Margaret Loughborough's Recollections Blog

In the New York Times, Lincoln’s French Toast

margaretsrecollections — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:21:48 +0000

I wrote this article for the New York Times’ Disunion Series, telling about President Lincoln’s visit to Fort Gaines on January 8, 1862.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/lincolns-french-toast/

First Manassas

margaretsrecollections — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:05:54 +0000

The Battle of Manassas

The Civil War began with more bombast and bravado than bombs. Neither side gave much thought to war’s reality. This changed after the armies came together in the first big battle along Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia on July 21, 1861. Even civilians were shocked by the carnage.

Congressman Alfred Ely’s reflections are an example of the reaction in the North. He was an anti-slavery Republican from Rochester, who had displayed little appreciation for what was coming. As late as February of that year, he thought war might still be avoided: “God grant that our glorious Union may yet be saved without the effusion of one drop of American blood.”

When Ely learned of the big fight shaping up at Bull Run, he claimed he needed to visit constituents in the Thirteenth New York Regiment that was maneuvering for battle, but the truth seemed to be that he naively wanted to see the spectacle with his own eyes. So, the Congressman went to Union General Winfield Scott for a pass to get on the battlefield. The General warned that the Confederate forces were estimated to be 38,000. Ely pointedly asked how many men the Union had. Scott would only answer with a laconic, “Enough.”

Pass in hand, the Congressman hired a carriage and sped off for Manassas. Soon he was in the thick of battle. A few hours later, as the smoke cleared, he found himself a prisoner of the victorious Confederates.

Margaret Loughborough of Richmond captured the reaction in the South. Her fiancée, and future husband Henry, was a soldier at Manassas. They had postponed their wedding lest the war end before he had a chance to fight. After the battle, Henry had stumbled upon some congressman’s abandoned carriage, most likely Ely’s. Margaret remembered: “A young soldier, a friend of mine, brought me some champagne and cake he had found in a congressman’s carriage on the battlefield; he had brought it to celebrate the walk-over the North expected, but we of the South, drank to our success.”

Ely’s captors put him in the boxcar of a train bound for Richmond along with cars of Union prisoners and Confederate wounded. He spent five months there before being exchanged for Confederate prisoners held by the North. After he was safely home, Ely published his journal of the experience. He wrote about the folly of what he had done: “[T]o visit battle-fields as a mere pastime, or with the view of gratifying a panting curiosity … is neither a safe thing in itself, nor a justifiable use of the passion which Americans are said to possess for public spectacles….”

But Ely didn’t stop there. He went on to explain how Manassas had changed him: “Bull Run now looms up in my mind with a very frightful aspect, and in all the magnitude of its horrors. The dead and the dying, the shattered limbs and flowing blood of the wounded, the miseries of desolated homes, the mourning of widowed mothers and fatherless children, and the crushing agony suddenly cast into the hearts of thousands in every ‘corner of the land, are so vividly pictured [now] on my imagination by the official reports….”

The battle had the same effect on Margaret even though she witnessed it from the safety of Richmond. She recalled: “One morning, the 21^st of July, 1861, just as my aunt and myself were preparing to leave Richmond for the country, we heard that the first battle of Bull Run was being fought. Almost all the young men in Richmond were on the battle-field and everyone was anxious. Later the news came that we had a glorious victory; there was much rejoicing until the cars came in bearing the wounded and dead. Then we realized what the war meant and would mean to us. Richmond was filled with mourning; the houses were thrown open to the wounded; the hospitals filled.”

The Civil War had been going on for three months; it would continue for forty-five more.

The Journal of Alfred Ely, a Prisoner of War in Richmond was published in 1862 and is available online.

Recipe book

margaretsrecollections — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:00:51 +0000

Margaret’s recipe book contained more than just food recipes.

I made these notes on some other “recipes” that a nineteenth century Southern woman might need.

Green dye can be made with oil of vitrol. Orange dye from hickory bark. Black dye from walnut hulls.

“To get rid of cockroaches, put molasses in a bowl with porter or beer and put a stick for them to walk on.” Apparently, when the roaches walk out on the stick, it dips and drops them into the liquid. (Of course, unless you are the real hearty type, it ruins the beer).

To make red dye, when you are through with a tea bag for your drink, leave it in a pot of boiling water.

Margaret also had recipes for curing a rattlesnake bite, getting red of bed bugs, and making grape wine.

Confederate cake

margaretsrecollections — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:04:54 +0000

Although Margaret Loughborough’s diary is lost, her recipe book survives. It is now in Special Collections at the Georgetown University library. Her diary presumably was a similar-looking book. The recipe book has front and back covers and is bound together with a string that could be untied and retied to allow the insertion or deletion of pages. Some recipes are in Margaret’s handwriting. When she borrowed, she usually noted the name of the person that gave her the recipe — at least if that person was family or famous. My favorite recipe is for Confederate cake. It is a basic cake recipe, but that was Margaret’s joke. Confederates only had the bare essentials for baking; hence, those were the only ingredients for Confederate cake.

Confederate Memorial

margaretsrecollections — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:38:56 +0000

Confederate Memorial

Choosing Moses Ezekiel to sculpt the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery had many ironies. For the Loughboroughs, who contributed to the construction fund, it was twofold. Margaret had shopped at the Ezekiel’s store in Richmond during the Civil War, and then an Ezekiel later bought Milton. There were larger ironies though. The federal government seized the Custis-Lee mansion during the Civil War and put a cemetery on Robert E. Lee’s property. Yet later, when Confederate veterans wanted a memorial there, the government acceded and picked Moses Ezekiel to do the work. It was Lee, supposedly, who convinced Ezekiel that he should become an artist. Although Ezekiel was living in Italy at the time of his death, his body was interred at the base of the memorial.

The fort McCausland took

margaretsrecollections — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:44:40 +0000

Jubal Early’s army had camped in Rockville, MD the night of July 10, 1864. The next morning, they set off for Washington DC. The infantry, under Early’s command, marched to Silver Spring and from there down today’s Georgia Avenue to the vicinty of Fort Stevens in the District of Columbia.

McCausland’s cavalry, which was called “mounted infantry,” rode towards Tenleytown and Fort Reno along today’s Wisconsin Avenue. Meanwhile, General Grant had sent 6,000 men from his seige of Richmond up to Washington by steamer. Both sides, Confederate attackers and Union defenders, arrived at the city simultaneously on the afternoon of July 11. By then, it was clear to the defenders that the principal attack was directed at Fort Stevens. In all likelihood they ordered men pulled from the forts on the northwest side of the city to reinforce those in Early’s path. Thus Fort Gaines might well have been temporarily abandoned, particularly since it was a less important, secondary position. Moreover, McCausland claimed he had looked down on the city from the fort. In 1864, one could see the Capitol from Gaines. It was one of the few forts with such a view. It was the only fort that might have been unoccupied from which the city could be seen.

This is Fort Gaines as it looked around 1862 when the 55th New York Regiment was garrisoned there. General Regis De Trobriand is looking down the gun. Tenleytown is in the distance although no buildings can be seen. The Loughborough’s Grassland is out of sight on the right about 1/4 mile.

John McCausland

margaretsrecollections — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:45:18 +0000

I first became interested in Margaret Loughborough when I was writing an article about Confederate General John McCausland. In this post and the next, I will explain the connection

After the Civil War, John McCausland ran into General Ulysses Grant. He bragged to Grant that he, McCausland, was in Washington during the Civil War. Not wanting to play the game, apparently, Grant asked how this could be, did McCausland come in disguise? McCausland explained that he led the cavalry for General Jubal Early in the July 1864 Confederate attack on the capital. Early had as many as 15,000 troops. McCausland told Grant that he came across an unoccupied Union fort, rode in with a few of his aides, and sat on a big gun. McCausland lamented that he did not have enough men to take the capital and put an end to the war. My interest, and my article, focused on what fort McCausland was talking about.

Robert E. Lee bust

margaretsrecollections — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:00:37 +0000

This is the bust of Robert E. Lee that Moses Ezekiel did for William Corcoran. An interesting thing is that Lee looks different from how he looks in the Matthew Brady photograph. The bust is a miniature.

Moses Ezekiel's bust of Robert E. Lee

More on Moses Ezekiel

margaretsrecollections — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:09:30 +0000

William Corcoran was a banker and art collector in Washington. He was also a Southern sympathizer. Thinking discretion was the better part of valor, he spent the Civil War in France. When he returned, he wanted to preserve as much of the Lost Cause as he knew how, so he commissioned a number of artists, all Southerners naturally, to capture the images of every single one of the Confederate generals. Naturally, Moses Ezekiel was near the top of his list and was chosen to do Robert E. Lee. By then, apparently, Ezekiel was in his statuary period and only did a miniature bust of Lee. But since Corcoran planned to hang the paintings in his new gallery, he didn’t mind. Besides, he had decided that Ezekiel would do the statues to fill the niches in the outside walls. The gallery is now the Renwick, part of the Smithsonian,

Renwick Gallery, Washington D.C.

http://americanart.si.edu/. Only two of the statues remain, however, the others were moved to another site.

Moses Ezekiel statue at Renwick

What the New York Times Didn’t Know

margaretsrecollections — Sat, 08 May 2010 21:19:12 +0000

In his review of the new Civil War exhibit at the National Archives, New York Times report Edward Rothstein expressed surprise to see this photograph.

He wrote:

We see, for example, an undated Civil War-era photograph of a crew on a Union gunboat (probably the Mendota), and notice, loosely gathered on the far right of the deck, a handful of black sailors wearing the same berets and uniforms as their white mates. But we notice too that among all of the posed seamen, these black men seem to be the only ones holding tools or handiwork; one black sailor stands more independently near a cannon. Some fundamental differences in duties and opportunities are suggested here, but the real surprise is that there was any racial integration at all — something that was uncommon in the Army but not, it turns out, in the shipbound realms of the Navy, where 18,000 blacks had enlisted. “Many of the black crew members” on this ship, we are told, “were recently freed slaves.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/arts/design/30museum.html?scp=2&sq=national%20archives&st=cse

Those of you who have read the book already knew the Navy was integrated by the end of the Civil War, much to the chagrin of Margaret who wrote:

I then went into the Exchange U. S. boat where … I saw negroes in uniform on equal terms with the white soldiers. I had never seen one before who was not a slave.