In the Forgotten American series, I've profiled people who were never publicly prominent or were prominent once but now are mostly unknown except perhaps to niche audiences. In each instance they made valuable contributions to our country.
Those profiled:
Nathan B Abbott & Edmund De SmedtE Arnold BertonneauOctavius CattoJohn DickinsonHenry Lafayette DodgeGeorge Sears GreeneGail HalvorsenElbert HubbardJohnnie HutchinsReverdy JohnsonJohn LaurensRalph LazoHelen Dortch LongstreetCumberland Posey Jr & SrOtto Frederick RohwedderElihu RootBayard RustinJuan SeguinHenry Waskow
For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field. The hope of freedom is perhaps the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his present condition. It would be preposterous then to expect him to fight against it with any degree of enthusiasm, therefore we must bind him to our cause by no doubtful bonds; we must leave no possible loop-hole for treachery to creep in. The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a thousand fold more dangerous; therefore when we make soldiers of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also. We can do this more effectually than the North can now do, for we can give the negro not only his own freedom, but that of his wife and child, and can secure it to him in his old home. To do this, we must immediately make his marriage and parental relations sacred in the eyes of the law and forbid their sale. The past legislation of the South concedes that a large free middle class of negro blood, between the master and slave, must sooner or later destroy the institution. If, then, we touch the institution at all, we would do best to make the most of it, and by emancipating the whole race upon reasonable terms, and within such reasonable time as will prepare both races for the change, secure to ourselves all the advantages, and to our enemies all the disadvantages that can arise, both at home and abroad, from such a sacrifice.
- General Patrick Cleburne, Army of the Tennessee, January 2, 1864An earlier installment of Forgotten Americans told the story of John Laurens, a South Carolinian who proposed freeing slaves who enlisted in the Continental Army to fight the British, a proposal rejected three times by his state legislature.
Eighty years later, another Southerner, this time from Arkansas, made an even more radical wartime proposal to emancipate every slave in the Confederacy and it came from Patrick Cleburne, the man considered the best division commander in the Confederacy outside of the Army of Northern Virginia. The proposal, and its reception, illustrated the chasm that existed between what Cleburne thought the Confederacy was fighting for and what, in reality, it was actually fighting for.
(Cleburne)Pat Cleburne was an Irish Protestant immigrant to the U.S. Born in 1828, he enlisted in the British Army, serving as a corporal in the 41st Regiment. In 1849 he purchased his release from the army and came to America with his two brothers and sisters, ending up in Helena, Arkansas where he eventually became a lawyer and co-owner of a local newspaper. When secession came, Cleburne, who was never a slave owner, went with his adoptive state believing wholeheartedly in states rights and that the North was trying to assert its sectional superiority, threatening the liberties of Southerners (one of his brothers who settled in Ohio, joined the Union Army). Perhaps most of all, he was understandably grateful to a community that had accepted him and given him a chance to succeed.
Well regarded by his neighbors and respected for his military experience he was elected Captain of a local militia company and then appointed Colonel of the 15th Arkansas Regiment. By March 1862 he was a Brigadier-General in what later became the Army of the Tennessee, the Confederate force charged with defense of the expanse of the Confederacy running from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. Over the next two years Cleburne led a brigade and then a division in battle after battle; Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge among them. In every battle he gained laurels for the performance of his troops as well as for his personal bravery, resulting in his nickname of "Stonewall of the West" in homage to Stonewall Jackson and to praise from Robert E Lee as "a meteor shining from a clouded sky".
The problem was that in most of the battles the Army of the Tennessee lost despite the efforts of Cleburne and his troops. For some perspective, think about the American League in the 1950s and the relative status of the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Athletics; one was the perennial world champion, the other a doormat and derogatorily considered the "farm team" of the Yankees. The relationship between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Tennessee was similar. Lee's army got the glory, often defeating and always, till the end, at least stalemating the Unionists, while the western army continually took its licks at the hands of a series of Union generals, including U.S. Grant.
Nothing demonstrated both Cleburne's abilities and the incompetence of the leadership of the Army of the Tennessee than the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. The Confederates were besieging the Union Army at Chattanooga. U.S. Grant had devised a plan to lift the siege which involved General Sherman leading an assault on the right of the Confederate line along Tunnel Hill, so-named because of the railroad tunnel running through it. Meanwhile a diversionary attack under General Thomas was to be launched against the center of the Confederate line along the highest part of Missionary Ridge.
Sherman's attack failed despite a 4:1 superiority in numbers due to mishandling of his forces and Cleburne's brilliant leadership in opposing him. Meanwhile, under circumstances that still remain controversial today, General Thomas' troops ascended Missionary Ridge against the main part of the Army of the Tennessee which collapsed, fleeing the scene, and only being saved from total destruction by Cleburne's rearguard action.
By the end of 1863 it was clear, at least to Patrick Cleburne, that the Confederacy was in grave danger of collapse and was simply running out of soldiers (see Civil War Demographics for more background). He'd been talking to a few trusted people about the possibility of freeing the slaves since the spring of 1863, but it was only after the disaster at Missionary Ridge that he finally sat down and worked diligently to proceed a lengthy written proposal.
Cleburne believed that slavery was not the prime reason for secession (for how mistaken he was see Forever Free: Why?). Though he may have been naive in this belief, he clearly gave much thought to laying out a sophisticated argument in support of his proposal which he set forth in a letter that he read to the assembled leadership of the Army of the Tennessee, including its new commander, Joseph E Johnston, on January 2, 1864 in its winter camp in northern Georgia. The proposal was not based on sympathy for the plight of slaves, but rather as a practical solution to the manpower problem faced by the Confederacy. It follows a train of logic to its conclusions, resembling a lawyer's brief sans legal citations. THC urges you to read the entire letter.
He had also taken care to have the letter co-signed by thirteen fellow officers, including three generals and the commanders of regiments from Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas.
Cleburne started by summarizing the dire circumstances:
Through some lack in our system the fruits of our struggles and sacrifices have invariably slipped away from us and left us nothing but long lists of dead and mangled. Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our territory or harassing those of the enemy, we are hemmed in to-day into less than two-thirds of it, and still the enemy menacingly confronts us at every point with superior forces.After spelling out the consequences of defeat he went on to say:
In touching the third cause, the fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse prejudice and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to look at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom.In the final part of his proposal Cleburne raised arguments that, intended or not, called out its recipients to come to grips with what they were really fighting for:
As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the latter — give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself. If we are correct in this assumption it only remains to show how this great national sacrifice is, in all human probabilities, to change the current of success and sweep the invader from our country.
It would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause and place independence above every question of property. The very magnitude of the sacrifice itself, such as no nation has ever voluntarily made before, would appal [sic] our enemies, destroy his spirit and his finances, and fill our hearts with a pride and singleness of purpose which would clothe us with new strength in battle.
It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.In addition to the audacity of the substance of his proposal, in the process Cleburne also challenged two tenets of white Southern belief about slavery; that the slaves were happy in their relationship with their masters and were incapable of demonstrating courage. Cleburne stated directly that slaves were dissatisfied with their status, capable of being brave, courageous soldiers if motivated by freedom and imbued with moral agency:
For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field. The hope of freedom is perhaps the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his present condition.
Most threateningly he advocated not just freeing of those slaves who fought for the Confederacy, but also their families and, carrying his proposal to its logical conclusion, all slaves held under any circumstances.
After Cleburne finished reading the letter, there is no direct account of the reaction of those hearing the proposal for the first time but privately the reaction was different, as Symonds describes. General William B. Bate called it “infamous”, “hideous”, and “objectionable,” and implied that Cleburne was an abolitionist. General James Patton Anderson said that it was “monstrous” and “revolting to Southern sentiment, Southern Pride, and Southern honor.’ General W.H.T. Walker asserted the proposal was nothing less than treason.
General Clement Stevens, speaking to an associate, said that while Cleburne was a "skilled army officer, and true to the Southern cause", he did not have "a proper conception of the Negro, he being foreign born and reared", adding that "if slavery is to be abolished then I take no more interest in our fight. The justification of slavery in the South is the inferiority of the Negro. If we make him a soldier, we concede the whole question."
Symonds describes Cleburne as a "true believer" that the South was fighting for liberty and if forced to chose between it and freeing the slaves, it would free the slaves, so the general was "astonished" at the negative reception to his proposal. Symonds attributes this to his Irish background and relative newness to America. He points out that Cleburne failed to understand that "many Southerners viewed the loss of slavery as virtually synonymous with the loss of their own liberty", going on to observe:
. . . his misunderstanding of the South's emotional and psychological commitment to the peculiar institution marked him unmistakably as an outsider. For all his effort to become fully integrated into the culture of his adopted land, he never fully grasped the complicated role of slavery in Southern society.
Though General Johnson forbade any further discussion, Walker decided to send the proposal to Jefferson Davis, feeling it his duty as a patriot to make the President aware of this treasonous document. Walker asked Cleburne for a copy and he agreed to provide one because he wanted his proposal heard in Richmond. The copy Cleburne provided had one difference from the original, omitting the names of the officers who supported it because Cleburne did not want to expose them to any risk. After President Davis reviewed the proposal, he wrote General Johnston that there must be no further discussion of the proposal and ordered all copies collected and destroyed, including Cleburne's, which was done, though the general continued to speak about it to select people for at least a few months.
Cleburne suffered no direct repercussions in the aftermath, which can be attributed to his reputation as an outstanding commander, with no one doubting his bravery or commitment to the Confederacy. Indeed, President Davis' suppression order, conveyed through Secretary of War Seddon stated, "no doubt or mistrust is for a moment entertained of the patriotic intents of the gallant author of the memorial". Unlike many other general officers, he was not a self-promoter, did not engage in personal feuds, and did not spend time denigrating others in an effort to obtain promotion. Nor did he, with the exception of the January 1864 proposal, ever seek out controversy, so he was well-respected by his peers. And by all accounts, the soldiers in his division loved him.
Six months later, with the war over, Cleburne dead, the few knowledgeable about his proposal keeping their mouths shut, and all copies thought to be destroyed, it looked like no one would ever know anything more about it. But it turned out one copy survived.
Cleburne's chief of staff as division commander was Major Calhoun Benham. Born in Ohio in 1824, the son of Joseph Benham, then the U.S. Attorney for the District of Ohio, Calhoun moved to Kentucky as a young adult, and then joined the U.S. army for the Mexican War, where he served with distinction. In 1849 he joined many other young Americans in going to California, settling in San Francisco. He quickly became prominent in state politics, during the mid-1850s serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of California. Benham was a vocal proponent of slavery and became the friend and ally of David Terry, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, also an ardent pro-slavery politician. Terry lost his bid to be renominated Chief Justice, blaming it on U.S. Senator David Broderick, who also happened to be an abolitionist and had agitated against the party's pro-slavery wing. Amid mutual accusations and slanders the two agreed to a duel which occurred on September 13, 1859, at which Terry shot and killed the Senator; there are also accusations that Terry rigged the pistols used in the duel, at which Calhoun Benham served as Terry's second. When the Civil War began, Benham left California to offer his services to the Confederacy. For Terry, the duel was not his last violent incident. In 1889, Terry assaulted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, who years before had succeeded Terry as Chief Justice in California and with whom Terry had been feuding, the incident ending when Field's bodyguard shot Terry dead.
Benham loyally served Cleburne and the two got along well, but Calhoun was appalled when Cleburne asked him to read a draft of his proposal to free the slaves. After failing to persuade Cleburne to shelve the proposal, he asked for a copy so he could prepare a rebuttal. Cleburne, desiring a full and open discussion, agreed to do so. Benham received a copy and prepared a strong, but respectful, response, which he read at the January 1864 meeting.
After the fall of Atlanta, a discouraged and despondent Benham left the army to go to Mexico. With the end of the war, Benham returned to San Francisco. When he died in 1884, the copy of Cleburne's proposal was found in his belongings. Several years later it was forwarded to a Washington DC office which was collecting Confederate documents and in the 1890s it was published for the first time and that is why the text of the proposal was saved for us.
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