February 9: Samuel J. Tilden, The Man Who Should Have Been President

Controversial elections occur periodically in any democracy, but few have been as controversial as the election of 1876. The winner in popular votes, but the loser in electoral votes, was New York born Samuel Jones Tilden.

Tilden was born at New Lebanon, New York, on February 9, 1814 - a descendent of a family that could trace its roots back to the founding of the New England colonies.

His lineage included Nathaniel Tilden, one of the leaders of Plymouth colony and a founder of the town of Scituate, Massachusetts; as well as William Jones, a lieutenant-governor of New haven colony. His parents were Elam Tilden and Polly Youngblood Jones. His father, a farmer and a merchant in New Lebanon, was known for his judgment and practical common sense, and was a respected power in the New Lebanon area. Among those who visited the elder Tilden while young Samuel was growing to maturity were such noted personalities as Albert Gallatin, Martin Van Buren, and Edward Livingston.

Tilden’s interest in politics, economics, law, and civics came from his parents and the multitude of politically significant visitors. As early as 1832, when young Tilden was 18, he submitted a paper to his father analyzing the political conditions that existed in the 1832 election. He father was so impressed that he took his son to see the vice presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, who was visiting Lebanon Springs. The article was later published and – though Van Buren vigorously denied authorship – was attributed to Van Buren. The two men – a political leader and a young man – became lifelong friends..

Tilden would attend Yale, and then transferred to the University of New York to study law. He graduated in 1837. He would be admitted to the bar in 1841, and would become one of the most noted and skilled corporate lawyers of the nation. Many of his clients would be from the fledgling railroad industry. It is said that over half of the railroad companies between the Hudson and Missouri Rivers were his clients at one time or another during the 1850’s – 1860s.

Tilden continued to maintain and broaden the interest in politics he had since his youth. A strong supporter of Martin Van Buren, he would later be classified as a Free Soil Democrat – one of the few free soil supporters who did not move into the new Republican party in the 1850s. While he supported the efforts of unity during the Civil War, he did not support all of the Lincoln Administrations various measures during that war.

Tilden’s political career really began as a result of his life-long interest in politics. In 1855 he was named as a nominee for state attorney general.

In 1866 Tilden was appointed the state chairman of the Democratic Party. There his reformist spirit took on the corrupt Tweed Ring. He entered the New York Assembly in 1872 under the reformist banner, and proceeded to impeach the judges that had been ‘bought’ by the Tweed Ring, and were busy protecting them from the law. He would gather much of the evidence that eventually broke up this notorious political group. In 1874 he was elected governor of New York, and took on the infamous Canal Ring – which had made its millions from illegal bribes concerning the maintenance, repair, and extension of the state’s extensive canal network.

The battle against corruption led Tilden to the high-water mark of his political career – the campaign for the Presidency against Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. This campaign – on the heels of the revelations of corruption that dogged the Ulysses S. Grant presidency – would result in one of the most famous election disputes in American History – only, perhaps, to be eclipsed by the 2000 Bush/Gore campaign.

Tilden received a small majority of the overall popular vote – however, American presidents are chosen through an electoral college system, where whichever party receives the most popular votes in a state receives all of that state’s electoral votes. As it turned out, the electoral votes in three of the newly ‘reconstructed’ southern states – Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina – as well as one electoral vote from Oregon were disputed. The U.S. Constitution did not address the issue, so Congress created an electoral commission made up of five U.S. Senators, five members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and five Supreme Court Justices. Seven of the commission were Republicans, seven were Democrats, and there was one Independent.

However, the Independent was appointed to be the U.S. Senator from Illinois, he was replaced by a Republican to take his spot on the commission. The commission would vote solely along party lines, and on March 2, 1877, just two days before the new president was to be sworn in, would give Hayes all of the disputed electoral votes – giving him a majority of one (185 to 184) and the presidency.

Tilden discouraged opposition from his party to the decision of the Electoral Commission. An offshoot of this was what became known as the Hayes-Tilden Compromise - or the compromise of 1877: Hayes became President, and the military occupation of the southern states was ended. The end of the military occupation of the south had been a major campaign issue for the Democrats during the election campaign.

Tilden, 63 years old when the disputed election was decided, retired from public office. He would die in 1884 in Yonkers, New York. He left three million dollars in a trust toward the establishment of a free public library in York City – a trust what would be combined with the Astor and Lenox Libraries and would eventually become the New York Public Library.

He is buried at Cemetery of the Evergreens, New Lebanon, New York.

WEB RESOURCES:

1911 Encyclopedia
Biographical Sketch, 1878
Find A Grave, Tilden
Harpers Weekly Cartoons 1876
Life of Samuel J. Tilden
NPS
NY Times Obituary
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Samuel J. Tilden, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SamuelJTilden.png
1876 Campaign Poster, Library of Congress, rbpe 23702200
Members of the Electoral Commission, Harpers Weekly
The Inauguration, Harpers Weekly
Tilden Gravesite, Find-A-Grave
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January 14: Benedict Arnold, Hero Becomes Traitor

He was a descendent from a distinguished family, a hero of the battle that is known as the ‘Turning Point of the American Revolution’; a man who lost a leg in battle in service to his country; yet a man who let jealously, pride, and greed turn him against the nation he served and into a notoriety that continues today.

Benedict Arnold was born on January 14, 1741, in Norwich, Connecticut. He was the second of six children born to Benedict Arnold III and Hannah Waterman King, and was named after his great-grandfather who was an early, three-time governor of Rhode Island, as well as his brother, who died in infancy. Only two of the Arnold children would survive to adulthood – Benedict and his sister Hannah.

Arnold had several character traits that would follow him throughout his life, hindering his opportunities for advancement and the recognition he desired. Arnold was enrolled in a private school when he was ten with the expectation that he would attend Yale. However, he wasn’t studious and persistent in his studies. A yellow fever epidemic struck a devastating blow to the Connecticut family in 1753 – taking the lives of three of Arnold’s siblings. Soon after that the family fortune began to decline, and by the time Arnold was fourteen there was no more money for a private education – or for Yale.

The outbreak of the French and Indian War when Arnold was fifteen proved to be a lure to the young man, but he was refused enlistment in the provincial militia when his mother would not give her permission. Undaunted, Arnold would enlist when he turned sixteen. His enlistment came when the militia was ready to march toward Albany, New York and Lake George to oppose a French invasion. After hearing about the French massacre of the British and colonial forces at Fort William Henry, the Connecticut militia turned around and marched home. Arnold’s enlistment lasted thirteen days. It became popular after the Revolution to write that Arnold would run away from home to join the militia and had deserted from his militia company.

Because of the financial situation of his family, Arnold was apprenticed to Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, cousins of his mother. They ran an apothecary and general merchandise store in Norwich, Connecticut, where Arnold spent seven years learning the principals of pharmacy and business.

In 1762, the Lanthrop brothers provided financial backing for the 21-year-old Arnold to start his own pharmacy business in New Haven, Connecticut. A year later he had repaid the money borrowed from the Lanthrops. By 1764 he had expanded his business interests through a partnership with Adam Babcock, and purchasing three trading ships in order to engage in the lucrative West Indies trade. Arnold would bring his sister Hannah to New Haven to help manage his apothecary shop while he was sailing on one of his ships. Often he would captain the ship, engaging in trade from the West Indies to Canada.

The British Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) limited the mercantile trade in the American colonies – and many voiced their opposition. Arnold would join the Sons of Liberty as well as engage in smuggling to avoid the customs agents and the taxes that he felt was stifling colonial enterprise and prosperity. His thoughts are perhaps best shown in a comment made after Arnold heard of the Boston Massacre: “good God; are the Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their liberties, or are they all turned philosophers, that they don’t take immediate vengeance on such miscreants.”

He also was concerned because he had a family to support. He married Margaret Mansfield, daughter of the sheriff of New Haven, in 1767. They would have three children prior to her early death in 1775 – while Arnold was at Fort Ticonderoga during the opening year of the Revolution.

Arnold would move swiftly up the military ladder – but not swiftly enough for him. He was elected as a captain in Connecticut’s militia in March 1775. He proposed an audacious attack on Fort Ticonderoga – which he knew to be lightly defended – and was promoted to Colonel. He arrived in time to participate in an attack on the Fort by Ethan Allen and his ‘Green Mountain Boys’. The fort fell, but Arnold – who had followed the procedures and the chain of command of the fledgling American military structure - felt that the full glory of the idea and the victory should have gone to him.

He was, however, given command of the American forces in the Lake Champlain area, and would use that region as a launching point for an American overland march on Quebec. Arnold had proposed the overland march, which took place during the winter of 1775. He was given the rank of Colonel in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress, and in the end would be wounded, and be forced to lay siege of Quebec until relieved. The Continental Congress promoted him to Brigadier General for his efforts.

The American army was forced to retreat in 1776 when British reinforcements arrived in Canada. Arnold presided over the American rear-guard actions during the Continental Army’s retreat. He then directed the construction of an impromptu fleet to defend Lake Champlain, New York. The Americans were defeated after a grueling 7-hour battle, but had succeeded in slowing the British advance into New York. As a result of the October 1776 battle, Arnold was called the ‘Father of the American Navy’.

Arnold made a number of enemies in Congress and in the hierarchy of the Continental Army during these first years of the war. He began to feel slighted, not receiving the promotions or the leadership opportunities that he felt he deserved, and for not being given credit for his military ideas. While his accomplishments were notable, others often took credit away from him. He was even charged with stealing military supplies, and was on the verge of being arrested when General Horatio Gates stopped the arrest because he needed Arnold in the field. British General Burgoyne was marching south through New York in the spring of 1777.

Arnold would distinguish himself at Saratoga – and would also see his hopes of command in the American army dashed. On his own initiative he brought his reserve troops into the battle at just the right moment to save the Americans from defeat, and to give them a victory over the British, a victory that became the turning point of the war. He also lost the use of a leg to wounds incurred during the battle. Gates claimed the victory, Arnold was passed over for promotion and the glory he felt he deserved; and – ultimately – would be investigated by Congress for corruption.

While recovering he met and fell in love with Peggy Shippen, daughter of a prominent Loyalist. They married on April 8, 1779. One of her former suitors was British Major Andre – who would become involved with Arnold’s plan to turn West Point over to the British.

Arnold toyed with the idea of supporting the British in this war the colonists had started against the Crown. After some negotiations, he would be given command of West Point, a crucial defense point on the Hudson River. Ultimately, the plans to turn the fort over to the British were discovered – with the final proof being found with the capture of Arnold’s contact, Major Andre.

Arnold fled, would be given the position of Brigadier General by the British, and would lead several raids on colonial cities – briefly capturing Richmond, Virginia and attacking New London, Connecticut. He had a far-reaching goal – to destroy the economic basis of the rebels, driving them to submission or starvation.

As the war ended, Arnold and his family would move to England, then after the war to New Brunswick, Canada. There he reentered the business world and established a thriving trade route with the West Indies. However, his remaining years were bitter ones. Maligned by the Americans, distrusted by the British, he found that many military, political, and economic doors were not open to him.

Arnold died on June 14, 1801, after returning to England.

The name Benedict Arnold has become synonymous with the word traitor to Americans. He was immediately demonized by American writers as soon as his actions became know. All of the contributions to the revolution that he had made – and the injuries he had sistained in that revolution, both physical, economic, and mental, were quickly forgotten. Benjamin Franklin wrote that "Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions", and that became a common theme through the rest of American history writings up to today.

WEB RESOURCES:

1911 Encyclopedia
Archiving Early America
Clements Library
Colonial Williamsburg
National Park Service
NNDB
Virtuology
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

A pen and ink portrait of Arnold, NNDB
Portrait of Arnold in military uniform, National Archives
1780 French map of West Point, Boston Public Library
Peggy Shippen, National Archives
Capture of Major Andre, Library of Congress
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Dec. 9: Br'er Rabbit and Joel Chandler Harris

He was one of America’s earliest folklore authors, using the dialect and stories from the land he grew up on. His stories – while not widely circulated today – have characters who are still know and loved by Americans of all ages.

Joel Chandler Harris was born on December 9, 1848, at Eatonton – a small town that is the county seat of Putnam County, and is located near the middle of Georgia. His father was an itinerant Irish laborer who disappeared just before Harris was born. His mother – Mary Harris – was unwed, and could barely make a living as a seamstress to support herself and her son.

While his early education was spotty, Harris was an avid reader of American, English, and world literary works. Reportedly his favorite author and book while growing up was Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield.

Harris had to end his formal education at the age of thirteen so he could go to work in order to help the family finances. He was hired in March 1862 as an apprentice and typesetter, spending four years working for a weekly newspaper, The Countryman. The Countryman was published by Joseph Addison Turner at Turner’s Turnwold Plantation during the Civil War, and would issue its last publication in May 1866. The plantation was about nine miles north of Eatonton.

Harris would live on the Turnwold Plantation during this time, and several of the slaves who worked there would eventually became models for Uncle Remus, Aunt Tempy, and other characters of his Uncle Remus series of stories that he would start to write twenty years after he left the plantation. This work for Turner during his formative years influenced Harris by directing him to a long and successful career in the newspaper world.

Harris would work for a variety of newspapers – including the Macon Telegraph, the New Orleans Crescent Monthly, the Monroe Advertiser, and the Savannah Morning News – where he was an assistant editor when he married Esther LaRose in 1873. The Harris’s would have nine children, although three would die due to childhood illnesses.

In 1876 he took a position as assistant editor with the Atlanta Constitution, which would be his employer for the next quarter century. Harris had moved to Atlanta because of an epidemic of yellow fever in Savannah and was able to land the job with the Constitution. It was his time with the Atlanta Constitution that Harris introduced his Uncle Remus stories. In 1881 he would buy a Queen Anne Victorian style home in Atlanta – the Wren’s Nest – where he would live until his death in 1908. His great-great-great grandson works in the house today as it’s executive director.

The idea for the Uncle Remus stories have their roots in Harris’ formative years while he was growing up in the Antebellum South. Slavery was the norm in the South during this period of American history, and even after the Civil War the role of superiority for Southern whites and subservience for Southern African-Americans was the norm rather than the exception in the rural regions of the South.

Harris spent quite a bit of his time with the African-American slaves living and working the land of Turnwold Plantation and it is thought that Uncle Remus is patterned after one slave – Uncle Bob Capers – who told fantastic stories to entertain and delight his audience after a hard days work in the fields. Harris would preserve the stories – most of whom had their roots in Africa – as well as the dialect, thus becoming one of the first folklore authors in American history. The Uncle Remus stories were full of the wit and wisdom of the era that Harris had heard many years before. Harris stated that he began writing the stories of Uncle Remus to “preserve in permanent shape those curious mementoes of a period that will no doubt be sadly misrepresented by historians of the future." Some examples of wisdom from the Uncle Remus stories would include:

“Lazy fokes’s stummucks don’t git tired.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Jay-bird don’t rob his own nes’.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Licker talks mighty loud w’en it gits loose from de jug.”
From Plantation Proverbs
“Hungry rooster don’t cackle w’en he fine a wum.”
From Plantation Proverbs.
“Youk’n hide de fier, but w’at you gwine do wid de smoke?”
From Plantation Proverbs

In the books, Uncle Remus is a kindly old slave who is telling the stories to the children sitting around him. The story characters are animals, with the main character being Br’er (Brother) Rabbit, a likeable – though troublesome – trickster. Other major characters include Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. The first Uncle Remus story, The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mrs Fox as Told by Uncle Remus, was published in the Atlanta Constitution on July 20, 1879. Eventually the Uncle Remus stories would be compiled into three Uncle Remus books - Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880); Nights with Uncle Remus (1883); and Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (1905). The books achieved immense popularity in the United States and abroad.

In 1946 Disney created an animated production called Song of the South based on Uncle Remus. Disney was quoted as saying "The first books I ever read were the Uncle Remus stories. Ever since then, these stories have been my special favorites. I've just been waiting until I could develop the proper medium to bring them to the screen."

Within a decade of its release the civil rights movement of the 1950s – 1960s matured, and the portrayal of the heavy dialect used in the movie that was so evident in the South during the 19th century was viewed as a racist stance that was portraying subservience of the African Americans of the 20th century.

While Harris is best known for his Uncle Remus stories, he did publish other works. He published six children’s books, short stories, and novels – most of which were based on plantation life or life in antebellum Georgia.

Harris died of acute nephritis and cirrhosis of the liver on July 3, 1908, in the Westview Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia.

WEB RESOURCES:

Documenting the American South
Find A Grave
National Park Service
New Georgia Encyclopedia
The Wren’s Nest
University of North Carolina
University of Virginia
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Joel Chandler Harris, Wikipedia
Portrait of Joel Chandler Harris in 1873, Wikipedia
The Wren’s Nest, Inside Access
Uncle Remus from cover of 1881 Harris book, Wikipedia
Joel Chandler Harris standing, Find A Grave
Gravesite of Joel Chandler Harris, Find A Grave
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December 4: Lillian Russell, Master of the Comic Opera

She was known as one of the most beautiful of American women, had a tremendous personality that ruled the stage she played on, and was a flamboyant master of the popular comic opera stage plays that played in theaters throughout the nation. She dominated the American theater in the late 19th century.

Helen Louise Leonard was the fifth daughter of newspaper publisher Charles E. Leonard and his wife Cynthia Rowland Leonard. Both parents would exert an extensive influence on their daughter – her father through his background in reading and understanding of news and events, and her mother through her feminist views. Helen was born on December 4, 1861, in Clinton, Iowa, but would move to and grow up in Chicago, Illinois, where the family moved in 1864.

She would be remembered to history not as Helen Louise Leonard, but as Lillian Russell.

Lillian would receive her education from the age of seven to fifteen the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and the Park Institute, both in Chicago. It was during these years that she learned to play the tambourine and to dance, showing a natural talent in the school plays that foretold of her stage career. While in school she studied music under Miss. Scheremburg and was an active participant in the school choir. Her first stage appearance was in December 1877, when she was a participant in an amateur production of Time Tries All at Chickering Hall in Chicago.

In 1879, Mrs. Leonard left her husband and moved to New York with the children.

In New York Lillian studied singing under a German émigré, composer, and orchestra conductor – Leopold Damrosch. Her dreams were to have an operatic career. In 1879 she joined the chorus of a Brooklyn theatrical company that was presenting the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera, HMS Pinafore. Two weeks after joining the troupe, she married the orchestra leader, Harry Braham. She had a baby boy by Braham, but he died in a tragic accident while still an infant.

The official transformation of Helen Leonard into Lillian Russell would take place on November 22, 1880, when she made her first appearance on Broadway at Tony Pastor’s Theater. She was billed as Lillian Russell, the English Ballad Singer, and would tour with Pastor’s company through the summer of 1881. Pastor paid her $40 a week and gave her the stage name Lillian Russell.

In June 1883, Lillian left her husband and went to England with composer Edward Solomon. Solomon, an English émigré who was the musical director of Pastor’s theater, would write Lillian into several of his compositions, including Billee Taylor, Polly, and Pocahontas. Lillian sailed with Solomon for England and a series of theatrical engagements. There two major personal events occurred: she became pregnant, giving birth to Lillian Dorothy on May 10, 1884; and the scandal of Lillian leaving her husband behind and living with Solomon “as his wife” reached the press – and turned theater managers against her. In 1885 they returned to the United States – and were informally boycotted by theater managers. Work finally appeared, and Lillian’s ability in comedic operettas and her singing voice carried the day. She began a comeback.

She worked hard to pacify the press and to keep scandals out of the press. When her husband won his divorce case, the newspapers were not informed for a week and a half – and by then Lillian had formally married Solomon. Soon, however, more scandal erupted. Lily Gray, a London actress, claimed that Solomon had married her in 1873 – and never divorced. Eventually, Lillian divorced Solomon. By the time she was twenty-five, Lillian had had two husbands, two children, and had performed on hundreds of stages in the United States and England.

By 1891 Lillian had overcome the earlier public disapproval of her life, and had made a comeback in the theater. She organized the Lillian Russell Opera Company, opening at the Garden Theater in New York. In 1894 she married a third time, to John Haly Augustin Chatterton – a tenor in her opera company. The separated in six months, and were divorced in 1898.

Lillian’s talent, singing voice, and stage success continued – and her popularity continue to rise as well. It was her voice that was first heard during the first long-distance telephone call on Alexander Graham Bell’s invention when she sang from New York, and was heard in Washington, D.C. and in Boston. The song was The Sabre Song.

In June 1912, Lillian – now fifty years old – married for the fourth and final time. Her husband was the publisher of the Pittsburgh Leader, Alexander P. Moore. That same year she made her last appearance on Broadway in a play titled Hokey Pokey. In 1915 she would appear in a motion picture with Lionel Barrymore which was titled Wildfire, and she would occasionally sing in vaudeville until 1919 when ill health made it necessary for her to stop.

Lillian would remain active – and in the public eye. She wrote newspaper columns, gave lectures, supported women’s suffrage, helped recruit for the Marines in World War I, and in 1921 was sent by President Warren G. Harding on a fact-finding tour of Europe to help formulate a new immigration policy in the United States. She came out in favor of restricting immigration and isolationism. Shortly after she submitted her report, she injured herself in a fall, and died ten days later – June 6, 1922 - of complications associated with the fall. She was interred in the Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Perhaps Lillian’s own words provide the best memorial of her life and tell why she strove to be successful in the theater:

“I only want to play the roles allotted to me in comic opera better than anyone else who ever sang them, or better than anyone who was in the line with me.”

WEB RESOURCES:

Find A Grave
Lillian Russell: A Biography of America’s Beauty

New York Times Obituary
University of Rochester
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Russell advertisement (color), Library of Congress, ncdeaa D0005-14
Russell in Costume, 1882, University of Rochester

Playbill, Library of Congress,
Russell in Costume, Library of Congress, ncdeaa D0040
Russell and husband, Alexander Moore, Library of Congress, ichicdn n074416
Russell at her desk, 1922, Library of Congress, ichicdn n074414

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Dec. 1: Oliver Wolcott: Soldier Statesman

His fore bearers had been leaders in their colony, and his children would continue that heritage. He was a man who provided political and military leadership during a time of international warfare and civil war. He risked his property and livelihood in politically backing American Independence while he risked his life in leading men in battle for that independence.

Oliver Wolcott was born on December 1, 1726, as the youngest son (and of fifteen children) of Roger and Sarah Wolcott. Wolcott’s father was a leading political figure in the colony of Connecticut, holding the post of governor from 1751 - 1754. The Wolcott family had been involved in the politics of New England since their arrival in 1630.

Young Wolcott attended Yale College, graduating at the top of his class at the age of twenty-one in 1747. He was appointed a captain in the Connecticut militia during King George’s War, and recruited a company to serve in the British expedition against the French in New France – an expedition that, as it turned out, was unsuccessful. His company then guarded against incursions into the northern parts of the British colonies.

After King George’s War ended in 1748, Wolcott returned home – to first study medicine with Dr. Alexander Wolcott - his brother. However, he never had the opportunity to practice medicine. He turned to the study of law when he was appointed the sheriff of newly created Litchfield county in 1751. Wolcott held the position of county sheriff for twenty years while simultaneously being a member of the lower house of the Connecticut colonial legislature in 1764, 1767-68, and 1770. He was a member of the upper house of the colonial and, later, state legislature from 1771 – 1786. He also held the job of both probate judge (1772 - 1781) and county judge (1774 - 1778).

In January 1759 Wolcott married Laura Collins, whose ancestors were among the first settlers of New England and Connecticut. The National Cyclopedia of American Biography stated that...

"She was a woman of almost masculine strength of mind, energetic and thrifty; and while Governor Wolcott was away from home, attended to the management of their farm, educated their younger children, and made it possible for her husband to devote his energies to his country."

Their marriage would last until her death in 1794, which was followed by his three years later. They had five children – three boys and two girls – though one of the boys died in infancy.

Wolcott found that having Laura as his wife freed him for his public interests. Yet he was compassionate enough to express concern for her. He would write to her from Philadelphia in 1776:

"MY DEAR--I feel much concerned for the Burden which necessarily devolves upon you. I hope you will make it as light as possible.... You may easily believe that the situation of publick Affairs is such that the critical Moment is near which will perhaps decide the Fate of the Country; and that the business of Congress is very interesting. Yet if any excuse can reasonably be allowed for my returning, I shall think myself justified in doing so. The circumstances of my affairs demand it."

Wolcott remained involved in the state militia, rising to the rank of colonel by 1774. It was, in part, because of this that the Connecticut legislature named him as a commissary for Connecticut troops and in 1775 the Continental Congress designated him as a commissioner of Indian affairs for the northern department. He worked with the Iroquois in New York to try and gain their neutrality in the escalating conflict with England. He also dealt with arbitrating land disputes between Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York and Vermont.

In 1775 Wolcott was sent as a representative of Connecticut to the Continental Congress. Wolcott, a strong supporter for independence, would be absent at both the voting for independence and the formal signing of the Declaration in August. However, he added his signature sometime after his return to Congress in October 1776.

Wolcott devoted part of each year to militia duty, being promoted to Brigadier General in the New York campaigns of 1776-1777, which culminated with the surrender of British general John Burgoyne at Saratoga to Continental general Horatio Gates. In 1779 Major General Wolcott defended the Connecticut seacoast against raids led by the Royal Governor of New York, William Tryon.

After the war was over, Wolcott remained active on the national and state level. He helped to negotiate the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, New York, in 1784. In that treaty the Iroquois ceded to the new United States some of the New York and Pennsylvania lands. He also negotiated a treaty where the Wyandottes gave up their lands in Ohio. On the state level Wolcott was elected annually as Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut from 1787 to 1796. In 1796 he was elected to the office of Governor. He would die prior to completing his term as governor.

He died on December 1, 1797 - his 71st birthday - and was buried in East Cemetery, Litchfield.

WEB RESOURCES:

Colonial Hall
Connecticut Magazine
Connecticut Society SAR
Find A Grave
National Park Service
Virtualology
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait: Wikipedia
Portrait of Laura Collins Wolcott, by Ralph Earl

Portrait as Governor, Connecticut Sons of the Revolutionary War

Gravesite, Find A Grave, by Eric Landers
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November 26: Mary Edwards Walker and the Medal of Honor

She was a controversial figure her entire adult life – often living up to her nickname of ‘Contrary Mary’. She was the second licensed woman doctor in the United States, graduating four and one half years after Elizabeth Blackwell achieved her degree.

Mary Edwards Walker was born on November 26, 1832, in Oswego, New York. Her parents were Alvah Walker and his wife Vesta, who owned a farm in the community. She was the youngest of the five Walker daughters, and had one younger brother. The Walker children - Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, Cynthia and one son, Alvah Jr. – grew up in a household which held lively discussions on the issues of the day.

Because farming was labor-intensive, Walker worked in the fields, plowing, planting, and harvesting – along with the myriad of other farm duties that fell on the shoulders of a small farming family. All of the Walker girls wore men’s clothing – pants and shirt – while working in the fields of the thirty-three acre farm because their father felt that the traditional women’s dress was too restrictive and confining for work. Their father was a carpenter as well as a farmer, and was involved in many of the reform movements that sprung up in the nation during the 1830s. He also became a self-taught country doctor in a frontier region that had few doctors. He was an abolitionist as that movement was established – his farm was a ‘station’ on the underground railroad - as well as a supporter of education and equality for his daughters. He wanted all of his children to have a profession to support themselves with.

Walker attended the local elementary school that her father built and where her mother was the teacher. She also attended Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York – where she received additional instruction in grammar, mathematics, philosophy, and hygiene. After graduation in 1852 she entered the work force as a teacher in the village of Minetto, New York.

However, Walker had developed a desire for an unusual career for a mid-19th century American woman. After watching and assisting her father as he ‘doctored’ injured farmers and farm hands, she decided that she wanted to become a trained doctor.

In December 1853, Walker enrolled in the Syracuse Medical College – an institution that was the first medical college in the U.S. to equally accept men and women as students. She spent three thirteen-week semesters involved in medical training, paying $55 for each semester. She graduated – the only woman in her class and the second licensed woman doctor in the United States - in June 1853.

She married a fellow medical student, Albert Miller in 1856. Miller was a free thinker in the mode of Walker’s father. They married in Oswego with Walker wearing trousers, a frock coat, and cutting any reference from the ceremony of the bride’s obligations to obey her spouse. She rejected the idea that a woman was mandated to have a man’s protection. As she later said: “You are not our protectors. If you were, who would there be to protect us from?” She begrudgingly changed her name – to Dr. Mary Miller-Walker. As she commented:

“A woman’s name is as dear to her as a man’s is to him, and custom ought, and will prevail, where each will keep their own names when they marry, and allow the children at a certain age to decide which name they will prefer.”

They set up a joint practice in Rome, New York, but the practice was not overly successful. Women physicians were not generally trusted or respected in the mid-nineteenth century. By March 1861, Walker found out that her husband was an adulterer, and had separated from him. The final divorce would be granted five years later.

When the American Civil War broke out, Walker went to Washington, D.C. to join the army as a surgeon and medical officer for the Union forces. Her request was denied, so she volunteered her services, being accepted as an acting assistant surgeon at the hospital set up at the U.S. Patent Office. The hospital was nicknamed the Indiana Hospital because of the number of patients there who were from Indiana. At one point, her superior, Dr. J.N. Green, recommended that she receive a commission in the Army as a doctor, but it was never granted.

Her duties were varied: serving in the operating room, accompanying badly wounded soldiers home, and, when she saw the need, organizing the Women’s Relief Association which provided temporary lodging for the mothers, wives, and children of soldiers who were in Washington.

By 1862 she had gained a second medical degree (from Hygeia Therapeutic College in New York), and November found her with the Union Army of the Potomac, serving as a civilian surgeon at the battle of Fredericksburg.

By September 1863 she had been appointed as the assistant surgeon in the 52nd Ohio Infantry, Army of the Cumberland, by General George Thomas – an appointment which was protested by the other (male) doctors in the army. She designed and wore a modified officers uniform, and always carried two pistols. Besides serving the Union forces, Walker also often went into Confederate territory to help civilians – leading some to think that she was also acting as a spy.

On one of her excursions into Confederate territory Walker was captured by the Confederates and imprisoned at Castle Thunder, near Richmond, Virginia. While there she was able talk the Confederates into providing more wheat and cabbage into the rations for the prisoners. Taken prisoner in April 1864, she was exchanged in August 1864, returning to the 52nd Ohio as a surgeon.

On October 5, 1864, Walker was commissioned as an acting assistant surgeon, becoming the first female commissioned surgeon in the Army. She would be discharged on June 15, 1865.

Walker became the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor when, upon the recommendation of both Generals William Sherman and George Thomas, President Andrew Johnson signed the bill authorizing the medal. The citation read in part:

“Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, "has rendered valuable service to the Government, and her efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways," and that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Major-Generals Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon; and Whereas by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service, a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existing laws, be conferred upon her; and
Whereas in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services and sufferings should be made:
It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her.”

Even the giving of the medal would be a controversy in Walker’s life. In 1917 Congress revised the standards for receiving the medal to be based on “actual combat with an enemy”, taking away the medals from 911 individuals. Walker refused to give back her medal, wearing it until she died two years later. After a long battle by her great-grandniece Ann Walker, President Jimmy Carter restored the medal in 1977.

Walker continued her medical practice after the war. She also travelled as a lecturer and wrote several books dealing with women’s rights and women’s dress. Concerning women’s suffrage, she stated: “You imprison women for crimes you have forbidden women to legislate upon.”

After her father died in 1880 Walker moved back to her girlhood home, the farm in Oswego. She lived there until she died in 1919 at the age of 86, and was buried in trousers and a topcoat in the Rural Cemetery, Oswego County, New York.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:

Walker, Dale L., Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond
Doherty, Karen, Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients

WEB RESOURCES:

About North Georgia
Above and Beyond
American Association of University Women
American Civil War
Find A Grave
Medal of Honor Citations
National Library of Medicine
Oswego Library
Wikipedia
Women in History

PHOTO SOURCES:

Walker Portrait of Mary Walker: Wikipedia
Walker Bloomer Dress of 1860s: National Library of Medicine
Walker Portrait of Mary Walker sitting: Library of Congress
Walker Picture of Mary Walker standing: National Library of Medicine
Gravesite of Mary Edwards Walker: Find A Grave

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Nov. 23: Edward Rutledge, Youngest Man to Sign the Declaration of Independence

He was the youngest man to sign the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776, and would wind up in a British prison as a result. A political conservative, he was able to postpone the first vote on independence before reversing himself and joining a month later in voting for independence.

Edward Rutledge was born on November 23, 1749, to Dr. John Rutledge, an Irish immigrant and physician, and Sarah Hext Rutledge, who was “lady of respectable family, and large fortune.” The Rutledge family lived near Charleston, South Carolina, and Edward was the fifth son, and the youngest of seven children. He would never know his father, who died on December 25, 1750.

Not much is known about Rutledge’s youth. With his father deceased, when young Rutledge was old enough for an education, he was placed under the care of David Smith who instructed him in language, reading, and mathematics. Rutledge soon desired to enter the same profession as his older brother, John – that of lawyer.

Like many of the wealthy in South Carolina – including fellow Declaration of Independence signers Middleton, Lynch, and Heyward – Rutledge was sent to England in 1769 as a young man to study law. He would study law at Temple, be admitted to the English bar, and returned to Charleston in 1773 where he set up a legal practice.

With the ever-increasing agitation over British taxation and reduction of colonial rights, Charleston in 1773 was becoming concerned about losing its inherent English liberties and right of self-government. It was during this time – Rutledge’s first year after returning to Charleston from England - that Rutledge won acclaim and became a popular local hero by winning the release of a newspaper publisher named Thomas Powell. Powell had been imprisoned by the Crown for printing an article critical of the upper house of the South Carolina colonial legislature – a house that was dominated during this tumultuous time by Loyalists to the Crown.

In 1774 the Whigs of South Carolina named Rutledge as one of their five delegates to the First Continental Congress. Rutledge (who was only 25 at the time) would serve his first congressional term along side of his older brother, John, and his father-in-law, Henry Middleton. Rutledge did not make a significant impression when he first arrived at the Congress. Rutledge was was nearly bald despite his age and "inclining toward corpulency" as he entered public life. As John Adams (who wasn’t overly fond of South Carolinians in the first place) wrote:

"Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect Bob-o-Lincoln—a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady; jejeune, inane, and puerile."

However, as he served his associates took more and more notice of his abilities, clear thinking, and logical judgment. By June 1776 Rutledge had become one of the more influential members of the Congress. Rutledge was in favor of colonial rights, but at first was not in favor of independence, and many think that he was responsible for delaying the vote on Richard Henry Lee’s proposal for independence on June 7, 1776. However, when he realized that the resolution for independence would carry and that unaminity was needed if independence was to succeed, he led the South Carolina delegation in voting for independence, becoming the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In September Rutledge would accompany John Adams and Benjamin Franklin on a peace mission to Staten Island, where they were to negotiate with the British Admiral, Lord Richard Howe. Lord Richard Howe, and is brother General William Howe, were trying to resolve the differences between the colonies and the Mother country. However, the peace mission failed, and two months later – in November 1776 – Rutledge would leave Congress to return to Charleston and his law practice.

In 1778 Rutledge would accept a seat in the State legislature. The next year he was reelected to the Continental Congress, but his military duties prevented his attending. In February 1779, as a captain of artillery in the South Carolina militia, he took part in the defeat of the British at Port Royal Island (South Carolina). The following year found him in Charleston, a city besieged by the British. The siege lasted from April 1 to May 12, 1780, and resulted in the capture of over 5,000 colonial troops – and three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence: Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward, Jr., and Edward Rutledge.

Rutledge was imprisoned by the British at St. Augustine, Florida. He was exchanged in July, 1781, when he returned to Charleston. Returning to his law practice, he was reelected to the State legislature from 1782 to 1798. Being conservative in nature he joined the Federalist Party.

His private life flourished, and he became wealthy through his law practice and investments. In 1792 his wife of 18 years – Henrietta - died, and he remarried. He had married Henrietta Middleton (sister to fellow Declaration of Independence signer Arthur Middleton) on March 1, 1774, and the couple had three children. His second wife was Mary Shubrick Eveleigh, who was the widow of Nicholas Eveleigh, comptroller of the treasury of the United States during Washington's administration.

In 1798 Rutledge was chosen a governor of South Carolina. However, due to poor health, he died before the end of his term. Rutledge died on January 23, 1800. He was buried in St. Philip’s Church Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.

LOCAL LIBRARY RESOURCES:
There are no biographies of Edward Rutledge available at our local library.

WEB RESOURCES:

Colonial Hall
Find A Grave
Focus on the Founding Fathers
Forgotten Founders
John and Edward Rutledge
National Park Service
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Edward Rutledge

Rutledge House
Burial Site photo by Janet Greentree
Signature, Founding Father Quotes

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