Category: Muster
Muster Call for Graduate Student Submissions

Muster Call for Graduate Student Submissions

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The Society of Civil War Historians’ Graduate Student Connection Committee, together with Muster, the blog of The Journal of the Civil War Era, is calling for submissions from graduate students.

Muster’s goal is to foster connections between The Journal of the Civil War Era and its readers, building relationships and offering stimulating conversations about American history in the period between 1820 and 1880. It provides an online space to explore new ideas, discuss relevant issues in the field, and connect with other scholars and enthusiasts. Muster seeks to publish work on slavery and emancipation, the sectional conflict, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, including works that focus on gender, politics, social history, and military history.

Submissions to Muster should be roughly 1500 words, on a subject of your choosing. For example, your piece could focus on your research, sources you have uncovered, or any other ideas you have related to the history of the US Civil War era.

Any questions should be referred to Dr. Robert D. Bland, editor of Muster, at rbland4@utk.edu.

Robert Bland

Robert D. Bland is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Remembering Reconstruction’s Lost Generation

Remembering Reconstruction’s Lost Generation

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Benjamin Franklin Randolph was part of a generation that changed the nation’s political history. Born free and raised in Ohio, he attended Oberlin College and after graduating he served as a principal of a Black public school in Buffalo New York. Like many Black northerners of his generation, he saw the Civil War as a pivotal moment in the race’s larger destiny. In December 1863, Randolph volunteered to serve in the Civil War and joined the 26th United States Colored Infantry Regiment.[1]

 

“The Late Rev. B.F. Randolph of South Carolina,” Harper’s Weekly, October 25, 1868

 

After the war, Randolph remained in South Carolina and joined the most important Black political project of his generation. During Reconstruction, he participated in an 1865 Colored Convention in Charleston, joined the Freedmen’s Bureau, and established weekly newspaper for freedmen. “I am desirous of obtaining a position among the freedmen where my qualifications and experience will admit of the most usefulness,” Randolph plead. “I don’t ask position or money. But I ask a place where I can be most useful to my race.”[2]

Motivated by the promise of the new political epoch, he labored tirelessly alongside a larger cohort of freeborn and recently freed Black Americans to make a new world in the postbellum South. In 1867, he was elected as a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868 and played a major role in crafting radically democratic provisions in the document that introduced the first system of public schools in the state’s history and granted the franchise to landless men.[3]

Randolph not only served as a beacon for South Carolina’s movement toward abolition democracy but also became a national leader in the Republican Party. He attended the 1868 Republican National Convention that elected Ulysses S. Grant and was nominated by his peers to be one of the nation’s first African American Presidential Electors. He used his growing celebrity to campaign for Republican candidates across the state of South Carolina, shaping the political project that he saw as central to the larger march toward black America’s new destiny.  On October 15, Randolph was in the midst of that very work, campaigning for the Party of Lincoln and Grant in the state’s increasingly violent upcountry region. The next day, while changing trains to head to another campaign event, he was gunned down in broad daylight by three unmasked white assailants.[4]

My book Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry’s Lost Political Generation explores the world that Randolph and his political cohort built, as well as the later efforts to remember the legacy of their political world in the face of the larger cultural attack upon their political project by proponents of the Lost Cause who were actively rewriting Reconstruction’s history to reflect their own white supremacist vision of the nation. This “Reconstruction generation,” composed of the Black teachers, missionaries, journalists, and politicians travelled to the South to aid in the destruction of slavery and established the region’s first Republican Party. [5]

The production of this countermemory was inextricably connected to the violence and tragedy that befell the Reconstruction generation’s political leaders. Just as white mobs dealt death with caustic abandon and the white southern press offered various levels of euphemistic cover to justify the campaigns of extralegal violence, the Reconstruction generation sought to fully memorialize both major and minor political figures from their era. When Ida B. Welles reflected before an 1889 conference of Black journalists that “no requiem, save the night wind, has been sung over the dead bodies,” she not only captured the depth and texture of the violence that shaped postbellum South but also crystallized the funereal cadence of an emergent countermemory of the larger era.[6]

Benjamin Randolph’s funeral serves as one of the first moments where this eulogistic memory was used to provide a forceful defense of Reconstruction’s larger importance in the Black world. In the immediate aftermath of Benjamin Randolph’s assassination, prominent members of the Lowcountry’s political bloc began to deploy Randolph’s death to reconstitute the bonds of the state’s Republican coalition. “He seemed to fully comprehend the fact that our State had been very much broken, the fragments scattered, and to gather them up, and properly unite them, master workmen were required,” lamented northern-born Jonathan Wright. “In every sense of the word, he was a master workman.”[7]

Wright hoped that the Randolph’s legacy would “be felt by generations yet unborn,” a sentiment echoed by many of his Republican colleagues in the legislature. Stephen Swails, a free-born Black New Yorker who had met Randolph in 1864 when both men were stationed in the Lowcountry with different USCT regiments, commented “Senator Randolph is dead, but he still lives in the memories of the Senators who are now here, and his memory will be ever cherished in the hearts of the people of this State.” Another northern-born Republican politician remarked “it is our duty to erect a monument to his memory, not only to mark his resting place, but to commemorate the cause for which he lived and for which he so nobly laid down his life.” Free-born Charlestonian Charles D. Hayne called for a memoriam page in the upcoming issue of the Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina.[8]

 

Memorial insert for Benjamin Randolph in December issue of the Journal of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of South Carolina

 

More than a local or regional story, the effort to produce a Black countermemory of Reconstruction was part of a larger project of Black sectional reconciliation. A wave of new Black newspapers purporting to be truly national in scope and scale, covered the events in the South with close scrutiny. Black journalists forged relationships with Reconstruction-era politicians and traded information to provide the paper’s growing readership with up-to-date political news. Leading editors opined on the actions and events in the South with concern—and at times consternation. In response, a new wave of southern-based Black newspapers emerged in the century’s penultimate decade to confront both the false myths propagated by the white southern press and challenge the whiggish narratives put forth by northern Black leaders about the perceived failures of Black southerners in acquiescing to the New South political order and abandoning Reconstruction.[9]

A.M.E. Metropolitan Church, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, 1900

 

Nowhere did this new national Black public sphere collide with the production of Black history more than in the Bethel Literary and Historical Society. Founded in 1881, the Bethel Literary was hosted in an auxiliary hall of Washington’s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. At once a lyceum and cultural hub of Black Washington’s nascent talented tenth, the Bethel Literary was one of the central nodes in the larger national Black public sphere that connected Black communities across the nascent national network of Black newspapers. “Every Washington correspondent of the Colored press, and there were more then than now, gave conspicuous notice to this institution, and the editors of their home papers often continued the discussion,” observed the Bethel Literary Society’s historian.[10]

The Bethel Literary not only held regular discussions about the history of Reconstruction but also played a major role in marking the passage of the Reconstruction generation. In 1895, the Metropolitan A.M.E. church hosted the funeral of Frederick Douglass. Before the century’s end, John Mercer Langston and Blanche K. Bruce would also receive the equivalent of state funerals at this citadel of Reconstruction-era memory. Following Langston’s funeral, the Washington Bee’s famed editor W. Calvin Chase reflected on the larger epoch-defining meaning of the triumvirate’s passing. “Their wisdom, patriotism, statesmanship, their race love may not be fully appreciated by the present generation,” remarked Chase. “But the men of the future will look in amazement and wonder that these men could have been so brave, so true, so constant amid such adverse conditions.”[11]

In this way, the Reconstruction’s generation’s countermemory was especially sensitive to the moments when major figures passed away. By the twentieth century’s second decade, the rapidly dwindling number of remaining Reconstruction-era leaders was a point of genuine concern for the stewards of Black history in the national press. In 1917, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s national magazine, The Crisis, published a piece reflecting on the passing of the previous political generation. Of the three figures profiled in the photograph, only P.B.S. Pinchback was still alive. Three years later during an effort to capture oral histories and collect archival material from the Reconstruction era, one interviewee lamented “I have long felt that the last opportunity to collect data concerning this interesting period is while this present generation lives. The next generation will have no interest in it.”[12]

 

“Shadows of Light,” The Crisis, August 1917

 

In many ways, Chisholm captured her era’s deep cultural turmoil over the legacy of Reconstruction. Woodrow Wilson had recently ousted a generation of Black officeholders from the federal government, the Republican Party had been made essentially moribund in the South by formal disfranchisement measures, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation exploded as a sensation in American popular culture, reflecting a broader embrace of Confederate memory in the national consciousness.[13]

And yet, Black countermemory persisted during the nation’s Jim Crow years. In Columbia, South Carolina, Randolph Cemetery, which had been established in 1872 to commemorate the legacy of Benjamin Randolph would serve as the final resting place for many of the era’s Black political leaders.

 

“Randolph Cemetery,” National Park Service, June 23, 2022

 

Far from forgetting the story, local communities and national institutions sought to preserve the story of Reconstruction, building the intellectual and cultural scaffolding for a new historical vision that would not only challenge the myth of the Lost Cause but also provide a blueprint for the Second Reconstruction—the American Civil Rights Movement. Blood soaked and hard won, the story the Reconstruction generation and their descendants crafted offers a deep and textured portrait of what it means to think deeply about the past. It is a story worth remembering.

 

[1] “Rikers Island-Trained USCT Regiments’ Chaplains,” New York Correction History Society, www.Correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/cw-usct/2rikersusctchaplains.html

[2] “Rikers Island-Trained USCT Regiments’ Chaplains.”

[3] Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, Negro in South Carolina, 383; Thomas C. Holt, Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 131-34; W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), chap. 7.

[4] Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 54-57, 60.

[5] Robert D. Bland, Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry’s Lost Political Generation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2026). On the use of generation in African American history, see Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Sarah L.H. Gronningsater, Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024); Andrew B. Lewis, Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights  Generation (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009).

[6] Irvine Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (Springfield, MA: Wiley and Company, 1891), 186. On the broader cultural history of funereal thinking in Black life, see LeRhonda Manigault Bryant, Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014); David Roediger, “And Die in Dixie: Funerals, Death, and Heaven in the Slave Community, 1700-1865,” The Massachusetts Review 22 (Spring 1981): 163-183; Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).

[7] Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, 14.

[8] Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, 15-16, 44-45.

[9] On the postbellum Black press and public sphere, see Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture 7 (Fall 1994): 107-46; Penn, Afro-American Press; Benjamin Fagan, Frederick Douglass’s Newspapers: Black Organizing and the Press for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026); Eric Gardner, Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Henry Lewis Suggs, ed. The Black Press in the South, 1865-1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).

[10] John W. Cromwell, History of the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, 15-17, 21-22

[11] “Hon. B.K. Bruce Dead,” Colored American (Washington, DC), March 19, 1898; “Death of the Triumvirate,” Washington Bee, March 26, 1898.

[12] “Shadows of Light,” The Crisis, August 1917, 181; Helen James Chisolm to Monroe Work, February 14, 1920, in Scurlock et al., “Additional Information and Correction,” Journal of Negro History 5 (April 1920): 248.

[13] Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). On the production of Lost Cause memory during the early twentieth century, see David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 394-97; Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003); Paul McEwan, The Birth of a Nation (British Film Institute, 2015).

Robert Bland

Robert D. Bland is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Death by Lightning – An Ode to Service

Death by Lightning – An Ode to Service

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In his inaugural speech on March 4, 1881, newly elected President James Garfield emphasized the importance of ongoing Reconstruction, asserting that the “elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787.”[1] Indeed, President Garfield had fought to ensure the death of slavery during the Civil War, and publicly considered himself an ally of Black Americans since the antebellum period, but the struggle for equality had only just begun. Garfield carried that sentiment to the White House upon his election, where his tragically abbreviated time as commander in chief has left much to the imagination of millions of Americans.

With the recent success of the hit Netflix miniseries, Death by Lightning, and America’s 250th anniversary on the horizon, Garfield’s observations of race and progress in the wake of America’s centennial resonate as much today as they did then. With this in mind, viewers share a consideration, and perhaps a longing, for what could have been. After all, the president which historian Todd Arrington dubbed the last “Lincoln Republican” had a grand appeal as perhaps the last shred of executive hope to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction in the 19th century.[2]

Throughout the four-part production, James Garfield’s story arc, from the reluctant consideration of running for office to the memorialization of the slain president, is viewed through a thoughtful, yet entertaining, lens defined by a blend of quiet introspection and external relationships; all while exploring a parallel timeline with that of his would-be assassin, Charles Guiteau. While depictions of Garfield’s wartime experiences are limited to brief and scattered flashbacks, the thread of military service is woven throughout much of the show. Discussion of service, however, is largely held between himself and fellow veterans. In one instance, Garfield extends a kind gesture of hospitality toward a veteran amputee of the 7th Michigan Infantry, offering his hotel bed to the ailing man while he prepared for the coming Republican National Convention in Chicago; of which the deliberation ultimately led to his nomination to party candidate for the 1880 presidential election.

Even so, there are a few moments throughout the limited series which elevate the portrayal of Garfield’s bond with those who helped put him in office while illustrating the deep connection he maintained with the veteran community. Several scenes, in particular, feature African American members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) during Garfield’s presidential campaign and subsequent victory. Their support for the Republican Party was found through service, comradeship, and the faith that Garfield had their best interests in mind.

The second episode of the series features Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, receiving countless guests at his Mentor, Ohio home, aligning with the reality of his 1880 “Front Porch Campaign” and a newfound face-to-face relationship between the candidate and prospective voters. Conducted from a place of transparency and principle, Garfield meant to put his convictions on full display for all who traveled to his section of the Buckeye State. Among his guests were several Black army veterans, whose place in the foreground of Garfield’s story emphasizes the importance of this particular relationship not only on the campaign trail, but among those who have a shared experience.

In an earnest tone, one veteran addresses Garfield with concern regarding Black men’s suffrage, which had largely been contested and circumvented since the passing of the 15th Amendment a decade earlier. “Now we soldiers did not put our lives on the line for a republic that will deny us freedom at the polls,” he asserts, “furthermore, that will impugn us with literacy tests the proctors themselves can’t pass.” In response, Garfield acknowledges the light weight of words when not backed by action, swearing “this will be part of my fight, on my honor.” “We fought together…for freedom, not poll tests,” he continues, saying “I’d rather be with you and lose than against you and win.”[3]

In truth, this cinematic interaction between Garfield and Black Grand Army veterans is a vignette of one particular moment likely shared when an estimated 250 men visited the future president in October 1880. Here, Garfield offered some words of affirmation, “whatever can justly or fairly be done to assure to you an equality of opportunity, it will always be my pleasure to do.”[4] In a similar spirit to that of the exchange portrayed on film, Garfield addressed the Fisk University Jubilee Singers during their visit to his farm that same month, declaring “you are fighting for light and for the freedom it brings; and in that contest I would rather be with you and defeated, than against you and victorious.”[5]

One particularly striking scene in which Black GAR veterans are featured exhibits a large group of men gathered among a large crowd in the wake of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Their appearance reflects the state of an integrated Grand Army of the Republic in 1880; a period before the material uniformity of the latter 19th century, but still emblematic of their political ascension at the dawn of Garfield’s administration. More so, the still somewhat youthful air of the Black GAR veterans, with their assorted civilian clothing and Grand Army ribbons, accurately reflects how they would have appeared just fifteen years following the end of the Civil War.

In foregrounding representatives of these often all too neglected stories, the producers of Death by Lightning have done a great service. The decision to explore and highlight Black veterans of the GAR, in particular, has allowed for a transcendent moment – perhaps the first time these men have been represented on film. In the pursuit of sharing the past, Death by Lightning has made history.

[1] “President Garfield’s Inaugural Address,” The Rutland Daily Herald, March 5, 1881, 1.

[2] Benjamin T. Arrington, The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880, (The University Press of Kansas, 2020), 172.

[3] Mike Makowsky, creator, Death by Lightning, Netflix, 2025.

[4] C.S. Carpenter, James A. Garfield: His Speeches at Home, 1880, (New York: E.M. Johnson Press, 1880), 35.

[5] Carpenter, James A. Garfield: His Speeches at Home, 37.

Richard Condon

Richard P. Condon is a historian of military and cultural history during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras and has worked for the National Park Service for seven years. He received his B.A. in Public History from Shepherd University and is currently pursuing an M.A. in American History through Gettysburg College.

Canada Caught in the Cross Fire: How U.S. Major General John Adams Dix Confronted Confederate Violence on the International Border

Canada Caught in the Cross Fire: How U.S. Major General John Adams Dix Confronted Confederate Violence on the International Border

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Hundreds of miles from the cacophony of hissing Minié balls, rumbling artillery fire, and thumping drums that defined the acoustic environment of battlefields in established theaters of war, Major General John Adams Dix commanded the U.S. Army’s Department of the East from its headquarters located at forty-four Bleecker Street in New York City. Maps unraveled, papers rustled, and pens scratched across official stationary as Dix issued orders and made decisions on behalf of the War Department that dictated the actions and movements of armed forces within his geographic jurisdiction. Dix led and oversaw the large-scale administration and mobilization of army operations in his department that spanned the states of New York, New Jersey, and New England; and the deployment of men from these states to southeastern and southwestern battlefields. Marshaling and allocating military resources against the enemy demanded his attention, but so did the need to use these resources against social unrest on the northern home front when Dix assumed this position in the wake of the violent draft riots that took place in New York City in July 1863. Since June 2, 1862, Dix had commanded the Department of Virginia from enemy territory and now in this new position, away from the heart of battle, he accepted that one of his vital responsibilities was protecting American civilians on the northern home front from internal threats to its security and order through the assertion of federal power.[1]

Edward Anthony and Mathew B Brady. Major General John Adams Dix (New York: E. & H.T. Anthony, 1861) https://www.loc.gov/item/2021669483/.

 

However, Dix must not have imagined that he would also be charged with protecting northern civilians from raids launched by Confederate operatives in Canada. The Confederacy expanded the boundaries of warfare by exploiting Canada’s borders, and in turn, foisted Dix into an international front of the war reminiscent of his military service on the Canadian border in the War of 1812. This post explores how one U.S. army department under the leadership of General Dix responded to irregular warfare. The Confederacy tried to counteract setbacks on established battlefields in southeastern states by moving the boundaries of war farther north to cause destruction on the United States home front in the form of violent raids across the international border in 1864.[2]

Historians have looked and continue to look to the West, Latin America, and Europe to broaden our understanding of the Civil War and its aftermath, but specific northern regions, including Canada and the Great Lakes, have not been fully fleshed out in the historical record. For example, Megan Kate Nelson affords scholarly attention to Civil War battles that occurred west of the Mississippi River by illustrating how the Union and Confederate armies not only looked to the West for alliances with First Nations to aid their war-making actions, but also to find and exploit resources on their lands. Moving from a continental to a hemispheric perspective, Michel Gobat’s work sheds light on the activities of filibusters like William Walker who invaded Nicaragua and the United States’ pursuit to advance its imperial power by denying the sovereignty of other nations while Evan Rothera points out the many locations where Confederates went to after the war to avoid a Reconstructed America including Mexico and Brazil. [3]

In addition to examining the war through a hemispheric lens, historians have also viewed the war as one that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Don Doyle positions the Civil War within the larger struggle between republican and monarchical systems of government. European expansionists wanted to maintain a foothold in the western hemisphere and illustrate the instability of democracies and republican governments. Canada, and other British North American provinces, have also been included in larger assessments of the Civil War’s impact on the world stage or in the context of the diplomatic relationship between the United States and the Confederacy with Great Britain. For instance, Beau Cleland’s work recognizes and considers the unofficial, yet deeply impactful, diplomatic work performed by Confederate and British business leaders, traders, merchants, shipowners, sailors, etc. in the economic, maritime arena. Cleland is in conversation with scholars such as Amanda Foreman who explores Britain as a historical force in the Civil War and Canada’s analysis emerges in the context of Britain’s formal and informal interactions with leaders of the United States and the Confederacy.[4]

Confederate President Jefferson Davis formalized the use of Canada in the spring of 1864 when he sent Confederate commissioners Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay Jr., and James P. Holcombe to Canada to advance the Confederacy there in any way they saw fit. Agents and soldiers under their direction organized and carried out violent attacks across the border and then crossed the border back into British North America before they could be arrested by the United States. After a hijacking of a two passenger steamboats on Lake Erie, and an attempted hijacking of an American gunboat called the U.S.S. Michigan—to attack Johnson’s Island Prison in Sandusky, Ohio, and use the collective force of the officers imprisoned there to attack the only source of federal protection on the waters of the Great Lakes—the United States government remained on high alert of other plots that circulated among civilians and government officials in Canada and the U.S. In the following month, the most well-known raid on St. Albans, Vermont, took place on October 19, 1864, leading to the death of a civilian, destruction of property, and the loss of at least $200,000 from multiple banks in the town. The confusion and fear continued as Dix tried to make sense of the violence and respond in the most effective manner possible.[5]

On December 14, 1864, the United States Army took action when General Dix issued General Order Number 97 after learning that the Canadian authorities released the Confederates involved in the St. Albans raid. Knowing that their release would empower raiders in their pursuit of violence against the United States and subsequent refuge in Canada, Dix used his power as Commander of the Department of the East in the United States Army to put an end to raiders acting with impunity. Dix ordered military officials in the Department of the East to cross the international border and go into Canada to apprehend raiders and prevent them from benefitting from the legal refuge it provided. Military officials on the border were instructed to shoot “marauders or persons acting under commissions from the rebel authorities at Richmond.” If the raiders were captured, they had to be sent to the Department of the East headquarters in New York where they would be tried and punished under martial law. Dix exercised the full power vested to him in the order’s enforcement to protect American citizens from “persons organizing hostile expeditions within Montreal territory and fleeing to it for an asylum after committing acts of depredation within our lines…to protect our cities and towns from incendiarism and our people from robbery and murder.” Dix wanted to prevent further Confederate exploitation of the Canadian border.[6]

President Abraham Lincoln thought this step was one step too far on an already delicate tightrope of the relationship between Britain and the United States. To this end, he revoked the ability to cross the boundary in pursuit of guilty parties. On December 15, 1864, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, conveyed President Lincoln’s disapproval of Dix’s order. Stanton explained, “The act of invading neutral territory by military commanders is, in the opinion of the President, too grave and serious to be left to the discretion or will of subordinate commanders, where the facility of communication with superior authority is so speedy, as it always may be with the chief authority in your department, and even with the President at Washington.” President Lincoln thought that crossing the border was not “required by any public necessity or compatible with proper military subordination or the public peace and security.”[7]

Although Dix did not contest Lincoln’s decision, he did defend his actions to Stanton by stressing the unrealistic nature of asking approval by telegraph before pursuit across the border. Dix asserted that taking this power from military commanders “removes all hope of capturing marauders who cross the boundary line for the purpose of committing depredations on our side.”[8] Dix issued General Order Number 100 on December 17, 1864, to revoke the part of his previous order that allowed military commanders to cross the border and instead instructed them to reach out to the Department of the East for guidance if the criminals entered foreign territory while being tailed.[9]

Although General Dix removed the permission for soldiers to cross the border into Canada outlined in General Order Number 97, his wife, Catharine M. Dix, crossed the nineteenth-century middle class political border when she wrote directly to President Lincoln. Catharine M. Dix probably did not include in her wedding vows a promise to defend her husband’s reputation in the eyes of President Abraham Lincoln, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the world, but she did it anyway. Catharine Dix thus inserted herself in international diplomacy and in the actions of the United States military, with just a few pages written to President Lincoln. While there was not much written on the page, Catharine Dix still managed to cover a significant amount of ground in her message. Dix declared, “The Country is with my husband—The Press is with him. The Canadian authorities are with him…the British Consul here, is with him— and the Law of Nations, by which he stands fast, and firm, is with him.” Dix questioned Lincoln, “Why Then, cannot you be with him also—and accept The service of his strong arm—and his honest, and valuable support.”[10]

Through the lens of General Dix and his actions, we can understand one channel in which the United States responded to irregular warfare on an international level to prevent further raids from Canada. The international border is a useful framework and entry point to demonstrate the many ways in which the border was used by Confederates, and the many ways in which U.S. civilians, government, and military responded to their actions. My research builds on the work of historians who have complicated, and continue to complicate, our understanding of the scope and magnitude of the Civil War.

 

 

[1] Edwin M. Stanton, “General Orders, No. 217,” 15 July 1863, United States War Department, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part II, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), 919–920. For reports from Dix’s predecessor, Major General John E. Wool, and others about the draft riots that took place in New York City from see pages 875–940; John A. Dix to Edwin M. Stanton, 15 May 1863 Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series II, Volume V, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), 615–616. For information about the evolution of military organization and professionalism throughout U.S. history see Joseph T. Glatthaar, The American Military: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ix–44.

[2] John A. Dix, “General Orders, No. 97,” 14 December 1864, United States War Department, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XLIII, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893), 789-790.

[3] Megan Kate Nelson, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2020); Michel Gobat, Empire by Invitation: William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Evan C. Rothera, Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States, Mexico, and Argentina, 1860-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022)

[4] Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 2015); Beau Cleland, “Sustaining the Confederacy: Informal Diplomacy, Anglo-Confederate Relations, and Blockade-Running in the Bahamas,” The Journal of Southern History LXXXIX, No. 1 (February 2023): 61-88; Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012).

[5] Jefferson Davis to Jacob Thompson, 7 April 1864, Dunbar Rowland, L.L.D., ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, Volume VI (New York: Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company), 220. Jefferson Davis, letter sent to Jacob Thompson on April 27, 1864, found in John W. Headley, Confederate Operations in Canada and New York (New York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Company. Reprint, London: Forgotten Books, (1906) 2015), 220-221. Citations refer to the Forgotten Books edition; John B. Castleman, Active Service (Louisville: Courier-Journal Job Printing Co., Publishers, 1917), 133; “MILITARY EXECUTION. EXECUTION OF JOHN Y. BEALL, THE LAKE ERIE PIRATE AND REBEL SPY. DETAILS OF THE CRIME, THE TRIAL, AND THE PUNISHMENT OF THE CULPRIT. HIS CONDUCT DURING HIS LAST HOURS,” New York Times (New York, February 22, 1865), 1; William C. Harris, Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023); “The Invasion of St. Albans. E. J. MORRISON SHOT. Messrs. Huntington and Bingham Wounded. EXCITEMENT GREAT.,” St. Albans Messenger, October 28, 1864. Vol. 28, No. 51., St. Albans Historical Museum, St. Albans, Vermont.

[6] John A. Dix, “General Orders, No. 97,” United States War Department, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XLIII, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893), 789-790.

[7] Edwin M. Stanton to John A. Dix, December 15, 1864, United States War Department, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XLIII, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893), 793-794.

[8] John A. Dix to Edwin M. Stanton, December 17, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XLIII, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893), 799-800.

[9] John A. Dix, “General Order #100,” December 17, 1864, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XLIII, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893), 800.

[10] Catharine M. Dix to President Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. -1916: Catharine M. Dix to Abraham Lincoln, December 18 1864 Urges support for her husband. 1864. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mal2052700/, accessed November 2024.

Compensated Emancipation in Maryland during the Civil War

Compensated Emancipation in Maryland during the Civil War

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Historians have long marked President Abraham Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation as the harbinger of immediate, uncompensated emancipation in both the Confederacy and the Border States. However, as my new book, Counting the Cost of Freedom (UNC Press, 2025) argues, that outcome was far from certain in 1863. In fact, the Proclamation opened new opportunities for the Lincoln administration to manumit some enslaved men and pay their loyal enslavers in the border states. In the summer of 1863, the War Department used Black enlistment to secure freedom for enslaved recruits and entice individual enslavers in the border states to manumit them with the promise of up to $300 compensation. Although the United States probably paid only twenty-five claims in Maryland, the promise of compensation convinced enslavers there to support Black enlistment in 1863, leading to the state’s abolition of slavery in 1864. Maryland also emulated federal policy and, after the war paid 3,627 former enslavers $362,700, or over $8.5 million today.[1]

 

General Orders 329

Even though many freedom seekers in the Confederacy joined the United States Colored Troops by summer of 1863, many questioned whether the United States could enlist enslaved men in border states. Slavery was still legal there, and the administration avoided alienating slaveholding loyalists, many of whom supported the United States on the condition that slavery remained intact in their states. In Maryland, which had a substantial free Black population, it was difficult to convince politicians to enlist free Black men, whom landowners and capitalists depended on for labor. On the other hand, non-slaveholding whites hoped Black enlistment would ease the federal draft quotas that often fell on them, betraying a willingness to sacrifice Black lives over white for a national cause.[2]

Whether enslavers approved, enslaved men in Maryland enlisted in recruitment camps all over the state in the summer of 1863.[3] After much negotiation, the War Department issued General Orders 329 to appease Maryland Unionists and lay out procedures for enlisting enslaved men and paying loyal enslavers. It created the Maryland Board of Claims to adjudicate claims from Maryland and Northampton and Accomack Counties on Virginia’s adjacent eastern shore.[4] Unlike most other border states, Maryland’s governing politicians and Unconditional Unionists generally supported the initiative. As an Eastern Shore Provost Marshal told the Secretary of War, “Loyal slave owners are glad of a last chance to receive some compensation for a property rendered worthless by the Rebellion and the cause of emancipation receives a constant accession of supporters.” The promise of federal compensation for at least some enslaved men would strengthen the Unconditional Unionists and further the cause of emancipation in Maryland.[5]

 

The Maryland Board of Claims

Almost as soon as it was established in late 1863, the Maryland Board of Claims ran into questions of eligibility, procedural delays, and loyalty politics. Originally, an enslaver had 10 days to make a claim by filing a deed of manumission or release of service for the soldier and proof of enlistment. But recruitment officers rarely provided the necessary documentation, and the War Department extended the submission deadline multiple times. Enslavers also had to take an oath of allegiance with affidavits from two loyalists.

 

Report for the Board for the week ending Saturday, April 9, 1864, which includes names of some of the paid claimants. Reports of the Board for the Assessment of Claims under General Orders 329, 1863, 1864-1865, Record Group 94, entry 181, National Archives & Record Administration.

 

As Marylanders worked out who “deserved” compensation, they began to perform a new politics of loyalty, one that required loyal enslavers to accept immediate emancipation if they wanted payment. Despite clear procedure, Marylanders and Virginians contested their neighbor’s claims. The three Unconditional Unionists who sat on the Board received several anonymous or confidential letters from self-styled Union men warning them that a neighbor who intended to make a claim had taken the loyalty oath but voted for secession. Some offered to verify loyal men if the Board sent them a list of county claimants—but only if their name was kept secret. Others cautioned of county-wide conspiracies of disloyal enslavers vouching for each other’s claims. One board member, Thomas Timmons, worried that even men he considered loyalists vouched for rebel claims. Ironically, the act of claiming compensation called into question an enslaver’s loyalties. Were they loyal, or did they just want payment for property in people?[6]

The promises of compensation nevertheless built support for the Lincoln administration, Black enlistment, and emancipation writ large. After an initial wave of enlistments ended, Maryland passed a new law to stimulate more in early 1864. The General Assembly passed a bill on February 6 that paid both an enslaved man and his enslaver if he enlisted in the army. Enslaved men received $100, and enslavers $100. Shortly after, on February 24, 1864, Congress codified the compensation policies in General Orders 329 by passing section 24 of the 1864 Enrollment Act. Maryland enslavers could receive up to $400 for an enlisted man under state and federal law.[7]

 

As this claims certificate suggests, the War Department-appointed Board heard claims for the state, too. Office of the U.S. Board of Claims certification for Charles Franklin of the 7th Regiment Colored Troop, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Resource ID 12227.

 

Raised and renewed, the promise of compensation also helped shift the outlook for emancipation in the state. Whether intentionally or not, the Board influenced the upcoming election for delegates to a state constitutional convention where, Marylanders knew, emancipation was on the table. On March 31, A. Randall, possibly Alexander Randall, a former Whig and Unionist who had served as a representative to Congress in the early 1840s, wrote to the President of the Board. He said, “our candidates for the Convention in [Anne Arundel] were particularly anxious to have some [claims] decided soon as it would operate to our great advantage. If this could be done justly towards the rights of other claims we would be much gratified.” I don’t know the Board’s response, but the War Department issued orders to pay claims on April 19, 1864, and the Board began the process of paying some claims in Baltimore, Frederick, Talbot, Dorchester, and Worcester Counties. In early April through early May, the War Department paid twenty-five claims to fourteen claimants, who received $6,900 altogether. Some received money for multiple soldiers, whether enslaved or bound laborers.[8]

At first glance, the claimants don’t appear to have anything in common, except that their claims were some of the first reviewed and awarded by the Board.[9] Levin E. Straughn, a Board member, received one payment, suggesting that politics and patronage played a role. After the initial twenty-five, the War Department delayed payments even as the Board continued hearing claims. When Dr. Samuel Harrison, an Unconditional Unionist enslaver from Talbot County, sought an explanation later that spring, the Board’s clerk told him that they received so many claims so quickly “that as soon as the Board commenced awarding, it seemed necessary to pass some claims for each county. This course was more important, from the fact that your best Union men has said that the Government did not mean to pay.” The Board reassured Harrison that “they also thought it would serve the good purpose of convincing the people, that loyal men had nothing to fear.”[10]

 

What was Paid?

As it turned out, Harrison was right to fear. The Board continued to hear claims through 1864 and 1865, but after more delays and funding reallocations, the War Department dissolved it on November 30, 1865, with no additional records of payments. Unpaid awards totaled $235,383. According to one War Department report it had the money to pay Maryland claimants and more. However, the order to pause payments still stood, and the Bureau did not appear to collect or review claims until 1866.[11]

As Counting the Cost of Freedom shows, the War Department heard more claims from other border states in 1867-1868. But Congress reneged on the promised compensation when it passed section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, when it was ratified in 1868, prevented all claims for compensation to enslavers. During debates on the amendment, some Republican congressmen challenged, “Let our political opponents call the dead to life . . . . We will then pay for their slaves.” I’ve found no additional records of US payments after 1864, but the War Department reported that it nevertheless spent $39,685.36—or $13,273,335.59 in 2025 dollars for salaries and office expenses from 1864-1867 to hear enslavers’ claims.[12]

 

Robert Riley, a veteran of the 7th USCT from Queen Anne’s County, who enlisted in 1863 and was manumitted by his enslaver, Valentine B. Clements, in 1864. He received his bounty from Maryland in 1867; Clements received state compensation in 1865. Carolyn C. Williams Collection of Robert Riley Papers, Photographs of Robert Riley [MSA SC 3836], Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD.

 

Maryland continued to pay state claims until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, including those of formerly enslaved soldiers, 3,409 of whom received $317,450 by 1869.[13] Though they weren’t fully realized, promises to pay enslavers smoothed the way for emancipation in Maryland and contributed to former enslavers’ sense of alienation from the Republican or Unionist parties after the war. As Samuel Harrison later wrote, “Many thought, and still think, as I do myself, that faith was not kept by the Government with the loyal slave holders.”[14] The United States paid soldiers’ bounties, but not enslavers’ claims, reflecting wartime Republicans’ growing belief that loyal enslavers must willingly relinquish their property rights in people to truly be loyal to the Union.

 

[1] Eric Foner, Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010); James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012); Paul Finkelman, “Lincoln and the Preconditions for Emancipation: The Moral Grandeur of a Bill of Lading,” in Lincoln’s Proclamation: Race, Place, and the Paradoxes of Emancipation, William A. Blair and Karen Fisher Younger, eds., (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 13-44; Blair and Younger, Lincoln’s Proclamation, 1–11; Paul Finkelman, “Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Limits of Constitutional Change,” Supreme Court Review (2008): 349-87; Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997), 105–21; “Purchasing Power Today of a US Dollar Transaction in the Past,” MeasuringWorth, 2025. <www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/>. This is a rough estimated compared to the value in 1868, even though Maryland paid out enslavers until 1869.

[2] Ira Berlin, Joseph Reidy, and Leslie Rowland, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. The Black Military Experience, II (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 183 [hereafter cited as TBME]; Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 71, 123-7; John Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 58, no. 1 (1963): 20–29; J. Holt to Stanton, August 20, 1863, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series 3, vol. 3, 694–96 [hereafter cited as OR].

[3] TBME, 184, 213-15, 221-22; Ana Rosado, “The Ties That Bind Us to Earth: Neighborhoods and Interpersonal Relationships of Black Southern Marylanders, 1850-1910,” Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2021, 87-90, 96-98; Mrs. Benjamin Harris diary, February 27-March 8, 1864, MS 1585, Maryland Center for History & Culture [hereafter cited as MCHC]; Dr. Samuel A. Harrison diary, September 22, 1863.

[4] General Orders 329 extended to most slave states that remained in the Union, and where there was military need for soldiers. There were two exceptions: the orders excluded Kentucky, a slaveholding Border State, but included Northampton and Accomack Counties on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, which had seceded. They were the only eligible Virginia counties because Lincoln exempted them from the Emancipation Proclamation as part of the Restored Government of Virginia, which had been admitted into the Union in 1863 alongside West Virginia. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton likely excluded Kentucky because of the state’s vociferous resistance to Black enlistment, and, he wrote, it was not close to combat. Black men were needed in Kentucky to build roads, not fight.

The Maryland Board received a few other claims from enslavers outside of Maryland but entertained few. One Missouri enslaver applied to the Board for compensation for a man who enlisted in Maryland. After a year, the War Department approved his case. It also received claims from Philadelphia and Washington, DC, but the Board refused to award enslavers in free states for soldiers, even if they were enslaved in Maryland, and to compensate DC enslavers who had previously been offered compensation under the DC Emancipation Act.

         TBME 185, 188; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 860-861; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” 536; OR, series 3, vol. 3, 887; OR, series 3, vol 3,  925; Report by Edwin M. Stanton, October 1, 1863, OR, series III, vol. III, 855-856; C. Whitelock to Timmons, January 13, 1864; Foster to Streeter, January 26, 1864; Foster to Timmons, January 31, 1865, Maryland Slave Claims Commission Correspondence, RG 94, entry 176, National Archives & Records Administration [hereafter cited as UD 176.]; Rockwell to Timmons, March 16, 1865; Rockwell to Timmons, March 28, 1865; Calvert to Timmons, August 1865, UD 176. Enslavers in Delaware also attempted to claim men who enlisted in Pennsylvania. The War Department did not allow compensation for men enlisted in a free state. Foster to Gum, November 28, 1864, February 23, 1865, Letters Sent by the Disbursing Officer, 1864-1867, RG 94, entry 178, National Archives & Records Administration [hereafter cited as UD 178]; Kurtz, “Emancipation in the Federal City,” Civil War History 24.3 (September 1978), 250-267.

[5] Baltimore American, August 15, 1863; Charles Wangandt, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), 123-125; Circular No. 1, War Department Adjutant General’s Office, Bureau for Organization of Colored Troops, Washington, DC, October —, 1863, OR series III, vol. III, 938; TBME, 210-215; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 855-856 [hereafter cited as OR]; Rosado, 82-83; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland”; TBME, chapter 4.

[6] Amanda Laury Kleintop, Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 49-51; Rachael Nicholas, “To Ransom a Borderland

Slavery, Emancipation, and Jubal Early’s 1864 Maryland Campaign,” (91st Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, St. Petersburg, FL, October 15, 2025); William A. Blair, With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014); TBME 185, 188; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 860-861; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” 536; OR, series 3, vol. 3, 887; OR, series 3, vol 3,  925; Alfred Mace to Sebastian F. Streeter, December 19, 1863; Colonel J. P. Creager, Monrovia, to Sebastian F. Streeter, December 24, 1863; John R. Quinan, et al, to Streeter, February 23, 1864; Dr. S. R. Bird to Streeter, February 11, February 15, 1864; Loyalist, February 15, 1864; Tyler to Streeter, March 4, 1864; William Daniel to Board, May 20, 1864; Watson to Streeter, March 10, 1864; Timmons, March 10, 1864; R. H. Jackson to Board, April 6, 1864; John E. Smith to Board, May 19, 1864; Robert H. Ellegood to Board, May 4, 1864; Penn to Streeter, July 4, 1864; Powell to Streeter, July 4, 1864; Samuel A. Harrison to Streeter, January 1864; John D. Rew, March 7 and 8, 1864; Timmons, February 24, 1864; Brohawn to Sears, November 7, 1864, UD 176; Streeter to Samuel A. Harrison, January 22, 1864, Box 1, Folder 6, Harrison-Denny-Tilghman Papers, MS 3264, MCHC.

[7] An Act to aid and encourage enlistments into the Maryland regiments in service of the United States, February 6, 1864.

[8] A. Randall to Streeter, March 31, 1864, UD 176. For similar reports, also see: A. J. Willis, June 13, 1864, Box 2, entry 177, National Archives & Record Administration [hereafter cited as UD 177]; Foster to Capt. Le Grant Benedict, April 19, 1864, UD 177; Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1864, House Exec. Doc. No. 83, 38th Cong., 2d sess. (1865), 27–28; Letter of the Secretary of War, communicating in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 8th instant, information in regard to the appointment of commissioners under the 24th section of the act of February 24, 1864, entitled “An act to amend an act entitled ‘An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes,’ approved March 3, 1863, and the awards made by the said commissioners, and why payments on awards have been suspended. S. Exec. Doc. No. 39-9 (1866); Reports of the Board for the Assessment of Claims under General Orders 329, 1863, 1864-1865, RG 94, entry 181, National Archives & Record Administration [NARA].

[9] Henry Kimberly to Foster, April 7, 1864; A. P. Kessler to Foster, April 6 and 8, 1864; Benedict to Streeter, April 9, 20, and 25, 1864; A. P. Kessler to Board, May 2, 1864; Streeter to Foster, April 21, 1864, UD 176; Streeter to L. G. Benedict, April 21, 22, and 26, May 11, 1864; L. E. Straughn to L. G. Bendict, April 30, 1864, Box 2, UD 177; William Daniel to Captain Le Grand Benedict, April 25, 1864, Box 2, UD 177; Vouchers for Disbursements to Members of Slave Claims Commissions, 1864–1866, RG 94, UD 349, Vol. 41-43, NARA; Register of Vouchers and Disbursements, 1863-1864, RG 94, UD 387, Vol. 8.

[10] Sears to Harrison, May 19, 1864, Harrison-Denny-Tilghman Papers, Box 1, folder 6, MCHC.

[11] Report to War Department as Disbursing Officer of the Bureau for Colored Troops for year ending October 10, 1865, UD 178; Rockwell to Col C. W. Foster, October 10, 1866, UD 178; S. Exec. Doc. No. 39-9 (1866).

[12] Kleintop, Counting the Cost of Freedom, chapter 4; An Act suspending the Payment of Moneys from the Treasury as Compensation to Persons claiming the Service or Labor of colored Volunteers or drafted men, and for other Purposes, Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., Sess. 2, Ch. 8, 1867, 376-377; Joint Resolution suspending all Proceedings in Relation to Payment for Slaves drafted or received as Volunteers in the military Service of the United States, Statutes at Large, Joint Resolution 31, 40th Cong., sess. 1, March 30, 1867, 29; Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 1st sess., 193, 196, 250, 460; Annual Report of the Adjutant General’s Office, Bureau for Colored Troops, October 20, 1867, F. W. Taggard, 1st Lieutenant US Army in charge of Bureau of Colored Troops, Colored Troops Division, Annual Reports of the Adjutant General Relating to the Colored Troops Division, 1865-65, 1867, RG 94, UD 388, NARA; “Purchasing Power Today of a US Dollar Transaction in the Past,” MeasuringWorth, 2025. <www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/>. The comparative dollar value is lower ($811,923.76) if we consider this money spent on a purchase instead of compensation for labor.

[13] Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1864 (Annapolis: Richard P. Payly, Printer, 1865), xii-xv, 19; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1865 (Annapolis: Richard P. Payly, Printer, 1866), vi-ix, 16; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1866 (Annapolis: Thomas J. Wilson, Printer, 1867), vii-xi, 21; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1867, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton, Printer, 1867), vii-xiv, 18; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1868, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton, Printer, 1869), x-xvii, 40-43; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1869, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton & Son, Printer, 1869), 9-10, 41-43.

[14] Political Annals of Talbot County, Vol. 8, page 5, Harrison Collection, Box 1, MS 432, MCHC.

Amanda Kleintop

Amanda Laury Kleintop is an assistant professor of History and Public History at Elon University. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2018. Her first book, Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight for Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2025. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Historical Association, and more.

JCWE Conversation with J Matt Ward

JCWE Conversation with J Matt Ward

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In today’s Muster, J Matt Ward, Assistant Professor of History at Quincy University, chats with JCWE Book Review Editor Megan Bever about his book, Garden of Ruins (LSU Press, 2024).

 

Stephen Douglas’ Fictitious Case: Immigrant Voting in Antebellum Illinois

Stephen Douglas’ Fictitious Case: Immigrant Voting in Antebellum Illinois

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Both sides agreed on the facts. Both sides, the Whigs and the Democrats,  agreed that on August 6, 1838, Jeremiah Kyle went to the window of a polling booth in Galena, Illinois. Both sides agreed that when Kyle arrived at the window of the polling booth, he submitted his vote to an election judge named Thomas Spragins. Both sides agreed that upon receipt, Judge Spragins certified Kyle’s vote in every election on the ballot, from the governor’s race all the way down to the county constable.[1] Both sides agreed on these facts.

Most controversially, however, both sides also agreed that when Kyle voted, he was not a U.S. citizen.[2] Kyle, a native of Ireland in his late twenties, settled in Galena around 1836 with his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children.[3] After moving to Galena, Kyle worked as a farmer and occasionally took jobs clearing timber.[4]

In the years before Kyle arrived, northwestern Illinois had attracted a large Irish population. These immigrants played a significant role in developing the region’s lead mining industry.[5] As early as 1829, the Galena-based Miner’s Journal reported local St. Patrick’s Day celebrations that included “a procession, accompanied by music [and] . . . a sumptuous dinner.”[6] The feast also toasted “a Sprig of Shillealeh” in honor of the newly inaugurated president, Andrew Jackson, demonstrating the Democratic sympathies of most Irish immigrants. [7]  By the late 1830s, Galena’s Irish population had become a vocal and politically active minority.

 

In the 1820s and 1830s, Irish immigrants played a key role in developing Illinois’ lead mining industry.[8]

 

The Irish immigrants faced opposition from native-born U.S. citizens, especially Whig supporters. Galena’s pro-Whig media lamented the loss of local jobs to Irish immigrants, criticizing one businessman who “re-lets his jobs to partizan Irish laborers at half-price.”[9]  Opposing Irish immigration assumed greater urgency after the Whigs lost the 1838 Illinois governor’s race. As Illinois, and the nation overall, developed during this era, debates over what role new immigrants could play in American politics grew more pronounced.

One Whig editor, Horace H. Houghton, objected to the fact that non-citizens like Kyle had voted for Democrats. Houghton, a Vermont-born former farmer, moved to Galena in 1835 to work for a local newspaper.[10] He actively participated in Whig politics and temperance advocacy, hobbies unlikely to endear him to the Irish community. [11] After the Whigs’ 1838 defeat, Houghton met with Judge Spragins, the election official who had certified Kyle’s ballot, to strategize ways of limiting Irish votes.

In Spragins, Houghton teamed with one of Galena’s most formidable Whigs. Born in 1798 in the frontier settlement of Cub Creek, Virginia, Spragins moved to Illinois just before the Black Hawk War and gained a reputation for “fearless manliness.”[12] Following the war Spragins remained “active and outspoken, both in politics and religion.”[13] In addition to serving as an election judge, Spragins also sat on the Whig General Committee of Jo Daviess County.[14] As a staunch Whig partisan, Spragins willingly collaborated with Houghton to oppose Irish voters.

The two Whigs developed a plan whereby Houghton would sue Spragins. Houghton agreed to file an action of debt alleging that Spragins had committed “manifest misbehavior”[15] as election judge by counting Kyle’s ballot. This suit would place the question of non-citizen voting rights before the courts. In fact, Spragins likely certified Kyle’s ballot with the deliberate intention of instigating a lawsuit.[16] Because Whigs controlled both the Circuit Court and the Illinois Supreme Court, Houghton and Spragins had a strong chance of success in their “collusive suit.”[17]

Still, the pair left nothing to chance. On May 29, 1839, they stage-managed a Spragins v. Houghton hearing at the Jo Daviess County Courthouse in downtown Galena. The hearing could not have taken much time- “argument was never had . . . nor brief nor authorities furnished.”[18] Instead, the pro-Whig judge, Dan Stone, “waiv[ed] all process . . . and all pleadings.”[19] After dispensing with the need for jurisprudence, the bench reached its inevitable conclusion that, as a non-citizen, Kyle held no voting rights. The ruling improved Whig electoral prospects by removing non-naturalized residents from the voting rolls- exactly as Spragins and Houghton intended.

 

Opened in 1839, just as the Spragins v. Houghton proceedings began, the Jo Daviess County Courthouse in Galena, Illinois remains in use today. The courthouse completed its latest round of renovations in October 2025.[20]

 

A Democratic attorney named Stephen Douglas appealed the verdict. Douglas, like Houghton a native Vermonter, was then serving as the Illinois Register of the Land Office.[21] However, this anodyne title belied the twenty-seven year old’s rising influence in state politics. Douglas had already gained reputation for “excellence in writing and debating,”[22] skills that won him election to the state legislature just three years after moving to Illinois. Narrowly losing an 1838 congressional race only reinforced his tendencies as “a workaholic who enjoyed politics.”[23] For Douglas, restoring non-citizen voting rights would bolster both the Democrats’ electoral prospects and his own reputation.

Douglas planned a strategy of delay. In that era Illinois Supreme Court justices, appointed by the General Assembly, openly flaunted party loyalties without any pretense of impartiality.[24] The court’s three-to-one Whig majority offered little chance for Douglas to reverse the initial ruling. However, the Democrats had strong prospects of reclaiming Illinois’ legislature in 1840. If Douglas could postpone a final ruling until after the election, the newly Democratic legislature could appoint sympathetic justices to the bench.[25] Douglas managed to stall the first appellate hearing until June 1840.

In the initial appellate round, Douglas caught a significant break. The pro-Whig filing erroneously dated Kyle’s vote as August 6, 1839, rather than 1838.[26] This minor slipup had significant consequences. Taken at face value, the Whig filing asserted that Kyle’s vote occurred after the initial May 1839 hearing about that very vote. This filing therefore created “an impossible fact, one which could not have transpired.”[27] Due to the incoherent timeline, Justice Theophilus Smith described the case as “fictitious” and postponed the hearing until the Supreme Court’s “next term” later in the year.[28]  Thanks to Spragins’ and Houghton’s miscue, Douglas had delayed a final ruling until after the 1840 elections.

 

By the time Stephen Douglas led the appeal of Spragins v. Houghton, the twenty-seven year old had already become one of Illinois’ leading Democratic politicians.[29]

 

When the court met in the new state capital, Springfield, for the final hearing in December 1840, it faced a profoundly changed political landscape. Although Whig general William Henry Harrison had won November’s presidential election, the Democrats stood triumphant in Illinois, where Martin Van Buren claimed the state’s five electoral votes. The Democrats also flipped both chambers of the state legislature[30] and immediately began working to restructure the court system.[31] Douglas had personally benefited from the election, earning an appointment as Illinois Secretary of State.[32] As Spragins, Houghton, Kyle, and all four Illinois Supreme Court justices filed into the red-domed state capitol building for final arguments, Douglas’ seemingly impossible appeal now had a chance of success.

The final hearing rested on the legal question of whether non-citizens can vote. Arguing alongside his mentor,Murray McConnel, Douglas focused on the constitutional antecedents of Illinois election law. [33] According to Douglas, the original Northwest Ordinance “permitted alien inhabitants to vote.”[34] Douglas further claimed that the Constitution upheld this right, noting that “whenever the constitution speaks of a voter, or elector, it uses the word ‘inhabitant’ and not ‘citizen’ of the United States,” and that these words “are not used as synonymous terms.”[35] Therefore, inhabitants may vote even before they become citizens.

Justin Butterfield, a Chicago-based Whig, led the counterargument.[36]Butterfield began by dismissing Douglas’ claim that “inhabitant” and “citizen” have different meanings. He pointed to the state constitutions of New York, New Hampshire, and Ohio which “by law restricted the right of voting to such inhabitants as are citizens.”[37] Butterfield found Douglas’ discussion of the Northwest Ordinance irrelevant, claiming that “it would be absurd to contend that the states formed out of the northwest territory possess any other or different rights than the original states.”[38] Overall, Butterfield claimed that “the admission of alien votes is a violation of the spirit and meaning of the constitution.”[39]

Beyond the legal details, Butterfield also argued that allowing non-citizen votes threatened the integrity of American elections. If states could eliminate citizenship voting requirements, theoretically they could “altogether dispense with the condition of residence, and extend the right of voting to aliens . . . on the same day of landing on our shores.”[40] Taken to this logical extreme, an expanded voter pool would render citizenship meaningless. Butterfield concluded with a peroration on the sanctity of elections, stating that because the nation’s “health and perpetuity depend on [elections’] purity, they should be guarded as with a flaming sword.”[41]

The court published its decision in Spragins v. Houghton on the last day of 1840. Douglas must have been relieved to see that the sole Democratic justice, Theophilus Smith, penned the decision. Smith agreed with Douglas’ reading of the Constitution, finding that “when the qualifications for a voter or elector are named, it uses the word inhabitant and no reference to that of citizen.”[42] Therefore, citizenship is not a Constitutional requirement for voting. After a thorough review of historic congressional debates on voting eligibility, Smith aimed some barbed comments at the defendant, Spragins. To Smith, the fact that Spragins knowingly counted what he considered as an ineligible ballot reflected “a novel attitude, to use no stronger expression.”[43] Hinting disdain for the collusive nature of the case, Smith found that Spragins’ behavior leads to “inferences [that] can not but be peculiar in their nature.”[44] After landing these subtle gibes, Smith stated a clear and decisive verdict- “Jeremiah Kyle was a person legally qualified under the constitution and laws of the state of Illinois to vote.”[45]

The ruling sent shockwaves through Illinois politics. Most immediately, the newly empowered Democratic legislature passed a Judiciary Act to expand and pack the state Supreme Court.[46] Douglas’ victory in the case and active role in shaping the legislation gained him appointment to one of the new Supreme Court seats and marked him as the state’s leading Democratic tactician.[47] Later in the decade, Illinois Democrats and Whigs reached a compromise on voting eligibility. This compromise, codified in a new 1848 state constitution, appealed to Democrats by granting voting rights to all “white male inhabitants at the time of the adoption of this constitution,” including non-citizens.[48] However for the Whigs, the Constitution reserved future voting rights exclusively for citizens.[49] Citizenship had become a formal requirement for suffrage, a requirement that remains in the present Illinois constitution.[50] The controversy surrounding this case demonstrates that, in the early republic, citizenship was not universally understood as a requirement to vote.

 

[1] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[2]Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[3] “Census Records.” Jo Daviess County, Illinois. 1840. (The census lists Kyle’s profession as “agriculture.”

[4] “Taken Up.” Illinois State Register and People’s Advocate (Vandalia, IL), April 26, 1839.

[5] “Cead Mile Failte! The Irish in the Old Lead Mine District: History and Music,” Galena Public Library District, Published March 14, 2024. Accessed September 2025 at https://galenalibrary.org/event/cead-mile-cead-mile-failte-the-irish-in-the-old-lead-mine-district/#:~:text=The%20Irish%20in%20the%20Old%20Lead%20Mine%20District:%20History%20and%20Music, March%2014%2C%202024&text=Weave%20your%20way%20through%20the,and%20as%20immigrants%20to%20America.&text=Tracey%20Roberts%2C%20Historian%20and%20Caitriona,and%20US%20Grant%20History%20Museum.

[6] “Celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.” Miner’s Journal (Galena, IL), March 21, 1829.

[7] “Celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.” Miner’s Journal (Galena, IL), March 21, 1829.

[8] R.K. Cunningham. “200 Years of Illinois: Lead is Galena and Galena is Lead.” September 30, 2016. Accessed November 2025 at https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/200-years-of-illinois-the-glory-of-lead/.

[9] North Western Gazette and Galena Advertiser, (Galena, IL), April 11, 1839. Italics were in the original.

[10] “Horace H. Houghton,” Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Accessed September 14, 2025, https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/persons/HO40885.

[11] “Horace H. Houghton,” Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Accessed September 14, 2025, https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/persons/HO40885.

[12] “Death of a Former Well Known Resident of Jo Daviess County,” Galena Daily Gazette, February 13, 1883.

[13] “Death of a Former Well Known Resident of Jo Daviess County,” Galena Daily Gazette, February 13, 1883.

[14] “Whig Meeting,” North Western Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Galena, IL), March 14, 1839.

[15] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. 1840.

[16] Allen Johnson, “Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics” (New York: Macmillan, 1908), accessed September 2025 via Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15508/15508-h/15508-h.htm#FNanchor_109_109.

[17] Allen Johnson, “Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics” (New York: Macmillan, 1908), accessed September 2025 via Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15508/15508-h/15508-h.htm#FNanchor_109_109.

[18] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. June 1840.

[19] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. June 1840.

[20] John Deacon. “Jo Daviess County.” American Courthouses: A Photo Archive by John Deacon. Accessed November 2025 at https://courthouses.co/us-states/h-l/illinois/jo-daviess-county/.

[21] “Stephen A. Douglas,” North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Published January 3, 2024, https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2024/01/03/stephen-douglas-j-14.

[22] “Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and their Friend John Calhoun,” Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom, the Lehrman Institute, Accessed October 2025 at https://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincolns-contemporaries/abraham-lincoln-stephen-a-douglas-and-their-friend-john-calhoun/index.html#int. Note: the actual quote says “excellent,” I removed the brackets for the changed tenses for clarity.

[23] “Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and their Friend John Calhoun,” Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom, the Lehrman Institute, Accessed October 2025 at https://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincolns-contemporaries/abraham-lincoln-stephen-a-douglas-and-their-friend-john-calhoun/index.html#int.

[24] Allen Johnson, “Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics” (New York: Macmillan, 1908), accessed September 2025 via Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15508/15508-h/15508-h.htm#FNanchor_109_109.

[25] Allen Johnson, “Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics” (New York: Macmillan, 1908), accessed September 2025 via Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15508/15508-h/15508-h.htm#FNanchor_109_109.

[26] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. June 1840.

[27] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. June 1840.

[28] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Circuit Court. June 1840.

[29] “Stephen Arnold Douglas.” HarpWeek. Accessed November 2025 at https://elections.harpweek.com/1860/bio-1860-Full.asp?UniqueID=6.

[30] “1840 Illinois State Elections,” Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Accessed September 14, 2025, https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/events/E4018085#:~:text=Coming%20in%20the%20midst%20of,funding%20the%20internal%20improvement%20system.

[31] “Illinois Judiciary Act of 1841,” Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Accessed September 16, 2025 at https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/events/E4016150.

[32] Allen Johnson, “Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics” (New York: Macmillan, 1908), accessed September 2025 via Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15508/15508-h/15508-h.htm#FNanchor_109_109.

[33] Michael Woods, “Stephen A. Douglas, ‘Little Giant’ had Deep Roots in City,” Journal-Courier (Jacksonville, IL), August 2, 2025.

[34] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[35] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[36] Thomas F. Schwartz, “‘An Egregious Political Blunder: Justin Butterfield, Lincoln, and Illinois Whiggery,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 8, no. 1 (1986): 9-19.

[37] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[38] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[39] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[40] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[41] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[42] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[43] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[44] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[45] Spragins v. Houghton. Illinois Supreme Court. 1840.

[46] “Illinois Judiciary Act of 1841” Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Accessed October 6, 2025, at at https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/events/E4016150.

[47] Mark E. Steiner, “Abraham Lincoln, Nativism, and Citizenship,” Journal of the University of Latvia Law 13 (2020): 15-32.

[48] ”Constitution of the State of Illinois,” Article VI. 1848. Accessed October 2025 at https://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/isl2/id/211.

[49] ”Constitution of the State of Illinois,” Article VI. 1848. Accessed October 2025 at https://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/isl2/id/211.

[50] ”1970 Illinois Constitution Annotated for Legislators,” Illinois General Assembly Legislative Research Unit, ed. 5, published December 2018, accessed October 2025 at https://www.ilga.gov/commission/lru/ilconstitution2018.pdf. The specific section on citizen voting requirement is in Article III, Section 1.

Clark North

Clark North studied 19th Century U.S. History at the University of Wisconsin, with a focus on pre-Civil War politics. Born and raised in Chicago, Clark currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his shelter beagle-mix, Maris.

Alternative Fictions: The New Lost Cause in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Alternative Fictions: The New Lost Cause in the Post-Civil Rights Era

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“What if the South Won the Civil War?” Answers to this question reflect shifts in collective memory as authors use artistic license to reframe the real-world past.[1] Mackinlay Kantor’s answer in 1960 signaled the impending shift in the Lost Cause ideology within an emerging cultural landscape that was being reshaped by the Civil Rights Movement. Though slavery is still not the cause of Kantor’s Civil War, the South ends the practice to keep pace with other nations. By the mid-twentieth century, growing numbers of southerners still could not admit to fighting for slavery and maintained that the peculiar institution was far more humane than abolitionists claimed, but also were uncomfortable celebrating a South that upheld the system. The most recent generations of “alt histories” of the war serve as a barometer of the Lost Cause’s new place in the post-Civil Rights cultural landscape, tracing hidden truths authors buried beneath the surface of history. Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (1992), Howard Ray White’s The Trilogy (2018) both use a post-Civil Rights era version of the Lost Cause, but have markedly different memories of the past. Turtledove wrote in the Lost Cause style most historians refer to in studies of modern memory. White’s narrative reflects a variant of the Lost Cause that emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s that warrants its own label, the New Lost Cause.

 

Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South (1992) highlights how deeply entrenched the Lost Cause remains in the white American psyche even amongst more progressive thinkers in the post-Civil Rights-era. Guns of the South rejects aspects of the Lost Cause. Slavery is depicted as cruel an immoral and is the outright cause for secession. Even so, Turtledove falls into the Lost Cause mythos of the southern gentlemen and frequently romanticizes Confederate leaders, especially Robert E. Lee. Lee becomes the second Confederate president and begins the process of abolition. In one scene, Lee visits wounded Union soldiers. A man asks Lee if he came “to gloat,” but another defends Lee, saying, “Come on, Joe, you know he ain’t that way.” Lee confirms that he “came to see brave men.”[2] Thomas Mallon explains how Turtledove used Lee as “a sort of Mandela” figure, implying race tensions would have eased sooner under a gradual emancipation platform than our world’s Reconstruction.[3] David Blight’s theory of white America achieving social reconciliation by agreeing to honor the bravery of both sides and ignore the role of slavery shines through even as Turtledove blames slavery for the war.[4] This is the power of the Lost Cause: even when denying states’ rights as the war’s cause, white memory clings to Reconciliation and forgiveness to the point of distorting the truth.[5]

Guns reflects the growing international scope of white nationalist movements. Twenty-first-century South Africans bring AK-47s to the Confederacy to help establish the South as a white supremacist nation, hoping to prevent the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s. Turtledove foreshadowed the growing international connections between white supremacists. The late twentieth-century’s revolution in personal computing and internet access allowed white supremacists around the world to share ideas online.[6] The Lost Cause and Confederate symbols can be found in many foreign and domestic forums today not just as a white supremacist symbol, but a generalized stance against a multicultural liberal consensus.”[7] Over the past two decades, online white identitarians have increasingly embraced the Confederate flag to the exclusion of more incendiary symbols like the Swastika, which is more likely to be banned by most websites’ rules of conduct.[8] The Afrikaners who time-traveled from 2014 to 1864 hoped that saving the Confederacy would strengthen the white supremacist movement in the 21st century. Post-Civil Rights Movement, American white supremacist organizations that had formerly been at odds, such as the Klan and Neo-Nazis, began working together as they lost political power, and the internet allowed like-minded white supremacists from around the world to commiserate and plan together.[9]

This post-Civil Rights era moment of cultural reinvention created what I call the “New Lost Cause.” Formed in the wake of the late twentieth-century white power movements, the New Lost Cause was part of growing international white supremacist movement that foreshadowed the rise of the alt-right. Post Civil Rights-era literary works in the New Lost Cause use much of the classic Lost Cause mythos but are broader and more flexible in their historical details.

 

For example, the preposterously titled The CSA Trilogy: An Alternate History/Historical Novel about Our Vast and Beautiful Confederate States of America — A Happy Story in Three Parts of What Might Have Been — 1861 to 2011 has a New Lost Cause memory of the war that has proven useful to the alt-right.[10] Since the 1990s, the Neo-Confederate movement has created a more masculine version of the Lost Cause that works to apply to politics well beyond race. The book is broken into three parts, covering the CSA’s acquisition of new territory and political development through 2011, which White presents as historically possible, claiming even the fictional details are based on sound evidence and reasoning.

The New Lost Cause gives white supremacists a mythos that frames whites as victims of the politically correct and anyone left of center as Communist demagogues. The CSA Trilogy, in which racism only exists in the US rump state, declares the South could have avoided the unpleasantness of the Civil Rights Movement if it had been allowed to self-direct its policies. Nearly every character states their precise racial background, by percentage, upon introduction. In White’s world, blood quantums still matter, but the CSA is still more racially diverse than the “woke” liberals of the North claim to be. Thus far, The CSA Trilogy is bizarre, but still within the Lost Cause narrative that the North caused more race tensions than it solved through the war and Reconstruction.

White’s New Lost Cause coopts progressive language to make white supremacist ideas sound more palatable to those on the fringes of the alt-right and offers a semblance of cover from accusations about white supremacy. For example, “diversity” is literally the CSA’s national anthem, but its meaning is unconventional. For White, diversity “does not mean diverse cultural behaviors” nor does it “mean political agitators can desecrate the monuments erected to Confederate heroes.” Everyone speaks English and follows white customs; assimilation to the dominant culture is critical in this white supremacist utopia.[11] In the modern CSA of 2011, Trumpism and the alt-right have crept in. The mainland country is protected by a “national fence” built by undocumented immigrants, and there is little environmental regulation, limited voting rights, and few labor unions. The immigration policy in White’s idealized Confederacy ensures the population is always at least seventy percent white, reflecting the common critique from the right that too much immigration from the wrong sort of places will destroy the country. Some of these ideas are familiar: the Lost Cause has always aimed to limit the voting rights of African Americans, the dislike of labor unions makes sense for those who wanted to control others’ labor, and it is no secret that the Lost Cause favors whiteness. The New Lost Cause uses almost all of the original Lost Cause, but adds to it by emphasizing cultural assimilation, disregarding environmental regulations, and demanding stringent border control. The alt-right can more easily adapt the New Lost Cause to the current political landscape than the original Lost Cause.[12]

Like the founders of the Lost Cause, who created a new history for political purposes, the New Lost Cause is being written by people who know the real history, but want to create a more politically useful story.[13] By using obviously fictitious elements, Clark makes the true parts of his story stand out: readers see slavery in all its gory detail and are reminded that progress is not guaranteed. In The CSA Trilogy, White presents fiction as the truth, and then gives readers a second fiction as a possibility. But those lies compound to create a frightening picture rather than an aspirational one. The changing landscape of alternative histories shows how much American memories of the Civil War have metamorphosed between the war’s end and today. Emancipationist memory still emphasizes freedom, but also the lack thereof. The Lost Cause and now the New Lost Cause emphasize political utility and have mutated themselves to remain culturally relevant and rhetorically powerful.

 

 

[1] Kathleen Singles, Alternate History : Playing with Contingency and Necessity. Vol. 5. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=39ca3bdf-e949-3f9b-bb91-3f70e62306ea.; Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’ Reflections on the Function of Alternate History.” History and Theory 41, no. 4 (2002): 90–103. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3590670.

[2] Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South. Ballantine, 1992. 192.

[3] “South Africa scraps legal foundation for apartheid system.” UN Chronicle, September 1991, 29+. Gale In Context: Biography. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A11547537/BIC?u=tulane&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=7e2de43c.; Thomas Mallon, “Never Happened.” The New Yorker, November 13, 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/21/never-happened.

[4] Subsequent works, such as Brian Jordan’s Marching Home, have suggested Blight’s emphasis on Blue-Grey reunions overstates the degree of white veterans’ reconciliation, or that the theory only describes white male reconciliation, in the case of Caroline Janney’s Remembering the Civil War. Even so, Blight’s central argument that white Unionists agreed to tolerate the Lost Cause narrative of the war and to downplay the role of slavery holds firm. David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2001.; Brian Matthew Jordan, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War. 1st ed. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015.; Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

[5] Turtledove is not the only author to point to slavery as the cause and still be influenced by the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause permeates even Dread Nation (2018) and its sequel Deathless Divide (2020) by Justina Ireland, which are otherwise Emancipationist stories. The duology imagines a world where the dead suddenly come to life at Gettysburg. Ireland tackles the complexities of relative freedom, colorism, and the ability to pass for white. Emancipation and all its nuances are at the heart of both stories. Even so, there are instances where the main character unironically uses “the War of Northern aggression” or “the War between the States,” both of which are strongly associated with the Lost Cause.

[6] The trends towards digital forums accelerated in the 2000s and today most white nationalism and alt-right conversations happen online rather than in person. Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home, White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Harvard University Press, 2018. 12, 237; Beth E. Kolko, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds. Race in Cyberspace. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. Alexandra Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate. Beacon Press, 2019.

[7] Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home, White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 238.

[8] For example, see: Margaret Crable, “Germany’s Strange Nostalgia for the Antebellum American South.” USC Dornsife, 31 Mar. 2021, https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/germanys-nostalgia-antebellum-american-south/.

[9] Belew, Bring the War Home.

[10] Howard Ray White, The CSA Trilogy: An Alternate History/Historical Novel about Our Vast and Beautiful Confederate States of America — A Happy Story in Three Parts of What Might Have Been — 1861 to 2011, 2018.

[11] White, The CSA Trilogy. 146.

[12] White is not the only writer to challenge such issues from the standpoint of the New Lost Cause. Many others, usually connected to the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the League of the South, have used their narrative of the Civil War as the historical proof for their modern political beliefs. For examples, see: James Ronald Kennedy, and Walter Donald Kennedy. Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home. Columbia, South Carolina: Shotwell Publishing, 2021.; Paul C. Graham, Confederaphobia: An American Epidemic. Columbia, South Carolina: Shotwell Publishing, 2017.; Wilson, Clyde N. Annals of the Stupid Party: Republicans Before Trump. The Wilson Files 3. Columbia, So. Carolina: Shotwell Publishing LLC, 2016.

[13] Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Kris Plunkett

Kris Plunkett is a PhD candidate at Tulane University studying Civil War memory. Her dissertation traces the evolutions of Civil War memories from the war’s end to the present. When she’s not in the archives, Kris coaches the speech and debate team at St. Mary’s Dominican High School.
Introducing New Muster Contributors

Introducing New Muster Contributors

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In today’s Muster, we are excited to introduce four new contributors to our site. We are excited to welcome Cassy Werking, Will Horne, Elliott Martin, and Kris Plunkett to our team. They will contribute regular posts reflecting their respective interests and scholarly expertise in the Civil War era. Short bios for each of them are below. Welcome Cassy, Will, Elliott, and Kris!

Cassy Jane Werking received her PhD in American history from the University of Kentucky where she studied under the mentorship of Dr. Amy Murrell Taylor. Her research draws attention to Confederate actions on the border, and in the borderlands, and demonstrates that established theaters of war did not define the extent of war-making. Her dissertation, Refuge, Raids, and Confederates on Sleighs: How the Confederacy Exploited Canada and the International Border and Shaped the American Civil War, explores how the Confederacy counteracted setbacks on established battlefields in southeastern states by moving the boundaries of war farther north to cause destruction on the United States home front. It also illustrates the many ways in which Confederates leveraged and weaponized the international border to wage war against the United States—and to shield themselves from capture by American authorities. In so doing, her study examines the limitations of political borders, as well as the incomplete power of nations, and empires, to govern and control people.

When not researching or writing, you can find Cassy drinking Dunkin iced coffee and taking road trips to the Adirondack Mountains.

Will Horne is an assistant research scholar at the University of Maryland and an assistant editor for the Freedmen and Southern Society Project. He was also co-founder and former editor of The Activist History Review. He earned his PhD in History from George Washington University.

His recent scholarly publications include “White Supremacy and Fraud: The ‘Abolitionist’ Work of Henry Frisbie,” Civil War History 70 no. 3, (September 2024): 69-86; “Abaline Miller and the Struggle for Justice against the Employer Police State after Slavery,” in The Civil War Era and the Summer of 2020, Andy Slap and Hilary Green, eds. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2024), 38-46; “Necessary Utopias: Black Agitation and Human Survival,” Green Theory & Praxis 16 no. 1 (February 2024): 14-33; and “Towards an Unpatriotic Education: Du Bois, Woodson, and the Threat of Nationalist Mythologies,” Journal of Academic Freedom 13 (2022): 1-16. His current book project, “Carnivals of Violence,” examines the systems of white supremacy enshrined in state institutions after emancipation.

As a Muster contributor, he will analyze documents from the FSSP and provide analysis and context for the world of emancipation through the project’s rich documentary collection.

Richard (Elliott) Martin is an early career public historian and a recent graduate of the MA in History program at Virginia Commonwealth University. A former Civil War reenactor, the 1990 PBS series The Civil War ignited a passion within him which has never gone out— thirty years later, he still returns to the series. That series has led Elliott to pursue public history as a professional occupation. He blames Ken Burns for both the hottest and the coldest that he’s ever been.

He is also experienced in the performing arts, having performed in several theatrical plays and music ensembles, and the literary arts, including poetry and longform essays.

Kris Plunkett is a PhD candidate at Tulane University studying Civil War memory. Her dissertation traces the evolutions of Civil War memories from the war’s end to the present. When she’s not in the archives, Kris coaches the speech and debate team at St. Mary’s Dominican High School.

Robert Bland

Robert D. Bland is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Announcing the 2025 Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award

Announcing the 2025 Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award

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The Journal of the Civil War Era is pleased to announce that Dr. J. Jacob Calhoun has been selected as the recipient of the Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award for 2025. His winning essay is titled, “‘Nothing was known of the dead’: Coroners and the Massacres of 1866.”

 

The prize committee, consisting of Paul Barba (chair), Erin Mauldin, and Whitney Stewart, praised the article as follows: “By closely and creatively interrogating the records of the coroner’s offices in Memphis and New Orleans in the aftermath of the 1866 massacres, Calhoun reveals the vast power and responsibility vested in these officials and their institutions. Significantly, Calhoun demonstrates in convincing fashion how these men shaped both the government’s investigations of mass racist violence and how historians have interpreted these pivotal moments in Civil War era history. Insightful and meticulous, Calhoun’s essay brings into relief the enduring methodological value of close readings and comparative lenses.”

 

Calhoun is a Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of History and the David A. Moore Chair in American History at Wabash College. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Nau Center for Civil War History 2024-2025, and he received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2024.  His research focuses on the history of emancipation and Reconstruction, specifically the intersection between politics, race, and violence.

 

The Kaye Award is awarded every two years and is co-sponsored by the JCWE, the Society of Civil War Historians, the University of North Carolina Press, and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.

Robert Bland

Robert D. Bland is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

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