CHAPTER 6

TO THESE BOUNTIES

A white flag flew over the small open boat as it crossed the waters. Rowed by enslaved men, the vessel was headed to Fort Sumter, which sat and sits still in Charleston’s harbor. This was not the boat Major Robert Anderson was hoping for. That ship, the Star of the West, carrying much-needed food and other supplies, already had been detained in this, the January of 1861, by rebel forces, taking fire from both Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island and the Citadel Battery. Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard demanded Major Anderson surrender the fort to his Confederate forces. Anderson refused. Then, on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired from Fort Johnson on the northeast point of James Island in Charleston Harbor. The shots struck the walls of Fort Sumter, occupied by a garrison of United States forces led by Major Anderson.

The battle was a brief, violent, one-sided one. Anderson surrendered the fort the next day, on April 13. The first soldier to lose his life in the Civil War was not actually caught in the line of fire. He was an artilleryman, and a premature cannon discharge took his life. His death was an accident. In perhaps a growing reflection of the evolving character of the nation, the artilleryman was Private Daniel Hough, a recently immigrated Irishman.

James Buchanan did not ultimately turn out to be the kind of president who would lead the country away from internal conflict. His support of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision—which declared that Black people were not citizens, that enslaved people were property, and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories—as well as the decision itself, enraged abolitionists and widened the gulf between North and South. However, Buchanan had been absolutely correct in predicting the challenges his successor would have to face. That man was an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

In his quest for the Republican party nomination, Abraham Lincoln had bested powerful former Whig—and former New York governor—William H. Seward, a U.S. senator. The Whig Party had emerged in the wake of, and in opposition to, President Andrew Jackson and the tyranny they believed he represented. The 1860 election saw four candidates in the increasingly fractured United States: Lincoln, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party, John Bell of the Constitutional Union, and Stephen A. Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party. With their victory in the presidential election, Lincoln and his vice presidential running mate, Hannibal Hamlin, represented the first winning Republican ticket in decades dominated by Whigs. Lincoln had made it clear prior to the election that he opposed the further spread of slavery in the states, even if his own views on what to do once slavery was eradicated were continuing to evolve. Before the election, voters knew where he stood politically. And just a little over a month after Abraham Lincoln’s November 6, 1860, victory, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the United States of America.

The newly elected president appointed his former party foe William H. Seward as his secretary of state. But by the time Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states had already seceded to form the Confederate States of America, and appointed Jefferson Davis, Mexican-American War veteran and plantation owner, as their president. In April, Confederates attacked Fort Sumter and open war was upon the United States. Four more states would join the Confederate States of America before summer was over, bringing the total number of seceded states to eleven.

Sarah Josepha Hale saw the Union she cherished, the one her father had fought for and been injured during the Revolutionary War, come apart. Achieving a different result for her campaign now—a positive one—in the midst of all that was facing the still young and increasingly fragile nation and the president struggling to lead it seemed futile.

Yet Hale was not to be deterred. Somehow the conflict made taking time to pause and come together to give thanks as a nation all the more necessary. The president was besieged politically. Loyalties were splintering, rending communities to shreds, leaving them bristling with more animosity and tension than even during the time of the American Revolution. Now, anger was shattering the bonds of family and friendship, and the nation—not yet a century into its existence—seemed destined for a bloody dismantling.

Hale’s use of press as pulpit had been a convenient, if not always effective, choice for her in her role as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Her success at rallying readers to various causes over the years must have been cheering to some degree. The growing cadre of governors and other leaders who supported her thanksgiving cause was surely satisfying. However, there could be no national holiday without the support of the commander in chief, and this particular commander in chief had a lot on his plate.

Similar to Hale, Lincoln had been, to a great extent, primarily self-educated. An avid reader, he was fond of the words of Edgar Allan Poe and poet-polymath Oliver Wendell Holmes, both of whom Hale had published in her magazines and, over the years, befriended as well. Where Hale supported women’s rights and education but was no suffragette, Lincoln stood against the spread of slavery but was no abolitionist. The editress from New Hampshire and the lawyer from Springfield had never met.

Like other publications, the Lady’s Book was struggling as a result of the nation’s hostilities. Just prior to the outset of the war, the magazine’s circulation had reached its peak of 150,000 individual subscribers, with its pass-along readership far exceeding that number. The magazine was a hot commodity, making its way from parlor to parlor via eager readers who were not able to afford a subscription of their own. Now the publication—which delivered its issues via everything from stagecoach to steamboat—lost a good deal of its subscribers when mail service between the northern and southern states came to an abrupt end, with no immediate solution on the horizon. The disruption curtailed readership as well as those ears sympathetic to Hale’s causes—thanksgiving among them.

As battles sprung up in multiple states, Hale took to her magazine in 1861 to write of a bright spot on her own, hard-fought horizon, one close to her heart: the education of women. One of her passions was gaining a foothold on a national level. “While clouds and darkness overhang the land, we naturally welcome with double pleasure whatever promises permanent good for the future. The founding of an institution like Vassar Female College, in a year like the present, is a peculiarly cheering event,” she noted.

When Hale had heard of brewer Matthew Vassar’s intentions to open a college for women in Poughkeepsie, New York, she wrote him—early and then often—offering advice, making suggestions (welcome or not), and supporting his efforts however she could. She wrote about the school’s developments almost obsessively in the pages of the Lady’s Book. Vassar was to be the second institution in the United States to grant degrees of higher education to women that were on par with those granted at reputable men’s colleges, following very closely behind Elmira College, also in New York State. However, when Hale later received word that the institution would not have women professors on the faculty, she took to the pages once again—to complain. Loudly. She made no bones about her displeasure and let Matthew Vassar know as well. She also took issue with the word female as a modifier in the institution’s name—Vassar Female College. The word appalled her, and since the 1850s she had derided its use in the pages of Godey’s. She likened the use of female when modifying human beings to the manner in which one might describe a farm animal. “What female do you mean?” she later wrote. “Not a female donkey?” She continued, “Then . . . why degrade the feminine sex to the level of animals.” She soon implored Vassar to reconsider the institution’s name, offering “Vassar College for Young Women” as an alternative, which she considered more “dignified.” She ended her letter somewhat sternly: “Pray do not, my good friend, disappoint me.”

Closer to home, Hale’s passion for education had inspired her daughter Josepha to open a school for girls, which she ran from the Philadelphia home she shared with her editor mother. The pair had recently relocated to Rittenhouse Square, and the school along with it.

The Civil War presented other challenges and missed opportunities for Hale in her role as editor. The Lady’s Book, with Louis Godey as its publisher, was already a decidedly apolitical magazine. It remained even more so with the country at war.

Godey—who typically granted Hale a tremendous amount of leeway and free rein in her role as editor—made no bones about keeping politics out of his publication. “I allow no man’s religion to be attacked or sneered at, or the subject of politics to be mentioned in my magazine,” Godey stated at a public dinner and later shared in his back-of-the-book column. “The first is obnoxious to myself and to the latter the ladies object; and it is my business and pleasure to please them, for to them—God bless the fairest portion of his creation—am I indebted for my success.”

There were gentle, measured steps in Hale’s editing of the magazine during the war. She took to the “Editors’ Table” for an extensive, glowing overview of medical pioneer Florence Nightingale’s book, Notes on Nursing. Hale enthusiastically encouraged her readers to buy the book and study it. “Her book is a wonderful monument of the power of truth when set forth by genius in the cause of humanity,” she gushed. “This little volume of eighty pages is one of the most important works ever put forth by woman; and very few medical books, produced by the most eminent men, equal it in usefulness. . . .” However, the magazine missed other opportunities to rally its readership to the growing need for supplies, donations, and volunteers for organizations like the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a civilian-run aid organization (though recognized by the federal government) that lent a hand in hospitals and camps and raised money for food and supplies. The Sanitary Commission and its fundraising fairs, for example, were constantly seeking numbers to strengthen their ranks, and could have benefitted from repeated campaigning plugs in Godey’s.

Hale’s efforts on behalf of her favorite holiday continued, even as the prospect of “union” in the United States seemed ever more hopeless. In small ways, though, she allowed the context of the celebration to necessarily evolve to reflect the trying times. Following her praise of Nightingale in 1860, Hale shared with readers that 1859 had seen thirty states and three territories celebrate thanksgiving on the same day. “This year the last Thursday in November falls on the 29th,” she wrote. “If all the States and Territories held their Thanksgiving on that day there will be a complete moral and social reunion of the people of America in 1860. Would not this be a good omen for the perpetual political union of the States? May God grant us not only the omen, but the fulfilment is our dearest wish!”

And again in 1861, Hale employed similar unifying language: “[A]midst all the agitations that stir the minds of men and cause the hearts of women to tremble . . . Shall we not, then, lay aside our enmities and strifes, and suspend our worldly cares, toils, and pursuits on one day in the year, devoting it to a public Thanksgiving for all the good gifts God has bestowed on us and on all the earth?” She continued, writing of the poor of other countries and the reasons her own nation had to be thankful. She encouraged her fellow citizens “to extend our sympathies beyond the limits of our own country,” and wrote of “[p]eace on earth and good-will among men,” adding that “All nations are members of one brotherhood. . . .”

There was certainly precedent for the holiday in even a divided land, including the South, and even beyond the congressional and presidential proclamations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Movement and migrations within the country had brought some Yankee traditions south, and the religious aspect of thanksgivings was familiar to many. Not twenty-five years prior to the start of the Civil War, Governor Charles Manly of North Carolina proclaimed Thursday the 15th of November “to be observed throughout this State as a day of general Thanksgiving.” The proclamation stated that the General Assembly had directed the governor “for the time being . . . to set apart a day in every year, and to give notice thereof, by Proclamation, as a day of solemn and public thanksgiving . . . and I do recommend and earnestly desire that all secular employments may be suspended during the day.” Georgia’s governor had issued a similar proclamation in 1826. By the 1850s, Ohio was another state supporting Hale’s contention that all states should give thanks on the same day each year.

And on June 13, 1861—shortly after the start of the war—clergyman Thomas Smyth preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Charleston, South Carolina, “on the day of National Fasting, Thanksgiving and Prayer.” The title of his sermon was “The Battle of Fort Sumter: Its Mystery and Miracle: God’s Mastery and Mercy.”

In the fall of 1861, a national celebration was not to be. However, the following year, 1862, though thanksgiving was still not a national celebration, its observance by some at the state level would prove the day to be a fruitful one.

In Boston that November, Lewis Hayden and his wife, Harriet, invited Massachusetts governor John Albion Andrew to dine with them on thanksgiving. Hayden was a former slave and clothing store owner who now worked for the secretary of state’s office. Governor Andrew, an abolitionist, was one of Hayden’s dear friends. The large dinner gathering was at Hayden’s home on what was then Southac Street in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The home was also, thanks to Hayden, a station on the Underground Railroad. Hayden had a topic to broach with his friend that night: Might the president permit Black soldiers in the Union Army? Could Governor Andrew put forth the idea? Andrew told his friend that he would, indeed, ask for permission to form a regiment in his state for Black soldiers. Governor Andrew would also seek to find a spot among the Union forces for another remarkable abolitionist, one who had escaped slavery and then risked life and limb helping others do the same: Harriet Tubman.

As 1863 dawned and the war raged on, Hale wrote a New Year’s editorial in which she hoped for a day that would throw “away the weapons of warfare and ensigns of military strife, so that influences of love and good-will may have room to work . . . [for] concord, prosperity and joy.”

The year started auspiciously. In January 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It stated that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free . . .” This did not free all enslaved people, but rather only those living in states that were rebelling against the Union. Enslaved individuals residing in “loyal” border states were not affected. George E. Fawcett composed “The President’s Emancipation March” in honor of the occasion.

Immediately, the call went out seeking Black men to enlist. Governor Andrew had been true to his word. “I am about to raise a Colored Regiment in Massachusetts,” Andrew wrote. “This I cannot but regard as perhaps the most important corps to be organized during the war.” That thanksgiving dinner of 1862 had helped ensure the creation of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.

“TO COLORED MEN!” read one such recruitment broadside. “FREEDOM, Protection, Pay, and a Call to Military Duty!”

Hayden helped recruit soldiers, and Frederick Douglass rallied the call as well. In spring of that year, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was off to war, consisting of 78 officers and 1,364 enlisted men. Frederick Douglass’s sons Charles and Lewis were among the recruits, Lewis serving as the regiment’s sergeant major. Charles would later transfer to the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry.

Also among those men was Corporal James Henry Gooding, who was a member of the New Bedford Company of the 54th.

“As the time draws near for the departure of the men . . . there is not a sufficient number to form a whole company,” Gooding wrote. “Does it not behoove every colored man in this city to consider, rationally with himself, whether he cannot be one of the glorious 54th? Are the colored men here in New Bedford, who have the advantage of education, so blind to their own interest, in regard to their social development, that through fear of some double dealing, they will not now embrace probably the only opportunity that will ever be offered them to make themselves a people.”

The next day the recruits marched through town, cheered on by a crowd and a band as they made their way to the train station. Upon assembling at city hall for roll call prior to departure, each recruit was given a pair of mittens. Governor Andrew of Massachusetts had also written General David Hunter on behalf of Harriet Tubman. Hunter, a friend of Lincoln’s and brother-in-law of Hale’s daughter Frances, was eager to benefit from Tubman’s knowledge and skill. Within months, Tubman—a Black woman and a civilian—would be instrumental in helping to conceive and execute a raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina. It was a first on numerous, previously inconceivable levels.