Contents - The Filson Historical Society

Contents
Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2010
A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the
Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville,
Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson
Historical Society.
3 The Confused, the Curious, and the Reborn
Methodism as a Youth Movement in the Upper South and Ohio Valley,
1770-1820
John Ellis
32 The Making of a Major General
William Henry Harrison and the Politics of Command, 1812-13
David Curtis Skaggs
53 “Cooped Up and Powerless When My Home
is Invaded” Southern Prisoners at Johnson’s Island in their Own Words
Christopher Britten
73 Finding Mr. Lincoln
A Few Reflections on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial
Thomas C. Mackey
86 Helen Steiner Rice
“The Lady in the Hat”
Dorothy Lingg
91 Book Reviews
104 Announcements
on the cover: Sketch of Johnson’s Island Military
Prison from The War of The Rebellion: A Compilation
of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies (Washington, DC: US War Dept., 1920).
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal was named
one of ten recipients of the 2009 National Medal for
Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor
for museums and libraries.

Contributors
John Ellis is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Purdue University. His forthcom-
ing dissertation is titled “Wildfire Religion: Methodism as a Youth Movement in
Post-Revolutionary America.”
David Curtis Skaggs is Professor Emeritus of History at Bowling Green State
University, and is the author of five books and editor of ten others. His publications
include biographies of War of 1812 naval heroes Thomas Macdonough
(2003) and Oliver Hazard Perry (2006). He co-edited with Larry L. Nelson The
Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814 (2001), which the Michigan State
University Press will publish in paperback later this year.
Christopher Britten is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan with a
B.A. in History and Political Science. He is currently serving as an AmeriCorps
volunteer at Boys Hope Girls Hope of New Orleans.
Thomas C. Mackey is Professor of History at the University of Louisville. To
support the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial and the Sesquicentennial of the Civil
War, he is at work on primary source book for the University of Tennessee Press,
‘To Think Anew, Act Anew’: Public Policy and Judicial Voices of the Civil War Era.
2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

The Confused, the Curious,
and the Reborn
Methodism as a Youth Movement in the
Upper South and Ohio Valley, 1770-1820
John Ellis
Between 1780 and 1820, the Methodist Episcopal Church grew from a
sect of 8,500 members into a denomination of almost two hundred and
sixty thousand. Although the exact number of Methodist youths cannot
be calculated, contemporary accounts suggest that most of these converts were
young adults. Methodist preachers and lay members stressed in their diaries
and correspondence that young men and women predominated at their revivals,
and the authors of most Methodist autobiographies recalled that they had
joined the movement as youths. Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
Americans generally regarded
as youths those individuals who
had entered puberty but had
not yet married. In the border
region stretching from the
Upper South to the Ohio Valley,
where the Methodist Church
grew most rapidly, unmarried
young men and women flocked
to the denomination. Other
upstart evangelical sects, like the
Baptists, also attracted young
people in these regions, but the
Methodists’ growth outmatched
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
all competitors.
To a degree, Methodism’s youthful orientation reflected the demographics of
American society. In 1800, the median age of the American population was only
sixteen. Yet even this does not adequately explain Methodism’s young leadership.
The majority of the sect’s itinerant preachers were unmarried men in their
twenties and thirties, and the Methodists licensed talented boys to preach as early
as their late teens. They also encouraged adolescent, even prepubescent, boys
First Methodist Church in Louisville, 1812, from a sketch
commissioned by Reuben T. Durrett.
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
and girls to exhort and pray at services. Because the Methodists entrusted their
young men and women with key leadership roles, American Methodism became
a youth-driven organization that, unlike modern youth movements, did not isolate
youths from adults in an age-specific subculture. 1
Yet Methodists had a more peculiar appeal to young people. The Methodists
empowered young exhorters and preachers to lead adults and other young people,
thus offering youths a forum to question the authority of their elders, challenge
established beliefs, and broadly influence both Methodism and mainstream
society. Given the youthful orientation of early American Methodism, the movement’s
appeal is thus best understood through the perspective of its young people.
This article considers two interlocking questions: Why did Methodism attract
young converts in the Upper South and Ohio Valley frontier between the movement’s
roots in America in the 1770s and its growth into a mainstream religion
by the 1820s; and why did Methodism evolve into a culturally radical, youthdriven
movement in the early republic?
Neither Methodism nor the sect’s youthful allure was confined to the rural
South and West. In the eighteenth century, the movement first flourished in the
mid-Atlantic’s seaboard cities. As early as the 1770s, Francis Asbury, who soon
emerged as the church’s national leader, admitted from Philadelphia that he led a
cohort of “young preachers,” causing older observers to suspect that Asbury had
“stirr[ed] them up against those the[y] should be in subjection to.” However,
toward the century’s end the movement’s growth shifted westward. By 1804,
Asbury lamented, “I have felt for the preachers in the east . . . for the towns and
cities, they are very dead.” In the rural interior, as the sect grew more youthcentered,
signs of intergenerational friction and youthful attraction persisted and
perhaps intensified. Parents became angry when their Methodist son publicly
condemned their sinfulness at a Kentucky revival or a teenage daughter questioned
her parents’ denominational bias when she announced her conversion to
Methodism at an Ohio camp meeting. “[You] have taught me from my childhood
to hate . . . the Methodists,” she proclaimed, “till my soul was well nigh
lost and ruined forever!” Methodists’ preachers were likely elated by this young
convert’s censorious assertions in part because they also became targets of their
elders’ ire. One complained, “[The Methodists] take foolish inexperienced young
men and place them at the helm of affairs,” while another protested, “Unless
there be some steps taken to less[en] the extravagances of young preachers (for
the old, almost to a man, have left us) the sober and sensible part of our societies
will get disgusted.” 2 However much conservative white southerners believed that
the Methodists’ youthful preachers lacked the maturity and social status necessary
to pastor, they sometimes joined this youth-dominated church.
Methodists’ cultural radicalism fueled these intergenerational disputes.
Historians John Wigger and Nathan Hatch argue that the evangelical message
4 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Title page, Adam Rankin, A Review of a Noted Revival in Kentucky,
Commenced in the Year of Our Lord, 1801 (Lexington, 1803).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
JOHN ELLIS
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Methodism dovetailed with
the democratizing rhetoric of the Revolution to transform American society.
Methodists’ conviction that all humans were equal before God, regardless of
wealth or education, justified the democrats’ disregard of inherited social status
in favor of earned privilege and charismatic authority. However, scholars Dee
Andrews and Cynthia Lyerly contend that Methodists demanded social equality
on a greater scale than the democrats envisioned, and they insist that Methodists’
evangelical message more shaped, than reflected, American society. In the Upper
South, Methodists empowered women, youths, and African Americans in a society
dominated by planters and patriarchs. Women became exhorters and African
American men became informal preachers in a sect that many white men initially
despised. Methodists also encouraged dependents to defy the wishes of
ungodly husbands, fathers, and masters, whose corrupt behavior fell short of
Methodist morality. Historians Rhys Isaac and Christine Heyrman assert that
both Methodists and like-minded Baptists undermined the hierarchical foundations
of southern families and communities by generating a popular upsurge in
a traditionally deferential culture. A. Gregory Schneider adds that Methodists
challenged frontier ideals of manhood. White men gauged their manliness by
the respect that they commanded among their social inferiors and by proving
their personal prowess before their peers through gambling, fist fighting, and
other forms of public competition. In a radical reversal, Methodists encouraged
wives, children, and other subordinates to condemn the glory-seeking activities
of men as sinful pride and to desire instead God’s approval alone by cultivating
private conscience. 3 This article illustrates the interconnectivity between the
Methodist counterculture and the youths who lay at its heart.
The Confused
In the unstable social environment of the post-Revolutionary South and West,
approval-seeking youths—often culturally confused and personally frustrated—
were particularly susceptible to the Methodists’ influence. Although America’s
fast-changing society disoriented young people throughout the nation, the South
and West presented youths with specific challenges that Methodists adeptly
addressed. The American Revolution unsettled society in the border region in
part because the British evacuation of the Ohio Valley had left vast tracts of land
open to Anglo-American settlement, accelerating the already-endemic demographic
mobility of the area. Rising in the 1780s and surging by the 1800s,
waves of ambitious yeoman farmers and planters poured into Kentucky, Ohio,
and other western states from the coastal South. While traveling in Kentucky
in the 1790s, the Virginia native and Methodist preacher John Kobler observed,
“This country is the . . . most fertile of any I ever saw. . . . The grass is higher
than my head and the ground is the most fertile of any that is to be found and
6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

produces corn &c. accordingly.” As similar reports circulated eastward in per-
JOHN ELLIS
sonal letters and published accounts, farmers who had tilled the seaboard’s worn
out land began migrating to the West’s rich soil. Residents of the border region
were both amazed and intimidated by the scope of the resulting exodus. In 1801,
one Kentuckian remarked, “The world had heard the fame of our fat land, which
promised to enrich its inhabitants. . . . [Thus] men . . . traveled from every direction
in hopes of securing the booty. . . . I suppose we are as complete a mixture
of all nations as ever met.” Between 1775 and 1790, the combined white and
African American populations of Kentucky and Tennessee soared from almost
nothing to over one hundred and ten thousand, while the population of Ohio
reached 581,000 by 1820. 4
White southerners were especially alarmed when the westward migrations
broke social bonds with family and neighbors because the region’s tight-knit
communities provided the foundation for their self-identities. Parents taught
their children to subordinate their personal desires to the expectations of both
their extended family and local community when making key life decisions,
including whom to marry and where to establish homesteads. Most southerners
derived their sense of moral self-worth from their kin’s approval, and they
looked to communal consensus rather than private conscience to determine right
from wrong. Southerners whose kin migrated to the West and whose families
stayed in the East not only felt abandoned, but they also lost their social support
system. Although migrants eventually reestablished kin networks in the Ohio
Valley, many found the transition difficult. 5
The loneliness and confusion that this migration generated in youthful children,
especially girls, far outweighed the stress experienced by grown men and
women. Young people lost their emotional support system by breaking their
bonds with kin and neighbors just as they entered adulthood. Separated by hundreds
of miles of terrible roads, their first encounters with adult challenges only
heightened personal insecurities. Those left behind in the East shared this sense
of loss. North Carolinian Methodist Frances Goodwin deeply missed her older
sister Mary’s guidance as she began courting. Frustrated, she wrote to her sister
within months of her migration to Tennessee asking for advice on suitors and
complaining that she did not write often enough. Frances’s fears compounded
as time progressed. Three months later, she wrote again, this time begging for
guidance on her newest beau, Mr. Smith. She culminated her letter with a plea,
“I want to be with you. I must go. How can I [survive,] a poor helpless creature
that has not a single person here that would give me the least assistance?”
Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown notes that the social disparities between men
and women in the patriarchal South restricted intimacy in their interactions.
Sisters and other kinswomen thus provided crucial support for young women
considering marriage. Migration broke this link in the South’s kin networks.
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Likewise, newlywed Susannah (Brooks) Johnson became distraught when her
husband’s preaching career forced her to move into the Kentucky wilderness,
one hundred miles from her mother’s home. Once there, her husband’s itinerant
ministry often forced this first-time mother to fend alone for her infant son.
She wrote that every night for several months, “Overcome with sorrow and perplexity,
I would sit down and mingle my cries, and sobs, and torrents of bitter
tears with [my son’s].” 6 Lonely young women like Johnson and Goodwin found
Methodism attractive.
Emigrants passing down the Ohio on a flatboat, from Walter W. Spooner,
Indian Tales for Boys, or the Back-Woodsmen and True Stories of the Frontier
(Cincinnati: W. H. Ferguson, 1883).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
8 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Young men also suffered psychological strains as
they moved west with their families, although
of a different nature than those of women.
Parents gave teen boys adult-like responsibilities
during the journey that they were
often ill-prepared to handle. Migrant
families needed as many hands as possible
to direct wagons, steer flatboats,
hunt, and guard against Indian attacks.
Youths accepted these hazardous challenges
to prove their manly courage and
emerging adulthood. Courting danger
was a hallmark of manly honor in the
South, especially when protecting kin. In
old age, Conduce Gatch recalled with pride that
he and his Methodist father, Philip, led the family’s
horses from Virginia to the wilds of Ohio when
he was a teenager. Although bitten by a dog en
route, Conduce recollected the journey as an adventure, likely forgetting in hindsight
the danger of the trek. Jacob Young better recalled the fearful trip that he
and his parents took from western Pennsylvania to central Kentucky, prior to his
Methodist conversion. He remembered that as he steered the flatboats down the
Ohio River, he was terrified that they would capsize on the rocks, their horses
would jump over the sides, or they would suffer an Indian attack. 7
Many frontier boys experienced acute confusion when thrust into adult-like
tasks, and their uncertainties did not subside with the journey west. Young men
often lacked the mental maturity and experience to handle their new duties.
Eleven-year-old John Deem repeatedly made poor choices during the roundtrip
journey that he took with his uncle from southern Ohio to southern Kentucky.
In his memoir, the future Methodist preacher recalled that his uncle left him and
his thirteen-year-old cousin to travel the final forty miles home alone. To prove
their bravery and get home quickly, the boys chose to ford two rushing creeks
against the orders of the uncle, almost tipping their carriage in the attempt.
Parents expected boys to continue their new responsibilities on the frontier.
Jacob Young was not yet twenty when his parents enlisted him in a road-building
expedition with several other teens in Kentucky’s backwoods. They worked
on their task during the day, but at night the testosterone-charged adolescents
began battling with firebrands, and several were seriously injured. Horrified,
Young was paralyzed to inaction, caught between manhood and boyhood. He
too wanted to join the fight to prove his manliness, but he recognized the irresponsibility
of doing so. 8
Jacob Young (1776-1859).
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
JOHN ELLIS
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Migrant boys’ confusion was compounded when parents gave them adult-
like duties before their culture regarded them as men (that is, before they married
and owned land). Contemporaries viewed older teens and even men over twenty
years of age as sub-adults because they could not marry until they had acquired
sufficient resources to support a family. This was especially true of white southern
boys who migrated to the frontier. By southern standards, an ideal man held
his kin and local community’s respect and had confidence in his own autonomy.
Teen boys had the responsibilities of adults, but they did not yet wield patriarchal
authority. However, parents tightly monitored unmarried youths’ decisions,
especially when their activities threatened the family’s reputation. Although John
Deem trekked through Kentucky’s wilderness with his uncle, when he returned
home he submitted to his father’s corporal punishments. In one instance, his
father’s apprentice, named Dickey, falsely accused fifteen-year-old Deem of cheating
and cursing during a corn-husking race. Refusing to believe John’s counteraccusation
that Dickey had lied, Deem’s father whipped his son with an apple
switch. In his memoir, Deem painfully recalled that his father had treated him
like a child. Jacob Young’s parents likewise allowed their son to join dangerous
road-building expeditions in Kentucky, but he faced his overbearing mother’s ire if
he degraded himself by attending horse races. Their societies’ incongruous assortment
of restrictions and freedoms vexed southern and western men throughout
their adolescent and post-adolescent years. 9 Like lonely young women, confused
young men were susceptible to the Methodists’ evangelical message.
With their socio-cultural world unstable and their route to adulthood
impeded, young men and women denied the comfort of an undisputed worldview
sought a core set of values on which they could ground their self-identities.
The disestablishment of state-sponsored Anglicanism during the 1770s and
1780s promoted a religious free market in which charismatic spiritual leaders
and millenarian sects catered to the laity’s popular beliefs and competed with one
another for converts. Within the Methodist Church, Nelson Reed, John Kobler,
and other preachers maintained cordial relations with other evangelical sects in
the eighteenth century, but the competitive climate intensified with time. By the
nineteenth century, hotheaded preachers like Tennessean Jacob Young remorselessly
stirred controversy by decrying Calvinist predestinarian tenets before unsuspecting
Presbyterians, and John Early insulted Virginia Baptists when he vowed
to “kill Calvinism” during his sermons. Amid the contest for souls, confused
youths tried to discern the uncertain path to salvation among mutually exclusive
alternatives. Moreover, theologies were not the only belief systems from which
youths could choose. The southern honor culture valued violence, hard drinking,
competitiveness, and boastfulness in men and feminine charm and physical
beauty in women. These self-aggrandizing values only exasperated Baptist and
Methodist evangelicals, who denounced them as vanity. 10
10 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Although church-going adults in the border region experienced the whir of
competing religions, usually their values systems had already congealed around
established denominations. Because youths’ values had not yet solidified, the
competing religious denominations of the early republic campaigned for the
souls of vulnerable young men and women. The individuals most in need of psychological
certainty became the focus of an ideological contest. In an effort to
break their children’s allegiance to established values, Methodist preachers blasted
the traditions and beliefs of the youths’ unconverted parents in sermons and private
conversations. On one occasion, William Colbert told an Anglican’s two
daughters that they would be damned if they continued
to attend dances. The incensed and confused
girls responded, “They would as soon be called
before the judgment of Christ from dancings,
as from praying, and that their Parson
Dent encouraged it, and if there was any
harm in it, such a good man as he would
not be in favour of it.” At another service,
John Early wrote, “I asked a young
woman . . . to give me a strand of beads
around her neck, she to try me (to see)
what I would do with them. . . . [She
threw them] to me. I opened the fire and
put them in to let her know I wanted to burn
old Sam [the Devil] up.” He also warned
unconverted youths they were bound for
hell. After he told one Baptist teen that
her Calvinist faith was a sure road to damnation,
she wished that he would “Go to
hell above all people.” 11
COURTESY OF EKSTROM LIBRARY,
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
The force of Methodists’ attacks nevertheless caught youths’ attention.
They broke the grip of traditional beliefs and created intense psychic conflict.
Evangelicals and proponents of southern honor waged cultural battles within
their own homes over the minds of their children. Unfortunate youths had to
choose which family member they most wanted to please. Peter Cartwright’s
father, a cursing and gambling Kentuckian, gave his teenaged son a racing horse
and pack of cards to initiate him into manhood, while his domineering Methodist
mother wept over him every time he danced or gambled. Likewise, Kentuckian
Elizabeth Roe had an overbearing Methodist mother who nagged her daughter
when she attended dances, but Roe’s siblings threatened to horsewhip her if
she ever converted to Methodism. Roe recalled her confusion, “No one, but .
. . [God] knew how I felt. I dearly loved my brothers and sisters; [but] I loved
JOHN ELLIS
Elizabeth A. Roe, from frontispiece, Elizabeth
A. Roe, Recollections of Frontier Life (Rockford,
Il.: Gazette Publishing House, 1885).
SPRING 2010 11

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
my mother, and I did not wish to grieve her.” Most youths could not make the
choice. Roe oscillated between puritanical religiosity and carefree dancing, while
Cartwright gambled, even as he sensed his mother’s disappointment. 12
12 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Title page, Elizabeth A. Roe, Recollections of Frontier Life
(Rockford, Il.: Gazette Publishing House, 1885).
COURTESY OF EKSTROM LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

The competition between proponents of traditional values and the diverse
sectaries of the post-establishment South disoriented many border youths whose
identities were already unstable. The religious traditions spreading through the
early republic taught that an individual’s ultimate objective should be to reach
Heaven, but each taught different means to achieve that goal. As a result, parents
pressured their children to experience conversion, but as these children entered
adolescence and encountered new theologies, they grew uncertain what path led
to the heavenly gates. Kentuckian James Finley told his distraught Calvinist parents
that he had adopted Universalism because he could not accept that a loving
God predestined anyone to hell, but he remained racked with fears that he was
damned. To mask his inner conflict, he embraced the southern ideal of manhood
by swearing and gambling. He explained, “In the midst of all this mirth and revelry
I dared not think of death and eternity.” As Calvinism, honor culture, and
Universalism struggled to gain ascendance over Finley’s beliefs, he coped by combining
the tenets of all three into a volatile amalgam of cultural values. Teenagers
Susannah Johnson and Jacob Young also adopted the incompatible facets of competing
value systems. Johnson flirted with Universalism to allay her Calvinist
fears that she was a reprobate. Young bet on horse races, while he worried that
gambling would damn him. 13
The Curious
In a society roiled by rival worldviews and theologies, shifting understandings of
JOHN ELLIS
status and adulthood, and the breakdown of community and communal identity,
Methodism offered an appealing resolution to youths caught in the cultural
uncertainty. However, most young people were not initially drawn to Methodism
because of its ideological message. Rather, youths and adults both flocked to the
circuit riding Methodist evangelists’ revivals because of their novelty in the border
region’s rural areas. Other than occasional itinerant entertainers or politicians
canvassing for votes, prominent strangers seldom appeared in the region’s backwater
towns. When outsiders did come, they drew large crowds of locals hoping
for a public spectacle to enliven the otherwise mundane routines of life in their
communities. Social gatherings in the sparsely settled areas of the region were
extraordinary events. Southerners thus used the arrival of important strangers,
as well as holidays and other public events, as excuses to leave their farms, meet
with neighbors, and celebrate. 14
When rural residents met, liquor often flowed. As James Finley lamented,
“A house could not be raised, a field of wheat cut down, nor could there be a log
rolling, a husking, a quilting, a wedding, or a funeral without the aid of alcohol.”
To Methodist preachers’ dismay, politicians treated boozing voters to kegs of
alcohol during elections. Thomas Mann complained that residents committed
“much wickedness” on election days. The merriment was still more boisterous on
SPRING 2010 13

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Christmas Day and the Fourth of July. John Early wrote that on Christmas, “The
Children of Darkness . . . fir[ed] off their guns,” drank, and danced. Likewise, a
dismayed John Kobler observed that on the Fourth, “[The locals celebrated] by
eating and drinking, fiddling, dancing and making merry.” Revelers were often
rowdy young men, but young women also used holidays and other public events
as rare opportunities to escape their households and flirt with neighboring young
men. No reaping, corn husking, Christmas, or Independence Day celebration
was complete without a community dance for the young people. 15
As a result, many rural residents went to Methodist revivals expecting to
socialize, but they also came because circuit riders were oddities. Prior to 1790
in the East and 1800 in the West, few had witnessed a Methodist revival or
heard a circuit rider preach. Because Presbyterians, Anglicans, and most Baptists
embraced Calvinism, listeners found the Methodists’ free-will theology startling.
In Maryland, one irate Anglican wrote to William Colbert, “I, with many other
for the sake of the novelty of your doctrine in these parts, have attended your
meetings . . . but have been so far disappointed that I think many of us will not
attend again. And believe me sir, your audience in my opinion would not be very
numerous, if some of the members in Church to gratify an idle curiosity, did not
on their return from Church to respective homes, add to the numbers.” Colbert
delightedly read the letter before his next congregation, knowing it would stoke
further interest in his unorthodoxy. Conversely, conservative clergymen’s firebrand
sermons against Methodism also fanned the flames of curiosity. As one
circuit rider gloated to a fellow preacher, Daniel Hitt, “[The Presbyterians] preach
so pointedly against and represent the Methodist principles in such colours, that
many are excited to come and hear.” 16
Methodists’ unusual worship style also attracted notice in the years before
1800. Methodists embraced the new evangelicalism’s ultra-emotional spirituality,
which shocked southerners accustomed to the sedate and intellectual services
of Anglican and most Presbyterian churches. In Methodism’s early years,
potential converts in the throws of conviction neared hysteria. John Kobler witnessed
one woman who “beat herself [on] the floor in such a manner that several
tried to hold her but could not.” William Colbert observed a distraught
African American man, who “was very much agitated and gave a most awful
shriek, foaming at the mouth and looking frightfully out of his eyes.” New converts
and longtime Methodists held equally expressive religious meetings, and
circuit riders encouraged their listeners to worship however they felt led by God.
Consequently, Methodists displayed a profusion of diverse emotions during their
revivals. At John Early’s meetings, the Methodists “shouted for joy,” while sinners
“rolled in the dirt.” During Thomas Mann’s services, “some shouted [and]
some cried.” Freeborn Garrettson delighted while listeners clapped and wept as
he preached. 17
14 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Religious conservatives were bewildered by what they
saw. After one of Kobler’s emotional services, “Some
were offended and . . . [averred] they that made such
a noise ought to be tied up and have 70 lashes.”
Among first-time observers, the most common
reaction to the Methodists’ hyper-emotionalism
was fear or astonishment. When Freeborn
Garrettson preached, a perplexed crowd of spectators
gathered round the building housing his
service, staring through the windows at the commotion
inside. More often, frantic onlookers ran
away if revivals became too chaotic or they feared
that they might succumb to the infectious emotions.
Garrettson, Kobler, and Richard Swain each conducted
services from which bystanders ran in
fright as emotions intensified, and Philip Gatch
and James Finley confessed to trying to flee the
first revivals they attended. 18
As they fled, eyewitnesses carried news to kin and neighbors of the inexplicable
behavior they saw, which in turn attracted more excitement seekers to
Methodist services. In the region’s social networks, the potent force of gossip
brought whole communities to witness Methodists’ strange behavior. Methodist
preachers welcomed the word-of-mouth publicity generated by gossip because
the border region’s oral culture provided few other mediums to attract unconverted
listeners. In the backcountry, newspapers were rare, and while local
preachers publicized Methodist revivals to their congregations, their announcements
mostly reached the ears of fellow converts. Thus John Kobler gleefully
noted that at one service, “Souls [were] weeping aloud for mercy and crying out
in a great agony of soul. Several was offended and others out of doors were hurrying
to for speaking great swelling words, saying men ought not to be suffered
to go on in such a way as this. So on Monday . . . [when] preaching began . . .
the whole neighborhood all came out.” 19
As the number of converts in isolated communities swelled, so did the magnitude
of rumors respecting the circuit riders and the consequent awe with which
locals regarded them. To rural people who believed in folk magic, witchcraft,
fortunetelling, ghosts, and demonic possession, Methodist preachers seemed to
have supernatural control over their emotionally wrought audiences. An Ohioan
tried to shoot Finley because he feared he had bewitched his wife, and many
spectators concluded that John Early, Peter Cartwright, and Lorenzo Dow had
the ability to prophesize and curse. In fact, Methodist preachers had a variety
of qualities that mystified insular rural communities. They were outsiders
JOHN ELLIS
Freeborn Garrettson (1752-1827) from M.
L. Scudder, American Methodism (Hartford,
Ct.: S. S. Scranton and Co., 1868).
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
who fought to transform local lifeways, they were religious radicals who rejected
Calvinism, and they often were youths who attracted large audiences in localities
where patriarchs monopolized social authority. Cultural and religious conservatives
were infuriated that these strangers completely disregarded tradition, but
most backwater southerners were astonished that humans so culturally foreign to
themselves existed. Marvel led groups of twenty or thirty locals to follow James
Meacham as he rode through one neighborhood to begin services. Uneasy with
his growing entourage, he wrote, “I suppose [my revivals are] something new to
them and the minds and fancies of unstable people is something like the spirit of
the world, a scratching at every new thing that comes in reach.” 20
After 1800, when the initial shock caused by the circuit riders and their sect
subsided, curiosity-seeking youths and adults still flooded Methodist services,
but now they were more often rowdies entertained by the revivalists’ confrontational
preaching. Zealous circuit riders had long heaped stinging reproofs
on recalcitrant sinners and disrespectful listeners, especially unruly youths.
But as Methodism matured, the preachers refined these reproofs into “biting
and withering sarcasm” that humiliated hecklers and amused other bystanders.
Entertainment-deprived rural border residents eagerly witnessed the verbal violence
that fervent preachers dished out. Conspicuous displays of wealth proved
a regular barb used by these mostly impecunious itinerants. John Early berated
a Baptist widow for wearing her wedding ring to his service. When asked if
she had converted, the woman replied that she “had the gold,” to which he
responded sarcastically, “Sure enough . . . there it is [on your finger].” Early’s
aggressiveness led some listeners to conclude that he was mentally disturbed, but
this only drew larger crowds. Early explained, “Curiosity led out some people
from a distance for it had been noised that I was distracted.” Similar gossip
circulated about Lorenzo Dow. After lay Methodist Thomas Grant witnessed
Dow’s revivalism for the first time, he wrote to his sister, “Some think him
deranged . . . [but] his labors has been much blessed. . . . He has an uncommon
manner and . . . is a great reasoner and powerful against the deists and doctrine
of particular election.” The circuit riders’ abrasive wit startled the region’s southerners
accustomed to deference as a cultural marker. But it convinced listeners
that Methodist preachers were powerful opponents. In the border region’s slave
states especially, the peculiar institution became a potent weapon in the hands
of itinerants. In one instance, John Early offended a slave trader’s wife by referring
to his kind in a sermon as “among the blackest characters.” When the angry
husband later demanded an apology, Early quipped, “I was sorry I had injured
his wife and further (I was sorry) she had a negro speculator for a husband.” In
a region where cock fights, duels, and fisticuffs drew spectators, the preachers’
verbal assaults persuaded listeners that abusive wordplay was an equally brutal
and entertaining sport. 21
16 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

The Methodists’ frank denunciations insulted southerners especially because
their criticisms humbled those who viewed humility as a mark of shame and infe-
riority. In southern culture individuals gauged their worth by the degree to which
their kin and neighbors esteemed them; they expected peers to affirm their social
equality and inferiors to defer to their authority. If a person was treated otherwise,
it signified a disreputable character. Backcountry yeomen, whether southern or
not, protected their autonomy and interpreted as grave insults all public challenges
to their authority. Finley encapsulated the frontier’s honor code when he noted,
“The law of kindness governed our social walks; and if such a disastrous thing as a
quarrel should break out, the only way to settle the difficulty was by a strong dish
of fisticuffs.” In contrast, the circuit riders demanded surrender to their values,
but as youthful outsiders they had no claim to authority in local communities. 22
Methodists’ verbal antagonism toward revival attendees often sparked hostile
responses that spiraled beyond their control. Fist fights and other violent behavior
occurred when young men, insulted by a preacher’s reproofs, and parents,
enraged that their child had converted, disrupted Methodist services. Offended
southerners especially often formed mobs of kin and neighbors that attacked
both preachers and followers. Composed largely of raucous young men eager
to entertain themselves and assert their manhood by shaming the circuit riders
into submission, the mobs employed a number of tactics, not all of them violent.
They often barged into services and mocked the worshippers or dragged them
outside. Richard Swain could not stop a fun-seeking mob that broke down the
meetinghouse door, filled the building, and began selling watermelons and rum.
Kobler was similarly flustered when miscreants “broke the door open and all
came inside laughing.” A particularly determined group of young men stormed
into one of Ezekiel Cooper’s services. After the congregation repelled them, one
of the youths bored a hole through the barn’s dirt floor to re-enter. 23
Though verbally aggressive, young circuit riders rarely returned blows when
conflicts with unruly mobs turned violent. Rather than defend their reputations,
the circuit riders embraced their shame. As Freeborn Garrettson remarked, “God
had taught me better than to use carnal weapons.” The Methodists measured
their worth by their intuitive sense of God’s approval rather than regard for the
unregenerate. The passions of the American Revolution had stoked a directed
rage against pacifist circuit riders who refused to declare allegiance to the newly
independent states. During the 1780s, Philip Gatch instructed a posse of men
who had captured him to tar his face. “I could bear it for Christ’s sake,” he
averred, and did not resist as they coated his cheek and eye. By the early nineteenth
century, preachers in the Ohio Valley largely avoided bloodshed when
they encountered rabble-rousers. Yet both Peter Cartwright and John Deem
admitted that they sometimes “had not the power to resist temptation” and occasionally
entered fistfights during their long careers. 24
JOHN ELLIS
SPRING 2010 17

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Rather, the circuit riders unleashed a startling counterassault on their attack-
ers by inverting the foundations of southern honor. Where most men affirmed
their manhood through their physical prowess, the Methodist preachers established
their divine authority by freeing torrents of feelings from their listeners’
psyches. The circuit rider Henry Smith referred to this ability as “a kind of holy
‘knock-‘em-down’ power.” In the contest between manly violence and godly
emotion, emotion won. Methodist accounts describe frequent instances of miscreants
who attended services intending to disrupt the proceedings, only to succumb
to conversion. Kobler recounted an emotional service at which a young
man, who had broken the chapel window during the previous day’s worship,
arrived “as full of ambition as he could hold” but soon collapsed on the floor in
ecstasy. Another man, who came to monitor his wife’s behavior, “fell down prostrate,
and roared out for the disquietedness of his soul, and beat himself against
the ground” after witnessing her conversion. 25
Like the young men who came to revivals to fight rather than convert, most
young women initially carried ulterior motives to the circuit riders’ services. At
religious services rural young women had an opportunity to escape the eye of
watchful parents and flirt with young men. This was especially true of nineteenth
century Methodist camp meetings, which were large enough events to
attract throngs of dashing young men and considered safe enough by parents
to allow their daughters to visit unsupervised. Elizabeth Roe’s cousin knew the
importance of the camp meetings to teenage girls as she prepared fifteen-year-old
Elizabeth to visit one in 1820. “It was necessary to make great preparations,”
Roe reminisced. “[The camp meeting] would be a great place to show off, and
make a grand appearance. So cousin set herself about arranging our dress, a new
18 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Henry Smith (b. 1769) from John Marshall
Barker, History of Ohio Methodism
(Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1898).
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

hat, a few articles of rich jewelry. . . . No expense or trouble was spared to make
me appear fine.” Even the smaller Methodist services of the eighteenth century
attracted young women hoping to charm young men rather than listen to sermons.
Many of the border ministers lamented the “dressy” and “gaudy” teen girls
who came to their services wearing gold rings, beaded necklaces, ruffles, and low
cut dresses. 26
Young women sometimes became as publicly assertive as teenage boys when
seeking eligible suitors. Aggressive adolescent girls often set their sights on young
strangers who came to their communities to preach. John Early and Jeremiah
Norman, both in their twenties, were particular objects of young women’s flirtations.
One playfully told Early that if he “wanted a wife without a fortune,”
then he should court her. Another coyly lamented to Norman, “It was mighty
hard for a young woman to have religion. How could they pray while the beautiful
men were in their sight?” Although these enticements failed to soften either
man’s prudish constitutions, other young men surrendered to feminine charms.
Youths flaunted Methodist rules demanding the separation of sexes during worship
and loudly chatted together throughout the service. They simply ignored
preachers who told them to separate. As community outsiders, circuit riders
wielded patriarchal authority only over those young people who had converted. 27
Yet beneath many of these youths’ unreceptive demeanor were psyches deeply
affected by the Methodists’ message. Youths often went to Methodist revivals for
entertainment and to alleviate the boredom of their small towns, but they could
not ignore the sect’s cultural and religious extremism. Circuit riders infuriated
and frightened their audiences, but they also forced their spectators to reevaluate
their values. The Methodists’ odd behavior jolted young people out of their comfort
zones, opening their minds to alternate moral principles. Unable to explain
the Methodists’ conduct through a conventional outlook and powerless to overcome
them with shame, many baffled youths conceded the possibility that the
sect’s cultural vision was more compelling than their own.
The Reborn
Methodism’s radicalism jarred border sensibilities at all ages. Yet culture shock
JOHN ELLIS
does not fully explain the overwhelming youth of Methodist converts. Young
people were also drawn toward Methodism by the intimacy generated among
its believers. In a society in which social bonds were transitory, the Methodists’
tight-knit sect had an arresting allure. Converts shared their most private struggles
with fellow believers in supportive weekly gatherings called class meetings.
The Virginia circuit rider Thomas Lyell recalled that during class meetings, “[The
converts] felt as brethren. . . . They began to bear each others burdens, and naturally
to care for each other and ‘as they had daily a more intimate acquaintance
with, so they had a more endeared affection for each other.’” For the border
SPRING 2010 19

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
region’s isolated youths, Methodism thus provided a new basis for community
not rooted to specific localities, North or South. Young converts who migrated
from their kin formed new bonds with like-minded believers in the West. 28
During revival services, the circuit riders initiated youths into the Methodist
community by dispensing with the formalities that distanced strangers, especially
in southern culture. Their astonished listeners felt preachers spoke individually
to them and brought to public light their darkest sins. Philip Gatch recalled
that during the first Methodist service he attended, “I was told [by the preacher]
all things that I had done,” while the circuit rider, Nelson Reed, affirmed to an
amazed audience, “I told them all the things that ever they did.” Methodists’
uncanny ability to discern listeners’ innermost thoughts was not confined to their
ordained preachers. Teenager John Deem recalled that he encountered a twelveor
thirteen-year-old boy exhorter during a camp meeting who “describe[d] my
character and it seemed to me that if he had my whole history before him, he
could not have discerned my character better than he did.” In a communal society
in which saving face was vital and intimate conversations rare even among
kin, listeners found the strangers’ candid pleas to convert unexpected. Indeed,
they dissolved the social barriers between the preacher outsiders and their audience.
Freeborn Garrettson recalled that as he listened to a Methodist sermon as
a youth, “[The preacher] began to wind about me in such a manner . . . probing
to the very bottom, and discovering the defects of my heart. I was ready to cry
out, ‘How does this stranger know me so well!’” The more pointed the critique,
the more piercing its impact. Two years later, Garrettson encountered a young
Methodist exhorter along the road. The stranger asked him if he knew whether
he was saved. When Garrettson said that he did not, the youth replied, “You are
on the broad road to hell.” Forced to defend his honor, he admitted, “I could
not easily forget the words of that pious young man, for they were as spears running
through me.” 29
Although honor-guarding young men initially withstood the preachers’ critiques,
young women found the strangers’ intimate appeals appealing. After
Jeremiah Norman encountered a teenage girl dressed in “gaudy attire” at a service,
he “interrogated her . . . [to learn whether] she was in any religious society
or not? She . . . answer[ed] in the positive no. . . . I then addressed myself to her
on . . . gaining religion, keeping it, and showing all the glorious consequences and
what would be her case if she missed these things.” The shaken young woman
began crying uncontrollably. William Colbert elicited a similar reaction from a
young woman who came dressed to his service with “an enormous string of beads
around her neck.” He told her that she would be damned if she continued to wear
provocative attire. “She was so mortified that she afterwards [said] to another
young woman that I should never see her with them on again,” he recalled, and
she removed the beads and began “crying to God for mercy.” The circuit riders’
20 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

personal appeals not only forced their listeners to consider the Methodist mes-
JOHN ELLIS
sage, but they also emotionally linked the preachers to their youthful audiences.
The young Baptist who told John Early to go to hell changed her mind just one
day after listening to his pleas to convert. Now she “cried powerfully and [said]
. . . she was sorry for what she had said about [Early] the day before for she now
liked [him] very well.” Although the preachers condemned sin, they also argued
that every “soul [had] priceless value.” Their concern for their converts’ eternal
well-being resonated with young women, both married and especially unmarried,
who asked for prayers and sought companionship. In fact, in the border region’s
sexually guarded culture, observers sometimes mistook unmarried Methodist
preachers for womanizers because they cultivated intense devotion among young
women. One man informed Colbert that he had heard of the “slippery tricks” of
Methodists and insisted that another preacher had “locked [himself] up in a corn
house with a young woman [and presumably raped her].” John Early likewise
overheard gossip suggesting that he courted “wicked” women. 30
The friendship offered by the itinerant preachers also proved a powerful
incentive for conversion among the frontier’s young men. Circuit riders often
developed father-like relationships with teenage boys, offering them the manly
praise for which they longed. Nineteen-year-old John Deem was pulled into
Methodism through the efforts of the preacher William Raper. Though barely
older than Deem, Raper earned the impressionable young man’s admiration after
he spent a day teaching him how to tan hides. Deem bonded enough with the
preacher that when he asked him to sleep in bed with him that night, he agreed to
do so. As the two lay awake, Raper reminisced about his experiences as a soldier
in the War of 1812. With Deem convinced that Raper was a model of manliness,
the circuit rider sprung his trap. “I tried to learn you to curry leather and
last night I narrated my adventures as a soldier,” the preacher told him the next
morning. “Now said he as he still held me by the hand, ‘I want to enlist you as
a soldier for Christ.’” Deem hesitated but, his honor challenged, “I thought if
a stranger should take such an interest in me as to be willing to pray three times
a day especially for me, it was but reasonable that I should comply with his
request.” Deem’s story was common. Circuit riders became mentors to Jacob
Young, Philip Gatch, John Early, and other youths, often pressuring them to
become fellow itinerants and advising them how to preach. 31
Social pressure to join Methodism came from more than the sect’s preachers.
Methodist revivals were collective efforts to convert unregenerate bystanders,
their heated emotions fueled by the energy of corporate coercion. At a typical
service in Virginia, three youths and a sailor asked the officiating preacher, Joseph
Rowen, to pray for them. As the four waited, a group of youthful believers surrounded
them and began singing. Rowen wrote that the sailor grew so distraught
that “He was on his knees beating on his breast . . . [and then] clap’d his hands
SPRING 2010 21

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
like a person frantic.” This unleashed
an emotional surge among worshippers
and unsuspecting spectators.
“[A] well dress’t young man . . . fell
back his whole length . . . [and] lay
motionless . . . for 2 or 3 hours.” Jacob
Young, too, was overwhelmed at a
Methodist revival. “The congregation
was melted into tears,” he recalled.
“I could compare it to nothing but a
storm of wind. . . . [They] nearly all
rose from their seats, and began to fall
upon the floor like trees thrown down
by a whirlwind.” A convert addressed
him, “Jacob Young, I suppose this
appears to be enthusiasm to you,” but
he became speechless and collapsed.
Revivals unleashed a sensory overload
that many participants found difficult
to escape, even image-conscious
young men. The preachers knew the
vulnerability of youths to the pinch of
peer pressure. John Kobler wrote that
during a Virginia service an excited
teen exhorted his friends to convert.
When several other young men became convicted of their sins, the neighborhood’s
leading troublemaker converted. Kobler triumphantly recorded, “Now
Sampson is slain surely we can conquer the rest of the Philistines.” 32
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
Yet peer pressure could not coerce young people to convert and commit to
Methodism’s radical program if religious confusion and personal frustration had
not already weakened their resistance. Methodism affected youths who were convinced
of the reality of hell but who also lacked the surety of salvation. William
Watters contended that only sinners “stripped” of their self-certainty would convert,
while Lorenzo Dow observed that “the lukewarm, lazy, half-hearted, indolent
professor [of religion]” was most susceptible to the extreme manifestations
of revival enthusiasm. If Methodism appealed to people filled with self-doubt
yet outwardly apathetic toward religion, then the border region’s youthful population
presented an ideal hotbed in which the movement could take root. Most
Methodist converts recalled in their autobiographies that their most potent childhood
memories consisted of religious admonitions from their pious kin. Troubled
young people, raised in devout households but caught in the uncertainty of the
Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834) from History of Cosmopolite:
or the Writings of Rev. Lorenzo Dow (Cincinnati:
Joshua Martin and Alex S. Robertson, 1849).
22 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

JOHN ELLIS
religious free market, felt bound toward hell. After teenage Freeborn Garrettson
nearly drowned while fording a stream, he “wept bitterly” certain that he had narrowly
missed hell’s fires. Young Susannah Johnson was similarly tormented by
recurring nightmares of her damnation. If the Methodists’ youthful converts did
not need to be convinced of their sins, they did need an incontrovertible ideology
to guide them from damnation. One young woman, who had converted under
Edward Dromgoole’s ministry, explained to her mentor, “I had heard without
being converted no one could inter [sic] the Kingdom of Heaven. I wanted to be
happy ever since I can remember but did not know wherein true happiness consisted.”
Disillusioned youths buried their uncertainty under feigned indifference
and drunkenness, gambling, and dancing. Calvinist youths also invoked predestinarianism
to justify their apathy. Finley and Young both reasoned that if they
were reprobated to hell, then it did not matter how they lived. 33
In a culture where religious values were contested and the afterlife uncertain,
youths found comfort in a sect that assured salvation to its converts. But to
experience this supernatural rebirth, young people’s psyches first needed cracked
to flush their latent anxieties to the surface of their consciousness. To do so,
preachers stripped their listeners of all confidence by guaranteeing their damnation
without conversion—or stated differently, by scaring the hell out of them.
Philip Gatch wrote that he first attended a Methodist meeting “with no expectation
of profiting by the occasion,” but the preacher’s sermon soon “revealed to
me the weakness of my past life and the corruption of my heart.” Consequently,
after “I was stripped of all my self-righteousness,” a dread of hell seized Gatch
so fervently his father feared his son might lose his sanity. The panic that struck
youths at Methodist revivals worried other parents, too. A young Virginian
woman wrote to Edward Dromgoole that the night after she had listened to her
first Methodist sermon, “I could not rest for I thought the earth would open
and swallow me up. My mother . . . said I would go beside myself and she was
advised to keep me from hearing the Methodists preach.” Meacham likewise
lamented that a protective mother “tore her [daughter] from the floor” during his
prayer meeting after her anguished cries grew loud enough to attract “the neighboring
family [who] took the alarm and came over.” Preachers incited panic
when they forced listeners to confront their dormant doubts. William Watters
admitted that he was already uneasy about the state of his soul when he attended
his first Methodist prayer meeting, but afterward he grew terrified. “If I died,” he
concluded, “I must die eternally.” 34
The preachers argued that salvation required only that an individual to have
faith that he or she was saved. James Jenkins dismissed as nonsense the predestinarian
notion that the human will must be divinely redirected to obey God.
Stith Mead and Richard Swain added that the chief difference between predestinarians
and Methodists was that the former taught individuals to wait until
SPRING 2010 23

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
God’s appointed time to convert, while the latter taught that “now” is always the
“accepted time.” By the mid-1800s, other evangelical sects would adopt these
free-will theologies that had been radical a half century earlier. 35
By forcing young people to confront their religious fears while denying them
the excuse of a foreordained eternity, the circuit riders magnified the youths’
adolescent uncertainties. The revivals’ emotional intensity
overran their preconceived norms and values.
Caught up in these revivals participants
found escape difficult. The interdenominational
Cane Ridge meeting, for example,
cracked James Finley’s manly exterior.
Frightened by the anxiety that
engulfed him as he contemplated
damnation and witnessed the worshippers’
hysteria, he fled to a tavern
to bolster his stamina. But the sight
of drunkenness only heightened his
distress. No longer able to suppress
his anxieties, they overran his conscience.
While traveling home with
a friend, he begged his companion to
convert with him. Like Finley, many
young men restrained their emotions at
Methodist-led gatherings with the comfort
of whiskey or by mocking the converts, while
other youths hurriedly left the services to
avoid the humiliation of collapsing, weeping,
and thereby exposing their insecurities. Many
other would-be escapees repeatedly defeated
their impulse to leave. 36
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
Freed from their cultural restraints, many youths proved susceptible to the
Methodists’ message. Preachers offered a decisive choice to youths whose lives
were otherwise dominated by instability and unpredictability. They could either
reject all traditional values that clashed with the sect’s morality and welcome the
shame of rebuffing the cultural consensus, or be damned. During a Carolina
sermon, George Dougherty confronted his young listeners’ inhibitions by empathizing.
“Say you, I am afraid my acquaintance will laugh at me,” he queried.
“Brothers, sisters, cousins will laugh at me and call me a Methodist, an enthusiast.
Why should you be . . . ashamed? . . . Why should sinners be too proud
to own Jesus? . . . I would submit to be despised and insulted for the sake of
your dear souls.” The Christian call to humility added resonance, especially in
24 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
James Finley (1781-1856) from Autobiography
of Rev. James B. Finley (Cincinnati:
Methodist Book Concern, 1853).

southerners’ honor culture. Real humility and defiance of community norms
struck at the heart of southern self-identities, which were anchored in manly bravado
and womanly respectability. Methodism called for no less than the annihilation
of one’s old self. When Young cried out during his conversion, “I am
undone,” his lament was not figurative. 37
Young’s old self might have been undone, but through the catharsis of conversion
he and other border youths were psychologically reborn. The hope of
regeneration motivated nineteen-year-old John Deem to sacrifice his concept of
manly honor at an Ohio camp meeting. Deem forgave Dickey, the mischiefmaking
apprentice who had earlier humiliated him at a corn-husking race, and
renounced his long-planned revenge. He converted at this decisive moment.
Teenager Brantley York likewise converted at a Carolina camp meeting when he
decided that he did not care whether his friends laughed at him as he fell prostrate
in the sodden field. He wrote, “It was suggested in my mind in the form
of a question, ‘What hinders since you have given all up?’ At that moment . . .
I felt perfectly easy.” York’s anxiety ended. Liberated
from public shame, he was now responsible only
to his newfound Methodist community and
the limits of his private conscience. 38
Prior to the 1810s, evangelized
youths demonstrated their allegiance
to their new community by scorning
their unregenerate kin and friends’ values.
During another camp meeting,
one young man decried the wicked
behavior of his drinking companions
to the congregation immediately
after his conversion, even though he
had drunk whiskey with them earlier
that day. Shortly before his conversion,
sixteen-year-old Peter Cartwright likewise
sold his race horse and surrendered
his playing cards to his Methodist mother
to burn. As the deck smoldered in his
mother’s hearth, he simultaneously razed
his relationship with his gambling father.
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
Youthful converts who publicly ridiculed
their parents presented the greatest challenge to southern norms. To taint their
family’s honor, youths did not need to decry their upbringing explicitly, like the
teenager who “exclaimed against his parents for bringing him up in such great
ignorance” at one of John Kobler’s revivals. The young Baptist woman who had
JOHN ELLIS
Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) from
Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, The
Backwoods Preacher (Cincinnati: L.
Swormstedt and A. Poe, 1859).
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THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
told John Early to go to hell simply exhorted against the necessity of water baptism
during her conversion, thus renouncing her parents’ faith as a rite of passage
into the Methodist fold. A month later, when her parents refused to consent to
her request to join the sect, Early admitted her against their wishes. The young
converts’ belligerence often produced troubled relationships between unregenerate
kin and their converted children and siblings. Young people developed
enduring friendships with their Methodist “brothers” and “sisters” that often supplanted
their allegiance to their biological families. Nevertheless, by eliminating
the appeal of other ideologies, breaking the power of shame, and dissolving competing
social bonds, Methodism provided youths with an uncontested ideology
that stabilized their identities and solidified their worldview. 39
After their conversions, young men also gained the respect and autonomy for
which they longed by becoming Methodist preachers and exhorters. The sect’s leaders
empowered youths because they maintained the primacy of personal experience
over culturally defined norms. To most Methodists, conversion was a supernatural
and experiential event that gave each believer direct access to God’s will. A Methodist
could claim to have a divine mandate to lead, and both fellow converts and church
leaders took the claim seriously, even if the broader community did not recognize the
person as an adult. Although the sect had a hierarchical episcopal structure, charismatic
young men who could win souls for Christ were quickly elevated to prominence
within the church, at least before the 1820s. Thus, shortly after fifteen-year-old
Thomas Lyell wowed a congregation of 4,800 listeners with a spell-binding exhortation,
the Methodist Church licensed him to preach regularly during their revivals.
He boasted in his memoir that he was a fifteen-year-old “boy” when he began preaching
and only a seventeen-year-old “youth” when Methodists granted him his first
ministerial charge in 1792. Methodist clergy often pressured promising young men
to preach shortly after their conversions. Lorenzo Dow pointed at teenager Joseph
Travis during the middle of a sermon in 1803 and told him, “There stands a young
man that the Lord intends to make a preacher, if he will but go home and get more
religion.” Young men eager to prove their manhood found challenges like these too
tempting to resist. The Methodist community supported these youths and gave them
the confidence that they needed to defy conventional values. Shortly after converting
in 1820, teenager John Deem felt called by God to exhort, but he believed that he
was “young and unlearned and ignorant and can’t do it.” After both his pastor and a
church elder assured him that he should not only exhort but also become a licensed
preacher, Deem overcame his cultural inhibitions. Likewise, after the presiding elder,
William M’Kendree, in the 1790s asked Jacob Young, then in his twenties, to create
a new preaching circuit alone in the wilds of Kentucky, he enthusiastically took on
the challenge to prove his manly worth. Young later recalled in his autobiography, “I
compared myself to a man settled in a wilderness, who had built his cabin, surveyed
his land, and was preparing to clear a farm.” 40
26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Before Methodism’s youthful heart aged in the nineteenth century and the
sect drifted toward mainstream respectability, it transformed many traditional
cultural values. When the energies of the young converts were focused through
the directive of Methodists’ radical and evangelical message, they unleashed a
potent force of intergenerational change. In the revival fire, youths forged a selfconfident
counterculture that rejected older concepts of community and challenged
hierarchies based on age. Although people of all ages and from various
regions were drawn to Methodism, youths zealously rejected their former lifeways
and had their personalities changed by their faith. Their transformations
confounded their kin and even older converts, who predicted that the change was
ephemeral or worried that the youths had gone mad with religious fanaticism.
They were wrong. The metamorphic energy of conversion, channeled through
the encouragement given by Methodists’ supportive community, created a liminal
space in which young converts could re-imagine their worldview and adopt
new values that met their generations’ needs in the diverse and fluid border society
of the early republic. 41
The author expresses his appreciation to Frank Lambert,
Emily Ellis, Glenn Crothers, and the anonymous readers for
their helpful editorial critiques, as well as to both his family
and friends, the Heckerts, who inspire him to write.
1 Charles Goss, Statistical History of the First Century of
American Methodism (New York: Carlton and Porter,
1866), 109-10. For examples of autobiographers describing
their youthful conversions, see Philip Gatch, Sketch of
Rev. Philip Gatch (Cincinnati: Western Methodist Book
Concern, 1854), 10-14; Jacob Young, Autobiography
of a Pioneer: Or, The Nativity, Experience, Travels, and
Ministerial Labors of Rev. Jacob Young (Cincinnati:
Methodist Episcopal Church Western Book Concern,
1857), 41-44; Lorenzo Dow, History of Cosmopolite: Or
the Writings of Lorenzo Dow: Containing His Experience
and Travels (Cincinnati: Anderson, Gates, and Wright,
1859), 12-17; Susannah Johnson, Recollections of the
Rev. John Johnson and His Home: An Autobiography
(Nashville, Tn.: Southern Methodist Publishing House,
1869), 34-36, 49-50; Stith Mead, A Short Account
of the Experience and Labors of the Rev. Stith Mead
(Lynchburg, Va.: Stith Mead, 1829), 40-43; Brantley
York, The Autobiography of Brantley York (Durham,
N.C.: The Seeman Printery, 1910), 21-24; Elizabeth
Roe, Recollections of Frontier Life (Rockford, Il.: Gazette
Publishing House, 1885), 40-44; William Watters, A
Short Account of the Christian Experience, and Ministereal
Labours of William Watters (1806), in Virginia United
Methodist Heritage 26 (Fall 2000), 9-12. As Joseph Kett
reminds scholars, eighteenth and nineteenth-century
Americans defined the concept of youth less clearly than
today; see Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America,
1790 to Present (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 11-14.
According to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, southern boys
became young men when they developed the physical
capability of performing man-like labor and joined in
“manly” social activities, like fighting, drinking, and
gambling. Southern girls became young women as they
approached sexual maturity, and thus, marriage age; see
Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the
Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),
163-67, 232-33. For information on the regionality of
Methodist growth, see John Wigger, Taking Heaven by
Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity
in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998),
5, 197-200; Russell Richey, Early American Methodism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 50-51;
and Goss, Statistical History, 110. I define the Ohio
Valley as Kentucky, Tennessee, and southern Ohio and
Indiana, and the Upper South as Virginia, Maryland,
Delaware, and North Carolina. For a statistical comparison
of Methodist growth rates with those of contemporary
sects and denominations, see Roger Finke and
Rodney Stark, “How the Upstart Sects Won America,
1776-1850,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
28 (Mar. 1989), 31. For information on the median
age of the population, see Kett, Rites of Passage, 38; and
Christine Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of
the Bible Belt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 81.
Historians of Methodism concur both that young men
in their twenties predominated the Methodists’ national
leadership and that Methodists encouraged child prodigies
to exhort and pray publicly; see Nathan Hatch, The
JOHN ELLIS
SPRING 2010 27

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven,
Ct.: Yale University Press, 1989), 87-88; and Heyrman,
Southern Cross, 77-104. For a synopsis of the sociological
characteristics of modern youth movements, see Kett,
Rites of Passage, 74. For other studies of Methodism
in the early republic, see Dee Andrews, The Methodists
and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping
of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2000); and Cynthia Lyerly, Methodism
and the Southern Mind, 1770-1810 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
2 Francis Asbury to Edward Dromgoole, Jan. 9, 1775,
James Keys to Edward Dromgoole, Aug. 3, 1810, Edward
Dromgoole Papers, folders 1 and 5, Southern Historical
Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
(hereafter SHC); Francis Asbury to Daniel Hitt, Aug. 22,
1804, Daniel Hitt Correspondence, no. 277, Archives of
Ohio Methodism, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware,
Oh. (hereafter AOM); Peter Cartwright, Autobiography
of Peter Cartwright, The Backwoods Preacher (New York:
Carlton and Porter, 1857), 122; Richard Owen to John
Owen, Jr., Dec. 22, 1820, Campbell Family Papers, box
4, Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham,
N.C. (hereafter DUSCL); John Kobler Diary, Mar. 3,
1792, mf., AOM. For a statistical analysis of changing
patterns of Methodist growth, see Wigger, Taking Heaven,
197-200.
3 For Wigger and Hatch’s views on Methodism, see Wigger,
Taking Heaven, 3-20; and Hatch, Democratization,
81-93. For certain historians’ insistence that Methodists
more shaped than reflected Americans social values,
see Andrews, Methodists in Revolutionary America, 220;
Lyerly, Southern Mind, 10; and Mark Noll, America’s God:
From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 341. For descriptions
of Methodists’ empowerment of women, youths, and
African Americans, as well as the limits of Methodists’
egalitarianism, see Lyerly, Southern Mind, 47-72, 94-145;
Andrews, Methodists and Revolutionary America, 99-154;
Wigger, Taking Heaven, 125-72; and Heyrman, Southern
Cross, 77-205. For Rhys Isaac and Christine Heyrman’s
analyses of evangelicals’ challenge to traditional notions of
family and community, see Rhys Isaac, The Transformation
of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1982), 161-77; and Heyrman, Southern
Cross, 77-110, 117-54. For Methodists’ challenge to conventional
notions of manhood, see A. Gregory Schneider,
The Way of the Cross Leads Home (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993), 59-77, 110-21; and Lyerly,
Southern Mind, 27-46, 150-56.
4 Kobler Diary, Aug. 10 or 11, 1798, AOM; Adam Rankin,
A Review of the Noted Revival in Kentucky: Commenced
in the Year of Our Lord, 1801 (Pittsburg, Pa.: John
Israel, 1802), 5 (second quote); Ray Allen Billington,
Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier,
28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
6 th ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1991), 32-44; Schneider, Way of the Cross, 28; Wigger,
Taking Heaven, 7-8; Hatch, Democratization, 30. For
examples of letters describing the richness of the western
soil, see the correspondence between Virginian Edward
Dromgoole and his Ohio Valley kin and former neighbor,
Philip Gatch, esp., Philip Gatch to Edward Dromgoole,
Feb. 11, 1802, Peter Pelham to Edward Dromgoole, June
20, 1807, Bennett Maney to Edward Dromgoole, July
27, 1807, Peter Pelham to Edward Dromgoole, Nov. 19,
1807, and Peter Pelham to Edward Dromgoole, Mar. 8,
1808, all in Dromgoole Papers, folders 3 and 4, SHC.
Population statistics come from Hatch, Democratization,
30; and Billington, Westward Expansion, 42.
5 For southern childrearing practices and the communal
and familial values that they instilled, and the role of
families and communities in courtships, see Wyatt-
Brown, Southern Honor, 125-32, 206-12; Jane Censer,
North Carolina Planters and Their Children, 1800-1860
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984),
42-72; and Daniel Smith, Inside the Great House: Planter
Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), 46-54,
82-125. For a fuller explanation of the difference
between private conscience and its inverse, communal
shame, see Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 154-55. For
a fuller description of the fears and uncertainty felt by
southerners whose kinship networks were ruptured by
migrations, see Heyrman, Southern Cross, 126-29.
6 Frances Goodwin to Mary Owen, Oct. 21, July 18, 1813,
Campbell Papers, box 2, DUSCL; Johnson, Recollections,
112; Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 247.
7 Conduce Gatch, “Sketches or Incidents of the Life of
Rev. Philip Gatch and Family,” m.s., 4-6, Philip Gatch
Collection, group I, section D, John W. Dickhaut
Library, Methodist Theological School in Ohio,
Delaware, Oh. (hereafter JWDL) [although unpaginated,
I have assigned each page in this document a number
to reflect its sequence within the manuscript]; Young,
Autobiography, 30.
8 John Campbell Deem Autobiography [typescript], 28-29,
AOM; Young, Autobiography, 32-33.
9 Deem Autobiography, 35-37, AOM; Young,
Autobiography, 35. Joseph Kett describes semiindependent
youths during the early republic, albeit
in the context of the northern Atlantic states; see Kett,
Rites of Passage, 14-31. In white southerners’ eyes, three
essential attributes distinguished men from youths: land
ownership, marriage, and fatherhood. Kin and neighbors
considered individuals who possessed all three patriarchs
because they controlled their own households and had
wives and children as dependents; see Joan Cashin, A
Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 22-23. For
an overview of what constituted a southern patriarch in
the eighteenth century and descriptions of the ideal of
manly independence, see Schneider, Way of the Cross,
2-7, 60-62; Cashin, A Family Venture, 32-39; and Wyatt-
Brown, Southern Honor, 149-74.
10 Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the
American People (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press,
1990), 225-88; Hatch, Democratization, 49-66; Young,
Autobiography, 122-23; John Early Diary, July 31, 1807
[typescript], 5, SHC; Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 149-
74, 226-53. For examples of eighteenth century Methodists’
cordial relationships with other evangelical sects, see Kobler
Diary, Dec. 11, 1790, Feb. 5, 1791, June 4, 1793, Nov.
17, 1794, Sept. 18, 1795, Mar. 13, May 11, 20, 1797, Aug.
4, 1798, AOM; Diary of Nelson Reed [typescript], Dec.
31, 1778, Mar. 2, 7, 10, May 4, June 30, Aug. 30, Sept.
2, 27, 1779, 36, 47, 48, 60, 66, 77, 80, Church History
Documents Collection, box 6, folder 4, Special Collections,
University of Chicago (hereafter UCSP).
11 William Colbert Journal, Aug. 13, 1794 [typescript], vol.
2:15-16, United Library, Garrett Theological Seminary,
Evanston, Il. (hereafter GTSUL); Early Diary, Nov. 18,
19, 1807, 13, 17, SHC. See also ibid., Aug. 12, Nov. 18,
1807, July 23, 1808, 6, 17, 24.
12 Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 27; Roe, Recollections,
21-36 (quote 26).
13 James Finley, Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley; Or,
Pioneer Life in the West (Cincinnati: The Methodist Book
Concern, 1853), 163-64; Johnson, Recollections, 34-35;
Young, Autobiography, 35, 38. For examples of children
convinced of the necessity of salvation at an early age,
see Mead, Short Account, 31-33; Watters, Short Account,
5-6, 8; Freeborn Garrettson, American Methodist Pioneer:
The Life and Journals of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson,
1752-1827, Robert Simpson, ed. (Rutland, Vt.: Academy
Books, 1984), 39; and Young, Autobiography, 27.
14 For examples of attention-drawing politicians and
entertainers appearing in rural southern towns, see York,
Autobiography, 9; Diary of Jeremiah Norman, Aug. 12,
1796, vol. 4:272-73, SHC.
15 Finley, Pioneer Life, 248; Thomas Mann Journal, Aug.
14, 1828, folder 7, DUSCL; Early Diary, Dec. 27, 1807,
Dec. 20, 1808, 21, 33, SHC; Kobler Diary, July 5, 1794,
AOM. For examples of women discussing the importance
of dances for their social lives, see Colbert Journal,
Feb. 27, Aug. 13, 1794, vol. 1:160, vol. 2:15, GTSUL;
and especially Roe, Reflections, 26-29.
16 Colbert Journal, Sept. 21, 1794, vol. 2:21, GTSUL;
Isaac Robbins to Daniel Hitt, n.d. Hitt Letters, no. 237,
AOM.
17 Kobler Diary, Dec. 2, 1793, AOM; Colbert Journal,
Sept. 21, 1800, vol. 3:131, GTSUL; Early Diary, Aug.
11, 1807, 6, SHC; Mann Journal, May 18, 1805, folder
2, DUSCL; Garrettson, American Methodist Pioneer,
58-59.
18 Kobler Diary, May 22, 1791, Aug. 15, 16, 1792, Mar.
29, 1798, AOM; Extracts of Letters Containing Some
Account of the Work of God Since the Year 1800 (New
York: J. C. Totten, 1805), 32; Garrettson, American
Methodist Pioneer, 59; Richard Swain, The Journal of Rev.
Richard Swain, Robert Steelman, ed. (West Long Branch,
N.J.: Old First United Methodist Church, 1977), 23, 29;
“Condensed Autobiography of Philip Gatch of 1828,”
m.s., 1, Philip Gatch Collection, group I, section F,
JWDL; Finley, Pioneer Life, 169.
19 Kobler Diary, Aug. 15, 16, 1792, AOM. Most circuit riders
either announced their next service after their sermons, or
they relied on the laity to make the announcement for them.
20 James Meacham Journal, Apr. 4, 1790, vol. 3, DUSCL;
Finley, Pioneer Life, 197; Dow, History of Cosmopolite,
176-77; Early Diary, Sept. 22, 1807, 11, SHC;
Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 49-50. For more on folk
supernaturalism in the South, see Heyrman, Southern
Cross, 61-63.
21 William McKendree Taylor to Benjamin St. James Fry,
Apr. 24, 1851, St. James Fry Letters, AOM (first quote).
Taylor wrote about his circuit-riding father, but the
description is applicable to most Methodist preachers
after 1800. Early Diary, Sept. 21, 1807, Sept. 4, 1811,
14, 86-87, SHC; Thomas Grant to Armella Owen, May
28, 1803, Campbell Papers, box 1, DUSCL; Early Diary,
June 9, 1812, 104.
22 Finley, Pioneer Life, 153-54; Schneider, Way of the Cross,
4-8, 12-14, 61-62, 116-17.
23 Swain, Journal, 35; Kobler Diary, July 3, 1791, AOM;
George Phoebus and Ezekiel Cooper, Beams of Light on Early
Methodism in America (Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe,
1887), 126. For examples of violent parents and siblings,
see William Ormond Journal, June 9, 1803 [typescript], vol.
5:11, DUSCL; Meacham Journal, May 25, 1789, Sept. 19,
1792, vols. 11, 8, DUSCL; Colbert Journal, Apr. 18, 1802,
July 14, 1807, vol. 4:78, vol. 6:214, GTSUL; Garrettson,
American Methodist Pioneer, 87. For examples of young men
provoked to violence by a preacher’s reproofs, see ibid., 49;
Norman Diary, June 4, 1794, vol. 1:81-82, SHC; Meacham
Journal, Aug. 29, 1790, vol. 4, DUSCL; Early Diary, Jan.
3, 1808, 22, SHC; Deem Autobiography, 74-77, AOM.
For a description of shaming rituals in early America, see
William Penack, Matthew Dennis, and Simon Newman,
eds., Riot and Revelry in Early America (University Park:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 3-176. For
additional examples of the activities of youthful mobs, see
JOHN ELLIS
SPRING 2010 29

THE CONFUSED, THE CURIOUS, AND THE REBORN
Meacham Journal, May 25, 1789, vol. 10, DUSCL; Colbert
Journal, Apr. 18, 1802, July 14, 1807, vol. 4:78, vol. 6:214,
GTSUL; Kobler Diary, July 3, 1791, AOM.
24 Gatch Autobiography, 25-28, JWDL; Cartwright,
Backwoods Preacher, 91 (second quote); Garrettson,
American Methodist Pioneer, 62; Schneider, Way of the
Cross, 62, 117-18. For examples of Revolution-era
violence and arrests, see Garrettson, American Methodist
Pioneer, 85, 98-101; and Watters, A Short Account, 32.
For examples of Deem and Cartwright in fistfights,
see Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 90-92; and Deem
Autobiography, 74-75, AOM.
25 Henry Smith, Recollections and Reflections of an Old
Itinerant (New York: Lane and Tippett, 1848), 31-32;
Kobler Diary, Aug. 15, 16, 1792, AOM. For additional
examples of miscreants who succumbed to conversion,
see Smith, Recollections, 106-07; Extracts of Letters, 41;
Garrettson, American Methodist Pioneer, 85; Kobler
Diary, Oct. 1, 1792, AOM; Finley, Pioneer Life, 240-41.
26 Roe, Recollections, 40; Garrettson, American Methodist
Pioneer, 78; Norman Diary, June 16 or 17, 1796, vol.
3:227, SHC; James Jenkins, Experience, Labours, and
Sufferings of Rev. James Jenkins, of the South Carolina
Conference (Columbia, S.C.: James Jenkins, 1842), 104;
Colbert Journal, Mar. 31, 1802, vol. 4:72, GTSUL;
Kobler Diary, Dec. 25, 1793, Mar. 1, 1794, AOM;
Meacham Journal, Mar. 5, 1797, vol. 9, DUSCL.
27 Early Diary, Aug. 12, 1807, 6, SHC; Norman Diary, Nov.
3, 1793, vol. 1:35, SHC. For examples of young men and
women socializing during services, see Deem Autobiography,
74-78, AOM; Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 131-32,
141-42; Early Diary, July 23, 1808, 24, SHC; and Mann
Journal, Sept. 30, 1810, folder 3, DUSCL.
28 Thomas Lyell Autobiography, m.s., 8-9, Aldert Smedes
Papers, box 7, folder 75, SHC (Lyell’s autobiography is
unpaginated, but I have assigned each page a number to
reflect its sequence within the manuscript). Heyrman
argues that the relationships developed between
Methodists “replicated kinship bonds”; see Southern Cross,
145-49 (quote 145). Andrews calls Methodist society
a “substitute family”; see Methodists and Revolutionary
America, 93.
29 Condensed Philip Gatch Autobiography of 1832
[typescript], 1, Philip Gatch Collection, group I, section
G, JWDL; Reed Diary, Apr. 5, 1779, 54, UCSP;
Deem Autobiography, 51, AOM; Garrettson, American
Methodist Pioneer, 41, 43. Heyrman agrees that southerners
generally guarded their emotions and innermost
feelings from their kin; see Southern Cross, 44-46.
30 Norman Diary, June 16 or 17, 1796, vol. 3:227-28,
SHC; Colbert Journal, Mar. 31, 1802, vol. 4:71-72,
GTSUL; Early Diary, Nov. 19, 1807, 17, SHC; Lyell
30 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Autobiography, 20, SHC (“priceless value”); Colbert
Journal, Jan. 24, 1794, vol. 1:156, GTSUL; Early
Diary, July 25, 1808, 24, SHC. For instances of
women seeking preachers’ advice and companionship,
see Meacham Journal, July 13, 28, 1790, vol.
3, DUSCL; Mann Journal, Nov. 12, 1807, June 11,
1810, folders 1 and 2, DUSCL; Ormond Journal, Mar.
12, 1800, vol. 3:41-42, DUSCL; Colbert Journal, May
21, 1794, vol. 2:6-7, GTSUL.
31 Deem Autobiography, 45-48, AOM (quotes 47-48).
For examples of these mentoring relationships, see
Young, Autobiography, 55-57, 65-66, 83; Autobiography
Fragment of Philip Gatch, n.d., m.s., Philip Gatch
Collection, group I, section I, JWDL; Gatch
Autobiography, 14-15, JWDL; Early Diary, Aug. 20,
1807, 7, SHC; Joseph Travis, Autobiography of the Rev.
Joseph Travis, A. M., A Member of the Memphis Annual
Conference (Nashville, Tn.: Methodist Episcopal Church
South, 1856), 30; and Jenkins, Experience, 36-37. For
explanations of the importance of competition and competitive
sports among southern men, see Wyatt-Brown,
Southern Honor, 339-61; and Isaac, Transformation of
Virginia, 94-104, 118-20, 136.
32 Joseph Rowen to Daniel Hitt, Feb. 10, 1804, Hitt
Letters, no. 269, AOM; Young, Autobiography, 41;
Kobler Diary, Mar. 3, 1792, AOM. For additional
examples of infectious revival emotions, see ibid.,
July 3, 1791, Aug. 15, 16, 1792, AOM. For other
examples of youths who converted under corporate
pressure, see ibid., Mar. 3, 1792, June 8, 1794, AOM;
Early Diary, June 23, 1811, 82, SHC; Mead, Short
Account, 35-36; York, Autobiography, 22-23; Watters,
Short Account, 9; Extracts of Letters, 38; and Finley,
Pioneer Life, 169.
33 Watters, Short Account, 10; Dow, History of Cosmopolite,
183-84; Garrettson, American Methodist Pioneer, 40;
Mary Avery Browder to Edward Dromgoole, Nov.
1777, Dromgoole Papers, folder 36, SHC; Johnson,
Recollections, 34; Young, Autobiography, 38-39; Finley,
Pioneer Life, 164. For examples of autobiographers
describing the religious admonitions of their pious kin,
see Phoebus and Cooper, Beams of Light, 12-13; Roe,
Recollections, 23; Young, Autobiography, 35; Cartwright,
Backwoods Preacher, 34-35; York, Autobiography, 1-2, 7;
Johnson, Recollections, 48; Travis, Autobiography, 17-18,
28; and Watters, Short Account, 5-6.
34 Conduce Gatch Sketches, 9, JWDL; Gatch, Sketch, 10;
M. P. to Edward Dromgoole, Jan. 19, 1778, Dromgoole
Papers, folder 36, SHC; Meacham Journal, Sept. 19,
1792, vol. 7, DUSCL; Watters, Short Account, 8. For
parents’ fears, see Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 35.
35 Mead, Short Account, 47 (quote); Jenkins, Experience,
122; Swain, Journal, 14; Hatch, Democratization, 170-79.

36 Finley, Pioneer Life, 167, 169; Roe, Recollections, 92;
Extracts of Letters, 38; Dow, History of Cosmopolite, 184;
Young, Autobiography, 41; Gatch, Sketch, 10; Smith,
Recollections, 101. Diaries often used age-neutral
language to describe the individuals who fled from their
revivals; see Kobler Diary, Jan.23, Feb. 14, Nov. 28,
1790, Aug. 15, 16, 1792, AOM; Swain, Journal, 23, 29;
and Colbert Journal, Sept. 7, 1800, vol. 3:129, GTSUL.
However, when diarists mentioned ages, the fleeing
individuals were typically labeled youths.
37 Jenkins, Experience, 125-29; Young, Autobiography, 41.
38 York, Autobiography, 23; Deem Autobiography, 53, AOM.
39 Kobler Diary, Mar. 3, 1792, AOM; Extracts of Letters,
38; Cartwright, Backwoods Preacher, 34-35; Early Diary,
Nov. 22, Dec. 21, 1807, 17-18, 20, SHC; Heyrman,
Southern Cross, 145-49; Wigger, Taking Heaven, 80-103.
For expressions of the intimate friendships that developed
among Methodists, as well as the competition between
Methodist relationships and those of biological kin, see
Deem Autobiography, 45-47, 61-63, AOM; Reed Diary,
Dec. 27, 1778, Jan. 26, Feb. 8, 1779, 35, 41, 44, UCSP;
Colbert Journal, Sept. 1, 1790, vol. 1:19-20, GTSUL;
and Smith, Recollections, 71-72.
40 Lyell Autobiography, 1-3, 6, SHC; Travis, Autobiography,
30; Deem Autobiography, 54, 57-58, 61-63, 65-67;
Young, Autobiography, 98. For other historians’ descriptions
of the Methodists’ conversion experience and experiential
spirituality, see Wigger, Taking Heaven, 104-24;
Lyerly, Southern Mind, 27-46; and Andrews, Methodists
and Revolutionary America, 73-96.
41 For examples of these reactions, see Mary Avery Broader
to Edward Dromgoole, Nov. 1777, and M. P. to Edward
Dromgoole, Jan. 19, 1778, Dromgoole Papers, folder 36,
SHC; Jan. 19, 1778, Dromgoole Papers, folder 36 SHC;
Dow, History of Cosmopolite, 17; Young, Autobiography,
44-46; Mead, Short Account, 44.
JOHN ELLIS
SPRING 2010 31

The Making of a Major
General: William Henry Harrison
and the Politics of Command, 1812-13
David Curtis Skaggs
By early 1812, Governor William Henry Harrison recognized that his political
career in Indiana Territory was about to close. The territory would
soon gain admittance into the Union, but his political rivals had gained
control of the legislature and he was too unpopular to win major elective office.
Always seeking public employment to supplement his income, Harrison sought
a general’s commission in the expanding regular army. Harrison’s quest for senior
command reflected the regional clash of interests that characterized politics of the
early national period, disagreements over whether to employ regular army troops
or militia volunteers as the core of the nation’s combat
force, personality differences between
various political and military leaders, and
an inter-generational contest for major
office between Revolutionary War veterans
and those born shortly before or during
that struggle. 1
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841),
engraving by R. Lorton, 1840.
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
32 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

E. White
Rainy Lake
Prairie du Chien
(Ft. Shelby)
1814
Ft. Madison
—
W I S C O N S IN
St. Louis
Lake
Nipigon
Ft. Dearborn —
—
Ft. Mackinac
1812 & 1814
Ft. Wayne
Battle of Tippecanoe
˚
Prophet’s Town
I L L I N O IS I N D I A N A
K E N T U C K Y
Sault Ste. Marie
¡ St. Joseph Island
Cincinnati
Lake
Nipissing
York
Grand River Iroquois
Ft. George
Burlington Heights — — Ft. Niagara
Queenston Black Rock
Moraviantown Ft. Erie — Buffalo
1813
Lake St. Clair ˚
˚ Longwoods
5 March 1814
Ft. Detroit
1812
Presque Isle
Frenchtown ¡
1813 Amherstburg
(Ft. Malden)
Put-in-Bay
Ft. Meigs
1813 —
Ft. Stephenson
1813 FIRE
LANDS
O H I O
Pittsburgh
Dayton
Frankfort
Lexington
Chillicothe
DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
Map 4. Great Lakes Region, 1795–1814
N E W Y O R K
P E N N S Y L V A N I A
V I R G I N I A
Washington, D.C.
Philadelphia
L O W E R
C A N A D A
Lake
Champlain
The Great Lakes region, 1795-1814, from David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds.,
The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814 (East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 2001), xiv-xv.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
While regionalism influenced Harrison’s promotion to senior command, his
membership in a new generation of military leadership played an equally impor-
tant role. In Inheriting the Revolution, historian Joyce Appleby argues that the
age cohort born “between Independence and 1800 worked out the social forms
of the new nation.” An age cohort trying to prove its worth in the wake of the
heroes of the founding generation, they “fashion[ed] the revolutionary affirmations
that gave the United States a national culture replete with purposes, heroes,
taboos, prescriptions, symbols, and celebrations.” Though Appleby excludes soldiers
or sailors from her analysis of the new generation, military service provided
these younger men an opportunity to prove their merit to those who went before.
The armed forces also enabled them to demonstrate their nationalism in an age
in which localism and regionalism pitted easterners against westerners, Yankees
against Yorkers, and northerners against southerners. 2
Though the youngest son of a distinguished Virginia gentry family, Harrison
found it necessary to make his own career in the army and western politics. His
family connections helped him secure a junior officer’s commission in the expanding
Baltimore
Montréal
Châteauguay
26 October 1813
˚
Crysler’s Farm
Georgian
˚
11 November 1813
U P P E R
Bay
Plattsburgh
C A N A D A
Lake
Simcoe
Kingston
Penetanguishene
Tyendinaga Mohawk
Sackets Harbor
Oswego
M.D.
DEL.
Albany
N.J.
Québec
Ile aux Noix
New York
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THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
U.S. Army of the mid-1790s and his skills as a staff officer under Maj. Gen. Anthony
Wayne led to his selection as secretary to the governor of the Northwest Territory,
his election as the territory’s delegate to Congress, and his appointment as the governor
of the newly created Indiana Territory, all before he was thirty. His governorship
lasted from 1800 until he resigned to become the commander of the North
West Army in 1812. During that time he acquired a number of political rivals in the
territory, dimming his political prospects as statehood approached. He capped his
gubernatorial career in 1811 when he employed regular army, and Indiana Territory
and Kentucky soldiers in the military campaign that ended in victory at the Battle
of Tippecanoe. For Harrison, the Tippecanoe campaign represented both a military
triumph over the Native American confederation assembled by Tecumseh and his
charismatic brother Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) and a reaffirmation of the military
leadership skills he learned under Wayne. His detractors deemed it unnecessarily provocative,
militarily inept, and inconclusive. 3 In contrast, most residents of the Ohio
Valley viewed Harrison as the most experienced regional military leader in light of the
reluctance of Revolutionary and Indian War leaders such as Kentucky’s Charles Scott
and Isaac Shelby to assume command.
When Harrison learned of the Army Act of January 11, 1812, authorizing the
appointment of two major generals and five additional brigadier generals, he promptly
wrote Secretary of War William Eustis of his desire “to resume the La guerre if the
Government should think me worthy of a commission
in the New Military establishment.” He
recounted his seven years of service in the 1790s
during which he had been “not an inattentive
observer nor neglectful of those studies which
appertain to the military art.” Moreover, his service
on Anthony Wayne’s general staff allowed
him “to apply to the test of experiment those
Rules for the Construction[,] the Substance[,]
the Marching and Manoevreing [sic] of Armies
which I had acquired from Books.” Even after
leaving military service, he maintained his
interest in military subjects, including study of
Julius Caesar’s famous Commentaries. His recent
campaign, he noted, highlighted his ability to
maneuver soldiers better than anyone available.
For these reasons, along with his “Ardent
zeal for the Service of my Country,” he offered
himself “to the Government as a Candidate
for a Military Appointment in the Army that
is contemplated.” 4
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
John P. Boyd (1764-1830) from Bernard J.
Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the War of
1812 (New York: Harper, 1868).
34 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
But criticism of Harrison’s conduct at Tippecanoe reverberated in Washington,
particularly the denunciation of Col. John P. Boyd (1764-1830) of the 4 th U.S.
Infantry, Harrison’s second-in-command during the campaign. Boyd’s letter to
the secretary of war attacked the conduct of many militiamen in the battle and
its widespread publication and Harrison’s reply created a controversy over the
comparative military value of regular and volunteer troops. The quarrel reflected
in part Boyd’s New England provincialism. He led a New England regiment
while Harrison used Kentucky and Indiana volunteers to supplement his troop
strength. Although the Kentuckians had more combat experience than most
of Boyd’s men, their unconventional discipline and the temporary collapse of
one Kentucky company during the battle infuriated the regular army colonel.
But military considerations and regionalism did not spur all of Harrison’s critics.
Jonathan Jennings, the governor’s Indiana political rival and the territory’s delegate
to Congress, continued his long standing criticism of Harrison. 5
Secretary of War Eustis and President
James Madison had other, more obvious
candidates for the new brigadier generalships.
William Hull (1753-1825)
rose from captain of a militia company
to lieutenant colonel in the Continental
Army during the War for Independence.
After the war he practiced law in
Newton, Massachusetts, and eventually
commanded the 3rd Division of the
Massachusetts militia. In 1805, Thomas
Jefferson appointed him governor of the
newly created Michigan Territory. Of all
Madison’s appointments to high command
in 1812, Hull probably brought
the most military experience as a field
grade veteran of the Revolution with
both command and staff duties, plus the
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
administrative familiarity of a militia
general and territorial governor. Yet some administration officials had reservations
about Hull’s abilities. The fifty-nine-year-old, corpulent Hull eagerly
sought the command of the ground forces in the Old Northwest and even
went to Washington to secure it. After receiving a brigadier general’s commission
in the regular army, Hull journeyed to Cincinnati where he secured
one regular regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. James Miller, and three Ohio
militia regiments led by the querulous and ambitious colonels Lewis Cass,
James Findlay, and Duncan McArthur.
William Hull (1753-1825) from Bernard J. Lossing,
Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812
(New York: Harper, 1868).
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THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
As Hull assembled his North West Army in Ohio, apprehension about his tal-
ents began to emerge. Col. Cass wrote Ohio’s U.S. senator, Thomas Worthington,
that he feared Hull “was not our man. . . . I am now told by men capable of
appreciating his talents and who have had opportunities of observing him, that
he is indecisive and irresolute, leaning for support on persons around him.” Col.
McArthur, on the other hand, claimed Hull appeared “to give entire satisfaction;
he is both friendly and attentive.” 6 Yet many expected Hull’s appointment and it
certainly could not affront Harrison. Detroit was far more vulnerable to British
attack than any place in Indiana or Illinois, Hull knew the region and the political
leaders in the new state of Ohio, and his service in the Continental Army provided
him with experience fighting British regulars that Harrison lacked.
But the Madison administration’s second western generalship certainly did
offend Indiana’s governor. The Tennessee congressional delegation promoted James
Winchester (1752-1826), a Tennessee businessman and militia officer, for a regular
brigadier general’s commission which he received in March 1812. While both
he and Hull brought maturity (they were twenty years older than Harrison, who
was only thirty-nine in 1812) and Revolutionary War experience to their positions,
Winchester lacked familiarity with the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes region and local
leaders. According to Senator Worthington, Madison did not put forth Harrison’s
name for the brigadier general rank because the Senate would not ratify his appointment
until Harrison resigned the governor’s post. The president, Worthington
added, did not want to put Harrison “on such uncertainty
otherwise he should not hesitate to nominate you.”
Soon after Winchester established his headquarters
in Lexington, however, his arrogant personality
aroused the enmity of Kentucky politicians and
potential soldiers. One pro-Harrison Kentuckian
described Winchester as “advanced in years” and
living “in a degree of elegant luxury and ease,
which was not calculated to season him for
a northern campaign in the forest.” 7
36 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
James Winchester (1752-1826)
from Alexander Clark Casselman,
Richardson’s War of 1812 (Toronto:
Historical Publishing Co., 1902).
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Albert Gallatin (1761-1849), U.S. secretary of the treasury (1801-1814).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
Still, intelligence from the Old Northwest after Winchester’s appointment
appeared to give Harrison’s critics the upper hand. After the victory at Tippecanoe,
Tecumseh had returned to northern Indiana from a southern trip to find his brother’s
village in shambles, but the Natives willing to carry on. In the winter and early spring,
Indians launched deadly raids on frontier families living near Fort Madison, Iowa, and
Fort Dearborn, Illinois, and the U.S. Army could do little to counter the small-scale
attacks. These forts, along with Michilimackinac (on Michigan’s Mackinac Island)
and Harrison (at Terre Haute, Indiana), became relatively easy prey for Native warriors.
With British assistance, Forts Detroit and Wayne might fall. In May, an intertribal
council involving representatives of the Delaware, Kickapoo, Miami, Ojibwa,
Ottawa, Piankeshaw, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Wea, Winnebago, and Wyandot tribes
met on the Mississinewa, a Wabash tributary. Although the conference counseled
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THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
peace, it represented a clear effort to achieve unity among most of the Native peoples
of the Old Northwest. John Badollet, a longtime Harrison critic and register of the
land office at Vincennes, the capital of Indiana Territory, lamented the failure of the
Tippecanoe expedition to his old friend Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin:
“The bloody tomahawk is now in fact raised, the work of murder has begun. . . .
[I]t is now ascertained that large collections of Indians are forming on the Wabash
above us, with a view . . . of retaliating upon this place the inhuman burning of the
Prophet’s town.” 8
Concurrently, the British helped reinforce the Indians’ military capabilities.
According to a report from Detroit in February, “Since the battle of Tippecanoe,
large numbers of savages who have visited the British fort at Amherstburg . . .
have been there liberally supplied with arms and munitions of war.” One junior
officer reported that parties as large as three hundred received weapons and munitions
from British Indian agents there. 9 As war between Britain and the United
States became increasingly likely, the British decided to utilize Native allies to
assist in the defense of Canada and revise the Great Lakes boundary with the
United States. The signs looked ominous to Harrison who received reports of the
advance of one company of British regulars to Fort Harrison and British attempts
to raise a company of rangers in the territory. And the withdrawal of the 4th U.S.
Infantry Regiment from Indiana to Cincinnati and then Detroit under Gen.
Hull posed a serious threat to the territory. From Fort Wayne came information
that Indians were gathering in large numbers downriver from Detroit at Fort
Malden, in Amherstburg, Upper Canada. The defense of the frontier depended
on a thin blue line and both Harrison and Tecumseh knew it. American hopes
for a peaceful summer hinged on Hull’s capture of Fort Malden.
On April 19, Hull received his marching orders from Secretary of War Eustis:
(1) march with “little delay” to Detroit with the 4th Infantry Regiment and Ohio
militia; (2) take command of all troops within Michigan, Chicago, and Fort Wayne;
and (3) “adopt such measures with the chiefs and the several Tribes of Indians in
your judgment may appear to be best calculated to secure the peace of the country.”
On June 11, 1812, the North West Army, consisting of slightly more than two
thousand officers and men, including 450 regulars and 1,450 Ohio militiamen,
marched from Urbana, Ohio, to Detroit, where it arrived on July 5. They faced
325 British regulars, 850 militiamen, and four hundred Native warriors gathered at
Fort Malden. Hull’s unwillingness to attack in the ensuing weeks drew sharp criticism
from the Ohio militia colonels. Meanwhile, the Indians, fur traders, and a
few British regulars made a coordinated attack on Fort Michilimackinac, capturing
it on July 17. This victory at the critical intersection of Lakes Huron and Michigan
caused many wavering Natives to abandon neutrality and join the British. It also
unnerved Hull who withdrew his troops from Canada to Detroit. He feared a
combination of northern Indians would destroy his forces if they remained divided
38 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
on both sides of the river, and the increasing insecurity of American supply lines
between Detroit and the Maumee Rapids. He wrote Col. Samuel Wells of the
newly recruited 17th U.S. Infantry Regiment, that the North West Army was “in
a most perilous condition,” its “communications cut off almost entirely by the
enemy—in danger of want of provisions, and instead of carrying on offensive operations”
it found itself “reduced to act on the defensive.” 10
Gen. Isaac Brock exploited British control of Lake Erie to transfer troops from
the Niagara frontier to Fort Malden. Brock faced no opposition when he landed
his troops on the Michigan shore of the Detroit River and Hull surrendered without
firing a shot to Brock’s combined force of regulars and Natives on August 16.
The surrender of Detroit changed everything on the northwestern frontier. Panic
erupted from St. Louis to Pittsburgh. Kentucky’s Robert McAfee recalled that
“it created an excitement and indignation as great as the catastrophe was unexpected.”
According to the Chillicothe, Ohio, Scioto Gazette, General Hull “has
let loose thousands of merciless savages on our defenceless [sic] frontiers—the
blood of many hundred helpless women and children must rest on his head.
God grant, that their cries may reach his ear, and pierce his heart, with anguish
and with agony.” A Dayton, Ohio, correspondent of the National Intelligencer
reported that news of Hull’s surrender “created considerable alarm” which he
suspected would result in “Savages, whose roving, active and restless disposition,
instigated by the British officers, would soon transport them to our neighborhood
and excite them to a barbarous warfare upon the defenceless frontier.” The
surrender shocked the Madison administration. Former U.S. Senator Jonathan
Dayton (1760-1824) wrote the president, “Your political enemies are taking
every possible advantage of our unaccountable disasters at Detroit, to render your
Presidency unpopular, and your cabinet Council odious and contemptible.” 11
When news of the Detroit debacle reached Ohio and Kentucky, many political
leaders saw Harrison as the best possibility for command of a rebuilt North
West Army. Kentucky’s Robert Johnson (1745-1815) wrote the president: “The
Idea with us is, that Hull is a traitor or nearly an Ediot [sic] or part of both. To
take a View of the whole of his Conduct, it would seem as if he has played the
Grandest Yanke[e] Trick [Hull was a native of Connecticut] that has been played
on the U.S.” Johnson, whose sons Richard M., John T., and James would serve
with distinction in the War of 1812 and in post-war Kentucky and national politics,
had been raised in Orange County, Virginia, Madison’s home, and wrote
his old acquaintance about the political maneuvering in the Ohio Valley on
Harrison’s behalf. 12
For Harrison, the crisis presented an opportunity to demonstrate military leadership
capabilities before a much larger audience. However, James Winchester of
Tennessee stood in his way. As territorial governor, Harrison was ex officio commander
of Indiana’s militia and a territorial brigadier general, but he had less seniority
SPRING 2010 39

THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
than Winchester, who held a regular army brigadier general’s commission. Criticism
of Harrison by Indiana’s political leaders also undermined his ambitions. For example,
Vincenne’s John Badollet mocked the governor for putting a palisade around his
home. The Hero of Tippecanoe, Badollet wrote Secretary Gallatin, “that brilliant
meteor in the galaxy of military heroes, who has sung and caused so many sycophantic
pens and venal presses to sing his unparalleled military talents, is at last eclipsed
behind a wooden fence, and the New Washington has sunk into a pitifull [sic] and
selfish Sir John Falstaf [sic] not daring to defend those he has exposed, nor to face
the enemy he has ostentatiously and wantonly provoked.” To receive a regular army
generalship, Harrison would need support from outside Indiana. Fortunately for
him, Winchester faced his own liabilities. Most notably, the Kentucky, Ohio, and
Indiana volunteers who served in the Ohio Valley heartily disliked Winchester. His
command of the Old Northwest, wrote Robert Johnson, would create “a great deal of
uneasiness in the Army” where the men have “great Confidence in Harrison but with
Winchestor [sic] they have very little.” 13
Before the Detroit defeat, Harrison sent Secretary Eustis his proposals for
conducting war in the Midwest. Nowhere else did Harrison so explicitly describe
his conception of frontier warfare. He outlined two tactical maneuvers to be
used against Native foes. First, he argued for a raiding strategy: “rapid and desultory
expeditions by mounted men having for their object the surprise and distruction
[sic] of Particular Villages.” Second, he proposed a persisting strategy:
Old Fort Dearborn, U.S. military base and trading factory, 1820, from Henry R. Schoolcraft,
Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the
United States . . . 4 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1856), 4:192.
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
40 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
“the more tardy but more effectual operations of an Army Composed princi-
pally of Infantry penetrating the Country of the Enemy and securing the pos-
session by a chain of Posts.” Kentucky militia Gen. Charles Scott’s raids in the
Wabash Valley in the 1790s best exemplified the former; Anthony Wayne’s 1794
campaign to the Maumee Valley provided a successful illustration of the latter.
The Tippecanoe campaign constituted a raiding strategy, though the construction
of Fort Harrison proved an exception. To implement a persisting strategy
and secure the northern frontier, Harrison advocated construction of a chain of
posts on the Illinois River from the Mississippi to Chicago and the reinforcement
of Fort Wayne. 14 Harrison’s proposals demonstrated his experience in Indian
warfare, but he had none with regular units utilizing European tactics such as
the campaign in the Detroit River region promised. For such combat, he had
only book learning and garrison experience as a company grade officer in the
Cincinnati area.
Most everyone from Secretary Eustis to Governor
Harrison recognized that the small garrisons at Forts
Michilimackinac, Dearborn (Chicago), Wayne,
and Detroit needed to be reinforced or evacuated.
Permanent garrisons required regular army
soldiers in sufficient numbers to sustain them in
case of attack. The modest detachments at these
most forward outposts of the U.S. Army—fifty at
Fort Harrison, fifty-four at Fort Dearborn, fiftyseven
at Fort Michilimackinac, and seventy at Fort
Wayne—made them particularly vulnerable. News of
Michilimackinac’s capture convinced Harrison that Hull
was in grave danger. “It is possible Sir,” he wrote
presciently to Eustis, “that every thing may yet go on
well, that no considerable Number of Indians may
be collected at Malden and that our Detachments
and Convoys may reach their destination in safety, the reverse however appears
to me to be the most probable.” To secure Indiana’s outposts, he determined
to raise two thousand Kentucky and Indiana volunteers rather than common
militia to relieve Fort Wayne. But he warned the secretary of war that the fall
of Michilimackinac “will give such éclat to the British and Indian Arms that the
Northern Tribes will pour down in swarms upon Detroit, oblige Genl Hull to
act entirely upon the defensive, and meet and perhaps overpower the Convoys
and reinforcements which may be sent him.” 15 How much Harrison’s strategic
analysis of the military situation in the Old Northwest affected Eustis’s decision
to offer him a brigadier generalship is unknown. However, the support of
Kentucky’s political and military leaders certainly played a role.
Isaac Shelby (1750-1826), governor
of Kentucky (1792-1796, 1812-1816).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 2010 41

THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
Harrison wrote his strategic commentary from Lexington, Kentucky, after
he had traveled to Frankfort for Isaac Shelby’s inauguration and conferred with
the state’s political leaders. Retiring Governor Scott and new Governor Shelby,
both experienced military figures, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Henry
Clay, and other local dignitaries had decided to take their own course of action
in the absence of effective regional military leadership. For some time they had
feared for Hull and his army in distant Detroit. Seeking a capable regional commander,
Scott defied the Commonwealth’s constitution and state law and named
Harrison a brevet major general of Kentucky’s militia, placing the state militia
and volunteers under Harrison’s command, not Winchester’s. The military experience,
political influence, and seniority of Scott and Shelby made both logical
candidates for regional command; their confidence in Harrison constituted a significant
endorsement of the Indiana governor’s reputation as a military leader. In
addition, Speaker Clay wrote effusive letters on Harrison’s behalf to the nation’s
capital. He informed Secretary of State James Monroe “that throughout all parts
of the W. Country there has been the strongest demonstrations of confidence in
him given.” He told Secretary of War Eustis that he hoped the president would
“see fit to approve substantially what was done . . . with the respect to the appointment
of Govr. Harrison.” Col. John Allen, commander of a Kentucky volunteer
rifle regiment, informed the president that notwithstanding the attempts by a
few to denigrate Harrison’s abilities, he “did not Know one who would be dissatisfied
with serving under him but believe all would be pleased with it and a large
proportion highly Gratified.” 16
The campaign for Harrison commenced before news of Detroit’s capitulation
arrived in either Frankfort or Washington, and Secretary Eustis offered Harrison
a federal brigadier generalship before learning of the Detroit disaster. He initially
placed him in command of the Indiana and Illinois frontiers and urged his
cooperation with both Gen. Hull and Governor Benjamin Howard of Missouri
Territory. When news of Hull’s surrender reached Washington, Eustis modified
these instructions: “You will extend your eye over all the circumstances, and communicate
with General Winchester. . . . It is left to your discretion to join him
with any part of the force under your Command, and to afford such other aid
and cooperation as may be in your power.” 17
Nothing in the directive indicated Harrison’s rank in relation Winchester,
but his supporters assumed he held a superior rank and commanded the troops
destined to regain Detroit. Ohio’s William Findlay, for example, wrote Harrison
“That gloom of indignation, which manifested itself at the news of the surrender
of Detroit and of our brave men, is dissipated, and every body, possessed of
patriotic zeal and ardour, is ready to enrol [sic] themselves under your conduct,
to defend their Country and fight her battles.” However, Harrison’s Kentucky
commission was legally suspect because he was not a resident of Kentucky as
42 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
law required. Moreover, as a federal brigadier general he was junior in rank
to Winchester whose federal commission made him the senior officer in the
Midwest. Whether a Kentucky major general outranked a federal brigadier general
remained uncertain. But the rub for Winchester was that Harrison commanded
most of the troops in the Ohio Valley. Kentucky could raise far more
infantrymen and cavalrymen than Ohio and the rest of the Old Northwest, and
governors Scott and Shelby placed these volunteers under Harrison’s direction. 18
Orders from Washington increased doubts about
Winchester’s status and authority. On September 1,
Eustis wrote Winchester “or officer commanding
the N. Western Army,” and four days
later he told Maj. Gen. Elijah Wadsworth,
commanding a division of Ohio’s militia,
that “the Governor of Ohio will furnish
Reinforcements on the requisition
of General Winchester or Officer
Commanding the North Western Army.”
The use of “or” indicated unease in
Washington about Winchester’s status.
The Madison administration also considered
Secretary of State James Monroe as
an alternative to Harrison as Midwest commander.
The ambitious Monroe suggested that
he be sent westward with a volunteer rank of brevet
major general, and the president saw “no
evil” in the plan. In fact, he argued for “the
critical good to be expected from the presence,
the influence, and counsels of Mr. Monroe.” “If Winchester is to retain the
command,” he continued, “such an expedient is the more necessary. Any new
calamity, or even failure of success, under him, following the oppressive disaster
of Hull, would shut every ear agst. arguments for not appointing a Commander,
preferred by the public voice.” The “public voice,” Madison knew, preferred
Harrison. In a carefully crafted and private letter to Monroe, the president analyzed
the situation and the relative strengths of Harrison and Winchester. “Is
Harrison if substituted,” he asked, “every thing that the public would ask?” He
feared what would happen if Winchester and Harrison tried to work together.
“No small degree of danger” would emerge in such a situation, Madison concluded,
and “jealousies and jars might weaken, more than [enhance] the union
of their talents.” Apprehensive that Winchester was not up to the command and
that Harrison was too young and inexperienced, he asked Monroe to accept a
brevet major generalship and take command. 19
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
James Madison (1751-1836), fourth president
of the United States (1809-1817).
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THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
44 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
While the president remained at
Montpelier, Eustis and Monroe conferred
about Madison’s suggestion in Washington.
They agreed that Monroe’s appointment
would have a positive “moral effect . . .
on the public mind, being one emanating
immediately from the govt. itself.” But they
concluded that the consequences might be
“doubtful” and “the advantages quite precarious.”
Still, Madison continued to push
for the secretary of state. “Nothing is wanting
in the Western Country, to cure the evil
proceeding from Hull,” Madison wrote to
Eustis, “but supplies of the necessary sorts,
and a head to combine and apply the volunteer
force every where springing into service.
Without such a head, in which all wd.
Confide, there is danger of much waste of military patriotism and money also;
I am more desirous that Mr. Monroe should patronize and guide the efforts on
foot.” To Monroe he wrote that he wanted “a head that will inspire confidence,
concentrate their force, and direct the application of it. I am not without hopes
that in some way or other this critical service may proceed from you.” When
the president returned to the capital, the three men finally reached a decision.
In a letter to Clay, Monroe expressed his “willingness to obey the summons [of
Madison], altho. it was sudden, and unexpected, as indeed the event which suggested
the idea was. On mature reflection however . . . [Madison] concluded that
it would not be proper for me to leave my present station.” Thomas Jefferson’s
refusal to leave Monticello and take the post of secretary of state may have contributed
to this “mature reflection.” 20
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
But the Madison administration had not yet determined the command relationship
between Winchester and Harrison. To Winchester, Eustis wrote that
the “immediate object appears to be the protection of the Frontier,” with Fort
Wayne’s relief receiving the highest priority. “You will,” he continued, “also keep
in view such further operations relative to the Michigan Territory and Upper
Canada as may become expedient.” These orders left the relationship between
Winchester and Harrison vague and the leadership of a campaign to retake
Detroit unstated. A day later, Harrison received a letter from Eustis noting the
president’s desire to “regain the ground which has been lost by the Surrender
of Detroit.” Once Harrison’s force had protected the frontier, Eustis directed,
it should join Winchester in the campaign against Detroit. Meanwhile, Eustis
ordered artillery from Pittsburgh and volunteers from Pennsylvania and Virginia
James Monroe (1758-1837) from Bernard
J. Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the War
of 1812 (New York: Harper, 1868).

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
sent to Winchester in Ohio. Heightening the command relationship confu-
sion, Eustis wrote the same day to Governor Return J. Meigs of Ohio directing
Virginia troops to “cooperate” with Harrison’s force.” 21
Eustis’s instructions placed Harrison in command of troops in Indiana
and Illinois Territories. Harrison quickly took command of the newly raised
Kentucky regiments and decided to relieve Fort Wayne, then under siege
from British-allied Natives, though he realized he exceeded his instructions—
to assist Hull in the defense of Detroit—in doing so. “It appeared to me
necessary,” Harrison explained, “that some one should undertake the general
direction of affairs here and I have done it. . . . [S]hould it be considered
by the Government to have been improper, I shall, I hope, be pardoned
for the purity of my motives.” In a deferential postscript he added, “I
shall cheerfully acquiesce in any arrangement which the president may make
and shall not think that I have the least right to complain at being removed
from it.” But Harrison soon dropped his obsequious tone. Days later, he
acknowledged receipt of the brigadier general’s commission but decided not
to accept it until Eustis settled the command relationship between himself
and Winchester. He demanded that Eustis determine just “how far I am to
be subordinate to” Winchester. There is, he pointed out, “a necessity of having
one head in the Western Country to direct all the military Movements.”
Obviously, Harrison thought himself the better qualified. Winchester’s
“extreme solemness [sic],” lack of regional friends, and ignorance of the local
geography, Harrison argued, made him less qualified for senior command.
“Woodsmen,” Harrison continued solicitously, “are a singular people.” “They
are susceptible of the most heroic atcheivements [sic] but they must be taken
in their own way. From the affection and attachment every thing may be
expected, but I will venture to say that they never did nor never will perform
anything brilliant under a stranger.” 22 In short, Harrison argued that regional
concerns must shape command appointments both to volunteer and regular
units mobilized from various sections of the country.
Meanwhile, Winchester wrote to Eustis implying that he would subordinate
himself to Harrison. But when Harrison and Winchester met at Fort Wayne on
September 19, Harrison issued a general order announcing that “The President
of the United States having designated Brigadier General James Winchester to
the Command of the army originally destined to relieve General Hull and that
officer having arrived at this place, the command is accordingly relinquished to
him.” A few days later at St. Marys, Ohio, however, he told army officers that
the latest message from Eustis did not resolve the question of command one way
or the other. He asked the officers to draft and sign a statement that their troops
would rather be under his command than Winchester’s. 23 Prudently, they refused
to follow this recommendation.
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THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
The uncertain command structure sparked continuing tension between the
two senior officers in the Old Northwest. When Harrison proposed they “divide
the force and act in support of each other,” Winchester disagreed, believing he
should direct a coordinated and maybe combined force. Nonetheless, Harrison
began making plans for an expedition against the Indians along the southern
shore of Lake Michigan, well within the area Eustis had designated for his operations.
But he still refused the federal brigadier general appointment because “it
was the almost unanimous wish of the people of the Western Country that I
should not accept of an appointment which would place me in a subordinate
situation in this Army.” The devolution of senior command upon Winchester
also did not sit well with many who had participated in the relief of Fort Wayne.
Kentucky militia colonel and congressman Richard M. Johnson wrote President
Madison that the “united exertions of us all” could not reconcile the volunteers
to the transfer of command. He continued the Kentuckians’ extravagant championing
of General Harrison: “He has capacity without equal. He has the confidence
of the forces without parrellel [sic] in our History except in the case
of Genl. Washington in the revolution.” Likewise, Johnson’s father urged the
president to give the command of the North West Army to Harrison rather than
someone else. In early September, with the command structure still unresolved,
Harrison left Winchester in charge at Fort Wayne while he returned to Ohio.
When he received an order from Eustis
to join Winchester with newly arrived
troops, Harrison refused the appointment.
He would not serve as brigadier
general subservient to Winchester
nor would he subordinate his Kentucky
major generalship. Harrison forwarded
the new troops to Winchester at Fort
Wayne, but remained in Ohio. 24
Finally, in mid-September the
administration decided that command
in the west should devolve to Harrison
“who it is believed will justify the favorable
expectation entertaind [sic] of him,
by those who are best acquainted with
his merit.” Monroe noted how Clay
and his Kentucky allies “will find that
the utmost attention has been paid to
your opinions and wishes, on all these
subjects.” Secretary Eustis informed
Harrison and governors Meigs and
46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Richard M. Johnson (1780-1850).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
Shelby, but apparently not Winchester, that the president had assigned command
of the North West Army to Harrison. When news of the decision reached Fort
Wayne leadership passed to Harrison, though he still lacked a suitable federal
military rank. He had not yet accepted the federal brigadier generalship which
meant that his seniority claim lay on the dubious Kentucky brevet major general
appointment and a presidential directive. 25
Moreover, the command situation had taken a month since Hull’s surrender, a
delay that most certainly affected the fall-winter campaign to retake Detroit. Harrison
left Fort Wayne for Ohio where he directed three columns of regulars and volunteers
attempting to reclaim Detroit. Ironically, this left Winchester in command of the
left wing at Fort Wayne with its force of four Kentucky volunteer regiments and the
17th U.S. Infantry Regiment consisting of mostly Kentuckians. The administration’s
decision deeply humiliated Winchester. A man twenty years his junior and inexperienced
in operations against regular British forces such as those stationed along
the Detroit River now commanded him. Winchester had fought with Washington,
while Harrison’s claim to fame rested on his association with “Mad” Anthony Wayne
and an 1811 Indian campaign up the Wabash River. In the fall 1812 campaign,
Winchester slowly advanced his column down the Maumee River. He often failed
to communicate his intentions to Harrison and he seemed overly cautious in moving
toward the Maumee Rapids (present-day Perrysburg, Ohio), not arriving until
January 10, 1813. Winchester’s desire to restore his military reputation may well
have affected his decision to march to Frenchtown, Michigan Territory (present-day
Monroe, Michigan), without approval from Harrison. His advance resulted in the
defeat of his force at the River Raisin Massacre and terminated the rivalry between
Harrison and Winchester. With Winchester a disgraced prisoner of war, no competition
existed for the senior post in the North West Army. 26
Still, the Senate let Harrison’s brigadier general nomination lie on the table until
he declared his intention to resign the governorship. In response, a frustrated and
angry Harrison wrote Senator Worthington of Ohio that he was willing that “it
Should lie over forever.” Passed over by Winchester’s original commission, Harrison
conceded that he was “mortified a little” now that the Senate sought to deprive him
of a governorship he had held for a dozen years. Worthington replied that senators
worried about the general’s plural office holding. He noted that Hull had resigned
his territorial governorship when he accepted the command of the North West Army.
He added that Harrison would be a prime candidate for one of the new major generalships
that Congress intended to create, though he reminded Harrison “that the
western people are more partial [to you] than perhaps your services heretofore might
strictly justify.” Worthington concluded with an astute summary of Harrison’s character:
“you are ambitious and . . . you are a little impatient. . . . If your ambition is not
most fully gratified it will be your own fault.” 27 Worthington had correctly evaluated
William Henry Harrison; he was an ambitious man.
SPRING 2010 47

THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
Though the Senate confirmed Harrison’s brigadier general rank on December 2,
he still refused to accept the commission, and as late as mid-January 1813 he
signed orders under the rank of “Major Genl Kenty Quota.” He obviously did
not want any questions about his rank to affect his position as commander of the
North West Army. In Ohio, Harrison’s actions sparked alarm that he might resign
his command unless he received a promotion. Citizens in Hamilton County,
Ohio, urged him not to leave his post. Arguing that his presence was “indispensably
necessary for a continuance of that discipline and harmony, and implicit
confidence, which we feel confident no other commander which government
may please to appoint will ensure,” the assembled supporters manifested their
“ardent wishes” that Harrison continue as commander. The group also resolved
to petition the president to appoint Harrison a major general in the U.S. Army.
After Harrison resigned his governorship of Indiana Territory in late December,
Congressman Johnson of Kentucky conveyed the news to Secretary of State
Monroe. Johnson explained that Harrison wanted one of the major general commissions
that Congress was expected to create in a few weeks. Before he accepted
it, however, Harrison sought a date of rank that placed him third or fourth on the
list of brigadiers. Harrison would not, Johnson noted, accept any federal appointment
that made him junior to Winchester and would instead continue to exercise
his command under his Kentucky brevet major generalcy. Johnson concluded by
urging that Harrison be promoted to major general. 28
In February, Harrison explained his problems of command to the new secretary
of war, John Armstrong:
The date of my appointment as Brigadier, made me the youngest of that grade
in the whole army (one only excepted) altho’ the sphere of my command
embraced two Militia Major Generals and a Brigadier of the Regular Army,
who by the articles of war was entitled to command me. To the rank of
Brigadier, I could certainly make no other objection than that it could not
give me that authority which was necessary to effect the object of my command;
I was obliged, therefore, to resort to my Kentucky commission, by
which alone, I was enabled to command gen. Winchester. . . . It appeared to
me . . . that the appointment of Major Gen. was necessary to the officer who
was intrusted [sic] with it. That there might be no obstacle to my obtaining
it . . . I determined to give up my civil appointment. . . . I have never been so
tenacious of rank as to suffer it to influence me for a moment in opposition to
the public interest. My only aim has been to obtain that which appeared to
me necessary to perform the duties assigned to me.
[Consequently] I resigned the government of Indiana, and intimated
an intention to decline the appointment of Brigadier. The latter step was
called for by the circumstances under which I received the command,
which might give room for the suggestion that I was rather forced upon
48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
the government by the partiality and importunity of the Western people
in my favour. . . . All that remains for me to say is, that I will continue in
the command in any grade which he [the president] may assign me.
Despite the final sentence, Harrison had thrown down the gauntlet, demanding
promotion to major general under threat of resignation. With Hull and
Winchester in disgrace, Monroe no longer in the running, and the western militia
major generals willing to subordinate themselves to Harrison, the administration
caved in. On February 27, 1813, President Madison sent two nominations to
the Senate: Harrison for major general and Thomas Posey for governor of Indiana
Territory. The major general promotion received Senate approval on March 1,
and Posey’s appointment came two days later. With this rank Harrison also
became commander of the newly created Eighth Military District that included
the states of Kentucky and Ohio and the territories of Indiana, Illinois, and
Missouri. In addition, he was to direct an invasion of western Upper Canada. 29
With an attitude typical of Continental Army veterans, Secretary of War
Armstrong thought Harrison “an artificial General—but the West and South,
were only to be satisfied by his appointment, and our’s [sic] is, you know, a
Government of opinion.” Armstrong despised the use of volunteer and militia
troops when in his opinion a much smaller contingent of regulars could do the
job. With the federal treasury bare and militiamen consuming huge amounts
of money for what the secretary considered meager results, the secretary determined
to restrain Harrison’s future use of militiamen and short-term volunteers.
Moreover, Harrison was not Armstrong’s kind of leader. Instead of donning an
elaborately decorated general’s uniform in the field, Harrison wore a hunting
shirt, much like most of his volunteer soldiers. 30 This endeared him to his subordinates,
but offended straight-laced Continental Army veterans like Armstrong.
His ambition gratified, Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison, U.S. Army,
now had to demonstrate a command competence that thus far had eluded most
of President Madison’s military appointments. He was the first major general
among what Joyce Appleby calls “the first generation of Americans,” 31 the first
midwesterner to receive such a commission, and the first who enjoyed the affection
of both volunteer and regular troops. But he was not alone. The generation
of 1812, consisting of military men such as Jacob Brown, Edmund Pendleton
Gaines, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Macomb, Zebulon Pike, and Winfield Scott,
would soon assume leadership of the regulars and volunteers who fought from
Plattsburg to Baltimore, from Lundy’s Lane to New Orleans, a “who’s who” of
early nineteenth century American military leadership. The rocky path Harrison
followed to his appointment reflected regional tensions and conflicts within the
military over how best to recruit troops for the North West Army. But it signaled
above all the beginning of a generational shift that reshaped the U.S. military in
the early national era.
SPRING 2010 49

THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
1 Standard biographies of the future president include:
Dorothy Burne Goebel, William Henry Harrison: A
Political Biography, Indiana Historical Collections, vol. 19
(Indianapolis: Indiana Library and Historical Department,
1926); Freeman Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe: William Henry
Harrison and His Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1939). Although Goebel has a chapter entitled “The
Making of a Major General” (128-71), it mostly describes
Harrison’s operational activities from the summer of 1812
to the summer of 1813 rather than examining the means by
which he rose to command the North West Army. The historiography
of the politics, society, and economy of the early
nineteenth-century Ohio Valley is enormous. The better
analyses include: John D. Barnhart, Valley of Democracy: The
Frontier versus the Plantation in the Ohio Valley, 1775-1818
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1953); Andrew R.
L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf, The Midwest and the Nation:
Rethinking the History of an American Region (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990); Stephen Aron, How the
West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel
Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996); Cayton, The Frontier Republic:
Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1815 (Kent,
Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1986); Cayton, Frontier
Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996);
Jeffrey Paul Brown and Cayton, eds., The Pursuit of Public
Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787-1861 (Kent, Oh.:
Kent State University Press, 1994); Donald J. Ratcliff, Party
Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio,
1793-1821 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998);
James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1998); David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L.
Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754-
1814 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001);
Daniel P. Barr, ed., The Boundaries Between Us: Natives and
Newcomers Along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest Territory
(Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 2006).
2 Joyce Oldham Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution:
The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Ma.:
Harvard University Press, 2001), 5. For the role of
southerners like Harrison in the emergence of the
Old Northwest, see Nicole Etcheson, The Emerging
Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture
of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996).
3 Besides the Goebel and Cleaves biographies, studies of
Harrison’s early career include: Robert G. Gunderson, “A
Search for Tip Himself,” Register of the Kentucky Historical
Society 86 (Autumn 1968), 330-51; Gunderson,
“William Henry Harrison: Apprentice in Arms,”
Northwest Ohio Quarterly 65 (Winter 1993), 3-29;
Hendrik Booraem, “William Henry Harrison Comes to
Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage 45 (Fall 1998), 3-20;
Reginald Horsman, “William Henry Harrison: Virginia
Gentleman in the Old Northwest,” Indiana Magazine
50 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
of History 96 (June 2000), 125-49; Robert M. Owens,
Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the
Origins of American Indian Policy (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 2007). For a summary of the
charges against Harrison, see Moses Dawson, A Historical
Narrative of the Civil and Military Services of Major-
General William H. Harrison and a Vindication of His
Character and Conduct (Cincinnati: M. Dawson, 1824),
252, 318-19. For a typical critique of his military record,
see Daniel Garrard’s 1840 campaign polemic, An Address
to the Young Men of Kentucky: Comprising a Brief Review
of the Military Services of General William Henry Harrison,
during the Late War Between Great Britain and the United
States (Frankfort, Ky.: Robinson and Adams, 1840). For
a brief account of the Tippecanoe campaign, see Allan
R. Millett, “Caesar and the Conquest of the Northwest
Territory: The Harrison Campaign, 1811,” Timeline
14 (July-Aug. 1997), 2-19. See also Alfred Pirtle, The
Battle of Tippecanoe, Filson Club Publications, no. 15
(Louisville: J. P. Morton and Co., 1900).
4 Act of Jan. 11, 1812, 2 Stat. 671; William Henry
Harrison (hereafter WHH) to William Eustis, Jan.
14, 1812, in The Territorial Papers of the United States,
Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., 16 vols. (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1939-48), 8:159-60.
5 Col. John P. Boyd and Capt. George W. Prescott
to William Eustis, Dec. 11, 1811, printed in the
[Washington] National Intelligencer, Jan. 11, 1812,
and the [Vincennes] Western Sun, Feb. 8, 1812, and
reprinted in Document Transcriptions of the War of
1812 in the Northwest, Richard C. Knopf, ed., 10 vols.
(Columbus: Anthony Wayne Parkway Board and Ohio
State Historical Society, 1957-62), 5, pt. 1:39-40.
Harrison’s Nov. 18, 1811, report on the battle is in
ibid., 5, pt. 1:22-28. For documents relative to the
controversy, see The Papers of William Henry Harrison,
1800-1815, Douglas E. Clanin, ed., 10 m.f. reels
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993-99),
5:146-56, 276-85, 304-05, 310-16, 328-33, 347-51,
354-58, 366-68, 390-95. See also Samuel G. Hopkins
to WHH, Jan. 15, 1812, in Territorial Papers, 8:161-
62; Robert S. Lambert, ed., “The Conduct of the
Militia at Tippecanoe: Elihu Stout’s Controversy with
Colonel John P. Boyd,” Indiana Magazine of History
51 (Sept. 1955), 237-50; Robert J. Holden, “The
Pen Replaces the Sword: Governor William Henry
Harrison and the Battle of Tippecanoe Controversy,”
Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Social Sciences, 3 rd
ser., 22 (1987), 57-68. Boyd subsequently proved an
inept brigadier general during the War of 1812.
6 Lewis Cass to Thomas Worthington, May 19, 1812,
Duncan McArthur to Thomas Worthington, June 26,
1812, in Document Transcriptions, 3:89, 101.

7 Thomas Worthington to WHH, Nov. 28, 1812, in
Territorial Papers, 8:218; Robert B. McAfee, History of
the Late War in the Western Country: Comprising a Full
Account of All the Transactions in that Quarter, from
the Commencement of Hostilities at Tippecanoe, to the
Termination of the Contest at New Orleans on the Return of
Peace (1816; Bowling Green, Oh.: Historical Publications
Co., 1919), 148.
8 John Badollet to Albert Gallatin, Apr. 29, 1812, in The
Correspondence of John Badollet and Albert Gallatin, 1804-
1836, Gayle Thornbrough, ed., Indiana Historical Society
Publications, vol. 22 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical
Society, 1963), 226-27.
9 [Washington] National Intelligencer, Feb. 29, 1812. See
also Reginald Horsman, Matthew Elliott: British Indian
Agent (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964).
William Eustis to WHH, Feb. 28, May 2, 14, 1812,
in Territorial Papers, 8:168, 179, 181; B. F. Stickney to
William Eustis, June 7, 1812, in Letter Book of the Indian
Agency at Fort Wayne, 1809-1815, Gayle Thornbrough,
ed., Indiana Historical Society Publications, vol. 21
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1961), 136.
10 William Eustis to William Hull, Apr. 19, 1812, in
Document Transcriptions, 8:21; John Taylor to James
Madison, July 7, 1812, in The Papers of James Madison,
Presidential Series, Robert Rutland et al., eds., 5 vols. to
date (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984-),
4:572. Hull’s letter no longer exists, but is summarized
in Henry Clay to William Eustis, Aug. 22, 1812, in The
Papers of Henry Clay, James F. Hopkins, ed., 10 vols.
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959), 1:17.
11 For primary sources on the Detroit campaign, see
Documents Relating to the Invasion of Canada and the
Surrender of Detroit, 1812, E. A. Cruikshank, ed.,
Publications of Canadian Archives, no. 7 (Ottawa:
Government Printing Bureau, 1913). The best
secondary accounts include: Robert S. Quimby, The
U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and
Command Study, 2 vols. (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1997); Alec R. Gilpin, The War of
1812 in the Old Northwest (East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1958); George F. G. Stanley,
The War of 1812: Land Operations (Toronto: National
Museums of Canada and Macmillan, 1983); and
Sandy Antal, A Wampum Denied: Procter’s War of 1812,
Carleton Library Series, vol. 191 (Ottawa: Carleton
University Press, 1997). McAfee, History of the Late
War, 121; [Washington] National Intelligencer, Sept. 8
(Scioto Gazette quote), Sept, 15, 1812; [ca. Sept. 17,
1812] in Madison Papers, Presidential Series, 5:325.
12 Robert Johnson to James Madison, Sept. 3, 1812, in
Madison Papers, Presidential Series, 5:261; Biographical
Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1989, Senate
DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS
Document No. 100-34, 100 th Congress, 2 nd Session
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1989), 1267-
68, 1270.
13 John Badollet to Albert Gallatin, May 19, 1812, in
Correspondence of John Badollet, 232; Robert Johnson
to James Madison, Sept. 3, 1812, in Madison Papers,
Presidential Series, 5: 261.
14 WHH to William Eustis, Aug. 12, 1812 in Territorial
Papers, 8:190. For an introduction to raiding versus persisting
strategies, see Archer Jones, Civil War Command
and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat (New York:
Free Press, 1992), 138-41, 183-86.
15 WHH to William Eustis, Aug. 12, 1812 in Territorial
Papers, 8:191. On Michilimackinac’s surrender, see
Matthew Irwin to John Mason, Oct. 16, 1812, ibid.,
10:411-15. See also Brian Leigh Dunnigan, The British
Army at Mackinac, 1812-1815, Reports in Mackinac
History and Archaeology, no. 7 ([Mackinac Island, Mi.]:
Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1980).
16 Goebel, William Henry Harrison, 135-38; Henry Clay
to James Monroe, Aug. 25, 1812, and Henry Clay
to William Eustis, Aug. 26, in Papers of Clay, 1:719-
22; John Allen to James Madison, July 25, 1812, in
Document Transcriptions, 6, pt. 2:136.
17 William Eustis to WHH, July 18, 1812, and WHH
to Eustis, Aug. 12, 1812, in Territorial Papers, 8:188;
William Eustis to WHH, Aug. 22, 28, 30, 1812, in
Document Transcriptions, 8:69, 71, 73.
18 William Findlay to WHH, Aug. 29, 1812, in WHH
Papers, 6:28. For Gov. Scott’s orders, see [Washington]
National Intelligencer, Sept. 10, 1812.
19 William Eustis to Elijah Wadsworth, Sept. 5, 1812,
in Document Transcriptions, 10:151; James Madison
to James Monroe, Sept. 5, 6, 1812, and James
Madison to William Eustis, Sept. 6, 10, 1812, in
Madison Papers, Presidential Series, 5:270-71, 277-78,
295; James Monroe to Henry Clay, Sept. 17, 1812,
in Papers of Clay, 1:727. See also Irving Brant,
James Madison: Commander in Chief, 1812-1836
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), 83-85; and Ralph
Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (New York:
Macmillan, 1971), 542.
20 James Monroe to James Madison, Sept. 7, 8, 1812, and
James Madison to William Eustis, Sept. 8, 1812, in
Madison Papers, Presidential Series, 5:284-87; Monroe to
Clay, Sept. 17, 1812, in Papers of Clay, 1:727; Ketcham,
James Madison, 542. On the Monroe gambit, see J. C. A.
Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare
in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 213-26; Quimby, U.S.
Army, 1:102-03.
SPRING 2010 51

THE MAKING OF A MAJOR GENERAL
21 William Eustis to James Winchester, Aug. 31, 1812,
and William Eustis to Return J. Meigs, Sept. 1, 1812,
in Document Transcriptions, 8:74-75; William Eustis to
WHH, Sept. 1, 1812, in WHH Papers, 6:56.
22 WHH to Eustis, Aug. 29, Sept. 3, 1812, in WHH
Papers, 6:35-36, 76-80.
23 The letter from James Winchester to William Eustis, Sept.
2, 1812, was docketed by the war department on Sept.
11, but no longer survives. See James Monroe to James
Madison, Sept. 12, 1812, and R. M. Johnson to James
Madison, Sept. 18, 1812, in Madison Papers, Presidential
Series, 5:312, 332; WHH Speech to field officers, Sept.
21, 1812, in WHH Papers, 6:210.
24 WHH to William Eustis, Sept. 21, 1812, in WHH
Papers, 6:204, 208; R. M. Johnson to James Madison,
Sept. 18, 1812, and Robert Johnson to James Monroe,
Sept. 3, 1812, in Madison Papers, Presidential Series,
5:262, 332. One Kentucky soldier described “Gen.
Winchester being a stranger, and having the appearance
of a supercilious officer, he was generally disliked.” In
contrast, Harrison’s “conduct . . . at Tippecanoe, and
his familiarity with the troops while on their march .
. . had gained to him a peculiar attachment”; see Elias
Darnell, A Journal Containing an Accurate and Interesting
Account of the Hardships, Sufferings, Battles, Defeat, and
Captivity of Those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars
Commanded by General Winchester in the Years 1812-1813
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1854), 20.
25 James Monroe to Henry Clay, Sept. 17, 1812, in Papers of
Clay, 1:727; William Eustis to WHH, Sept. 17, 1812, in
WHH Papers, 6:173-74.
26 Primary sources on the battles at Frenchtown include:
Laurent Durocher letter, Jan. 13, 1858, Lewis Bond,
“Journal,” and Simon Perkins to Return J. Meigs, Jan.
28, 1813, in Document Transcriptions, 10, pt. 1:39-41,
188-97, 2:225; Isaac Day to WHH, [Jan. 12, 1813], in
WHH Papers, 7:180-81; Darnell, Journal, 44-63; Henry
Procter to Roger Sheaffe, Jan. 25, 1813, in Select British
Documents of the Canadian War of 1812, William C.
H. Wood, ed., Publications of the Champlain Society,
nos. 13-15, 17, 3 vols. in 4 (Toronto: Champlain
Society, 1920-28), 2:7-12; James Cochrane, “The War
in Canada, 1812-1814,” unpublished m.s., ca. 1840,
Welsh Regimental Museum, Cardiff Castle, South Wales,
U.K.; McAfee, History of the Late War, 222-44; Eleazer
D. Wood, “Journal of the Northwestern Campaign
52 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
of 1812-13,” in Campaigns of the War of 1812-15,
Against Great Britain, George W. Cullum, ed. (New
York: James Miller, 1879), 364-70. Secondary sources
include: Quimby, U.S. Army, 1:132-38; Antal, Wampum
Denied, 161-83; Dennis M. Au, War on the Raisin: A
Narrative Account of the War of 1812 in the River Raisin
Settlement, Michigan Territory (Monroe, Mi.: Monroe
County Historical Commission, 1981); G. Glenn Clift,
Remember the Raisin! Kentucky and Kentuckians in the
Battles and Massacre at Frenchtown, Michigan Territory,
in the War of 1812 (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical
Society, 1961); and Ralph Naveaux, Invaded on All Sides:
The Story of Michigan’s Greatest Battlefield, Scene of the
Engagements at Frenchtown and the River Raisin in the War
of 1812 (Monroe, Mi.: MP Design, 2008).
27 WHH to Thomas Worthington, Nov. 20, 1812, and
Thomas Worthington to WHH, Nov. 28, 1812, both in
WHH Papers, 6:657-60, 704-08. The latter letter is also
found in Territorial Papers, 8:217-18.
28 Thomas Worthington to WHH, Nov. 28, 1812, and
Richard M. Johnson to James Madison, Jan. 21, 1813,
in Territorial Papers, 8:218, 231-32; WHH order to Jesse
Hunt, Jan. 17, 1813, and Address and Resolutions in
Columbia Township, Hamilton Co., Jan. 16, 1813, in
WHH Papers, 7:230, 207-10. Harrison’s manuscript
letter of resignation as Indiana Territory governor has not
been located, but various Ohio newspapers published
it in early 1813; see WHH to Secretary of State [James
Monroe], Dec. 28, 1812, in Territorial Papers, 8:227-28.
29 WHH to John Armstrong, Feb. 16, 1813, in Territorial
Papers, 8:237-38; Goebel, William Henry Harrison,
163-65. On the creation of the various military districts,
see American State Papers: Military Affairs, 7 vols.
(Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1832-61), 4:147.
30 John Armstrong to William Duane, Mar. 16, 1813,
“Selections from the Duane Papers,” Historical Magazine,
and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History,
and Biography of America, 2 nd ser., 4 (Aug. 1868), 61;
W. S. Hunt to wife, Sept. 22, 1812, in WHH Papers,
6:216. On the Harrison-Armstrong rivalry, see C.
Edward Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr.: A Biography (Syracuse,
N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981), 130-38, 149-56;
Goebel, William Henry Harrison, 172-79, 185-96; and
Cleaves, Old Tippecanoe, 216-28.
31 Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution.

“Cooped Up and Powerless
When My Home is Invaded”:
Southern Prisoners at Johnson’s Island in their Own Words
Christopher Britten
Arriving on an unfamiliar island in Lake Erie, one he would not leave
for nearly two years, Lt. William B. Gowan, an Alabama native, soon
noticed the walls. Standing “about 12 feet in height of plank set up
endways” and lined with guards, these walls stood between Gowan and his freedom.
Capt. John H. Guy’s first impression of the prison was strikingly similar;
the Virginian quickly noted the walls lined with sentinels that surrounded his
new residence. These imposing barricades were surely an unsympathetic welcome
to the prison for men far from the open countryside of their native South.
Lt. Gowan and Capt. Guy were two of nearly nine thousand Confederate officers
who spent time as prisoners of war on Johnson’s Island in Ohio’s Sandusky Bay.
Prison Grounds during the Civil War from Lydia Jane Ryall, Sketches and Stories of the
Lake Erie Islands (Norwalk, Oh.: The American Publishers, 1913).
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
SPRING 2010 53

“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
The Confederate officers imprisoned at Johnson’s Island suffered through frozen
winters, low food rations, and separation from their families and comrades. At
the same time, however, many attempted to make the best of the situation by
staying in touch with loved ones, playing baseball, relishing the food sold by the
sutler, and even producing theatrical performances. The diversity of stories that
have emerged from Johnson’s Island makes any investigation of the men who
stayed there challenging. The nearly one hundred and fifty years that separate
modern investigations from the prisoners themselves alone can make it difficult
to discern what prison life was like. To understand the experiences of prisoners
on Johnson’s Island, the best resources available are the writings of the prisoners
themselves. 1
An expansive record of contemporary diaries and letters from these prisoners
offers a window into prison life on the island untainted by the passage of time.
The prisoners on Johnson’s Island were primarily officers, and consequently they
were generally well educated and articulate. Their words provide a direct means
of evaluating many facets of prison life in a manner that would be impossible
relying solely on newspaper accounts, secondary histories, and postwar memoirs.
The diaries and letters of prisoners offer perspectives on many familiar topics,
such as food conditions, the cold weather, and prisoner health. Moreover, the
prisoners’ writings reveal how these soldiers’ origins in the South shaped their
experience on Johnson’s Island. Many, especially from the Border and Upper
South, came from communities divided over the war, which complicated their
responses to their confinement. Other soldiers’ writings indicate that their home
communities offered them important support, especially when these prisoners
wrote letters in search of money, food, and friendly contact.
Historians have addressed many subjects contained in the Johnson’s Island
prisoners’ sources. Yet they have often overlooked how prisoners responded to
news of the war, what coping methods they used to soften the hardships of prison
life, and how they interpreted the passage of time while confined. Through an
analysis of the writings, one can begin to evaluate those aspects of prison life that
weighed most heavily on the prisoners in the moment. Were they more interested
in news of the war or news from home? Were they more upset by the food
conditions or the freezing winter temperature? The written records of prisoners
at Johnson’s Island offer a view of prison life that was then more complex and
diverse than current scholarship suggests. Defining changing prison conditions
or prison life requires analysis of a range of categories to understand the multifaceted
lives of the Confederate officers imprisoned on Johnson’s Island.
Numerous available sources address the topic of life in the northern and southern
prisons during the Civil War, both at Johnson’s Island and elsewhere. First published
nearly eighty years ago, William B. Hesseltine’s Civil War Prisons: A Study in
War Psychology is one of the first thorough studies of Civil War prisons and prisoners.
54 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

P. Fullerton Willard, Johnson Island Military Prison Diagram, 1862.
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
In addition to various topics, his chapter on war psychosis and the northern pris-
ons explains how sensationalized reports of conditions at southern prisons affected
the treatment of Confederate captives by the federal authorities. Hesseltine makes
heavy use of newspaper reports and the 144-volume Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies. In his chapter dealing with war psychosis and its consequences
for the conditions of northern prisons, over 75 percent of Hesseltine’s 173 footnoted
citations reference these Official Records. He cites not a single diary or letter from a
Confederate prisoner. Charles W. Sanders’s While in the Hands of the Enemy examines
the policies, politics, and leadership that resulted in the now infamous conditions at
prisons like Andersonville and Elmira, arguing that “the roots of Civil War prisoners’
suffering and death lay in decisions and directives that were deliberately chosen and
implemented by Union and Confederate leaders.” More recently, Lonnie R. Speer
has focused specifically on the nature of prison life. 2
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In contrast, Charles E. Frohman’s Rebels on Lake Erie focuses exclusively
on Johnson’s Island. Frohman provides an excellent overview of the prison,
including its conception and design, prison life, escape attempts, and conspiracies.
In his chapter on prison life, Frohman notes the presence of religion
on the island. Religious services were held twice a day on the Sabbath,
and prisoners often did some of the preaching. The Sabbath was observed by
restricting games, sports, and other “boisterous” pastimes. On the subject of
food, one prisoner wrote in August 1863 to the Confederacy’s secretary of war
James Seddon that the food prisoners received was “good in both quantity and
quality.” As the war continued into 1864, prison officials reduced rations.
Some prisoners were “compelled to subsist on two meals a day” and likely
did not receive even that much. The extreme example of prisoners forced to
eat rats because of starvation is dismissed by Frohman who cites a prisoner’s
1905 remembrances of the prison. “Were Confederate Prisoners compelled
to eat rats? No, but we did, largely out of a spirit of adventure,” stated Capt.
McLean. Frohman also discusses elements of prisoners’ recreation, the prison
economy, and prison health. The totality of his research on prison health suggests
that the prison itself was often filthy, but disease and death rates were
lower than expected. Prevalent ailments included typhoid fever, dysentery,
diarrhea, and pneumonia. 3
Surprisingly, as focused a study as Frohman’s fails to cite actual diaries and letters
written by prisoners on Johnson’s Island. Like Hesseltine, he instead draws
on newspaper accounts, official records, and memoirs published by prisoners long
after they left the island. The other works draw on memoirs written after the war,
newspaper accounts, government records, and secondary research to reach their
conclusions. While these additional sources are useful in gathering information
that is often unavailable in the prisoners’ writings, relying too heavily on them
can be problematic. As James M. McPherson notes in For Cause and Comrades:
Memoirs, regimental histories, newspaper letters, and rewritten diaries . . .
suffer from a critical defect: they were written for publication. Their authors
consciously or subconsciously constructed their narratives with a public audience
in mind. Accounts written after the war present an additional problem
of potential distortion by faulty memory or hindsight. In all such writings
the temptation is powerful to put the best face on one’s motives and behavior.
After studying twenty-five thousand personal letters and 249 diaries, McPherson
argues that these documents offer content that is “more candid and far closer to
the immediacy of experience than anything the soldiers wrote for publication.”
By relying on letters and diaries written at Johnson’s Island during the war, a
less distorted view of prisoners’ daily topics of interest emerges by which we can
evaluate issues of importance and gain deeper insight into life inside the walls of
this particular prison. 4
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
Methodologically, the Johnson’s Island results offer comparisons with other
Civil War prisons that support claims of its atypicality. The privileged status of
many of these Confederate officers, as well as the individual policies governing
the prison, created a unique experience for prisoners on the island. Indeed, other
prisons more closely align with conclusions drawn broadly in the secondary literature;
those conclusions represent the numerical majority of prisoners. More
prisons and documents as points of comparison, including Johnson’s Island, can
only further our understanding of Civil War prisons by offering the full range of
experiences of confined rebel soldiers.
Passing Time
The striking patterns found in the data collected from the prisoners’ writings
create the need for a reconsideration of prison life on Johnson’s Island. One
such topic meriting discussion is the level of boredom, idleness, and monotony
in prison life. In his book on Civil War prisons, Lonnie R. Speer argues that
“[i]dleness . . . was one of the most distressing aspects of prison life. Thousands
of men lapsed into helpless and hopeless apathy, caring for nothing and thinking
of nothing except their homes.” The Johnson’s Island prisoners’ writings present
a far more complex account of how time passed for the Confederates held there.
To be sure, boredom was an issue. The diaries and letters examined contain
eighty-four references to the passage of time. Of these, twenty-four passages contain
explicit descriptions of boredom and monotony, while another twenty-five passages
count the number of days spent as a prisoner and thirty-two more make note
of specific holidays passed far from home. William Gowan wrote in one entry that
“[w]e have had nothing to day to relieve the dull monotony of this place” and in
another that “[e]very day is alike here now.” Alabamian John L. Stockdale similarly
described how “[p]rison life is nearly the same day by day, with little variety
or change.” These conditions were only intensified as the prisoners anticipated
their elusive exchange. Col. Samuel Eugene Hunter wrote in a letter to his wife in
Louisiana that to “properly appreciate time you should be in prison expecting to
be released.” A formal exchange cartel, proposed by the Confederacy and accepted
by the Union in the summer of 1862 (after thousands of prisoners were captured
on both sides in the Seven Days and Fort Donelson battles), made exchange a real
possibility for the officers on Johnson’s Island. However, after just ten months of
operation, the Union suspended the cartel in response to two Confederate actions:
the threat of the South enslaving or executing black prisoners and the reenlistment
of Confederate soldiers that the Union had paroled under an agreement that they
would not fight again. The breakdown in the cartel left Confederate prisoners waiting
for an exchange that was increasingly unlikely as the war stretched into its final
years. The prisoners struggled to pass each day on the island, longing to return to
their homes or rejoin the armies from which they were taken. 5
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One way to track how the prisoners noted the passage of time is to consider how
they viewed holidays and major events in prison. “I had always hoped I would get
home by Christmas so that I might eat my Xmas dinner in the bosom of my dear
family” wrote Capt. Littleburg W. Allen of Virginia. On Christmas day, he added
“[w]hat strange reflections crowd upon the mind this morning as we remember the
strange scenes which surround us, so changed from the peace and quiet of the day
of former times.” Birthdays were also a time for reflection on their imprisonment.
Capt. Robert Bingham of North Carolina pondered how his birthday “is so different
from any birthday I ever spent—no birthday kiss—no wishes of happy return—but
a stranger in a strange land.” Holidays provided a somber reminder that as prisoners
they experienced a far different life than they had been accustomed to in the South.
Other holidays stirred different emotions. Many of the more patriotic holidays presented
a chance for the prisoners to evaluate the cause they defended at the time of
their capture. On July 4, 1863, Gowan explained in his diary that the day was “once
hailed with delight. . . . But now alas! What is the condition of this once proud and
prosperous Nation? Convulsed with war and drenched in blood.” Holidays, usually
a time of merriment spent with family, raised new and different emotions for the
Confederates on Johnson’s Island. Understanding how the prisoners responded to
these days reveals their more general feelings—the separation and frustration—which
shaped their prison experience. 6
Another indicator of how the prisoners experienced the passage of time is
found in their counts of days since their capture. On the six-month anniversary
of his capture, Allen explained how “humly hangs the dull hours upon men in
this loathsome imprisonment.” Echoing many of the prisoners, Gowan noted
that his first month on the island felt like a year had passed. Most of the prisoners
kept accurate counts of their imprisonment. Yet the tendency of the prisoners
to count up rather than down made these counts especially difficult to measure.
The prisoners of course had no idea of how long they would be forced to stay on
the island, so descriptions of the long days passing and the months in captivity
turning to years lends some support to Speer’s conclusion that pervasive idleness
led to “helpless and hopeless apathy.” 7
Still, these discussions of boredom and the passage of time were rarer than
other topics discussed in the diaries. Mentions of boredom and monotony were
found in only 2.3 percent of the entries, and only 8 percent contained even general
references to the passage of time. More common were discussions of prisoners’
recreation. Prisoners organized often elaborate activities to pass the time, many
of which, according to Edward T. Downer, effectively relieved “the monotonous
hours.” Games, crafts, education, and even theatrical performances prevented the
onset of boredom. Capt. Thomas Dix Houston, a Virginian, wrote how “[p]reachers
used to teach that it was the province of time to kill man. [B]ut it would amuse
you to see how many [activities] are resorted to here by men to kill time . . . ring
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
making, lecturing, chess, cards, novel reading, in fact everything but love making.”
Yankee Confederate Edward William Drummond, a native of Maine who served in
a Georgia artillery unit, stated that the prisoners got along “very comfortably” and
“instituted a system into our prison life which takes away the monotony somewhat.”
In one diary entry, Bingham even went as far as to describe his days as “quite busy.” 8
The prisoners developed a wide range of activities and sports to pass the time.
Typical games on the island included cards, chess, and backgammon. In the
spring and summer, the prisoners engaged in games of baseball. The winter
months brought occasional snowball fights. Both Allen and Stockdale described
such a spectacle on January 20, 1863, when the prisoners divided into lines of
battle, complete with flags and commanders. Other prisoners decided to spend
their time in what they felt was a more constructive manner, reading or learning
a new language. In a letter to other captured men in his unit, Guy advised that
those “of you who now spend day after day at Ball and Cards and other amusements
will recollect it hereafter with no satisfaction. . . . He of you who diligently
bestows his time on his books will have no such regrets.” In another letter Guy
wrote to his men:
it may indeed well happen, in after years you may find yourselves able to
look back with great satisfaction to your prison life,—its complete leisure
and its freedom from interruptions, as having, laid the foundation of your
success in life by having afforded better opportunity than might otherwise
have ever been offered you of improving your minds.
Fort on Johnson’s Island from Lydia Jane Ryall, Sketches and Stories of
the Lake Erie Islands (Norwalk, Oh.: The American publishers, 1913).
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Reading and education certainly helped pass the time for many who did not
prefer to be outdoors. Mississippian William Peel remarked in one entry that a
prisoner entering a prison block at any given hour could easily imagine he was in
fact entering a country school. 9
Other prisoners passed the time by putting on musical and theatrical performances.
Houston was the manager of a group that called themselves the Rebel
Thespians. He depicted in a letter to a friend how the troupe was created “for
the purposes of charity and amusement.” The prisoners also organized a musical
group of minstrels. For some performances they charged admission of twentyfive
cents, which they donated to the hospital. Other forms of entertainment
included a structured debating society. The debaters discussed a chosen topic
at each meeting, ranging from reopening the African slave trade to whether the
Confederacy should maintain universal suffrage or impose a property qualification
for voting. As Peel wrote of the minstrels, such groups “seem determined to
make the best of misfortune.” 10
When not involved in these forms of recreation and entertainment, some
men participated in the vibrant prison economy by working or making goods.
Prisoners did craft work to help pass the time. Drummond described how men
made pipes, chess sets, buttons, and rings. Sometimes these crafts were made for
amusement. Other times, the crafts were sold on the island or sent home to be
sold, furnishing the prisoners with much needed money to spend at the sutler
stand. Other prisoners pursued more traditional means of earning money. Men
mended shoes, tailored and mended clothes, and did laundry. The comforts of
slaveholding to which many of these southern officers were accustomed created a
demand for prisoners who were willing to do chores for pay. “Officers were not
allowed to bring their servants with them to this prison,” wrote Guy. “Some of
us feel greatly the loss of them. There are luckily however some of the prisoners
who are willing to cook and to wash clothes for pay and thus most of us are able
to get rid of two very disagreeable necessities.” 11
Indeed, Johnson’s Island may not fit with prevailing descriptions of prison
life in part because it was not a typical prison. As officers, the prisoners were
connected to a well-to-do network of supporters. Houston wrote to his friends
requesting stockings and other costume parts for the Rebel Thespians. Other
prisoners frequently received money to buy the raw materials needed for their
crafts. At the same time, the prisoners were held in generally livable conditions,
with greater access to food and health care than in other prisons. Because
their necessities of life were amply met, prisoners could focus their attention on
finding positive ways to pass time rather than falling into apathy and idleness.
Prisoners’ discussions of boredom were overshadowed by mentions of activities,
entertainment, and the numerous crafts which kept them occupied and even
“busy.” 12
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
Determinants of the Quality of Life
In the literature on Civil War prison camps and on Johnson’s Island specifically,
scholars have identified a few primary topics that determined prisoners’ quality of
life. Almost half the entries discuss weather conditions on the island, by far the
most prevalent topic in the detainees’ writings. Prisoners interested themselves in
the weather as more than a means of passing time. Weather served as a constant
and often troubling reminder that the prisoners were not near their homes in the
South. William Peel bemoaned the late spring in the North:
May, which in the sunny clime of my Southern home, I have ever been
wont to hail as the season of all that, in connection with the floral kingdom,
is lovely and beautiful, dawned upon us, on this bleak Isle, without
a single particle . . . of the dellicate [sic] aroma or the beauteous hues of
even one little jonquil to rest the weary eye from its long continued gaze
on winter’s lifeless scenery.
Both Thomas Houston and Robert Bingham explained how the northern cold
“chilled [their] Southern blood.” Many were unprepared for the harsh northern
winters and longed to return home, and the freezing winter served as yet another
reminder that they would continue to suffer in prison. Beyond comparing the
local weather to that in the South, prisoners often included weather conditions
with descriptions of their mood. A gloomy tone in the writings often reflected a
gloomy day outside. Bingham wrote how it “is cold and cheerless outside—and
cold and cheerless inside” and added that “I confess to being in worse spirits to
night than I have been in a long time.” Weather clearly influenced the mental
health of the prisoners. But beyond its emotional impact, the weather also had a
tangible impact on the prisoners’ lives. 13
Many of the worst descriptions of hunger appear in prisoners’ writings during
the winter months. Because of the location of the Johnson’s Island prison,
when Lake Erie froze over it cut off supplies and access to the mainland.
Weather prevented the delivery of rations and on some occasions caused the
prisoners to “go hungry.” Weather shaped the health and suffering of the prisoners.
Living in a climate more extreme and harsh than anything most had
ever before experienced, many of the prisoners’ bodies and minds had difficulty
coping with the climate. When the weather restricted access to supplies,
it added to prisoners’ emotional suffering and worsened their physical health,
in part because they were also not adequately housed or dressed for winter.
As Stockdale noted, “Many of the prisoners are sick with colds and pneumonia,
the effect of want of proper clothing and comfortable quarters this severe
weather.” Littleburg Allen predicted that an entire winter spent on the island
would cause “a good deal of suffering.” Poor conditions also affected the prisoners
by cutting off recreational activities. In seasons other than winter, too,
inclement weather “deprived” prisoners of games and general exercise. John Guy
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described how a rainstorm made it “peculiarly disagreeable here, as it keeps all the
crowd in the room and makes it hard to get through the day even by sleeping.” 14
Food was another component governing the quality of prison life. Although
attention to hunger and low rations in prisons occupies a major portion of the
secondary literature, surprisingly food is only the eighth-most discussed topic in
the Johnson’s Island writings. Food or hunger-related passages were mentioned
in only 11.8 percent of the documents, behind discussions of weather, war news,
and even prisoner activities. Undoubtedly, hunger was at times an issue on the
island. Allen complained how he was once kept up all night by hunger. Peel
wrote about frequently hearing “‘How hungry I am.’ ‘I’m hungry as a wolf.’ ‘I
am nearly starved.’ These are the exclamations that greet me on all occasions.”
Apparently, the prisoners were not adequately fed. Moreover, prisoners often
described rations as decreasing over time. The diaries contain confirmation that
these officers, like enlisted men confined elsewhere, ate rats. Why, then, are discussions
of extreme hunger not found in more of the diaries and letters? 15
When federal authorities reduced rations, many of the prisoners had alternative
means of obtaining food. The officers on Johnson’s Island used their
connections to secure packages of food as well as money to spend at the sutler’s
stand. While rations may have been low, John Stockdale wrote that if
“one has plenty of money he can [live] well here.” Cabbage, potatoes, onions,
beets, lettuce, beans, butter, eggs, molasses, pickles, mustard, sauces, fruits,
cheese, and crackers were all available for sale at the sutler. When not supplied
with money, some prisoners received packages of food directly from
family and friends. William Peel once received a package with oranges, sugar,
sausage, and an “elegant ham.” Although the government may have reduced
food to near-starvation levels, many prisoners got by with the support of
those at home. The writings leave unclear whether all prisoners were so lucky,
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
Sketch of Military Prison from Joseph Barbière, Scraps from the Prison Table,
at Camp Chase and Johnson’s Island (Doylestown, Pa.: W. W. H. Davis, 1868).
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“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
and enlisted men in other prisons apparently had little access to alternative
food sources. Still, the opportunity to receive packages and money perhaps
explains why many of the prisoners went days and weeks without ever mentioning
hunger or lack of food. 16
Weather and nutrition combined to create another factor that affected
prisoners’ quality of life on Johnson’s Island: health care. As with food, detainees’
experiences and opinions on the topic of health varied greatly. Stockdale
and Guy both described the overall health of the prisoners as “remarkably
good.” Some, such as Peel, had positive things to say about his health care,
describing the doctors on the island affectionately and hoping their reward
for their quality care would be “the brightest jewells of Heaven.” At times,
the health care the prisoners received surpassed their expectations for a wartime
prison. For example, Bingham described receiving a gold filling when
he had dental work. Other prisoners, however, had few good things to say
about prison health. Allen wrote about the sadness at seeing “so much sickness
among the Officers and really . . . nothing to prevent it.” During a bout
of fever, Bingham described how he “suffered horribly—and had no hand to
sooth my suffering.” Much of the writing suggests that although prisoners
were accustomed to hardships, coping with them so far from friends and family
was especially difficult. 17
Many soldiers also struggled to cope with the deaths of fellow officers on the
island. Compared to other prisons in the Civil War, Johnson’s Island had a lower
death rate. Of an estimated nine thousand total prisoners held, approximately
235 died, a death rate of just 2.6 percent, startlingly lower than the nearly 13 percent
that one historian has estimated as the average for all prisons. Other federal
prisons of comparable size to Johnson’s Island (and much further south) experienced
significantly more deaths. Alton, Illinois, smaller than Johnson’s Island, had
1,508 deaths, while Old Capitol (or Carroll) Prison in the Washington saw 457
prisoners die. Prisons located roughly on the same latitude as Johnson’s Island—
Rock Island, Camp Douglas, and Elmira, each of which housed more prisoners
than Johnson’s Island—had a death rate of at least 15 percent, much larger than
that of Johnson’s Island. Although death and dying may not have affected all
Johnson’s Island prisoners to an equal degree, many had firsthand experience with
these difficult issues. “It is a melancholy thought to think of dying away from
one’s home and family” wrote Edward Drummond after the death of two fellow
officers. Funeral services, often attended by prisoners, offered little comfort. Peel
described the prison cemetery: “Oh what a resting place! A few feet below the surface,
among the cold, cheerless rocks of a bleak, frozen Island of a few acres extent,
a thousand miles from the land of those he loved, with no fond mother near to
drop a farewell tear.” Just under a year later, after Peel died of pneumonia, he too
was buried away from his family in the small prison graveyard. 18
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
War News and the Hope for Exchange
Judging events that caused emotional fluctuations offers another means of esti-
mating prisoners’ experience of confinement. The ebb and flow of news, whether
of battles or prisoner exchange, stirred detainees’ emotions. Although secondary
sources often fail to mention either, war news and rumors of possible release
were two of the topics most frequently discussed by Johnson’s Island prisoners.
Mention of war news is found in 29.5 percent of the sample, and 25.7 percent of
documents contain discussion of release from prison. The prisoners talked about
these topics significantly more than they described news and letters coming from
loved ones at home. How exactly was news of the war gathered and digested?
And what emotional impact did it have on the prisoners? The importance of
news to the prisoners makes this topic essential for understanding their experience
at Johnson’s Island. 19
The chief source of war news for prisoners on the island was newspapers.
Prisoners were at times able to read both northern and southern papers. In one
entry, William Peel described the different descriptions of William T. Sherman’s
movements prior to his 1864 Atlanta campaign as told by the “Federal press”
and the “Richmond papers.” Because prisoners often mistrusted the accuracy
of Yankee papers, Peel later noted that they “don’t always confine themselves
strictly to the truth,” while Littleburg Allen wrote that much of what fills these
papers was “supremely ridiculous.” At times, prisoners had no choice but to rely
on northern accounts of events. On at least one occasion, the guards banned
“Copperhead,” or northern antiwar, newspapers (though they later lifted the
ban). When the papers did not come, the prisoners often claimed to know
“nothing of what is going on outside.” However, Johnson’s Island detainees had
other means of gathering information while behind the prison’s walls. The steady
flow of recently captured prisoners arriving on the island offered a second notable
source of war news and rumors. In the field just days or weeks prior, these newcomers
had privileged access to information that the current prisoners hurriedly
consumed. One of Peel’s entries suggests that these “fresh fish” were able to speak
to the “spirit” or morale of the army in ways that newspapers could not. Allen, in
contrast, was often skeptical about the sensational and likely exaggerated nature
of news brought by these new prisoners. While the news’s accuracy may have
been doubted, new prisoners as a source for information did represent an important
complement to newspapers. 20
Once news entered the prison, whether by newspapers or by way of new
arrivals, an established system spread it to the hundreds or thousands of prisoners
anxious to hear it. Called the grapevine, or more simply just the grape, a network
of public readings and message passing ensured the quick distribution of news. It
also placed prisoners on an emotional roller coaster of sorts. Edward Drummond
explained that on the grape “word starts from some person and it manages to
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“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
rope us all in. By the time it becomes generally known it is so increased in impor-
tance that it generally excites the whole crowd to such a pitch that we all think
we are set free.” As such, some of the island’s detainees turned a skeptical ear to
war news gathered by the grape. Drummond discounted the accuracy of many
rumors as “Grape Vine,” or a “report [that had] lost foundation.” 21
Although the Johnson’s Island grapevine was not a perfect means of spreading
information, the news disseminated by it had a significant impact on the lives and
emotions of the prisoners. Although they read the same newspapers as civilians and
soldiers, Johnson’s Island detainees contextualized the information contained in them
according to the circumstances of their confinement. Prisoners had few opportunities
independently to confirm or deny the information they received. Consequently,
they often received false stories as truth more easily than those outside the prison
walls. Some prisoners recognized that the news they received was likely to be partially
false, even in the newspapers they read. Allen gave the newspapers slightly more
credit than word of mouth, concluding “though often exaggerated, [they] contain
much of truth.” John Stockdale described reading a story in an August 1863 newspaper
that claimed falsely that Jefferson Davis had died. How prisoners received news
of one the war’s most important events, the battle at Gettysburg, reveals much about
the news-gathering process. Although the battle ended on July 3, 1863, William
Gowan mentioned the battle just two days later:
[P]apers report a hard fought bat[t]le at Gettysburg in which the Federals
claim a Victory . . . but we have to receive news of this kind here with a
good many grains of allowance and will have to wait several days perhaps
before we get anything like a correct statement of the matter.
The following day, Gowan wrote again that prisoners still did not believe news
of the battle, though the “Yankees are quite jubilant.” On July 11, Gowan again
questioned the accuracy of Robert E. Lee’s defeat. Finally, more than a week
after the battle’s close, Gowan accepted that the federal Army of the Potomac
had forced Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to retreat. Clearly, gathering news
was a multi-step process, with early reports either confirmed or challenged by a
combination of later stories and sources, allowing prisoners to reach a consensus
on events off the island. 22
Prisoners walked a fine line with regard to war reports. At once aware of the
often false information in the newspapers, their debates, discussions, and writing
reveal the great importance they placed on such reports. Although Eugene
Hunter lamented that “hopes [of exchange] have prooved delusive so often that
noone places much reliance of them,” he went on to conclude optimistically,
“[h]owever there is a hope and I can only trust that it is well founded.” With little
choice in available sources, prisoners understandably continued to value the news
they did receive, however inaccurate they suspected it. Their isolation allowed
all reports on the war to take on the illusion of truth. As historian Jason Phillips
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CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
argues with regard to the “complicated nature” of Confederates’ reception of war
news, “rumors were not external demons that plagued people; rather, men used
hearsay to transmit their hopes and fears. . . . [The rumors] are uncontrollable
monsters and the products of men; they both affect and reflect reality.” 23
Because positive or negative news could have a dramatic emotional impact on the
prisoners, war news was a significant determinant of prisoners’ quality of life. When
good news arrived from the front, the detainees’ collective mood was cheerful. After
one Confederate battlefield victory, Edward Drummond described the scene in the
prison yard. “The shout that went up would scare the Devil if he had been anywhere
about,” he wrote jubilantly. “It was kept up by over Thirteen Hundred voices unceasingly
for over an hour. Never did I see such heartfelt gratitude in my life. Men were
in tears screaming at the top of their voices with joy.” These rare moments of elation
were extremely important to the prisoners. News of victory gave the officers a chance
to feel they served their prison time for a greater purpose. Drummond explained how
“recent victories brace us up and if they continue we shall not despond even if we are
kept here.” Stockdale described one particular day that brought news of a great victory
as “the most joyous day we have had within these walls.” 24
Battlefield victories took on greater importance because the prisoners believed
that they increased the chances of reviving prisoner exchanges. In an 1863 letter to
his wife, Hunter wrote that his prospects for exchange depended on the “decisive
John Joyes, Jr. Diary, entries for Apr. 10-14, 1865.
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 2010 67

“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
events” of the coming battles. Near the end of the war, William Peel recognized that
the “principle obstacle” to the exchange was the “enemy’s excess of prisoners,” and when
the Confederates captured men it was a cheering sign that the Confederacy had more
to offer the North. Negative news about the prisoner exchange also weighed heavily on
the prisoners. The inmates “can bear no more of the long wishes for exchange” wrote
Stockdale. Despite what they hoped, the exchange eluded many prisoners. As Allen
explained fatalistically, the “brighter the hopes, the more certain the failure.” Indeed, the
link between misery and dimming dreams of exchange appears throughout the diaries.
Bingham wrote that “I am getting more and more hopeless about the exchange daily—
and so more and more depressed.” When not favorable, the news of war and exchange
took a heavy toll on the prisoners. 25
As the war wore on, the news about the Confederate armies on various fronts
became decidedly worse. For Peel, the receipt of bad news “added very materially to
the gloom already cast over our spirits.” For other prisoners, more than their morale
was on the line. Prisoners from portions of the South that saw the clash of armies
worried that battles fought close to home might jeopardize the safety of loved ones.
Virginian Littleburg Allen was most “anxious and sensitive” when he heard news
about the northern army maneuvering close to his family and home, near the front
lines of the conflict. “I shall be greatly mortified if they rob my farm and insult
my family or even visit and frighten them,” Allen wrote. In truth, prisoners from
throughout the Upper South found themselves fearful for the safety of family and
friends as the war slowly pushed into and through their home region where battles
were often succeeded by a prolonged federal occupation. 26
In the final months of the prison’s operation, most inmates of Johnson’s Island knew
their cause was doomed. By the summer of 1865, prisoners’ candidly reflected on the
end of the Confederacy and the war now lost. A desire to sacrifice for the Confederacy
once enabled the prisoners to bear their internment, but when the southern nation
failed they wanted only to return home and reestablish their lives. Eugene Hunter wrote
in a letter that “I bore this imprisonment pretty well until I came to the conclusion that
the war was over and tried to get out by taking the oath. Since then no imprisoned bird
ever beat its pinions against its prison bars more industriously than I have.” Hunter also
wrote that their “cause has collapsed completely, and no man of sense will continue to
hold out.” For others, a commitment to the Confederacy as an abstract cause remained,
but it was no longer absolute. Writing in his diary on April 10, 1865, the day after Lee’s
surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, Kentuckian John Joyes Jr., described the prisoners as
“gloomy.” Four days later, he was more reflective about the war’s ending and its meaning.
“I have much cause for regret and despondency,” he noted, “and yet I feel justly
proud that I have endeavored to perform my duty in what I will ever consider a noble
cause.” The prisoners’ writings project a mixture of emotions, sadness that the war had
ended in defeat yet relief that they had survived their imprisonment and would once
again be reunited with loved ones. 27
68 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
Prisoners’ diaries and letters provide an overview of the most important topics
affecting them. Contrary to the secondary literature, the writings of Johnson’s
Island prisoners indicate that war news and discussion of release concerned them
most during their stay on the island. Studying these writings reveals how prisoners
felt both about the war and their stay in prison. Although the numerous news
sources available to prisoners were often not accurate, veteran detainees invested
a great deal of emotion and effort into receiving and interpreting reports from
northern and southern papers as well as verbal information from incoming prisoners.
The news could cause unprecedented joy or hopeless depression. Other
primary determinants of the quality of life at the prison included weather, food,
and health. Beyond the suffering caused by freezing temperatures, weather had
a profound impact on prison life. It reminded inmates that they were far from
home, restricted their recreation, and influenced their moods. Food also affected
prisoners’ lives. When rations fell short, prisoners relied on a network of family,
friends, and supporters to send money or food. Descriptions of health on the
island varied greatly within the writings. Some prisoners praised their health care
while others bitterly complained about the lack of care and personal suffering
Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware Military Prison,
April 29, 1864. Bullitt Family Papers,
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 2010 69

“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
from illness. Yet, neither of these topics—food and health—ranked in the top
five most discussed subjects within the writings. Consequently, although these
issues affected prisoners, they mentioned them less frequently than topics such as
their hopes for release.
Finally, the sources scholars use to study Civil War prisons matter. Prisoners’
depictions of Johnson’s Island offer a picture different from prevailing secondary
accounts of prison life. Understanding more fully what these prisoners felt about
their experience enables scholars to reconsider descriptions of prison life that
rely on sources created after the war. The prisoners’ accounts make it clear that
no single narrative can accurately depict prison life. Each prisoner had his own
experiences and responses to life on Johnson’s Island. Only by collecting these
often varied accounts and looking for patterns and consistencies can scholars
develop a more complete comprehension of life in this prison.
Table 1
Frequency of References in All Documents
Count Percentage*
Weather 487 46.4
War News 309 29.5
Release 270 25.7
Writings 193 18.4
Religion 149 14.2
Health 146 13.9
Activities 129 12.3
Food 124 11.8
Guards 113 10.8
Prisoner Relationships 98 9.3
Passing Time 84 8.0
Romance and Women 78 7.4
Death 57 5.4
Requests 37 3.5
Prison Visits 3 .3
*Percentage taken to show the rate at which a given topic
is found within the 1,049 total documents.
70 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

The author wishes to thank David R. Bush, of Heidelberg
University, and Maris A. Vinovskis, of the University of
Michigan, for their gracious assistance with the research and
writing of this article.
1 Diary of W. B. Gowan, June 5, 1863, Texas State Library,
Austin (hereafter TSL); Diary of John H. Guy, Apr. 29,
1862, Papers of John Henry Guy, 1833-1890, Virginia
Historical Society, Richmond (hereafter VHS).
2 William B. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in
War Psychology (Columbus: The Ohio State University
Press, 1930); Charles W. Sanders Jr., While in the Hands
of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005); Lonnie
R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War
(Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997).
3 Charles E. Frohman, Rebels on Lake Erie (Fremont, Oh.:
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, 1997), 16, 18,
23, 22, 25-37, 153-54. Also see Edward T. Downer,
“Johnson’s Island,” in Civil War Prisons, William B.
Hesseltine, ed., (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press,
1972), 98-113, esp. 98-99, 101, 104.
4 James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men
Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997), 11-12.
5 Speer, Portals to Hell, 60; Gowan Diary, June 10, 12,
1863, TSL; Diary of J. L. Stockdale, Aug. 3, 1863,
Department of Archives and History, Montgomery,
Al. (hereafter ADAH); S. Eugene Hunter to Stella,
June 2, 1862, Hunter-Taylor Family Papers, Special
Collections, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley
Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge (hereafter LSU). The first
diary entry from Stockdale written on Johnson’s Island
is from July 29, 1863. Before arriving on the island
Stockdale traveled from the point of his capture near
Port Hudson, Louisiana, through Vicksburg, Mississippi,
then Arkansas before making his way to Johnson’s Island.
His final entry, dated Apr. 1864, gives no indication of
why the diary stops then. Hunter was a colonel in the
4 th Louisiana Infantry. He was captured near Atlanta
on Sept. 2, 1864. Throughout his prison stay he corresponded
with both his wife and father. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988), 791-92.
6 Diary of Littleburg W. Allen, Dec. 20, 25, 1863, David
R. Bush, ed., Brock Collection, Huntington Library, San
Marino, Ca. (hereafter HL); Diary of Robert Bingham,
Sept. 9, 1863, Rutherford B. Hayes Memorial Library,
Fremont, Oh. (hereafter RHML); Gowan Diary, July 4,
1863, TSL. Allen was captured on July 20, 1863, and
arrived on Johnson’s Island in Nov. 1863. He remained
there until his release on Feb. 9, 1864. Bingham was a
CHRISTOPHER BRITTEN
captain in the 44 th North Carolina Infantry. His diary
begins with entries written by Bingham while a prisoner
in Fort Norfolk, Virginia, and continues with his first
entry at Johnson’s Island written on July 21, 1863.
7 Allen Diary, Jan. 20, 1863, HL; Gowan Diary, June 16,
1863, TSL; Speer, Portals to Hell, 60.
8 Thomas D. Houston to Lizzie, Oct. 21, 1863, transcripts
obtained from Heidelberg University Center for
Historic and Military Archaeology, Tiffin, Oh. (hereafter
HCHMA, original letters housed in Washington and
Lee University Special Collections Library, Lexington,
Va., emphasis in original); Edward W. Drummond,
A Confederate Yankee: The Journal of Edward William
Drummond, A Confederate Soldier from Maine, Roger S.
Durham, ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
2004), 80; Bingham Diary, Sept. 2, 1863, RHML;
Speer, Portals to Hell, 60; Downer, “Johnson’s Island,”
104. Houston was a first lieutenant in the 11 th Virginia
Infantry. Throughout his imprisonment on Johnson’s
Island, he wrote to friends Ella and Lizzie, as well as his
sister. Although Drummond’s family was originally from
Maine, in 1859 he moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he
married a local woman and became attached enough to his
new life to join the Confederate army shortly after the war
began. His brother, Clark, fought with the Union army.
Drummond was captured after the fall of Fort Pulaski in
Georgia. He was eventually exchanged and returned to the
South where he rejoined the Confederate army.
9 William H. Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 1863-
1865, Ellen Sheffield Wilds, ed. (Carrollton, Ms.: Pioneer
Publishing Co., 2005), 140, 235; Allen Diary, Jan. 20,
1865, HL; Stockdale Diary, Jan. 20, 1865, ADAH;
Guy Diary, July 28, June 12, 16, 1862, Papers of John
Henry Guy, VHS. Peel served in the 11 th Mississippi
Infantry and was captured at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
After spending approximately one year as a prisoner
on Johnson’s Island, he died on Feb. 8, 1865, and was
buried there. Guy, an artillery captain, spent time in
Camp Chase prison in Columbus, Ohio, before being
transferred to Johnson’s Island. He wrote in his diary
beginning on Apr. 29, 1862, until he was exchanged and
left for the South on Aug. 31, 1862.
10 Houston to Lizzie, Nov. 11, 1863, HCHMA; Peel, The
Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 160; Stockdale Diary, Sept.
1, 2, 8, 1863, ADAH.
11 Guy Diary, May 15, July 28, 1862, VHS; Drummond, A
Confederate Yankee, 74.
12 Houston to Stella, Nov. 11, 1864, HCHMA.
13 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 179; Bingham
Diary, Sept. 18, Oct. 7, 1863, RHML; Houston to
Lizzie, Dec. 1, 1864, HCHMA.
SPRING 2010 71

“COOPED UP AND POWERLESS WHEN MY HOME IS INVADED”
14 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 103, 126; Guy
Diary, May 31, 1864, VHS; Allen Diary, Dec. 19, 1863,
Brock Collection, HL; Stockdale Diary, Oct. 6, 1863,
ADAH. For one prisoner’s description of the harsh
climate, see Hamlin to Father, Jan. 11, 1865, Theodore
P. Hamlin Papers, 1834-1885, Southern Historical
Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Hamlin was a first lieutenant in the 18 th Tennessee
Infantry. He wrote letters to both his father and a sister
while staying on Johnson’s Island.
15 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 278, 268; Allen
Diary, Dec. 5, 1863, HL; Stockdale Diary, Nov. 21, 1863,
ADAH. According to Speer, federal authorities reduced
rations to levels that caused “malnutrition” and “starvation”
in 1864 and 1865; see Speer, Portals to Hell, 14-15.
16 Stockdale Diary, July 29, 1863, ADAH; Peel, The Diary
of Lt. William H. Peel, 141.
17 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 111; Guy Diary,
July 18, 1862, VHS; Stockdale Diary, Oct. 15, 1863,
ADAH; Allen Diary, Nov. 22, 1863, HL; Bingham
Diary, July 25, Oct. 2, 1863, RHML.
18 Drummond, A Confederate Yankee, 90; Peel, The Diary of
Lt. William H. Peel, 112, 325. Peel died Feb. 17, 1865,
according to a final entry in his diary written by a friend.
Rock Island saw 1,960 prisoners die, and Camp Douglas
and Elmira had 4,454 and 2,933 prisoner deaths,
respectively. For death rate and size of prisons based on
maximum capacity and most men held at one time, see
Speer, Portals to Hell, xiv, 323-30.
19 Of 270 total references to release from the island, 207
references (or 76.7 percent) refer specifically to release
by exchange. Thirty-seven references (or 13.7 percent)
refer to escape, and only nine references (or 3.3 percent)
refer to leaving once the war had ended. Clearly, prisoners
focused most on leaving through an exchange, as
opposed to escape, and consequently their hopes for
leaving the island were most frequently tied to news of
the exchange. Descriptions of receiving letters from
friends or family at home are found in only 18.4 percent
of the diaries and letters.
72 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
20 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 126, 162, 189,
207-08; Allen Diary, Jan. 29, 1864, Nov. 15, 1863, HL;
Stockdale, Nov. 21, 1863, ADAH.
21 Drummond, A Confederate Yankee, 82, 76.
22 Allen Diary, Nov. 26, 1863, HL; Gowan Diary, July 6, 7,
11, 15, 1863, TSL; Stockdale, Aug. 8, 1863, ADAH.
23 Hunter to Stella, Feb. 12, 1865, Hunter-Taylor Family
Papers, LSU; Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The
Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2007), 116.
24 Drummond, A Confederate Yankee, 78, 87; Stockdale
Diary, Sept. 22, 1863, ADAH.
25 Hunter to Stella, Feb. 21, 1865, Hunter-Taylor Family
Papers, LSU; Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 130;
Stockdale Diary, Sept. 22, 1863, ADAH; Allen Diary, Nov.
30, 1863, HL; Bingham Diary, Sept. 13, 1863, RHML.
26 Peel, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 131; Allen Diary,
Nov. 30, Dec. 29, 1863, HL; Stockdale Diary, Jan. 12,
1863, ADAH.
27 Hunter to Stella, June 16, May 21, 1865, Hunter-Taylor
Family Papers, LSU; Diary of John Joyes Jr., Apr. 10, 14,
1865, The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Ky. Joyes
was captured near Salemville, Ohio, on July 26, 1863.
He remained a prisoner on Johnson’s Island until June
11, 1865, more than two months after Lee’s surrender.

Finding Mr. Lincoln
A Few Reflections on the
Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial
Thomas C. Mackey
On Friday, February 12, 2010, at four p.m., in Frankfort,
Kentucky, in the Old State Capitol Building, the
Kentucky Historical Society convened a ceremony
that concluded Kentucky’s bicentennial of the birth of
Abraham Lincoln and initiated Kentucky’s sesquicentennial
observations of the Civil War. As the Civil War sesquicentennial
progresses in the next few years, Lincoln
will remain a prominent figure, but the various commemorations
in honor of his two hundredth birthday
have ended and Lincoln-focused events will become
fewer. Thus, the moment is right for reflections on
the Lincoln bicentennial. Or as Lincoln said on
November 9, 1863, in perhaps his best known
speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, “It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.”
For the past few years I have worked on the
Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial commemorations
and events at the local, state, national, and
briefly the international level. Since the 1970s,
Lincoln and his place in the middle period of the
nineteenth century has been one of my research,
teaching, and professional interests. Thus I volunteered
with little hesitation to help plan and deliver
programs recognizing the bicentennial of the birth
of the Kentucky-born, Indiana-raised, Illinoisan,
Abraham Lincoln. Starting with an episode that occurred on Lincoln’s two hundredth
birthday, this essay seeks, in an admittedly individual and idiosyncratic
fashion, to weigh and assess some of the strengths and weaknesses of the Lincoln
bicentennial. Others would no doubt offer different opinions and insights, but
this evaluation seeks to cast some perspective on Lincoln, his memory, his significance,
and his long legacy still discernable in the early twenty-first century.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865),
carte de visite, 1864.
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 2010 73

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
Kent Whitworth, executive director of the Kentucky Historical Society, speaks at an event
honoring the conclusion of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial and the beginning of the
commemoration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, February 12, 2010, in the
Old State Capitol, Frankfort.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
On February 12, 2009, after I had participated in the formal ceremony hon-
oring the two hundredth birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I drove from the high
school in Hodgenville, Kentucky, to the middle school. The National Parks
Service and the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission had
planned on holding the ceremony at the Lincoln birth site at the Sinking Spring
just outside of Hodgenville, but a few days prior to the event an ice storm hit
the area and closed the park. Electricity had only just been restored, downed
trees and limbs scattered the grounds, and the parking lot could not accommodate
what turned out to be a nice crowd. In response, the organizers moved the
ceremony to the local high school. I shared the stage with the director of the
United States Mint who unveiled the first of four new Lincoln pennies depicting
the symbolic Kentucky log cabin of Lincoln’s famous humble birth. Also on the
stage was the governor of Kentucky. Security people alone—from the U.S. Mint,
the state police, and the local and county police—guaranteed a good crowd. The
governor arrived, his staff handed him a speech, and he made his way through his
prepared comments. My harmless remarks went off without embarrassment and
the ceremony ended. I bought my quota of the new Kentucky Lincoln pennies,
got into my car, and drove to the middle school for the invited lunch.
74 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

THOMAS C. MACKEY
And then Abraham Lincoln found me. As I opened my car door, and started
to step out, a flash of copper caught my eye—a Lincoln penny, face-up, glinted
at me from the pavement. Hello Mr. Lincoln.
On his birthday, near his birth site, Lincoln was not going to be forgotten by
the patriotic and appropriate hubbub of the day. I laughed to myself because I
am always finding Lincoln pennies, so I picked up this one and placed it in my
shirt pocket for safe-keeping. The lunch proved to be quite good and the lunch
speaker, the commander of the U.S.S. Louisville, a nuclear powered submarine,
delivered a good community relations speech after which I left Hodgenville and
headed to Louisville and the office. But I needed some gasoline for the car so I
stopped at a local gas station before heading to the freeway. Sure enough—and
in the words of humorist Dave Berry, I am not making this up—I opened my car
door and on the ground lay another Lincoln penny, face-up.
Hello Mr. Lincoln.
That penny too made its way into my pocket. I paid for my gas with three five
dollar, Abraham Lincoln-portrait bills. I drove to my office where I parked and
noticed that the car next to mine was registered in Lincoln County, Kentucky.
Hello Mr. Lincoln.
Once in my office, I checked the news through the internet and saw that
the Washington, D.C., ceremony for Lincoln’s two-hundredth birthday at
the Lincoln Memorial took place without any obvious problems and that the
Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield was holding an event that evening. I
checked my regular mail and found that I received a new book on Lincoln. Since
2002 or so when I agreed to serve on the Library of Congress’s Abraham Lincoln
Bicentennial Commission, I’ve been finding Mr. Lincoln.
The bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth has sparked a multi-year and multi-faceted
series of remembrances, recognitions, ceremonies, and events, reflecting Lincoln’s
historical significance and the fact that his era constitutes a watershed in United
States history. Professional historians speak about the U.S. prior to the era of
Lincoln and the U.S. after the era of Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction
(really, the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution). Lincoln’s contemporaries
also recognized the changes of the era. Before Lincoln’s administration,
people spoke of the United States in the plural (the United States are . . .). After
Lincoln, the country’s grammar changed to the singular (the United States is . .
.), as a nation emerged from the fiery trial of civil war. Lincoln’s vision and legacy
of a united and perpetual nation as reflected in the language of the Lincoln
canon—at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, at the Illinois Republican senatorial nomination
in 1858, at Cooper Union in 1860, at the first inaugural, on July 4, 1861,
at Gettysburg in 1863, and at the second inaugural—resonated with Americans
during his time and continues to do so. A commemoration of Lincoln’s birthday
was appropriate.
SPRING 2010 75

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
Commemoration efforts began in Illinois. In 2000, Ray LaHood (D-IL, secretary
of transportation in Barack Obama’s administration), then congressman from the
same district Lincoln represented in the late 1840s, and Dick Durbin (D-IL),
the United States senator from the seat sought by Lincoln in 1855, introduced
identical legislation in the House and the Senate to create the Abraham Lincoln
Bicentennial Commission (ALBC). Congress passed the bill and President
William Jefferson Clinton signed the legislation. 1 In the bureaucratic language
of the federal government, the ALBC sunsets in June 2010. As provided by the
federal statute, a varying number of commissioners from the academic and political
worlds served on the ALBC, including Harold Holzer, Lincoln scholar and
vice president of communications and marketing of the Metropolitan Museum
of Arts; Darrel E. Bingham of the University of Southern Indiana (emeritus);
Tommy Turner, judge executive of LaRue County, Kentucky (where the Lincoln
birth site and boyhood home are located); and Frank Williams, Lincoln scholar
and chief judge of the Rhode Island Supreme Court (retired). In turn, the commission
hired an executive director, Michael F. Bishop, but when fund-raising
failed to meet expectations, the commissioners let Bishop go. In October 2006,
they hired Illinois-based non-profit organizer, Eileen R. Machevich, who will
serve throughout the rest of the commission’s life. Housed in the Library of
Congress building, the staff of the ALBC recruited an advisory committee of
scholars and Lincoln enthusiasts from across the United States and quite literally
around the world. In 2002, I joined this committee. The commissioners then
divided their work among several standing committees, responsible for areas such
as budget, legacy, and education. I agreed to serve on the education committee.
Charged with organizing the national remembrance of Lincoln’s two hundredth
birthday, the commission, led by its committees, started planning. Two
fundamentals became clear: First, the Commissioners wanted two years of events
and activities starting with the 199th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, climaxing
on February 12, 2009, and followed by a series of wrap-up events until June 1,
2010. That plan was not unreasonable, but it rested on the second fundamental:
money. While Congress and Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush supported
the ALBC, the federal government set aside only a modest appropriation for
staff. As a result, fundraising consumed most of the work of the commissioners
and money—or the lack of it—decided what could and could not be done. But
fundraising soon lagged. At first, the commission set the grandiose goal of raising
one hundred million dollars for the bicentennial; nothing close to that amount
materialized and in 2006 that failure contributed in part to the change in the
leadership of the ALBC. In 2010, the ALBC will issue a final report on its activities
and finances, and even for someone like me who sat largely on the sidelines,
what that report says and does not say about money will be of interest. Since
76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

THOMAS C. MACKEY
Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, Senate President David Williams, and Governor Steve Beshear lay a
wreath at the Lincoln statute in the rotunda of the Kentucky Capitol Building, Frankfort, at Kentucky Historical
Society-hosted ceremony commemorating Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 2009.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 2010 77

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
2006, the schedule of events depended on some federal funds and the limited
amounts raised from contributions to support the national staff. State-funded
Lincoln bicentennial commissions, including Kentucky’s (one of the most active,
and best organized and funded of all of the states), and of course volunteer efforts
and private donations carried much of the weight of the bicentennial. Both the
national ALBC and the state commissions could do nothing without the aid,
support, and staff of the National Park Service at the federal Lincoln sites, and
the state park and local directors of other Lincoln sites that brought bicentennial
events and commemorations to fruition.
2008-2010
As a result of funding issues, the ALBC did not make as big a splash in popular
culture and consciousness as the its founders and early planners might have liked
or envisioned. Nonetheless, the organizations and volunteers (federal, state, and
local) involved still presented a surprising amount of quality programming. I
can speak to a few of the events that should be mentioned, though this list is not
intended to be definitive, even of the events held within the Commonwealth of
Kentucky. Still, I had the good fortune either to be involved with or attend a few
of the more interesting and important events.
78 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Replica of Abraham Lincoln boyhood home, Knob Creek, Kentucky.
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The formal kick-off of the bicentennial
THOMAS C. MACKEY
occurred in Louisville on February 11,
2008, with follow-up events scheduled
for the 199th birthday in Hodgenville,
Kentucky, at both the birth site and the
boyhood home. An ice and snow storm
that hit the area caused organizers to cancel
and postpone the Hodgenville events
altogether, including a visit by First Lady
Laura Bush, and made it difficult for
large numbers to attend the Louisville
concert and lectures. (Bush traveled to
the site eventually, but her belated visit
received limited publicity.) Weather also
delayed the arrival of featured speaker
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prizewinning
author of Team of Rivals: The
Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Upon
her arrival, she delivered a note-free, thumb-nail talk about the book and Lincoln;
by the end of her lecture, Goodwin had the audience of over seven hundred on
their feet applauding. Goodwin’s visit was one of the few 2008 events that worked
in spite of the weather. Jefferson County and Louisville Metro sponsored a talk by
local historians, featuring John Kleber, the editor of the Louisville Encyclopedia and
the Kentucky Encyclopedia, and myself, later in the day after Goodwin’s address. 2
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Local access television replayed the event for several months thereafter.
Both the state and national ALBC held events in the year before the actual
bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. On February 12, 2009, commemorations
occurred in Hodgenville, in Washington, D.C., in Springfield, Illinois, and probably
plenty of other cities and classrooms across the United States and around the
world. As in the previous year, an ice and snow storm caused changes in program
and location. This is why I found myself sharing the stage of the local high school
with Kentucky’s governor and the director of the U.S. Mint, and delivering a talk
about Lincoln and his enduring heritages. Like me, the staffs of the National
Park Service and the Kentucky ALBC, and the political leadership of LaRue
County were disappointed that the event could not be held in the park at the
birth site, but the event was well attended, sales of the new penny brisk, and the
lunch afterward enjoyable. And after the ceremonies and pomp, Lincoln found
me—or rather I found two Lincoln pennies that day. Just as the country cannot
avoid Lincoln and the political and cultural transformations of his era, I cannot
escape Lincoln. In order to understand nineteenth-century America, many
scholars insist that one has to get right with Lincoln. The United States before
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site,
Hodgenville, Kentucky.
SPRING 2010 79

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
Lincoln was a less united and deeply flawed polity and culture. After Lincoln
and his era, the country faced enormous challenges on any number of cultural,
social, political, and economic issues, but the essential issue of political unity and
nationhood had been settled. Lincoln’s presidency represents a breakwater in the
nation’s history, and every little lost copper penny I find reminds me (and I hope
others) of the significance of finding Mr. Lincoln.
Important events associated with or convened because of the bicentennial
occurred after February 12, 2009. On May 30, 2009, in Washington, D.C.,
the ALBC oversaw the re-dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, as tourists and
busloads of school children streamed into and through the monument. On an
unusually hot day (Lincoln attracts the extremes of weather; too much cold for
the Kentucky events and too much heat for the Washington events), invited
guests, surrounded by tourists, listened as the Marine band played and Harold
Holzer presided. In sharp contrast to the original dedication of the Lincoln
Memorial, the audience was biracial just as the organizers had hoped. Benjamin
F. Payton, president of Tuskegee University, delivered the primary address on
Lincoln and his era’s multiple meanings for the African American community.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar accepted the rededication on behalf of the
people of the United States and the event concluded (after only a couple of people
fainted from the heat) with the playing and singing of “God Bless America.”
I then walked to the Potomac River bridge directly behind the memorial in order
to catch the Metro line to Virginia and my hotel. About halfway across, in a
break in the traffic, my eye recognized a familiar color and shape. I bent down
and reached into the closest lane of traffic and picked up, of course, a Lincoln
penny. Hello Mr. Lincoln.
At least a few history professionals became involved in the Lincoln bicentennial.
Like me, some have served on advisory committees and delivered a
variety of talks and presentations on Lincoln and his era. Three major scholarly
conferences occurred: one at Howard University focusing on Lincoln and
race relations; a second at Oxford University in the United Kingdom focusing
on the international meanings and significance of Lincoln; and a third at the
American University of Paris examining European understandings of and reactions
to Lincoln. Scholarship from these conferences is already appearing in
print, including the important roundtable discussion at the Oxford conference
published in the leading scholarly journal of United States history, The Journal
of American History. 3 Articles and conference proceedings from these meetings
promise to deepen and enrich further an already impressive historiography on
Lincoln and his era.
For educators below the college level, the Organization of American Historians
devoted at least three numbers of its Magazine of History to Lincoln and the problems
he confronted. These issues are useful for teachers because they contain
80 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

THOMAS C. MACKEY
articles dealing with both the substance of a historical question, together with
teaching resources (that is, primary sources) on the same topic. 4 The ALBC also
commissioned a poster promoting the bicentennial and at reduced charge the
post office delivered it to K-12 teachers across the country. They held a national
“teach-in” on Lincoln for K-12 students that used the World Wide Web to link
students across the country to each other and to Lincoln scholars who lectured
and fielded student questions about Lincoln and his era. Despite scarce resources,
the ALBC worked to enhance the civic education of school children, achieving
significant results with modest backing. Scholars who volunteered their time for
this worthy cause, supported by teachers across the country and the staff of the
ALBC, have to be given high marks (if no pay check) for their efforts.
Encouraging scholarship on Lincoln and his times constituted one of the
goals of the bicentennial. To that end, I had the unique experience of chairing
the Organization of American Historians/Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial
Commission graduate fellowship sub-committee of the ALBC’s education committee.
The idea was to fund and encourage, not high school or undergraduate
research, but graduate-level scholarship in the field. At first, the committee
planned to award two graduate fellowships, one at the M.A. level and one at the
PhD level, but in the end the OAH/ALBC awarded only one doctoral award.
A donor came forward to boost the financial award for the student, which the
OAH publicized through its printed and on-line publications. The OAH/ALBC
committee, consisting of ALBC commissioner and historian Darrel Bingham,
distinguished historian Orville Vernon Burton, Heather Cox Richardson of the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and myself, faced a tough decision, ultimately
recognizing Jared Peatman of Texas A&M University at the OAH’s 2009
annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. Peatman’s creative analysis of Lincoln’s
1863 Gettysburg Address and the history of how various regions in the United
States have accepted and rejected it will be read and debated long into the future. 5
Based on the applications received by the graduate fellowship committee, the
study of Lincoln and his era will be in good, creative, and highly competent
hands in the future.
The bicentennial celebration will leave additional legacies. Abraham Lincoln
and his immediate family lived in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and the District
of Columbia, and all four claim him as a native son. In 2009, the U.S. Mint
began changing the reverse image on the penny to reflect the four locations where
Lincoln resided. Use of these four images enabled the Mint to avoid choosing
which location owns Lincoln; now, all four can claim him officially. In 1909,
the centennial of his birth, Lincoln became the first president/politician with
his image on the national coinage. In 1959, the Mint changed the imagery for
the sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. In the bicentennial year, it seems fitting
to change the penny once again. These new pennies will certainly reach more
SPRING 2010 81

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
Americans for longer than the events and ceremonies of 2008-2010, despite the
ALBC’s desire to shape popular culture. The ALBC hopes, for example, to continue
the Lincoln web site (www.lincoln200.gov) as an ongoing legacy of the
bicentennial, but the stability of internet sites remains uncertain. Only serious
scholarship, another of the ALBC’s goals, will last as long as the new pennies.
Appropriately, the popular Lincoln on the pennies and the scholar’s Lincoln in
the historiography will endure.
And what an impressive outburst of scholarship on Lincoln and his era is underway.
Lincoln scholar Frank Williams estimates that at least sixteen thousand books
have been published on Lincoln during his life and since his death; three thousand of
these are juvenile literature. 6 On occasion, someone asks, “What else can there possibly
be left to say or research and publish on Lincoln?” As it turns out, a lot.
Lincoln continues to draw high quality analysis and argument, one suspects,
because of the man himself, his unique historical context, and the way he helped
shape this key period of United States history. The most important books offer historical
arguments both challenging and useful that future scholars and serious readers
will have to confront. In addition to Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Team of Rivals,
good places to start include Stephen B. Oates’s older, but useful introduction, With
Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln, and David Donald’s Lincoln, which
also won the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, perceptive and challenging Lincoln scholar
Michael Burlingame weighed in with his monster two-volume history/biography,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Detailed and sweeping in a narrative of over fifteen hundred
pages, Burlingame’s work constitutes his magnum opus as well as a source for
Three of the four 2009 Lincoln pennies issued by the U.S. Mint. From left to right: Lincoln
birthplace (Kentucky); Lincoln boyhood home (Indiana); Illinois Statehouse.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
82 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
The Lincoln centennial penny (1909),
and the Lincoln Memorial pictured on the
Lincoln sesquicentennial penny (1959).
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

THOMAS C. MACKEY
further historical questions and research. Ronald C. White Jr.’s one-volume history
of Lincoln, his rhetoric, and policies, A. Lincoln: A Biography, is written with verve
and attention to historical context. Rhodes Professor of American history at Oxford
University, Richard Carwardine, contributed a subtle and impressive interpretation
of Lincoln in his 2006 work, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power. Important specialized
studies of Lincoln have also appeared, including Harold Holzer’s Lincoln
at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President, and Tried By
War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, by the dean of Civil War historians,
James M. McPherson. Orville Vernon Burton’s important and in places appropriately
grumpy The Age of Lincoln assesses Lincoln and his administration, and how the
nation both realized and failed to live up to Lincoln’s vision. These few books just
scratch the surface of the important new scholarship that has appeared in tandem
with the bicentennial. But they demonstrate the riches of the field and the impressive
new work, both scholarly and popular, about Lincoln and his crucial era. 7
Other scholars have explored a spectrum of topics related to Lincoln and his
era during the bicentennial. Gerald J. Prokopowicz’s clever Did Lincoln Own
Slaves?, published in 2008, answers student questions about Lincoln while doing
battle against historical myths and current popular culture. Exploring popular
culture and Lincoln, History: The History Channel Magazine, a journal aimed at a
general audience, published articles in 2009 on the 1876 effort to steal Lincoln’s
body from its tomb and an article on Lincoln’s use of the cutting-edge technology
of his day, the telegraph. Seeking a slightly different audience, the Kentucky
Humanities Council entitled a recent number of its biannual publication, “The
Lincoln Issue,” devoting the entire journal to Lincoln-related subjects. It includes
John Kleber’s persuasive case for Lincoln as a Kentuckian; a discussion by the
state historian of Kentucky, James Klotter, of how Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln,
and Henry Clay influenced each other; Burrus Carnahan’s analysis of Lincoln’s
timing of the Emancipation Proclamation; as well as other creative pieces. One
of the odder yet interesting pieces that appeared during the bicentennial focuses
on Lincoln’s sense of touch. In “The Touch of an Uncommon Man,” which
appeared in The Chronicle Review, the weekly magazine of the Chronicle of Higher
Education, Mark M. Smith argues that historians need to pay more attention to
the senses, and especially how people saw, felt, smelled, tasted, and touched in
the past. Smith employs Lincoln as an example of how new understandings can
emerge of even an iconic figure such as Lincoln when creative historians ask new
questions of the evidence. Assessments of the Lincoln bicentennial, like this article,
have also begun to appear. Orville Vernon Burton has considered the scholarly
and public endeavors of the bicentennial in two pieces: “Is There Anything
Left To Be Said About Abraham Lincoln?” in Historically Speaking: The Bulletin
of the Historical Society, and “Abraham Lincoln at Two Hundred,” in the OAH
Newsletter. His assessments are fair, balanced, and engaging. 8
SPRING 2010 83

FINDING MR. LINCOLN
As this sample suggests the scholarship on and about Lincoln, much of it
sparked by the bicentennial, has been wide ranging and self-reflective, deepening
and widening scholars’ and the public’s understanding of Lincoln and his
historical contexts. And yet, one possesses the uneasy feeling of not “knowing”
and not finding Lincoln at all—and that conundrum is what continues to inspire
the field.
Overall, the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial receives a grade of a “B” for denting
the popular consciousness, and a mark of an “A” for its creative output. But
after the ceremonies and the civic education efforts about Lincoln have receded
into memory, what legacies will last? Because of the efforts of educators at all
levels, some students will have gotten the Lincoln “bug” during the bicentennial.
In time, these students will immerse themselves in the secondary and primary
resources about Lincoln and his world, they will pursue advanced studies
and research in the field, and they will ensure that the scholarship remains upto-date
and flourishing. And with these new scholars will come new questions
and approaches to understanding that most crucial era of U.S. history: the age
of Lincoln. The outpouring of popular and scholarly work will continue—and
that scholarship constitutes an enduring legacy of the bicentennial. Of course,
the monuments and statues will be maintained, and the pennies will remain in
circulation, sometimes lost and then picked up at unexpected times and places.
Those physical remembrances of Lincoln will remain, standing silent witness to
the importance of the man, his times, and the American values he represents.
But after the ceremonies are completed, the enigma of the man will remain, and
these continuing mysteries will spark the drive for more and better scholarship.
Hello Mr. Lincoln: In spite of our best efforts, we still hardly know you and
your era. The multiple efforts to find Mr. Lincoln will continue.
1 U.C. Code, Title 36, 106-73.
2 Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2005); John Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1992); Kleber, ed., Encyclopedia of Louisville (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
3 “Abraham Lincoln at 200: History and Historiography,” The Journal of American History 96 (Sept.
2009), 357-499.
4 See, for example, Thomas C. Mackey, “‘That All Mankind Should Be Free’: Lincoln and African
Americans,” and Michael Ryan-Kessler, “A Complex Relationship: Lincoln and Frederick Douglass,”
in Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 21 (Oct. 2007), 24-29, and 42-48.
5 For an early iteration of Jared Peatman’s work, see “Virginians’ Responses to the Gettysburg Address,
1863-1963” (M.A. Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2006).
84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

6 For an interesting example of Frank J. Williams’s work
see, Judging Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2002).
7 Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: A Life of
Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper and Row, 1977);
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1995); Michael Burlingame, Abraham
Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2008); Ronald C. White, Jr.,
A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Random House,
2009); Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose
and Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); Harold
Holzer: Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made
Abraham Lincoln President (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2004); James M. McPherson, Tried By War:
Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York:
The Penguin Press, 2008); Orville Vernon Burton, The
Age of Lincoln (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007). Other
important Lincoln works include: Stephen Berry, House
of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by
War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007); Gabor Boritt,
The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody
Knows (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006); Lord
Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, A Biography (1916;
Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1996); David Herbert
Donald, “We Are Lincoln Men”: Abraham Lincoln and His
Friends (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003); Daniel
A. Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2003); Eric Foner, ed., Our Lincoln: New
Perspectives on Lincoln and His World (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2008); Allen G. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2004); Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas:
The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2008); William C. Harris, Lincoln’s Rise to the
Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007);
Harold Holzer, Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln
and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861 (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2008); Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth
of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil
War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000);
Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (New
York: HarperCollins, 2008); Thomas L. Krannawitter,
Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest
President (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008);
Lewis E. Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point
(Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2008); Elizabeth
D. Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and
Reunion after the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton,
2004); William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical
Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 2002); Miller,
President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); Phillip Shaw Paludan, The
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1994); John C. Waugh, Reelecting Lincoln:
The Battle for the 1864 Presidency (New York: Crown
Publishers, 1997); Tom Wheeler, Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails:
THOMAS C. MACKEY
How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil
War (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006); Ronald
C. White, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln
Through His Words (New York: Random House, 2005);
Sean Wilentz, ed., The Best American History Essays on
Lincoln (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). For
recent works on Abraham Lincoln as lawyer, see Brian
R. Dirck, Lincoln the Lawyer (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2007); Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (New
York: Knopf, 1948); J. M. Fenster, The Case of Abraham
Lincoln: A Study of Adultery, Murder, and the Making of a
Great President (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007);
John T. Richards, Abraham Lincoln: The Lawyer-Statesman
(Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 1999); Allen D.
Spiegel, A. Lincoln, Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated
Lawyer in His Time (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University
Press, 2002); Mark E. Steiner, An Honest Calling: The
Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2006); Daniel W. Stowell, ed.,
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008); and
Williams, Judging Lincoln.
8 Gerald J. Prokopowicz, Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And
Other Frequently Asked Questions about Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Vintage Books, 2008); Bob Frost, “Stealing
Abe,” and Emily Lucas, “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails,” History:
The History Channel Magazine 7 (Jan.-Feb. 2009),
20-25, 26-29; John Kleber, Shall Any Claim Come
Before the Mother?”, James Klotter, “A Power Trio,” and
Burrus Carnahan, “A Question of Timing,” in Kentucky
Humanities (Nov. 2008), 6-16, 30-32, 26-28. Also see
Burrus Carnahan, Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation and the Law of War (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 2007); Mark M. Smith, “The Touch
of an Uncommon Man,” The Chronicle Review, Feb. 22,
2008, b6-b8; Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing,
Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2008); Orville Vernon
Burton, “Is There Anything Left To Say About Abraham
Lincoln?” 9 Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the
Historical Society (Sept.-Oct. 2008), 6-8; and “Abraham
Lincoln at Two Hundred,” OAH Newsletter 37 (Nov.
2009), 1, 8, 12. Important for the long-range study
of Lincoln and his era is the work of the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois (http://www.
papersofabrahamlincoln.org/). Headed by Daniel W.
Stowell, it is dedicated to identifying, imaging, and
publishing all documents written by or to Lincoln during
his lifetime. This important work will continue well
into future.
SPRING 2010 85

Collections Essay
Helen Steiner Rice
“The Lady in the Hat”
After careful consideration, and by unanimous consent of the trustees of
the Helen Steiner Rice Foundation, on June 1, 2009, the Foundation’s
intellectual property and archives were awarded to Cincinnati Museum
Center. A photograph of Rice and a sampling of her poetic renderings can
be found in a display case located at the entrance to the Cincinnati Historical
Society Library. Dorothy Lingg, who assisted Virginia Ruehlmann for nineteen
years, is now working as the HSR Archivist under the direction of Anne Kling in
the Manuscripts Department.
Helen Steiner Rice, often referred to as the “Poet Laureate” of inspirational
verse and “Dear Abby” of greeting cards, was born Helen Elaine Steiner on
May 19, 1900, in the Lake Erie town of Lorain, Ohio. As a young child, Helen’s
mother, Anna Bieri Steiner, and her maternal grandmother read the Bible to her
and encouraged her to memorize passages from it. Possessing an excellent memory,
Helen was able to quote scriptures effortlessly until her death. When Helen
turned ten years old, she composed her first poem:
Helen was a little girl
With many a golden curl
And her lovely eyes
Were as blue as the summer skies
Oh no, I guess they’re brown
So I will have to lose a crown
Throughout her childhood, Helen continued
to compose rhyming couplets. Her witty
and timely poems frequently appeared in the
Scimitar, the Lorain High School yearbook. The
October after Helen graduated from high school,
the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 claimed her
father, John. Instead of going off to college and
pursuing her law degree as she had planned, his
death forced her to continue her employment
at Lorain Electric, Light, and Power in order to
support her mom and younger sister, Gertrude.
Helen Steiner and fiance, Franklin Rice, January 1929.
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

DOROTHY LINGG
Young, dynamic, and modern, Helen quickly climbed the corporate ladder
to become the company’s advertising manager. She cleverly managed to use her
original rhymes and jingles to promote her products. Soon, numerous speaking
opportunities came her way and she was invited to be a spokeswoman for the
Ohio Public Service Company. In her twenties, she traveled around the country
giving speeches, many expounding the importance of women in the workplace.
Her motivational speeches were well received and she authored a prize-winning
article on public relations that appeared in Forbes magazine. In her hometown
of Lorain, she was known as “The Lorain Tornado.” In 1926, enthusiastic and
resolute, Helen opened up her own motivational lecture service known as “The
Steiner Service.” Her verse summed up her theory of success:
Success is a mixture of good hard work,
good humor, good luck, and good sense!
In 1928, while speaking before the Rotary Club in Dayton, Ohio, she met her
future husband, Franklin Rice, a successful banker. They were married on January
30, 1929, in New York City’s historic Marble Collegiate Church. Franklin steadily
lost his assets and his bank collapsed following the October 1929 collapse of the New
York stock market, and the onset of the Great Depression. Bankrupt and jobless,
Rice took his life at their Dayton home on October 10, 1932.
Prior to his death, aspiring to recoup the family fortune, Helen contacted
Cincinnati’s Gibson Art Company and was hired as a marketing agent. With the
sudden death of the director of the company’s greeting card line, Helen became
the new editor. Over the span of fifty
years, she remained in the company’s
employ and wrote countless humorous
and inspirational verses for their greeting
cards. By 1939, Helen was widely
acknowledged as one of the leading poets
in the greeting card industry. Deeply
spiritual, she composed a new greeting
card with her unique verses each year at
Christmastime. When Aladdin Pallante,
a violinist and dramatic reader of poetry
on the Lawrence Welk Show, received
one of Helen’s cards, he approached
Welk and asked if he could read it on the
show. On December 17, 1960, Aladdin
gave an impressive recitation of the poem
“The Priceless Gift of Christmas” before
a nationwide audience. The audience’s
positive reception convinced Welk to ask
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
Helen Steiner Rice with a framed copy of
“The Praying Hands,” her most popular poem.
SPRING 2010 87

HELEN STEINER RICE
Helen if she would allow him to read other poems on subsequent holidays. During
a 1961 promotional tour in Cincinnati, Welk invited Helen to dinner. Later that
year, Pallante read “The Praying Hands” on the air and it became one of the most
popular greeting cards ever issued.
Helen lived most of her adult life alone at the Hotel Gibson, located on
Fountain Square. Her flamboyant, tailored hats drew attention whenever she
walked the downtown streets. She completed her last book, Somebody Loves You,
in 1976 while hospitalized, and spent her final days at the Franciscan Terrace
on Compton Road. During this time, she received well wishes from Pope John
Paul II, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and many Cincinnati politicians. The
College of Mount St. Joseph awarded her the degree of Doctor of Humane
Letters a month before she died on April 23, 1981. In October 1992, she was
posthumously inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame.
Prior to her death, Helen expressed a desire to set up a foundation in her
name to award grants to non-profit organizations that served the elderly, needy,
and the sick. The Helen Steiner Rice Foundation, established in 1981, also provided
that her personal correspondence, poetic compositions, and intellectual
property would be used to perpetuate and disseminate her works. Until her
own death in 2008, Virginia Ruehlmann sorted the archives and, at the publisher’s
request, searched out poems that had never been published and compiled
over fifty themed books utilizing Rice’s poetry. The royalties generated
from the book sales, along with interest earned through the investment portfolio,
made it possible for the Foundation to award over eight million in grant dollars
to worthy non-profit organizations in Greater Cincinnati and Lorain, Ohio.
Grants are currently awarded to creditable organizations located in Hamilton,
Butler, Clermont, and Warren Counties in Ohio; Boone, Campbell, and Kenton
Counties in Kentucky; Dearborn County in Indiana; and Lorain, Ohio.
The Helen Steiner Rice archives are currently housed in the Manuscripts
Department at Cincinnati Museum Center. The collected works include all of
the memorabilia which Helen carefully safeguarded during her lifetime. The collection
consists of twenty archival boxes. Included in the collection are:
• Information about Helen’s early years in Lorain, Ohio, including her
Steiner family history, friendships, and achievements while a student at
Lorain High School.
• Details about Helen’s early life before 1940, including her birth certificate,
marriage certificate, letters to and from her husband, and Franklin Rice’s
suicide letter.
• Her affiliation with the Willis D. Gradison family, and correspondence
between them spanning decades.
• Files proving ownership of early verses and witticisms, and personal
Christmas Cards penned by Helen spanning 1932 to 1970.
88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

• Correspondence files, speeches she gave, and biographical information
after 1940.
Helen Steiner Rice wearing one of her flamboyant hats.
CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER
• Gibson-related files, correspondence with employers and co-workers,
newsletters, company events, and promotional appearances.
• Early non-inspirational Gibson greeting cards and information about
her award-winning poem, “The Praying Hands.”
• Helen’s affiliation with Lawrence Welk.
• Information about publishers of HSR books and poems including
DOROTHY LINGG
Christian Publishing Company, Guideposts, Doubleday, Revell,
and Shaw-Barton.
• Church-related files and Helen’s charitable giving records.
SPRING 2010 89

HELEN STEINER RICE
• Greeting cards bearing HSR verses published by Gibson, Buzza,
Classique, and Pleasant Thoughts, organized topically.
• News clippings, radio, TV, and music media files.
• Miscellaneous correspondence organized by year, HSR verses and
messages of empathy organized topically, and a poem written for her
mom’s funeral.
• Source material for poems, typescripts for inspirationals, and legends
told in poetic format.
• Extensive correspondence files to and from her many fans, friends, and
family members through 1981.
• Helen’s obituary in the Cincinnati Post, news of her death which made
front-page news in the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1981, and her Last Will
and Testament.
One copy of each HSR book ever released can be found in the Cincinnati
Historical Society Library. Barbara Dawson, the Curator of Printed Works, has
cataloged them and assigned a call number for each book. The photos of Helen
Steiner Rice were turned over to Linda Bailey, the Curator of Photographs.
Helen Steiner Rice dolls, plates, magnets, and other HSR objects were turned
over to David Conzett, the Curator of History Objects.
HSR books and greeting cards can be ordered through Cincinnati Museum
Center’s Gift Shop. Anyone wishing to learn more about Helen Steiner Rice is
encouraged to visit the web site at www.helensteinerrice.com. On average, 2,500
persons log onto this website each month.
Dorothy Lingg
Archivist, Helen Steiner Rice Collection
The author utilized the following sources in preparing this essay:
Virginia J. Ruehlmann, The Lady in the Hat (Cincinnati: Deerfield Press, 2005).
Ronald Pollitt and Virginia Wiltse, Helen Steiner Rice, Ambassador of Sunshine (Grand Rapids, Mi.: F. H.
Revell, 1994).
90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Book Reviews
Murder and Madness:
The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy
Matthew G. Schoenbachler
The “Kentucky Tragedy” was the name
given to a series of events—a murder,
subsequent trial, execution, and related
suicide—that brought national attention to the
state between 1825 and 1826. It later became the
basis of fictional portrayals ranging from Edgar
Allen Poe’s aborted attempt to (most famously)
Robert Penn Warren’s novel World Enough and
Time (1979). While multiple writers have turned
to the story for subject matter, only a small number
of historians have attempted to unravel the
tragedy’s complicated series of events. According
to Matthew G. Schoenbachler, most of these
accounts either ignore the most reliable sources or
else take them too much at their word. In Murder
and Madness, Schoenbachler asserts that those
who took part in the Kentucky Tragedy predetermined
subsequent interpretations. The murder
on the streets of Frankfort was the perpetrator’s
intentional imitation of Byronic romanticism,
flummoxing chroniclers of the tragedy ever since.
A cynical deist Tidewater transplant, Anna
Cooke hid in her western Kentucky home, reading
Mary Wollstencraft and refusing all suitors until
well into her thirties. Her heart could be won
only by another eccentric, the younger Jereboam
Beauchamp, a backcountry Zelig who tended to
reset his public persona according to his changing
social needs, imitating the Byronic “abandonment
BOOK REVIEWS
of convention” (92) (Schoenbachler argues that
many young Americans were so afflicted by the
Newstead Abbey Bard). But their union came
only after Cooke was allegedly raped or seduced—
Schoenbachler reiterates the early nineteenth century
indeterminacy between the two—by one
Solomon Sharp, lawyer and National Republican
politico. Cooke gave birth to a stillborn child that
was supposedly Sharp’s, but he parried the accusation
by insinuating a liaison between Cooke
and a black man, an element of the story that
Schoenbachler says has been curiously absent in
most accounts. The teenaged Beauchamp’s courtship
of the thirty-something Cooke was inspired
by his idealizing her as the sort of damaged damsel
that his literary heroes would have protected and,
true to form, her eventual acquiescence came out
of their shared bibliophilia.
The marriage also produced murder. When
Beauchamp ambushed Sharp on a Frankfort
street, it looked like the sort of honor killing that
historian Bertram Wyatt Brown has established as
familiar, if not commonplace, in the Old South.
The fact that it came amid Kentucky’s first (of
many) great internal political disputes, the “Old
Court/New Court” debate (a great illustration
of post-Jeffersonian disillusionment irrespective
of the Kentucky Tragedy), and Sharp’s role
at the center of said dispute, made many think
SPRING 2010 91

BOOK REVIEWS
Matthew G. Schoenbachler. Murder and Madness:
The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 2009. 392 pp.
ISBN: 9780813125664 (cloth), $35.00.
it a political assassination. Schoenbachler insists
otherwise; the murder was an apolitical act of life
imitating art. Beauchamp believed his betrothed
had been dishonored without justice and he
appointed himself to balance the scales.
After Beauchamp was indicted for murder the
facts became murky, mostly because contemporary
editors wanted the account to square neatly
with the dictates of fictional form, and hedging a
bit when it did not (apparently they also read too
much Byron). This has been, Schoenbachler states,
a continuing problem: “We of the early twentyfirst
century, although liable to believe ourselves
too savvy to be susceptible to such blandishments,
are every bit as eager as early nineteenth-century
Americans to nullify the boundaries between
entertainment and more serious endeavor. We
should be more careful” (231). But in the end,
92 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Schoenbachler argues, Beauchamp was the author
of his own story. His bizarre courtroom behavior,
the couple’s jail cell suicide pact (she succeeded;
he did not), and his refusal to exhibit proper gallows
behavior were all just plot elements in his
lived novel. Beauchamp “understood that a ritual
was being enacted, that a performance was being
staged,” Schoenbachler writes, “but he refused to
play a role that he had not scripted” (207).
Is this a sufficient explanation for one of
the early republic’s most celebrated scandals?
Decades ago, Louis B. Wright’s Culture on the
Moving Frontier showed who the authors that
inspired the Beauchamps were widely available to
the literate public even so far west. Is it believable
that even the most impressionable couple
would act out such an incredible drama just for
the sake of flaunting social norms? Paradoxically,
Schoenbachler expects all others to conform to
these norms based upon the dictates of cultural history
dogma. He is especially nonplussed that the
disgraced Anna Cooke’s brothers had not avenged
her according to assumed custom; apparently
they had not read Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor.
It is difficult to relate this to Schoenbachler’s antipost-modernist
“old-fashioned notion that there
is a ‘there’ back there” in the past (207). While
Dickson D. Bruce’s recent “agnostic” (288) take
on the facts of the case is not entirely satisfying
(see The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conflict
and Change in Antebellum America [2006]), neither
is Schoenbachler’s. Our subjects did not
always act rationally but they usually did act for
fairly material reasons, at least more so than to
imitate beloved book characters. Even though
Schoenbachler does not conclusively explain this
sensational crime, Murder and Madness is a vivid
image of a western state’s population searching for
its identity within the new nation.
T. R. C. Hutton
University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Vindicating Andrew Jackson:
The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two-Party System
Donald B. Cole
The Birth of Modern Politics:
Jacksonian political history is suddenly riding
high. Long dormant, the field has been
revitalized by the appearance of two counterposing
magisterial narratives, Daniel Walker
Howe’s What Hath God Wrought (2007) and
Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy
(2005), and by a slew of Andrew Jackson biographies
by Wilentz (Andrew Jackson [2005]),
Andrew Burstein (The Passions of Andrew
Jackson [2003]), H. W. Brands (Andrew Jackson:
His Life and Times [2005]), and Jon Meacham
(American Lion [2008]). Howe and Meacham
have garnered Pulitzers.
Inevitably, attention turns again to the event
that ushered in Andrew Jackson’s two-term
presidency and, arguably, our modern political
arena. The campaign of 1828 pitted Jackson,
the challenger, against incumbent John Quincy
Adams. Despite running second to Jackson in
both popular and electoral vote in the confused
multi-candidate race of 1824, Adams had been
awarded the presidency in the second, and so
far the last, presidential contest decided in the
House of Representatives. The epic rematch
of 1828 sorted politicians and voters across the
country into two opposing camps, spurred both
BOOK REVIEWS
Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828
Lynn Hudson Parsons
sides to pioneer new techniques of organization
and publicity, and prompted a doubling of
voter turnout. Jackson trounced Adams, with
178 electoral votes to eighty-three and the highest
popular vote percentage (56 percent) of any
candidate in the nineteenth century.
In retrospect, Jackson’s victory seems all but
foreordained. A minority president to begin
with, Adams lugged the baggage of his Federalist
past, his forbidding intellect, and Puritanical
temperament. Never personally popular, he
seemingly courted and perhaps privately relished
defeat. Almost daring the country to support
him, he deliberately overreached with a provocative
legislative program, disdained to humanize
his image, and deployed the presidential patronage
only clumsily and unwillingly. Jackson, his
antagonist, was a great popular hero, the victor
of New Orleans and America’s most celebrated
military man since George Washington.
Though Jackson disclaimed any unseemly ambition
for the presidency (as custom required), he
was in fact eager for the fray. He had also gathered
round him a band of ingenious political
operatives, many of them newspapermen adroit
in the arts of propaganda and slander.
SPRING 2010 93

BOOK REVIEWS
Donald B. Cole. Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election
and the Rise of the Two-Party System. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 2009. 280 pp. ISBN: 9780700616619
(cloth), $34.95.
Not since Robert V. Remini’s The Election of
Andrew Jackson in 1963 has this story been told
at book length. Now we have two accounts,
both by veteran historians. Lynn Parsons is an
Adams biographer, while Donald Cole has written
previously on Jackson’s presidency and on
state politics and politicians in New Hampshire,
Kentucky, and New York. The two books are
thematically similar though quite differently
organized. Both Parsons and Cole stress the
novelty of the campaign and its import for
the future. Structural changes in the electoral
94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
system since the War of 1812 had made possible
a democratized style of presidential politics.
With a gripping two-man race in 1828
for the first time in many years, those possibilities
were suddenly realized. Many standard features
of later campaigns—publicity, ballyhoo,
media events, image-making, mudslinging,
careful canvassing, and behind all these furious
organizing and networking by committed partisans—made
sudden appearances in 1828. And
in all of them the eager Jacksonians bested the
more reluctant (or inept) Adamsites.
Much spadework has been done since
Remini wrote in 1963, and both these books
benefit from it. Because 1828 as seen in retrospect
clearly foretold much that was to come,
historians find it easy to anticipate later developments
and import anachronisms into the narrative:
for instance, to call the Jackson and Adams
men “Democrats” and “National Republicans,”
labels not yet current, or to read Jackson’s later
presidential opposition to the protective tariff
and federal transportation projects into his
stance as a candidate. Parsons and Cole carefully
avoid such traps. Indeed, their signal contribution
is to restore a sense of contingency to
the campaign, to show that the famous result
was not necessarily in the cards. It was not
inevitable that Jackson would oppose Adams
for the presidency or that the opposition would
coalesce around him to create a two-man race or
even that Jackson would win if it did.
The two authors show this in different
ways, and curiously, in ways that their titles
half belie. Parsons’s book is more about vindicating
Andrew Jackson than Cole’s, and
Cole’s is more about the birth of modern politics
than Parsons’s. Parsons takes a straight
chronological and largely biographical
approach. Beginning with their youths, he
shows how Jackson and Adams led strangely

intertwining and often reinforcing careers.
Until Adams became president they were not
antagonists but allies. Parsons tells this tale
thoroughly and well, taking half his text to
get to the pivotal moment of Adams’s election
by the House in February 1825.
Cole begins with that moment and moves
forward, filling in backstory through flashbacks.
Cole emphasizes the mechanics of campaign
organizing at the national level and in
six selected states: New Hampshire, New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia.
Although he stresses the birthing of a national
party apparatus, he also shows how far that process
had yet to go; compared to those that followed
the campaign of 1828 remained haphazard
and ad hoc. Again challenging the
aura of inevitability, Cole shows how Martin
Van Buren’s crucial place in Jackson’s coalition
was not ensured until De Witt Clinton’s sudden
death just months before the election; how
results in state elections as late as early 1828
still gave hope to Adams men; and indeed how
a strategic shift of only a few thousand votes
could have given him the victory despite all.
How far to stress the modernity of 1828, and
how far to emphasize differences rather than similarities
between the Jackson and Adams camps,
are questions with far-reaching implications, and
both Cole and Parsons offer carefully tempered
answers. Why, beyond the contrasts in the candidates
themselves, did the Jacksonians so clearly
outdo the Adams men in electioneering dexterity
and zeal? Were they really more democratic
at heart, or merely hungrier and less scrupulous?
(Or—perish the thought—are the two really the
same?) Are we reading too much modernity and
too much national homogeneity into a campaign
that bore a strong sectional coloring (Adams actually
beat Jackson in the free-state electoral vote)
and that still drew far fewer voters to the polls
BOOK REVIEWS
Lynn Hudson Parsons. The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew
Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 272 pp. ISBN:
9780195312874 (cloth), $24.95.
than subsequent elections? What defines political
modernity anyway: the two-party system, the
stress on candidates’ image and personality, the
influence of money, or something else?
A simpler question is this: which book
should I read? Both are thoughtful, surehanded,
and written with verve. Cole’s analysis
engages an ongoing dialogue among historians
and political scientists about the origins
and nature of party politics. For the non-specialist
seeking a lucid and compelling narrative,
Parsons is probably the better choice.
Daniel Feller
University of Tennessee
SPRING 2010 95

BOOK REVIEWS
The Fragile Fabric of Union:
Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War
Brian Schoen
By 1860, King Cotton had indeed
become king in several southern states.
The extraordinarily high prices then
being offered for the fiber convinced Fire-eaters
in South Carolina and elsewhere that they had
an economic and political advantage that could
not be beat. Therefore they argued that the
South’s interests could and should be served by
an independent country where cotton would
form the center of a new political economy, one
that would rival the North. What made them
gamecock sure of their argument, however, had
nothing to do with the South. Their confidence
arose from overseas, from the fact that Britain
needed cotton to fuel a massive textile industry.
The Fire-eaters also took comfort from the
supposition that Britain’s empire could not supplant
the American South as the world’s chief
supplier of cotton. But King Cotton had not
always been king. It took several decades after
the Revolution for it to rise to that position, an
uneven ascension punctuated by economic setbacks
and grave political crises.
The Fragile Fabric of the Union gets off
to a slow start as Brian Schoen outlines the
place of cotton in politics immediately after
the Revolution. The difficulty here resides
in the fact that cotton accounted for only
a tiny portion of the South’s production of
commodities until the invention of the cotton
gin made the planting of short staple cotton
profitable in the upcountry. The book
picks up quickly afterward with an account of
96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
how Thomas Jefferson’s trade embargo made
unlikely enemies and allies among planters
and merchants north and south, and led to
the collapse of the first party system. Schoen
then provides a detailed account of the long
depression that followed the Panic of 1819,
during which cotton planters prospered
and shifted the center of production to the
lower South, creating new political divisions
between the upper and lower South states.
The vast expansion of cotton cultivation gave
rise to a new alliance of interests between the
Deep South and northern manufacturers,
financiers, insurers, and shippers, an alliance
only temporarily interrupted by the nullification
controversy in 1832.
Once a compromise of sorts had been
reached to modify the tariff schedule of 1828,
peace and goodwill reigned between North
and South with two notable exceptions. Small
farmers in the west craving free land sought
to create new states in places where cotton
would never be king, and thereby upset the
delicate balance of power between North and
South. This led to several conflicts and compromises
over territorial expansion beginning
with Missouri, as well as filibustering expeditions
into Central America. At the same time,
abolitionists in the North and antislavery men
in the upper South threatened to undermine
the moral as well as political dominance of the
southern states at the national level. This neutered
the Whig Party in the South, and created

one-party states in the Deep South that inter-
nalized conflict in the Democratic Party. It
also led to the election of a sectional president
in 1860 that placed an interesting choice in
front of southern Democrats: the possibility
of establishing a southern nation with cotton
planters at its center. In an important final
chapter, Shoen explains how Fire-eaters and
later prominent Democrats carefully and deliberately
calculated their chances of succeeding
in a rebellion, and made the wrong choice.
They believed that Britain and its empire could
not do without cotton in the short run, and
that would force Britain’s hand into aiding the
new southern republic. In short, the globalization
of cotton production and consumption
led to economic prosperity and political disaster
for cotton planters in the South.
Schoen’s study tells the story of how those
who grew cotton came to have so much political
power in the antebellum South, and how it led
them to make a serious political miscalculation
in 1861. Schoen argues persuasively that much
of their power arose from the market for cotton
in Britain. The book’s most important innovation,
however, lies not so much in Schoen’s
argument about the globalization of the cotton
trade, as in the fine grained descriptions of
the internal politics of the South where cotton
planters sought political and economic advantage,
not only over the North, but over other
economic and political interests in the South,
particularly sugar planters and tobacco planters,
BOOK REVIEWS
Brian Schoen. The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal
Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. 357 pp.
ISBN: 9070801893932 (cloth), $55.00.
and even merchants in southern port cities. In
short, Schoen portrays the politics of the antebellum
South as a seething cauldron of conflict,
and thereby effectively nullifies any idea of a
solid South before the Civil War.
Wayne K. Durrill
University of Cincinnati
SPRING 2010 97

BOOK REVIEWS
Lincoln’s Political Generals
David Work
The fracture between North and South
was the clearest manifestation of the
intense divisions that beleaguered
American society in 1861. But the two geographic
sections had a host of divisive issues and
sparring groups within their separate borders as
well. In the North, these potential schisms were
particularly volatile. Class, ethnic, and racial
tensions were rife. Republicans and Democrats
opposed each other, while struggling mightily
to keep the disparate components of their own
parties unified. Policy makers differed on how
to approach the war and how best to achieve a
lasting peace. And in the midst of all, President
Abraham Lincoln sought to keep a section
together long enough to reunite a nation.
In Lincoln’s Political Generals, David Work
analyzes one of Lincoln’s solutions to that
dilemma. An expansion of Work’s dissertation,
which won the Hay-Nicolay Prize of the
Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham
Lincoln Institute, the book examines the Civil
War careers of numerous “political generals”
(or “citizen generals”). These men were placed
in positions of military leadership “primarily
on the basis of their political influence” (2).
Although a few of these men had prior fighting
experience or some military training, their
chief credentials consisted of their political ideology
or ethnic affiliation. While Work estimates
the number of men that could be considered
political generals at over one hundred,
his sample includes sixteen citizen generals. Of
these men, eight were Republicans and eight
were Democrats; two were Irish and two were
98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
David Work. Lincoln’s Political Generals. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2009. 320 pp. ISBN:
9780252034459 (cloth), $34.95.
German. Work argues that the political generals
“benefited the Federal cause” even if they
“compiled mixed records” (5). He defends
Lincoln’s selection of the men; there was strong
historical precedent for appointing citizen generals,
from the American Revolution through
the Mexican War, and at any rate there were
not enough West Point professionals available
to fill the Union’s generalships. But Lincoln did
not intend for his political generals to be merely
battlefield commanders. Rather, he used them
in the war’s many arenas of administration, government,
and political negotiation.

Work concedes that if evaluated solely on
their battlefield prowess, most of the citizen gen-
erals should be considered unmitigated failures.
Amassing an impressive array of papers, letters,
and military reports, Work traces the careers of
the political generals through the various campaigns
and in each of the theaters of war. He
finds that the political generals performed best
when limited to subordinate commands. When
serving under a West Point-trained commander
such as Grant or Sherman, citizen generals often
functioned competently, and sometimes admirably,
as in the case of John Logan. The chief
deficiency of the political generals in these situations
was their failure to get along with their
professional counterparts. Jealousy and suspicion—and
sometimes utter insubordination—
were common between political and professional
military leaders. When holding an independent
command, however, political generals
operated atrociously. They simply did not have
the experience or training adequate for the tasks
necessitated by the Civil War, and they did not
learn quickly enough on the job to make up for
their insufficiencies. In their defense, the same
might be said about many of the professional
generals. Lincoln, as Work notes, put up with
headaches from many of his generals, professional
and political, but political generals had
more powerful friends with greater access to the
president. Lincoln’s greatest shortcoming in
his oversight of the citizen generals was not his
selection or placement of them, but his failure
to remove them from independent commands
once they had demonstrated their incompetence
for such positions.
BOOK REVIEWS
While Work’s analysis of the political generals’
battlefield records is well-researched and
fruitful, the real payoff of his book lies in his discussion
of their influence on policy and occupation.
Work devotes the last quarter of the book
to the ways citizen generals set the stage for
future policies toward black freedmen, ex-Confederates,
black soldiers, and Reconstruction.
The analysis also considers the ways in which
various generals maintained support for the
president among important ethnic constituencies
and political factions. Even when they disagreed
with Lincoln’s policies, these men helped
sustain a coalition that held the North together
long enough for the Union army to achieve
victory, and they provided policies and precedents
that helped shape the difficult processes
of emancipation and reconstruction.
Work’s book is not without flaws. His analysis
at times seems inconsistent. He argues
that John Logan was denied an independent
command that he deserved based on his military
record yet repeatedly contends that political
generals were unfit for independent commands.
A deeper analysis of Lincoln’s own role
as a “political general” and the command decisions
he made would have been beneficial; Work
hints at, but does not flesh out, such analysis at
several points. But these quibbles do not detract
from Work’s accomplishment. Lincoln’s Political
Generals is a valuable contribution to an expanding
literature on the confluence of war and society,
and will be read with profit by both political
and military historians of the Civil War.
Corey J. Markum
Auburn University
SPRING 2010 99

BOOK REVIEWS
King of the Queen City:
The Story of King Records
Jon Hartley Fox
Jon Hartley Fox’s King of the Queen City
explores the story of Cincinnati’s King
Records and its owner, Syd Nathan, aiming
it largely at fans of mid-twentieth century
American popular music. According to Fox,
King was one of the most important independent
record companies in the United States from
the late 1940s through Nathan’s death in March
1968 at the age of sixty-four. King’s importance
was largely due to Nathan who started the
company from scratch. Nathan enjoyed success
because he was entrepreneurial and experimental
and because he knew how to use his legendary
personality—by turns rude and vulgar, gregarious
and expansive—to extract the best from
his staff and musicians. Nathan’s eye for profit
and ear for what would sell led him to record a
wide range of popular music and help give birth
to rock and roll. Eventually, King’s stable of artists
encompassed bluegrass greats like the Stanley
Brothers to James Brown, the “Godfather of
Soul.” This breadth made King unique among
independent record companies and according to
Fox, helped it influence the evolution of a range
of popular music in this period.
Nathan began as a music entrepreneur when,
as a record store owner in downtown Cincinnati
in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he discovered
that he could sell records to both African
Americans and whites and make a good profit
doing it. He founded King Records in 1943
with a country repertoire, but rapidly expanded
to R&B and the blues. Nathan also hired a
100 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Jon Hartley Fox. King of the Queen City: The Story
of King Records. Music in American Life. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2009. 280 pp.
ISBN: 9780252034688 (cloth), $29.95.
racially integrated group of employees to do
the daily work at his company. He said that he
did this because he was “a Jew and I know what
obstacles are. A Jew may have it rough but a
Negro has it a lot rougher” (57). Nathan’s commitment
to integration rose to the highest levels
in the company. In a pioneering 1949 move, he
hired Henry Glover, an African American musician,
as his artist and repertoire director. Rather
than pigeon hole Glover on the R&B and blues

side of the company, Nathan also had him pro-
duce country and “rockabilly” acts. Moreover,
Glover recorded white acts covering R&B and
the blues, and black acts covering country and
rockabilly because with a bit of rearranging
the same songs spoke to both audiences and
Nathan got double his money’s worth for songs
he owned.
Fox indicates that Nathan’s success at integrating
his workforce came largely because
Nathan purposely hired people who were willing
to give integration a try, and because like
much else in his business model he was willing
to bully his employees to do what he wanted.
Fox also argues weakly that Nathan successfully
integrated King because Cincinnati’s
unique status as a “border” town enabled him
to draw on both black and white labor pools.
He also claims vaguely that workforce integration
was not possible in New York, Chicago, or
Los Angeles, either because of the demographic
makeup of these cities or racial attitudes or both.
Despite these (and other) occasionally weak
arguments, fans of King’s music will find this
book a treat. Fox explores a broad range of artists
who recorded for King as well as important
aspects of Nathan’s story and the business end
of King Records. Organized largely by music
genre, most chapters are a series of loosely connected
discussions of the artists who recorded
for Nathan interspersed with a few longer
BOOK REVIEWS
narratives covering King’s more important artists.
Fox gives his estimation of the importance
of each of these and their relationship to the
evolution of their genre.
Although Fox covers King’s story with
great breadth, the narrative often lacks depth.
Dealing with so many artists does not allow
Fox to focus on the more important ones nor to
develop a nuanced interpretation about King’s
importance. Perhaps part of the problem is the
book’s beginnings in Fox’s public radio documentary
series of the same name released in the
1980s, a format that makes extended analysis
difficult. Another problem with the book is
that it assumes readers’ familiarity with the jargon
of the music world. This means that parts
of the story are difficult for the non-fan to follow.
Thus, if the general reader wants an accessible
story but does not have much background
in popular music they may be disappointed.
The historian seeking a nuanced analysis of the
place of King Records in the history of race and
popular music at mid-century will also have to
wait. Nevertheless, Fox has done a great deal of
solid research, makes it available in encyclopedic
detail, and documents it with an extensive
bibliography and index. As a result, the book
is a valuable and welcome reference work, especially
for fans.
Charles Casey-Leininger
University of Cincinnati
SPRING 2010 101

BOOK REVIEWS
Uneven Ground:
Appalachia since 1945
Ronald D. Eller
A
ppalachian history is undergoing a
new wave of interest, with much of the
scholarship focused on the second half
of the twentieth century. Recent case studies, syntheses,
and edited works about that period reflect
a great currency and relevance for the issues in
today’s Appalachia. Scholars of Appalachian history
must confront many of the same writing and
research challenges faced by historians studying
the American South. Their parallel issues revolve
around defining geography, culture, and economics,
while addressing regional comparisons (especially
to the industrial northeast), demographic
shifts, the changing political landscape, and the
recent past in light of the present day. However,
the most important challenge for historians of
southern and Appalachian history is to recognize
the people who in fact define their regions; their
voices are crucial to understanding the complexities
of their regions.
Ronald Eller, former director of the
Appalachian Center and professor of history at
the University of Kentucky, is a well-established
scholar in the field of Appalachian history. He
broke significant ground nearly thirty years ago
with Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The
Modernization of the Appalachian South, 1880-
1930 (1982). That work has spawned a new
generation of scholars in the field of Appalachian
studies. Through scholarship and presentations
he remains an active voice for the region, and
many have eagerly anticipated his latest book on
Appalachia since World War II.
102 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
Ronald D. Eller. Uneven Ground: Appalachia
since 1945. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 2008. 376 pp.
ISBN: 9780813125237 (cloth), $29.95.
In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945,
Eller approaches the historical challenges of defining,
describing, and assessing the recent past of
Appalachia. He begins with the post-World War
II period as the starting point for the region’s modern
disconnect with the rest of the nation. Unlike
other regions, Appalachia did not experience high
levels of prosperity, mostly because of out-migration,
a lack of infrastructure, and entrenched local
political systems. Eller demonstrates that at midcentury
the southern mountains lagged far behind
the rest of the nation.
By the Kennedy era, national figures and social
activists had “re-discovered” Appalachia and labeled
it as a backwater in need of relief, reform, and
reconstruction. These outside reformers believed
that the region was not depressed, just underdeveloped.
As part of the War on Poverty, the federal
government sponsored a host of agencies, commissions,
and programs to assist Appalachians.
However, policy makers and agency administrators
unfamiliar with longstanding issues in the
mountains—government dependence, a culture of

poverty, environmental ruin in favor of economic
gain, and the importance of the extended family
network—oversaw often nearsighted efforts.
More successful, Eller explains, were local grassroots
groups who had a clearer understanding of
the region’s flaws and a greater vision for the future.
Student-led groups, including the Appalachian
Volunteers, registered important progress in combating
poverty and pushing for restrictions against
extractive industries, especially mining companies.
Many present-day mountain activists cut
their teeth during the 1960s as members of these
community-based organizations. While Eller recognizes
the accomplishments of the more localized
groups, he explains that the influence of the coal
industry, corrupt politics, and internal squabbles
diluted many of their achievements.
During the 1970s, Appalachia caught the
attention of a new range of scholars, researchers,
and activists. Dozens of colleges and universities
embraced Appalachian studies as a distinct academic
program, while government investigators
launched new social and economic studies of the
region. As a result, Appalachia developed a regional
consciousness and external groups once again
attempted to modernize the mountains. During
this renaissance, legislators placed greater restrictions
on mining and activists led programs to alleviate
poverty. In the twenty-first century, however,
the region still has deep pockets of poverty, unregulated
mining operations, and political systems heavily
influenced by outside economic interests.
This ongoing cycle of outside interest, sporadic
reform, and uneven progress marked Appalachia
during the second half of the twentieth century.
Eller attributes Appalachia’s modern condition to
poor leadership, especially from federal government
programs. He argues that these external “experts”
relied on the misguided post-war principle that
development and growth equals progress. When
applied to the already fragile Appalachian society,
BOOK REVIEWS
this principle weakened local economies, further
fragmented family structures, segregated communities
more by class, and often displaced local residents
unable to afford a new consumer culture in the
mountains. As such, Eller contends that by the end
of the twentieth century, Appalachia had become
much like any other part of the country: full of
subdivisions, Wal-Marts, fast-food restaurants, and
unchecked retail development. However, underneath
this argument is the sense that Appalachia is
still a unique region, one which took a difficult and
different path toward modernization.
Eller pieces together a very disjointed history
to make a significant contribution to our understanding
of Appalachia. His strong narrative,
based in archival sources, secondary literature, and
his decades-long research, overcomes the enormous
challenges of writing about Appalachia—
with just a few exceptions. While Eller covers
a range of topics and his arguments are strong,
he focuses perhaps a bit too much on eastern
Kentucky. In the last sections of the book, it
remains unclear whether enough available sources
exist to cover adequately the more recent events
in the Appalachian experience (especially the
struggles against mountaintop removal practices).
Time should rectify that deficit and Eller or other
scholars can take the lead in painting a wider picture.
The largest issue with Uneven Ground, however,
is that Eller employs too few voices and perspectives
of the people who defined, lived in, and
contributed to Appalachia during the past sixtyfive
years. Still, these minor issues do not detract
from Eller’s groundbreaking work. His parallel
notions of regional uniqueness and national conformity
will challenge students, scholars, and interested
Appalachians to ask new questions about the
region’s recent past and uncertain future.
Aaron D. Purcell
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University
SPRING 2010 103

Announcements
Correction:
Due to an editing error, an incorrect
image of John L. Helm (1802-1867)
appeared in the previous issue of Ohio
Valley History (vol. 9, Winter 2009,
p. 55 lower right). The editors apologize
for this error. The correct image
appears to the right.
104 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY
John L. Helm (1802-1867).
THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Cincinnati Museum Center Heritage Programs will present the following tours
this summer. If you are interested in signing up for one or more, please call
513-287-7031.
Union Terminal in the 1940s
Experience Union Terminal during the 1940s when the Rotunda was filled with
service men and women departing for assignments during World War II. Visit
the USO and the other amenities that the Terminal offered to soldiers. Learn
about the era when swing was king with a presentation in the Newsreel Theater.
Discover what was happening on the home front with an interpreted tour of the
World War II exhibit. Meet the secretary for the President of Union Terminal
as she takes you on a tour of their stylized Art Deco offices. Before you meet
the train, enjoy in the original dining room, a 1940s-style lunch taken from an
authentic Union Terminal menu.
Thursday, July 1; 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Fee: $40 Members; $45 Non-members
Registration Deadline: June 23

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Union Terminal Photo Shoot
Attention photography enthusiasts! This is your opportunity to take pictures of
Union Terminal after visiting hours. Capture photographs of areas not routinely
open to the public such as the restored President’s Office, The Cincinnati and
Losantiville Dining Rooms, and the original Men’s Lounge, now the Amtrak
Waiting Room. Visit Tower A, once the main control tower for Cincinnati
Union Terminal where the Train Director managed all incoming and outgoing
trains. Also, the balcony will be available for shooting the Grand Rotunda.
Sunday, August 22; 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Fee: $25 Member; $30 Non-members
Registration Deadline: August 17
Starry, Starry Night
View the summer sky through the world’s oldest operational telescope at the
Cincinnati Observatory, the birthplace of American astronomy. Enjoy the evening
with wine and cheese and learn why President John Quincy Adams laid
the Observatory’s original cornerstone on Mt. Adams in 1843, and why the
Observatory was moved to its present site in 1873. On a tour of this National
Historic Landmark, discover how nineteenth-century astronomers determined
time for Cincinnati and how the first U.S. weather prediction was achieved.
Wednesday, August 25, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m.
Fee: $30 members; $35 non-members
Registration Deadline: August 18
SPRING 2010 105