Sep 1862–Lincoln’s Cockamamie Idea; Rebels at the Doorstep; the Constitution Takes a Beating

By Gary Far­row, Danville VT His­tor­i­cal Society

The times were very bleak indeed for the North: the Pres­i­dent was flop­ping around on the race ques­tion; a shock­ing­ly swift mil­i­tary rever­sal had just occurred in the east; and the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was fight­ing with the judi­cia­ry here in Ver­mont. Mean­while, the Ninth Ver­mont suf­fered a rever­sal of fortune.

North Star–September 6, 1862

The President’s Colonization Scheme

Sen­a­tor S. C. Pomeroy of Kansas by request of the Pres­i­dent con­sent­ed to orga­nize emi­gra­tion par­ties of free col­ored per­sons for set­tle­ment in South Amer­i­ca and has been com­mis­sioned accord­ing­ly. This gentleman’s suc­cess in orga­niz­ing “Emi­grant Aid Expe­di­tions” from Mass­a­chu­setts for the pur­pose of get­ting con­trol of Kansas for the Free Soil­ers is looked upon as an encour­age­ment for the present scheme. The Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to send the emi­grants in good steamships and pro­vide them with all the nec­es­sary imple­ments of labor and also sus­te­nance until they gath­er a harvest.

Sen­a­tor Pomeroy’s address pro­pos­es to take with him on the first day of Octo­ber next, 100 col­ored men, as pio­neers in the move­ment with their fam­i­lies to Chirigui in New Grana­da [Nicaragua], if the place on exam­i­na­tion is found sat­is­fac­to­ry and promis­ing. He desires all per­sons of the African race, of sound health, who desire to go, to send him at Wash­ing­ton their names, sex, age, num­bers and post office address… He wants mechan­ics and labor­ers, earnest and sober men, for the inter­ests of a gen­er­a­tion, if may be, are involved in the suc­cess of this exper­i­ment, and with the appro­ba­tion of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and under the bless­ing of God it can­not fail.

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Abo­li­tion­ists were mor­ti­fied by the Cen­tral Amer­i­can project. Fred­er­ick Dou­glass raged that Lin­coln, based on his state­ments that blacks should be giv­en an equal chance at “the race of life,” was con­temp­tu­ous of blacks and hyp­o­crit­i­cal. Many Repub­li­cans opposed col­o­niza­tion, call­ing it racist and inhu­mane. How­ev­er, con­ser­v­a­tives lam­bast­ed the Repub­li­cans “for ignor­ing the immutabil­i­ty of racial dif­fer­ences.” One con­ser­v­a­tive stat­ed that abo­li­tion­ists “may prat­tle as they wish about the end of slav­ery being the end of strife,” but “the great dif­fi­cul­ty will then begin.” Ulti­mate­ly, the Con­gress appro­pri­at­ed $600,000 for the effort. As one Repub­li­can said, “Col­o­niza­tion is a damn hum­bug. But it will take with the people.”

Sen­a­tor Pomeroy did suc­cess­ful­ly recruit hun­dreds of emi­grants; how­ev­er, this col­o­niza­tion project fell apart with oppo­si­tion of host coun­tries Nicaragua and Honduras.

 North Star–September 6, 1862

 Gen Pope’s Retreat

When Gen. Pope assumed com­mand of the Army of Vir­ginia, he issued a bom­bas­tic address to his sol­diers, one of which is as follows:

“In the mean­time I desire you to dis­miss cer­tain phras­es I am sor­ry to find much in vogue among you. I hear con­stant­ly of tak­ing strong posi­tions and hold­ing them — of lines of retreat and bases of sup­plies. Let us dis­card such ideas. The strongest posi­tion a sol­dier should desire to occu­py is one from which he can most eas­i­ly advance against the ene­my.… Suc­cess and glo­ry are in the advance — dis­or­der and shame lurk in the rear.”

The Gen­er­al who under­takes to con­duct a cam­paign against such offi­cers as lead the rebel armies with­out care for strong posi­tions, lines of retreat and bases of sup­plies there by shows him­self unfit for com­mand. For­tu­nate­ly for Gen. Pope and his brave sol­diers and for that great cause in which they are engaged, he did not act so sense­less­ly as he wrote; … — he cer­tain­ly made good use of those “lines of retreat”… [N.H. Patriot]

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Pope’s retreat marked the Union’s sec­ond defeat at Man­as­sas. Gen­er­al Lee had com­plete­ly turned the tables on the North. Less than a month had passed since McClellan’s Army of the Potomac was twen­ty miles from Rich­mond. But with an army one-half the size of the com­bined forces of Pope and McClel­lan, Lee had orches­trat­ed events to where rebel troops were now with­in twen­ty miles of Wash­ing­ton, DC.

As beat­en Union troops came stream­ing back to Wash­ing­ton, Sec­re­tary of War Stan­ton called out for vol­un­teers to go to the front and help with the wound­ed. Gov­ern­ment employ­ees and oth­ers respond­ed, but a sec­ond deba­cle would fol­low the first. Not only was Pope sound­ly beat­en, but some of the vol­un­teers arrived at the front drunk, where­upon they bribed ambu­lance dri­vers with whiskey to take them back to Wash­ing­ton instead of to the wounded.

The paper also reports on a con­flict between the Ver­mont courts and Fed­er­al author­i­ties over a person’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a speedy trial.

North Star–September 13, 1862

Judge Smalley on Habeas Corpus

We learn from Burling­ton (VT.) Times that an impor­tant deci­sion has just been made by Judge Smal­l­ey, on the writ of habeas cor­pus. The ques­tion arose on a writ issued in the case of Dea­con Anson Field of Jeri­cho, recent­ly arrest­ed by Mar­shal Bald­win for utter­ing trea­son­able lan­guage, and dis­cour­ag­ing enlist­ments. The writ com­mand­ed the Mar­shal to pro­duce in Court the said Field. Between the issue of the writ and the day of the return, the Mar­shal received the fol­low­ing telegram from the War Department.

Wash­ing­ton, Aug 30, 1862

To C. C. P. Bald­win, U.S. Marshal:

Pay no atten­tion to the habeas cor­pus for the lib­er­a­tion of … Field and if any attempt be made to lib­er­ate them from cus­tody, resist it to the utmost, and report the names of all who may attempt it.

By Order of the Sec­re­tary of War

I.G. Turn­er, Judge Advocate

When the case came on for hear­ing, Lieut Gov. Under­wood on behalf of the Sher­iff and Mar­shal made a return stat­ing that the arrest of Field was under the order of Sec­re­tary Stan­ton, relat­ing to dis­cour­ag­ing enlist­ments, dat­ed Aug 8, 1862; and that under the order of the Sec­re­tary of War, sus­pend­ing the writ of habeas cor­pus in such cas­es: and also in con­sid­er­a­tion of the telegram from the War Depart­ment, Messrs [Mar­shal] Bald­win and [Sher­iff] Flana­gan with­out intend­ing any dis­re­spect for the Court declined to pro­duce the body of Field.

Hon. Gen. Edmunds and Wm. G. Shaw coun­sel for Field, argued that this return was not suf­fi­cient and that the refusal to bring him into Court was a con­tempt on the part of the Mar­shal and Sheriff.

Judge Smal­l­ey, then, after stat­ing that Sec­re­tary Stan­ton and his sub­or­di­nates had no pow­er to sus­pend the writ of habeas cor­pus, decid­ed that the return was not in accor­dance with the writ; and that he would give Mar­shal Bald­win and Sher­iff Flana­gan four hours to pro­duce Mr. Field.… Mar­shal and Bald­win declined to pro­duce the prisoner.

This case will bring direct­ly before the Court the ques­tion of the right of Gov­ern­ment to sus­pend the writ of habeas cor­pus when, in its dis­cre­tion, in the cas­es of insur­rec­tion or inva­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty requires it. Judge Taney decid­ed more than a year ago in a sim­i­lar case, that the arrest was ille­gal, but had no pow­er to enforce the writ he only issued a writ­ten protest against the act. And in this case a deci­sion of the Court sim­i­lar to Judge Taney’s would prac­ti­cal­ly amount, doubt­less, to as lit­tle as that decision.

It is, how­ev­er a very impor­tant ques­tion involv­ing as it does the lib­er­ty of the cit­i­zen. There can hard­ly be a more dan­ger­ous pow­er that per­mits a Mar­shal or Sher­iff to arrest, at the plea­sure and with­out process, a peace­able cit­i­zen whose only offence is the utter­ance of what in the Marshal’s judge­ment of a dis­loy­al sen­ti­ments, and if exer­cised at all, it should be with the utmost care against abuse.

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North Star–September 27, 1862

Ninth Vermont Taken Prisoner

For the first time since the com­mence­ment of the war (says the Green Moun­tain Free­man) we are called to chron­i­cle the sur­ren­der of an entire reg­i­ment of Vt. troops — not how­ev­er, from any want of brav­ery in the men or lack of skilled offi­cers. The Vt Ninth were among the troops which sur­ren­dered at Harper’s Fer­ry last Monday.

They had been sta­tioned at Win­ches­ter under Col White… White’s com­mand evac­u­at­ed that place and pro­ceed­ed to Harper’s Fer­ry, where they arrived the next day. They left some eighty sick sol­diers belong­ing to the reg­i­ment at Win­ches­ter in charge of Sur­geon Car­pen­ter, sim­ply because they had no ambu­lances or means of trans­porta­tion to take them off. These sick men were undoubt­ed­ly tak­en pris­on­ers when the rebels occu­pied Winchester.

It does not appear whether the reg­i­ment was or was not seri­ous­ly engaged in the fight, which result­ed in the sur­ren­der of Harper’s Fer­ry… the men had all been paroled by the rebels.

We see it stat­ed that the paroled pris­on­ers of Col Miles are imme­di­ate­ly to be sent North­west, to be used in sup­press­ing the Indi­an out­break. If this be true, we pre­sume the Ver­mont Ninth will go with them to Minnesota.

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A paroled pris­on­er could not fight in Civ­il War bat­tles, thus the chance they would be sent to the North­west. Accord­ing to the Revised Ros­ter of Ver­mont Vol­un­teers in the War of the Rebel­lion, the paroled men were actu­al­ly sent to Chica­go, but under pris­on­er exchange in Jan­u­ary 1863, could once again do battle.