My Old Confederate Home (33 page)

Notes

Abbreviations

Introduction

1.
Going Back to Civilian Life
, iv.

2.
Lincoln quote from “VA History in Brief,” 5.

3.
Klotter,
A Concise History of Kentucky.

1. The Cripple and the Banker

1.
The description of Beasley's funeral service and interment that begins and ends this chapter comes from the
Louisville Courier-Journal
(hereafter
C-J
), March 6-7, 1898, and the
Louisville Times
, March 6, 1898.

2.
Confederate casualty figures are problematic. The “one in five” and “a quarter-million” figures are “commonly cited by historians today,” according to Faust,
This Republic of Suffering.
The “20 percent” is from Rosenburg,
Living Monuments
, citing an extrapolation in Livermore,
Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-65.
The “tens of thousands” comes from an estimate in Dean,
Shook over Hell.

3.
Beasley's enlistment and service record and unit history comes from the Alabama Department of Archives and History,
www.archives.alabama.gov/civilwar/soldier.cfm
.

4.
Trammell, “Battles Leave an Army of Disabled,”
Washington Times
, June 21, 2003.

5.
“VA History in Brief”; Blanck and Millender, “Before Civil Rights.”

6.
Wines, “Paupers in Almshouses,” in
Report on Crime, Pauperism and Benevolence in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890
(Part 1, Analysis), 303.

7.
“VA History in Brief,” 5-6.

8.
Even as Louisville's Confederate veterans gathered to organize their own relief organization, a letter to the editor of the
Courier-Journal
lamented the closing of the Sadd Mission, a relief organization founded by J. M. Sadd and funded by public contributions. The Sadd Mission had provided meals, vocational training, and religious instruction to hundreds of Louisville's homeless and destitute each year.
C-J
, April 3, 1888.

9.
C-J
, April 1, 1888.

10.
Horan,
Confederate Agent
, 137-140; H. Levin,
Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky
, 94.

11.
C-J
and
Louisville Evening Post
, April 3, 1888; Johnston,
Memorial History of Louisville
, vol. 1, 215-219.

12.
Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century;
“Louisville of To-Day.”

13.
For more on John Leathers, see Johnson,
History of Kentucky;
Evans,
Confederate Military History;
and
City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky.

14.
For a more complete listing of these earlier groups, see W. W. White,
The Confederate Veteran.

15.
A copy of the dinner program for the AAT reunion dinner is in the United Confederate Veterans Association Records, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

16.
The names of the association's charter members appeared in
C-J
and the
Louisville Evening Post
, April 3, 1888; their occupations can be found in contemporary city directories and biographical compilations. They were, almost without exception, professional men, Louisville's business, political, educational, religious, and social leaders. For a financial accounting of the organization's first nine years, see
C-J
, April 14, 1897, and “Confederates in Kentucky,”
Confederate Veteran
(hereafter
ConVet)
5, no. 5 (May 1897): 209.

17.
Allen,
The Big Change
, discusses the stigma charity carried with it at the time. For a more thorough discussion of how men like Leathers determined the worthiness of Confederate veterans like Beasley, see Rosenburg,
Living Monuments.

18.
Mrs. Williams wrote about her visit to Beasley's newsstand in “One of the Real Heroes,”
ConVet
5, no. 4 (April 1897): 167.

19.
The generosity exhibited by Louisville's ex-Confederates toward Billy Beasley did not end with his death. His widow, daughter, and stepdaughter received regular assistance from the Confederate Association of Kentucky for the next fifteen months. Mrs. Beasley was hospitalized with typhoid fever in June 1899 and died on July 9. The ex-Confederates paid her medical expense and arranged for her burial and for a marker next to her husband in Cave Hill Cemetery.
C-J
, July 10, 1899.

2. The Private and the Clubwoman

1.
For a detailed description of the memorial and dedication service (including speeches), see
Kentucky Leader
, June 11, 1893; and “Unveiling a Monument at Lexington, Ky.,”
ConVet
1, no. 7 (July 1893): 196. For preparations, see the
Lexington Press
, May 28-30, 1893.

2.
Quoted in Halberstam,
Coldest Winter
, 645.

3.
“Reunion at Augusta,”
ConVet
1, no. 11 (November 1893): 323; and untitled article in
ConVet
2, no. 10 (October 1894): 290. See also W. W. White,
The Confederate Veteran.

4.
C-J
, September 21, 1889.

5.
Biographical information on Boyd comes from Peter,
History of Fayette County, Kentucky
, 528; and “John Boyd, Maj. Gen. U.C.V.,”
ConVet
2, no. 4 (April 1894): 121. He was also profiled in the
Dallas News
, May 22, 1895, as part of its Houston reunion coverage.

6.
“John Boyd, Maj. Gen. U.C.V,” 121.

7.
Lexington Herald
, April 15, 1918.

8.
Confederate Veteran Association of Kentucky, “Constitution,” Special Collections, Kentucky History Center, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort (hereafter KyHS).

9.
Lexington Leader
, March 20, 1892.

10.
For brief histories of the founding of the United Confederate Veterans and its grassroots origins, see Foster,
Ghosts of the Confederacy
, and W. W. White,
The Confederate Veteran.

11.
“United Confederate Veteran Camps,”
ConVet
1, no. 3 (March 1893): 85; and “U.C.V. Camps,”
ConVet
2, no. 3 (March 1894): 94.

12.
For an early history of the Kentucky UCV, see “History of U.C.V. of Kentucky,”
ConVet
1, no. 11 (November 1893): 340.

13.
Lexington Leader
, March 20, 1892.

14.
Lexington Leader
, June 1, 1893.

15.
C-J
, September 20, 1889.

16.
Kinkead,
A History of Kentucky;
Deiss, “Thirteen Stars—Thirteen States,” 7.

17.
Thirty years later Mrs. John B. Castleman still seethed as she recalled her treatment during wartime at a Federal checkpoint. Mrs. Castleman and her sister, both girls barely into their teens, were stopped while trying to return to their home on the outskirts of Louisville. The Union officer in charge of the checkpoint refused them passage and took the children into custody, where they were interrogated as possible spies. Only the intervention of a family friend prevented the frightened girls from being jailed and held for charges when they refused to take a Union loyalty oath.
C-J
, September 9, 1895.

18.
From a speech by Louisville mayor Charles D. Jacob at an Orphan Brigade reunion,
C-J
, September 20, 1889.

19.
“Our Dead at Lexington, Kentucky,”
ConVet
4, no. 3 (March 1896): 89.

20.
Ironically, a year later the Women's Auxiliary to the Confederate Veterans Association would threaten to boycott Confederate Decoration Day if Breckinridge were allowed to attend. The “silver-tongued orator” had been caught in a messy affair with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. In the twelve months following his speech at the dedication, Breckinridge would lose a $15,000 breach-of-promise lawsuit, reelection to the House, and most of his reputation.
Lexington Leader
, May 23, 1894.

21.
The memorial ritual remained the same, year after year. See
Lexington Press
, May 27, 1894, and
Sunday Leader
, June 6, 1897.

22.
This treatment of battlefield dead was not unusual. See Faust,
This Republic of Suffering.

23.
Bennett Young tells the Dorothea Burton story in “Dedication of Zollicoffer Monument,”
ConVet
18, no. 12 (December 1910).

24.
Blair,
Cities of the Dead
, sees memorialization as an act of resistance against a Federal occupation. For a description of Decoration Day in Louisville, see “The Lesson of Decoration Day,”
Southern Bivouac
1, no. 9-10 (May–June 1883): 390.

25.
Cynthiana Democrat
, May 28, 1929.

26.
Peter,
History of Fayette County, Kentucky
, 616. Also, social club news and announcements in Lexington newspapers, 1885 to 1905, demonstrate the breadth of Adeline Graves's club activities.

27.
“One Hundred Years Old,”
ConVet
5, no. 6 (June 1897): 254-255.

28.
“History of U.C.V. of Kentucky,”
ConVet
1, no. 3 (November 1893): 340.

29.
C-J
, September 19, 1889.

30.
On the organization of the UDC, see Poppenheim,
History of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The quotations are from ibid., 4, 7.

31.
Lexington Leader
, March 23, 1896. Also “United Confederate Daughters,”
ConVet
4, no. 1 (January 1896): 22; and
Lexington Herald
, April 15, 1918.

32.
“Kentucky,”
ConVet
4, no. 12 (December 1896): 408.

3. The Boat Captain and the Bank Robber

1.
The account of the meeting between Daniel Parr and Bennett Young that opens and closes this chapter comes from
C-J
, April 19, 1901; “Home for Disabled Confederates,”
The Lost Cause
4, no. 9 (April 1901): 131; and
Mt. Sterling (Ky.) Advocate
, April 30, 1901. Bennett Young is quoted extensively in the
C-J
account.

2.
Duke,
History of Morgan's Cavalry
, and Young,
Reminiscences of a Soldier of the Orphan Brigade.

3.
Georgetown (Ky.) Weekly Times
, July 13, 1881.

4.
Georgetown (Ky.) Weekly Times
, November 30, 1881.

5.
“Taps,”
Bivouac
1, no. 1 (September 1882): 36; and untitled article in
Southern Historical Society Papers
11, no. 8-9 (August–September 1883): 432.

6.
A Boyd County newspaper editor grumbled about the state's refusal to provide financial support: “The sum required would not affect the taxpayers … any more than the weight of a feather would check the speed of a horse,” he wrote.
Catlettsburg (Ky.) Democrat
, quoted in
Georgetown (Ky.) Weekly Times
, November 30, 1881.

7.
Georgetown (Ky.) Weekly Times
, November 14, 1883.

8.
The best study of the Confederate soldiers' homes in the states of the Southern Confederacy (and the schemes that financed them) is Rosenburg,
Living Monuments.

9.
“The Blue and the Gray,”
Southern Bivouac
2, no. 9 (May 1884): 431.

10.
ConVet
6, no. 3 (March 1898): 156-157.

11.
ConVet
30, no. 1 (January 1923): 48.

12.
Plante, “National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers,” 57-59.

13.
“Confederates in Kentucky,”
ConVet
5, no. 5 (May 1897): 209.

14.
During an oration entitled “Reconciliation,” Bennett Young would hold up to the crowd a bullet-ridden old gray jacket, which he would then slowly and reverently fold and put away as he recited a familiar Confederate poem: “Fold it up carefully, / Lay it aside; / Tenderly touch it, / Look on it with pride.” “Confederate Memorial, Columbus, O.,”
ConVet
3, no. 9 (September 1897): 455-456.

15.
C-J
, January 12, 1898.

16.
Bennett H. Young was an extraordinary part of Kentucky politics, commerce, jurisprudence, and popular culture during the twenty years either side of 1900, and it's surprising that he is largely forgotten today. The information here was drawn mainly from Kinchen,
General Bennett H. Young
, a hagiographic, but the only existing, book-length biography. He is, however, listed in many biographical compilations, and I have consulted Johnson,
History of Kentucky;
Johnston,
Memorial History of Louisville;
LaBree,
Notable Men of Kentucky
and
Press Reference Book;
H. Levin,
Lawyers and Lawmakers;
and Seekamp and Burlingame,
Who's Who in Louisville.
See also McAfee,
Kentucky Politicians;
and
City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky.
Young was a fascinating figure, and he deserves a full-length, critical biography.

17.
Edward G. Longacre, “Terror Strikes the Northern Heartland,”
Civil War Times
42, no. 3 (August 2003): 36.