Author: Matthew Pinsker Page 2 of 3

UPDATE:  The Jenkins monument was removed during the summer of 2020.  Read about the details from the Harrisburg Patriot-News coverage (July 3, 2020):  “Another Confederate Monument Falls, This Time on the West Shore.”

Before & after photographs of the Jenkins monument in Mechanicsburg (courtesy of John Quist)

Original post from 2015:

Courtesy of Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau

There is a monument honoring Confederate general Albert Jenkins in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania –paid for by donations from local residents and organized by the Camp Curtin Historical Society. It is the northernmost memorial for any Confederate officer and probably the only one paid for by northerners.  Yet Jenkins was one of the most controversial Confederate officers, one who destroyed northern civilian property and whose men conducted what they called a “slave hunt,” kidnapping black people during the Gettysburg campaign and hauling them into slavery in the South.

The text of the obelisk reads:

“BRIG. GEN. ALBERT G. JENKINS, C.S.A. Born November 10, 1830 in Greenbottom, Virginia. He was a graduate of Jefferson College and studied law at Harvard University. Albert Jenkins served as U.S. Congressman from 1857 to 1861 and then resigned to serve the Confederacy. Thereafter, he served as a Congressman for in the First Congress of the Confederate States prior to receiving his Brigadier General’s commission. Gen. Jenkins and his command occupied this property June 28-30, 1863 as he probed the defenses of Harrisburg, but was recalled by Gen. Lee to join the main army at Gettysburg. Gen. Jenkins suffered severe wounds from artillery fire during the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 but recovered. In 1864, he was appointed commander of the Department of Western Virginia by the Confederacy. The General was again seriously wounded and captured at the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain and died of those wounds on May 21, 1864.”

You can read more about Albert Jenkins at the House Divided Project research engine and more about the planning for the memorial at Camp Curtin Historical Society.  To learn more about the “slave hunt” conducted by Jenkins’s cavalry, see these articles from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the New York Times Disunion series.  On the question of whether or not this monument stands as a helpful symbol of national reconciliation or as a disgraceful obliteration of the past, that is for readers to decide but we would welcome your comments below.

However, before you venture a judgment about the monument in Mechanicsburg, it is worth putting this issue into national context.  There has been a recent movement to remove Confederate flags and monuments across the South.  This happened in the aftermath of the June 2015 mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Here are some helpful articles on the impact of that tragedy and the subsequent political battles that have been erupting over Confederate heritage and history:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Take Down the Confederate Flag Now,” The Atlantic, June 18, 2015
• Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Take Down the Confederate Flags, But Not the Monuments,” The Atlantic, June 25, 2015
• “Confronting the Past,” Inside Higher Ed, January 6, 2016

This post originally appeared in April 2015 and has been updated at various times to reflect developments in the debates over Confederate flags and monuments and following the removal of the monument itself in July 2020.

Below is a musical interpretation of Abraham Lincoln’s letter to William Seward, April 1, 1861, written and performed by Patrick Horan (Dickinson ’15) with Isabel Burlingame (Dickinson ’15). Lyrics can be found below the video.  For more information on the exchange between Lincoln and Seward, go to Lincoln’s Writings.

On the first day of April, 1861
Seward wrote to Lincoln
About Ft. Sumter’s guns
He told dear Whitman’s captain
In language frank and keen,
“Who really leads this union,
It remains to be seen!”

Lincoln gave his rival in March of ’61
A seat in the cabinet
State Department #1
“Administration needs a policy
Domestic and foreign, you see
Here is what I would do
Were it up to me!”

O Seward, a Republican
Thought he would be the one
To take hold of the Union
So for office he did run
But Lincoln won the primary
And stormed upon the scene
Stealing Seward’s thunder, oh
It made New Yorkers green!

The Great Emancipator
Though it wasn’t yet his name
Wrote back to William Seward
For his argument to maim
“A month into my term
And plenty done by me!
You give advice, I make the calls
That’s how it’s going to be!”

Noted biographer Catherine Clinton addressed the Dickinson College community on Monday, April 13, 2015 on “Mary Lincoln’s Assassination.”

US flag flying again over Fort Sumter, April 14, 1865

Exactly four years after he had surrendered Fort Sumter to the Confederates, Union officer Robert Anderson returned to Charleston to help once again raise the U.S. flag over the now-ruined harbor fortifications.  Following an emotional mid-day ceremony, hundreds of men and women, included dozens of notable figures like abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, gathered on Friday afternoon, April 14, 1865 to hear the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher deliver a commemorative speech from what he memorably called, “this pulpit of broken stone.”  Beecher spoke at length about the meaning of the war, offering President Lincoln in particular his “solemn congratulations” for his “disinterested wisdom” during the long conflict and for having maintained “his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years.”   Yet that very night, of course, the president was shot at Ford’s Theatre.  Lincoln died the next morning at almost exactly the same time that Garrison had gone with several of the other leading abolitionists to visit the gravesite of the late secessionist John C. Calhoun.  The day before Beecher had vowed that “Slavery cannot come back.” Now, standing over Calhoun’s imposing tombstone, Garrison sternly echoed that sentiment by telling his friends: “Down into a deeper grave than this, slavery has gone, and for it there is no resurrection.”

It was yet another one of those unforgettable moments from the American Civil War, and what makes it even more compelling is that we have some amazing photographic evidence of that astonishing trip.  The War Department had sent several photographers to help capture scenes from the Sumter events and then from across the devastated city of Charleston.  These are all now in the collection of the Library of Congress. Some of these images are famous, and widely reproduced, like the ones of the four black children (in Union military garb) seated by the pillars of the city’s well known circular church:

Other images from that period are less familiar, but still vital for understanding the narrative details of this critical episode.  In particular, there is one heavily damaged image, not usually reproduced, but which shows a level of crowd detail from around Beecher’s speech unprecedented in the other images from the series.

Yet that heavily stained image (above), yields this wonderful detail (below), which clearly shows Major General Anderson, seated on the crowded platform itself, casually holding a walking stick, just to the right (our left) of the standing Rev. Beecher, who is tightly clutching the pages of his windblown speech.

Relying on this image and others from the series, we here at the House Divided Project have been busy trying to identify the rest of the notables at the event.  Most important, we are trying to figure out exactly where editor William Lloyd Garrison was seated.  His best modern biographer, the late Henry Mayer, used a detail from one of the blurrier versions of this image to claim that Garrison was probably the man in the big hat seated a few feet to Beecher’s left (our right), but the quality of this particular detail shows how unlikely that was.

We think it is far more likely that Garrison was this lean, spectacled man, standing here (right) in reflective pose after the ceremony.  In part, we believe this man was Garrison, because other images from the event suggest that he was seated behind Gen. Anderson, among other leading abolitionists, such as George Thompson, from Britain (and Garrison’s close friend), and also New York antislavery editor Theodore Tilton.  White House aide John G. Nicolay, who was serving as the president’s personal emissary to the event, was also in that section of the platform. Details from some of these images are provided below.  We also have some zoomable versions at the House Divided research engine, showing preparations, and two slightly different versions of Beecher’s speech, here and here.  The bulk of the images from that journey have been digitized by the Library of Congress, more than two dozen of them are now available online.  Check them all out and decide for yourself.  If you come across anything important, please offer your insights in the comments section below.  If you can, please help us identify any other notables in the audience.  We are especially eager to find Robert Smalls, the ex-slave and wartime hero.  Newspaper accounts claimed that the ceremony was attended by a mixed race crowd and that Smalls was present and widely celebrated –but we cannot find him, nor actually much evidence of any black presence near the speaker.

Larger version of the image with Garrison standing by pole, center

This post originally appeared at Blog Divided.

General John C. Fremont

According to historian Louis Masur, Abraham Lincoln was “upset” by Union General John Fremont’s decision on August 30, 1861 to announce from his headquarters in St. Louis the general emancipation of rebel-owned slaves in Missouri (p. 28).  Yet, in his first letter to Fremont requesting changes in this proclamation, which he sent by special messenger from Washington just a few days later, Lincoln doesn’t sound so upset.  He claimed only that two points in the fiery August 30 directive (which had also declared martial law) had given him “some anxiety.”  The president dealt with the first matter regarding the shooting of people under the terms of Fremont’s martial law in blunt fashion, saying effectively, don’t do it without my approval, but then addressed the second matter concerning emancipation in a more subtle fashion.  He asked Fremont to modify this part of the order “as of your own motion,” so that it would “conform” to the recent Confiscation Act (August 6, 1861) and claimed explicitly that he was making these confidential requests “in a spirit of caution, and not of censure.”

Now this is a  good example of how historians have to interpret evidence and how these interpretations actually matter.  Masur believes Lincoln was upset because he thinks the Great Emancipator was still adamant in the summer of 1861 that the war was being fought over union and not slavery.  That is why Masur claims that Lincoln found the Fremont proclamation so upsetting and “objectionable,” mainly because, as he puts it in The Civil War: A Concise History (2011), the order “violated the terms of the Crittenden-Johnson resolution, adopted by Congress on July 25, which reaffirmed the position that the war was not being fought to overthrow or interfere with established institutions” (28).  Yet, Lincoln never mentioned that important (and very conservative-sounding) resolution in either of his two letters to Fremont.  Nor did he use the word “objectionable” in his initial communication with Fremont, which Masur does not quote from in his short book.

Jesse Benton Fremont

Yet even in Lincoln’s second letter to Fremont, the one which Masur quotes from, the tone is not necessarily “upset.” Written in response to the general’s September 8th reply to his “private and confidential” September 2d telegram, the president still remained at least outwardly calm despite the fact that the general was stubbornly refusing to do what he had suggested.  Fremont had actually sent his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont, an experienced politico herself, to deliver his response to the White House.  She did so apparently around midnight on September 10, 1861. There was some kind of dramatic confrontation between Mrs. Fremont and President Lincoln that evening at the White House although its nature has been disputed.  Two years later, the president recalled, according to the wartime diary of a close aide, that she “taxed me violently” during their conversation, although much of their argument by his recollection concerned rumors of Fremont’s administrative incompetence and factional politics in Missouri and not either martial law or emancipation (John Hay diary, December 9, 1863).  This claim of the president’s is supported by a private memo from another White House aide (John Nicolay) produced just a week after the confrontation which asserted that the “matter of the Proclamation … did not enter into the trouble with the Gen” (September 17, 1861).  Years later, Jesse Fremont remembered it much differently, claiming in 1891 that Lincoln was focused almost solely on the dangers of emancipation and had told her: “the General should never have dragged the Negro into the war.”  This is not a very credible recollection, but it has appeared in various forms in many secondary sources and presumably helped inform Masur’s outlook.  Regardless, what resulted from this unusual collision was a second presidential note, this time for public consumption, in which Lincoln claimed that while there was “no general objection” to Fremont’s August 30th order, on the particular matter of the “liberation of slaves,” there was something “objectionable” about its “non-conformity” with the Confiscation Act.  So, Lincoln decreed, since the general wanted an “an open order for the modification” from the Commander-in-Chief himself, that he was “very cheerfully” willing to do so.  Hence, the president publicly ordered on September 11, 1861, that Fremont’s proclamation was to be “modified” so as not to “transcend” the government’s official confiscation policy regarding the seizure of Rebel-employed slaves.

And there’s the rub.  Some historians, like Masur, consider the official Union policy regarding slavery in the summer of 1861 to have remained what Lincoln had stated (or technically re-stated) in his March inaugural address.  In his brief passage on Fremont’s controversial order, Masur writes, “The proclamation itself violated Lincoln’s assurance that he had no intentions of interfering with slavery where it existed” (28-29).  Yet for other historians, such as James Oakes, that policy on non-interference had already  changed –and had been changing since spring 1861.  The August 6th Confiscation Act merely culminated a new wartime policy by Union authorities allowing them to interfere with slavery whenever it was necessary for military reasons.  In particular, runaways or “contrabands” were generally supposed to be “discharged” from enslavement, because as the fourth section of the new statute delicately put it, any slaveholder who required or allowed “any person claimed to be held to labor or service” (i.e. his slaves) to either “take up arms” against the United States or to be employed by the Rebel military was to “forfeit his claim to such labor.”  It’s not clear from the plain language of the statute that these ex-slaves were to be freed, but that was the practical effect in many cases.  This new precarious freedom also applied indirectly to runaways who had nothing to do with the war effort.  The War Department had begun issuing orders to field commanders as early as May 30, 1861 allowing them to protect so-called “contrabands” or fugitives from the demands of slaveholders, and on August 8, 1861, the Secretary of War (Simon Cameron) provided a clear directive based on the new law authorizing commanders to protect and discharge not only Rebel-employed slaves, but also runaways whose masters were loyal.  Cameron’s letter informed field commanders (in this case, specifically General Benjamin Butler) that they should simply keep records of everyone freed so that later (“Upon the return of peace”), Congress could provide for “just compensation” to any loyal masters whose slaves had been “discharged” incorrectly.  Not every Union commander followed this directive in the subsequent months, but more than a few did.  The result was real freedom for many ex-slaves.  At the end of the year, President Lincoln, in his first annual message, described the policy shift as one that had “thus liberated” an unspecified “numbers” of black people in 1861.

Lincoln and Browning, courtesy of Ana Kean

The interpretative stakes are quite high here.  Masur (and many others) explicitly describe the Civil War as one that “began as a limited war to restore the country” (xi) before becoming in late 1862 and early 1863 a more revolutionary struggle for freedom.  Yet if Lincoln was not so “upset” by Fremont’s 1861 emancipation decree, but rather more concerned over exactly how to emancipate slaves, then this emphasis on limited war seems misplaced.  There was certainly plenty of limited, cautious rhetoric on the Union side, especially from President Lincoln, but the policies on the ground seem far more radical, almost right from the beginning.  Yet it is complicated.  On September 22, 1861, Lincoln defended his actions in regard to General Fremont in a remarkably candid private letter to his old friend, Orville Browning, now a U.S. senator from Illinois (he had recently taken the seat following the death of Stephen A. Douglas).  Lincoln labeled Fremont’s emancipation edict “purely political” and

Copy of Lincoln’s 1861 letter to Browning

denied forcefully that either “a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation.” That sounds quite limited as a policy statement, and yet a smart Civil War student might well ask, isn’t that also exactly what the Great Emancipator himself did just one year later, when he revealed his own emancipation policy on September 22, 1862?  With presidential emancipation, he made “permanent rules of property by proclamation.” In his letter to Browning –a must-read for any serious student– Lincoln denied that he had been or would be “inconsistent” and carefully explained to his longtime friend and political colleague the difference between “principle” and “policy” and why some things had to be done in private while others had to be managed in public.  It’s a masterful document and one that holds perhaps the key to understanding Lincoln as a wartime political leader.

This post provides new material to an issue raised by an earlier short essay on the Lincoln household in 1860.

The 1860 census noted the “Dinker” family household (near Eighth and Edwards streets) in Springfield, headed by Barbara with Phillip (15), George (13), Mary (11), and (presumably) grandparents, John (80) and Margaret (62) Merguthole (sic).  The census taker listed Barbara and her parents as natives of Wurtenberg [Germany] and her three children as Illinois natives.  This appears to be the same Philip Dinkel listed by the census taker as a 15-year-old male living nearby at the Lincoln household (Eighth and Jackson)

A death notice for a “Philip Dinkel” appeared in the Illinois State Journal, Friday. October 27, 1865.  The notice lists his mother as “Mrs. Barber Dinkel,” but the connection to the First Baptist (later Central Baptist) Church in Springfield makes it obvious that this must have been the eldest child of widow Barbara Dinkel.  Philip had apparently abandoned his plans to become a minister (just about a week before his brother George wrote President Lincoln in 1864) and had enlisted in the Union army in May 1864 for 100 days (providing his occupation as a “student”).  His muster in report listed him as 5’6″ with brown hair, gray eyes and a fair complexion. One of his descendants has posted his service record at Ancestry.com.  Philip Dinkel served in Company G of the 134th Illinois Volunteer Infantry and mustered out in Chicago on October 25, 1864.  How he contracted and then died from consumption remains unknown.  This was also apparently his second short tour of duty in the Union army.  Records indicate that Philip Dinkel also served with Company F of the 70th Illinois Infantry from July 4, 1862 until October 23, 1862.  During that period, the regiment was stationed at Camp Butler, near Springfield, and assisted with guard duty for Confederate POWs, many of whom had been sent there in spring 1862 after the Union capture of Fort Donelson in Tennessee.

For more on George J. Dinkel (or Dinkle)’s service in the 114th Illinois Infantry, see this link.  And here is also a detail of the image of his signature from his 1864 letter to Abraham Lincoln (now available from the Lincoln Papers at Library of Congress).

George J. Dinkel

It turns out that George Dinkel survived the war and married a daughter of Sullivan Conant, one of Springfield’s early settlers.  Lydia Jane Conant and George J. Dinkel married in Sangamon County in 1868.  By the 1880s, they were living in Las Vegas, New Mexico (east of Santa Fe), where Dinkel had become a prominent local businessman.  When Sullivan Conant became ill and then died in 1886, the Las Vegas newspapers reported on his demise and his daughter’s concern (available now via Chronicling America).  She died herself later that year.  Eventually, Lydia Conant Dinkel was re-buried and now rests in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.  The couple apparently never had any children. George did later remarry, however, and relocated to Delton, Michigan (Barry Township, not too far from Kalamazoo).  Dinkel’s descendants have posted a photo of him at the family tree in Ancestry.com.

In 1903, the Springfield Illinois State Journal noted the death of “an old resident of Springfield,” in Delton, Michigan (Sunday, February 22, 1903). The newspaper listed her as Mrs. Barbara Dinkle, but according to Find-A-Grave records, this was Christina Barbara (Mergenthaler) Dinkel, the mother of Philip, George and Mary, an originally a native of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, now buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, not too far from the Lincoln family tomb. Here is what you will find online at Find-A-Grave from a record added in 2008 by Charles W. Brown, appended to a transcript of Barbara Dinkel’s 1903 death notice:

Aged 78 years; on cemetery records and in obituary as Barbara Dinkle.  Barbara married Valentine Dinkel August 3, 1844. Mother of Phillip Dinkel, George J Dinkel, and Mary Alice Dinkel.

A quick check of the 1900 census confirms that 75-year-old Barbara Dinkel (mother) was living in Barry County, Michigan with her 53-year-old son George (b. Dec. 1846 in Illinois), his much younger second wife Emily (born in Michigan) and their three small children.  According to the census, George J. Dinkel was then a dry goods merchant in town.  There is also a death record from 1909 for a “George S. Dinkel” from Barry, Michigan transcribed in Ancestry that lists his birth year as 1846 and his father as Philip Dinkel.  He is buried in nearby Riverside Cemetery in Kalamazoo, Michigan as George J. Dinkel.  Find-A-Grave has even posted an image of his headstone.  The local newspaper in Springfield did provide a prominent obituary for Dinkel in July 1909.  Apparently, Dinkel had not only served in the war, but also had endured the Andersonville prison camp –sometime following his unanswered May 1864 letter from President Lincoln.  See the article pasted at the left from the Illinois State Journal, July 21, 1909.

All of these records fill out an amazing family story, but they also raise questions.  It appears possible that Valentine Dinkel immigrated to the United States from Germany as a young man in the 1840s with his parents.  This 1891 obituary of Mary (Dinkel) Schilling (b. 1830) suggests that perhaps she was Valentine’s sister; that their father’s name was Philip, and that the  family arrived in Springfield in the 1840s.  However, her obituary also puts her parents arriving in the U.S. in 1846, and yet Valentine Dinkel and Barbara Mergenthaler married in Sangamon County in 1844.  That might be just a small discrepancy rooted in slightly faulty recollections. However, it is also conceivable that there were two sets of entirely different Dinkel families in Springfield –both from Baden-Wurttenberg. The death notice for Mary Dinkel Schilling that appeared in the Illinois State Register, 6/28/1891 matches some, but not all, of the biographical records for widow Barbara Mergenthaler Dinkel and her children from her marriage with Valentine.  Almost anything is possible, including multiple Dinkels. There is, for example, a Phillip (2 l’s) Dinkel (1848-1930) buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, near Springfield, who served in the Union army (10th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, Company G) and whose wife’s name was actually Mary.  Yet obviously, these are not the Philip and Mary Dinkel from Springfield whom we have been researching.

There is a marriage record transcribed in Acestry for Valentine Dinkel and Barbara “Mexican Dollar” (presumably, Mergenthaler) for August 3, 1844 in Sangamon County.  There is also a marriage record transcribed in Ancestry.com for a Barbara Dinkel and a “Gerd Gerdes Dose” in Sangamon County, January 22, 1877.  Still working on that one…

There is a Dinkel family tree posted at Ancestry.com by “rideca,” but it doesn’t yet answer all of these questions.  Noted Lincoln scholar Wayne Temple has completed an article related to the Dinkels that accomplishes a great deal, but it’s clear that definitive answers even to some of these relatively minor genealogical questions remain elusive.

New York Times, July 15, 1902

Who was abolitionist William Still and what did the New York Times say about him in his obituary?  It turns out that Still was a leader in the fight against slavery.  The Times coverage of his death, from July 15, 1902, actually called him the “Father of the Underground Railroad.”  Yet today he is almost totally obscure.  Students seeking out information about Still can pretty easily discover information about his life with any typical Google search, but actually obtaining an image of the obituary itself would normally require using a subscription database, either direct from the New York Times or from a service such as ProQuest Historical Newspapers (available via the Dickinson College Library databases).  However, the House Divided Project has posted a transcript of the obituary for anyone to see.

Still was important for many reasons, but foremost among them was his collection of records from the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.  Nobody in the history of the Underground Railroad preserved more documents and better information about the operations of the fugitive aid network than William Still.  That’s why some people in his lifetime considered him the “Father of the Underground Railroad.”  Here are some digital links to his incredible documentary legacy:

• William Still, Underground Railroad (Porter & Coates, 1872) (Slavery & Abolition in the US, Dickinson College)
• Journal C, Station No. 2, Philadelphia Vigilance Committee Records (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
• Lesson Plans: Fugitive Slave Notices (Underground Railroad Digital Classroom)

 Find a copy of General Meade’s official description of the fighting on Little Round Top during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

How does a modern-day student accomplish this in the most efficient way possible?  Searching combined key words like “Meade” “Round Top” and “Gettysburg” in Google yields almost countless website entries, starting with Wikipedia.  Using “Meade” and “official description” helps, but still doesn’t provide a clear and quick result.

Instead, this question forces the digitally savvy student to think about how evidence was organized in a pre-digital age.  A quick study of Civil War military research will yield the information that following the conflict, the War Department organized a massive compilation of official military correspondence and after-action reports filed by both sides. This collection, known as the OR, was formally published in 128 volumes over twenty years between 1881 and 1901, under the title: The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.  

There are numerous full-text searchable copies of the OR scattered across the Internet and in various digital subscription services.  One of the best ways to access the OR material is through the Making of America / Cornell site.  Another good way to access the full-text OR online is through Ohio State University.  Choosing the volume covering the Gettysburg campaign (Series 1, Volume 27, chapter 39) and the entering Part 1 “Reports” section will enable a student to search the text.  Enter a term like “Round Top” and the results will quickly lead to Meade’s official report on the Battle of Gettysburg filed on October 1, 1863.  On p. 116, you can read the general’s terse description of the “desperate but unsuccessful efforts” of the “enemy” to secure what Meade only referred to as “Round Top Ridge.”  This was his version of the events now made famous by recollections from figures such as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, novels such as The Killer Angels and movies such as “Gettysburg.”

NOTE:  There is a separate OR series for the Union and Confederate navies.  You can access a full-text copy of all thirty volumes (1894-1922) once again from the Making of America / Cornell University library.