L'Hermione Comes to Alexandria

A replica of one of the Marquis de Lafayette's ships is in Alexandria for three days as part of a tour of the Eastern Seaboard from Yorktown to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Suddenly, everyone is very conscious of saying its name in the French style (lair-me-own) rather than the English (like the character in Harry Potter). Lafayette sailed on the original ship in 1780, one of many times he came across the Atlantic, this time with word that France would support the Americans with men and ships. At the ceremony I attended yesterday, much was made of the historic and current French-U.S. alliance, with lots of Vive la France! cries from the speakers and audience. The real treat was to board the ship. (It had that wonderful smell of creosote or tar or something that I remember from working at Mystic Seaport many years ago.)

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Lafayette died in 1834, still a beloved figure in the U.S.

Shortly after Julia Wilbur arrived in Washington in October 1862, she took her first walk around LaFayette Sq. [sic], across from the White House, a fashionable address for Washington movers and shakers.

In Alexandria, on January 7, 1863, when her sister Frances and sister-in-law Charlotte were visiting--

...  Met Col. Tait who told us of a Museum over the Market. We went there. A police man opened the sanctorum for us. There is the bier on which Washington was carried to the grave, & Lafayette’s saddle, & Revolutionary Flags & many curious and interesting relics. They are covered with dust, & the labels are torn off some of them. I must go there again.

Everyone would have known about the Marquis de Lafayette, dust notwithstanding.

And here is the beautiful ship from a press package--which I could not begin to capture with my iphone camera.

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Crossing the Potomac

Both Union and Confederate armies used the narrower stretches of the Potomac to facilitate getting from Virginia to Maryland (and back). A few weeks ago, I was on the Northern Neck of Virginia (where the Potomac is much wider), contemplating the crossing of John Wilkes Booth. Today, though, I was above Washington and Great Falls, on the Maryland side. The crossing almost looks swimmable from here.

I drove first to Edwards Ferry, where 50,ooo Union troops camped in 1861 and from where Thaddeus Lowe launched his reconnaissance balloon.

Across the way was Ball's Bluff. As always, I like to see if Julia mentioned this place or others nearby. Yes--

She wrote in early November 1861:

Our troops have been defeated at Edwards Ferry & many of them wounded & killed. Someone is terribly to blame, for it was a rash, & ill advised affair on our part. Col. Baker was killed. [Baker was a member of Congress from Oregon and a friend of President Lincoln. Noble intentions, but not cut out for military strategy.]

A year later, as she prepared to come to Washington, she learned her brother-in-law Joseph Von Buskirk was camped there. She was hoping he was closer to Washington, but

"he thinks perhaps I can come there with the mail boy, who belongs to their co." [This did not happen.]

In late 1863, Gen. Hooker led 70,000 troops across the river from Virginia and on to Gettysburg at Edwards Ferry, using two pontoon bridges constructed for the purpose.

From there, I went up to Whites Ferry, about 5 miles west along a gravel road with an occasional farm alongside it--very "back to the past" in Montgomery County. A ferry began in 1817; after the Civil War, a Confederate officer named Elijah White bought the business. He named his boat in honor of his officer, Gen. Jubal Early. It's still called White's Ferry, it's still called the Jubal A. Early, and the business still occasionally runs afoul of the U.S. Coast Guard. I supposed that would warm Elijah White's heart.

Lee and McClellan both used the narrow crossing near White's Ferry, as this sign explains when Lee crossed to try to rally support in Maryland en route to Antietam. The sign noted that one resident called the troops "the dirtiest, filthiest, piractical-looking, cut throat men I ever saw....Yet there was a dash about them that the Northern men lacked." While plenty of Confederate sympathizers no doubt lived in and near White's Ferry, apparently not enough saw the "dash" as enough to side with the South as Lee and his men marched through.

Whites Ferry sign

Julia visited this area in 1866 as part of an expedition up the C&O Canal to Harpers Ferry (the subject of a future post).

My Minute of Fame

I gave a presentation at the Lyceum (historical aside: built in 1839, used as a hospital during the Civil War, Julia visited on a number of occasions) this past week for the Alexandria Historical Society. My husband found the most exciting part was my reserved parking space in Old Town Alexandria. So even though this photo makes my look like Mr. Magoo, here it is.

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Decoration Day, 1868

Numerous locations and groups have claimed to have created Decoration or Memorial Day, but the first event at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868, seems to have trumped them over the years. And Julia Wilbur was there. She and several friends hired a carriage to take them across the Long Bridge to Arlington (although she is "vexed" that the carriage came at noon instead of at 11 a.m., as planned). She spends many pages of her diary describing the scene, complete with the military top brass "& other invited guests, including 54 orphans of soldiers & sailors." Somber music, flower-laying, and flags were the order of the day, as they remain today (minus the sales, "unofficial start of summer," and BBQs, of course). She worries that the elaborate bouquets laid on some graves meant that some graves had no flowers at all.

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I need to make a return trip to Arlington to review its layout. In 1868 as Julia described it, the cemetery had a "principal" portion near Arlington House where the ceremony took place, and a smaller, older section in the northeast corner of the property. She wrote:

....The programme did not seem to apply to this portion of the Cemetery. But I understood that a few persons, white & colored had been there with flowers & a prayer had been offered. I was not satisfied to leave without going there. We drove there, & entered. The grass had not been cut, & it is very tall. A small part seemed to be allotted to colored soldiers & flags & flowers were on all these graves. Here I left my bouquet from the White House on the grave of an “unknown”& a few others, separating it for this purpose....

She and her friends ("Miss E. & Miss S.") returned home at 6 1/2 PM, tired and apparently no longer vexed at the late start.

Relics and Souvenirs

Like many law-abiding citizens of her time, Julia Wilbur collected things in a way that we would describe almost as vandalism today. This was not a question of going into the museum gift shop or finding a great cache of items on ebay. She took plantings from Mount Vernon ("Not a single leaf of anything is given away, but we all succeeded in getting something"). In Alexandria, she took some seat buttons from George Washington's pew at  Christ Church and a piece of wallpaper from Mansion House Hospital, among many other things. She even was a second-hand collector. As she wrote on March 20, 1863

Mr. Wells has brought many relics from the battle fields, & he gave us each a bayonet from the field of Antietam, also an apricot stone from the tree that Washington hacked with his hatchet, & would not lie about it to his father. This tree is in Fredericksburg where Martha W. monument is. So it was not a cherry tree after all.

Apricot or cherry, the story is still questionable. But the volume of relics collected by her and others is not.

In the book The Nineteenth-century Relic: A Pre-History of the Historical Artifact, Theresa Lynn Barnett notes the Civil War unleashed a popular tradition of collecting and preserving relics: "The practice of collecting Civil War artifacts quickly became a mass phenomenon in a way that no relic collecting tradition had been before or would be again..." (pg. 109).

Across the Potomac

Just spent a few days on the Northern Neck of Virginia, staring across the Potomac at Maryland. Where we stayed at Westmoreland State Park near Montross, the river is perhaps 5 miles across, much wider than between Alexandria and Washington. As we looked across, we realized about 150 years ago almost to the day, John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice David Herold tried to row across.

Potomac River

It would have been a formidable trip, especially at night. In fact, their first attempt ended with them mistakenly doubling back and returning to the Maryland side.

Here was their route from Washington, through Southern Maryland, to eventual shooting (Booth)/capture (Herold) in Virginia, thanks to the Surratt House Museum, which runs tours of the route.

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Here's what Julia Wilbur had to say in her diary on April 15, 1865:

There is a report that Boothe [sic] has been taken; that his horse threw him on 7th st. & he was taken into a house.—

There is no doubt that it was intended to murder the President, the Vice Pres. all the members of the cabinet and Gen. Grant. & that the managers of the theater knew of it.

On April 20, 1865:

Numbers of persons have been arrested. but Booth has not been taken yet. Ford & others of the Theater have been arrested. The Theater is guarded or it would be torn down. If Booth is found & taken I think he will be torn to pieces. The feeling of vengeance is deep & settled.

Finally, on April 26, 1865:

Report that Booth is taken. 

Then, more detail the next day, April 27, 1865:

Booth was taken yesterday morning at 3 oclock, 3 miles from Port Royal on the Rappac., in a barn, by 25 of 16th. N.Y. Cav. & a few detectives. He was armed with 2 revolvers & 2 bowie knives & a carbine 7 shooter, all loaded. Harrold, an accomplice was with him. Neither wd. surrender until the barn was fired. Then Harrold gave himself up. & when Booth was about to fire at some of the party, he was shot in the head by Sargt. B. Corbett, & lived 2 ½ hrs. afterwards.

He was sewed up in a blanket & brought up from Belle Plain to Navy Yd. in a boat this A.M. One of the capturers, Paredy, was here this P.M. & told us all about it.—

(I believe this to be Emery Parady, one of the soldiers who shared in the reward. Because he was from an upstate New York regiment, perhaps this is how he would have recounted his experience to Julia.)

In June, she watched some of the trial of the assassins and included a sketches of the courtroom in her dirary, realizing, as she often did, that she was witnessing history in the making.

Bits from Books Alive 2015

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I attended the Washington Independent Review of Books' Books Alive conference yesterday. The conference is set up as part educational panels/part talking to agents, so there's a lot of going in and out of the sessions. Nonetheless, some miscellaneous pieces that I picked up, applicable to my work with Julia Wilbur and other nonfiction projects.

Gender in Biography

Panelists: Linda Lear, Kitty Kelly, James McGrath Morris, moderated by Marc Pachter.

Can a woman write about a man, and vice versa? Yes....if the writer can develop empathy for the subject and be able to make the effort to understand the gender-related issues the subject dealt with.

Other gender-related issues came up--related to sources (women's letters and other writings traditionally not saved, especially the non-famous), reception by editors and publishing houses, and critics.

Place

Panelists: David Rowell, Maud Casey, Eugenia Kim, moderated by Tim Wendel

This session related to a sense of place in writing fiction. But the same attention to sensory details applies to nonfiction. Newspapers, other people's writings, photographs, novels written at the time--all these can help, since, unlike in fiction, we cannot "make things up."

Research

Panelists: Michael Isikoff, Tom Dunkel, moderated by Chuck Babcock

"Throw out a lot of seeds of corn to see what will grow."

Alexandria Walking Tour

On Monday, April 13, Pamela Cressey, who teaches Historical Archaeology at George Washington University, asked me to join her class as she took them on an abbreviated tour to show them the places they have studied in class. We met on a beautiful spring afternoon at the King Street Metro Station and headed southeast to Duke Street. First stops" Bruin's--one of the "inspirations" for Uncle Tom's Cabin--and Franklin & Armfield slave pens. Both establishments were flourishing mid-19th century businesses that dealt in the purchase and sale of humans. Alongside Franklin & Armfield (sold and called Price Birch and Co. by 1861), the Union built a hospital for African American soldiers and civilians, called L'Ouverture Hospital, in 1864 and operated for the next several years before it was torn down.

Julia Wilbur often visited these sites.

Our last stop was Alexandria National Cemetery, the military cemetery built in 1863. In a future blog post, I will talk more about the cemetery, including an ultimately successful petition by L'Ouverture patients in late 1864 to demand that black soldiers be buried there.

Pam (Alexandria's now-retired City Archaeologist) had assigned her students a project to research some of the USCT through hospital and pension records. Then they fanned out in the cemetery to search for the gravestone of "their" soldiers.

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Surrender in April 1865

On April 7, Grant telegraphed Lee:

"General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.: 5 P.M., April 7th, 1865. The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia. U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General"

Two days later, Appomattox.

Julia Wilbur wrote in her diary on April 9 (a Sunday):

Another memorable day! Less has surrendered the army of Northern Va. to Gen. Grant. The news came to W. [Washington] this evening.

The next day:

At an early hour we were awakened by the report of a heavy gun & this was following by 199 others. We could only guess what the matter was, but as soon as possible sent out and learned that Lee has surrendered with the whole army of N. Va.--The paper soon came & we read, Peace!!