I have not yet had a chance to read his new book, but a colleague and I are going to Baruch College tomorrow afternoon to hear Dr. Jonathan Sarna discuss his new book When Grant Expelled the Jews. The just released book recounts the story of Grant’s General Order 11 that expelled Jews “as a class” from the territory under Grant’s jurisdiction in December 1862. Lincoln rescinded the order a few weeks later. From what I understand Sarna tells the story with restraint, letting the facts speak for themselves and then explaining how Grant tried to atone for his mistake.

Last night to get ready I again watched Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray, the award winning documentary released last year chronicling the the 10,000 Jews who fought on both sides of the conflict. Most histories of the Civil War that discuss the role of the Jews in the war, if they do that, mention Judah Benjamin and stop there. I am looking forward to hearing Sarna tomorrow and reading the book in the next few weeks. To be continued.

(Hat tip David Jensen)

I have written before of my appreciation for the recovery of Long Lost Items. The stories are exciting precisely because of their unexpectedness. You are reading the newspaper one day and learn, for instance,  that a WW2 German U-boat has been discovered off the coast of New Jersey, as actually happened about a decade ago. The other day a friend forwarded me this piece about the discovery of a cache of personal effects once belonging to Richard T. Greener. That many readers might not know who Greener was is unfortunate, because he was very much the equal of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and even W.E.B DuBois. Greener was the first African American graduate of Harvard College, entering that institution in September 1865 as a member of the first class to enroll after the Civil War’s end that April. In the early 1870s Greener was the principal of the Male Department in the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth. He soon took a similar post at a school in Washington DC. Eventually Greener earned his law degree from the University of South Carolina. While studying there he traveled through the heart of the fire eating Palmetto State preaching the gospel of racial equality, often under considerable threat of violence. Wisely, Greener left South Carolina as Reconstruction was ending. He moved back to Washington where he served as Dean of Howard University’s Law School, but left after a few years to open his own highly successful practice on T Street. Greener was a Republican and a close friend of U.S. Grant’s. He was secretary of the Grant Monument Association and was thus largely responsible for the creation of Grant’s Tomb. He even procured funds from African nations such as Sierra Leone for this endeavor. Later he served in India, China, and Russia in the McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations. (It is always surprising to read/hear of Americans serving in such far flung regions in the nineteenth century.)

Richard T. Greener

In the earlier twenthieth century Greener had fallen into obscurity, eventually moving to Chicago. That so few know who Richard T. Greener is today is partly because his family was not there to protect his legacy. Many had changed their name to Greene and lived their lives passing in White America. Greener died in 1922.

The documents that came to light the other day were found in a derelict house in a rough neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. A construction worker found them in a trunk in 2009 and saved them by stuffing them in a paper bag. Included are Greener’s Harvard diploma and his personal correspondence with President Grant. How these items came to be found in  a derelict home open to drug addicts is one of the story’s great mysteries. Time will tell where these items will eventually settle. Wherever they do end up, we can only hope they restore Greener to his rightful place in the pantheon of Great Americans.

(image/J.H. Cunningham for The Colored American, 1890)

Hey everybody, it is Sunday afternoon. A good friend of ours was here from Texas this week. We visited Ellis Island yesterday, in addition to  a number of other things over the course of the week. I took copious notes and photographs and intend to post them in the coming days. She went back this morning, and now we are getting ready for another busy work week. A little while ago I went to Green-Wood Cemetery for a quick walk before the gates closed. While there I took a few snaps on my cell phone.

A few families had come this weekend to visit family members in observance of St. Patrick’s Day. Such observances are not uncommon and are a reminder that Green-Wood is very much a “living” cemetery. Seeing such things always touches me.

Yesterday I posted a photograph of the headstone placed in memory of Thomas Francis Meagher. The “In Memory” was because the leader of the Irish Brigade is not interred at Green-Wood, though his family is. The general’s remains were lost when he fell off a boat and drowned in 1867. Today I happened up General Thomas William Sweeny. Sweeny was born in Cork, Ireland in 1820 and fought in the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. Note the American and Irish flags.

In the old days visitors to Green-Wood tethered their horses to these posts when visiting their loved ones. Objects like these are tangible manifestations of the past and always make me feel closer to the people who came before us.

The calendar says there are two days left in winter, but as you can see spring has arrived in New York City.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

General Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish Brigade; Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery

Perhaps more appropriate than a John Wilkes Booth bobblehead…

New Montefiore Cemetery, Long Island

1916 Army-Navy game, Polo Grounds

This afternoon the Army football team–for the first time ever–will play its annual spring game outside of New York. And not just anywhere outside of New York. The game is being played in Doughboy Stadium at Fort Benning against that command post’s team. The Black Knights had to get special permission from the NCAA to play the scrimmage against a none NCAA team. The game is part of a West Point initiative to reach out to other institutions within the Army infrastructure. Leaders at Fort Benning were also eager to play the intersquad game to emphasize the revitalization of the Benning football program. For decades in the early to mid-twentieth century Benning’s football team played organized games against college teams from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama with great success.

Doughboy Stadium is not just another building. Benning infantrymen built the stadium in 1924 to pay tribute to their comrades who had fallen in the Great War. Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower coached the team in the mid-1920s, to his great frustration. Ike loved football but he was eager to move on and serve in other ways. Unfortunately for him, the Benning brass grasped his football acumen and made certain to keep him stationed down in Georgia.

A short video is here.

(image/LOC)

Ever wanted to be a bonafide plantation owner? Now is your chance. The economic crisis has forced many South Carolina plantation owners to place their properties on the market in recent years. Hard as it may be to believe, tucked away at the end of many dirt roads in the Palmetto State are estates still standing that trace their roots back to the seventeenth century. Yes, that is the 1600s. Sherman’s men did their best to destroy as many of these estates as possible. The collapse of the slave system during the Civil War did the rest. Still, enough held on to serve as hunting lodges, paper mills, wildlife refuges, and retreats for wealthy Northerners during the Gilded Age and after. Such was the case with Hobcaw, the plantation owned by industrialist Bernard Baruch pictured at right. During Reconstruction such land was selling for as little as 3 cents an acre. Today, a plantation will set you back $3 to $20 million. Aspiring Rhett Butlers should be aware that annual maintenance averages an additional $500,000.

(image/Hobcaw Plantation, Georgetown County, S.C./LOC)

Something to enjoy with your Sunday coffee:

(Hat tip Gianni Rocco)

In May 2011 I noted the passing of Claude Choules, the last veteran of the Great War. In that small piece I mentioned that Florence Green was thus the last surviving uniformed service person known to have served in the war. Well, a friend has informed me that Mrs. Green died this past Saturday, two weeks before what would have been her 111th birthday. Green, born Florence Beatrice Patterson in London the same month as Queen Victoria’s funeral, joined the Women’s Royal Air Force when she was seventeen. The RAF and others will be participating in the services.

Sad to know that a generation has finally, truly come to an end.

The expression of a man who fathers fifteen children

In a small news story that serves as a reminder that the Civil War was not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, geneaologists announced this week that two of the grandsons of President John Tyler are still alive. The Virginian Tyler was the tenth president of the United States. He served from 1841 to 1845 and died in 1862. One of the Tyler grandsons served on the Virginia Civil War Centennial Commission from 1959-1963 and later received his PhD at Duke.