1 WE ARE INTERESTED IN ONE OUT OF FOUR STEPHEN ELLIOTTS
PROF. STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1771
November 11: Stephen Elliott was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, the 3d son of William Elliott, a merchant. The father would die while Stephen was a boy and it appears that an older brother took charge of his education.
1787
December: Stephen Elliott was sent to New Haven, Connecticut to be tutored by Judge Simeon Baldwin.
1788
February: Stephen Elliott matriculated at Yale College.
1. First we will proceed from 1771 to 1933 in regard to the Southern botanist Professor Stephen Elliott whose textbook Thoreau consulted — because this is the Stephen Elliott in whom we are interested, the one who went from being a legislator to being a slave plantation manager to being a banker to being a botanist and college professor and the author of this textbook of botany that Thoreau consulted. Then, however, we will start all over again at the year 1806, and proceed with the lives of three other Stephen Elliotts of note, the 1st a decorated ship captain in His Majesty’s Navy not known to be a relative of the American family, the 2d the botanist Stephen Elliott’s son who became the head of the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States during the Civil War, and the 3d that Episcopal bishop’s son, a decorated General in the army of the Confederacy and a hero of the defence of Charleston harbor. That is to say, the three American Elliotts we are considering here happen to have been father, son, and grandson, and it is only in the case of the father that there is a direct link to Thoreau. BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1791
Stephen Elliott received his BA from Yale College, as the class valedictorian. At the graduation ceremony he orated on “The Supposed Degeneracy of Animated Nature in America.” He would return to South Carolina and become a plantation master (I don’t seem to be able to find out the name of his plantation, how many slaves his plantation utilized, or what his cash crop was).
1793
Stephen Elliott was elected to the South Carolina legislature (other sources date this at 1796; he would serve this time until about 1800).
1796
Stephen Elliott got married with Esther Habersham. The couple would produce a large family (I don’t know that the Stephen Elliott, Jr. who would become an Episcopal bishop in the Southland was one of these children, for all I have been able to find out is that this Jr. was born in this locale in 1806).
2 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1800
Stephen Elliott left the South Carolina legislature to devote himself to the family plantation, and to the study of natural history.
1806
August 31: Stephen Elliott, Jr. was born in Beaufort, South Carolina.2
1808
Stephen Elliott was re-elected to the legislature of South Carolina, where he would be active in establishment of a state bank.
2. This Stephen Elliott, Jr. born in Beaufort, South Carolina was not the Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1812
A “Bank of the State of South Carolina” was created and Stephen Elliott, who had been active in sponsoring this new establishment, left the state legislature to become that new institution’s president. He removed his family to Charleston, South Carolina, where he would serve as the bank’s president until his death in 1830 (he would also preside over the Charleston Library Society, while teaching botany and natural history at the Medical College of South Carolina).
1814
Stephen Elliott had been active in the founding of the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina, and in this year became its president (he would serve until his death in 1830).
1816
The initial installment of Stephen Elliott’s publication in botany. Other installments would follow, seven in all, until 1824.
1819
Yale College awarded to Stephen Elliott an honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
4 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1820
Stephen Elliott was elected president of South Carolina College (the institution is now the University of South Carolina).
1821
The initial volume of Stephen Elliott’s A SKETCH OF THE BOTANY OF SOUTH-CAROLINA AND GEORGIA (Charleston SC: J.R. Schenck). ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, I
1822
Harvard College awarded to Stephen Elliott the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
1824
The other volume of Stephen Elliott’s A SKETCH OF THE BOTANY OF SOUTH-CAROLINA AND GEORGIA (Charleston: J.R. Schenck). ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, I ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, II
The botanist had been an early and active campaigner for the establishment of a Medical College of South Carolina, and at this point was able to become its professor of natural history and botany (this would continue until his death in 1830).
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1825
Columbia University awarded to the botanist Stephen Elliott the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
Stephen Elliott, Jr., son of the above botanist, graduated from South Carolina College, at which he had been president of the Clariosophic Society.
1828
Stephen Elliott and Hugh Swinton Legaré founded the Southern Review.
6 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1830
March 28: Stephen Elliott died of “apoplexy” (that would be most likely a stroke) in Charleston, South Carolina. His grave in St. Paul’s churchyard there would initially be unmarked. His herbarium is now at the Charleston Museum. He is remembered “in a genus of plants of the Heath family ... established by Dr. Muhlenberg,” presumably Ericaceae Elliottia racemosa.
The Reverend Charles Grandison Finney and his wife Lydia had their 2d child in New-York, naming him Charles Beman Finney after their friend Nathan Beman.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1847
The Elliott College building on the University of South Carolina campus was named in honor of Professor Stephen Elliott.
1853
The Elliott Society of Charleston, South Carolina was founded.
8 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1854
A specimen of Elliottia racemosa Muhlenberg ex Elliott, or “Georgia plume,” named in honor of the botanist Stephen Elliott but feared to have been lost because it can be propagated by cuttings but not by seed, was recovered near Hamburg, South Carolina.
1857
March 13. Thermometer this morning, about 7 A.M., 2°, and the same yesterday. This month has been windy and cold, a succession of snows one or two inches deep, soon going off, the spring birds all driven off. It is in strong contrast with the last month. Captain E.P. Dorr of Buffalo tells me that there is a rise and fall dai1y of the lakes about two or three inches, not accounted for. A difference between the lakes and sea, is that when there is no wind the former are quite smooth, no swell. Otherwise he thought that no one could tell whether he was on the lakes or the ocean. Described the diver’s descending one hundred and sixty-eight feet to a sunken steamer and getting up the safe after she had been sunk three years. Described the breeding of the capelin at Labrador, a small fish about as big as a sardine. They crowd along the shore in such numbers that he had seen a cartload crowded quite on to the shore high and dry by those in the rear. Elliott, the botanist, says (page 184) that the Lechea vil1osa (major of Michaux), “if kept from running to seed, would probably form a very neat edging for the beds of a flower garden; the foliage of the radical branches is very handsome during the winter, and the size of the plant is well suited to such a purpose.” Rhus Toxicondendron (page 303): “The juice which exudes on plucking the leaf-stalks from the stem of the R. radicans is a good indelible dye for marking linen or cotton.” Of the Drosera rotundifolia (page 375), “This fluid never appears to fall from the hairs, but is secreted nearly
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
in proportion to its evaporation, and the secretion is supposed to be greatest in dry clear weather;” hence called sundew. Howitt, in his “Boy’s Adventures in Australia,” says, “People here thought they had discovered large numbers of the graves of the blacks, lying lengthways, as amongst the whites, but these have turned out to be a natural phenomenon, and called Dead Men’s Graves.” The natives generally bury — when they do not burn — in a sitting posture. Is the country cold enough to allow these mounds to have been made by the ice? ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, I ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, II
1901
Frank Lamson-Scribner wrote the following about Stephen Elliott’s A SKETCH OF THE BOTANY OF SOUTH- CAROLINA AND GEORGIA: Not until one has prepared a book where almost every line contains a statement of fact learned from original observation can he fully appreciate the amount of patience and labor involved in the preparation of such a work as the Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia...today it remains indispensable to the working systematic botanists of our country. ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, I ELLIOTT’S BOTANY, II
1933
A monument was erected over a previously unmarked grave in St. Paul’s churchyard of Charleston, that of the botanist Stephen Elliott.
10 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith STARTING AGAIN, FOR PURPOSES OF DISAMBIGUATION,
WITH OTHER STEPHEN ELLIOTTS OF NOTE
1806
August 31: Stephen Elliott, Jr. was born in Beaufort, South Carolina.3
3. This Stephen Elliott, Jr. born in Beaufort, South Carolina was not the Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son. BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1814
March 26: There was an encounter between HMS Hebrus, Stephen Elliott commanding, and the French frigate L’Étoile, which after its capture would become HMS Topaze (in 1848 Captain Elliott would belatedly be awarded the Naval General Service Medal with a bar inscribed HEBRUS WITH L’ETOILE).4
William Baker, a sergeant of the 103d regiment of infantry of the British Army, was executed as a spy on the sand ridge between Court and Brinkerhoff streets.
Here is a record of getting fired by a millionaire for being overly familiar, from the manuscript account book of Peter C. Brooks of Boston (manuscript now on file with the Massachusetts Historical Society). Guess what, the “black boy” who got kicked out was in the wrong for getting uppity, and the white master who had to fire 4. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, and we do not know that he was related to the American Elliotts.
12 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT him for wanting to get paid for his services was in the right for withholding wages: March 26, 1814—A day or two ago we parted with our black boy, Abraham Francis, who has lived with us about two years and a half, and proved a very excellent servant, till within a few days, when he took it into his head that he must have wages.—He is but seventeen years old—and we thought he had not judgment enough to spend money for himself—beside which he has an idle father who would probably insist on his wages.—Mrs. Brooks has sent him to Prime Saunders’ school this winter to learn to read well and write and we think it has been a great injury to him: for it has not only put this notion of wages and independence into his head,—but has led him into company, and made him fond of staying out at night, and given him airs of familiarity very different from what he was wont to have.—From whatever cause it may arise, it is, I believe, a fact that very few blacks have conduct enough to support themselves.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 13 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1824
Graduating from Harvard College in this year with the degree of Bachelor of Arts were:
Graduate Died
Francis Amory, A.M. 1881
James Winthrop Andrews, A.M. 1842
David Hatch Barlow, A.M.; Div. S. 1829 1864
William Hazzard Wigg Barnwell 1863
Zephaniah Ames Bates 1842
John Francis Bingaman 1828
Edward Blake, A.M. 1873
Duncan Bradford 1887
George Washington Burnap; A.M.; Div. S. 1827; S.T.D. 1849 1859
Charles Henry Carter 1871
Samuel Adams Cooper, A.M. 1840
Phineas Miller Crane, A.M.; M.D. 1828
Benjamin Cutter; A.M.; M.D. 1827, Univ. Pa. 1857 1864
Elias Hasket Derby, A.M. 1880
George Bucknam Dorr, 1866 1876
Robert Brent Drane, 1825; A.M. 1841; S.T.D. Univ. N. C. 1844 1862
John Thomas Philip Dumont; A.M. 1852
Alexander Clarke Dunbar 1852
Stephen Elliott; A.M.; P.E. Bishop Ga.; Prof. Sacr. Lit. So. Car. 1866 Coll.
Edward Bliss Emerson, (I); A.M. 1834
Joseph William Faber; A.M. 1861
Benjamin Franklin Fisk 1832
Richard Fuller; S.T.D. 1853, Columbian (D.C.) 1844 1876
Lewis Glover; A.M. 1828 1839
John Mark Gourgas; A.M. 1862
John Henry Gray; A.M. 1850
John Grenough 1852
Alfred Greenwood, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827 1868
14 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
William Horton, Andover Theol. Sem. 1827; S.T.D. Hobart 1858 1863
Lucius Virgil Hubbard 1849
William Pitkin Huntington; M.D. 1835 1885
Asa Farnsworth Lawrence, Principal Groton (now Lawrence) Acad. 1873
Edmund Lewis LeBreton; A.M. 1849
Thomas Lowndes 1833
George Lunt 1885
William Perkins Matchett; A.M. 1834
Artemas Bowers Muzzey; A.M.; Div. S. 1828; S.T.D. Tufts 1890; Over- 1892 seer
William Newell; A.M.; Div. S. 1829; S.T.D. 1853; Memb. Mass. Hist. 1881 Soc.
Joseph Osgood; M.D. 1827 1876
John Cochran Park; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1889
Samuel Parker 1882
Samuel Parker Parker; S.T.D., Union 1861 1880
William Edward Payne; A.M. 1838
Henry Coit Perkins; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad. 1873
Edward Pickering 1876
William Pratt; A.M. 1828 1842
Benjamin James Prescott 1838
Samuel Cordes Prioleau; A.M. 1831
Charles Gideon Putnam; A.M.; M.D. 1827; Fellow Am. Acad. 1873
Daniel Clark Relf; A.M. 1876
David Roberts; A.M. 1879
George Thomas Sanders; A.m. 1856
Nathaniel Silsbee; A.M. 1862; Treasurer 1862 - 1876 1881
Calvin Stephen Smith 1838
Joseph Lewis Stackpole; A.M.; LL.B. 1828 1847
William Gordon Stearns; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1872
Jeremiah Chaplin Stickney, 1825 1869
Caleb Morton Stimson; A.M.; LL.B. 1827 1860
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Christopher Toppan Thayer; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827 1880
Augustus Torry; M.D. 1827 1880
Charles Church Chandler Tucker 1836
Henry Samuel Tudor 1864
Stephen Palfrey Webb 1879
George Wheatland, A.M. 1893
William Wilson Wheelwright 1832
George Whitney; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1829 1842
William Augustus Whitwell; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1827 1865
Samuel Williams 1884
Although a South Carolinian, the Stephen Elliott above was not the botany professor whose textbook was available to Henry Thoreau, as that botanist had graduated from Yale College. The above Harvard graduate was Stephen Elliott, Jr., the botanist’s son, who would become the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Confederate States of America and Professor of Sacred Literature at South Carolina College.
16 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1825
Columbia University awarded to the botanist Stephen Elliott the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
Stephen Elliott, Jr., son of the above botanist, graduated from South Carolina College, at which he had been president of the Clariosophic Society.
1827
Stephen Elliott, Jr. studied law and would practice in Charleston, South Carolina, where he would help to found a Forensic Club, and in Beaufort, South Carolina, until 1833.5
5. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 17 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1830
October 26: Stephen Elliott was born, son of Bishop Stephen Elliott. He would serve in the South Carolina legislature and become the captain of the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery. He would serve as a Major in the defense of Beaufort, South Carolina, and would eventually be a Brigadier General in the army of the Confederate States of America. Badly wounded in the battle of the Crater, he would be wounded again near Bentonville. After the war he would return to the legislature but would serve only a few months before succumbing to these injuries.6
1833
The attorney at law Stephen Elliott, Jr. make himself a candidate for holy orders in the Episcopal Church.7
1835
Stephen Elliott, Jr. was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church. The fact that he was of a slaveholding family was no detriment, for his church was proclaiming that human slavery had been ordained of God.8
1836
Stephen Elliott, Jr. took priest’s orders in the Episcopal Church.9
6. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but the botanist’s son and grandson. 7. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son. 8. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son. 9. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son.
18 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1840
Stephen Elliott, Jr. was chosen to be 1st bishop of the Diocese of Georgia (he would also become Provisional Bishop of Florida).10
Notice that the fact that this man was of a slaveholding family would have been no detriment, for his church was proclaiming that race slavery had obviously been ordained of God — the head is supposed to control the hands, not the hands the head, and the boss is supposed to control the laborers, not the laborers the boss, and the intellect is supposed to govern the passions rather than the passions the intellect, and the world is supposed to be subordinate to God, not God to the world, yada yada yada....
1841
An Episcopal Church was organized in Georgia through the efforts of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr.
10. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son.
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February 28, Sunday: Consecration of Stephen Elliott, Jr. as first bishop of the Diocese of Georgia. He would become rector of St. John’s Church in Savannah, Georgia.11
February 28. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. Every sentence is the result of a long probation. The author's character is read from title- page to end. Of this he never corrects the proofs. We read it as the essential character of a handwriting without regard to the flourishes. And so of the rest of our actions; it runs as straight as a ruled line through them all, no matter how many curvets about it. Our whole life is taxed for the least thing well done; it is its net result. How we eat, drink, sleep, and use our desultory hours, now in these indifferent days, with no eye to observe and no occasion [to] excite us, determines our authority and capacity for the time to come.
1842
Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. founded and would run –largely with his own funds– Georgia’s Montpelier Institute for girls.12
11. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son.
20 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1843
December 10: The Alcott family had some discussions in the absence of Charles Lane (“and we were glad” he was away, per Louisa May) which indicated that Bronson Alcott was on the verge of walking away from all this struggling for existence at Fruitlands, and evidently from his wife and kiddies as well.
A church building was consecrated in Georgia for the state’s Episcopal congregation, through the efforts of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr.13
12. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina, whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau would consult, but his son. 13. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his son.
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1858
January 6: Bishop Stephen Elliott was instrumental, with Bishops Leonidas Polk and James H. Otey from other Episcopal dioceses of the south, in the founding of The University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, atop the Cumberland Plateau about 50 miles west of Chattanooga. Local landowners and the Sewanee Mining Company donated a campus of nearly 10,000 acres for use by this Episcopal institution of education.14
January 6, Wednesday: The first snow-storm of much importance. By noon it may be six inches deep. P. M.–Up railroad to North River. The main stream, barely skimmed over with snow, which has sunk the thin ice and is saturated with water, is of a dull-brown color between the white fields. I detect a very tall and slender tupelo by its thorny-looking twigs. It is close by a white oak, at the yellow gerardia up railroad. It is nearly fifty feet high and only one foot through at the ground. I derive a certain excitement, not to be refused, even from going through Dennis’s Swamp on the opposite side of the railroad, where the poison-dogwood abounds. This simplestemmed bush is very full of fruit, hanging in loose, dry, pale- green drooping panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It impresses me as the most fruitful shrub thereabouts. 14. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau had consulted, but his son.
22 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
I cannot refrain from plucking it and bringing home some pretty sprigs. Other fruits there are there which belong to the hard season, the enduring panicled andromeda and a few partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the snow, over which the snow has not yet been able to prevail. I was feeling very cheap, nevertheless, reduced to make the most of dry dogwood berries. Very little evidence of God or man did I see just then, and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six- rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart? Sometimes the pines were worn and had lost their branches, and again it appeared as if several stars had impinged on one another at various angles, making a somewhat spherical mass. These little wheels came down like the wrecks of chariots from a battle waged in the sky. There were mingled with these starry flakes small downy pellets also. This was at mid-afternoon, and it has not quite ceased snowing yet (at 10 P. M.). We are rained and snowed on with gems. I confess that I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe that Nature was poor and mean, and I was now convinced that she turned off as good work as ever. What a world we live in! Where are the jewellers’ shops? There is nothing handsomer than a snowflake and a dewdrop. I may say that the maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snowflake and dewdrop that he sends down. We think that the one mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows together and falls, but in truth they are the product of enthusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist’s utmost skill.15 The North River is not frozen over. I see tree sparrows twittering and moving with a low creeping and jerking motion amid the chenopodium in a field, upon the snow, so chubby or puffed out on account of the cold that at first I took them for the arctic birds, but soon I see their bright-chestnut crowns and clear white bars; as the poet says, “a thousand feeding like one,”16–though there are not more than a dozen here.
15. Channing, pp. 72, 73. 16. “There are forty feeding like one.”–WORDSWORTH.
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1860
October 10: A cornerstone was set in place for the central building of the new University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee (this building would be destroyed by Federal troops during July 1863).
October 10: In August, ’55, I levelled for the artificial pond at Sleepy Hollow. They dug gradually for three or four years and completed the pond last year, ’59. It is now about a dozen rods long by five or six wide and two or three deep, and is supplied by copious springs in the meadow. There is a long ditch leading into it, in which no water now flows, nor has since winter at least, and a short ditch leading out of it into the brook. It is about sixty rods from the very source of the brook. Well, in this pond thus dug in the midst of a meadow a year or two ago and supplied by springs in the meadow, I find to-day several small patches of the large yellow and the kalmiana lily already established. Thus in the midst of death we are in life. The water is otherwise apparently clear of weeds. The river, where these abound, is about half a mile distant down the little brook near which this pond lies, though there may be a few pads in the ditched part of it at half that distance. How, then, did the seed get here? I learned last winter (vide December 23,1859) that many small pouts and some sizable pickerel had been caught here, though the connection with the brook is a very slight and shallow ditch. I think, therefore, that the lily seeds have been conveyed into this pond from the river immediately, or perchance from the meadow between, either by fishes, reptiles, or birds which fed on them, and that the seeds were not lying dormant in the mud. You have only to dig a pond anywhere in the fields hereabouts, and you will soon have not only water-fowl, reptiles, and fishes in it, but also the usual water-plants, as lilies, etc. You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it. I suspect that turtles eat these seeds, for I often see them eating the decayed lily leaves. If there is any water communication, perhaps fishes arrive first, and then the water-plants for their food and shelter. Horace Mann shows me the skeleton of a blue heron. The neck is remarkably strong, and the bill. The latter is 5+ inches long to the feathers above and 6 1/2 to the gape. A stake-driver which he has, freshly killed, has a bill
24 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
3 inches long above and 4 1/8 to the gape and between 5/8 and 6/8 deep vertically at the base. This bird weighs a little over two pounds, being quite large and fat. Its nails are longer and less curved than those of the heron. The sharp bill of the heron, like a stout pick, wielded by that long and stout neck, would be a very dangerous weapon to encounter. He has made a skeleton of the fish hawk which was brought to me within a month. I remark the great eye-sockets, and the claws, and perhaps the deep, sharp breast-bone. Including its strong hooked bill it is clawed at both ends, harpy-like. P.M.–Went to a fire–or smoke–at Mrs. Hoar’s. There is a slight blaze and more smoke. Two or three hundred men rush to the house, cut large holes in the roof, throw many hogsheads of water into it,–when a few pails full well directed would suffice,–and then they run off again, leaving your attic three inches deep with water, which is rapidly descending through the ceiling to the basement and spoiling all that can be spoiled, while a torrent is running down the stairways. They were very forward to put out the [FIRE], but they take no pains to put out the water, which does far more damage. The first was amusement; the last would be mere work and utility. Why is there not a little machine invented to throw the water out of a house? They are hopelessly cockneys everywhere who learn to swim with a machine. They take neither disease nor health, nay, nor life itself, the natural way. I see dumb-bells in the minister’s study, and some of their dumbness gets into his sermons. Some travellers carry them round the world in their carpetbags. Can he be said to travel who requires still this exercise? A party of school-children had a picnic at the Easterbrooks Country the other [DAY], and they carried bags of beans from their gymnasium to exercise with there. I cannot be interested in these extremely artificial amusements. The traveller is no longer a wayfarer, with his staff and pack and dusty coat. He is not a pilgrim, but he travels in a saloon, and carries dumb-bells to exercise with in the intervals of his journey.
October (10 and) 11: P.M.–To Sleepy Hollow and north of M. Pratt’s. There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. Which is as well for the squirrel. The acorns are now in the very midst of their fall. The white oak acorn is about the prettiest of ours. They are a glossy hazel (while the red and black are more or less downy at first) and of various forms,–some nearly spherical but commonly oblong and pointed, some more slender oval or elliptical; and of various shades of brown,–some almost black, but generally a wholesome hazel. Those which have fallen longest, and been exposed to the severe frosts on the ground, are partly bleached there. The white oak acorns are found chiefly on trees growing in the open or on the edge of the wood, and on the most exposed side of these trees. They grow either singly or in twos and threes. This afternoon (11th) the strong wind which arose at noon has strewn the ground with them. I could gather many bushels in a short time. This year is as good for white oak acorns as for apples and pears. What pleasant picking on the firm, green pasture sod which is browned with this glossy fruit! The worms are already at work in them,– sometimes three or four in one,–and some are already decayed and decaying on the tree without a worm. The fibery inner bark of the nut appears to retain moisture and hasten rot, especially when the fruit has once been swollen by the wet. The best time to gather these nuts is now, when a strong wind has arisen suddenly in the day, before the squirrels have preceded you; and so of chestnuts. Of red oak acorns, some are short and broad, others longer. I see some pretty shrub oak acorns longitudinally striped. Chestnuts also are frequently striped, but before they have been exposed to the light, and are completely ripe. The season is as favorable for pears as for apples. R.W.E.’s garden is strewn with them. They are not so handsome as apples,–are of more earthy and homely colors,–yet they are of a wholesome color enough. Many, inclining to a rough russet or even ferruginous, both to touch (rusty) and eye, look as if they were proof against frost. After all, the few varieties of wild pears here have more color and are handsomer than the many celebrated varieties that are cultivated. The cultivated are commonly of so dull a color that it is hard to distinguish them from the leaves, and if there are but two or three left you do not see them revealing themselves distinctly at a distance amid the leaves, as apples do, but I see that the gatherer has overlooked half a dozen large ones on this small tree, which were concealed by their perfect resemblance to the leaves,–a yellowish green, spotted with darker-green rust or fungi (?). Yet some have a fair cheek, and, generally, in their form they are true pendants, as if shaped expressly to hang from the trees. They are a more aristocratic fruit. How much more attention they get from the proprietor! The hired man gathers the apples and barrels them. The proprietor plucks the pears at odd hours for a pastime, and his daughter wraps them each in its paper. They are, perchance, put up in the midst of a barrel of Baldwins as if something more precious than these. They are spread on the floor of the best room. They are a gift to the most distinguished guest. Judges and ex-judges and honorables are connoisseurs of pears, and discourse of them at length between sessions. I hold in my hand a Bonne Louise which is covered with minute brown specks or dots one twelfth to one sixteenth [OF AN INCH] apart, largest and most developed on the sunny side, quite regular and handsome, as if they were the termination or operculum of pores which had burst in the very thin pellicle of the fruit, producing a slight roughness to the touch. Each of these little ruptures, so to call them, is in form a perfect star with five rays; so that, if the apple is higher-colored, reflecting the sun, on the duller surface of this pear the whole firmament with its stars shines forth. They whisper of the happy stars under whose influence they have grown and matured. It is not the case with all of them, but only the more perfect specimens.
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Pears, it is truly said, are less poetic than apples. They have neither the beauty nor the fragrance of apples, but their excellence is in their flavor, which speaks to a grosser sense. They are glouts-morceaux. Hence, while children dream of apples, ex-judges realize pears. They are named after emperors and kings and queens and dukes and duchesses. I fear I shall have to wait till we get to pears with American names, which a republican can swallow. Looking through a more powerful glass, those little brown dots are stars with from four to six rays,–commonly five,–where a little wart-like prominence (perhaps the end of a pore or a thread) appears to have burst through the very thin pellicle and burst it into so many rays.
26 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1861
John Mitchel enlisted in the Confederate Army, but since his eyesight was problematic they put him for a time in their ambulance corps. His eldest son, John C. Mitchel Jr., received a lieutenant’s commission and was ordered to a South Carolina artillery battalion stationed at Fort Moultrie. (This son would take part in the attack on Fort Sumter and his company would be sent, along with the Palmetto Guards, to garrison the island fortress. He would serve out the war in this vicinity, and be killed by a shell in July 1864.) His second son, James Mitchel, would become Adjutant on the staff of General John B.Gordon. (This son would survive the war but would lose an arm in fighting near Richmond, Virginia.) His youngest son, William Mitchel, went into the Stonewall Brigade. (This son would be killed during the Battle of Gettysburg.)
While on guard in the vicinity of Port Royal harbor, Captain Stephen Elliott and twenty men took the tug Lady Davis to sea to look for a prize. They were able to capture a sailing vessel of 1,200 tons and bring it in to Beaufort.17
17. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson.
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1862
Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase appointed the abolitionist Reverend William Henry Brisbane who had manumitted his many slaves, despite the fact that he was a former repeat business failure, as the Union tax commissioner for occupied Beaufort, South Carolina. The Reverend would oversee the auctioning of confiscated slave plantations.
Stephen Elliott became the first and only Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, while his friend Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont would be the equivalent for the northern-states portion of the church.18
18. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his son.
28 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT August: Stephen Elliott led a successful expedition against a Federal force on Pinckney island. He was also involved in the devising of floating torpedoes, with which they blew up a tender in St. Helena bay. He would be promoted to chief of artillery of the Third military district, including Beaufort.19
During this month and the following one, in his deliberations leading up to his decision to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, a resistant Abraham Lincoln was bringing himself to “suppose” that if his staff of White House lawyers could compose such a proclamation bringing about a general manumission so that it could be considered merely a “a practical war measure,” that then, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America in the midst of this sectional conflict, he would possess adequate authority to issue such a piece of paper — but only, bear in mind, as “a practical war measure,” an interim solution, which after the cessation of hostilities inevitably would need to be superseded by one or another colonization scheme, as a final solution, that would create the necessary all-white America, freeing our nation
19. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson.
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(Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. :-)
There was a race riot in South Brooklyn that is significant in that it provided a “dress rehearsal” of sorts, for the enormous and sustained race riot/draft riot in New-York that would be occurring during the summer of 1863. In many Northern cities, the idea of turning this sectional war into a war to free the enslaved Negroes down South was being regarded as a definite step in the wrong direction — what the white workingmen desperately needed to do was to enslave the ones who were already free in the North!
20. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward an Emancipation Proclamation was that it was, if it was anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never was a man more reluctant to do the right. Lerone Bennett, in FORCED INTO GLORY: ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S WHITE DREAM, has simply dismissed the traditional story that with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, done out of the goodness of his heart, President Lincoln had freed America’s black slaves. “No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false.” The real Lincoln, he pointed out, was a white supremacist very much on the order of this century’s David Duke. Lincoln’s dream for America, “like Thomas Jefferson’s dream, was a dream of a lily-white America without Native Americans, African Americans or Martin Luther Kings.” Let us take the man at his word, Bennett suggested, and consider this to have been an act of desperation: “What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.” (Of course, Bennett, a black historian, has been dismissed by white historians as a revisionist.)
30 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1863
March 27, Friday: The Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, D.D. preached a sermon on “Samson’s Riddle” in Christ Church of Savannah, Georgia as part of a day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer appointed by Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States.21
At this point Major “Chinese” Gordon (later more famous as the lisping General Charles George Gordon of Khartoum), fresh from the looting and torching of the Summer Palace in Peking, took command of the “Ever Victorious Army” that had been created by the deceased Frederick Townsend Ward, to do battle against the
21. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his son.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 31 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT teeming hordes of wicked Taiping Chinese Christians of South China.
Here is how Jonathan D. Spence has recorded the beginning of this Westerner’s story of adventure in a foreign land, in Chapter 3 “Ward and Gordon: Glorious Days of Looting” of his TO CHANGE CHINA, WESTERN ADVISERS IN CHINA, 1620-1960 (pages 57-92; London: Penguin, 1969): Born on the twenty-eighty of January 1833, Charles George Gordon had embarked on a military career at an early age, as his family wished. But there was something a little too headstrong about him; he seemed always to be getting into one scrape or another. In military academy he had butted the senior colonel down a flight of stairs; and later, just before graduation, he had beaten one of the younger cadets over the head with a hairbrush, losing his chance to be in the Royal Artillery like his father and grandfather. And when be had gone to the Crimea in 1855, as a royal engineer, he had done things in his own way, criticized his superiors, exposed himself too much to enemy bullets and had been wounded. Even worse, he had liked it all and wouldn’t come home, complaining when peace came: “We do not, generally speaking, like the thought of peace until after another campaign. I shall not go to England, but expect I shall remain abroad for three or four years, which individually I would sooner spend in war than peace. There is something indescribably exciting in the former.” Gordon took the next best course. He went off first to Bessarabia to help a frontier delineation commission and then on to Armenia in 1857 for the same type of work. Yet his admiration went out to those very people who paid no attention to the frontiers he was delineating. “We met on our
32 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
road a great number of Kurds ... they are as lawless as ever, and go from Turkey to Russia and back again as they like. They are fine-looking people, armed to the teeth, but are decreasing in numbers. They never live in houses, but prefer tents and caves.” When, in 1858, Gordon did return home, he found he rather liked the tents and did “not feel at all inclined to settle in England and be employed in any sedentary way.” So, in late 1858, he was back in the Caucasus with an Anglo-Russian commission, again helping to define frontiers and make peace, a job to which he admitted “I am naturally not well adapted.” Back in England again in 1859 and promoted to captain, he volunteered for the British force gathering at Shanghai to enforce the Tientsin treaty. On July 22, 1859, he left for China. Shortly after Gordon’s arrival in Peking, and the looting of the Summer Palace, the Treaty of Tientsin was ratified; the Emperor returned to the capital, a new group of ministers more willing to deal with the West took over control, and the invading army was withdrawn. But pending the payment of indemnities and to ensure the carrying out of the provisions of the treaty, a garrison of three thousand men under the control of the British general, Staveley, was left in Tientsin. Gordon was assigned to this garrison as head of the Engineers with the job of constructing barracks for the troops and stables for their horses as well as surveying the neighboring areas. He was to spend the next eighteen months at this job. Despite the fact that the “indescribable” excitement of war was lacking, young Gordon found a very describable satisfaction in peace-time life abroad. “Do not tell anyone,” he confessed to his sister Augusta in October 1861, “but I do not feel at all inclined to return to Great Britain. I like the country, work and independence; in England we are nondescripts, but in China we hold a good position and the climate is not so bad as it is made out to be.” In addition, be was able to travel widely in north China, often to areas rarely before visited by a Westerner, informing his sister, “I shall go to the Great Wall if I can in a short time, and thence send you a description and eventually a brick from that fabric.” So Gordon waited for his opportunity in Tientsin, rather than on the Thames, sending home boxes of sables, vases, jades, and enamels, with instructions stating “A to my father, B, C and D for general and fair distribution amongst the ‘tribe’ of Gordons, E and F to my father, G to Aunt Amy ... P, Q and R to my mother ... Y to Henry....” In the spring of 1862, Gordon was ordered to Shanghai where the British forces had been committed by Admiral James Hope to clear the Taiping rebels from a thirty-mile zone around that city. According to the commander of the land forces, General Staveley (the brother-in-law of Gordon’s older brother Henry), “Captain Gordon was of the greatest use to me.... He reconnoitered the enemy’s defenses, and arranged for the ladder parties to cross the moats, and for the escalating of the works; for we had to attack and carry by storm several towns fortified with high walls and deep wet ditches. He was, however, at the same time a source of much anxiety to me from the daring manner he approached the enemy’s works to acquire information.” In December 1862, Gordon was promoted to major and given the task of surveying the whole thirty-mile zone in preparation for better allied offensives. The job, perfectly fitted to a man content only working for himself, he did admirably, often advancing with a few men deep into rebel-held territory. In less than three months, his task
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was completed. This year of surveying work, often under dangerous conditions, brought Gordon into contact for the first time both with the Taiping rebellion and with the difficulties of fighting the Taiping troops in the area of allied operations. “We had a visit from the marauding Taipings the other day. They came close down in small parties to the settlement and burnt several houses, driving in thousands of inhabitants. We went against them and drove them away, but did not kill many. They beat us into fits in getting over the country, which is intersected in every way with ditches, swamps, etc.” The rebels left him horrified and brought out the “better Christian” in him as the burning of the Summer Palace had not. “It is most sad this state of affairs, and our Government really ought to put the rebellion down. Words could not depict the horrors these people suffer from the rebels, or describe the utter desert they have made of this rich province.” At the same time, Gordon shared the European’s scorn for the fighting abilities of the Chinese and the general character of their ruling classes, a sentiment typified by this poem run in the British humor magazine Punch just before he left for China:
With their little pig-eyes and their large pig-tails, And their diet of rats, dogs, slugs, and snails, All seems to be game in the frying-pan Of that nasty feeder, JOHN CHINAMAN. Sing lie-tea, my sly JOHN CHINAMAN, No fightee, my coward JOHN CHINAMAN: JOHN BULL has a chance — let him, if he can, Somewhat open the eyes of JOHN CHINAMAN.
“These Chang-mows [Taipings] are very funny people,” Gordon himself commented; “they always run when attacked. They are ruthlessly cruel, and have a system of carrying off small boys, under the hope of training them up as rebels.... I saved one small creature who had fallen into the ditch in trying to escape, for which be rewarded me by destroying my coat with his muddy paws in clinging to me.” If he thought nothing of the Taipings, he thought hardly better of the Chinese government, and said of the country as a whole, “I do not write about what we saw, as it amounts to nothing. There is nothing of any interest in China; if you have seen one village you have seen all the country.” Yet, as with his Bessarabian and Armenian experiences, the people appealed to him. In Armenia, it has been the Kurds, here it was the Chinese peasant. “Whatever may be said of their ruler, no one can deny but that the Chinese peasantry are the most obedient, quiet, and industrious people in the world.” In his personal life, Gordon was a lonely and withdrawn man, ill at ease among his peers and in the presence of women. “He stays with me whenever in Shanghai and is a fine noble generous fellow,” Harry Parkes, the British consul wrote to his wife, “but at the same time very peculiar and sensitive –exceedingly impetuous –full of energy, which just wants judgement to make it a very splendid type.... We have seen a good deal of each other when he is here, for as he is very shy I try as much as possible to dine alone, and we then tattle on Chinese affairs all to ourselves.” His personality prevented him from relating well to those above him, and scarcely better to those below him (except perhaps the Chinese troops he later had under his command — with whom he could not speak). Drawn to China by
34 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
contradictory impulses he scarcely understood and haunted by self-doubts, he proved erratic in his friendships, inconsistent in his opinions, and contradictory in his thoughts. “The world,” be confided to his sister later in life, “is a vast prison house under hard keepers with hard rulers; we are in cells solitary and lonely looking for release.” It was only in non-English lands and on his own that be found a part of that “release.” “The fact is,” he commented years later from the Sudan, “if one analyzes human glory, it is composed of 9/10 twaddle, perhaps 99/100 twaddle.” Yet he was waiting in China for just that glory which he often seemed to despise, and in March 1863 his chance came. Since Ward’s death near Ningpo six months before, the Ever-Victorious Army had steadily fallen into disarray. Ward’s second-in-command, Burgevine, another American, had been appointed to command by Li Hung-chang at the urging of British, French and American officials. In many ways Burgevine was like Ward. An adventurer who also had come to China as a ship’s mate, he was brave in battle, sustaining several wounds, and had hopes of carving out his own sphere of influence. But where Ward had had the perception to attach himself closely to his Chinese masters, Burgevine did no such thing. As described by Gordon, he was “a man of large promises and few works. His popularity was great among a certain class. He was extravagant in his generosity, and as long as he had anything would divide it with his so-called friends, but never was a man of any administrative or military talent, and latterly, through the irritation caused by his unhealed wound and other causes, he was subject to violent paroxysms of anger, which rendered precarious the safety of any man who tendered to him advice that might be distasteful. He was extremely sensitive of his dignity.” Li Hung-chang, now settled into Shanghai, feared that Burgevine, whose popularity among his predominantly American subordinates in the Ever-Victorious Army ran high, was more a danger to the Ch’ing in the Shanghai area than to the Taiping rebels he was supposed to fight. Li was soon complaining that Burgevine “is full of intrigues and stubborn. Wu and Yang [the Taotais] both say that he is not so easy going as Ward.” Li would have preferred to disband the Ever-Victorious Army, fearing the defection of its officers to the Taipings, but the foreigners insisted that it be retained to protect Shanghai. So, instead, he set his mind to substituting for Burgevine –the independent adventurer– a British officer for whose loyalty he could hold British officials responsible. Arbitrarily, he ordered Burgevine to take his army away from its base of power at Sungkiang and help with the capture of Nanking. At the same time, he arranged that Yang Fang (Taki) should withhold payments to the army. Burgevine, impetuously doing just what Li must have wanted, refused to move his army and (reported Li) “On [Jan. 4] between 9-11 A.M., ... brought several dozen of his musketeers quickly to Yang Fang’s residence in Shanghai; Yang Fang was wounded on the nose, forehead and chest until he vomited a great deal of blood, and more than forty thousand silver dollars were forcibly carried off.” Li, using this pretext, dismissed Burgevine, and turned to the British. Having already committed themselves to the support of the Ch’ing dynasty, the British government, at the urging of Bruce, their minister at Peking, and Staveley, commander of the British forces in China, agreed to allow British officers to undertake service with the Imperial forces. With this understanding, Staveley and Li reached an agreement whose main points were: “The force to be under the
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joint command of an English and a Chinese officer.... For the English officer, who was to enter the Chinese service, Captain Holland was nominated temporarily, but Captain Gordon was to take the command when he should have received the necessary authorisation; he was to have the rank of Chentai [brigadier general]. For expeditions beyond the thirty-mile radius the previous consent of the allies [English and French] was necessary. Chinese were to be appointed as provost marshal, paymaster, and in charge of the commissariat... The strength of the force was to be reduced to 3,000, or even below that number, if the custom house receipts should fail... The force and its commanders were to be under the orders of the Futai [Li Hung- chang], who was also to buy the military supplies.” Both sides had achieved their goals. Li had replaced an independent leader of a force whose loyalty to the Empire was doubtful with a man directly subordinate to him, held in check by Li’s control of the force’s money, and guaranteed by British officials. In addition, he had managed to limit the force’s power, reducing its strength by fifteen hundred men. The British, in turn, had assured the continuing existence of the force defending their economic interests at Shanghai. On January 15, 1863, Captain Holland took command, but in his first major engagement, at the town of Taitsang (recently reinforced by the Taiping rebels), bad intelligence work, bad reconnaissance, poor tactics, and a mishandled retreat resulted in a disastrous defeat. Some 190 men were killed, 174 wounded, and many guns lost. The force returned, demoralized, to Sungkiang to await its next commander. In March 1863, having completed his surveying work, Gordon took command of the Ever-Victorious Army. The day before he left for Sungkiang he wrote to his mother with some trepidation: “I am afraid you will be much vexed at my having taken the command of the Sungkiang force, and that I am now a mandarin ... [but] I can say that, if I had not accepted the command, I believe the force would have been broken up and the rebellion gone on in its misery for years.... You must not fret on this matter. I think I am doing a good service.... I keep your likeness before me, and can assure you and my father that I will not be rash, and that as soon as can conveniently, and with due regard to the object I have in view, I will return home.” For all his hedging to his mother, Gordon was obviously pleased with himself and in no hurry to return to England. Yet for a regular officer in the British Army, the force be was to command was nothing to brag about. “You never did see such a rabble as it was,” Gordon wrote later to a military friend. Although the Western officers of the Ever-Victorious Army were “brave, reckless, very quick in adapting themselves to circumstances, and reliable in action; on the other hand, they were troublesome when in garrison, very touchy as to precedence and apt to work themselves about trifles into violent states of mind. Excited by Rebel sympathizers at Shanghai, and being of different nationalities, one half of them were usually in a violent state of quarrel with the other; but this, of course, was often an advantage to the commander.” The Chinese troops under these officers were hardly inspired by the recklessness of their commanders. “I can say with respect to the high pay of the officers,” observed Gordon, “that there is not the slightest chance of getting any men for less — it is by far the most dangerous service for officers I have ever seen, and the latter have the satisfaction of always feeling in action that their men are utterly untrustworthy in the way of following
36 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
them.” When Gordon arrived in Sungkiang on March 25, 1863, the morale of the force was at a low point because of the disastrous defeat at Taitsang. Moreover, the officers wanted Burgevine back, fearing, justly, what would happen to them under the command of a regular officer of the British army. The force was mutinous. Gordon wasted no time. Assuring all the officers “that they need not fear sweeping changes or anything that would injure their future prospects,” he moved against the rebels on March 31. Militarily, Gordon had been a good choice both for the Chinese and the English. By the end of May, his force had taken several points including Taitsang and was camped in front of the town of Kunshan. What Ward had done by intuition and hard experience, Gordon did by training. In front of Kunshan, for instance, he analyzed the situation thus: “Isolated hill, surrounded by wall; very wide ditch. City very strong at East Gate. Every manoeuvre seen at top of hill, and telegraphed to chief [of Taipings]. Determined to surround the city. We have already, Chiang-zu, at north, belonging to us. Rebels have only one road of retreat towards Soochow, twenty-four miles. Reconnoitre the country on the 30th May. Found that this road can be cut at Chun-ye, eight miles from Quinsan [Kunshani], sixteen miles from Soochow, point of junction and key to the possession of Quinsan held by the rebel stockades. Detour of twenty miles in rebel country necessary to get at this point. Value of steamer.” Having followed his own plan and captured Kunshan with great slaughter of the fleeing Taiping troops, he added: “Knowledge of the country is everything, and I have studied it a great deal.... The horror of the rebels at the steamer is very great; when she whistles they cannot make it out.” If he was militarily more effective and efficient than Ward, he followed Ward’s path, emphasizing the value of steamers in the delta area, as well as of pontoon bridges, and of heavy artillery. He even emulated Ward’s style of entering battle: “Gordon always led the attack, carrying no weapons, except a revolver which he wore concealed in his breast, and never used except once, against one of his own mutineers, but only a little rattan cane, which his men called his magic wand of Victory.” Li Hung-chang was gratified. “Since taking over the command,” he reported to Tseng Kuo-fan in April, “Gordon seems more reasonable [than the others]. His readiness to fight the enemy is also greater. If he can be brought under my control, even if he squanders forty or fifty thousand dollars, it will still be worth while.” Soon after, his admiration seemed almost unrestrained: “When the British General Staveley formerly stated to your official that Gordon was brave, clear-minded and foremost among the British officers in Shanghai, your official dared not believe it. Yet since he took up the command of the Ever-Victorious Army, their exceedingly bad habits gradually have come under control. His will and zeal are really praiseworthy.” Gordon’s main accomplishment in Li’s eyes was his ability to keep his force busy and ensure their loyalty to the Ch’ing government. He was, as well, pleased at the victories Gordon was winning, victories which were making it easier for the government to support Tseng Kuo-fan’s troops besieging Nanking. But Li had spoken too soon. If Gordon followed Ward’s path in military tactics, he did no such thing in dealing with his men. Ward, and Burgevine after him, had avoided disciplining the officers and men of the Ever-Victorious Army when they were in camp, realizing that a group of adventurers were hardly
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soldiers in a regular army. The Chinese troops were allowed to return to their villages during harvest time, and both commanders had winked at the looting with which the officers supplemented their less than regular pay. But Gordon was appalled by this state of affairs. Almost immediately, he banned all looting (on grounds that Li Hung-chang would make regular payments from that time on); drunkenness in battle was to be punishable by death; trading in opium and women was to be stopped; and all ranks were to be subjected to proper training and regular drill. In addition, to show his disapproval of the behavior of his officers, he lived and messed by himself. He was determined to turn this force of mercenaries into a small regular army. Gordon’s plan soon ran into difficulty. After the victory at Taitsang, his officers insisted on returning to Sungkiang to spend their pay and “prize-money” before heading back into action. Gordon yielded, but once in Sungkiang faced a new threat of mutiny. His men, Gordon commented, were “reliable in action ... [but] troublesome in garrison and touchy to a degree about precedence. To divert them, he started for Kunshan immediately. He decided to make Kunshan his new base, severing all ties with Sungkiang and the memories that went with it. In his diary, he recorded, “G[ordon] determined to move headquarters there, as the men would be more under control than they were at Sung-keong. Men mutiny. One is shot at tombstone outside West Gate. Mark of bullets still there. Men then desert, 1700 only out of 3900 remain. Very disorderly lot. Ward spoilt them. G. recruits rebel prisoners, who are much better men.” If he had trouble with his own troops, he threw his Chinese superiors into fits of total exasperation. In the wake of the attack on Kunshan, he quarreled with the Chinese general whose troops were supporting the Ever-Victorious Army. Depressed by the desertions, disgusted with his Chinese opposites, and dismayed by the criticism be received from the British press in Shanghai for his part in the “massacre” at Kunshan, he wrote to Li Hung-chang in July, 1863: “Your Excellency — In consequence of monthly difficulties I experience in getting the payment of the force made, the non-payment of legitimate bills for boat hire and necessities of war from Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, who have done so much for the Imperial Chinese authorities, I have determined on throwing up the command of this force, as my retention of office in these circumstances is derogatory to my position as a British officer, who cannot be a suppliant for what Your Excellency knows to be necessities, and should be happy to give.” He refused to be “soothed” by the normal Chinese practice of giving “rewards.” But Gordon was in some confusion. He did not long wish to remain idle, though to “take the field” again meant a loss of English “honor.” Burgevine provided him the pretext for reassuming command. After his dismissal, Burgevine had gone to Peking and, with the backing of the American minister, had managed to get himself reappointed by the authorities there to command of the Ever- Victorious Army. When he reappeared in April, Li reported: “When Burgevine had returned from the Capital to Shanghai full of self-satisfaction, he requested me immediately to reappoint him. I have refused and gave the details to Prince Kung. As the Throne and the law should both be upheld, how can they be ambiguous and timid in determining the rights and wrongs? This is discouraging. Yet Gordon is the best character among the British officers.... Even if he cannot get rid of the evil habits of the
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Ever-Victorious Army, these do not now seem to be growing worse.” At the beginning of August, Burgevine, disgruntled, defected to the Taipings with three hundred Europeans be had recruited from the Shanghai waterfront, much as Ward had recruited the original Ever-Victorious Army; Gordon, fearing that his own force would desert as well, happily retook the field. The campaign for Soochow began, with Gordon’s force acting in conjunction with a much larger body of Imperial troops. This was to be the crowning goal of all the previous campaigns around Shanghai, since Soochow was the most imposing and heavily fortified city under Taiping control in the area. Li, once again reconciled with Gordon, commented guardedly: “The officers and men of the Ever-Victorious Army are not really trustworthy in attack and defence. What they depend on is the considerable number of large and small howitzers on loan to Gordon from the British, and the ammunition and weapons constantly supplied [by the British). So your official is willing to make friends with the British officials, in order to make up what the military strength of China lacks. Nevertheless, Gordon is quite obedient in assisting the campaigns. After the conclusion of final victory, he may not cause any trouble, or if he does, your official can rein him in sharply.” Meanwhile Burgevine, now in Soochow, found he had as little hope of gaining influence under the Taipings as he had under the Ch’ing. The Taipings, on their part, found that Burgevine did not live up to his promises either in providing them with Western military equipment or with effective European troops. Burgevine finally surrendered to Gordon, though be defected again to the Taipings in June 1864. While his predecessor Ward, who had had much the same motivations as Burgevine, had been buried with great honors near a Confucian temple, Burgevine died in Ch’ing hands, “drowning” while government troops were ferrying him across a river. During the negotiations for Burgevine’s surrender, Gordon wrote, “Burgevine is safe [in Soochow], and not badly treated. I am trying my utmost to get him out; and then, if I can see a man to take my place, I shall leave this service, my object being gained — namely, to show the public, what they doubted, that there were English officers who could conduct operations as well as mates of ships, and also to rid the neighborhood of Shanghai of these freebooters. I care nothing for a high name.” Obviously, by the time Gordon reached the walls of Soochow and the Ever-Victorious Army was settled in for a siege of the city, be was once again nearing the point of handing in his resignation. The European press in China (the “public” of his letter) constantly questioned the fitness of a British officer’s serving under the Chinese. This bothered him intensely and reinforced his growing personal disillusionment with the side for which be was fighting. “I am perfectly aware from nearly four years service in this country that both sides are equally rotten,” he wrote from Soochow in October 1863. “But you must confess that on the Taiping side there is at leas[t] innovation, and a disregard for many of the frivolous and idolatrous customs of the Manchus. While my eyes are fully open to the defects of the Taiping character, from a close observation of three months, I find many promising traits never yet displayed by the Imperialists. The Rebel Mandarins are without exception brave and gallant men, and could you see Chung Wang, who is now here, you would immediately say that such a man deserved to succeed. Between him and the Footai, or Prince Kung, or any other Manchoo
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officer there is no comparison.” The fighting under the walls of Soochow proved arduous, the city being held by about forty thousand Taiping troops, and on November 27, 1863, Gordon was defeated. But the city fell on December 5 owing to dissension among the Taiping leaders, most of whom surrendered to the Ch’ing forces. Gordon, refusing his men a chance to plunder the rich city, withdrew his whole force to Kunshan. Li Hung-chang, meanwhile, according to Chinese custom had ordered the execution of the Taiping chiefs who surrendered and whose safety Cordon, as a British officer, felt he had guaranteed. In a hysterical letter, never delivered, Gordon insisted that Li “at once resign his post of Governor of Kiangsu, and give up the seals of office, so that he might put them in commission until the Emperor’s pleasure should be ascertained; or that, failing that step, Gordon would forth with proceed to attack the Imperialists, and to retake from them all the places captured by the Ever- Victorious Army, for the purpose Of banding them back again to the Taipings.” This, of course, was a preposterous infringement on Chinese sovereignty, but Gordon was too highly wrought to consider what be was saying. When Li’s Western secretary Dr. Halliday Macartney entered Gordon’s quarters, he found Gordon sobbing and before a word was exchanged, Gordon stooped down, and taking something from under the bedstead, held it up in the air, exclaiming: “Do you see that? Do you see that?” The light through the small Chinese windows was so faint that Macartney had at first some difficulty in recognizing what it was, when Gordon again exclaimed: “It is the head of the Lar Wang, foully murdered!” and with that burst into hysterical tears. Though the initial rage passed, Gordon remained indignant. He withdrew to Kunshan and would have nothing more to do with military campaigns against the Taipings. With him remained his force. Though Gordon was legally no longer in command, having resigned, the Ever-Victorious Army was more of a threat now under this “righteous” English officer than it had been under its previous mercenary commanders. The Chinese resorted to “soothing the barbarian.” On January 4, a Chinese official came to Kunshan, bringing an Imperial decree and presents for Gordon as rewards for his share in the capture of Soochow. Gordon refused these presents, including ten thousand taels of silver from the Emperor and captured Taiping battle flags from Li Hung-chang. Gordon’s official reply, written on the back of the Imperial rescript, stated: “Major Gordon receives the approbation of His Majesty the Emperor with every gratification, but regrets most sincerely that, owing to the circumstance which occurred since the capture of Soochow, he is unable to receive any mark of H.M. the Emperor’s recognition, and therefore respectfully begs His Majesty to receive his thanks for his intended kindness, and to allow him to decline the same.” This was an incredible affront to the Chinese. Li Hung-chang, both fearful of what the mercenary army at Kunshan might do and bewildered by Gordon’s actions, was at his wit’s end. As early as December 27, 1863, be suggested in a memorial: “I hope that the Tsungli Yamen and the British Minister will reach agreement on Gordon’s retirement, and order either that the more than one hundred foreign officers and men in the said Army should all be withdrawn, or that your official should select and appoint several persons to assist in the command of the said Army.” But Gordon, the English officer, was once again beginning to waver in the face of Gordon, leader of a mercenary army. His troops,
40 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
inactive at Kunshan, were again mutinous; his higher officers beginning to quarrel over succession to command. Either he had to forget his English honor and take the field, or lose complete control of his army and his chance for glory in China. His British superiors were as exasperated with Gordon as Li himself. “I beg you to do nothing rash under the pressure of excitement,” wrote Bruce, “and, above all, avoid publishing in newspapers accounts of your differences with the Chinese authorities.” They urged him to take the field again; and Gordon preserving that “honor” to which he had committed himself, insisted through Bruce that the Peking government agree to instruct Li that “in future operations in which a foreign officer is concerned, the rules of warfare, as practised among foreign nations, are to be observed.” Having done this, he met Li, who took full responsibility for the Soochow incident. Gordon was satisfied, and several months later was justifying his return to duty by saying: “That the execution of the Wangs at Soochow was a breach of faith there is no doubt; but there were many reasons to exculpate the Futai for his action, which is not at all a bad act in the eyes of the Chinese. In my opinion (and I have not seen Tseng-kuo-fan yet), Li-Hung-Chang is the best man in the Empire; has correct ideas of his position, and, for a Chinaman, has most liberal tendencies.” If Gordon was pleased, Li was less so. He had too clear an idea of Gordon’s character not to doubt for the future. “Although yesterday,” Li wrote on February 25, 1864, “Gordon was glad to volunteer, and was commanded to assist Kuo Sung-lin and others in an attack on I-hsing, he can only be treated as a partisan officer, not as a regular. Gordon is brave enough, but not sufficiently patient. As his bad temper suddenly comes and goes, I do not know whether there will be any change later on.” In late March, scarcely a month after Gordon had taken the field again, Li added: “As soon as military affairs in Chiang-nan are settled, the Ever-Victorious Army had better he discharged. Gordon does not disagree with this idea.” In fact, campaigning had not gone well and the force had suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the Taiping rebels. As Li explained in June, “Gordon has felt rather discouraged. On (April 27), in the campaign of Ch’ang-chou, even when the city walls had been blown up, it was still not possible to effect an entry. Thus Gordon saw that the Ever-Victorious Army was of no use.” The British military authorities, though, were strongly against the disbandment of the Ever-Victorious Army. General Brown was “not for disbanding any portion of the Disciplined Force until we see the fate of Nanking and the retreat of the rebels. I am also for keeping up a corps of disciplined Chinese at Shanghai.... It is a great strategical point and should be made the place of a regular cantonment.” But Gordon went his own way. When Li offered him £100,000 to pay off and disband the force, he jumped at the chance. Perhaps be was tired of his role as a mercenary general; perhaps he felt, with the siege of Nanking tightening, that the war was nearing its end; perhaps he simply felt that the force be commanded provided a bad example for the Chinese or a bad advertisement for Western methods; certainly he concurred with Li in his opinion of the force itself. “This force,” he wrote at the time of its disbandment, “has had ever since its formation in its ranks a class of men of no position.... Ignorant, uneducated, even unaccustomed to command, they were not suited to control the men they had under them.... I consider the force even under a British officer a
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most dangerous collection of men, never to be depended on and very expensive. In my opinion more would be done by a force of Chinese under their own officers, who do not want for bravery when properly instructed.... Do not let us try to govern their own men by foreigners but, keeping these latter as instructors, make them create their own officers.” His opinions on the force he commanded hardly reflected his opinions on himself. “I have the satisfaction,” he commented, summing up his time with the Ever-Victorious Army, of knowing that the end of this rebellion is at hand, while, had I continued inactive, it might have lingered on for years. I do not care a jot about my promotion or what people may say. I know I shall leave China as poor as I entered it, but with the knowledge that, through my weak instrumentality, upwards of eighty to one hundred thousand lives have been spared. I want no further satisfaction than this.” If he had exaggerated the importance of the local victories be had helped to win, be certainly minimized the “satisfactions” be had received. “Allow me to congratulate you,” wrote Robert Hart, the young Inspector-General of Customs. “The Emperor has by a special Edict conferred on you the Hwang Ma-Kwa, or yellow jacket, and has also presented you with four sets of Tetuh’s uniform, which, you remember, you said you would like to have. Don’t, like a good fellow, refuse to accept these things.” Hart should not have worried, for Gordon himself commented, “The Chinese tried hard to prevent me having it; but I said either the Yellow Jacket or nothing; and they at last yielded.” Concerning this Yellow Jacket and other honors offered him he told his mother, “I do not care two-pence about these things, but know that you and my father like them. I will try and get Sir F. Bruce to bring home Chung-Wang’s sword, which is wrapped up in a rebel flag belonging to a Tien-Wang, who was killed on it at ChunChu-fu. You will see marks of his blood on the Rag.” In his role as British officer Gordon tended to deny any desire for honors, wealth or glory; but as a mercenary army leader, in exile from an England that he felt oppressed him, he accepted them cheerfully enough. Gordon assembled souvenirs for his parents, but be was in no hurry to return home. Instead for the next five months, he turned to the quieter job of helping the Chinese “create their own officers.” He had developed a certain faith in the Chinese –rare in a Westerner in nineteenth-century China– and felt “if we drive the Chinese into sudden reforms, they will strike and resist with the greatest obstinacy ... but if we lead them we shall find them willing to a degree and most easy to manage. They like to have an option and hate having a course struck out for them as if they were of no account.” Even Chinese dislike of the West and Westerners, he excused, saying: “The Chinese have no reason to love us even for the assistance we have given them, for the rebellion was our own work indirectly.” Thanks to dramatic accounts in the daily press, he had become “Chinese Gordon” to an enthralled Western world, the man who single-handedly had put down the Taiping Rebellion. It wasn’t true, but that was less important to him than the fact that the excitement was over. Being a drillmaster for Chinese troops became a bore — “too slow an occupation to be suited to his active and somewhat erratic tastes,” explained a friend.” The world was hemming Gordon in, and his spirit chafed. In the fall of 1864 he “remembered” his promise to be back in England by Christmas, and as impulsively as he had come to China, he departed. “The individual,” he told his relieved mother, “is
42 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
coming home.”
(Well, folks, that’s the way it goes in the live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-sword business, one man’s story leaves off and another man’s story picks up. –The singular thing that persists is the sheer inanity of it all.)
April: Stephen Elliott captured the Federal steamer George Washington. He would be promoted to Major and then to Lieutenant-colonel.22
US General David Hunter prepared his land forces on Folly, Cole’s, and North Edisto Islands of Charleston Harbor to cooperate with a naval bombardment of Fort Sumter. On April 7, the US South Atlantic Squadron under Rear Admiral S.F. Du Pont bombarded Fort Sumter, having little impact on the Confederate defenses of Charleston Harbor. Although several of Hunter’s units had embarked on transports, the infantry were not landed, and the joint operation was abandoned. The ironclad warships Keokuk, Weehawken, Passaic, Montauk, Patapsco, New Ironsides, Catskill, Nantucket, and Nahant participated in the bombardment. Keokuk, struck more than 90 times by the accurate Confederate fire, would sink the following day.
22. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 43 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT July: Waldo Emerson decided that war was one of his Good-Things-Leading-To-Human-Elevation:
I shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the Vistas it opens of ... reconstructing and uplifting Society.
The central building that had been created for the new University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee –the institute for Episcopal students– was destroyed by Federal troops.
When he would learn that his son Toussaint L’Ouverture Delany had been among the survivors of the frontal assault of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers upon Fort Wagner, Dr. Martin Robison Delany would commit himself wholeheartedly to the cause of the war against the Southern states.
Frederick Douglass was assured personally by Secretary of War Stanton in Washington DC that in exchange for recruiting black Southerners as Union soldiers he would be receiving an officer’s commission. (Would Stanton
44 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT keep his promise? –Stanton would be a white man.)
NO!
John Andrew, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician, offered the following words of encouragement to Robert Gould Shaw, the white leader of the black recruits:
I know not, Mr. Commander, where in all human history to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory, as the work committed to you.
Carleton Mabee’s BLACK FREEDOM
The Tappanite-related American Peace Society itself acquiesced in the war. In doing so, it indulged in the sophistry of considering the war not to be a war in the usual international sense, but merely the attempt of a government to punish its own subjects for breaking the law. Indirectly the peace society ... supported the federal conscription law as necessary without indicating concern to secure exemption for conscientious objectors.... Among the Concord transcendentalists, Thoreau, who had once advocated going to prison to shame the state into giving up both war and slavery, in a sharp reversal now believed that suffering in this war was regenerating the nation. Similarly, the once anti-institutional, individualistic Waldo Emerson now argued that government must have dictatorial powers during wartime and that participation in war taught self-reliance — surely not the same kind of nonconformist self-reliance that he had once valued. To the disillusionment of Moncure Daniel Conway, one of Emerson’s individualistic, antiwar, antislavery disciples, Emerson even accepted an appointment as an official visitor at West Point.
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Pencil sketch of Fort Ridgely in the summer of 1863 after the race war
September 4, Friday: Calvin H. Greene went in the afternoon with Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau to Neshawtuck [Nawshawtuck] Hill near Concord, where they enjoyed the view of Ponkawtasset to the north across the Assabet River, “& the village spread out in its beauty.”
Major Stephen Elliott took command of the rubble heap that was all that remained after the extensive US Navy bombardments of Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.23
23. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson.
46 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT September 6, Sunday: In Charleston Harbor, the Union forces were putting pressure on Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg by means of advancing siegeworks.
Calvin H. Greene went with Ellery Channing to the “Eastabrook [Estabrook] Country” to take a look at what was left of “the Thoreau Hut, where it had been moved to, yrs before this. Took a memento — a broken shingle, as a fitting emblem.”
That evening he went with Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau to the home of Mrs. Mary Peabody Mann, where he met Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Horace Mann, Jr. The lad showed Calvin “his $175.00 microscope & something of its power.”
That night, Confederate forces evacuated Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg in Charleston Harbor.
1864
The Episcopal church structure in Georgia that had been established through the efforts of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. was damaged when Federal troops led by General William Tecumseh Sherman stabled their horses in it, and dynamited a nearby arsenal.24
No mention would be made of the Civil War in Flushing Monthly Meeting minutes, even at the height of the conflict. Flushing Quakers joined with New York Yearly Meeting in resisting the payment of war taxes, although they declared this to be not an act of disloyalty to the Union but instead merely an expression of their loyalty to the Quaker Peace Testimony. THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY
24. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his son.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 47 BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT May: General Ulysses S. Grant, promoted to commander of the Union armies, planned to engage General Robert E. Lee’s forces in Virginia until they were destroyed. During this month North and South would meet and engage in an inconclusive three-day Battle of the Wilderness. General Lee would inflict more casualties on the Union forces than his own army would incur — but unlike General Grant he would have no replacements.
Stephen Elliott, who had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, was relieved from command of the ruins of Fort Sumter upon the arrival of his replacement, Captain John C. Mitchel.25
July 30, morning: As the colonel of Holcombe’s legion Stephen Elliott had been ordered to Petersburg, Virginia, where he was soon promoted to Brigadier-General and assigned to the command of N.G. Evans’s old brigade, which included that legion. He served actively in the defense of Petersburg, his brigade, a part of Bushrod Johnson’s division, holding that important part of the line selected by the Federals as the point to be mined, and carried by an assaulting party. Two of his regiments, the 18th and 22d, occupied the works blown up on this morning, and the immense displacement of earth which formed the crater maimed and buried many of the men of his command. While fighting to defend the breach, General Elliott was seriously wounded.26
25. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson. 26. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson.
48 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT
1866
February 21: Stephen Elliott, who had been a slavemaster and a Brigadier General of the CSA, died of his multiple war injuries. The body would be placed in the churchyard of Saint Helenas Episcopal Church in Beaufort, South Carolina.27
Had he been an evil person, or a good one? — Should we hope he is in Hell, or in Heaven?
December 21: Stephen Elliott, who had been a slavemaster and a leader in Christ’s church, died in Savannah, Georgia.28
Had he been an evil person, or a good one? — Should we hope he is in Hell, or in Heaven?
27. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson. 28. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his son.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2010. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: June 12, 2010
50 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith BACK WHAT? ACTIVE TRACK INDEX STEPHEN ELLIOTT STEPHEN ELLIOTT ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with
52 Copyright 2010 Austin Meredith