The US Civil war was a defining moment in our history costing 750,000 American lives, the destruction of 11 U.S cities and put a large portion of our Nation into economic depression for generations. It was a huge failure of democracy where a government for the people engaged in the slaughter of its people. It was a horrific, ugly event where neither side can claim any moral or ethical privilege, and which is also greatly misunderstood by many.
In controversial times it is appropriate to seek insights of great men who have gone before us. I think it appropriate to seek the wisdom of a particularity great American hero, a man who is a hero for all races and gender and admired throughout the world. During the Civil War he advised President Lincoln, was at the forefront of abolition and worked tirelessly to educate and inform the masses on the evils of racism and slavery. I speak of a son of Talbot county, a former slave who became a great orator, abolitionist and statesman – Mr. Frederick Douglass.
On April 14th 1876 Douglass gave a speech to commemorate the Freedmen’s Monument, the first monument to Abraham Lincoln in Washington D.C. Present among the masses was President Grant, his cabinet, the Supreme Court Justices and members of both houses of Congress. Douglass’s words were not just for those present but for us also, he spoke that they were for the “wise and thoughtful men who shall come after us and study the lesson of our history”. With this speech Douglass showed great moral courage and integrity for he wanted to preserve the truths of the events of that time – “Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places”.
To the great astonishment of all, Douglass reminded everyone, that Lincoln did not initiate Federal military action against the Southern States to end slavery, that for the first several years of the conflict the abolition of slavery was not Lincoln’s objective. Douglass points out that Lincoln was solely focused on preserving the Union and that he would have gladly kept the colored race in perpetual bonds to do such – “He was ready to execute all the supposed constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave States.” Douglass States that only after Lincoln lost public support for the conflict on the grounds of “union” did he tap into the sentiment of abolition to give the carnage a moral purpose to maintain public support. Frederick Douglass dispels the misunderstanding held by many today, that Lincoln initiated military action against the Southern States to end slavery.
Another important event misunderstood by many is the Emancipation Proclamation by which many believe Lincoln freed the slaves. Unfortunately, this proclamation issued in the third year of the war, was only directed towards the States in secession and did nothing to free the slaves in bondage within the four slave States that remained within the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation however is where Lincoln pivots the purpose of his military action against the States from “Union” to the more morally acceptable cause of abolition.
Many sit here today and judge why a hundred and sixty years ago 84 men took up arms against the Union. Many of these judgements are formed from an over simplified understanding of the events during that time. Let’s take a look at Maryland history in the early 1860’s so that the reader can more fully understand the issues the men of Talbot County pondered in making their decisions.
After Lincoln’s election seven Southern States seceded from the Union – a right they thought they had based upon the Constitution’s silence about secession and the language of our Founding Fathers about the right to self-government. The decision to send Federal forces into those States caused four additional States to secede based upon their belief of State’s sovereignty and that Federal military force against the States was unconstitutional. The Maryland press was buzzing about the unconstitutionality of Lincoln’s actions. The Maryland General Assembly attempts to clarify the conflict by issuing a proclamation that the hostilities are only about reuniting the States. In Baltimore Federal forces fire into protestors killing many civilians. Soon after Lincoln has the members of Maryland’s General Assembly who had differing political views, arrested along with Baltimore’s mayor and its police commissioner – thus ensuring a government friendly to his administration. Lincoln orders Federal troops to occupy Maryland. Major General Tench Tilghman, a Talbot native and grandson of George Washington’s trusted Aid-de-Camp, calls up Talbot’s militia and makes plans to protect Maryland, not from rebel forces but from the Federal Government itself. The 2nd Amendment is suspended, and Federal forces begin seizing guns and munitions held by both the Maryland militias and civilians.
The Maryland press wrote unending articles about the illegality of Lincoln’s actions, the unconstitutionality of his administration, the tyranny and “despotism” of the President and that the end of our Constitutional liberties was at hand. In reply, Lincoln suspended the first amendment, censored the press and arrested any editor that disagreed with his administration. The occupying Federal troops began looking for anyone disloyal to the Federal administration – coming to their homes in the middle of the night to arrest and whisk away those with opposing political views. At one time Fort Mchenry held over 2,500 “political” prisoners. To accomplish the mass arrests Lincoln suspended Marylander’s Constitutional right to Habeas Corpus and ignored the Supreme Court Justice that ruled this action unconstitutional. Judge Carmichael, our Talbot county judge, was pistol whipped and dragged from his bench by Federal troops and imprisoned for attempting to enforce the constitutional protections of his citizens. Federal cannons were placed on Federal Hill in Baltimore and around Annapolis with Lincolns’ order to General Winfield Scott to bombard Maryland Cities if required – an act that would have killed countless innocent men, women and children of all races.
The Federal occupation was by no means a benevolent occupation. Federal forces, mostly from the North, brutalized many Marylanders, confiscating much private property without compensation and physically assaulting the population with numerous beatings, murders and rapes. Union military courts prosecuted over 450 cases of sexual crimes committed by Union soldiers against Maryland women, a number considered grossly under reported given the reluctance of victims to speak about rape. Federal commanders had the authority to execute any civilian suspected of being a spy and execute they did. What elections that did take place was done under the watchful eye of Union troops and only after the Marylander took an oath of allegiance to the current administration.
The occupying forces also showed great prejudice and brutality to people of color. In 1863 on Baltimore’s Pratt street a group of 200 Federal troops indiscriminately attacked a group of free colored people about to start their work day, beating them with brick batts and “pursuing every African American in sight, vandalizing and invading their homes.” Another report tells of a Union soldier bayoneting and elderly gentlemen of color for his act of scolding white children for throwing bricks in his yard. A young boy was shot by a soldier over a dispute on the price of lemonade he was selling – the list of abuses would fill volumes.
In the blink of an eye Marylander’s constitutional liberties created just 87 years prior and designed to protect the people from the abuses of government were eliminated and Marylanders found themselves under military occupation. Unlike you and I today who can look back and see how things turned out, these people did not know the future and believed their freedom and democracy had permanently ceased.
What would you do if something of this magnitude happened today? Substitute President “Lincoln” for President Trump / Biden (your choice) and imagine that they took such actions to “save the country” – suspending the constitution, censoring the press, arresting politicians of the opposite party, only allowing citizens loyal to him to vote? How would you “feel” if government forces kicked in your door in the middle of the night to take your guns, your spouse or your parents? This is what Talbot County citizens experienced in the early 1860’s.
It has become obvious that the rights of citizens of color have not been protected by our government to the standards that the government would like us to believe and which may have been pre-warned by Mr. Douglass over a century ago. That does not mean that a monument to our ancestral veterans, particularly in light of Maryland’s and Talbot County’s history during that conflict, should be removed due to the emotions of the day and without careful deliberation and discussion. To some it is a monument to those who fought to protect slavery. To others it is a tribute to our Talbot County ancestors who took action against the abuses of government. To many others it is a reminder that our Constitutional rights and liberties are not given to us by our government but are secured by the sacrifices of our citizens and ultimately it falls upon our citizens shoulders to protect those liberties.
It is becoming apparent that any decision on the fate of this monument may be too great for our council members to bare. Some are already being accused of prejudice based upon the color of their skin. Our council has come under great pressure from organizations and people outside Talbot County. I believe our council members should not have to endure such indignities or external influences. Ultimately it is up to the citizens of Talbot County to decide whether to keep, remove or modify this monument and they should be given the opportunity to do such in an environment free from accusations and external influences. This can only be accomplished in the private sanctity of the voting booth.
Paul Callahan
Oxford
Ted Doyle says
Mr. Callahan’s letter sets out that the Talbot Boys were a product of their times. We should judge them under those circumstances not those of today. It may be that their motivation to join the South was not about slavery.
In their time, people tended to be more loyal to their states than the federal government.
My position on the statute is that it should be removed, because it offends others in our county. It is about being a good neighbor.
Marian Murphy says
This wonderfully informative letter is why I don’t want monuments destroyed but believe they should be moved from public spaces. I learned a lot from this letter and could easily change my mind about even the monument being moved because we can’t know our history from our fifth-grade history books but need to dialogue which is what this controversial time is challenging us to do. We will learn from each other and be better for it and we can change our minds along with the exchange of information.
Willard T Engelskirchen says
The monuments in question were erected in a spirit of White Supremacy. The history cited is important. So is other history such as the fact that the Seceding States made no bones about the preservation of slavery. Or the fact that colored prisoners were executed by Confederate captors. Or what happened at Andersonville or other prisons.
The monuments were placed as a thumb in the eye of the non-white population. There is no reason to believe otherwise. Please consider this: https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy
We have had enough apologies to white sensitivities for my lifetime. I agree it is time to move on. The monuments are NOT about the justice of any cause.
In my lifetime we have made great progress in race relations. Not enough but great. I repeat, the monuments are not about justice for the CSA or its armies. They are about white supremacy. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I believe I had relatives who fought in the Civil War. My wife had the same. On different sides. Please read the link.
Jim Franke says
“the issues the men of Talbot County pondered in making their decisions.” You failed to mention that 400+ Talbot County men decided to fight for the Union. So, if Talbot was a hotbed of Southern sympathizers, how come only 84 joined that other army?
Charles Bohn says
Agree, with having the county voters decide this matter in November.
Pamela R Getson says
An admirable concept IF it could truly be accomplished such that ALL Talbot voters could provide their “vote”, but it is not possible via the November election. The Fall election of in-person voting will be avoided by many during an era of illness and infection concerns. Of those who do arrive to vote in person, the group will not even be a representative sample of the County. If these few members were to be separately solicited on their departure outside the polling stations, and then perhaps only a further subset agree to provide their ad hoc opinions, the issue would simply smolder; incorrectly measured for full County opinion, the losing side will remain unconvinced.
In any case, there is no mechanism to place a ballot initiative in Maryland and no way to utilize the (veto) referendum which is allowed for a similar process outside of several months after a general assembly session which votes on the matter; our next such Assembly begins again in January 2021.
As others have stated: why would we dignify the opinion of anyone to continue glorification of the Lost Cause? If confining ourselves to the un-nuanced reason for the development and placement location of that statue in the early 1900s, it was clearly undertaken for perpetuating the concept and future threat of sustained mores of racial superiority and inferiority. Past time to just be moved and placed elsewhere by those who wish to still view it and support its maintenance.
Paul Gilmore says
This letter is a great history lesson and I appreciate the details provided by the author. The reference to the ‘Lost Cause’ is left until the end of the piece and there is no reference to the reason the states seceded as stated in their secession papers and constitutions – to preserve slavery. But I digress.
The monument to the Confederacy that stands outside our courthouse is a monument to white supremacy, a warning to Blacks in Talbot County in the early 1900s to remind them of their ‘place’. It serves no purpose other than that. It certainly deserves a place in Talbot County history and a place in Talbot County. It does not deserve a place of honor on the courthouse lawn.
Frank Raines says
This piece is a well written exposition of the argument that the civil war was a “war between “ the states or a war of Northern aggression. It was neither. It was a war to maintain the union in face of the intractable differences regarding slavery. This was made clear in several of the manifestos published by Southern states that seceded. Once civil war commenced, precipitated by Southern states seeking to expel Federal forts and facilities, Lincoln of course sought to win the war and particularly avoid encirclement of his capital by a confederate Virginia and a hostile Maryland. Lincoln was willing to compromise the fate of the enslaved if that helped him win the war and emancipated those in rebel territory when that proved expedient. This willingness to sacrifice the enslaved carried over into Reconstruction and its aftermath leading to our current unsettled times. The Talbot boys statute has always been understood to be a monument to those from Talbot county who fought to divide the country and preserve slavery. It is time to withdraw that approval and recognition.
Glenn Baker says
Congratulations to The Spy for publishing Mr. Callahan’s unemotional history lesson.
But then you publish another extreme emotional outpouring of untruths which even includes the Southern Poverty Law Center reinvention of history.
1st amendment rights also require educated not biased readers.
Pamela R Getson says
While on the topic of “educated readers” who are not biased, one may wish a more full account of the precipitating factor for the riots summarily described by Mr. Callahan inversely, as it seems, due to the Federal troop’s instigation. In fact the dispatched peacetime militia of the 6th Massachusetts regiment had been called into Federal service to get to Washington, DC. They were attacked by what has been termed widely a Southern mob in Baltimore who refused their passage. That was after a first day of their suffering an attack when specifically unarmed. Herein, the setting: “…the thirty-year-old ordinance forbidding the operation of steam engines in the city obliged the Union troops on both the eighteenth and nineteenth to transfer from their terminating depots on their way to Camden Station, where trains to Washington awaited them. The forced transfer made the soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts vulnerable as, unlike the Pennsylvanians a day earlier, they had to stop and wait while horse cars hitched up and then rolled over Pratt Street’s rails to Camden Station. (Ezratty, Baltimore in the Civil War (2010), p. 47.)
Anticipating resistance or trouble of some sort, the commanding officer Jones, gave these actual regiment orders: “The regiment will march through Baltimore in column of sections, arms at will. You will undoubtedly be insulted, abused, and, perhaps, assaulted, to which you must pay no attention whatever, but march with your faces to the front, and pay no attention to the mob, even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles; but if you are fired upon and any one of you is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Do not fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select, any man whom you may see aiming at you, and be sure you drop him” (United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1. Edited by John Sheldon Moody, et al. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880, p. 7.)
The Baltimore and Pratt Street Riots that ensued were indeed unimaginably terrible for all sides. I have also enjoyed the extra historical accounts via The Spy, but as with so many topics, our Civil War history can not be easily simplified. I am not certain of your reference and unilateral denigration of an SLPC accounting; it seems somewhat specious, but makes even clearer that our Talbot Boys monument needs to go elsewhere if its openly public current presence can so upset and reflect the continuance of emotions on both sides today. Maryland never voted for secession. Slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864, the year before the Civil War’s end. We need no statuary to honor the long-ago, dishonored, whose proponents and/or descendants chose, 50 years later, to make their presence and insurgence known again. It is essential to ask: for what purpose? –and–Why to extend the answer any further?
Charles Barranco says
Mr Callahan,
Your Article is well researched, written and informative.
I learned a little history too!
Thank You for the insight and food for thought.
I agree the question of removal should be one for The People to decide in the voting booth!
To that end I will support your initiative!
Please contact me when you propose this to the Council, or before.
Carol Voyles says
Bottom line: Lincoln may have “pivoted” to a “more morally acceptable cause of abolishing slavery,” but Confederate leaders had stated quite clearly their cause of slave ownership in their Constitution.
Paul Callahan says
The US Constitution allowed and protected Slavery.. I believe it referred to them as “persons held to the service of labor” and slavery was protected and practiced within the Union throughout the conflict until it was abolished by the 13 th amendment to the Constitution. No moral high ground for either Constitution on that issue – at least during the conflict.
David Montgomery says
My endorsement is unlikely to endear Mr Callahan to many readers, nevertheless here it is. This is the first objective description of how the Civil War came to the Eastern Shore that has been entered into the debate. It is a necessary corrective to the fictional history of evil supporters of slavery invented to support an ideological movement that has been repeated far too often in the last few weeks.
I am also convinced that Eastern Shore residents took up arms in the Army of the Confederacy to defend not slavery, but rather their families, communities and agrarian way of life against what they saw as the aggression of Northern industrialism. I find that view particularly convincing because I can see no rational reason why they would have gone to war for the cause of slavery. Few if any of the men who volunteered for the Confederate army would have been wealthy enough to own slaves. Their livelihoods were tied to the farms they owned or worked on and local industries. Slave labor was, if anything, competition that held down the price of cotton and allowed large scale cultivation that denied them access to land. Not even Robert E. Lee had any sympathy for slavery. They fought to protect their homes and, like soldiers everywhere, for each other. Those are the men commemorated by the Talbot Boys and similar monuments being dragged down elsewhere.
It would be good if those who believe they can cast moral judgments on choices made 160 years ago would reflect that those “enemy“ soldiers were human beings fighting for reasons not very different from “our” soldiers.
It seems to be forgotten that there was First Maryland regiment in both the Union and Confederate Armies, each filled by volunteers. Men from Talbot County likely served in both.They first met in the Battle of Front Royal, where the Confederate 1st Maryland Infantry defeated the Union 1st Maryland. It was the only time in the Civil War that two regiments of the same numerical designation and from the same state faced each other. When prisoners were taken, “nearly all recognized old friends and acquaintances, whom they greeted cordially, and divided with them the rations which had just changed hands.” Later the First Maryland (CSA), reconstituted as the Second Maryland (CSA), faced the Union First Maryland in the bloody Battle of Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, and few survived.
CS Lewis wrote that if in World War I some young German and he had simultaneously killed one another, the moment after their death neither of them “would have felt resentment or even any embarrassment. “I think we might have laughed over it.” That should be remembered by those who now sit in judgment on men who chose to fight with the Confederacy. If nothing else, the Talbot Boys statue should be accepted by even the most dedicated anti-racist as a recognition of the common humanity of all common soldiers.
Pamela R Getson says
I enjoyed reading Mr.Callahan’s account, and made one point (above) about the riots he described. His and your added context for what Lincoln was actually doing in those early years, as well as knowing about more of the initial basis from the famous Lincoln-(Stephen ) Douglas debates, are quite informative for all of us who may have grown up with overly simplistic ideas about the Emancipation. Similarly helpful was your entry to this recent discourse which included more historical notes and an extended philosophical POV…all except one.
You say: “It would be good if those who believe they can cast moral judgments on choices made 160 years ago would reflect that….”
It seems few are making that particular claim today. It is not typically or only or uniquely, the moral judgement of choices (or debatable reasons) for those choices made 160 years ago, it is instead the undeniable reasons that 50 years AFTER those original choices and at least two generations hence, it became the NEW choice of descendants or sympathizers to erect this prominent monument to the CSA. It was selected to be done in a way and time of most definitely Jim Crow sentiment, laws and desired continuance of white supremacy and racial oppression. Placing it of all things on courthouse steps mere feet from an original slave market was its intended bold move.
Quite the choice. THIS is the one now under scrutiny causing consternation about retaining the statuary, elsewhere or not at all.
Hardly a morsel of moral equivocation remains for at least its removal from the courthouse site on this latter day basis.