Dec 1862–A Resurrected Peninsula Campaign Suffers a Bloody Death

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

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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Mapa-de-la-Batalla-de-Fredericksburg-Guerra-Civil-Estadounidense--13-Diciembre-1862The 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.

Nov 1862–America’s Little Napoleon Meets His Waterloo

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

November 15, 1862 North Star–Removal of Gen. McClellan

General George B McClellan, America's little Napoleon
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
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.

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

By Gary Far­row, Danville VT His­tor­i­cal Society

slaveThe 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.

Raising Israel Randall

Local historian conjectures a life not found in the history book

Lance Com­fort holds the Israel Ran­dall deed that he bought on Ebay.

By Sharon Lakey

The ide­al his­to­ri­an goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: “Lazarus, come forth!” and sets him that was dead for ages, blink­ing and pas­sion­ate, in the sun.”

AUSTIN O’MALLEY, Key­stones of Thought

Lance Comfort’s Lazarus is Israel Ran­dall of North Danville, and his attempt to raise him start­ed with a deed he bought on Ebay.

The deed, a time-weath­ered doc­u­ment, begins with “Know all men by these presents that I Jesse Leav­en­worth of Danville in the Coun­ty of Orange and State of Ver­mont for and in con­sid­er­a­tion of the sum of thir­ty pounds law­ful mon­ey to men in hand paid before the deliv­ery here­of by Israel Ran­dal of Danville…” The deed is dat­ed Novem­ber 30, 1791.

With deed in hand, Lance began his own his­tor­i­cal mys­tery tour with a series of ques­tions that devel­oped into a con­jec­tured under­stand­ing of Israel Randall’s life in Danville. “His­to­ry is writ­ten by the sur­vivors, the win­ners, those who passed their his­to­ry for­ward. If a fam­i­ly didn’t stick around, they do not appear in the his­to­ry book,” said Lance, point­ing to Vil­lage in the Hills a his­to­ry of Danville, Ver­mont that lay on the table in front of us. A quick check of the index in the book shows no Israel Randall.

How­ev­er, Randall’s name does appear once in the book—page 24 on the map that is cap­tioned: “Final divi­sion of land under Danville’s sec­ond char­ter in 1802 fol­low­ing set­tle­ment with New York for ’30,000 rights.’” There, in the tini­est of print, is a plot with­out a num­ber read­ing “200A Israel Ran­dall.” The first town char­ter was grant­ed under New York with the name of Hills­bor­ough; the sec­ond char­ter was grant­ed under Ver­mont with the name Danville. Vil­lage in the Hills describes this con­fus­ing process in detail in chap­ter two. It was a process that Lance believes affect­ed Ran­dall as well as and oth­er ear­li­er set­tlers. Could Ran­dall have set­tled first under the Hills­bor­ough char­ter, then lat­er be made to com­ply with the sec­ond? Lance believes this is likely.

Janet’s new calendar

A Local's Perspective By Sharon Lakey Last year, Janet Carson, one of Danville's excellent photographers, put out her first calendar. For everyone that was lucky enough to get one, they…