THE PASSING AWAY OF ONE ERA

The origins and various applications of “Dixie Land” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” along with the necessity of sacrifice during the Civil War (l861–1865)

One headstone reads: “DANIEL DECATUR EMMETT (1815–1904) WHOSE SONG ‘DIXIE LAND’ INSPIRED THE COURAGE AND DEVOTION OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE AND NOW THRILLS THE HEARTS OF A UNITED NATION.”

Photograph of Dan Emmett in
blackface, probably early 1860s,
http://en.wikipedia.org

Ohio-born Dan Emmett left home first chance he got, enlisting in the army at eighteen only to be discharged as underage a year later. He then joined the circus—if not the army, the circus, right?—and, in 1843, founded one of the first blackface professional minstrel groups: “Dan Emmett’s Virginia Minstrels”—“Virginia” to imply firsthand knowledge of working as a field hand, which Emmett actually knew next to nothing about.

By then he was a sort of one-man “Ed Sullivan Show” meets “America’s Got Talent.” He played the fiddle. He sang. He told jokes. That was his shtick.

In the late 1850s, after joining Bryant’s Minstrels, Dan Bryant, who put the Bryant in Bryant’s, asked Emmett to write a ‘walkaround’ to close their show in a rousing fashion, Emmett’s response was “I wish I was in ‘Dixie’s Land,’” which debuted on April 4, 1859 at New York City’s Mechanic’s Hall. Not only was it rousing, it was an instant hit that went on to achieve nationwide fame even as the nation was pretty much coming apart at the seams.

And, yet, if you were to talk to neighbors and town folk, who went to see “The Snowden Family Band,” they’d tell you there’s more to the story. There always is.

Grand Concert! Handbill for the
Snowden Family Band (Cropped),
http://en.wikipedia.org

Thomas and Ellen Snowden were free blacks, who lived in Knox County, Ohio, not too far from where Dan Emmett was born and raised. Right around the time that Dan was hitting it big, they formed a band with their seven children.

“Traveling regularly to farming communities roughly within a seventy-five mile radius, the band also played within their home county for both black and white audiences. In contrast to the advance work by minstrels and other professional entertainers, the Snowdens used word of mouth and a simple handbill to gather their audiences at churches, community halls, family reunions and picnics.” They became known far and wide as fine musicians, particularly Ben and Lew, since they were the only members of the family, who lived see the 20th century. Andrew Lewis, an elderly, Knox County resident, remembering the 1930s, observed: “There was a lot of talk about the Snowden brothers...they were musical, everybody knew them.”

Ben and Lew Snowden on the banjo & the fiddle in the second-story gable
of their home, Clinton, Knox County, Ohio, c. 1890s, http://en.wikipedia.org

 

Whether Dan Emmett wrote “Dixie” all by himself or got by with a little help, conscious or not, from the Snowdens remains unclear.

Their headstone reads: “BEN AND LEW SNOWDEN/THEY TAUGHT DIXIE TO DAN EMMETT.”

*            *            *            *

The history of the song itself, however, is quite clear.

On February 18, 1861, when the provisional but soon to be permanent president of the newly formed Confederate States of America delivered his “unmemorable inaugural address” in Montgomery, Alabama the soon-to-be-moved-to-Richmond capital, “…‘Dixie’ began its career as the unofficial Confederate anthem.” (Dan Emmett, a staunch Union supporter, had regrets: “If I had known to what use they were going to put my song, I will be damned if I’d have written it.”

Julia Ward Howe, Courtesy of the
New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

“Patriotic songs aligned martial spirit and sectional loyalties to become anthems of war. In the North, ‘Hail, Columbia,’ ‘Yankee Doodle,’[and] the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’… would give voice to the Union cause” as did ‘John Brown’s Body,’ ‘We’re Coming, Father Abraham’ and a contribution that perhaps, only could have come from Boston’s well-bred, “red-haired, vivacious,” highly educated (fluent in seven languages—eight if you count philosophy) and rather arrogant (“I...have fears that I may not be after all, the greatest woman alive.”) abolitionist and poet: Julia Ward Howe.

The Blue Passion Flower, 1807,
Courtesy of the New York Public
Library, www.nypl.org

In December 1853 Passion Flowers, her first collection of poetry, was published anonymously by Ticknor, Reed and Fields, one of the most highly regarded houses at that time. (Fields, who would, a decade later, advise Louisa May Alcott: “Stick to your teaching; you can’t write,” had tried to convince Julia to publish it under her name.) As a collection it was mediocre—“there is little true poetry in Passion Flowers”—and at the same time shocking enough to sell (infidelity, etc.), the age-old reason for anonymity. Even though everybody in town knew she wrote it—Julia had told all her friends—the man, who probably would have been most interested to know, didn’t: her husband.

Samuel Gridley Howe, date
unknown, http://en.wikipedia.org

Samuel Gridley Howe “…took it very hard.” He considered the entire enterprise—the writing and publishing—a personal betrayal.

Ambitious and adventurous, after graduating from Harvard Medical School, Howe served for seven years as a soldier/surgeon, helping the Greeks in their war of independence against the Turks. He became the first director of the Perkins School for the Blind in 1832 (where “…[h]is greatest triumph was with a deaf and blind student named Laura Bridgeman…”) and nearly three decades later, one of the “secret-six,” backers, financial and otherwise, of John Brown’s failed raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. (The raid, designed to ignite a slave uprising that would end slavery in the United States, instead brought on the Civil War.)

Liberation, apparently, was fine for Greeks, slaves and blind people, but a woman’s place was in the home, giving birth to and raising children. (The Howes would eventually have seven.) Julia, whose mother died during childbirth, viewed the issue quite differently: “How I do dread another nursing! It is so wearing and so uncomfortable,” she would write to her sister. Their marriage was “…one of the great unhappy couplings in the annals of American matrimony.”

*            *            *            *

In mid-November, 1861 Howe, a member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, brought Julia with him to Washington D.C., where he was sent to inspect the hygienic conditions of Massachusetts troops along with Reverend James Freeman Clarke and Massachusetts Governor John Andrew.

While they were attending a grand review outside Washington, a Confederate attack forced everyone to retreat. During the carriage ride back to the capital, they listened to the soldiers singing “John Brown’s Body” (a campfire spiritual) as they marched. The song, which, did not refer to that John Brown, was already the Union army’s most popular in spite of (or maybe because of) the crude lyrics.

John Brown Going to Execution, Courtesy of the
New York Public Library, www.nypl.org

 

Rev. Clarke suggested that Julia, as a poet, might pen new lyrics to the same tune, elevate it, make it more meaningful and, in the process, create an anthem for the Union that would rival “Dixie.”

Typical Guest Room, Willard Hotel, 1969,
Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division,
Library of Congress, HABS DC,WASH,542--20

That night back at the Willard Hotel she began:

“I awoke on the gray of the morning twilight, and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’ So with a sudden effort I sprang out of bed and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. I had learned to do this when, on previous occasions, attacks of versification had visited me in the night and I feared to have recourse to the light lest I should wake the baby, who slept near me…. At this time, having completed my writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, ‘I like this better than most things that I have written.’”

A Field of High-Grade Cotton, c.1911, Courtesy
of the New York Public Library, www.nypl.org

“If ‘Dixie’ was elegiac, a nostalgic evocation of cotton fields, buckwheat cakes and gay deceivers, the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was its antithesis: apocalyptic, ironfisted, and almost industrial in its summoning of God’s legions to march forth and crush iniquity.”

The results of that sleepless night first appeared as a poem in the February 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine.

As James M. McPherson observed: “The words of the ‘Battle Hymn,’ next to those of the Gettysburg Address, have come down through the years as the noblest expression of what the North was fighting for.”

*            *            *            *

“Thank God I have lived to see this,” Abraham Lincoln reflected. “It seems I have been dreaming a horrid nightmare for years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”

Ruins of Richmond, April, 1865,
Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress,
LOT 4162, no. 222

On April 4, 1865, with the end near, he and his twelve-year-old son Tad travelled to the Confederate capital, which had been captured the day before.

“Lincoln’s motive in going to Richmond was not just natural curiosity about the citadel of the Confederacy; it was a desire to help in the process of restoring peace.”

Even though their arrival was informal and earlier than scheduled, word spread and former slaves hastened to behold the scarcely believable sight of the great emancipator himself, falling on their knees, singing his praises and attempting to kiss his hands—all of which caused this truly modest man much discomfort.

Tad Lincoln, Matthew Brady portrait,
Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress,
DIG-ppmsca-19225

Hand-in-hand with Tad, Lincoln walked down Main Street and toured the city, much of which had been devastated in the fires ignited by retreating rebel forces. Receiving reports that he was in danger, he declared: “I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.”

As they were preparing to depart, he asked the band to play “Dixie,” saying: “That tune is now Federal property; it belongs to us, and, at any rate, it is good to show the rebels that with us in power they will be free to hear it again.”

By April 10th Lincoln and Tad were home again and news of General Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox Court House the day before had reached Washington.

Surrender of General Lee, Courtesy of the New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

 
“Throngs of people collected around the White House, filling the north portico, the carriageways and the sidewalks.”

It was a day of jubilation and noise.

All Federal departments were closed, so the “…Treasury employees gathered in the hall of their building...before marching across to the White House to serenade the…President with the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ Impromptu processions sprang up everywhere, the whole converging on the White House, where the President, serenaded repeatedly, responded with brief sentences.”

The Grand Review of the Army,
Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress,
B811- 3397 [P&P] LOT 4198

Once again he asked the bands to play “Dixie.”

At the same time, the crowds outside the White House, “like an agitated sea of hats, faces, and arms” continued to call out for him. “When one of the larger processions appeared, young Tad Lincoln was seen waving a captured flag” from “the well known[, second-story] window from which the president always spoke.” The crowds roared, and Lincoln, at last, came out.

*            *            *            *

The flag Tad was waving was no ordinary flag. It had been captured on the morning of May 24, 1861 by 24-year-old Colonel Elmer Ellsworth.

E.E. Ellsworth, Courtesy of the New
York Public Library, www.nypl.org

“[F]ive foot six, quick motioned,” serious, independent and very impetuous, Ellsworth had joined the local militia while living in Chicago, Illinois, and “…like a basketball genius from the mean streets of the Bronx, or a home-run hitter sprouting amid the cornfields of Iowa, the oyster peddler’s son from upstate New York turned out to be a natural” and “an uncompromising disciplinarian.” In no time he became the company’s highly respected, wildly popular and national recognized leader and drillmaster: “…it was said that at the moment he was the most talked-about young man in the country.”

Abraham Lincoln met Ellsworth in Springfield before his May 18, 1860 nomination and took an instant liking to the young man, which was very much reciprocal. Ellsworth worked as a clerk in Lincoln’s law office, hit the campaign trail (writing his fiancée that fall: “Yesterday I launched my bark on the troubled sea of politics….”) and even travelled East with the family for the inauguration. Indeed, he was like family to Mary and the two boys and like a son to Lincoln; “…in some ways their relationship resembled that of a medieval knight and his squire.”

A group of the 11th New York Volunteer
Infantry Regiment in a Confederate POW
Camp, http://en.wikipedia.org

When the war began, Ellsworth, who had no intention of watching this or any other war from behind a desk, ventured eastward with a characteristically bold plan. He would, with the help of a letter of introduction from the president, recruit and train the bravest of New York City firemen for a volunteer regiment. On April 29th, they departed for the nation’s capital, arriving on May 2nd.

Twenty-one days later, Virginia’s electorate ratified the state convention’s earlier decision to secede and Lincoln ordered that Alexandria, Virginia, which was only eight miles away, be secured. (In fact, a huge secession banner flying from one of the town’s buildings could be seen from the White House. The President, Mrs. Lincoln and Ellsworth had viewed it through a spyglass. According to Ellsworth’s biographer: “It is said that…Lincoln remarked…that the flag was an insult. How the high-spirited Colonel must have longed to do something about it.”)

Last Letter Written by Elmer
Ellsworth, http://en.wikipedia.org

Ellsworth, of course, “…asked that his regiment, the first volunteer regiment to be sworn in for the whole war, be given a foremost part. The letter he sent his fiancée, composed the night before their departure, was eerily prescient:

“My own darling Kitty, My Regiment is ordered to cross the river & move on Alexandria within six hours. We may meet with a warm reception & my darling among so many careless fellows one is some what likely to be hit.”

The rebels had withdrawn, and a Confederate Colonel had surrendered the town before Ellsworth and his men, part of a Union force totaling 13,000, arrived.

The First Telegram Ever Sent: What
Hath God Wrought? Courtesy of the
New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

Ellsworth detailed a company to destroy the railroad lines between Alexandria and Richmond. Then he and small squad headed for the telegraph office in the center of town. According to embedded New York Herald journalist Edmund House:

“We passed quickly through the streets...when the Colonel first…caught sight of the Secession flag, which has so long swung insolently in full view of the President’s House, [he said,] ‘Boys, we must have that down before we return.’”

Ellsworth’s biographer picks up the story: “Ellsworth seems then to have hesitated for an instant, torn between the necessity of cutting the telegraph wires and the burning desire he felt for many days to tear down that intolerable flag. With a sudden decision, he started rapidly toward the three-story hotel from which the flag was flying.”

Incidents of the War: Marshall House, Alexandria, Virginia, where
Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was shot to death, Courtesy of the New York
Public Library, www.nypl.org

 

When Ellsworth entered the hotel, he charged into the lobby with five soldiers and two journalists in tow, and confronted “...a disheveled-looking man, only half dressed, who apparently had just gotten out of bed.” The man claimed he was only a boarder. How would he know anything about the flag?

Death of Ellsworth, Courtesy of the
New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

Revolver in hand—Ellsworth “…seemed to go everywhere armed as if ready at any moment to engage in single-handed combat against a grizzly bear”—he climbed two flights of stairs to the attic, then a ladder to the roof, where he cut down the flag. On the way back down the man he had spoken to in the lobby (actually the hotel owner, a rabid secessionist, who had commissioned the eighteen-foot-wide flag) stepped out onto the landing and shot him through the heart with a double-barreled shot gun, killing him instantly.

One of Ellsworth’s men retaliated, shooting the owner in the face and stabbing him over and over again with his bayonet as he went down.

*            *            *            *

Abraham Lincoln, Courtesy of the
New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

“On the morning of the funeral, the East Room was crowded with dignitaries: generals, cabinet secretaries, ambassadors. At the end of the service, all rose to file past the open casket. Then the line suddenly stopped.”

For a long time the knight and his wife there beside him stood over the squire. “My boy! My boy!” he asked, “Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?”

Lincoln’s heartfelt letter of condolence to the Ellsworth’s was the first of the many he would have to write in the coming four years.

“Ellsworth’s was the first conspicuous death in that war; he was the first shining victim, just as Lincoln was the last.”

Across the North, flags flew at half-mast. Photos and brief bios circulated. Newspapers ran elegiac eulogies. Song lyrics honored the fallen hero. Babies were named for him, and the number of volunteers spiked beyond expectation.

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth “...was...one of those occasional American figures whose death, even more than his life, seemed to mark the passing away of one era and the beginning of another.”

Repairing the Star-Spangled Banner, Courtesy of the New York
Public Library, www.nypl.org

Bibliography

Brooks, Noah; Washington in Lincoln’s Time. 
Burlingame, Michael; Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1 and 2. 
Clifford, Deborah Pickman; Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of Julia Ward Howe. 
Denenberg, Barry; Lincoln Shot: A President’s Life Remembered. 
Donald, David Herbert; Lincoln. 
Freeberg, Ernest; The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language. 
Foote, Shelby; The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. 1, 2 and 3. 
Gitter, Elisabeth; The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl. 
Goodheart, Adam; 1861: The Civil War Awakening. 
Horwitz, Tony; Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. 
LaPlante, Eve; Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother. 
McPherson, James M.; Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. 
—————.; Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. 
Nathan, Hans; Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. 
Nevins, Allan; The War for the Union, vols. I–IV. 
Oates, Stephen B.; With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. 
Reisen, Harriet; Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. 
Reynolds, David S.; John Brown, Abolitionist; The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. 
Sacks, Howard L. and Judith Rose Sacks; Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Smith, Page; Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 
Soskis, Benjamin; “A Fiery Gospel: How the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ changed America—and the life of the woman who wrote it 150 years ago,” Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/life_and_art/2011/11/julia_ward_howe_s_battle_hymn_of_the_republic_how_it_changed_america_.html. 
Stout, Harry S.; Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War. 
Ward, Geoffrey C. with Ric Burns and Ken Burns; The Civil War: An Illustrated History.
 Ziegler, Valarie H.; Diva Julia: The Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe.

“DANIEL DECATUR….”; Sacks, 1 
“I wish I was….”; Ibid, 3 
“Traveling regularly….”; Ibid, 11 
“There was a….”; Ibid, 87 
“BEN AND LEW….”; Ibid, 160 
“…unmemorable inaugural…”; Goodheart, 355 
“…‘Dixie’ began….”; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 259 
“If I had….”; Nathan, 275
“Patriotic songs….”; Stout, 110 
“…red-haired, vivacious…”; Reynolds, 4 
“I…have….”; Smith, 142 
“…there is little….”; Clifford, 119 
“Stick to your….”; Reisen, 165 
“…took it very hard…”; Ziegler, 78 
“…[h]is greatest….”; Ibid, 26 
“How I do….”; Ibid, 44 
“…one of the great….”; Soskis, 1 
“I awoke….”; Stout, 115 
“If ‘Dixie’….”; Horwitz, 42 
“The words….”; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 265 
“Thank God….”; Ibid, Battle Cry of Freedom, 746 
“Lincoln’s motive….”; Donald, 577 
“I cannot….”; Ibid
“That tune….”; Burlingame, 798, vol. 2 
“Throngs of….”; Donald, 581 
“Treasury employees….”; Nevins, 317 
“…like an agitated….”; Brooks, 225 
“When one of….”; Nevins, 317 
“…the well-known….”; Brooks, 225 
“[F]ive foot….”; Randall, 5 
“…like a….”; Goodheart, 192 
“…an uncompromising…”; Randall, 133 
“…it was said….”; Ibid, 194 
“Yesterday I….”; Ibid, 198 
“…in some ways…”; Burlingame, 177, vol. 2 
“It is said….”’ Randall, 244 
“…asked that….”; Ibid, 249 
“My own….”; Ibid, 252 
“Ellsworth seemed….”; Ibid, 257 
“…a disheveled-looking….”; Goodheart, 285 
“…seemed to….”; Ibid, 279 
“On the….”; Ibid, 291 
“My boy! My boy!”; Burlingame, 177, vol. 2 
“Ellsworth’s was….”; Randall, 273 
“…was…one of….”; Goodheart, 188

A DARK HARBINGER

September 11, 1851, Christiana, Pennsylvania/April 14, 1865, Ford's Theatre

Edward Gorsuch, a fifty-five-year-old, Maryland farmer, did not consider himself a harsh master. Not only did he never use physical punishment, he had freed some slaves and planned to free others at the age of twenty-eight, if not sooner. (Wheat, his main cash crop, wasn’t dependent on year-round labor, like tobacco, so it turned out to be more economical for him to free slaves and hire them back as needed.)

Bags of Wheat and Piles of Straw
from a Steam Harvester, Courtesy
of the New York Public Library,
www.nypl.org

“Neighbors brought him disputes to arbitrate because he was such a fair man. [He] thought that his slaves saw him that way, too.”

So certain was Gorsuch of “his benevolence as their master” that after four of his twelve slaves ran away that in November, 1848, “he…believed if he could meet or communicate directly with them he could get them back.”

He wrote his governor, who wrote to the governor in Pennsylvania, where the former slaves were thought to be living, and requested that Mr. Gorsuch’s “property” be returned to him. Pennsylvania was not, like Maryland, a slave state. No response came.

Years later, in a taped interview, his great-granddaughter “an alert, spry-sounding southern belle with a thick drawl” told the story as it had come down to her; he believed the slaves “…wanted to come home.”

The thing was, they didn’t.

Stephen A. Douglas, who divided
Clay's Compromise of 1850 into
a package of five bills, one
strengthening the Fugitive Slave
Act, http://en.wikipedia.org

Gorsuch, driven by a combination of outrage, insult, stubbornness and naiveté, never gave up the hope of retrieving his “property,” a concept legalized by the Fugitive Slave Act, “…which gave slave owners like Gorsuch the authority to cross into a free state, recapture runaways, and, with the help of federal marshals, return escaped slaves to bondage.”

In early September, 1851 he received a letter from someone in the area, who provided the whereabouts of fugitives in exchange for money; two of the four slaves were living about fifteen miles north of the Maryland border in Christiana, Pennsylvania. With warrants issued under the Fugitive Slave Act, Gorsuch and a well-armed slave hunting party—one of his three sons, a nephew, a cousin and three neighbors—set off for Christiana. Their decision to carry arms “…suggest[s] that [Gorsuch] no longer believed the fugitives really wanted to come home, that he no longer was confident he could convince them to return to this farm.” 

Emily Runs Away, August 4, 1853, a reward posted
for a runaway, Courtesy of the New York
Public Library, www.nypl.org

*            *            *            *

Christiana was a “…Quaker community that had extended a welcome to fugitives.” Many members of the Society of Friends were active in the Underground Railroad, which “…had been shuttling fugitives through [that] part of Maryland to abolitionist communities in Pennsylvania for years. Christiana, a predominantly black settlement in Lancaster Country, Pennsylvania, was a common destination for escaped slaves.”

Levi Coffin, Quaker, abolitionist
leader, whose home is often
called "The Grand Central
Station of the Underground
Railroad,"  http://en.wikipedia.org

Unbeknownst to Gorsuch, as soon as his group crossed the border, the community in general and William Parker in particular had them under close watch. (Gorsuch had never heard of Parker, an escaped slave from Maryland, who had lived in Christiana for twelve years—an oversight.)

Whites admired Parker, and blacks “…regarded him as their leader, their protector, their Moses and their lawgiver, all at once.”

True to his credo—the only response to the white violence perpetrated by slavery was armed resistance—Preacher Parker, as he came to be called, had organized his black followers into a cohesive militant unit.

Green Hill Plantation, Slave Auction
Block, Campbell County, Virginia,
Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, 
HABS VA,16-LONI.V,1J--2

There had been any number of confrontations, in recent months, with slave catchers who swept into the area and broke into homes in order to forcibly abduct blacks, oftentimes carrying off whole families in the middle of the night, dragging them down South to the auction block or in some cases, former owners. (Whether all of the captives had been slaves before seems to be beside the point.) Parker and his organization fought them, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, but they always fought.

Parker’s wife Eliza, an escaped slave herself, was as committed to armed resistance as her husband. They lived with their three, young children in a secluded two-story stone house situated on a hill so that Parker could see anyone who came near and if need be, prepare.

In the foggy, early morning hours of September 11, 1851, Parker, Eliza and five others, who had been warned by a fugitive slave and sympathetic white neighbors that a posse of white men were on their way, were armed with guns clubs and axes, ready and waiting.

"The Christiana Tragedy," 1872, Courtesy of the New
York Public Library, www.nypl.org

The two groups faced off outside: The nine whites were outnumbered by approximately fifty local blacks, who had been summoned by the sound of the Parker dinner horn, a prearranged signal. Gorsuch challenged Parker, and there are conflicting stories about what precisely happened next. Within the hour, Gorsuch lay dead in a pool of his own blood; his son was seriously wounded, and the white posse had fled the scene.

“The incident at Christiana was a microcosm for the growing concern sweeping the nation over slavery. It was a dark harbinger of the violence that was becoming endemic in the decade leading up to the Civil War.” 

The Underground Railroad by Chas T. Webber, Courtesy of
the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress,
USZ62-28860

The blacks, all uninjured, split up into small groups. Parker and two others, aided by members of the local station of the Underground Railroad, headed five hundred miles north to Frederick Douglass’s home in Rochester, New York.

The North Star, June 2, 1848
issue, http://en.wikipedia.org

By 1851 Douglass was a famous escaped slave and the “preeminent spokesman for African Americans” thanks to his astonishing (talk was it couldn’t have been written by a black man) autobiography, mesmerizing speeches and extensive articles in The North Star, the abolitionist newspaper he owned and edited.

His home was the last station on the Underground Railroad, leading to Canada and freedom. Parker not only would have been aware of that, he may even have met Douglass, who had escaped from Maryland the year before he had, or heard him speak one time in Pennsylvania.

Douglass, who had already heard about the incident over the wires and read about it in the newspapers, risked his life welcoming and feeding the three men. (His views had become more radical in recent years, as he made clear in 1849: “I should welcome the intelligence to-morrow, should it come, that the slaves had risen in the South, and that the sable arms which had been engaged in beautifying and adorning the South were engaged in spreading death and devastation.”) He sent a trusted assistant down to the docks to find out when the next ship was departing and, with luck, one was leaving for Toronto, Canada in a few hours.

Frederick Douglass,
c. 1847–1852,
http://en.wikipedia.org

Before they parted, Parker gave Douglass the gun that someone—in all likelihood, Parker—had pried from Gorsuch’s cold, dead hand.

After he learned that his father had been killed by black men, bursting with indignation, Thomas, the youngest Gorsuch boy, confided in a younger classmate and bosom friend at Milton Academy, where he was enrolled at the time.

Almost as horrified and outraged as Thomas himself, this friend carried the memories of Thomas and the circumstances of his father’s death with him for the rest of his brief life.

His name was John Wilkes Booth.

*            *            *            *

Nine years later, in late December, 1860, when Booth was “in the ascendancy of his acting career,” he wrote “a long, rambling discourse” while stopping over in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

Yours Affectionately, John
Wilkes Booth, autographed
portrait, Courtesy of the Prints
and Photographs Division,
Library of Congress,
DIG-ppmsca-23892

“…when I was a school boy, my bosom friend was a boy 3 years my senior named…[Thomas Gorsuch], he was as noble a youth as any living. He had two brothers grown to be men. And…an old father who loved and was beloved by them. He was all that a man of honor should be. Two of his negroes…ran away from Maryland [and], came to this state…under the protection of the fugitive slave law not only to recover his property, but to arrest…[them]…”

The would-be speech ends there. (The rest may be lost.)

Booth’s brother Edwin, a better and even more famous actor, wrote on the first page: “This was found long after his death, among some old play books, & clothes kept by John…in my house.”

“The death of Tommy Gorsuch’s father touched the young John Wilkes Booth personally. While he would move on with his life, he would not forget what happened in Christiana.”

Now, it’s what happened in Ford’s Theatre that we can’t forget.

Presidential Box from Orchestra, Ford's Theatre, Courtesy
of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, HABS DC,WASH,421-

Bibliography

Clarke, Asia Booth and Terry Alford (ed.); John Wilkes Booth: A Sister's Memoir.

Denenberg, Barry; Lincoln Shot: A President’s Life Remembered.

Foner, Philip S. (ed.); Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings.

Goodrich, Thomas; The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy.

Hanchett, William; The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.

Harris, William C.; Lincoln's Last Months.

Katz, Jonathan; Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, September 11,

l851: A Documentary Account.

Kauffman, Michael W.; American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies.

McPherson, James M.; Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.

Neely, Mark E., Jr.; The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia.

Rhodehamel, John and Louise Taper (eds.); “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth.

Slaughter, Thomas P.; Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North.

Steers, Edward, Jr.; Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Swanson, James L.; Manhunt: The 12 -Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer.

Titone, Nora; My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Winik, Jay; April 1865: The Month That Saved America.

“Neighbors brought….”; Slaughter, 5

“…his benevolence….”; Katz, 70

“…he always….”; Ibid

“…an alert…”; Ibid, 69

“…wanted to….”; Ibid, 71

“…which gave….”; Titone, 139

“…suggest[s] that….”; Slaughter, 19

“…Quaker community….”; McPherson, 84

“…had been….”; Titone, 139

“…regarded him….”; Slaughter, 47

“The incident….”; Steers, 33

“…preeminent black….”; Foner, xi

“I should….”; Katz, 148

“…in the ascendency….”; Steers, 31

“…a long, rambling…”; Ibid

“…when I was…”; Rhodehamel, 64

“This was….”; Ibid

“The death….”; Steers, 34