This student essay was written in summer 2019 just before the release of the Dickinson & Slavery report.

In the late 19th Century, students at Dickinson College inevitably crossed paths with the college’s African-American employees. Some were former slaves and Civil War veterans, but nearly all were fixtures of campus life. Janitors brought firewood to students’ rooms, maintained the buildings and interacted with students on a daily basis. Henry Spradley, one such janitor, was known as “the king of West College [Old West].”[1] Then there was Noah Pinkney, known as “Uncle Noah,” who–though not a college employee–sold ice cream and oysters outside of the East College gate for years. It was only partly in jest that an 1899 edition of the Microcosm included on a list of places “Students Should Visit,” in bolded, large letters, the name “Pinkney.” [2] Students returning decades later as alumni fondly remembered these familiar faces as “old friends.” [3]

Yet beneath these benign recollections lay a more nuanced reality. Far from full members of the campus community, African-American janitors were excluded from spaces reserved—both expressly and tacitly—for whites. In their attempts to break through these barriers, janitors repeatedly became the subjects of controversy and exclusion.

In 1886, the family of janitor Robert Young received a cruel reminder of their secondary status. Young’s son, a recent graduate of Carlisle High School, applied to attend Dickinson’s preparatory school, igniting a firestorm that briefly paralyzed the Dickinson community. News reports generally attributed the threats to the college’s “southern young bloods,” who made up a substantial block of the student body. “The audacity of the son of the colored janitor in seeking admission seems to have maddened them.” noted the Philadelphia North American. Yet as one Ohio paper reminded its readers, this was nothing new: “Dickinson college is nothing if not notorious.” Only a few years had passed, penned the editor, “since a colored janitor was hung to a beam in one of the rooms of the college, raised and lowered repeatedly and at last driven out of Carlisle, all to extort a confession from him of a theft of which a senior was subsequently convicted.” [4] The Young family was confronted with a whirlwind of procedural delays, threats and intimations of violence. Outlasting the backlash, Young was finally admitted. [5]

On more than one occasion, students and faculty wrongfully accused African-American employees and their families of thefts. There was the notorious incident years earlier, referenced by the Ohio editor, in which students held a simulated lynching of a janitor for a theft actually committed by a student. Then in 1892, longtime janitor Henry Spradley’s son, Shirley, was arrested under the pretense of stealing $40 in cash from a student’s trunk, though he was promptly exonerated. [6]

In the eyes of white society at least, the latter incident was forgotten four years later when Shirley Spradley was engaged to be married. Around 100 students—“armed with cow bells and the musical instruments”—marched to his house, assembling outside as the younger Spradley gave a speech, thanking the student body for “celebrating each big victory.” Perhaps more revealing are the remarks of the elder Spradley, who emerged to tell the students that “he had never made much of a speciality of physiology, [psychology], or many of the other ologies but that he had put in a good many years at bellology and that he would get back at them the next morning at chapel time.” As he spoke, students interrupted with “several fog horns and a multitude of cat calls,” signifying if not outright disrespect, then amusement and novelty at Spradley assuming the role of public speaker. The same report included a reference to Spradley as “‘Prof.’ Henry Spradley,” (a joke repeated in the Microcosm)—the humor lying in the improbability of Spradley, a black man and janitor, ever assuming a position reserved almost exclusively for well-educated white males. [7] Indeed, a group of student reminiscences from the period acknowledged that the college’s janitors “were so much a part of our College life–the butt of many a merry joke and boisterous prank–but always kindly and uncomplaining.” [8]

Hostility towards the college’s black employees also followed similar racial anxieties prevalent in the 19th Century North. Many working-class whites in Carlisle feared competition from African-Americans, both before and after the Civil War, as evidenced in an anonymous 1842 letter addressed to Dickinson’s president. A correspondent signing himself “A Friend of Dickinson College and the rites of Man,” demanded to know why “must nearly all the minor work of the installation be given to colored people.” He groused that “not even a native negrow [sic] of this state is imployed [sic] in the college,” but instead those “who neather [sic] contribute by tax nor influence to publick institutions” and “usurp the rites [sic] of the sober industri[ou]s white man.” [9]

There is no doubt that Dickinson students had affection for their janitors, but it was affection on their terms. The humorous anecdotes they recorded were often tinged with racism. When janitors or their families attempted to integrate into exclusively white spaces, the swift reaction they often met with served as a stark reminder of the racial prejudices of the day.

 

Notes

[1] “There He Goes,” The Dickinsonian, March 1883, vol. 10, no. 6, Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, quoted in Rebecca Stout, “Henry W. Spradley,” Dickinson Employees Exhibit, [WEB].

[2] “Students Should Visit,” Microcosm, 1899, Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections.

[3] “The Corps of Hygiene,” Microcosm, 1903, 26-27, Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections.

[4] “A Humiliating Confession,” Philadelphia North American, October 26, 1886; Springfield Daily Republican, October 31, 1886.

[5] “The Color Line in College,” Boston Herald, November 22, 1886.

[6] Harrisburg Patriot, December 21, December 22, 1892.

[7] “Spradley-Caldwell Nuptials,” Carlisle Sentinel, April 30, 1896.

[8] “The Corps of Hygiene,” Microcosm, 26-28.

[9] Anonymous Correspondent to Robert Emory, September 23, 1842, Box 1, Series 1, RG 2/2 Presidential Papers, Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections; Brian Luskey, “Houses Divided: The Cultural Economy of Emancipation in the Civil War North,” Journal of the Early Republic 36, no. 4 (2016):637-657.

This student essay was written in summer 2019 just before the release of the Dickinson & Slavery report.

When the enslavement of black people was constitutional, when the bloodiest war in American history was fought over the human rights of African Americans, when the Reconstruction of the divided nation furthered racial barriers, the janitors of Dickinson College were African Americans and all the students until 1886 were white.[1] Many of those janitors were former slaves, while approximately half of the students hailed from the South. And yet, despite all the barriers between the two groups, the janitors left a lasting impression on the students they served. While by today’s terms, much of the treatment and perception of the janitors was racist, nineteenth century students had a much more complicated relationship with them than can be defined in just this term. Their relationship was marked by the students’ simultaneous racially-based condescension to and genuine friendship with their janitorial staff.

As early as 1846, Dickinson students proved their respect for their janitors when they signed a petition Dickinson College to reinstate John Jenkins to his janitorial position. The petition does not explain why Jenkins might have been fired. However, in the short document, the students affirm Jenkins work ethic and convey respect for the janitor. They declared that Jenkins’s “deportment has been uniformly so correct, and, he has been so faithful, in the discharge of his duties, that we conceive it to be the interest of all parties to keep him.”[2] Even their diction in this sentence reveals their respect for Jenkins. According to the students, “his deportment,” or behavior, was not just decent, but was “so correct,” they could not find fault with it. Beyond his character, they argued that he was “so faithful” in completing all “his duties.” In both descriptions, the “so” emphasizes just how “correct” his behavior was and how “faithful” he was to his job. However, not only do they emphasize his character and work ethic, they continue by arguing that it is in “the interest of all parties to keep him.” This ending reveals that the students believe that “all parties,” meaning everyone, benefit from Jenkins’s role as a janitor. While we have yet to find any other documents regarding John Jenkins, the students’ belief that his presence was so beneficial to their lives as students and to the maintenance of Dickinson College that they would petition the school with such praising language and manage to gain 30 signatures, a surprisingly high number for such a small school, proves that they respected and even befriended their janitor.[3]

At the end of the century, The Dickinsonian printed an obituary for janitor Henry Spradley. The article, which appeared on the front page, was reverent and praising of Spradley. Giving a brief history of his life, it detailed his time in slavery, his service in the 24th United States Colored Troops, and his work for Dickinson College. According to the students, “Uncle Henry” was “thoroughly honest,” “was noted for the regularity with which he performed all his duties,” “and by, his death the college has lost the services of one whose fidelity to every good interest is rarely equalled.”[4] The reverence with which the students describe him reveal the prominent role he played in their lives as well as the respect he earned. In their opinion, not only was he good at his job and a good person, but his “fidelity” was incomparable to almost anyone else.[5]

The document that potentially best reveals the student’s ambivalence in caring and patronizing language is the Class of 1870’s reflection pamphlet that appeared in the 1903 Microcosm. Entitled “The Corps of Hygiene,” the five-page document includes pictures, information, and recollections of each of five janitors that served when they attended the school. The descriptions are simultaneously demeaning and well-meaning. In the introduction to the sketch, the students explained that “We were truly delighted to see these old friends again, with all of whom we were so closely associated and who were so much a part of our College life—the butt of many a merry joke and boisterous pranks—but always kindly and uncomplaining.”[6] This opening is one of the most complicated representations of the janitors because it is so demeaning and yet somehow caring of the janitors. Claiming to be “delighted” at the memory of their janitorial “old friends,” they remembered being “so closely associated” to them that they constituted an important “part of our College life.” And yet, despite the friendship with and importance of the janitors that they described, they also admitted to their maltreatments of their “old friends” when they said that the janitors were “the butt of many a merry joke and boisterous pranks.” While most likely not all these “jokes” and “pranks” were ill-intentioned, the fact that they took advantage of the janitors being “always kindly and uncomplaining” because it was their job to behave so, reveals the cruelty of the students’ behaviors.

While mostly descriptive, the recollections of the janitors in “The Corps of Hygiene” were both caring and incredibly patronizing. While the background on “Judge” Watts was mostly just a depiction of his appearance and clothing, the students quickly revealed their condescension when explaining how “Judge” got his nickname. They wrote that because he shared the last name of a prominent judge and lawyer in Carlisle, they nicknamed him “Judge.” However, they continued by saying “many of us never knew his Christian name, nor did it greatly matter.”[7] The fact that they did not think his name was important enough to “matter” that no one knew it reveals their condescension because not only did they rename him, but they also refused to learn his actual name.[8]

The description of Sam Watts, brother to “Judge” Watts was much more mocking. Beyond mocking him for his tobacco consumption, the writers of this pamphlet also mocked his cleanliness, diligence, intelligence, and pronunciation. The students included a recollection of Watts changing sheets in which “expansive silhouettes of his grimy fingers would appear on the sheets, and upon being taken to task, in terms of earnest remonstrance, he would quickly reverse the sheets and smoothing them into place would remark oracularly, ‘I allus advocates the keeping of things neat and clean,’ which naïve remark generally silenced all adverse criticism.”[9] This depiction of Watts not only describes him as “grimy” but also mocks his intelligence with the quote and reference to it as being naïve. The students continued by claiming that he would refuse to do any janitorial work in West College. Because Watts was assigned to East College, he was not responsible for cleaning West College. However, their portrayal of him implies that he was rejecting his janitorial duties by refusing not that he was by no means required to tend to West College.

Potentially the worst offense of the description of Watts was the claim that “among his own race, however, he was held in high esteem as a pulpit orator, and his efforts were said to be quite scholarly, due in large measure to the fact that many of the boys were regular contributors to his sermons, their erudition being painfully in evidence at times.”[10] This sentence alone mocks both Watts’s intelligence and the African American community’s intelligence. By claiming that he was only “scholarly” because the students assisted him in writing the sermons, in a “painfully” obvious way “at times,” these students revealed how condescending they were that they did not think Watts was capable of writing a good sermon on his own. However, the writers specifically included that “his race…held [him] in high esteem” despite him supposedly getting his sermons from the students. This fact reveals that the students viewed the African American community as a whole to be lesser than they because African Americans believed him to be a good orator despite his implied lack of intelligence and inability to write for himself. This then implies that there were no good African American orators who did not rely on white students who added “erudition” to their

speeches.[11]

Despite how short the description of Andrew Beals is, the students seemed to both like him and like to mess with him. They claimed that “to lock him up so that he would be unable to ring the bell for recitations or to abstract the key from the bunch at his belt that we might be able to perpetrate that time-worn prank—the tolling of the bell at midnight—was a legitimate exercise of our energies.”[12] This admission reveals that the students enjoyed keeping Beals from his duties. However, despite the lack of respect these pranks convey, they claim that “he was thoroughly incorruptible” and “he held the respect of the boys, and we parted from him with sincere regret.”[13] By praising his character and claiming to respect and miss Beals, the students reveal that despite the pranks they played on him, they cared for the janitor.[14]

The students’ description of George Norris was friendly and caring. They praised the janitor for “being of kindly disposition and of unfailing good humor” that made him “deservedly popular” and “an especial favorite of the Class of ’70.”[15] Beyond this praise they even claimed that after “noticing the battered condition of his watch, they determined to present him with a new one, and to his great delight, and it will be noticed in the accompanying portrait that he proudly displays it.”[16] That the students were willing to pitch in to buy a watch for their janitor reveals that they clearly cared for him.[17]

The students depicted Robert Young almost lovingly and heroically. Unlike the other janitors, the students mapped out Young’s life, explaining his earlier life working for Dickinson College President Dashiell, his role when the class of ’70 was there, and his interactions with them upon their return for the 30^th reunion. This description also mentions pranks on him in the form of being “pelted with many a snow-ball and other convenient missiles.”[18] However, the students remarked that, “to the great delight of the boys,” he became “quite a fighter,” even helping “a member of ’72 in a melee down town so well that “Robert for the time was the hero of the hour.”[19] Beyond viewing him as a “hero,” the students praised his memory as “scarcely short

of remarkable” because at their thirtieth reunion “he was able to recall most of us by name, in spite of the great changes the years have wrought.”[20] The combination of the students’ respect for Young and their enjoyment at pranking him reveals the students both cared for and mocked their janitors.[21]

The class of 1870 ended their pamphlet by stating “this quintette were all more or less characters in their way and were prime favorites with the boys of ’70, and our relations were always amicable and they returned our feeling in kind.”[22] Describing them as “favorites,” the writers claimed to be “always amicable” and friendly despite their previous admissions to mocking and pranking the janitors. However, even if their pranks were carried out amicably, their patronizing views of the janitors are evident in the next and last line of the pamphlet when they claimed “certainly no class of students could wish for more devoted friends or more ardent admirers of their poor talents than were this little body of lowly friends, and we bear witness to their worth.”[23] Every caring sentiment in this sentence seems to have a direct patronizing contradiction in it as well. Despite calling them “devoted friends,” they cockily claim the janitors were the students’ “ardent admirers” as if they served no other role than to admire the students. Continuing, they refer to them as “lowly” because of their position and race, yet simultaneously “bear witness to their worth.” These two sentences perfectly sum up the students’ attitudes toward their janitors during the nineteenth century because they are filled with friendship and respect yet condescension and patronization.[24]

 

Footnotes

[1] One of the janitors, Robert Young, petitioned the school to allow his son the opportunity to get an education at Dickinson College. The president of the relented and admitted his son into the college. For unknown reasons, Young’s son left after only one year at the school. Regardless, he was the first African American to attend Dickinson College.

[2] “Application for John Jenkins,” 1846, President’s Papers, Emory, RG 2-3 2.2.1, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

[3] “Application for John Jenkins.”

[4] “Death of Henry W. Spradley,” The Dickinsonian, April 17, 1897, 1.

[5] “Death of Henry W. Spradley,” 1.

[6] “The Corps of Hygiene,” Microcosm, 1903, 26, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections.

[7] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 26.

[8] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 26.

[9] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[10] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[11] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 27.

[12] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[13] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[14] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 28.

[15] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[16] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[17] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 29.

[18] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[19] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[20] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[21] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[22] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[23] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

[24] “The Corps of Hygiene,” p 30.

Over the years, we have built up an array of special online resources designed to assist with teaching the story of Gettysburg, but this summer, we’ve done some of our best work yet on this front.  Our 2018 interns –Frank Kline, Becca Stout, and Cooper Wingert– have organized a series of fascinating posts that tackle less-familiar topics related to the 1863 battle, and the famous cemetery dedication which followed.  

Teachers and students can now learn first-hand many of the tragic details about the so-called “slave hunt” that occurred during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in June 1863.  Wingert provides links to diaries and other records that detail how the Army of Northern Virginia captured black residents in south-central Pennsylvania, treating them like fugitive slaves.  One of the cases involved a free black man named Amos Barnes, who was actually later released from a Confederate prison in Richmond because of the intervention of two Dickinsonians.  This summer, Wingert also wrote about the Confederate occupation and shelling of Carlisle in late June and early July, which was part of the famous 1863 campaign, but has mostly been forgotten because of the immense scale of the battle which followed at Gettysburg.  Wingert actually wrote a book about the Confederate approach to Harrisburg a few years ago, but now he has curated several primary sources related to the campaign, included several that have never before been available online.  

Our other interns focused on the story of the cemetery dedication in November 1863 and Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.  Kline organized an incredibly useful post detailing contemporary newspaper reaction to Lincoln’s remarks and subsequent recollected accounts about how the short speech was written and received.  Kline’s work was inspired by Gabor Boritt’s thought-provoking study, The Gettysburg Gospel (2005).  Many teachers too easily embrace myths about the Gettysburg Address –that it was written on the back of envelope, for example, or that it was poorly received at first– and this post offers a helpful corrective.  Stout’s post also provides an important supplement, especially for classes or families that might be visiting the Soldiers’ National Cemetery themselves.  Stout describes how a half a dozen black army veterans came to be buried in the Civil War section of the national cemetery at Gettysburg.  The story is far more complicated than you might imagine, beginning with the sad revelation that even though the Battle of Gettysburg occurred seven months after the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s endorsement of black soldiers, Union commanders still excluded black men from combat roles in the 1863 fighting in Pennsylvania.  That meant, at first, that the soldiers’ cemetery at Gettysburg was segregated, despite all of the hope of “a new birth of freedom.”

Other House Divided Project resources on Gettysburg

• Lincoln’s Gettysburg Addresses (2013) exhibit for Google Arts & Culture which tells the story of the five known copies of the speech in Lincoln’s own handwriting
• Gettysburg Virtual Tour (2013) video tour of the battlefield co-produced by the Gilder Lehrman Institute that includes 13 stops and one-hour total of material hosted by Mathew Pinsker
• Blog Divided posts (2007-2018) make sure to check out over two dozen posts on the battle, campaign and its aftermath at our main project blog site
• Research engine records (2007-2018), our main research engine database contains over a thousand records related to Gettysburg, including some amazing zoomable maps
• Lincoln’s Writings (2015), our multi-media edition of Lincoln’s writings ranks the Gettysburg Address as the #1 most teachable Lincoln document –check out the array of resources on this page
• Confederate monument (2015) –Did you know there is a Confederate monument in Mechanicsburg, PA marking an element of the 1863 Confederate invasion?  Check out this classroom-friendly discussion post to find out more.

 

 

“He said, in substance, Ninety years ago our fathers formed a Government consecrated to freedom and dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal.” Centralia (IL) Sentinel  November 26, 1863, from coverage of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Ninety years ago? Imagine being the Civil War-era reporter who did not believe that the phrase “Four score and seven years ago” was memorable enough to record in its exact language. Yet historian Gabor Boritt includes this passage from the Sentinel’s slightly botched coverage of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in his book, The Gettysburg Gospel (2006).  Boritt uses the example as a way to highlight the surprisingly complicated story about how Lincoln’s brief speech at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery dedication was received in late 1863 and then how the memory of it changed 0ver the years that followed.  Boritt’s book introduces readers to a host of primary sources, including numerous historical newspaper accounts, that show a wide range of reactions to Lincoln’s now-famous and universally-celebrated words.  This post attempts to organize some of these sources for teachers and students to view themselves.  In addition, I have started to collect various post-war recollected accounts of the dedication ceremony, including some that Boritt does not feature, as a way to provide first-hand accounts of that memorable day on November 19, 1863.

Local Reactions

“How the president’s words were reported would impact how they were received. People often read papers out loud, and what they heard, if they read his remarks, varied widely.” (Boritt, 142)

• (Gettysburg, PA) The Adams Sentinel, “Speech of the President,” November 24, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 
• (Lancaster, PA) Daily Inquirer, “The Gettysburg Celebration,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
• (Harrisburg, PA) The Patriot News, “President Lincoln’s Last Speech,” December 3, 1863 [IMAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
  • This one is especially teachable because the paper retracted their criticism many years later.
• Union County (PA) Star and Lewisburg Chronicle, “Dedication at Gettysburg,” November 27, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Chronicling America)

Republican Reactions

“The Republican papers printed overwhelmingly favorable editorial comments.” (Boritt, 131)

• Chicago Tribune, “The Consecration of the Battle Cemetery,” November 21, 1863  [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 
• (Montpellier, VT) The Daily Green Mountain Freeman, “Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 21, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
• New York Times, “The Heroes of July,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL ARTICLE] (Courtesy of New York Times Online Archives)
  • The editor of the Times, Henry Raymond, served as chairman of Lincoln’s reelection campaign in 1864.
• (Springfield) Illinois State Journal, “Inauguration of the Gettysburg Cemetery,” November 23, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Genealogy Bank)
  • This article by Lincoln’s hometown newspaper ends with noting the tremendous applause he received following his remarks at the cemetery.
• (Washington, DC) Weekly National Intelligencer, “The Ceremonies at Gettysburg,” November 26, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)

Democratic Reactions

“Most of the Democratic papers tried to hide, or entirely ignore, the president’s speech, which they regarded as the start of his presidential campaign.” (Boritt, 140-141)

• Baltimore Sun, “The National Cemetery,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The Sun mostly avoided criticism of the president’s remarks.
• Clearfield (PA) Republican, “A Voice From the Dead,” December 2, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The column attacked both Edward Everett and Lincoln for allegedly making the dedication about themselves.
• (Ebensburg, PA) Democrat and Sentinel, “The Gettysburg Cemetery,” December 2, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • This account aggressively misquoted the president to make it appear as if he was not appreciating the fallen.
• (Indianapolis) The Indiana State Sentinel, “The President at Gettysburg,” November 30, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Lincoln is yet again attacked for trying to be political at the dedication.
• New York Herald, “Consecration of the National Sepulcher at Gettysburg,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE][FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • The Herald focuses on the soldiers who fought rather than any of the speeches at the dedication.
• Philadelphia Inquirer, “Gettysburg Celebration,” November 20, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL ARTICLE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com) 

British Coverage

• (Colchester, UK) The Essex County Standard,  “Later Intelligence,” December 4, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
• (London, UK) The Morning Post, “The Civil War in America,” December 12, 1863 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)

Recollections

• Noah Brooks,  “Personal Reminisces of Lincoln,” Scribner’s Monthly, Vol. 15 (Feb. 1878), p. 565 [IMAGE] (Courtesy of HathiTrust, digitized by Cornell University)
  • Brooks was a leading journalist who described his interactions with Lincoln leading up to the speech, and how he remembered the president writing the speech.
• [John Hay], The Holton Recorder (KS), “Lincoln the Author of His Gettysburg Address,” January 3, 1884 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Hay, who was Lincoln’s personal aid, admitted to signing the President’s name often but assured he had nothing to do with the Gettysburg Address.
• [Samuel Schmucker], Adams County News (PA), “Death of Judge S. D. Schmucker,” March 11, 1911 [IMAGE]  [FULL PAGE] (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Schmucker was a local jurist who viewed the speech as a young man.
• [James Speed], The Chicago Tribune, “A Pretty Little Fiction,” April 20, 1887 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE]  (Courtesy of Newspapers.com)
  • Speed, who served as Lincoln’s second attorney general, disputed the impression that Lincoln wrote the speech on the train to Gettysburg.
• [David Wills], The Carlisle Sentinel (PA), October 7, 1885 [IMAGE] [FULL PAGE]
  • Wills was the local attorney who hosted the president at Gettysburg and recalled that Lincoln wrote at least the final version the speech in his house.

Further Reading

Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech that Nobody Knows. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Pinsker, Matthew.  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Addresses.  House Divided Project exhibit at Google Arts & Culture, 2013.

While citations are not so difficult to produce, getting the details right can be time consuming, especially for a history student looking to deliver flawless Chicago-style citations. For this reason, many students are increasingly turning to online citation-generators.  There are some partially free services from commercial providers, like EasyBib or CitationMachine, and there is at least one good open-source platform called Zotero.  In this post, I will explain why I believe Citation Machine is the easiest to use, especially for history students.

But first, here’s some quick background.  Digital humanities faculty at George Mason University have created Zotero to be an academic, non-commercial platform for help with organizing bibliographies and citations. EasyBib and CitationMachine are actually now both owned by Chegg, a massive fee-based student tutorial service.  Such commercial services have mixed reputations, though, especially among teachers, who sometimes believe that they encourage cheating and plagiarism.  But few teachers object to online citation and bibliography generators.   The expectations for original writing are just different.  Yet most students don’t quite realize that these online generators still require significant work on the part of the student in order to get the details exactly right.  You still have to edit the materials. Today, I will focus on Chegg’s CitationMachine, because it doesn’t charge anything for generating Chicago-style citations and because I do think it’s the best of all the options.

How To Use Citation Machine

1. Open your web browser and go to Citation Machine for Chicago Style (Citation Machine).
2. Click the type of resource you want to cite.
3. Enter a link, title, or author into the search bar and search through the results for the right source. The more specific your search is, the fewer sources you will need to go through. Most likely for links, the correct page will pop up right away.
4. Once you select the correct source, double check and edit the information it pulled.
5. Citations automatically appear in bibliographical form. Copy and paste the citation into any platform.
6. For footnotes, simply click on the “footnote” link at the bottom right corner of the citation, enter the pages you plan to use, and then copy the generated footnote and paste it in into any platform.
7. Then just repeat steps 2-6 until you have cited all of your sources. Remember, however, that Citation Machine will only keep your citations for a couple days, so you can access them for a limited amount of time.

 

How to Use Zotero

1. Open Zotero in your web browser (Zotero).
2. Click the “Download” button, select “yes” to allow Zotero to make changes to your desktop, and then open Zotero when it finishes downloading. Note: if you are using a Mac, you will need to download both the 5.0 and the browser connector.
3. Click the icon of the folder with a green plus mark to create a new folder and name it.
4. Be sure to leave Zotero open before returning to your web browser. Zotero will not work if it is not open in the background.
5. In the top right corner next to the search bar there will be a little icon of a page. Click on that icon and a little box should appear right below it.
6. Click on the little downward arrow/carrot and select the folder you want the source in. You can create a tag at the bottom of the little box to find the source more easily later.
7. Go back to Zotero and you can edit the information in case it did not pull all the needed information for a citation. Always double check to make sure all the information you need for a citation is present.
8. Repeat steps 6-8 until you have all the sources you want.
9. When you are ready to create a citation, go to the platform you are using to write in. See step 10 for Word, step 11 for Pages, step 12 for Google Docs, and step 13 for LibreOffice.
   

   Zotero plugin in Word (Courtesy of Word)

10. Word is one of the easiest platforms to use Zotero with because it will automatically show up in Word as a tab at the top of the page. You will first need to install Zotero within Word. Once it is installed, click on the Zotero tab in Word and select “Add/Edit Citation” for a footnote or “Add/Edit Bibliography” for a complete bibliography that includes all the sources in the folder you select.
11. There is no Zotero plugin for Pages, but it is compatible with the RTF Scan function. To use this, type the author’s name and year of publication of a source in brackets for footnotes or “Bibliography” in brackets for a bibliography. Save the document as an .RTF file and reopen Zotero. Click the tools button in Zotero and then click “RTF Scan.” Zotero should pick up your citations and insert correct Chicago Style citations so long as they are in brackets.
12. The RTF Scan is also compatible with Google Docs. If you would prefer not to do the RTF Scan in Google Docs, you can place Zotero and Google Docs side-by-side and click and drag sources from Zotero to Google Docs for a bibliography. For a footnote, click on an item, press the “shift” key and drag it to Google Docs.
13. Zotero offers a similar plugin to Word for LibreOffice. LibreOffice functions on Apple products, so Apple owners can access the perks of a Zotero plugin without needing to switch to a PC.  Just like with Word, you will need to install the plugin in LibreOffice for Zotero before you can access it.
14. You can create as many folders as you need in Zotero and reference your folders and sources whenever you need them because they are saved on your desktop.

Choosing Your Preference

Citation Gathering

Once Zotero has been installed, both Zotero and Citation Machine are equally quick to access because Zotero appears in your browser and Citation Machine opens in a tab. However, Zotero often does not pull all the information it should and it sometimes confuses the types of information, so revising the citations can be especially time consuming. Citation Machine, on the other hand, is quicker because it gathers more information and automatically converts titles that appear in caps to proper capital and lowercase letters, which Zotero does not do.

Saving Citations

One of the most helpful features of Zotero is that it can help to archive important websites and sources. This is incredibly helpful for projects that rely on multiple sources. Its inclusion of “tags” makes categorizing similar sources much easier. In addition, you  can add an unlimited number of sources to each folder and can make an unlimited number of folders, so you will not lose any sources from previous projects. Citation Machine will only allow you to access sources for a few days, so you will need to save any citations you need in a document.

Cost

Both Zotero and CitationMachine are free to use,  although every 48 hours in CitationMachine, you will need to watch an interactive ad for a few minutes.  EasyBib actually charges an upgrade fee if you want citations generated in Chicago-style (the preferred format for most history classes).  So, as long as you can put up with some ads, right now CitationMachine is the best value for the time-pressed history student.

While phones can be a distraction in the classroom, with augmented reality (AR) they can help bring lessons to life and create an interactive learning experience. By simply aiming their phones at augmented images, students can unlock the personal stories of historical figures, triggering videos and other online content (called auras). Here at the House Divided Studio, we are working to enhance our visitor experience and to model classroom applications through the use of AR. You can learn more about the various uses of AR and how to create your own free augmented experiences in this instructional post.

Downloading the HP Reveal app

To view the auras created by the House Divided Project, visitors and educators can download the free HP Reveal app, create an account and follow the House Divided channel in HP Reveal. (House Divided content won’t trigger until you follow the channel). Once those steps are completed, simply open the app, select the blue viewer square located at the bottom of the screen, point your phone at images located throughout the studio and the app generates specific video content (auras) related to those images.

 

 

 

 

Using Augmented Reality

Through AR, teachers can bring new experiences into their classrooms. Below are some of the most innovative uses of AR.

• Augmented Portraits – At the House Divided studio, the walls are decorated with augmented portraits that trigger brief student-produced films. At right, check out this augmented portrait of President James Buchanan (Class of 1809).  You can access all of the House Divided images with AR enhancements here at the online version of our studio.
• Handouts/Facsimiles – Reproductions of historic photos, letters and newspaper articles enable students to connect to personal stories.  Here’s an example of Lincoln’s famous Blind Memorandum from the 1864 election, augmented with a video by project director Matthew Pinsker.
• Virtual field trips –  The Google Expeditions app is already being used in schools. Google created a brief promotional video showing how students at an Iowa middle school experienced world-renowned architecture using the app. The app is free, and can be downloaded and accessed by anyone with a Google account. Google Expeditions shows virtual images of sites accompanied by longer text explanations, available by tapping the bottom of your screen. Especially in classroom settings, Google encourages the use of a Virtual Reality headset for the best experience. Students can place their phones into the headsets, known as Google Cardboard, and experience a site. The Cardboard headsets are available for around $15.

 

Creating Your Own Augmented Reality Experience

Augmented reality is not only an effective teaching tool, but it is also free and relatively easy to learn. Using the HP Reveal studio, you can upload images and augment them. When editing your image, you should use a variety of circles, eclipses and rectangles to mask the background of your image (see below), making faces and main objects easier for the app to recognize.

Tips for masking images:

• Identify and mask mundane objects/spaces in the background of your image. Think of it as removing clutter so the app can recognize the image and trigger your content. For the example above, I masked the indistinct faces of the pursuers in the background, making it easier for the app to focus on the four main figures.
• HP Reveal is often color sensitive. If your trigger image is in color, a black and white version (i.e., photocopies) may not work successfully. For the best results, convert an image to grayscale and then mask it.
• Finally, make sure you save and then share your aura. If you haven’t shared your aura, it will be marked private.

After you have finished masking the image, click “Next” and upload your overlaying video or other content. Press save and then try viewing the image through the HP Reveal app to verify it works.

For more guidance on how to mask images in the HP Reveal studio, see the following House Divided tutorial.

 

Alabama soldier Elihu Wesley Watson arrived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 as part of the Army of Northern Virginia’s shocking invasion of Pennsylvania –the one that culminated with the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863).  While he was on brief occupation duty in Carlisle at the end of June, Private Watson spent some time talking to the president of Dickinson College (Herman Johnson), a man he then described in a subsequent letter as “an unmitigated abolitionist and a bitter enemy to the south,” with “principles… as bad as Wm. H Seward’s.” Watson’s fascinating account from the occupation of Carlisle was not an isolated bit of first-hand testimony.  While often overlooked in classroom studies of the great battle, the primary sources describing the days leading up to confrontation at Gettysburg offer rare and very teachable glimpses into the nature of the war and especially into a deeper understanding of the interactions between Confederate soldiers and Northern civilians.

For this post, I have assembled available digitized primary sources from the House Divided Project, the Dickinson College Archives, the Cumberland County Historical Society and from my book, The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg (2012). Featured below are accounts that describe a series of little-known skirmishes and events from the 1863 invasion, including the Confederate occupation of Carlisle. Of special interest are the stories of Samuel Hillman, a Dickinson professor who debated Confederate officers about slavery, and recollections from Dickinson alumni and Confederate officers Richard Beale and Richard Shreve who were among the Confederate troops responsible for shelling Carlisle on the evening of July 1-2.  I created this post originally in the summer of 2018, but we will keep adding materials to it as they become available.  Feel free to make your own suggestions or contributions using the comment box (“Leave A Reply”) below.

 

Primary Sources – Skirmishes 

Confederate Occupation of Carlisle – June 27-28, 1863

• Campbell Brown account (Confederate Staff Officer)
• Samuel Dickinson Hillman account (Dickinson professor) – account for The Methodist, July 18, 1863
• Charles Himes Letter and Diary (Civilian)
• Jedediah Hotchkiss Letter (Confederate map-maker)
• Henry London recollection (32nd North Carolina)
• Robert Park recollection (12th Alabama)
• Leonidas Polk Letter (43rd North Carolina)
• Confederate Supply Requisition, June 27, 1863
• “General Orders No. 72” posted in Carlisle, June 27-30, 1863
• William J. Underwood Letter (4th Georgia) – camps on the Dickinson College campus (Atlanta History Center)
• Elihu Wesley Watson Letter (6th Alabama) – mentions “a long conversation” with Dickinson College President Herman Johnson
• Young Girl’s Pocket Diary, June – July, 1863, CCHS (transcribed by Frank Kline) –The unknown young girl wrote on Monday, June 29 that, “The Rebels are going in every house and stealing all they can”

Confederates in York and Wrightsville – June 27-30, 1863

• Maj. Gen. Jubal Early’s memoir (Confederate)
• Newspaper account of the occupation of York (Civilian)

Battle of Sporting Hill – June 30, 1863

• George Wingate (Union)
• Report of Landis’s Philadelphia Battery (Union)

Shelling of Carlisle – July 1-2, 1863

• Richard L.T. Beale profile and account (Confederate, Dickinson Class of 1838)
• George W. Beale (son of RLT Beale) letter (Confederate)
• Theodore S. Garnett account (Confederate)
• Report of Landis’s Philadelphia Battery (Union)
• Fitzhugh Lee (Confederate)
• Anna Fosdick recollection (Civilian)
• Charles Godfrey Leland memoir (Union)
• Isaac Harris diary (U.S. Sanitary Commission) – took shelter “under the lee of the jail wall” during the shelling
• C. Stuart Patterson account (Union) – wounded during the shelling
• Charles Schaeffer Diary (Union)
• Richard Southeron Shreve account (Confederate, Dickinson Class of 1860)
• John Keagy Stayman letters (Civilian) – Dickinson College as a hospital
• George Wingate (Union)

Primary Sources – Union

• “A Word to Pennsylvania”: New York Times column criticizing Pennsylvanians’ response to the invasion.
• Isaac Harris diary (U.S. Sanitary Commission)
• John Lockwood memoir (23rd New York State National Guard)
• George Wingate history (22nd New York State National Guard)
  

  Union militia camped near Fort Washington, the defenses of Harrisburg. (Cumberland County Historical Society)

Primary Sources – Confederate

• “Gen. Jenkins’ Brigade” Newspaper account (Chronicling America)
• Herman Schuricht Diary (14th Virginia Cavalry)
• William Sillers Letter (30th North Carolina Infantry)

Primary Sources – Civilian

• Anonymous Letter from Cumberland County resident
• “Behavior of Our Citizens Under Rebel Fire” – Carlisle Herald account
• “Boyhood Memories of the Civil War” – James Sullivan account
• “Citizens of the Cumberland Valley” – recruitment poster, July 3, 1863
• Culver Family Correspondence – Hanna Culver’s July 9, 1863 letter detailing the occupation and shelling, and her brother Joseph Culver’s letter of concern for their father.
• Mary Johnson Dillon – (daughter of Dickinson College President Herman Johnson)
• George Chenoweth Letter – Carlisle civilian’s account
• Conway Hillman letter – son of Prof. Samuel D. Hillman, recalls the summer of 1863
• Jacob Hoke – Chambersburg civilian
• “Rebel Occupation of Carlisle” – Carlisle newspaper account
• Thomas Griffith Letter – Carlisle civilian
• Theodore M. Johnson account – (son of Dickinson College President Herman Johnson)

 

For the first twenty years of its existence, there were no black veterans buried in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg.  That famous military cemetery, where President Lincoln had spoken so eloquently about a “new birth of freedom,” was not integrated until 1884, with the burial of Henry Gooden, an African American Civil War soldier from York, PA who had originally enlisted in Carlisle.  Over the next few decades, the U.S. army interred at least five other black veterans  in the cemetery’s Civil War section.  The question is why?  Were they buried there intentionally, to help integrate the “hallowed ground”?

 

Congress authorized the enlistment of black men in the Union army with the Militia Act of July 17, 1862, though President Lincoln did not lend his public support to this policy until the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.  Yet by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, only some black regiments had been mobilized (as United States Colored Troops), and none of them were yet incorporated into the Army of the Potomac.[1] In addition, during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in June 1863, Union general Darius Couch, the departmental commander in charge of the state’s defense, actually turned away a group of black volunteers from Philadelphia.[2] For these reasons, no African Americans fought officially at Gettysburg for either the Union field army or the local militias and thus there were no black soldiers to bury afterwards at the national cemetery when President Lincoln was present to help dedicate it on November 19, 1863

In 1884, however, Henry Gooden, a black veteran who had died in 1876, was reinterred at the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg. Private Henry Gooden does not seem to appear in census records, but his enlistment papers indicate that he was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1821, worked as a laborer, and stood 5’3″.  Gooden enlisted in Carlisle in August 1864 for one year, where he was signed into the Union army by Provost Marshal Robert M. Henderson, a graduate of Dickinson College.  Gooden, who was literate,  served in Company C of the 127th United States Colored Troops. [3] The 127th USCT saw combat briefly near the end of the war and was present for General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. [4] Gooden survived the war, and actually mustered out of service from Texas in late 1865.  He seems to have returned to Carlisle, however, where he died in August 1876. [5] However, on November 8, 1884, Gooden was reburied in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg in the U.S. Regulars Plot, section D, site 30. [6]  Local historian Deb McCauslin claims that the family of the white soldier buried next to Gooden then had his body removed in protest, though park historians have remained somewhat skeptical of that connection, arguing there is no documentary evidence detailing the motivation for the re-interment. [7] 

In 2012, Gettysburg military park historian D. Scott Hartwig wrote a fascinating blog post about the discovery of a photographic image in the NPS archives depicting black army regulars burying one of their own at Gettysburg in 1898. Hartwig identifies a total of four black soldiers who died from disease during the Spanish American War and were buried at Gettysburg in  late 1898. These men were Clifford Henderson, Emmert Martin, and Nicholas Farrell, all of whom served as privates in the 9th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Battalion, and Corporal Harry Prager, who served in Company H, 2nd Tennessee Infantry.[8] 

Hartwig identifies the picture (featured right) as the burial of Clifford Henderson.[9] I found additional information about this story in various newspapers from the period. According to a September 7, 1898 report in Cleveland, “Private Clifford Henderson, Company A. Ninth Ohio (colored) battalion, died of typhoid fever this morning in the Red Cross hospital. His body was sent home to Cleveland for burial.”[10] However, by September 9, the Philadelphia Inquirer was reporting that “this morning the body of Private Clifford Henderson, Company A, Ninth Ohio Battalion, whose home was at Springfield, [OH], was taken to the Gettysburg National Cemetery for burial.”[11]

While there is little other information regarding these soldiers or the particular motivations for burying them in the Civil War section of the national cemetery, Find a Grave has solid entries on Gooden, Prager, Henderson, Martin, and Farrell that show pictures of their grave markers and explain the exact placement of their burial locations. [12] Prager was from Tennessee and served with a unit from his home state, but for some reason, he was buried in the Illinois section.[13] I was also able to find

some interesting information on the 9^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Battalion, in which three of the soldiers served. This was the unit headed by Col. Charles Young, a famous nineteenth century African American leader. He attended West Point, becoming only the third black graduate of the military academy and later served as the first black U.S. National Park Superintendent. [14] According to a book by Brian G. Shellum, the 9^th Ohio battalion was in the nation’s press quite a bit during the Spanish-American conflict for “its superior discipline and training.” However, the battalion also experienced low morale, especially after their time at Camp Meade, the place where all three soldiers died before being buried at Gettysburg.[15]

The story of the final black veteran buried at Gettysburg is even stranger in some ways than the ones that brought Gooden or Prager and his 1898 peers to the cemetery. Steve Light’s 2012 blog post “Forgotten Valor – The Lincoln Cemetery”   and  James M. Paradis’s  African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign (2013) help explain how Civil War veteran Charles H. Parker arrived at the cemetery in 1936.[16] Charles H. Parker served in Company F of the 3rd United States Colored Troops. [17]  Upon his death on July 2, 1876, he was buried in the Yellow Hill Cemetery, which became essentially abandoned. [18] Parker’s grave was rediscovered as a part of a restoration project and then reinterred at Gettysburg.[19]

Why these decisions to integrate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery?  The newspaper record is almost completely silent.  Hartwig argues that the four Spanish American War soldiers were buried there because it was the closest National Cemetery.[20] The men had been stationed at Camp Meade in Middletown, Pennsylvania, so the Gettysburg National Cemetery was just under 50 miles away. Margaret S. Creighton’s The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History (2005) argues that segregation within national cemeteries was a major issue for African Americans. She claims that local veteran Lloyd Watts, an African American sergeant during the Civil War, and the “Sons of Good Will,” a black fraternal society he co-created, fought for integration at the various local cemeteries. While

African Americans were permitted to partake in the burials of white soldiers, white soldiers often refused to assist in and attend black soldiers’ burials. Creighton suggests that there was local segregation between the black and white communities in Adams County throughout the 1880s and 1890s. [21] However, the timing of Gooden’s burial in 1884 points to the beginning of the end of this segregation regime at least in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery . As historian John R. Neff argues in  Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (2005), the burial of black soldiers in national cemeteries established them as “the first publicly funded integrated cemeteries in American history.”[22]

Neff assumes that Gooden’s burial was intentional, designed to insure that the  “the color line of segregation…was between blue and gray, not black and white.”[23] Yet the odd stories of the scattered six black burials at Gettysburg and the near total lack of commentary on these developments in the national press, raise questions about this assumption.  Does anyone have more detail, or new theories about how to interpret the halting story of integration at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery?  Feel free to comment below and we will update this post as more information becomes available.

 

Endnotes

[1] James Oakes, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 378, 387.

[2] Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 291-293. [Google Books]

[3] D. Scott Hartwig, “A Burial in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,” The Blog of Gettysburg National Military Park, April 2012. [WEB]

[4] Brenna McKelvey, “Henry Gooden,” House Divided Research Engine. [WEB]

[5] D. Scott Hartwig, “A Burial in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,”

[6] Gettys Bern, “PVT. Henry Gooden,” Find a Grave, August 8, 2006. [WEB]

[7] Brandie Kessler, “Did Union soldier’s family move body away from black soldier’s grave?” Evening Sun, November 19, 2013. [WEB]

[8] D. Scott Hartwig, “A Burial in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,”

[9] D. Scott Hartwig, “A Burial in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,”

[10] Brian G. Shellum, “Volunteer Officer in the Spanish-American War,” Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). [Google Books]

[11] “Governor’s Day at Camp Meade,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, (September 9, 1898), 5. [Newspapers.com Proquest]

[12] Karl Stelly, “CPL Harry S. Prager (1860-1898),” Find A Grave Memorial, August 23, 2009. [WEB]

[13] Karl Stelly,  “PVT Emmert Martin (Unknown-1898),”  Find A Grave Memorial, November 3, 2010. [WEB]; Karl Stelly, “PVT Clifford Henderson (Unknown-1898),” Find A Grave Memorial November 3, 2010. [WEB]; Karl Stelly, “PVT Nicholas Farrell (Unknown-1898),” Find A Grave Memorial, November 3, 2010. [WEB]

[14] “Colonel Charles Young,” National Park Service, May 21, 2018.

[15] Brian G. Shellum, “Volunteer Officer in the Spanish-American War,”

[16] Steve Light, “Forgotten Valor – The Lincoln Cemetery,” Battlefield Back Stories, September 29, 2012. [WEB]; James M Paradis, African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 107-109. [Google Books]

[17] Don Sailer, “Charles H. Parker,” House Divided Research Engine. [WEB]

[18] Steve Light, “Forgotten Valor – The Lincoln Cemetery,” Battlefield Back Stories, September 29, 2012. [WEB]

[19] Savannah Labbe, “Separate but Equal? Gettysburg’s Lincoln Cemetery,” The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History, March 12, 2018. [WEB]

[20] D. Scott Hartwig, “A Burial in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,”

[21] Margaret S. Creighton, The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 217-218.

[22] John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 133.

[23] John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation, 134.

 

Additional Readings

Primary Source Documents

The Emancipation Proclamation

The Militia Act of July 1862

Secondary Source Documents

Gettysburg General Reading

• Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America. 291-293.
• Map of Cemetery
• African Americans in the Cemetery – The Blog of Gettysburg National Military Park.
• Burials and Lincoln Cemetery

United States Colored Troops

• Henry Gooden – Find A Grave
• Henry Gooden – House Divided Research Engine.
• Henry Gooden – African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign.
• Henry Gooden Controversy – Evening Sun
• Charles H. Parker – Find A Grave
• Charles H. Parker – House Divided Research Engine.
• Charles H. Parker and Henry Gooden – Battlefield Back Stories

Ninth Ohio Battalion

• Clifford Henderson – Find A Grave
• Emmert Martin – Find A Grave
• Nicholas Farrell – Find A Grave
• Life in the Ninth Ohio Battalion, Clifford Henderson’s Death, and Charles Young – Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young.
• Charles Young – National Park Service

Second Tennessee Infantry

• Harry S. Prager – Find A Grave

The Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in June 1863 had a profound effect on south central Pennsylvania’s African-American population. Numbering at least 5,000, local blacks fled the region in large numbers as the Confederate army drew near, and many of those who remained behind were quickly captured by Southern soldiers. [1]

This post explores the fate of several local blacks as they faced either captivity in Confederate prisons, or enslavement elsewhere in the South.  But at least one captured black resident, a man named Amos Barnes, was returned to freedom by Confederate officials because of the intervention of a network of Dickinsonians.

On June 16, shortly after Confederate cavalry had occupied Chambersburg, the Southern horsemen were seen “scouring” the surrounding fields and countryside for not only horses, but African-Americans. “O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds,” wrote resident Rachel Cormany in her wartime diary. In Chambersburg alone, between 25-50 blacks were captured and shackled, many of them women and children. “I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle,” recorded Cormany. [2] In nearby Mercersburg, Dr. Philip Schaff watched as a group of Confederate guerrillas, known as McNeill’s Rangers, “came to town on a regular slave-hunt, which presented the worst spectacle I ever saw in this war.” The Southerners threatened to “burn down every house which harbored a fugitive slave, and did not deliver him up within twenty minutes.” A subsequent search of the town turned up “several contrabands, among them a woman with two little children.” To Schaff, it was a “most pitiful sight, sufficient to settle the slavery question for every humane mind.” [3]

Locals were quick to note that many of the captured African-Americans were free-born Pennsylvanians and long-time members of the community. Jemima Cree, another Chambersburg woman, attempted to intercede on behalf of her free-born domestic servant, but was rebuffed by a Confederate officer, who claimed “he could do nothing, he was acting according to orders.” [4] Other residents took their complaints directly to Confederate generals, occasionally securing the release of a specific captive. [5] Chambersburg resident Jacob Hoke later wrote about how a connection to a Confederate officer helped secure the freedom of one African-American captive.

The story of one prisoner, Amos Barnes of Mercersburg, illustrates the confused and often protracted fate that awaited many African-Americans. Barnes claimed that he and another free African-American helped McNeill’s horsemen ferret out the location of runaway slaves. During the retreat, Barnes accompanied the Confederate army southward, under the “assurance” that he would be released and permitted to return home. However, at Martinsburg, Virginia (modern-day West Virginia), “in the confusion of such business,” he was sent along with other African-American captives to Castle Thunder Prison in Richmond. At first “confined closely in Castle Thunder,” Barnes was eventually put to work at nearby Camp Winder Hospital, and later “employed to labor on a boat carrying wood to Richmond.” He was allowed to keep “some refuse wood for himself and sell it in Richmond,” earning $25 in Confederate script. With those funds in hand, Barnes cajoled a Confederate guard to mail a letter on his behalf to acquaintances back in Mercersburg. [6]

Barnes’s plea for help ultimately found its way into the hands of two Dickinsonians, who collaborated to secure his freedom. His letter first reached Rev. Thomas Creigh (Class of 1828) of Mercersburg, who wrote to another Dickinsonian, Rev. T.V. Moore (Class of 1838) of Richmond, asking Moore “to do something in their behalf to release them….” Moore paid a visit to Castle Thunder, and left convinced of Barnes’s freedom. He appealed to Confederate Assistant Secretary of War, John A. Campbell, who on December 14, 1863, ordered the release of “Amos Bar[n]es, a free negro from Pennsylvania… upon grounds which appear to the Department sufficient to justify an exceptional policy with regard to him.” [7]

 

Still, the strange story of Amos Barnes raises new questions. What were Confederates hoping to gain by imprisoning free African-Americans like Barnes? Southerners had long-held grievances about the flow of fugitive slaves into border states such as Pennsylvania, leading some historians to speculate that the “slave hunt,” was a reprisal. It appears some captured blacks were indeed enslaved. In a letter dated June 28, William S. Christian, an officer in the 55th Virginia, claimed to have been “offered my choice” of the captives, but declined “as I could not get them back home.” [8] Similarly, Lucy Buck, a Winchester, Virginia woman, recorded in her diary that her family’s fugitive slaves were captured near Greencastle and later recognized by a local Confederate cavalryman. Buck expected her family’s fugitives–a mother and her young children–to be returned to her family, while noting that male captives taken by the Confederate army “had all been sent to Richmond to work on fortifications.” [9]

Among those sent to Richmond were Barnes and another local black, Alexander Lewis of Chambersburg. Lewis was ultimately placed in charge of the culinary department at Castle Thunder, and his story survives in a collection of wartime stories of Chambersburg residents. An African-American child seized from York was also held at Castle Thunder, and tasked with carrying messages and performing errands. [10] Historian Mark Neely counts at least 16 free blacks from Pennsylvania who were held at Castle Thunder. In prison records, Confederate officials consistently distinguished these captives as “free negroes,” indicating an awareness of their legal status even as they were being detained. Neely argues that Confederates held these free African-Americans as “civilian political prisoners,” with the aim of exchanging them for Confederate civilians or fugitive slaves. More recent research by David Smith suggests that while Barnes was freed in December 1863, many African-Americans remained in Confederate prisons well into 1864, and perhaps beyond. Smith, drawing on Lucy Buck’s diary account and notes left by Confederate bureaucrats, concludes that captured African-Americans “had value to the Confederate hierarchy” as manual laborers.  [11]

In the aftermath of Gettysburg, it was also apparent that some enslaved men from the Army of Northern Virginia had been left behind in Pennsylvania.  A reporter for the New York Herald asserted that “among the rebel prisoners… were observed seven negroes in uniform and fully accoutered as soldiers.” In recent decades, these words have sometimes been seized upon as purported proof of the existence of Black Confederates. However, contrary to popular misconception, these seven men were among the estimated thousands of camp slaves who accompanied the Confederate army into Pennsylvania. While the Confederate force numbered around 75,000 fighting soldiers on the eve of Gettysburg, historians estimate that as many as 10,000 slaves marched north with the army. Non-combatants, these camp slaves filled important roles as officers’ servants, cooks and teamsters. According to Arthur Freemantle, a British observer traveling with Robert E. Lee’s army, “in rear of each regiment were from twenty to thirty negro slaves.” After the battle, many camp slaves were forced to tend to the wounded and dead. Elijah, the slave of Col. Issac E. Avery, recovered and buried his master’s body after Avery was mortally wounded on the slopes of Cemetery Hill.^[12]

Primary Sources

Rachel Cormany’s June 16, 1863 diary entry.

Thomas Creigh’s June 26, 1863 diary entry. 

Amos Stouffer’s June 19, 1863 diary entry.

William Heyser’s June 14, 18 and 22 diary entries.

Vermont Soldier Chester Leach’s July 15, 1863 letter from “Dear Wife”: The Civil War Letters of Chester K. Leach.

 

 

 

Notes

[1] Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864), 412, [WEB].

[2] Rachel Cormany, “Rachel Cormany Diary, 1863,” Valley of the Shadow Project, [WEB]; Franklin Repository, Chambersburg, PA, July 8, 1863, Valley of the Shadow Project, [WEB]; Jacob Hoke, The Great Invasion of 1863: Or, General Lee in Pennsylvania, (Dayton, OH: W. J. Shuey, 1887), 107-108, [WEB];

[3] Philip Schaff Diary, June 16-19, June 25-27, 1863, in The Woman’s Club of Mercersburg, Old Mercersburg, (New York  The Frank Allaben Genealogical Company, 1912), 163-165, [WEB]; Ted Alexander, “‘A Regular Slave Hunt’: The Army of Northern Virginia and Black Civilians in the Gettysburg Campaign,” North & South 4, no. 7 (September 2001): 82–88, [WEB]; Steve French, Imboden’s Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign, (Hedgesville, WV: Steve French, 2008), 63-64, [WEB]; Captain John H. McNeill’s group of partisan rangers was temporarily attached to Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden’s command during the Gettysburg Campaign. See U.S. War Department. War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1899), Series I, vol. 27, pt 2:291, [WEB].

[4] Jemima K. Cree, “Jenkins Raid,” in The Kittochtinny Historical Society: Papers Read before the Society from March, 1905 to February, 1908, (Chambersburg, PA: Repository Printing Press, 1908), 94, [WEB].

[5] Hoke, The Great Invasion, 107-108, [WEB]; Charles Hartman Diary, June 22, 1863, Philip Schaff Library, Lancaster Theological Seminary.

[6] “Discharged from Richmond,” Franklin Repository, December 23, 1863, Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers Database; T.V. Moore to Isaac H. Carrington, November 1863, File 1025 C 1863, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, RG 109, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, National Archives and Records Administration.

[7] Thomas Creigh to T.V. Moore, November 10, 1863, Section 11, Confederate Military Manuscripts, Series A: C.S.A. Army, Department of Henrico Papers, 1861-1864, ProQuest History Vault Database; The Woman’s Club of Mercersburg, Old Mercersburg, 86, [WEB]; Official Records, Series II, 6:704-705, [WEB]; Peter C. Vermilyea, “The Effect of the Confederate Invasion of Pennsylvania on Gettysburg’s African-American Community,” Gettysburg Magazine, [WEB]; Mark E. Neely Jr. Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism, (University of Virginia Press, 1999), 201; James F. Epperson, “Lee’s Slave-Makers,” Civil War Times Illustrated 41, no. 4 (August 2002): 44; David G. Smith, On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 188-194; Edward L. Ayers, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), 45-49.

[8] “A Rebel Letter,” in Frank Moore (ed.), Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, 7:[WEB].

[9] Lucy Buck Diary, July 3, 1863, in Elizabeth R. Baer (ed.), Shadows on my Heart: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Rebecca Buck of Virginia, (Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press, 1997), 228.

[10] Jacob Hoke, Historical Reminiscences of the War; or Incidents which transpired in and about Chambersburg, during the War of the Rebellion, (Chambersburg, PA: M.A. Foltz, 1884), 144, [WEB].

[11]  Neely, Southern Rights, 139-140; Smith, On the Edge of Freedom, 192-193; Creigh to Moore, November 10, 1863, Confederate Military Manuscripts, Series A: C.S.A. Army, Department of Henrico Papers, 1861-1864, ProQuest History Vault Database.

[12]  “Incidents of the Battle,” New York Herald, July 11, 1863, [WEB]; Arthur Freemantle, Three Months in the Southern States, (New York: John Bradburn, 1864), 234, [WEB]. James M. Paradis, African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign, (Toronto: The Scarecrow Press, 2013), 23-26, 72 [WEB].

 

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

On a camping trip for the first time, a student in my mother’s fifth grade class exclaimed that he was surprised the great outdoors “wasn’t all black and white”. The student, raised on video games and smart phones, thought of nature as old-timey, flat. If the vibrant colors and sounds of nature seemed “black and white” to the student, how could the black and white photograph of a moment ever connect?

You take in a black and white photograph all at once. A captivating video by Vox explains how adding a little color helps a viewer relate to the details – familiar denim pants or a cherry red Cola. Among a collection of black and white photos, just one flash of color can help students think differently about the rest. Familiar scenes from the Civil War come to life in color.

A color photograph looks like a slice of reality to the viewer, but the artist knows better. The image is an interpretation of the past: art, not reproduction. Artists run into issues if they present an updated photo as authentic and fail to credit the original artist. Professional color artists debated how to present recolored images in this insightful piece. Students should be able to recognize that the new colors are not necessarily correct. If you are going to colorize Civil War era images, and especially if you post them online, make sure to clearly credit the original photograph and explain that you modified the new one. As always, make sure the image is credited for reuse. A “before and after” comparison proves very transparent, because the viewer can compare the artists work with the original. Being open about a colorized image does not make it less teachable. Students may look at black and white images differently if they imagine the alternative colors in the scene. See some good examples of how to present such work from the coverage by the Daily Mail and here from Time magazine in 2013 when new digital technologies helped make colorizing easier.

I learned how to colorize this summer and then made my first recolored photo in about an hour . With a few simple Photoshop tricks, vibrant color photos of history can be regular features in the classroom.

The quickest way to recolor a photo is essentially one of the oldest. In the 1890s, photographers tinted sections of their photo negatives and then layered them by color. The layer technique on Photoshop imitates this “photochrom” process for a quick and easy recolor. It is perfect for classroom use but only the tip of the iceberg in the art of recoloring.

I learned how to colorize photos from this tutorial by the Photoshop Video Academy:

Bear in mind – colorization works best with a large, high-res image. Color brings out detail, and this is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to old, maybe damaged images. The best parts of the photograph will be more vivid but so will the blurry or unclear elements. Even with a high quality image, it may be difficult to decide what color to use. Shadows and camera angles can obscure parts of a picture. Your impulse may be to zoom in very close to seamlessly select parts of the photo.  This is essential, but make sure you regularly zoom out to get the big picture. Notice my subject’s left hand in the color image below. Up close, this seemed like a shadow but zooming out on the original image, I recognized fingers. Keep the original picture open in a different tab so you can flip back and forth.

I started off with this portrait. The background and lighting are simple. Also, the face and hands make up a relatively small part of the image. Human skin tones are very difficult to get right and are one of the more noticeable differences if you get them wrong. Textiles are much easier. From my experience, I find full-body images easier to recolor than facial details or group photographs.

Where possible, use historical records or period models for color inspiration. Expert color artists will obsessively research to find the right colors for their subjects’ clothes but for classroom purposes, imagination and an educated guess can still make for a convincing photograph. I had no reason to believe my subject’s shirt was red, for example. Google “Lincoln in color” to see how many different ways artists have interpreted the same portrait.

The blacks and whites in old photographs do not carry over well into color. In fact, they fall on the spectrum of gray. So, even if part of an image will remain white or black in the finished product, it should still be recolored. For example, I tinted my subject’s coat a very dark blue so the color was consistent with the richer tone of the new image.

Try to keep the colors muted. An overzealous recoloring job will stand out. Compare your work with other colorized photographs, or even modern photographs of period artifacts.

All of these details will “unflatten” a black and white photograph. Maybe a student will discover that old photos weren’t so flat to begin with. Or, like Dorothy opening her door into the land of Oz, color will reveal a new world.