Gordon W. Bess–Danville’s oldest man at 92 and climbing
By Sharon Lakey
For photo album, gathered and shared by Linda Bess, Gordon and Gerry’s daughter, click here: Gordon Bess
Gordon learned painting and wallpapering from his father and for many years was seen working on his very tall house on Brainerd Street in Danville.
Gordon Bess is an organized man. He credits this to his twenty-year military career. He was born and raised in Meriden, Connecticut, known as the Silver City. His younger brother, Ronald, was also a military man, joining the Marine Corps and serving during the Korean War. Ronald is still living in Meriden. Gordon’s younger sister, Lois, died in January 2004 at the age of 81.
Desperation over the war effort continued to be one of main themes in the North Star’s reporting and opinion columns. The paper’s commentary also brings its political stripes into clearer focus.
April 4, 1863 North Star, Government Expenses
The Newburyport Herald says our national expenses since this war commenced have been greater than from the origin of the Government down to 1861, a period of seventy-two years. Our whole nation expenses to the time of the rebellion, including the war with England, the Mexican war, and our many Indian wars, were $1,353,785,000: and were the war to cease now no one imagines that our debt would be less than $2,009,000,000 created in less than two years…
Every day since the war began our expenses have increased. Millions are voted by Congress for emancipation purposes, Pacific Railroads, and anything, and everything, and where the limit might be reached, or what will be the end, Heaven only knows.
A recruiting poster for soldiers of African descent
Our New Orleans correspondent confirms the rumors which have been current as to difficulties between the white and black regiments at Ship Island and Baton Rouge in the Department of the Gulf. We see no reason why this state of things should be allowed to spring up. White and black troops should not be brigaded together or stationed together. The Proclamation specified the use to which black troops should be primarily put, when raised, as “garrisoning forts and positions,” and there are forts enough in our hands in the Gulf Department to furnish duty for ten times the number of black troops we have there…
When the sickly weather comes on in the Gulf and on the river, our white soldiers will be glad enough to have this work taken off their hands by the acclimated negroes; and there will be no quarrelling for precedence in the duty.…
We need not doubt that Col. Higginson’s black battalion exhibited all the “fiery energy” which can be claimed for them: but the greater part of the men of the South will require a great deal of discipline and training before their fiery energy can be relied on in the field of battle.
The North Star was not abolitionist. During the War, political positions arose along a continuum. On one end of the spectrum were Radical Abolitionists, who saw slavery as a moral imperative that must triumph at all costs; on the other were the Peace Democrats or Copperheads, who wanted peace with the Confederates at any price. In between were the War Democrats, who rejected the Copperheads faction that controlled the Democratic Party. These War Democrats joined with the Republicans to support the war effort against the South. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in all rebel states, had just taken effect in January. Now in February, the North Star became more explicit about where it stood.
February 21,1863 North Star, What is Radicalism?
The abolitionist, Charles Sumner.
Wendell Phillips defined Radicalism in a late speech at Plymouth Church, when he said: -“Now, I would accept anything on an antislavery basis. I would accept separation. I would accept compromise. I would accept peace, and pay the whole Confederate debt at par on an antislavery basis. On that basis, I have touched the hard path of National existence. I have reached the granite strata, and may begin to build agrarian peace. And until I reach that no chicanery of parties, no ingenuity of compromise, no manner of separation can make any difference. We are in for the war.”
The completed pontoon bridge necessary for troop movement into Fredericksburg .
The events of late fall — early winter had brought the North to a low point. Although the army experienced some success in the West, the war in the Virginia theatre had seen one Northern debacle after another.
Ohio’s Ben Wade, chair of the Congressional Committee looking into Fredericksburg.
The Congress’ Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which was established in 1861 and chaired by Ohio’s Ben Wade, was now looking into the loss at Fredericksburg. Over time the committee had become identified with the Radical Republicans, who were at odds with the administration over the lack of an aggressive war effort.
January 3, 1863 North Star, The Fredericksburg Disaster
The evidence in the report of the committee for investigating the disaster of Fredericksburg fixes definitely the responsibility for the consequences of not crossing the Rappahannock at once. It besides makes revelations that are painful and cannot fail to sink deep into the public mind.
With the armies expected to shut down for the winter, December was anticipated to be a quiet month, but Lincoln had other ideas.
December 20, 1862 North Star–The War
The Battle of Fredericksburg
Our war news this week is of the most exciting character — of a nature calculated to painfully interest the public. Great events have transpired at Fredericksburg. Again have the Union forces met the enemy, have fought severe and bloody engagements, and again has that enemy been found too strongly posted to be overcome… The preliminary shelling and occupation of Fredericksburg by our troops appeared to be a success. So was the crossing of the Rappahannock in the face and eyes of a deadly foe — that was one of the most daring military exploits on record.
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The Federals were slaughtered. One of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War was fought by General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of North Virginia and the Army of the Potomac, now commanded Major General Ambrose E. Burnside. It was waged over five mild days in mid-December. The Union troops initially took Fredericksburg with only token resistance from the Grays. The city had been evacuated prior to the commencement of serious bombardment. The rebels waited and fortified their positions in the Marye’s Heights behind the town.
November 15, 1862 North Star–Removal of Gen. McClellan
General George B McClellan, America’s little Napoleon
The latest military change is the removal of Gen. McClellan from the army of the Potomac, and the appointment of Gen. Burnside in his stead. The order was delivered last week Friday night; and it took the army by surprise. He was relieved of his command and ordered to report himself at Trenton N.J., where his family now is. His last official act was the issuing of an address to his soldiers informing them in a few words that the command had devolved on Gen. Burnside and took affectionate leave of them. He immediately departed for Trenton.
This change will perhaps take many of our readers by surprise. It is claimed to have been a military necessity, which means we suppose that the best good of the army and its future success, required the change. If this is true, and the only motive for removal, no one should complain, for it is no worse for Gen. McClellan to be superseded for these important reasons, than for many other military officers, who have shared the same fate.
Everything should yield to military success and fitness for the place, so far as army appointments are concerned, not withstanding many of these offices have been and still are, conferred as a matter of favoritism, rather than merit. Gen McClellan, we have believed, to be an able General — a man of sterling personal probity, and unwavering loyalty. And while he has, as we believe tried to do his work conscientiously and surely, in meeting the enemy in front, almost from first to last, he has had enemies in his rear, who have tried to thwart his plans and secure his downfall. There have been political, if not personal, plots and counterplots against him and although President Lincoln has not been engaged in them, but has always defended and sustained McClellan, yet his opponents have at last triumphed in his removal, and they are now glorifying the change.
General Burnside replaced McClellan
We sincerely trust, that as a military measure, the removal may prove highly beneficial to the Federal cause and that the gallant General Burnside will secure speedy and brilliant success, and that the noble McClellan, whether he entirely retires from military life or accepts some other command, will live long enough to overcome those political and envious conspirators who have been instrumental in his removal.
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“Plots and counterplots” weren’t the half of it. As evidenced by the Civil War itself, the Republic was fragile, only some 85 years removed from the American Revolution. Today the notion that our military exists to serve civil authority is a bedrock assumption; one hundred and fifty years ago with the nation coming apart at the seams, the boundaries between civilian government and the military weren’t so clear.
A victory on the field of battle gave President Lincoln opportunity to issue a document that would change the nature of the Civil War.
The Union victory at Antietam came at a high price.
Coming a few days after a narrow Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It declared “that all persons held as slaves” within rebel states as of January 1, 1863 “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
Prior to this point, the war had been about quelling the secession of the Southern states and preserving the Union. Now this document, one of the greatest in human history, casts the war in a new light. The Civil War became a moral conflict about human freedom.
A bold gamble, the Proclamation also strengthened the North militarily and politically with the announcement of the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy. By the end of the war almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors served in the armed forces.
Lincoln and his cabinet at the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
As can be seen by the North Star’s editorial, the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation was by no means a clear call.
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.
If you haven’t seen him already, stop by and visit Hollis, the Duck Man, when you see him selling rubber ducky numbers for the first 50-50 Ken-Ducky Derby to be…
