As this famous photograph suggests, photography was capable of communicating powerful ideas about the so-called “peculiar institution”—ideas that ultimately undermined the prevailing notion that slavery was a benign tradition.

Gordon As He Entered Our Lines

The photograph pictures the runaway slave Gordon exposing his scourged back to the camera of two itinerant photographers, William D. McPherson and his partner, Mr. Oliver. Gordon had received a severe whipping for undisclosed reasons in the fall of 1862. This beating left him with horrible welts on much of the surface of his back. While the plantation owner discharged the overseer who had carried out this vicious attack, for the next two months as Gordon recuperated in bed, he decided to escape.

In March 1863 he fled his home, heading east towards the Mississippi River. Upon learning of his flight, his master recruited several neighbors and together they chased after him with a pack of bloodhounds. Gordon had anticipated that he would be pursued and carried with him onions from the plantation, which he rubbed on his body to throw the dogs off-scent. Such resourcefulness worked, and Gordon—his clothes torn and his body covered with mud and dirt—reached the safety of Union soldiers stationed at Baton Rouge ten days later. He had traveled approximately eighty miles.

Runaway Slave Gordon under medical inspection.

While at this encampment Gordon decided to enlist in the Union Army. As President Lincoln had granted African Americans the opportunity to serve in segregated units only months earlier, Gordon was at the front of a movement that would ultimately involve nearly 200,000 African Americans. It was during his medical examination prior to being mustered into the army that military doctors discovered the extensive scars on his back. McPherson and Oliver were then in the camp, and Gordon was asked to pose for a picture that would reveal the harsh treatment he had recently received.

The photographic team mass-produced and sold copies of Gordon’s portrait in the small and popular format of the time, known as the carte-de-visite. The image provoked an immediate response as copies circulated quickly and widely. Samuel K. Towle, a surgeon with the 30th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers working in Baton Rouge, sent a copy of the photograph to the Surgeon-General of the State of Massachusetts. In his accompanying letter he wrote: “Few sensation writers ever depicted worse punishments than this man must have received, though nothing in his appearance indicates any unusual viciousness—but on the contrary, he seems INTELLIGENT AND WELL-BEHAVED.” Within months commercial photographers in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and London were issuing this image on their own studio mounts. This particular copy was made by the famous New York portrait photographer Mathew Brady.

Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863

Recognized as a searing indictment of slavery, Gordon’s portrait was presented as the latest evidence in the abolitionist campaign. An unidentified writer for the New York Independent wrote: “This Card Photograph should be multiplied by 100,000, and scattered over the States. It tells the story in a way that even Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe [author of the 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin] can not approach, because it tells the story to the eye.” Abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison referred to it repeatedly in their work.

On July 4, 1863 Harper’s Weekly reproduced the image as a wood engraving with the article, “A Typical Negro.” Two other portraits of Gordon—one “as he entered our lines,” and the other “in his uniform as a U.S. soldier”—were also included. Together these three images and the accompanying article about his harrowing journey and the brutality of Southern slaveholders transformed Gordon into a symbol of the courage and patriotism of African Americans. His example also inspired many free blacks in the North to enlist.

Gordon in his uniform as a U.S. Soldier.

Records of Gordon’s military service during the Civil War are incomplete. Harper’s Weekly reported that he served as a Union guide in Louisiana, and that during one expedition he was taken captive by Confederate forces, beaten, and left for dead. Yet, he supposedly survived and returned to Union lines. The Liberator reported that he served as a sergeant in an African American regiment that fought bravely at the siege of Port Hudson, an important Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River twenty miles north of Baton Rouge. This battle on May 27, 1863 marked the first time that African American soldiers played a leading role in an assault on a major Confederate position. Their heroism was widely noted and helped convince many skeptics to accept the enlistment of African Americans into the U.S. Army. There are no further records indicating what became of Gordon. Yet, this famous image of him lives on as a searing testament of slavery’s brutality and the fortitude displayed by so many African Americans during this period. (source: Smithsonian Photography Initiative)

Confederate Flag Removed in Palestine, Texas

The first national flag of the Confederacy is removed from the flagpole outside the Anderson County (Texas) Courthouse. (Photo by the Palestine, Texas, Herald Press)

CNHI News Service, by Tom Lindley on April 5 2011: PALESTINE, Texas — As a small crowd sang “Dixie,” the first national flag of the Confederacy was lowered from a flagpole outside a southeast Texas courthouse, ending a brewing controversy.

The Anderson County commissioners had voted, 3-2, to fly the flag during Confederate History and Heritage Month. But the flag, which also drew a group of protesters, flew for only a few days before representatives of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans lowered it.

Their action came minutes before the Palestine City Council voted unanimously to ask the commissioners to take it down.

Mayor Bob Herrington

Palestine Mayor Bob Herrington said he took an oath to defend the U.S. and Texas flags.

“It’s (the Confederacy) a government that no longer exists,” Herrington told the crowd. “...It’s hard for me to recognize a flag like the Confederate flag that is so divisive in nature.”

The issue had drawn attention from media outlets across the state to the community which is located southeast of Dallas.

Not all agreed to remove the flag. “Many members of the community, along with myself, are extremely disappointed that the Confederate flag was taken down from the courthouse this evening,” said Palestine resident Morgan Carroll, who added a protest response was being planned.

(source: By Tom Lindley at Apr 5 2011 - 10:39amDetails for this story were provided by the Palestine (Texas) Herald-Press.)

A Copy of The Emancipation Proclamation on the Auction Block

A copy of the Emancipation Proclamation once owned by Robert F. Kennedy sold for $3.7 million, setting a record for presidential documents.

The Emancipation Proclamation- the document signed by Lincoln that freed the slaves in 1863. Purchased by Robert F. Kennedy for $9500 in 1964, it was sold today to an anonymous buyer for $3.7 million

cartoon of the Emancipation Proclamation

The copy of the Emancipation Proclamation is perhaps the item with the most storied provenance. Kennedy, a collector of American historical documents, purchased his copy in 1964. While the official document is in the National Archives, additional authorized printings were published and signed by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War era.

First reading of the Emancipation Proclamation

The president signed several copies to assist the fund-raising efforts of the United States Sanitary Commission, a charity established in 1861 for the benefit of Union soldiers. The commission held a series of fairs in American cities, including Brooklyn. Merchandise was donated, and the funds raised from the sales went mainly to hospitals and to improve camp conditions for soldiers.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Among the items sold at the fairs were documents autographed by prominent figures, notably Lincoln. “Sanitary fairs would request something to be sold. Facsimile copies were made as souvenirs,” said Illinois state historian Thomas F. Schwartz , the director of research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

President Barack Obama viewing the Emancipation Proclamation

For the Chicago fair of 1863, Lincoln autographed and donated an original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. The patron who bought it—for $3,000—then donated it to the Chicago Soldier’s Home, but it was lost in the Chicago fire of 1871. In 1864, two sets of publishers decided to create copies of the Emancipation Proclamation. An abridged and decorated version was published in San Francisco in 1864. And for the 1864 fair in Philadelphia, a full-text version was printed by George Henry Boker and Charles Godfrey Leland.

President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

A total of 48 copies were made by Boker and Leland, who sold them at a price tag of $10 each. Not all were bought; some were donated to institutions. According to Sotheby’s research, of those 48 copies, 18 are currently in institutions, including the Brooklyn Historical Society and the New-York Historical Society. Six copies are in private collections—in addition to the Kennedy copy that sold Friday.

The Emancipation Proclamation on display in Washington, DC

As with any object at auction, the provenance adds significance, but the Kennedy ownership introduces an even greater variable. The document hung for years in Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s Hickory Hill estate, outside of Washington, D.C. “This was his most significant purchase. This was a big step for him as a collector,” said Selby Kiffer, specialist in historic American manuscripts and senior vice president at Sotheby’s.

Sotheby's sale of Robert Kennedy's copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

Two years ago, Sotheby’s facilitated a private sale of a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation for $1 milllion. (source: The Wall Street Journal)

North Carolina KKK Murder Senator John W. Stephens

The Caswell County courthouse in Yanceyville was the scene of a brutal Ku Klux Klan murder in 1870.

Raleigh, N. C., Feb. 25 — …Mr. Bowman, Republican… related from the sworn evidence of one of the parties present the particulars of the murder of Senator John W. Stephens, of Caswell, which occurred in June, 1870; and that warrants had been issued for the guilty parties. He stated that a public Democratic meeting was in progress in the court-house at Yanceyville, the county seat of Caswell; that Stephens was in attendance on that meeting; that a prominent Democrat of Caswell approached Stephens with a smile, and asked him to go down-stairs with him.

Senator John W. Stephens

Stephens assented, and they went into a room formerly occupied by the Clerk of the Court of Equity; that as soon as they entered the room the door was locked; that there were in the room eight white men and one negro. Stephens was surprised to find the room full of men, and was struck with horror when a rope, fixed as a lasso, was thrown over his neck from behind, and he was told by the spokesman of the Kuklux crowd that he must renounce his Republican principles;

kkk

That he believed they were right, and that the Republic would prosper if they were carried out; that he could not leave the country and State, because his all was there; that the colored people looked upon him as a leader, that they depended on him, and that he could not desert them. Stephens was then told that he must die. He then asked to be allowed to take a last look from the window of the office, at his home and any of his family that might be in view.

The request was granted, and when Stephens stepped to the window he beheld his little home and his two little children playing in front of his house. He was then thrown down on a table, two of the Kuklux holding his arms. The rope was ordered to be drawn tighter, and the negro was ordered to get a bucket to catch the blood. This done, one of the crowd severed the jugular vein, the negro caught the blood in the bucket, and Stephens was dead.

woodpile

His body was laid on a pile of wood in the room, and the murderers went up-stairs, took part in the meeting, and stamped and applauded Democratic speeches.

John W. Stephens Pistol (1870) The Richmond-Miles History Museum in Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina, is this "Pocket" Colt pistol that was taken from Senator John W. Stephens (1834-1870) before he was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the Caswell County Courthouse May 21, 1870. The weapon is owned by Earl J. Smith, Jr., who inherited it from his father.

John Walter “Chicken” Stephens was a Republican state senator and justice of the peace from Caswell County. Stephens worked to encourage blacks to vote for the Republican Party, which infuriated many of his white neighbors, who considered him a scalawag — a traitor to the South.

On Sunday morning, May 22, 1870, Stephens was found in a storeroom of the county courthouse, brutally murdered. It was assumed that the Klan had been responsible for the murder, and several Klansmen were arrested by state militia, questioned, and then released.

Amnesty for the Klan

In 1871, Democrats again controlled the General Assembly, and they impeached Governor Holden and removed him from office. In 1872 and 1873 they passed amnesty laws that pardoned anyone who had committed any violation of state law, excepting only rape, in his duties as a member of a secret political organization such as the Ku Klux Klan. Some men who had been convicted of crimes were released, and Stephens’ murderers were never brought to justice.

The article on this page was printed in the New York Times after the State Senate passed an amnesty bill in 1873. The article reminded readers of the brutal nature of Stephens’ murder, and asked, “Shall his assassins be amnestied?”

Ku Klux Klan Captain John Lea's confession

One of the men arrested after Stephens’ murder, former Confederate Captain John Lea, was asked repeatedly in later years about his involvement. He supposedly answered each time, “You all can wait until I die.” In 1919, Lea gave three state officials a statement about the murder, insisting that they pledge not to open the statement until Lea died.

When Lea finally died in 1935, the statement was made public. In it Lea had written that “Stephens had been tried for arson, and extortion, found guilty and sentenced to death by the KKK.” Lea described the murder, named the twelve men responsible, and concluded that “Stephens had a fair trial before the jury of twelve men.” Lea, like many members of the Ku Klux Klan, considered the Klan to be the rightful government of North Carolina during Republican rule in Reconstruction. And Lea, certainly, never regretted his actions.

The song "John Brown's Body"

Old John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But though he lost his life in struggling for the slave,
His truth is marching on.

Chorus:
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on!

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave;
Kansas knew his valor when he fought her rights to save;
And now though the grass grows green above his grave,
His truth is marching on.
Chorus

He captured Harpers Ferry with his nineteen men so few,
And he frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled through and through,
They hung him for a traitor, themselves a traitor crew,
But his truth is marching on.
Chorus

John Brown was John the Baptist for the Christ we are to see,
Christ who of the bondsman shall the Liberator be;
And soon throughout the sunny South the slaves shall all be free.
For his truth is marching on.
Chorus

The conflict that he heralded, he looks from heaven to view,
On the army of the Union with its flag, red, white, and blue,
And heaven shall ring with anthems o'er the deeds they mean to do,
For his truth is marching on.
Chorus

Oh, soldiers of freedom, then strike while strike you may
The deathblow of oppression in a better time and way;
For the dawn of old John Brown was brightened into day,
And his truth is marching on.
Chorus

John Brown's Body

Harpers Ferry and John Brown

John Brown

John Brown's plan seemed fairly straightforward: he and his men would establish a base in the Blue Ridge Mountains from which they would assist runaway slaves and launch attacks on slaveholders. At least that was the plan that the militant abolitionist had described to potential funders in 1857. But his plans would change. He had been ready in 1858 to launch his war -- he had both the men and the money to proceed. Brown was asked to postpone the launch, though, because one of his followers had threatened to reveal the plan -- a threat that the blackmailer did follow through on. So Brown agreed to go into hiding.

The following summer, after a one-year delay, Brown was eager to get underway. He rented a farm in Maryland, across the Potomac River from Harpers Ferry. Here he assembled his arms and waited for his "army" to arrive.

The delay had an adverse effect on Brown's plan. Many of the men he had recruited the previous year had changed their minds, moved away, or simply didn't think the plan would work. Even Henry Highland Garnet, the radical abolitionist who advocated insurrection, didn't have faith in the plan, believing that slaves were unprepared. Brown also met with Frederick Douglass in August of 1859, when Brown told his friend of his intentions of seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry rather than staging guerrilla warfare from the mountains. Attacking the arsenal was in effect attacking the federal government and, in Douglass' estimation, a grave mistake. "You're walking into a perfect steel-trap," he said to Brown, "and you will never get out alive."

Map of Harper's Ferry Virginia (now West Virginia)

On October 16, Brown set out for Harpers Ferry with 21 men -- 5 blacks, including Dangerfield Newby, who hoped to rescue his wife who was still a slave, and 16 whites, two of whom were Brown's sons. Leaving after sundown, the men crossed the Potomac, then walked all night in heavy rain, reaching the town at 4am. They cut telegraph wires, then made their assault. First they captured the federal armory and arsenal. They then captured Hall's Rifle Works, a supplier of weapons to the government. Brown and his men rounded up 60 prominent citizens of the town and held them as hostages, hoping that their slaves would join the fight. No slaves came forth.

The local militia pinned Brown and his men down. Under a white flag, one of Brown's sons was sent out to negotiate with the citizens. He was shot and killed. News of the insurrection, relayed by the conductor of an express train heading to Baltimore, reached President Buchanan. Marines and soldiers went dispatched, under the leadership of then Colonel Robert E. Lee. By the time they arrived, eight of Brown's 22-man army had already been killed. Lee's men moved in and quickly ended the insurrection. In the end, ten of Brown's men were killed (including two blacks and both of his sons), seven were captured (two of these later), and five had escaped.

Brown, who was seriously wounded, was taken to Charlestown, Virginia (now Charles Town, West Virginia), along with the other captives. There they were quickly tried, sentenced, then executed. John Brown's statements during his trial reached the nation, inspiring many with his righteous indignation toward slavery. The raid ultimately hastened the advent of the Civil War.

(source: PBS)

Harpers Ferry and John Brown


This Outlook program focuses on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (previously Virginia). The first section explores the birth and history of this pre-civil war, industrial town. The second section focuses on the abolitionist, John Brown, and his raid on the armory and town of Harpers Ferry. Produced by Bob Wilkinson, Cecelia Mason, and Larry Dowling.

Testimony from Victims of New York’s Draft Riots, July, 1863

“If It Were Not For My Trust in Christ I Do Not Know How I Could Have Endured It”: Testimony from Victims of New York’s Draft Riots, July, 1863

Between July 13 and 16, 1863, the largest riots the United States had yet seen shook New York City. In the so-called Civil War draft riots, the city’s poor white working people, many of them Irish immigrants, bloodily protested the federally-imposed draft requiring all men to enlist in the Union Army. The rioters took out their rage on their perceived enemies: the Republicans whose wealth allowed them to purchase substitutes for military service, and the poor African Americans—their rivals in the city’s labor market—for whom the war was being fought. On July 20, four days after federal troops put down the uprising, a group of Wall Street businessmen formed a committee to aid New York’s devastated black community. The Committee of Merchants for the Relief of Colored People Suffering from the Late Riots gathered and distributed funds, and collected the following testimony.

Abraham Franklin

This young man who was murdered by the mob on the corner of Twenty-seventh St., and Seventh avenue, was a quiet, inoffensive man, 23 years of age, of unexceptionable character, and a member of the Zion African Church in this city. Although a cripple, he earned a living for himself and his mother by serving a gentleman in the capacity of a coachman. A short time previous to the assault upon his person he called upon his mother to see if anything could be done by him for her safety. The old lady, who is noted for her piety and her Christian deportment, said she considered herself perfectly safe; but if her time to die had come, she was ready to die. Her son then knelt down by her side, and implored the protection of Heaven in behalf of his mother. The old lady was affected to tears, and said to our informant that it seemed to her that good angels were present in the room.

Scarcely had the supplicant risen from his knees, when the mob broke down the door, seized him, beat him over the head and face with fists and clubs, and then hanged him in the presence of his mother.

While they were engaged, the military came and drove them away, cutting down the body of Franklin who raised his arm once slightly and gave a few signs of life.

The military then moved on to quell other riots, when the mob returned and again suspended the now probably lifeless body of Franklin, cutting out pieces of flesh and otherwise mutilating it.

Peter Heuston.

Peter Heuston, sixty-three years of age, a Mohawk Indian, with dark complexion and straight black hair, who has for several years been a resident of this city, at the corner of Rosevelt and Oak streets, and who has obtained a livelihood as a laborer, proved a victim to the late riots.

His wife died about three weeks before the riots, leaving with her husband an only child, a little girl named Lavinia, aged eight years, whom the Merchants' Committee have undertaken to adopt with a view of affording her a guardianship and an education. Heuston served with the New York Volunteers in the Mexican War, and has always been loyal to our government. He was brutally attacked on the 13th of July by a gang of ruffians who evidently thought him to be of the African race because of his dark complexion. He died within four days at Bellevue hospital from his injuries....

Wm. Henry Nichols

Died July 16th, from injuries received at the hands of the rioters on the 15th of July.

Mrs. Statts, his mother, tells this story:—

The father of Wm. Henry died some years ago, and the boy has since, by good behavior, with persevering industry, earned his own living; he was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in good standing. I had arrived from Philadelphia, the previous Monday evening, before any indications of the riot were known, and was temporarily stopping, on Wednesday, July 15th, at the house of my son, No.147 East 28th street.

At 3 o’clock of that day the mob arrived and immediately commenced an attack with terrific yells, and a shower of stones and bricks, upon the house. In the next room to where I was sitting was a poor woman, who had been confined with a child on Sunday, three days previous. Some of the rioters broke through the front door with pick axes, and came rushing into the room where this poor woman lay, and commenced to pull the clothes from off her. Knowing that their rate was chiefly directed against men, I hid my son behind me and ran with him through the back door, down into the basement. In a little while I saw the innocent babe, of three days old, come crashing down into the yard; some of the rioters had dashed it out of the back window, killing it instantly. In a few minutes streams of water came pouring down into the basement, the mob had cut the Croton water-pipes with their axes. Fearing we should be drowned in the cellar, (there were ten of us, mostly women and children, there) I took my boy and flew past the dead body of the babe, out to the rear of the yard, hoping to escape with him through an open lot into 29th street; but here, to our horror and dismay, we met the mob again; I, with my son, had climbed the fence, but the sight of those maddened demons so affected me that I fell back, fainting, into the yard; my son jumped down from the fence to pick me up, and a dozen of the rioters came leaping over the fence after him. As they surrounded us my son exclaimed, “save my mother, gentlemen, if you kill me.” "Well, we will kill you," they answered; and with that two ruffians seized him, each taking hold of an arm, while a third, armed with a crow-bar, calling upon them to stand and hold his arms apart, deliberately struck him a heavy blow over the head, felling him, like a bullock, to the ground. (He died in the N.Y. hospital two days after.) I believe if I were to live a hundred years I would never forget that scene, or cease to hear the horrid voices of that demoniacal mob resounding in my ears.

They then drove me over the fence, and as I was passing over, one of the mob seized a pocket-book, which he saw in my bosom, and in his eagerness to get it tore the dress off my shoulders.

I, with several others, then ran to the 29th street Station House, but we were here refused admittance, and told by the Captain that we were frightened without cause. A gentleman who accompanied us told the Captain of the facts, but we were all turned away.

I then went down to my husband’s, in Broome Street, and there I encountered another mob, who, before I could escape commenced stoning me. They beat me severely.

I reached the house but found my husband had left for Rahway. Scarcely knowing what I did, I then wandered, bewildered and sick, in the direction he had taken, and towards Philadelphia, and reached Jersey City, where a kind, Christian gentleman, Mr. Arthur Lynch, found me, and took me to his house, where his good wife nursed me for over two weeks, while I was very sick.

I am a member of the Baptist Church, and if it were not for my trust in Christ I do not know how I could have endured it.

Interesting Statement

I am a whitewasher by trade, and have worked, boy and man, in this city for sixty-three years. On Tuesday afternoon I was standing on the corner of Thirtieth street and Second avenue, when a crowd of young men came running along shouting “Here’s a nigger, here’s a nigger.” Almost before I knew of their intention, I was knocked down, kicked here and there, badgered and battered without mercy, until a cry of “the Peelers are coming” was raised; and I was left almost senseless, with a broken arm and a face covered with blood, on the railroad track. I was helped home on a cart by the officers, who were very kind to me, and gave me some brandy before I got home. I entertain no malice and have no desire for revenge against these people. Why should they hurt me or my colored brethren? We are poor men like them; we work hard and get but little for it. I was born in this State and have lived here all my life, and it seems hard, very hard, that we should be knocked down and kept out of work just to oblige folks who won’t work themselves and don’t want others to work.

We asked him if it was true that the negroes had formed any organization for self-defence, as was rumored. He said no; that, so far as he knew, “they all desire to keep out of the way, to be quiet, and do their best toward allaying the excitement in the City.”

The room in which the old man was lying was small, but it was the kitchen, sitting-room, bedroom and garret of four grown persons and five children.

Instances of this kind might be multiplied by the dozen, gathered from the lips of suffering men, who, though wounded and maimed by ruffians and rioters, are content to be left alone, and wish for no revenge.

Burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum

Our attention was early called to this outrage by a number of letters from the relatives and friends of the children, anxiously inquiring as to the whereabouts of the little ones. It is well known that as soon as the Bull’s Head Hotel had been attacked by the mob, their next destination was the Colored Orphan Asylum, on Fifth Avenue, near Forty-third street. The crowd had swelled to an immense number at this locality, and went professionally to work in order to destroy the building, and, at the same time, to make appropriation of any thing of value by which they might aggrandize themselves. About four hundred entered the house at the time, and immediately proceeded to pitch out beds, chairs, tables, and every species of furniture, which were eagerly seized by the crowd below, and carried off. When all was taken, the house was then set on fire, and shared the fate of the others.

While the rioters were clamoring for admittance at the front door, the Matron and Superintendent were quietly and rapidly conducting the children out the back yard, down to the police station. They remained there until Thursday, (the burning of the Asylum occurred on Monday, July 13th, when they were all removed in safety to Blackwell’s Island, where they still remain.

There were 230 children between the ages of 4 and 12 years in the home at the time of the riot.

...

The buildings were of brick and were substantial and commodious structures. A number of fine shade trees and flowering shrubs adorned the ample play grounds and front court yard, and a well built fence surrounded the whole.

The main buildings were burned. The trees were girdled by cutting with axes; the shrubs uprooted, and the fence carried away. All was destroyed except the residence of Mr. Davis [the superintendent], which was sacked.

White Women

Some four or five white women, wives of colored men applied for relief. In every instance they had been severly dealt with by the mob. One Irish woman, Mrs. C. was so persecuted and shunned by every one, that when she called for aid, she was nearly insane.

[Source: Report of the Committee of Merchants for the Relief of Colored People, Suffering From the Late Riots in the City of New York. (New York, 1863).]

Selective Memory : The Civil War in American Memory

Selective Memory

A historian studies how Reconstruction influenced the legacy of the Civil War in America.

By ERIC FONER

Nearly a century and a half after it ended, the Civil War remains the central event in American history and an enduring source of public controversy. The past few years have witnessed disputes over the flying of the Confederate battle flag above the South Carolina Statehouse and the decision by the National Park Service to devote more attention to slavery at its battlefield sites. Clearly, the Civil War is not over.

RACE AND REUNION:The Civil War in American Memory.

By David W. Blight.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. $29.95.

In ''Race and Reunion,'' David W. Blight demonstrates that as soon as the guns fell silent, debate over how to remember the Civil War began. In recent years, the study of historical memory has become something of a scholarly cottage industry. Rather than being straightforward and unproblematic, it is ''constructed,'' battled over and in many ways political. Moreover, forgetting some aspects of the past is as much a part of historical understanding as remembering others. Blight's study of how Americans remembered the Civil War in the 50 years after Appomattox exemplifies these themes. It is the most comprehensive and insightful study of the memory of the Civil War yet to appear.

Blight touches on a wide range of subjects, including how political battles over Reconstruction contributed to conflicting attitudes toward the war's legacy, the origins of Memorial Day and the rise of the ''reminiscence industry,'' through which published memoirs by former soldiers helped lay the groundwork for sectional reconciliation. He gives black Americans a voice they are often denied in works on memory, scouring the black press for accounts of Emancipation celebrations and articles about the war's meaning. As his title suggests, Blight, who teaches history and black studies at Amherst College, believes that how we think about the Civil War has everything to do with how we think about race and its history in American life.

Two understandings of how the Civil War should be remembered collided in post-bellum America. One was the ''emancipationist'' vision hinted at by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address when he spoke of the war as bringing a rebirth of the Republic in the name of freedom and equality. The other was a ''reconciliationist'' memory that emphasized what the two sides shared in common, particularly the valor of individual soldiers, and suppressed thoughts of the war's causes and the unfinished legacy of Emancipation. By the end of the 19th century, in a segregated society where blacks' subordination was taken for granted in the North and South, ''the forces of reconciliation'' had ''overwhelmed the emancipationist vision.'' Another way of putting it is that the Confederacy lost the war on the battlefield but won the war over memory.

The origins of the reconciliationist memory, Blight argues, can be traced to debates during Reconstruction, when Republicans made a commitment to legal and political equality for the former slaves, then abandoned it in the face of violent opposition from the white South and a Northern retreat from the ideal of equality. Horace Greeley's campaign for president in 1872 at the head of a coalition of Democrats and dissident Republicans focused on the need to ''clasp hands across the bloody chasm'' and return control of the South to its ''best men'' (that is, the former slaveholders). Despite his defeat, Greeley's campaign persuaded many Northerners to view their former enemies more sympathetically and to abandon the idea of federal intervention on behalf of the former slaves.

Meanwhile, Southerners were mobilizing in what the Virginia newspaper editor Edward A. Pollard called ''the war of ideas.'' During the 1870's, Southern publications like The Land We Love and works issued by the new Southern Historical Society promoted a memory of a war in which slavery played no part and blacks participated only as faithful servants who protected their masters' property. Old-time mammies and loyal slaves were celebrated in memoirs, tributes and statues. In this highly selective, not to say grossly misleading, memory, the legions of blacks who fled plantations to seek freedom behind Union lines and the 200,000 who fought for the Union were forgotten. Even today, of the thousands of Civil War monuments throughout the country only a handful contain an image of a black soldier.

By the 1880's, as mass-market magazines like The Century bombarded readers with veterans' reminiscences and the construction of Civil War monuments began in earnest, the nation's memory came to focus more and more on the soldiers' heroism, ''immunized,'' Blight writes, ''from motive.'' Ironies abound in the triumph of the reconciliationist outlook. Gettysburg, site of the greatest Northern victory, was transformed into a shrine to the Confederacy centered on Pickett's charge, the high tide of the Southern cause. Even Memorial Day, whose origin lay in 1865 when thousands of black South Carolinians placed flowers on the graves of Union soldiers, soon became an occasion for expressions of white nationalism and reconciliation.

Rather than the crisis of a nation divided by antagonistic labor systems and ideologies, the war became a tragic conflict that nonetheless accomplished the task of solidifying the nation. With Reconstruction having ended in 1877, another invented memory -- how the South had suffered under what was called Negro rule -- was widely accepted among Northern and Southern whites. The abandonment of the nation's commitment to equal rights for former slaves was the basis on which former white antagonists could unite in the romance of reunion.

Blacks were not the only ones forgotten in this story. Gen. James Longstreet, the Confederate commander who had the temerity to support the rights of former slaves after the war, was excised from the pantheon of Southern heroes. No monuments to Longstreet graced the Southern landscape; indeed, not until 1998 was a statue erected at Gettysburg, where he served under Robert E. Lee.

The reconciliationist vision of the war did not go unchallenged. On the margins of national memory, black communities celebrated the anniversary of Emancipation and the service of black troops. The unveiling in Boston in 1897 of Augustus Saint Gaudens's magnificent monument to the black soldiers of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiment for a time rekindled a more inclusive memory of the war. The most unusual dissenter discussed by Blight was the former cavalry officer Col. John Mosby, the ''Gray Ghost'' of the Confederacy. Mosby declined invitations to memorial events where speakers claimed that slavery had nothing to do with the conflict. ''The South was my country,'' Mosby wrote, and he was not ashamed that he had fought to defend it. But, he pointed out with refreshing candor, ''the South went to war on account of slavery.''

The Confederate John Singleton Mosby, aka "Gray Ghost" wrote in 1907, "The South went to war on account of Slavery," ... "South Carolina went to war—as she said in her Secession Proclamation—because slavery wd. not be secure under Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for her seceding

."

Blight begins and ends with the Gettysburg reunion in 1913, a ''festival of national reconciliation'' attended by more than 53,000 veterans, all of them white. Presiding over the occasion was Woodrow Wilson, the first elected president born in the South since Zachary Taylor. Wilson had recently dismissed many of the black employees of the federal government and imposed rigid segregation on the remainder. Three years later, he invited D. W. Griffith to show his film ''The Birth of a Nation,'' which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and presented white supremacy as the underpinning of national unity, at the White House. ''A segregated society,'' Blight comments, ''demanded a segregated historical memory.''

Blight tells this story in a lucid style and with an entirely appropriate measure of indignation. He does not explain why, if reconciliation triumphed so completely, Northern Republicans long reaped political windfalls by ''waving the bloody shirt'' -- reminding voters of the war -- during election campaigns. But the book is so persuasive over all that one regrets that Blight did not try to bring it up to the present.

Today, nearly all historians view slavery as the war's fundamental cause, Emancipation as central to its meaning and consequences, and Reconstruction as a praiseworthy effort to establish the principle of racial justice in the United States. As current controversies reveal, however, the reconciliationist vision of the war retains a powerful hold on many Americans' imaginations. Ken Burns concluded his documentary on the war with a loving depiction of the Gettysburg reunion as a moment of brotherly forgiveness, while failing to note that the betrayal of the dream of racial justice was essential to the process of white reconciliation. ''Race and Reunion'' demonstrates forcefully that in the year 2001, it still matters very much how we remember the Civil War.