Part 6 (2/2)
”I mean,” the secretary of state replied, ”that the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was uttered in the first gun fired at Sumter, and we have been the last to hear it.”124 ON AUGUST 6, 1861, Brigadier General John Bankhead Magruder, commander of Confederate forces in southeastern Virginia, received intelligence-unfounded, as it would turn out-that enemy troops, having withdrawn from Hampton some weeks earlier, were about to reoccupy the town. And not only that: the Yankee Butler planned to house Negroes there. ”As their masters had deserted their homes and slaves,” Magruder reported back to headquarters in Richmond, ”he [would] consider the latter free, and would colonize them at Hampton, the home of most of their owners.” This could not be countenanced. Brigadier General John Bankhead Magruder, commander of Confederate forces in southeastern Virginia, received intelligence-unfounded, as it would turn out-that enemy troops, having withdrawn from Hampton some weeks earlier, were about to reoccupy the town. And not only that: the Yankee Butler planned to house Negroes there. ”As their masters had deserted their homes and slaves,” Magruder reported back to headquarters in Richmond, ”he [would] consider the latter free, and would colonize them at Hampton, the home of most of their owners.” This could not be countenanced.
Although many of the rebel general's troops had been busy on a mission to ”scour the [surrounding] country” for fugitive blacks, Magruder immediately summoned his officers to a council of war. Steps must be taken at once to prevent the empty town from becoming once again a ”harbor of runaway slaves and traitors.” The other Confederates, most of them residents of Hampton and its surrounding farms, agreed. And there was another motivation, too. It was time, some felt, for a grand and splendid gesture of renunciation. It was time to show the Yankees-to show the world-what Southern men would forfeit for their freedom. ”A sacrifice,” one soldier said, ”to the grim G.o.d of war.”125 The following night, Union pickets from Colonel Weber's regiment, who were standing watch just across the inlet, were surprised by noises from the direction of the darkened town. First there were shouts of alarm from some of the few civilians, black and white, who had remained in their homes. And then they heard the slow, deliberate tramp of marching feet. Two snakelike lines of yellow flame threaded their way among the houses, then broke apart, b.a.l.l.s of light dancing wildly in every direction as hundreds of Confederates fanned out with torches through the streets. They knew the way; this was their town.
”Many a young man set fire to his own father's house,” one Hamptonite would remember.
From their posts across the bridge, the Yankees watched in astonishment as first one building, then another, was engulfed. ”The loud roar of the flames, the cries of the terrified negroes as they were being driven from their huts by the enemy and marched off under guard to their lines, all combined to make up a wild scene,” a soldier said.
Major Cary's columned academy was the last building to catch fire. At first the federals thought it was being deliberately spared. But finally the youths of Hampton fell with a vengeance upon their former schoolhouse, soaking the desks and chairs with turpentine and camphene, hacking holes in the floors and ceilings so the flames could rise. It lit up, window by window, from within.
And so the old town burned. The ancient church; the Negro shanties; the courthouse with its whipping post and its bell; the fathers' mansions-separate fires at first, then all consumed into one, an inferno reflected on the black waters of the James.
The Great Comet of 1861, from Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888) ( (1888) (photo credit 8.2)
*Contrary to popular belief, most freedmen did not automatically adopt the surnames of their masters, preferring to distance themselves from the bonds of slavery, and more often choosing the last name of a local family they admired, a famous name (Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Lincoln), a name that they simply liked-or, sometimes, the name of a family to which they claimed kins.h.i.+p.*”The tablets of law are erased with a laugh.”*The following month, Confederate general D. H. Hill returned Winthrop's gold pocket watch, taken from his corpse, to Butler, so that the Union commander could forward it to the dead man's mother. The Confederate's accompanying note read: ”Sir, I have the honor herewith to send the Watch of Young Winthrop, who fell while gallantly leading a party in the vain attempt to subjugate a free people.” (D. H. Hill to Butler, July 5, 1861, Butler Papers.)*George Scott went on a similar mission. He accompanied Colonel Duryee to Was.h.i.+ngton in July, saying that he ”was going to plead with Pres. Lincoln for his liberties.” It is unclear if he was given a hearing. (Lewis C. Lockwood to ”Dear Brethren,” April 17, 1862, AMA Papers, Fisk University.)*Exact estimates of the numbers of contrabands are rare. As of early January 1863, a Northern newspaper estimated that 120,000 fugitives had been received into the Union lines. (Utica Morning Herald, Jan. 6, 1863.) However, the means of arriving at this figure are unclear, and it does not account for the large numbers of fugitives who remained outside the Union encampments or continued north to the free states. Certainly by that point there were a number of Union bases (including Port Royal, South Carolina, and Fortress Monroe) that each had at least 5,000 or 10,000 contrabands. Jan. 6, 1863.) However, the means of arriving at this figure are unclear, and it does not account for the large numbers of fugitives who remained outside the Union encampments or continued north to the free states. Certainly by that point there were a number of Union bases (including Port Royal, South Carolina, and Fortress Monroe) that each had at least 5,000 or 10,000 contrabands.
CHAPTER NINE.
Independence Day.
And is this the ground Was.h.i.+ngton trod?
-WALT W WHITMAN, ”The Centenarian's Story” (1861)
Was.h.i.+ngton, July 1861.
ONE SUNDAY NIGHT in early summer, James Ferguson, a.s.sistant astronomer of the United States Naval Observatory, was making a routine survey of the skies above Was.h.i.+ngton when he noticed an unusual ray of light pulsating just above the northern horizon. As the night was somewhat overcast, he was unable to determine the exact nature of this phenomenon, and decided that it was probably just a stray beam of the aurora borealis. in early summer, James Ferguson, a.s.sistant astronomer of the United States Naval Observatory, was making a routine survey of the skies above Was.h.i.+ngton when he noticed an unusual ray of light pulsating just above the northern horizon. As the night was somewhat overcast, he was unable to determine the exact nature of this phenomenon, and decided that it was probably just a stray beam of the aurora borealis.1 The following evening, the first night of July, a rainstorm swept the capital. Afterward, when Ferguson returned to the Observatory dome, he saw the same pale streak flickering in a slightly different place, once again half hidden amid drifting banks of heavy cloud. At last, just past midnight, the sky cleared and the mysterious object swam free into his view. Indeed, it soon glowed so bright that Ferguson pushed the telescope aside and simply stared in astonishment at the ball of luminescence that swelled and became more brilliant by the minute, soon outs.h.i.+ning every star and planet. A pale brushstroke of light trailed behind, streaming higher and higher above the horizon, waxing like the flame of a lamp newly lit.
Millions of people across the country saw the comet-indeed, half the world did. By the next night, its head looked as large as a three-quarters moon, and the tail traversed more than half the sky, seeming to one observer as if it were made of ”infinitesimal specks of fire” that swayed from side to side. It cast a faint shadow, and reflected on the surface of the sea. Some even claimed they could see it by day.
Scientists were as dazzled as the general public. They were accustomed to watching comets approach earth gradually, from a great distance; none had imagined that such a spectacular celestial body could loom up so unexpectedly. One overstimulated astronomer in Pittsburgh, confessing that the first glimpse made his hair ”fairly [stand] up with wonder and excitement,” announced to the press: ”I think by the cut of her jib she will probably be remembered, and also recorded, as one of the most extraordinary craft that has floated into our horizon in hundreds of years.”
At Fortress Monroe, Edward Pierce observed the comet as it burst into full splendor just past dusk on July 2, its tail sweeping across the zenith of the sky like a second Milky Way. Thomas Starr King saw it in San Francisco and was reminded of the fiery dragon in the Book of Revelation. In Manhattan on the night of the 3rd, according to the New York Herald, New York Herald, one enterprising citizen set up a large telescope at the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, the usually jaded city lining up to pay for a quick peep. Perhaps inevitably, the one enterprising citizen set up a large telescope at the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, the usually jaded city lining up to pay for a quick peep. Perhaps inevitably, the Herald, Herald, not fully satisfied with the news value of a mere cosmic event, dubbed the celestial apparition the ”War Comet of 1861.” not fully satisfied with the news value of a mere cosmic event, dubbed the celestial apparition the ”War Comet of 1861.”
On the following night, the Fourth of July, the New York Fire Zouaves watched it from their camp in Alexandria. ”While a grand pyrotechnic display was taking place throughout the loyal States,” one observer there wrote, ”a still grander and more beautiful one took place in the heavens.”
INDEPENDENCE D DAY WAS CELEBRATED throughout the rebellious states as well as the loyal ones, it so happened. Early that morning, as the garrison at Fortress Monroe was busy preparing for its festivities-which were to include a speech by General Butler, a reading of the Declaration (postponed indefinitely, it would turn out, when no one could locate a copy), and then an opportunity for officers and men to get blind drunk-the Yankees were startled to hear artillery booming on the far side of the James, volley after volley in stately cadence. For a moment everyone thought it might be some sort of surprise attack. But it was only the enemy's salute to the holiday. throughout the rebellious states as well as the loyal ones, it so happened. Early that morning, as the garrison at Fortress Monroe was busy preparing for its festivities-which were to include a speech by General Butler, a reading of the Declaration (postponed indefinitely, it would turn out, when no one could locate a copy), and then an opportunity for officers and men to get blind drunk-the Yankees were startled to hear artillery booming on the far side of the James, volley after volley in stately cadence. For a moment everyone thought it might be some sort of surprise attack. But it was only the enemy's salute to the holiday.2 In the latter years of the Civil War, most of the Confederacy would let the day go un.o.bserved, or even openly scorn it. In 1861, however, the Fourth of July was one of the few things that the two halves of the sundered nation still kept in common-more or less, anyway.
Across the South, editors and orators proclaimed their own region the true heir to the Revolutionary legacy. After all, what had the thirteen colonies done but secede from the mother country? Indeed, the Founding Fathers-led by Virginia's immortal Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, and Henry, slaveholders all-had established the very principles on which the Confederate states based their own claim to independence. Governments, the leaders of 1776 had said, derive their just power from the consent of the governed, and the subjects of a despotic regime have not only the right but a sacred duty to take up arms against it. ”The people of the Confederate States of the South,” wrote the editor of the New O
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