The Presidential Proclamation of December 8, 1863, was an offer of reconciliation to the South that at the same time threatened to split the North. Since no state could secede from the Union legally, Lincoln reasoned, the 11 states in the Confederacy were still part of the United States. Reconstruction should be a "restoration, not [a] revolution." With some exceptions, President Abraham Lincoln's 10% Plan offered to any Confederate who would take an oath to support the Union a "full pardon" and restoration of property "except as to slaves." Furthermore, the plan provided that in any occupied Southern state when a number equal to 10 percent of the voters from the 1860 presidential election swore their federal allegiance, they would be permitted to hold a state constitutional convention and organize a government. Assuming this government abolish slavery, it would receive full executive recognition. "Absurd, monarchical, and anti-American," thundered Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, who, with Rep. Henry W. Davis, led the fight among the Radical Republicans in Congress to thwart the president's design. While introducing a much more punitive blueprint for reconstruction, Davis and Wade, encouraged by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, maneuvered unsuccessfully to substitute Chase for Lincoln in the 1864 presidential nomination. Lincoln got his way by agreeing to a compromise, which he promptly shelved in order to implement his original plan early in 1864. By the end of the war, Lincoln's 10% Plan had been implemented in Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia, but it did not meat with great success.
Congress responded by prohibiting the elected Southern representatives from taking their seats in Washington.
Fascinating Fact: Lincoln's 10% Plan formed the basic method of reconstruction followed by Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson.
Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Conduct of the War, was known as a duelist and commonly referred to as "Bluff Ben." Rep. Henry W. Davis, chairman of the House Committee on the Rebellious States, was passed over for a cabinet post in 1861, a slight that he took as a personal affront, fueling his opposition to President Lincoln throughout the war. Ambitions, tempers, and egos played a large role in the teaming up of Wade and Davis to defeat Lincoln's lenient 10% Reconstruction Plan by introducing their own, more radical Wade-Davis Bill in 1864.
Lincoln was able to accept the preliminary provisions of the bill that required him to appoint provisional governors, all white Southern males to take the Union Loyalty Oath, and state constitutional conventions to be held only after a majority of the voters had sworn federal allegiance. But Lincoln objected to the more punitive measures, such as banning any former high Confederate official from taking office, banning all former Confederate officers from even swearing the oath, and requiring each new state constitution to abolish slavery, a move Lincoln wanted the states to make voluntarily. When Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill after Congress barely passed it on July 2, 1864, Wade and Davis resorted to attacking him in the press. The Wade-Davis Manifesto, appearing in the New York Times on August 5, 1864, accused Lincoln of, among other things, "dictatorial usurpation" of legislative power and warned him "to confine himself to his executive duties--to obey and execute, not to make, laws." Public reaction was swift. "Very bad taste.........Hot-headed precipitancy," complained the Chicago Tribune, while the New York Times said of Wade and Davis, "They have sanctioned the War not as a means of restoring the Union, but to free the slaves, seize the lands, crush the spirit, destroy the rights, and blot out forever the political freedom of the people inhabiting the Southern States." The Wade-Davis Bill was effectively killed, although some of its strictures were eventually applied in 1867. Fascinating Fact: Wade nearly became president having been first in line to succeed President Johnson if his impeachment had been successful.
Clement L. Vallandigham was born in New Lisbon, Ohio, to Clement Vallandigham, Sr., and Rebecca Laird. A bright student, Clement attended the New Lisbon Academy before entering Jefferson College in 1837 as a junior. After a philosophical argument with the college president over constitutional law, Vallandigham was asked to leave without graduating. In 1842, he nevertheless managed to pass the Ohio bar.
In 1845 and 1846 Vallandigham was elected to the Ohio legislature, but he was defeated in a run for a congressional seat in1852 and 1854. He became a brigadier general in the Ohio militia in 1857. In 1858 he finally won a congressional seat after denouncing the Republicans as "dangerous sectionalists" and predicting they were headed for civil war. At Cooper Union, NY, in 1860, Vallandigham stated he would never "vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of American blood should be shed in a civil war."
Vallandigham continuously attached President Abraham Lincoln, blaming the war on Lincoln and the Reublican party. Viewed by some as treasonous, Vallandigham was not reelected in 1862, and he returned to Ohio, determined to run for governor. On April 30, 1863, in an attempt to get the sympathy vote, Vallandigham disregarded a general order in Ohio that forbade the expression of sympathy for the Confederacy, and deliberately delivered a message in which he made ddrogatory statements about the president and the war. He was arrested, tried by a military commission, and sentenced to confinement. Instead, Lincoln banished Vallandigham to the Confederacy. This move angered the Ohio Democratic party so much that it nominated Vallandigham for governor.
Escorted to North Carolina, Vallandigham was then shipped to Canada. He ran for governor of Ohio from there but was resoundingly defeated. He returned to Ohio in 1864; when the war ended, Vallandigham found himself a failure in politics and resumed his law practice.
Fascinating Fact: Hired for a murder trial, Vallandigham accidentally shot himself while showing a friend how the alleged victim could have shot himself. He won the case posthumously.
Varina Howell was a well-educated, refined woman from Natchez, Miss. She spoke French, played the piano beautifully, and was quite interested in politics and current affairs. though her parents resisted her marriage to Jefferson Davis, who was 18 years her senior, the two wed on February 26, 1845.
Varina's husband immediately entered politics, which in her own words brought about "everything which darkens the sunlight and contracts the happy sphere of home." Still Varina was an excellent hostess in Washington, DC, while her husband served as senator and secretary of war. Besides performing her social duties brilliantly, she helped her husband write his speeches and letters.
As First Lady of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA, Varina proved to have immeasurable inner fortitude. Jefferson Davis had not wanted the presidency, and his wife knew his "super-sensitive temperament" would e deeply affected by the office. Varina cared for their children, one of whom tragically fell to his death from their balcony in Richmond. She also constantly tended to her sickly husband and helped manage many of his official affairs. Declared by some to be "the power behind the throne," Varina tried to protect her husband from his detractors and a workload that further weakened him. Her influence was such that some commanders and cabinet misters "took pains to cultivate her good will."
When Jefferson Davis was arrested in Georgia after fleeing Richmond, Varina was with him. Afterward she sent their children to Canada with her mother, and then tirelessly petitioned to gain her husband's release from prison. For a while she was allowed to join him in prison. He was released in May 1867 and they returned to Mississippi. A childhood friend of Jefferson Davis willed to him an estate, Beauvoir, to which they retired. After her husband's death in 1889, Varina wrote her memoirs. Leaving Beauvoir to the state as a veteran's home, she moved to New York, where she died in 1905.
Varina stipulated in her agreement with the state that Beauvoir be used as a home for Confederate veterans and widows and be preserved as "a perpetual memorial sacred to the memory of Jefferson Davis" and the Confederate cause.
The pride a unit felt in its flag was indicated by the great sacrifices the soldiers made to preserve and protect it. There were many instances during the Civil War in which one color guard member after another would pick up the flag from a fallen comrade until the entire guard fell dead or wounded.
Faced with capture, color guards would often hide or destroy their banner to keep it from becoming an enemy war trophy. One Union guard member at the siege of Knoxville took two fence rails, tied his unit's flag to them, and safely swam across the Tennessee River. One Confederate color bearer hid his flag under his coat when he was captured, somehow concealing it from his captors while imprisoned. When the color bearer was finally paroled, he triumphantly returned the banner to his old unit.
On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 26th Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers suffered the loss of 14 successive color bearers, including its colonel in one attack. At the Battle of Seven Pines, 10 members of a Confederate color guard were killed, passing the flag along as they fell, not letting the hallowed cloth touch the ground.
At the end of the war, Confederate cavalry commander Gen.. Joseph O. Shelby vowed never to surrender to the Yankees and led his men into Mexico. As they crossed the Rio Grande, Shelby took his unit's tattered banner and wrapped it around a large stone, and then threw it into the muddy water.
In February 1864 the Confederate Congress authorized color bearers to have the rank of ensign and to wear the uniform of a first lieutenant. The change was not practical at the time and, if it was ever implemented, it did not endure.
The Army of Northern Virginia suffered an estimated 28.000 casualties, nearly 40 percent of the total force, in the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. When the Rebels withdrew on July 4, 1863, the battlefield behind them was strewn with more than 3,000 unburied bodies of their comrades. Union burial details swarmed over the battlefield for days, digging graves for the dead of both sides as rapidly as possible. Union soldiers had individual graves with identifying headboards, but Confederate dead were placed in mass graves, some holding more than 150 bodies. A few weeks later, the slain Union soldiers were dug up and reburied in neat lines in a special battlefield cemetery, the dedication ceremony for which was held in November 1863 and was attended by President Abraham Lincoln. With the Union "honored dead" at Gettysburg properly interred, the war moved away to other fronts. But the remains of dead Rebels were buried in shallow graves throughout the area and kept being resurfaced by farmers' plows, with bones strewn across the fields.
Southerners learned of the extent of the desecration of their sons' graves in 1871. Despite slim resources in the midst of reconstruction, they formed memorial associations to raise money to bring the remains back to the South, where the graves would receive tender care. By the end of 1873, 2,935 bodies had been returned, but only a few hundred could be identified by name or unit.
Upon the arrival of each of the six shipments of bodies to Richmond, a solemn ceremony was performed, and thousands of people accompanied the remains from the wharf to Hollywood Cemetery, where they were reentered on a slope now called Gettysburg Hill. When Gen. George E. Pickett, a leader of the fateful Southern attack on Gettysburg's third day, died in 1875, his request to be buried with his men at the top of Gettysburg Hill was honored.
The remains of Gen. Richard B. Garnett, a brigade leader killed in Pickett's Charge, were never identified. His body is believed to have been in one of the shipped boxes marked with the letter "P," for the part of the battlefield where Pickett's men died and were buried
The 8th Ark was organized under state service at Camp Price, near Jacksonport (just south of present-day Newport) on July13, 1861.
Following organization, the 8th marched to Pocahontas where it was sworn into Confederate service under the command of General Hardee with an initial strength of over 1200 troops. Gen. Hardee made the 7th the nucleus of his brigade consisting of the 3rd Confederate (formerly Marmaduke's 18th Ark), and the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, McCarver's regiment, and McCann's battery of artillery. The regiment remained in State service about six weeks, when Gen. Hardee was ordered to make transfer of the State regiments into Confederate service. In making these transfers, nearly all the regiments lost the equivalent of a company in those men who declined to re-enlist for Confederate service and were subsequently discharged. Arkansas was ordered to Pittman's Ferry, where it was drilled and disciplined by Gen. Hardee in person until the last of August, when Hardee's brigade marched by land to Point Pleasant, MO on the Missouri River, and then traveled by steamboat to the Confederate stronghold at Columbus, KY. From Columbus the brigade moved to Bowling Green, KY, in October, where it was assigned to the division commanded by Gen. Buckner. Here, Col. Shaver was appointed to command a newly-formed brigade made up of the 7th, 8th, and 9th Ark, and the 19th Tenn. Shaver's brigade remained at Bowling Green where they served on occupation duty until the Confederates were forced to evacuate that state after the fall of Forts Henry and donelson. Shaver's brigade guarded the Confederate rear during this retreat, being shelled by the artillery of Buell's advance while the last trains of stores were being loaded. On leaving, Col. Shaver, by order of Gen. Hardee, burned the depot and took down the telegraph wires. It was during the worst month in that climate, with rain and snow and the thermometer at night below zero, when this retreat was made.
The regiment reached Nashville ten days after the fall of Fort Donelson, and went to Murfreesboro. From Murfreesboro they went to Decatur and thence to Courtland, AL, and went into camp at Corinth, MS to await the concentration of the Confederate armies to meet the federal advance through Tennessee.
The 8th's first taste of battle was a big bite, when they were thrown into the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7 as part of Wood's Brigade in Hardee's Corps, as part of the Confederate right wing in that battle, entering the early part of the battle at Fraley's Field, then the desperate fight to reduce the "hornet's nest", and finally rolling up against Grant's Last Line just before dark. The 8th suffered heavily at Shiloh, losing more than its strength.
Following the repulse at Shiloh, the 8th returned to Corinth where it rested and refitted and participated in the defense of that railroad junction for April to June 1862. They then went with Bragg as a part of Liddell's Brigade what would soon become as the Army of Tennessee's "Arkansas Brigade" of Cleburne's Division to invade Kentucky once again, fighting and losing heavily in a campaign intended to regain lost ground in Kentucky, fighting at Perryville and at Stone's River.
After Stone's River, the 8th was so reduced in manpower that it was combined with the 19th Ark (which was already consolidated with Crawford's Infantry Battalion and the 24th Ark, the consolidated unit was renamed as "Dawson's-Hardy's Infantry Regiment) in order to maintain some semblance of combat power. Because of misconceptions about the surrender of Arkansas Post, few Confederate division commanders would accept the soldiers of the 19th; however Cleburn welcomed them warmly and gave them ample opportunity to prove their worth. They were engaged in Tullahoma, Tenn campaign, and fought at Chickamauga.
It is always a great honor to be invited to this special place and event. "Are you hot?" Oh my yes we were and then it rained on Monday - a lot! Even though we (civilians) were camped right next to the carousel I think we had one of the better spots available to civilians. At least it was very close to the "necessary" in spite of our being right in the middle of Yankee country. I must say they were quite well behaved for Yankees. On Monday, the Ladies of the 8th Arkansas tied over 100 red plaid ribbons to the coats of all Confederate soldiers that were present that day, with the statement, "From the Ladies of the 8th Arkansas in memory of our fallen brothers and surviving Veterans." I understand that the soldiers were most impressed with our generosity and compassion. I think it made us feel good also to see all those ribbons while the men were in formation. Good job ladies! To those who could not make it - you were sorely missed! You missed some real good cooking!
Our first attempt at cooking unit meals over the open flame was quite successful - just ask any of our soldiers. Ladies we did mighty fine but I fear we shot ourselves in the foot so to speak because now they expect it at every event. Oh well that's the price you pay for being great. Anybody else got any comments about Greenfield Village? You know where to send 'em.