Scottsdale Civil War Round Table, Inc. 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation Founded 1978 2017 MARCH THE GRAPESHOT KYLE WICHTENDAHL To Care He Who Has Borne the Battle: Medicine in the American Civil War March 21, 2017 6:40 PM Scottsdale Civic Center Library (Auditorium) Kyle Wichtendahl is currently a graduate student and teaching assistant at the University of Maryland, where he is earning his PhD in 19th Century U.S. History. Prior to returning to the University, he served as Education Coordinator for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland; and its two satellite sites: the Pry House Field Hospital Museum at Antietam National Battlefield and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, DC. Kyle earned his degree in history from St. Mary s College of Maryland. He is currently President of the Harpers Ferry Civil War Round Table. Kyle is a native Marylander and currently resides in Catonsville, Maryland; a western suburb of Baltimore. Kyle's great great great grandfather served in the 59th Indiana for three years during the Civil War, including the campaign against Vicksburg and Sherman's March to the Sea.
PRESIDENT Dr. John Bamberl 480-699-5844 VICE PRESIDENT: Shelly Dudley SECRETARY / GRAPESHOT Karen Becraft 480-991-2668 TREASURER Charles Madigan PROGRAM CHAIRMAN Don Swanson BOARD MEMBERS (thru 5/2017) Henry Potosky & Don Swanson BOARD MEMBERS (thru 5/2018) Dean Becraft, Paul Knouse George Mitchell, Cal Thompson, Michael Harris, Richard Howley & Brad Cox COMMITTEES Book Table: Richard Howley Editorial: Karen Becraft Finance: Paul Knouse Genealogy: Brad Cox Greeters: Cal Thompson Membership: John Bamberl Program: Don Swanson Public Relations: John Bamberl Webmaster: Drew Moraca.meets @ Scottsdale Civic Center Library (Auditorium) 3839 N Drinkwater Blvd Scottsdale AZ 3rd Tuesday of the month September thru May 6:40 PM - 8:45 PM $35 Annual Dues (individual) $45 Annual Dues (family) EVERYONE WELCOME www.scottsdalecwrt.org mailing address: SCWRT #274 7349 N Via Paseo Del Sur Ste 515 Scottsdale AZ 85258-3749 e-mail: scottsdalecwrt@gmail.com Apr 18 May 16 UPCOMING MEETINGS William C. Jack Davis The Confederate Kardashian: Loreta Janeta Velasquez - Media Celebrity, Con Artist, and the Making of a Civil War Myth William Bonekemper The Myth of the Lost Cause: False Remembrance of the Civil War GOOD TIME. TO BECOME A NEW MEMBER Join now which will include membership for the rest of this season 2016-2017 and the next 2017-2018! Help us to continue to bring quality programing to our monthly meetings with your membership dues! Thank you!
ATTENTION! SCWRT Member, Dr. Warren Breisblatt will share with us an exhibit of his Civil War medical instruemnts. Don t miss seeing this exciting collection starting at 5:00 PM March 21st before the March meeting. IMPROVE YOUR CIVIL WAR VOCABULARY Enfilade: To fire along the length of an enemy s battle line. Foraging: A term used for living off the land, as well as plundering committed by soldiers. Goober Pea: A common Southern term for peanut. Graybacks: A slang term for lice or occasionally an offensive Yankee slang term for Confederate soldiers. Powder Monkey: A sailor (sometimes a child) who carried explosives from the ship s magazine to the ship s guns. Shebangs: The crude shelters Civil War prisoners of war built to protect themselves from the sun and rain. 1862.. MARCH DURING THE CIVIL WAR -Mar 3 Abraham Lincoln appoints Andrew Johnson to be military governor of Tennessee. -Mar 6 Battle of Pea Ridge 1863.. -Mar 13 An explosion in the Confederate Ordinance Laboratory on Brown s Island in the James River near Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond kills 69 people, 62 of them women and young girls. A friction primer exploded. -Mar 17 Battle of Kelly s Ford 1864.. -Mar 21 Abraham Lincoln signs legislation allowing Nevada and Colorado to become states even though they don t meet population requirements. 1865 -Mar 23 Abraham Lincoln leaves Washington for Ulysses S. Grant s headquarters in City Point. -Mar 27 Lincoln held a council of war with Ulysses G. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and David Porter on the River Queen at City Point.
CIVIL WAR IN THE SOUTHWEST MARCH 18-19, 2017 Picacho Peak State Park Re-enactment of an Arizona Civil War skirmish and the New Mexico battles of Glorieta and Val Verde happen the weekend of March 18th & 19th. Complete with lifestyles of the soldiers in the southwest during the 1860 s and with more than 200 re-enactors, the camp will come alive transporting you back in time. Parking lot opens at 9:30 AM with entrance fee of $10 per vehicle for up to 4 people. Each additional person is $3. No charge for children age 13 and under. For more info to this exciting event: https://azstateparks.com/picacho/events/picacho-peak-civil-war-in-the-southwest WIN A TWO YEAR MEMBERSHIP TO THE SCWRT! We are on a roll! At present time there are 95 generous members of the SCWRT that have made donations above and beyond their membership fee. 100 We are trying to set an all time record for donations this year.so anyone who is the 100th person to make a donation to the SCWRT will win a 2 year membership. ( for seasons: 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 ). This offer is for anyone new or an existing member. Send in your donation today for a chance to win!!!!! SCWRT #274 7349 N Via Paseo Del Sur Ste 515 Scottsdale AZ 85258
LINCOLN S ADDRESS AT COOPER UNION -By- Mary K. Lannon SCWRT Member Lincoln s address at Cooper Union was the speech that propelled him to the presidency. Delivered on February 27, 1860 in the Great Hall of Cooper Union in Manhattan with over nine hundred people in attendance, the speech was some 7,715 words in all, ten times longer than his Second Inaugural address. For all of the acknowledged importance of the Cooper Union address, it remains one of Lincoln s least explored and least understood works. And yet Lincoln put more research and careful preparation into this speech than to any other of his life. Photo of Lincoln taken February 27, 1860 in New York City by Mathew Brady, the day of his famous Cooper Union Speech. (Courtesy of Wikipedia) The limited attention and analysis which the Cooper Union address has received may well be linked to its intimidating length. In addition, it is quite unlike anything else that Lincoln wrote either before or after. As Harold Holzer has recognized in his detailed account of the address, it is infinitely more restrained, intricate, and statesmanlike than the stem-winding oratory with which Lincoln earned his reputation as a speaker in the West. At the same time, it is far less melancholic than the celebrated speeches he would deliver as president throughout the Civil War. Holzer eloquently identifies the Cooper Union address as the rhetorical watershed, the transforming moment separating the prairie stump speaker and the presidential orator. That this speech represents such a transformation in Lincoln as a political figure, while at the same time paving his way to the presidency, marks it as one of Lincoln s most critical works, without which Lincoln may well have drifted into obscurity. Lincoln knew well the importance of the address he would give, and the political challenges confronting him both at home in the West and across the country, from Democrats and Republicans alike. As Michael Leff and Gerald Mohrmann have recognized in their rhetorical analysis of the Cooper Union address, Lincoln was running hard, if humbly, for political office, and while he spoke for his party, he spoke first for his own nomination. Holzer has agreed, stating that Lincoln was neither ambivalent nor indifferent about the presidency, and that he understood the frenzied, partisan press that would simultaneously praise and ridicule his performance. We can be sure that Lincoln tailored his speech to the press and those who would read it in print just as carefully as he tailored it to those who would hear it that night..continued next page
Holzer has identified five goals with which Lincoln approached his first public appearance in New York. First, he knew he must demonstrate his historical and legal expertise to support his opposition to the expansion of slavery, and to show that he was a thoughtful statesman rather than a simple frontier speechmaker. Second, he knew he must out-perform the two Western speakers who had preceded him in what was a series of speeches organized as part of a stop-seward movement: Cassius Clay and Frank Blair. Third, Lincoln knew he must present himself as the principal Republican alternative to Seward, a New Yorker. This required separating himself both from Seward s argument of irrepressible conflict over slavery, as well as John Brown s radicalism. Fourth, Lincoln knew that even as he advocated reconciliation with the South, he must also reaffirm his devotion to the antislavery cause. Fifth, he must again, and most convincingly, argue against Stephen Douglas and his popular sovereignty doctrine. As Holzer has summarized it, Lincoln s mission at Cooper Union was symbolically, peremptorily, to defeat two formidable potential opponents simultaneously: Seward and Douglas, the presumptive nominees for each party. Lincoln s speech is divided into three sections. In the first, he associates himself and Republicans with the founding fathers and Constitutional principle, thereby dissociating rival candidates and groups from those fathers and that principle. In particular, Lincoln counters the assertion by Douglas that the founding fathers had endorsed slavery, and that they had understood this question just as well and even better than we do now. Lincoln then embarks upon a detailed chain of inductive evidence. From the Northwest Ordinance of 1784 to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Lincoln lists seven statues regulating slavery in the territories, articulating the voting record of twenty-three of the fathers. Noting that these fathers were bound by official responsibility and their corporal oaths to uphold the Constitution, Lincoln argues that the implication of their affirmative votes is beyond question. As Leff and Morhmann have recognized, Lincoln s argument holds that to conclude that the twenty-one who voted in favor of regulation would have condoned federal regulation if they thought it unconstitutional would be to accuse these fathers of, in Lincoln s words, gross political impropriety and willful perjury. This first section makes up nearly half of Lincoln s speech, by which time he has associated himself and his audience with the principles and actions of the founding fathers, while at the same time dissociating Douglas and those who would support him from the very same. (Courtesy of Wikipedia) In the second section of his speech, Lincoln addressed the Southern people in an argument directed against an entire section of the country not in attendance. Indeed, knowing that the coming election would be won or lost in the North, it seems odd that Lincoln would shift from his purpose to those who would not listen, even if they could hear him. In fact, Lincoln here uses a subtle but forceful technique. As Holzer has noted, Lincoln makes an offer to speak to the South, knowing they will not print what he says, and immediately goes above the Southern audience to direct his message to the North. As Leff and Morhmann have recognized, this enables Lincoln to create a mock debate between Republicans and the South, a debate in which he becomes spokesman for the Republicans, thereby strengthening his association with them..continued next page
The crux of Lincoln s argument here is the battle for alignment with the principles of the founding fathers. Lincoln argues that resistance to the spread of slavery qualifies as genuine conservatism, and that anything less is revolutionary. Moving through a series of specific charges made by the South, Lincoln addresses sectionalism, radicalism, agitation of the slavery question, and slave insurrections, refuting each. He is careful to distance himself from the radicalism of John Brown s raid, arguing that Brown s peculiar effort was so absurd that the slaves saw plainly enough it could not succeed. Lincoln continues, But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights, rights which Lincoln has just proven are not granted by the Constitution or the fathers. In the third and final section of his speech, Lincoln addresses a few words now to the Republicans, in which he summarizes his historical arguments, defines his political cause, and appeals for unwavering support from the Republican rank and file. As David Donald has recognized in his biography of Lincoln, Lincoln argued that Republicans must avoid both the moral indifference with which Douglas approached the slavery issues, as well as the proslavery zeal of the Southern radicals. Republicans must bravely and effectively persist in preventing the spread of slavery, confining it to the states where it already existed. Lincoln brings his argument full cycle, concluding his address with a final declaration of moral outrage and pledge to duty. As Holzer has described it, after devoting so much time to the negative argument, and what is wrong with the proslavery extension position, Lincoln culminates his speech by turning to what is right in the antislavery position: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Lincoln s address at Cooper Union was well received by the audience that night, and published the next day in three New York newspapers. It was almost immediately published in pamphlet form, issued and reissued as a Republican tract. As Donald has recognized, it was a superb political move for an unannounced presidential hopeful. Lincoln had appeared in Seward s home state, sponsored by a group largely loyal to Chase, and had shrewdly avoided any reference to either of these rivals for the Republican nomination. Donald further recognizes that even Lincoln s language contributed to the effect he sought; the careful structure of the speech, the absence of incendiary rhetoric, even the laborious recital of the voting records of the founding fathers suggested reason and stability, rather than fanaticism. Lincoln had established himself as a qualified and viable candidate. If prior to his Cooper Union address Lincoln made no mention of his interest in the presidency, upon his return he made no effort to conceal his desire for the nomination: I will be entirely frank. The taste is in my mouth a little. Note: As the length and complexity of Lincoln s Cooper Union address is beyond the scope of this piece, to the interested reader is recommended Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President by Harold Holzer, and Lincoln at Cooper Union: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Text by Michael Leff and Gerald Mohrmann.