Framing the Civil War

Sarah McConnell: For nearly a century, if you visited an American Civil War battlefield, the brochures and tour guides from the National Park Service would tell you all about the troop movements, the Minié balls, the cannon fire, and the brilliant tactics. But they meticulously avoided discussion of why the war happened. It was a feel-good version of history that left out the most explosive word in the American lexicon: slavery.

That all changed in 1998, and it triggered thousands of protest letters, political threats, and accusations the National Park Service was slandering the South.

From Virginia Humanities, this is With Good Reason. I'm Sarah McConnell. My guest today was the man at the center of that historical storm. Dwight Pitcaithley served as Chief Historian of the National Park Service for a decade, and he didn't flinch. A wounded Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, he has spent his retirement writing books that use the words of the secessionists themselves. His latest book is called Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History.

Dwight, after you retired as the Chief Historian of the National Park Service, you spent 20 years writing a series of books that explain just how devoted to slavery and to white supremacy the Southern states were. Tell me about that series and what motivated you.

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, to start with the motivation... in the later '90s, the Park Service superintendents who managed Civil War battlefields got together for a meeting in Nashville to talk about a number of things. And they decided that they would start—this is 1998—start talking about the causes of the Civil War, which was an unwritten policy in the Park Service not to talk about causes. Because talking about causes at Civil War parks would lead to slavery, and the Park Service in the '30s thought that most visitors would not want to hear that. So from the 1930s until the late 1990s, there was this unwritten policy.

And there was a great public backlash. And I ended up with about 2,000 to 2,500 cards and letters on my desk protesting what the Park Service was doing. Scholars had, for 40 or 50 years, understood that—as Eric Foner put it—slavery was the core cause of secession. So I was puzzled a bit by this public outcry, and I decided when I retired in '05, as a retirement project—everybody needs one—that I would dig as deeply as I could into the primary source records, the official records of secession, and satisfy myself as to how did slavery affect secession.

I found almost 70 constitutional amendments in those various records I mentioned, 90% of them designed to preserve or protect slavery at the federal level. So my first book was built around those constitutional amendments. After I finished the general book, I decided that it might be interesting to go state-by-state, because a lot of the material—speeches in Congress, speeches in state legislatures, addresses and proposals, and constitutional amendments that I found in the state conventions—might make a standalone book.

So, the University of Tennessee Press was kind of enough to publish the Tennessee book, a collection of those records. And then they published the Kentucky book, which was called Kentucky and the Secession Crisis. And then the third book in the series was Virginia, Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History. Since then, Missouri has come out. Texas will come out at the end of this year, and I'm presently working on a collection of Alabama reports and publications and speeches.

[08:15 - Second Half]

Sarah McConnell: So the books you’re writing use the actual words of the Southerners who argued for secession, and who said it was all about keeping slavery. Will you describe a few of those speeches and read excerpts from them?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Sure. Every series, every state conversation was all about slavery. It wasn't about states' rights, wasn't about the tariff—it was all about protecting slavery and protecting white supremacy.

The clearest one was found in Texas's Declaration of Secession, and the last couple of paragraphs go as this:

"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various states, and of the Confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race has no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."

Probably the most famous articulation of that idea was Alexander Stephens, who was the Vice President of the Confederate States. And he said:

"The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African. The enemies of our institutions ignore this truth. They set out with the assumption that the races are equal; that the Negro is equal to the white man. If their premises are correct, their conclusions would be legitimate. But their premises being false, their conclusions are false also."

And this kind of comment can be found in every one of the states that I've worked with so far, and I'm sure it's in all of them.

Sarah McConnell: You made mention to me of Mississippi's declaration. Tell me about that one.

Dwight Pitcaithley: Yeah, Mississippi's says, "Our interest is wholly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest in the world, and an attack on slavery is an attack upon our culture and civilization."

Some of the most direct evidence we have about the intent of the South is found in the four declarations of secession produced by South Carolina (the first state to secede), Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas. These are explanations, justifications for why that state seceded. Virginia produced more proposed constitutional amendments than any other state—16. Virginians really saw themselves as conditional secessionists. They weren't hardcore secessionists as Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, or even Florida. They wanted to find a solution to the problem and stay in the Union. They deliberated longer than any other state.

It's interesting that reading those deliberations, the delegation in Richmond got a telegraph from the Governor of South Carolina that said Fort Sumter is under bombardment, it will soon fall, and the convention instantly did a 180-degree turn. Instead of working for compromise, for some sort of compromise, they immediately started talking about secession, which happened, I think, just maybe two or three days later.

Sarah McConnell: Let me ask you this. As Southerners debated seceding from the Union, who were they? Were these mostly elites who had a lot of slaves who said, "We're going to be toast if we lose this income and the sort of leisurely way of life it allows," or were they everyone?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, politics then, like politics now, are run by money. And the large majority of the members of state legislatures, Congress of course, and the delegates to the state conventions were the upper class. A large percentage were slave owners. And what you find among the minority in each one of these areas that were not as wedded to slavery is the threat that if you secede, slavery is going to fall.

For example, Sherrard Clemens from Virginia said, "Before God, in my innermost conscience, I believe that slavery will be crucified if this unhappy controversy ends in a dismemberment of the Union."

Sarah McConnell: So what you're saying is that even some of them who advocated for staying with the Union, their argument was: if we leave the Union, it will destroy slavery.

Dwight Pitcaithley: That's exactly right. There are two questions that are basic through this whole conversation after Lincoln's election and before the firing on Fort Sumter. The first question was: to what degree is the election of Abraham Lincoln a threat to slavery? And the second question was: to what degree is slavery protected in the United States Constitution?

Sarah McConnell: What in the Constitution protected slavery?

Dwight Pitcaithley: The primary protection was in fugitive slaves themselves. Essentially, it said escaped slaves must be returned to their owners. The counterpart to that is the word "slave" never appeared in the Constitution at that time until the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Slaves were always referred to as "persons held to service or labor."

So the Constitution could be interpreted in two different ways: is slavery protected holistically because of the Fugitive Slave Clause, or are these people who happen to be slaves and therefore have potential to become citizens?

Sarah McConnell: What plunged the states into such a panic over deciding they had to leave the Union?

Dwight Pitcaithley: The kickoff was Abraham Lincoln's election. Lincoln was called an abolitionist regularly; the Republican Party was called the Abolitionist Party.

Sarah McConnell: Had it been left to just blue-collar workers, small business people, farmers... would they have, in all likelihood, voted to abolish slavery and not secede in these Southern states?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Not in the South. Because the South was concerned, one, about losing slavery, but equally concerned about losing white supremacy. And that affected every white Southerner, whether they owned slaves or not—that their standing in society was elevated because they were not on the bottom rung. And many of them hoped to become slave owners, and there was a large market in the renting of slaves by non-slave owners.

So slavery affected not just the owners, but everyone, and the white supremacy aspect of this cannot be overstated.

Sarah McConnell: Wasn't there also a group of people who at least thought, "We are doomed with slavery. We are destined to someday get rid of it because this is an evil institution we know we're profiting off of it, but we need to get rid of it," just as Jefferson—who owned slaves and kept them—had famously worried, "We have a wolf by the ears"?

Dwight Pitcaithley: That's right, exactly, exactly so. It's interesting that the Southern perception of slavery changed between Jefferson's comment in 1820 and 40 years later. The attitudes in the South had shifted from thinking that slavery was an evil, but perhaps a necessary evil, to a good. Ordained by God—one finds that comment throughout these records. And God designed black people to be inferior to white people, and that was embraced by the vast majority of Southerners, whether they owned slaves or not.

Sarah McConnell: Why so many years after the end of the Civil War—1930—would the Park Service have said to itself and others, "We are not getting involved in this commentary. It is too much of a hot button"?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, there are a couple of answers to that. The war ended in April of 1865. In December, the 13th Amendment was ratified that ended slavery. But you can't legislate against white supremacy. It continued.

If you trace the history of this country through the second half of the 19th century into the 20th century, you have the removal of all of the rights that black people attained during Reconstruction—those essentially 10 years after the end of the war. And with lynchings and segregation and intimidation, reduced black people in the South to very close to slave status, but not quite.

In the 1910s, '20s, '30s, you have deep segregation in transportation, in railroads. Black people were assigned to second-class status, and this is not limited to the South, but it also has many ramifications in the North as well. But in the '30s, segregation was at its height in the South, and the Park Service didn't want to raise the ire of a vast number of public who found these Civil War battlefields very intriguing and very popular.

Sarah McConnell: Can you give me a very simple example of signage at a Civil War battle site that might be an example of how, for years, the National Park Service should have mentioned slavery but never brought it up?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Um, that's an interesting question. That requires some discussion of secession, and the Park Service essentially prohibited that.

So in many instances—and I went through a lot of Park Service records, brochures, films, handbooks, almost throughout the 20th century—almost all of them began at, let's say, Battlefield X (Antietam, let's say): "On the morning of, Federal troops moved in this area of the field and Robert E. Lee moved in this section and they had a battle." It literally began without cause.

They simply said, "Here these two men were, fighting each other, these two forces," with no indication of how they got there, why they were trying to kill each other, what motivated them, and so forth. The Park did that in Revolutionary War sites, World War II sites, other sites—not with the Civil War. Any kind of causality was absent from public interpretation.

Sarah McConnell: Why do you think the National Park Service—and you were the Chief Historian by that time—in 1998 in Nashville said, "You know what? Let's start telling a fuller history of what really happened"?

Dwight Pitcaithley: At that point, the Park Service had a number of very smart superintendents. Two of them had PhDs in history. And they simply realized that this should happen, that people should understand why 750,000 men ended up dying in this battle. For what reason? And they collectively decided the Park Service should.

Sarah McConnell: When word got out that the Park Service was changing its stand on this, you as chief historian received 2,500 letters of protest, some of them from congressmen, accusing you of slandering the South. Was that intimidating for you? I mean, that must have been a shock.

Dwight Pitcaithley: I found it interesting that a large number of public, and through their congressmen, were very opposed to this. And actually, I—I have to say I enjoyed those five years or so that the—that the soup boiled on this, because it gave me an opportunity to write, to respond to every one of these letters that I could, to respond to the congressmen.

Sarah McConnell: Didn't you feel some sympathy for people who felt that their core beliefs had been so ripped from them in a way that they couldn't understand or fathom?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Absolutely. Southerners had been taught for generations that secession was not about slavery; it was about protecting states' rights. And this argument was incorporated through family histories, textbooks were written to enforce the idea that—that—that the states seceded because of federal overreach, starting with Alexander Stephens's history of the War followed by Jefferson Davis's history of the War that many had said that slavery was a—a minor issue here. It was about federal overreach, it was about protecting our states' rights. And when you've got generation upon generation upon generation learning that, not only from their teachers, but from their pastors, from their parents, from their grandparents, it's a powerful heritage that they embraced. And here's somebody, a government official, saying that's not so.

Sarah McConnell: Give me a feeling from a handful of perspectives, the kinds of things those letters said to you.

Dwight Pitcaithley: They were—some were sort of mild, saying, 'Uh, you just don't know your history.' 'Everybody knows—everybody knows—that the secession was caused by states' rights.' Then it ran the gamut to, you know, 'The chief historian of the National Park Service shouldn't be elected dogcatcher, he has no idea what history is, he certainly doesn't know our history.' Many of them came in an organized fashion through the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who published *The Confederate Veteran*, and every issue had a tear-out postcard section on 'heritage violations.' And the Park Service was accused of a heritage violation of this. So many of the response—many of the letters we got were these—these cards that were simply signed, or sometimes not signed, by the sender that said, 'You've got it all wrong.'

Sarah McConnell: You know, you're a Marine who was wounded in Vietnam, got the Purple Heart. You started wearing your Purple Heart pin when addressing Civil War audiences. Tell me why you did that.

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, I—I was often asked to give talks to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Texas, for example, or in Mississippi. And I realized that I was simply a suit from Washington coming to talk. And the military aspect of this is—is huge. In fact, people much prefer talking about the military aspects of the Civil War than they do talking about the causality of the Civil War. And so I thought maybe if I wear my Purple Heart pin, not the medal, just the lapel pin, um, that might affect the room. And I found that it did. Uh, I don't know to what extent, but um, several I remember in Hammond, Louisiana, once I was asked, 'You're wearing a Purple Heart?' I said, 'Yes.' I don't—I don't know exactly what the person asking was thinking, but I think it moderated the heat in the room to some extent.

Sarah McConnell: Another thing you've said is that critics called you and historians like Eric Foner and James McPherson 'Yankees' who did not understand the South. And when that happened, at one point you thought, 'Well, let's get some Southern historians like Ed Ayers involved.' Did that make any difference?

Dwight Pitcaithley: No. (laughs) No, that was—I was surprised at that because Jim McPherson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Eric Foner was not then but has become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. So I thought everybody loves Eric and Jim, I'll just—I'll just do that. And you're right, they were labeled 'Yankee historians' who don't know our history. So I switched from using 'Yankee' historians to using Southern historians like Ed Ayers, Bill Freeling, Bill Cooper. And the response very immediately was, 'Well, they're just Scalawag historians. They're essentially traitors to the Southern cause.'

And it was at that point that I think I had done enough research that I came across the four declarations of secession. And I thought, 'Well, they might not listen to—to the—the leading scholars in the country, but they might listen to the participants at the time: the men, the elected officials of the South who had their finger on the trigger, and what they said.' And that—that again moderated the—the animosity to a degree. I think those who really couldn't let go of the Lost Cause interpretation just ignored it. Others—this was a very rewarding period in my professional life—would respond. And I remember there were a couple of occasions where I went back and forth with emails to people who didn't really believe what I was arguing but were willing to engage the conversation. And that was wonderful.

Sarah McConnell: I'm so glad you brought up the great historian Bill Freeling. I'm such an admirer of his work.

Dwight Pitcaithley: As am I. As am I. I used Bill's work, his two-volume books on—on secession, his more recent *Becoming Lincoln* tracks the conversion of Lincoln from opposing slavery in the territories to, in the middle of the war, becoming an abolitionist and realizing the results of the war weren't going to be affected until there was an amendment. Uh, his earlier work on the Missouri Compromise is equally good. So, I'm a big fan of—of Bill Freeling's. We've never met, we've corespondent, but never officially met eye-to-eye.

Sarah McConnell: Now there is new debate over the language the National Park Service is using in interpreting our Civil War battlefields and many other sites. Has the language explaining the cause of the Civil War as slavery been removed?

Dwight Pitcaithley: It—I only know anecdotally that, I don't—I don't follow that closely. I know that in some parks, yes, it has. I also know that one park has the Mississippi declaration—those famous words of 'our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery'—was up in a visitor center that's been up now 25 years, perhaps. And I called them just to check on that and they said, 'No, it's up, and it's still up and we have no intention of taking it down.'

Sarah McConnell: So where do you think this leaves us? How can we honestly teach the casualness with which 19th-century officials defended white supremacy and slavery?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, we can't honestly. That's the—that's the whole point. Uh, if one wants to be historically correct, not just politically correct—and that's an odd term and used in different ways at different times—but if we want to be historically correct, this information needs to be produced not just in parks, but—but wherever. And look at the past with eyes wide open. We are not responsible for what our parents did, much less what our grandparents or great-grandparents did. It's best for us to simply understand that those were different times, and this is what they said, and this is what they fought for, and use that in the hopes of making better decisions today on related issues. In fact, that's why schools used to require history, so that we can make better decisions knowing what happened in the past, honestly and truthfully, with eyes wide open, and work more closely toward that more perfect union that the Constitution talks about.

Sarah McConnell: You know, unlike you, I'm a very proud Southerner. I was born in Virginia, my father was born in Louisiana, my mother was born in Georgia. And I love those states and Southern culture. But I have zero interest in white supremacy or defending a false historical narrative.

Dwight Pitcaithley: And there are many people like you out there. But white supremacy, as we've found out recently, it ebbs and it flows. Um, it's sublimated sometimes and then sometimes it pops out, as we saw in Charlottesville just a couple of years ago. It rises and falls depending on other elements that are being moved in our social and political world.

Sarah McConnell: You taught at New Mexico State University, you taught history. And at one point, you would divide students into two different groups. Tell me what you noticed about that.

Dwight Pitcaithley: Yeah, that was fun. Obviously in working through all this material, I—I would find great quotes, some of which I read, I've got pages and pages of these quotes. So I realized at some point, uh, that I would clip those out and I would divide them into Southern voices and Northern voices. And then I'd have them read them, but alternatively. So there'd be a Northern statement and then there would be a Southern quote, and a Northern quote, Southern quote. And that was—I think that was very effective. In fact, some of the students at the end of their evaluation said they really enjoyed that because it gave them a sense of the flavor of the national conversation that was being held over secession winter.

Sarah McConnell: Did you change any minds? Did students have beliefs about this or are they sort of innocent of slavery, white supremacy?

Dwight Pitcaithley: Well, we're in New Mexico. If I'd been teaching in Alabama it would be a different thing. New Mexico is Western. The talk of the Civil War doesn't resonate here as it does in—in Virginia or Mississippi or even East Texas. Did I change any minds? I certainly hope so.

Sarah McConnell: We're all raised the way we're raised, and we think we've been taught it the right way, and it's hard to disabuse ourselves of things we've been taught.

Dwight Pitcaithley: How we understand the past is often determined by the first interpretation that we get, uh, in grade school, high school, wherever we find that. Ed Linenthal has talked about this a lot, that that first interpretation you get about history gets the upper hand.

Sarah McConnell: I'll never forget, in a class in college, a professor saying a thing that didn't sit right with me because I thought I've been taught differently. My reaction (laughs)—my reaction was, 'That can't be true because nobody ever told me that!' I didn't say it, but that's how I felt. I thought, 'You cannot be right because all these times through schooling and high school, nobody ever told me that.'

Dwight Pitcaithley: Exactly! Exactly! That's what we were highly sensitive to. That—that this was a new concept of thinking about the Civil War, and people who had—had been educated in a totally different way would respond exactly the way you responded. Uh, I think all of us, superintendents and people on my staff, uh, we were all very sensitive to that—that dynamic.

Sarah McConnell: Are you hopeful? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where we find ourselves now in terms of understanding each other?

Dwight Pitcaithley: History runs in cycles. Uh, doesn't repeat itself, but it does run in cycles. And I'm very optimistic that this too shall pass, the signs that have been taken down in parks will go back up and maybe even be better in terms of being, uh, anchored in scholarship. But it will take time. These are hard issues to get at, that it's difficult to—to embrace or even understand an interpretation of the past that is different from the one you—you you got originally. In the centennial of the Civil War in—in 2016, Congress passed the Centennial Act that requires the Secretary of the Interior to ensure that all interpretive displays, either signs—uh, interpretation signs or history—must be based on the most current scholarship available.

Sarah McConnell: Dwight Pitcaithley, thank you for sharing your insights on this with me on With Good Reason.

Dwight Pitcaithley: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Sarah McConnell (Outro): Dwight Pitcaithley served as chief historian of the National Park Service for a decade. He served with the Park Service for 30 years. His latest book is *Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History*. We'll be back momentarily.

Here is the verbatim transcript of the With Good Reason audio segment.

Introduction

Sarah McConnell: Welcome back to With Good Reason from Virginia Humanities.

At the start of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass spoke harshly about Abraham Lincoln for not moving quickly on emancipation. But in his new book, Jonathan White reveals how Douglass came to be one of Lincoln’s greatest admirers. White is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, and with Lucas Morel, he co-authored Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln.

Segment 1: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

Sarah McConnell: Jonathan, talk a little first about who Frederick Douglass was, and then, how he first viewed Lincoln after Lincoln lost his bid for a Senate seat.

Jonathan White: Well, Frederick Douglass was a formerly enslaved person from Maryland who escaped to freedom in the years before the Civil War. And he became one of the most important Black abolitionists and one of the most important abolitionist editors in the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War.

In 1858, the Republican Party of Illinois nominated Abraham Lincoln to be their candidate for US Senate. And Lincoln accepted the nomination and gave a very famous speech called the "House Divided" address. Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and he pointed out essentially that the nation would become either all free or all slave; it would not remain divided.

And Douglass liked what he heard. He said, "Well and wisely said. One system or the other must prevail. Liberty or slavery must become the law of the land."

Sarah McConnell: And why did he change his tune about Lincoln once Lincoln took office?

Jonathan White: Douglass believed that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document. He believed that all of the provisions that somehow touched slavery actually pointed towards freedom. The problem was, you had white Southerners or Northern sympathizers with slavery who occupied the White House for most of the years between George Washington and then, ultimately, Abraham Lincoln.

From Douglass's view, what you needed was an anti-slavery president who would interpret the Constitution correctly and who would then lead to the destruction of slavery. Lincoln's view was that the Constitution was a compromise, that it included both anti-slavery components but also some concessions to slavery. Now, Lincoln did believe that slavery would eventually be destroyed in the country—it would just take some time—but he didn't believe that just because he was an anti-slavery politician, if he became president, he could destroy slavery on his own.

And so, Douglass initially had high hopes for a Republican to become president. But when Lincoln was inaugurated, he said that he would enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Now, this law is probably the most egregious law ever enacted by any Congress in all of our history. It stacked the decks against Black people. They were not allowed to testify on their own behalf in court; it authorized US Marshals to hunt down and track alleged fugitive slaves and bring them in. And if all that weren't bad enough, the judges presiding over these cases would be paid $5 if they believed the Black person was free, but $10 if they believed the person was a slave. And so this law actually incentivized judges to find against African Americans who were hauled into court.

Now, from Douglass's perspective, this law was unconstitutional because he did not believe the Constitution authorized the recapture of fugitive slaves. Lincoln's view was that it was constitutional, and while Lincoln opposed the law and thought it should be amended, he believed as president he was responsible to enforce it. And so, when Lincoln gave his inaugural address on March 4th, 1861, pledging to enforce this horrendous law, Douglass was furious. He went so far as to call Lincoln "abolitionism's worst enemy" and "the South's greatest slave hound."

Sarah McConnell: Douglass and Lincoln met three times during the war. Tell me about the first time when Douglass pushed past people waiting to speak with Lincoln. He hadn't been invited, but Lincoln heard him out.

Jonathan White: Yeah, one of the things that's fascinating is that in the 19th century, anyone who wanted to could go to the White House to meet with the president. And for the first year of the war, only white men and women do that. But as early as April of 1862, Black men and women begin claiming this privilege as well.

And so the first time that Douglass comes to the White House is in August of 1863. At this point, Lincoln has issued the Emancipation Proclamation; he has allowed for Black men to join the army. But Douglass very quickly becomes disillusioned, and that is because Black men do not get equal treatment. They don't get equal pay as white soldiers, they get subpar weapons and uniforms, they're made to do fatigue duty instead of fighting—and fatigue duty is exactly what it sounds like, it's manual labor that makes you tired—and if all that is not enough, the official Confederate policy is to enslave or kill Black soldiers who are captured on the battlefield, to treat them as slaves in insurrection.

By August of 1863, he's really frustrated with Lincoln for not defending the rights of Black men. And so he goes to the White House, and when he gets there, he goes into Lincoln's office and he tries to introduce himself, but Lincoln cuts him off and says, "I know who you are, Mr. Douglass." And Lincoln then takes him by the hand and leads him in, and they sit down together.

And Douglass pushes Lincoln on these issues of inequality and Confederate atrocities. On the issue of Confederate atrocities, Lincoln says that he doesn't want to retaliate against Confederate POWs who have not committed a war crime, but if he could capture people who had, then, you know, justice could be done. From Lincoln's perspective, enough blood is being spilled and he doesn't want to execute someone who hasn't done something heinous on the battlefield. On the issue of unequal pay, Lincoln says that eventually Black men will get full pay, but that political realities will not allow for it at this point—that the white Northern electorate is having a hard enough time accepting the idea of Black soldiers, and to give Black men equal pay as white soldiers would just be pushing a little too hard. Lincoln says, though, eventually Black men will get equal pay, but they should treat freedom as part of their compensation.

Frederick Douglass wanted equality, and he wanted it now. But he appreciated the political constraints facing Lincoln. Lincoln shook his hand, which is something that most white politicians, probably most white Americans, never would have done in that era—to shake a Black hand. And most importantly, Lincoln listened to him, and eventually did bring about some of the changes Douglass was looking for.

Sarah McConnell: What were other issues that were really upsetting Douglass about Lincoln's political stands regarding emancipation and other issues around this time?

Jonathan White: For the first two years of the war, Douglass is very frustrated that Lincoln will not free the slaves immediately and that he will not arm Black soldiers. But Douglass is elated by January of 1863 when Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. Finally, the war is getting its moral value, and from his perspective, if the war were to end without permanent Black freedom, then it was just murder and useless death.

Sarah McConnell: In addition to how overjoyed he was that Lincoln finally did the Emancipation Proclamation, what else changed his mind about who Lincoln was and brought him genuine admiration for him?

Jonathan White: Lincoln and Douglass met for a second time in August of 1864. This time, Lincoln invited him to come to the White House. And the issue was this: the summer of 1864 was a terrible time for the Union. Ulysses S. Grant had tried to capture Richmond in June; he lost something of 60,000 men in a four-week period. William Tecumseh Sherman is stuck outside of Atlanta trying to capture that stronghold. Northern morale is plummeting. And so by August of 1864, Lincoln is convinced that he's going to lose his bid for re-election.

And it's at that moment that he invites Douglass to come to the White House. He says, "Douglass, I hate slavery as much as you do, and I want to see it abolished altogether. I issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but the slaves aren't running away in as great of numbers as I had hoped they would." And Douglass responds by saying, "Well, the slaveholders don't tell the slaves about the proclamation, so they don't know to run away."

These two men then sit down together, and they concoct a plan modeled after John Brown's raid of Harpers Ferry from 1859 to send bands of scouts into the Confederacy, essentially shouting from the rooftops: "Run away now while you still have the chance!" Because once Lincoln is out of office next year, your opportunity for freedom will be gone. Because if Lincoln loses, the Democrat who defeats him will, of course, rescind the Emancipation Proclamation.

Fortunately, things took a turn for the better. Sherman captured Atlanta, there were some victories for the Union in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Northern morale went way up, and Lincoln sailed into re-election in November. But this meeting is really important. First, it shows us that Lincoln's heart was fully in Black freedom. Lincoln was trying to come up with a plan to free as many people as he could before he was out of power, and that had nothing to do with military necessity or saving the Union; it just had to do with making as many people free as possible.

Sarah McConnell: You and your co-editor, Lucas Morel, found eight remarkable letters that Douglass had written to British abolitionists that have never been quoted by modern scholars. In those letters, he's far more critical of Lincoln than he's expressed publicly back in America. Tell me about that.

Jonathan White: Douglass was a very shrewd political thinker, and there were some things he recognized that you couldn't say to an American audience that you maybe could say to an audience overseas.

In the fall of 1864, he sent a letter to a British abolitionist where he actually talked about wanting the war to continue. Now, you could never say it that bluntly to an American audience because hundreds of thousands of people are dying, millions of men are away on the battlefield—you couldn't say to an American audience, "I want the war to continue." Well, why did Douglass want the war to continue? Because he understood that when the war ended, the armies would be withdrawn from the South, and Black freedom and Black political rights and equality might become precarious because there would be no army there to protect them.

The most jarring new letter that we discovered was written after Lincoln's assassination. So Lincoln is shot on April 14th, 1865, he dies on the 15th. Douglass tries to offer hope to his community members, but he writes a very different message to British abolitionists. And to these abolitionists in England, he describes how, wonderful as Lincoln was, Lincoln was too kind-hearted. Lincoln was a "with malice toward none" kind of guy, as he said in his second inaugural address. And what Douglass knew was that the Confederates, the ex-Confederates, needed to face real chastisement; they needed to be punished. And he worried that Lincoln would have been too soft on them.

And so, in a letter that hasn't been seen for 160 years that Lucas and I discovered, Douglass describes how he thinks Andrew Johnson will be a better president for Reconstruction because Johnson has said things like "treason must be made odious" and Johnson was known for wanting to punish the planter class. In a letter to British readers, he says Johnson will be a better president because he will do what needs to be done to bring about Black equality, like the right to vote. Now, of course, Douglass would prove to be really wrong in that assessment.

Sarah McConnell: What did Andrew Johnson actually do that shocked Douglass?

Jonathan White: During the Civil War, Johnson had been an anomaly. He was the only Southerner who held his seat in the US Senate, so he remained loyal to the North. He then became military governor of Tennessee. The Emancipation Proclamation had excluded Tennessee because it was under Union control, and so Johnson ultimately frees the slaves of Tennessee. In October of 1864, Johnson had given a speech in Nashville to a group of Black leaders and Black men where he said, "I will be your Moses. I will lead you into freedom."

Many radicals believed that Johnson would be a radical president. Johnson would be the guy to punish, whereas Lincoln had wanted forgiveness for the Confederates. But it very quickly became clear that Johnson cared more about ex-Confederates than former slaves. Johnson pardoned every ex-Confederate in the years after the Civil War, and it very quickly became clear that Johnson would not support Black voting rights.

Now, Lincoln had publicly come out in favor of Black suffrage at the very end of his life, four days before he died. And in February of 1866, Douglass and a group of Black leaders go to the White House and they push Johnson: "We should have the right to vote." And Johnson will have none of it. He's rude to these visitors, and after they leave, Johnson says that Douglass is just like any other N-word and he would slit a white man's throat the chance he got. And this shows—this showed Douglass—that Johnson was no friend of the formerly enslaved.

Segment 2: A Wonderful Career in Crime

[Music Transition]

Sarah McConnell: Jonathan White is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and the author, with Lucas Morel, of Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln.

During the period after the Civil War, the social and cultural fabric was shifting, and that left room for con men and scam artists to take advantage of people. In his book, A Wonderful Career in Crime, Frank Garmon tells the story of just such a scoundrel, who was also the only criminal to have been pardoned by two of the most prominent political foes of the day: President Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States. Frank Garmon is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

Frank, tell me just how big of a rascal and cheat this guy was.

Frank Garmon: He's a pretty incredible one. He's the only person to be pardoned by both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War for the same crime. And after the war, spent nearly two decades involved in various scams and schemes. He managed to con his way into becoming a detective on the Lincoln assassination. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him US Marshal. He managed to con his way into working as a detective for the British government and the American government. He tried to run for Congress and became a serial bigamist.

Sarah McConnell: When did his life of crime begin? How young was he?

Frank Garmon: It started during his teenage years. His father died when he was about 12 years old, and shortly thereafter Charles Callum turned to crime. He was arrested at least five times in the course of his career. But when he was 19 years old, he was working as a clerk in the post office department in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the post office noticed that letters started disappearing as they made their way through the region, particularly letters containing large sums of money.

So they set up a sting operation and they isolated the Portsmouth post office. They confronted Charles, and at first he stoutly denied it, but when they searched the contents of his trunk, they found the missing money. And he pled guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in the state penitentiary.

Sarah McConnell: It's interesting that a guy as small a criminal as him would appeal to Abraham Lincoln, who was president at the time, for a pardon.

Frank Garmon: There's a letter from the pardon clerk that lays out both sides of the story. It mentions his four sisters and brother are now orphans now that his mother has died while he was incarcerated, and that he has a letter from a congressman, a former senator, and more than 50 residents of his hometown of Battle Creek, Michigan, supporting a pardon on his behalf.

But there is a line that stands in the path that leads to mercy in this case, in the shape of a letter from the officer of the Richmond Penitentiary, stating that Callum is an old offender in spite of his tender age. During his first imprisonment in Richmond, he was recognized as an acquaintance of men from the Ohio Penitentiary with whom he had served there. "If these statements are true, Callum has run a wonderful career in crime for one so young. I am compelled to say that I regard his application as one of the least meritorious on file in the office."

Sarah McConnell: And so Lincoln did not pardon him?

Frank Garmon: Curiously he did. Unfortunately for Charles, it arrived too late. By the time the pardon was issued, Virginia had already seceded from the Union, and the governor of Virginia refused to let him out, and Callum remained in prison for another two years.

Sarah McConnell: He now appeals to the president of the South, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.

Frank Garmon: Yes, and in this case, he realized that the evidence that he had in his favor in appealing to Abraham Lincoln wouldn't be as consequential in appealing to Jefferson Davis. So he changed his story and presented himself as a Confederate sympathizer.

He produced a letter supposedly from his maternal aunt—as far as I can tell, he had no maternal aunt. In the letter from the Confederate Attorney General, he noted that Callum "has many brave and worthy relatives in the Confederacy, and that some lie buried amongst the gallant dead on memorable fields." He noted the touching appeal of his maternal aunt, whose devotion and sacrifices to the South included the loss of her property along with her three gallant sons, her only children—one in a soldier's grave at Shiloh, one upon the Rappahannock, and the other a maimed and helpless creature, and yet the mother mourning that she has not another son to give to Southern independence.

Sarah McConnell: So did that do the trick?

Frank Garmon: It did. When Jefferson Davis pardoned him, he pardoned him, quote, "in light of his many gallant kinsmen."

Sarah McConnell: At some point, he even lied his way into a position as a detective on the Lincoln assassination case. How did he get that job?

Frank Garmon: Well, after the war ended, Callum made his way back to Michigan where he rejoined his family. But upon hearing the news of Lincoln's murder, he boarded a train to Detroit and met with the colonel commanding the military district of Michigan, and he told a compelling story. He said that during his time in Richmond, he had overheard various conspiracies that related to the president's death. And he believed that if he were hired as a detective on the case, that he might help catch the culprits.

So the colonel commanding the military district of Michigan paid for his train passage and sent him to Washington at once, where he told the same story to the detectives there, and they hired him. For the next 17 days, he worked as a detective investigating Lincoln's assassination. But he later parlayed this into real jobs as a detective once the war ended.

Sarah McConnell: He also lied his way through a run for office in Florida.

Frank Garmon: Yes, he launched a scheme to put himself on the ballot. He printed deceptive-looking ballots and included his own name as a member of Congress, and he attempted to trick unsuspecting voters into voting for him. It was not successful. One newspaper notes that had he remained in the city, he almost certainly would have been lynched.

Sarah McConnell: At some point, he married a wealthy, lonely New York widow and conned her out of what was then about a million dollars' worth of her money.

Frank Garmon: Yes, after losing the election in Florida, he decided to go to New York City and to try his luck there. And he married more than half a dozen women in a span of six months by moving from neighborhood to neighborhood within Manhattan. He would target wealthy widows and claim to have a snug fortune of his own, and would let on that he would not marry anyone who could not match his own means. Shortly after the wedding, he would disappear with their money and try the scan in a different neighborhood. Uh, one article, it says, "This woman has lost $50,000." She hired a pugnacious New York attorney. The New York attorney took out advertisements in all the major New York newspapers and the newspapers in his home state of Michigan in an attempt to locate him. Charles spent that decade as a fugitive and lived a life on the run. He spent some time in the Midwest as a traveling photographer. He went to San Francisco where he wrote a play and performed it at Baldwin's Theater. It was called Perpetual Motion: A Drama in Four Acts. And he went to Latin America to search for gold, and spent some time in Guatemala.

Sarah McConnell: How many aliases did he go by in all?

Frank Garmon: Well, according to one newspaper, he has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet. He went by Charles Callum, Charles Coolum, Charles Cowley, Charles Hamilton, uh, William E. Burlick, Colonel Livingston Graham, and others.

Sarah McConnell: (Laughs) You write that this was a period in American history of so much upheaval that actually it gave rise to lots of scammers and swindlers and snake oil salesmen. Was he any worse than the average of those?

Frank Garmon: Well, he was certainly more successful than most of them because he made a career of it.

Sarah McConnell: Does he remind you of anybody nowadays? (Laughs)

Frank Garmon: Well, in some ways he's sort of like a George Santos in exaggerating his credentials in an effort to get elected, or Catch Me If You Can, a Frank Abagnale.

Sarah McConnell: Oh, that was the fake Pan Am pilot?

Frank Garmon: Yes, he traveled from place to place and assumed a variety of different personalities, and Charles Callum was a good imposter.

Sarah McConnell: Well, it's a fascinating book, and I'm so glad you were able to share it with me today on With Good Reason. Thank you.

Frank Garmon: Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Sarah McConnell: Frank Garmon is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

With Good Reason is produced by Virginia Humanities, which acknowledges the Monacan Nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our production team is Allison Quantz, Matt Darroch, and Lauren Francis. Special thanks to Jenny Taylor for booking assistance, and to Jordan Christie of WHRV for recording assistance. For the podcast or to comment, go to withgoodreasonradio.org.

I'm Sarah McConnell. Thanks for listening.