George St. Pierre Brooks (1846-1948)

It's been six months since my last entry.  I've been busy with a new job and a host of other projects.  The other day, I came across this entry on a database of American First World War veterans.  It dealt with African American veterans in honor of Black History Month.  The life of George St. Pierre Brooks is nothing short of incredible.  Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1846, he was forced into Confederate service at the outbreak of war in 1861.  Soon captured by the 7th Ohio Cavalry, he served with them as a farrier (horse tender) for the duration of the conflict.  Afterwards, he joined the U.S. Army as a cook for the next thirty years, encompassing service on the western frontier and in the War with Spain.  Had enough yet?  I'm not done.  He moved to Canada in the early 20th Century and, believe it or not, enlisted in the Canadian Army in the Great War at the age of 73 - but he claimed to be 40.  He did not last long, however, and returned to Winnipeg in 1915.  He died at age 102 in 1948, being the last Civil War veteran in Canada.  Wow, that's some life.  He died in a veteran's hospital literally down the street from where I grew up.  What more can I say: Winnipeg has lots of connections to the Civil War.

Here's an image of his obituary. 

Believe it or not, he was not the only Civil War veteran to serve in the First World War.  In 1917, the U.S. Army brought Major General Peter Coonover Hains out of retirement to serve as a chief engineer for the Eastern Seaboard defenses.  He was 76 years old at the time. Hains began his service in 1857 when he entered West Point.  Graduating in 1861, he served in the United States Army as an engineer.  He ended the war as a 24-year old lieutenant colonel, but retired in 1904 as a brigadier general. 

A Confederate Flag in Canada

Hello again.  I just returned from a trip to northwestern Ontario with the family.  Along the way, I came across an actual Confederate flag flying at a local house.  I won't say where to protect its resident's privacy.  Ironically, I just happened to have a copy of John Coski's 2004 book The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem on me at the time.  

This comes at a time when the Confederate battle flag has come under increasing scrutiny.  In June, a white man killed nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.  After his arrest, pictures emerged of him with Confederate flags.  Demands to take down the flag everywhere soon came from across the country.  This was a tall order, but down they came. Walmart and Amazon stopped selling items with the flag on them.  Most remarkably, the South Carolina Legislature voted to remove the flag from its Confederate war memorial at the Capitol in Columbia.

The Confederate flag is far less common in other countries but it appears from time to time. As I understand it, some use it as a substitute for the Nazi Swastika, which is banned in numerous countries.  This may or may not apply to the Swedish van covered in Stars and Bars that I saw in late 2013.  I am not sure why this homeowner flies the flag, because I never asked.  I certainly hope that they do not subscribe to any such philosophy.  Yet they may do so as an act of defiance, oblivious to the racist symbol that it clearly is.  All it proves is that the Confederacy's legacy is well known around the world.

Civil War Memorials in Norway and Sweden

 I recently returned from a two-week long trip to Norway, Sweden and Finland.  While in Scandinavia, I sought out a couple of Civil War-related monuments.  The first is of Colonel Hans Christian Heg of the 15th Wisconsin Infantry, also known as The Scandinavian Regiment due to its mostly Norwegian and Danish (but not Swedish) membership.  Heg was killed in action at Chickamauga.  In 1925, the residents of his hometown of Lierbyen in Brakar County, about 50 miles west of Oslo, erected this monument to him.  A similar statue is on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Legislature.

The next monment is the grave of Brigadier General Ernst Matthias Peter von Vegesack (pronounced fe-zeck).  A descendant of a distinguished military family -- his grandfather had been a prominent Swedish general in the Napoleonic Wars, fighting mostly to keep Finland from the Russians -- he resigned his Swedish Army commission to head to the United States to serve in the war.  He was one of George McClellan's foreign aides.  




In that role, he served bravely in the Peninsula Campaign.  For his courage at the Battle of Gaines' Mill, he received the Medal of Honor in 1893.  Vegesack later commanded the German-speaking 20th New York at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  Afterwards, he resigned his United States commission and returned to his Swedish military career.  In 1866, he received an American promotion to Brigadier General.  He died in 1903.  He is buried in Norra Begravingsplaten (Northern Cemetery) in Solna, north of Stockholm.  Other famous internments include Alfred Nobel, director Victor Sjostrom, playwright August Strindberg and actress Ingrid Bergman.

Addendum: General Sherman's 1880 Visit to Winnipeg

Yesterday, I wrote about General William Tecumseh Sherman's 1886 visit to Winnipeg.  In the related news stories, he commented to journalists how much the area had changed since his previous stay there.  I said that I could find no information about that event.  Thanks to information provided by a friend, I can correct that view.

Courtesy of the New York Times, three stories exist about the trip in July 1880.  The first, dated July 7, reports that the General was met by Premier Norguay (actually John Norquay), Major Alexander Logan (who met him on his subsequent visit), and Colonel Osborne Smith, commander of the local militia units.  Smith, according to Wikipedia, spent much of the Civil War guarding the border around Windsor, Canada West, opposite Detroit.  This time, he received Sherman, who at the time was Commanding General of the United States Army, with a full military parade.  "A procession was formed, with an escort of cavalry, and as it crossed the Red River, was greeted with a salute of 19 guns, on the Winnipeg bank of the River, by a field battery," the Times reported.  A parade of infantry met Sherman at Government House where a band played "the national anthem", but it does not say which country's.

The second story is dated two days later, July 9, 1880.  It adds some more detail about the political reception extended to Sherman. Traveling via special train from St. Paul, Minnesota via St. Vincent (in the northwestern corner of the state), and Pembina in Dakota Terrtory, the general arrived in the afternoon of the 7th.  Greeters included Lieutenant Governor Joseph Édouard Cauchon and Madame Cauchon, the first Francophone to hold that office, Speaker Gilbert McMicken, Mayor Logan, some clergy and other prominent citizens.  

The third story is dated three weeks later from a Minnesota newspaper.  It adds little new detail about the visit itself, but instead describes the conditions in this part of the North American continent.  The report states that Sherman spent three days in Winnipeg, which with a population of 12,000, was the capital of "a newly-developed region, the Province of Manitoba."  It goes on to describe the position of the Lieutenant Governor as being "as independent as the Governor of Missouri" in his relationship to the British home government.  Moreover, it reports that Sherman disclaimed any notion of annexation of the area to the United States, "that there is talk of annexation of the United States to Canada."  Perhaps assuaging the fears of the white population in Manitoba as in other parts of the North American west, the paper reported that local authorities had "the right to try and punish Indians for individual crimes, the same as the courts do."  

While limited in scope, these stories reveal that General Sherman received a warm welcome in Winnipeg, at least from the higher echelons of its society. 

General Sherman's Visit to Winnipeg, early September 1886.

Here is another blog post about Canada's connections to the American Civil War.  I recalled being told years ago that General William T. Sherman once visited the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba.  One of the city's premier clubs, the Manitoba Club, even boasted about it on their website.  Being a historian, I wondered if this was true.

It turns out that it is.  Sherman visited the city in September of 1886.  He and one of his daughters returned to their home in New York City from a trip to the West Coast of the United States via the then-newly completed Canadian Pacific Railroad. Indeed, the president of the CPR, Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona, who used his wealth to outfit a cavalry regiment for the Boer War in 1899.  It still serves in the Canadian Army today) accompanied the General on the trip.

Perusing the Manitoba Archives' superb website, I found notices in two local newspapers about the visit.  The first comes from the Brandon Sun of September 9, 1886.
 

Cyrus W. Field was an American-born investor who laid the first trans-Atlantic submarine cable in 1858, and who had extensive contacts in Britain, Canada and the United States. 

I can find no evidence about Sherman's claim to have visited seven years before, but it could be possible.  

The second excerpt comes from the Minnedosa Tribune.  Although only a small town west of Winnipeg, surviving issues of this newspaper provide extensive coverage of Manitoba's early years. 

The consul was James Wickes Taylor, a New Yorker who represented the U.S. government in Manitoba from 1870 to 1893.  Henry Shaver Wesbrook (or Westbrook) was the mayor at the time.  His predecessor, Alexander Logan, also attended. 

Although brief, Sherman's visit nonetheless brought out many of the area's dignitaries.  One can imagine that the local branch of the Grand Army of the Republic, headed by Harper Wilson, an Irish-born veteran wounded at Gettysburg, turned out to see the famous commander. Sadly, no records have survived from this organization.  Here is just another of the ways in which the American Civil War shaped Canada.

The Scottish-American Civil War Memorial, Edinburgh

The Scottish-American Civil War Memorial

I recently came across the only full Civil War memorial outside of the United States.  In previous entries, I have described monuments pertaining to the war abroad, including the John Ericsson Memorial in Sweden or the grave of Simeon Cummings in South Africa.  This one in Edinburgh is more on par with the local monuments found in town squares across the U.S.  In 1892, some impoverished Scottish veterans of the war asked the U.S. government to mark their graves.  It appears that they received a bit more.  The monument includes the first statue of Lincoln in a foreign country (Manchester and London would get theirs later).  It also has a freed slave who is carrying a book, indicating that he is both free and educated.  What another fascinating example of how the Civil War touched the rest of the world.  If only there were more like this one.

Review: Point of Honor (ABC Signature and Amazon Studios)

Here we have yet another entry into the ‘family divided’ theme of Civil War television and movies.  Point of Honor is a proposed series for ABC Signature and Amazon Studios, the online retailer’s video programming branch, focusing on a slaveholding family in Lynchburg, Virginia.  So far, only one hour-long episode has been released, produced and written by Carlton Cuse of Lost fame and Randall Wallace (writer of Braveheart, and director of Pearl Harbor, We Were Soldiers, and this).  Its promise does not look good.  Its southern focus, ridiculous handling of the slavery issue and basic historical errors ruin its dramatic impact.  The result is a series similar in style to The Blue and the Gray and North and South but also their flaws in portraying families torn apart by the Civil War. 

First, the family structure works for and against the narrative.  Ralston Rhodes (played by Apollo 13’s Brett Cullen) owns the Point of Honor plantation near Lynchburg (which actually exists if the family itself is fictional).  Although in financial straits, he still commands great respect from those around him, as evidenced when he hosts a large party with his neighbors.  Here, we are introduced to four of his five children, including arrogant and aggressive daughters Estella, Kate and Lorelei, whom Ralston prepared to be strong-willed.  Garland oversees the plantation.  John attends West Point where his best friend is an anti-slavery northerner, Robert Sumner, who also happens to be married to Lorelei.  These relationships are the grounding for the movie, but the southern focus expects the audience to see them as the heroes.  Sumner, a peripheral member of the family, serves no purpose except to tear at his wife’s allegiances, and barely so at that.  This may play out in later episodes, but it is unconvincing in the pilot.

Second, the slavery issue occupies a prominent part of the story but in ridiculous ways.  The Rhodes’ family appears to own about fifteen enslaved persons and employs them in domestic and field tasks.  When war begins, John renounces slavery to Robert’s great relief, but resigns from the Army to return home and raise a regiment of non-slaveholders for the Confederate cause.  Somehow, we are supposed to believe that this makes John the great hero, indeed it fulfills the series’ title.  Word of his decision reaches the plantation incredibly fast, for the family has a hard time believing it.  Adding to their woes, a mob of neighbors condemning the possible liberation appears at the front gate.  This part is actually credible, for non-slaveholders still had a stake in maintaining the institution.    When John carries out on his promise, the slaves are relieved but none know what comes next.  The Rhodes family promise to pay wages to them, but it is clear that they do not know what to do either. One slave is not freed as she was sold to another plantation, headed by a stereotypically cruel master and overseer, similar to David Carradine in North and South.  Even if the audience accepts John’s emancipatory act as sincere, it is clear that no one else, not even his family, does.  This evading of the politics and economics of slavery is intended to make the Rhodes the heroes.  It fails as both as drama or history. 

There are too many historical errors in this episode to count.  At West Point, Robert says that John has the highest standing since Robert E. Lee.  Either he or the screenwriters did not know that Charles Mason graduated ahead of the more famous Lee.  The assertive daughters appear out of place for an upper-class southern woman of the time.  Their father’s desire that they be strong-willed, possibly since he was a widower, may explain part of that.  A small Union cavalry troop, led in part by Robert, manages to make it from the north to outside of Lynchburg within days of the attack on Fort Sumter.  This act completely ignores the five-week delay on secession in Virginia pending the outcome of a statewide referendum.  Ralston dies in a clash with these raiders, yet it is not explained why he wore a blue uniform with officer’s insignia.  If one could speculate, he may have served in the Mexican War.  Please note that no comment has been made about limited production values.  The combined effects of its southern bias, poor handling of the slavery issue, and historical errors thwart Point of Honor in its attempt to tell a story that we have heard many times before.