The Jackson County War: now available in paperback

 The University of Alabama Press released The Jackson County War as a paperback this month. It's also still available in hardback, ebook and also an audible version through amazon.   https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817360726/the-jackson-county-war/

Finding and Remembering Benjamin F. Livingston — Slave, Politician, Father to a Murdered Child

[Originally posted at bloodandoranges.com: March 29, 2013] 

A couple of years ago, while googling background on Jackson County politician Benjamin Livingston, I came across an informative internet posting written by Odell Robinson. The Polk County researcher had discovered Livingston’s grave in Bartow’s historical Evergreen cemetery, picture in the featured image above. Robinson sought to direct well-deserved attention to the impressive, but unheralded and forgotten, African American political activist, and businessman.

Benjamin F. Livingston was born in 1841 in slavery. After the war, when Congressional Reconstruction policy was implemented under the guidance of the Freedman’s Bureau, Livingston rose to prominence. Florida’s Governor Harrison Reed appointed Livingston to the board of county commissioners after the state government, reconstituted under Republican rule, was readmitted to the Union in June 1868.

This achievement, however, was soon overshadowed by tragedy.

In late September 1869, Livingston’s two-year-old son Stewart, and presumably his wife Grace, joined a group of women and children on an A.M.E. church picnic excursion. The group was escorted by Constable Calvin Rogers, an African American who had drawn the ire of Jackson County whites for taking his law enforcement role seriously and for having the temerity to arrest white men. An ambush had been set. The intended target was most certainly Rogers, but bumbling assassins botched their mission and instead sent a bullet through the skull of Stewart (as known as “Mack”) Livingston.

Livingston was undaunted by his toddler son’s murder. Determined that white Democratic antagonists not take back the county by intimidation, he prevailed in the bitterly contested 1870 election, winning a seat in the state assembly. He was re-elected twice and served through the spring 1875 session. In 1874, Governor Hart returned Livingston to the Jackson County board of commissioners. He was briefly considered as a potential U.S. senator during assembly deliberations in 1875 and, in a sign of further respect, Florida’s Republican Party sent him as a delegate to the 1876 national convention in Cincinnati.

Livingston’s legislative record was not particularly distinguished, although he had the privilege to vote in favor of Florida’s landmark 1873 Civil Rights bill. He enjoyed a no-show patronage job as a Federal timber agent, courtesy of his friend, Congressman William J. Purman, that drew some scrutiny during a civil service investigation.

An example of Livingston’s political skill in bridging party lines is his appearance on a list of founding shareholders in 1875 of the West Florida Railroad Company together with such disparate political opponents as James McClellan and William D. Barnes. Livingston’s strong Republican connections served him well as he was one of the handful of Jackson County African Americans still holding political office after the Democratic “redemption” in early 1877. He was elected to the Marianna town council and held the federally controlled position of postmaster during the Republican Garfield-Arthur administrations. Livingston was probably the last black public officeholder in Jackson County for a century.

As Odell Robinson recounts, Livingston and his large family – eight children – made their way to Bartow between 1900 and 1910, probably drawn by opportunities presented by the growing phosphate mining industry. He died in Bartow in 1926.

Inspired by Odell Robinson’s reference to a grave in Bartow, the Blood & Oranges field investigation unit set out on a search operation two weekends ago.

We arrived at the historical African American Evergreen Cemetery in Bartow and through the deployment of the remarkable Townsend cemetery analytical software*, soon came across Livingston’s marker which is photographed here. [From Billy — This software consists of Billy simply saying, “Trust me, we’ll find it. Just look around.” And so we did.]

We stood for a moment in silence to remember this remarkable man who, born a slave, persevered through tragedy and an era of violence, rose to statewide office, played the political game with impressive skill, and died an old man and patriarch of a large family in central Florida. An apt epigraph can be found in the Philadelphia Christian Recordernewspaper which described Livingston as “a man who reflects credit upon his race by his upright character and attention to official duty.” Livingston’s grave stone simply says “Father” and “Rock of Ages”

Postscript: unfortunately Mr. Odell Robinson, who marked the trail that led us to Livingston’s grave, passed away in February 2013. An obituary describes Robinson’s curiosity and devotion to history, demonstrated by his prominent role in the Polk County Historical Society.

[Sources for this essay are: Mr. Odell Robinson’s on-line essay at : http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flgatsaa/BFLivingston.htm; Canter Brown Jr.s Florida’s Black Public Officials, and my research files]

 

State of Florida v. B. A. Thrasher (1891): The Murder of Louis Witkovski and the Sensational Trial That Followed

Originally posted at bloodandoranges.com over several posts in 2013 

On Dec. 11, 1889, Louis Witkovski, mayor of Starke, Florida, and sometime Bradford County Commissioner, encountered young attorney Barton Albert Thrasher on a Gainesville street. Later that morning, shortly after the two men entered Thrasher’s office, neighbors heard two gun shots. One passer-by reported finding Thrasher standing on the street, calmly admitting that he had shot Witkovski and that he was going to find the sheriff. Men who entered found Witkovski dead, sitting with his head hanging over the back of a chair with two bullet holes in his face. 

After a prolonged delay, Thrasher was finally put on trial for Witkovski’s murder in February 1891 before the state circuit court at Gainesville. The trial was a sensation and newspapers covered it in detail. Thrasher had retained an all-star team of criminal defense attorneys who argued that Thrasher had acted in self-defense in shooting the one-armed, fifty-year-old man he had invited into his office. No witnesses appeared to exonerate Witkovski. Nevertheless, after three hours of deliberation, the jury exonerated B. A. Thrasher and he walked away a free man.

We’ll explore the stories of each of these men, the woman who linked them, and the sensational trial of Thrasher as reported in regional newspapers. 

What do we know about Louis Witkovski? Census records show that he was born in the Posen district of Prussia in 1838 or 1839. While most Jewish immigrants to the United States before the 1880s were typically described as German, many, like Witkovski came from the Polish regions governed by Prussia. It is not clear when he arrived in the United States.  He appears to have spent some time as a clerk in Savannah but by the summer of 1861 he was living in Alexandria, Rapides Parish, Louisiana. Witkovski listed his occupation as merchant when enrolling in the army, but not appearing in the 1860 census, he may very well have been a transient peddler. Soon after Fort Sumter, Witkovski enlisted and, in early July 1861, he was mustered into Stafford’s Guards, which became Company B the 9th Louisiana Regiment. The 9th, known as the Louisiana Tigers, became one of the most celebrated regiments in the Confederate armies. Witkovski’s service records show that he was present at all the battles of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia until early May, 1863 when, after nearly two years of relentless combat, Witkovski was struck by a shell, or shell fragment, at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Surgeons amputated Witkovski’s left arm at the shoulder and a discharge from the army soon followed.

Immediately after the war, Witkovski could be found in Savannah and various places in Georgia. He married Mary Daniel in Jefferson County, not far from Augusta, and Mary gave birth in 1870 to Benjamin, the first of six children. The couple soon moved to Milledgeville. Although Mary was not Jewish, Louis assumed a leading role in the Jewish community of Milledgeville where he organized a Yom Kippur service for the towns 21 Jewish residents and founded a Jewish Social and Benevolent Society. He was also prominent in the fraternal lodge, the “Order of the Red Men.” Newspaper accounts after his death indicate that he was respected and liked in Georgia. 

At some point in the mid-1870s, Witkovski’s business in Milledgeville suffered and he looked south for a more promising location to open a country store. In mid or late 1877, he moved his family to Starke in Bradford County, Florida where he immediately encountered problems. Witkovski’s initial travails in Starke are described in a long, anonymous account reported in May 1878 in the Jewish South, a regional, ethnic newspaper. The correspondent does not mention Witkovski, or even Starke, by name, but refers to “L. W.” who is identified as a one-armed Confederate veteran and Jewish merchant recently arrived from Georgia.

The Jewish South describes Witkovski as “an Israelite faithful to the teachings of his fathers, a plain, unassuming man, father of an interesting family and a model husband.” The Witkovskis were the only Jews in Bradford County; a Jewish family listed living in Bradford in the 1870 census had apparently departed. The author set the scene upon Witkovski’s arrival. The local store keepers, entirely Christian, “had formed a little ‘ring’ in order to fleece their…brethren systematically, and they grew rich by the extortion practiced upon the unsophisticated planters and freedmen.” The newcomer ignored the ring and “ere long Mr. W. had his hands full of work. His goods were precisely what they were represented to be and 25 per cent cheaper than sold hitherto by the good Christian dealers.” As a result, Witkovski’s “business increased day after day.” But the merchants’ ring soon expressed their displeasure with Witkovski’s conduct. One morning he found a letter marked with a skull and cross bones and signed “K.K.K.” that ordered him to leave within ten days or face the consequences. Witkovski ignored this threat, just as he ignored the ring’s business collusion, and instead “continued in honest dealing, selling goods at legitimate profits, giving honest weight and measure, and returning to colored and ignorant white folks the full amount of change due them, a practice entirely ignored before ” in Starke.

The reporter continued his narrative, alleging that the local tradesman held public meetings to demand that Christians keep away from the “d—d Christkiller.” But Starke’s residents paid as little heed to the ring as Witkovski had. The ring merchants then purchased the house and store rented by Witkovski and evicted his family and shop. Witkovski could not immediately find another lodging or store in Starke. The family instead found shelter with a farmer two miles from town. That same night, Witkovski purchased a lot and lumber to build a house. The merchants then announced that “no one doing work on the Jew’s house would ever receive employment from the other stores.” Nevertheless, Witkovski secured a “very large force of laborers” and nine days later broke ground on “the finest house” in Starke. He re-established his store and “his business visibly grew.“ The newspaper observed that Witkovski “had a hard fight for six months, but he maintained his ground like a man.”

The Jewish South then added a bitter coda to the story. At some point after he weathered the storm of threats, Witkovski visited Savannah and made arrangements to order tobacco for his store from the firm of H. Myers & Bros. Soon Witkovski received a letter (dated March 12, 1878) from the Jewish proprietors of H. Myers & Bros. declining to honor his order because “our trade in your town are so strongly opposed to our selling you goods, and they being very old customers, we feel compelled to oblige them.”

Although Witkovski found enemies among the merchant class of Starke, he was well received by the majority of citizens. Six years after his arrival, WItkovski became a candidate for mayor. One local newspaper decried “the attempt to excite popular prejudice against” Witkovski. But while the Bradford County newspaper insinuated that this prejudice arose from Witkovski’s Judaism, the reporter’s word choice suggests that Witkovski’s foreign origins may also have prompted opposition to his candidacy (Florida Weekly Telegraph in the American Israelite, January 4, 1884). Witkovski prevailed once again and was elected Starke’s mayor in 1883 or 1884 and soon also became a Bradford County Commissioner. He continued to fill the office of mayor until the fateful morning of Dec. 11, 1889.

Who was B.A. Thrasher, the man who shot Louis Witkovski?

Barton Albert Thrasher was born in Troy, Alabama in 1859 to a prominent family. His grandfather, Early Thrasher, was a successful planter in Morgan County, Georgia and owned 55 slaves. B. A.’s father, Barton H. Thrasher, a lawyer, moved the family in 1876 from Atlanta to Gainesville, where he built a large and successful law practice. Barton A. also studied law and graduated in 1881 from Cumberland Law School in Lebanon, Tennessee (now located at Samford Univ. in Birmingham, AL). Thrasher returned to Gainesville where he opened the law firm of Ashby & Thrasher. [Pruett, Our Thrasher Heritage, pp. 141-2; Rerick, Memoirs of Florida, 726.]. In the mid-1880s, Thrasher married Sarah W. Brown, daughter of prominent Gainesville businessman and city father, James B. Brown. For purposes of the story to follow, it is important to note that Thrasher was no stranger to violence. The Alachua County court dockets show that “Albert Thrasher” was indicted for “assault with the intent to commit manslaughter” in 1880. That case was placed on the absentee docket and it’s not clear how it turned out.

The facts about the shooting of Louis Witkovski- the one-armed, Confederate Veteran, German-Jewish immigrant shopkeeper and Bradford Co. politician- by Barton Albert Thrasher, a young attorney who was well-connected in Gainesville, are indisputable.

On the morning of Dec. 11, 1889, Witkovski, encountered Thrasher on a Gainesville street and the two men entered Witkovski’s office. Some minutes later, two gun shots were heard. Thrasher emerged from his office, admitted to passers-by that he shot Witkovski and turned himself into the sheriff, handing over two pistols, one of which Thrasher claimed belonged to Witkovski. Examination of Witkovski’s body found two bullets holes in his face and powder burns on the victim suggested that the shooting took place at very close range. There were no witnesses to the shooting or the conversation between the two men that immediately preceded it. Open and shut?  Not so fast.

At this point, when we venture beyond these few facts to go deeper into the story, we risk losing our path in the dank miasma of a Florida swamp. The accounts available through court documents and newspaper reports reveal a confusing narrative of conspiracy, forged letters, defamation, blackmail, death threats, and erotic obsession, involving Witkovski, Thrasher, and the woman who linked them, Mrs. Annie J. Brown. 

Not much is known about Annie Brown’s early life.  She was born in South Carolina in 1859 or 1860. Next, the 1880 census finds her living in Gainesville married to John M. Brown, a railroad worker, and with a two year old son, Lee. The young couple lived next door to the household of John’s father, Col. James B. Brown, in whose home also lived John’s fourteen-year-old sister, Sarah (later Sarah Thrasher). Col. Brown – the father-in-law of both Annie Brown and Barton A. Thrasher – was a Civil War veteran, and successful livery stable keeper and orange grove planter.

Col. Brown, as he was known, was one of the leading citizens of Gainesville, elected mayor several times (including years corresponding with Witkovski’s term as mayor in nearby Starke), served on the city council, and was a master mason and Presbyterian church elder. [http://genealogytrails.com/fla/alachua/bio1.html].  The elder Brown sounds a lot like Witkovski.

Annie Brown’s circumstances soon changed. By 1885, she was divorced from John Brown and living in Bradford County with her seven year old son as boarders with another couple. The state census taker listed her as a merchant, but by this time she was working for Louis Witkovski.

The cast is a triangle as eccentric as their story: 1) the one-armed veteran, middle-age immigrant shopkeeper and community pillar who is possibly a predator as well as victim; 2) an independent, young, single mother making her way in the business world, whose impeccable image may mask a ruthless, femme fatale; and 3) the enthusiastically protective young lawyer and brother-in-law who is equally at home shooting a man in cold blood and then assassinating his character.

Barton Albert Thrasher readily confessed to killing Witkovski.  At the same time he confessed, however, Thrasher calmly insisted that his shooting Witkovski was justifiable as self-defense. With no evidence or witnesses to support his defense, Thrasher’s contention is shameless and impressive in its audacity. But Thrasher had an ace up his sleeve which he skillfully played. The young trial attorney, whose father was one of the most successful lawyers in the region, well knew the peers who were to sit as jurors delegated with the power to decide whether he would hang or walk. Shrewdly, Thrasher, or his friends, leaked to the public that Thrasher’s reason for killing Witkovski lay not merely in Thrasher’s defense of such a trivial matter as his own life, but also arose from Thrasher’s nobly fulfilling a gentleman’s duty of defending the honor of an offended woman, his wife’s sister-in-law, Annie Brown.

The daylight murder of Starke’s mayor was ghastly enough to catch the attention of newspapers across the region. Then, the identification of the mysterious Mrs. Annie J. Brown, starring in the role as the feminine spark that ignited the deadly confrontation, added the irresistible ingredient of lurid glamour.

The ensuing delay of more than one year between Thasher’s arrest and indictment and then the trial surely encouraged rumor and gossip to swirl amid speculation about the exact nature of Annie Brown’s relationship with each of the married men. By the time of the trial, the defense team’s argument that Thrasher had shot Witkovski based on his belief that Witkovski was about to shoot first, were at most a second-thought as far as the public was concerned. Annie Brown’s appearance and testimony made Florida v. Thrasher a sensation.

Beginning on December 13, 1889, two days after the Witkovski murder, a grand jury hearing was held in Gainesville to decide whether Thrasher should indicted and imprisoned pending trial during a forthcoming circuit court term.  The prosecution explained that Thrasher had confessed to killing Witkovski and evidence showed the shooting was at close range. Such evidence should be sufficient for an indictment. With the hearing public (unlike our grand jury hearings), Thrasher and his defense team decided to establish their defense in the court of public opinion, well in advance of the forthcoming trial, by introducing Mrs. Brown into the story. 

The response of reporters to Annie Brown’s appearance and testimony suggests that the Gainesvlle jury, like the modern reader, was immediately distracted from the simple question of whether B.A. Thrasher should be indicted and convicted for shooting Witkovski in the face at close range while the one-armed, older man sat in a chair in Thrasher’s Gainesville office one Wednesday morning – a shooting to which Thrasher readily confessed.  Instead, all attention was drawn toward the irresistible drama of the young widow and the ambiguous nature of her relationships with both the killer and the victim.

Thrasher’s fate would depend Annie Brown’s ability to divert the jury and public. She succeeded beyond all expectations. 

The defense team’s strategy immediately began paying dividends because Annie Brown’s testimony at the hearing was reported in the regional press in detail. With widespread coverage, prospective jurors for the future murder trial were certain to learn of Brown’s lurid narrative that irreparably defamed Witkovski.

Mrs. Brown testified that she had been employed for about four years by Witkovski and managed the millinery department in his Starke store. Their agreement allowed Mrs. Brown to take home merchandise in lieu, or in partial payment, of her salary. According to Mrs. Brown, Witkovski had requested that they settle accounts in June 1889. Predictably with such an arrangement, a dispute arose between Brown and Witkovski over her pay and the amount of charges on her store account. Brown claimed that they had agreed her pay was $75 per month, but Witkovski insisted it was $50. In addition, Witkovski informed Brown that she owed money, about $200 according to Brown, to the firm to pay for merchandise she had taken.  Brown claimed she repaid about $100 of her debt after borrowing the money from the Thrashers. 

At this point, Brown’s testimony turns ugly. Brown said she told Witkovski she wanted to quit, but Witkovski threatened to “ruin her” if she did. At this time, according to Brown, Witkovski made an “improper proposal.” Brown stated that Witkovski informed her that he would visit her room at 10 o’clock that night. Brown reported that she replied “if you do I will kill you.” She locked her room that night and later a servant handed her a note from Witkovski to “Let the matter rest to-night.”  She returned to work the next day but the matter was not spoken about.  According to Brown, Witkovski never made any other such “improper proposals.” 

Then, Mrs. Brown’s story transitioned from the salacious to utterly bizarre. About two weeks after Witkovski’s ‘improper proposal,” Brown said she quit and left Starke. She traveled to North Carolina and from there wrote to Witkovski to meet her in New York. Why she initiated contact with Witkovski to meet in New York is never explained in the newspaper accounts. When in New York Brown left instructions for Witkovski with the location to find her.  Brown recalled that during their ensuing conversation in New York, Witkovski urged her to return to his employ but she refused. Brown then added the strange detail that Witkovski told her that “his business would go to the devil if she did not return,” but that he did not care because “everything he had was mortgaged.” A different newspaper reporter, however, gave Browns’ account of Witkovski’s words a different spin, suggesting not that Witkovski said his business would go “to the devil” without her presence, but that for all Witkovski cared, his business could go “to the devil” if she refused him. Witkovski returned to Starke and Brown eventually came to Gainesville, arriving on December 5, 1889.

From Brown’s testimony and the newspaper reports of the hearing, it is impossible to know what to make of the relationship between Brown and Witkovski.  Brown worked for Witkovski for four years. The two engaged into frequent correspondence and a number of  letters, some even affectionate, from each addressed to the other were presented at the hearing.  In other letters Witkovski informed Brown that we could have her prosecuted for her conduct but sought instead an amicable settlement. For example, according to the Savannah Morning News, the following letter was found in Witkovski’s pocket the morning he was shot and entered into evidence:

Savannah Morning News, December 14, 1889

In a tantalizing detail, the journalists covering the trial reported that the prosecution presented a letter purportedly written by Brown to Witkovski which Brown insisted was a forgery. Regrettably, we did not know the contents of this letter, or, if Brown is to be believed, why anyone would have gone to the trouble of forging such a letter within days of the murder to impeach Mrs. Brown’s credibility.

Thrasher then made his statement. He claimed that when he met Witkovski in his office, Witkovski asked him to use his influence to get Mrs. Brown to return to his employ. Thrasher refused and offered the opinion that Witkovski was a “damned infernal scoundrel. According to Thrasher, Witkovski then said that he would carry out “threats” against Brown. The exchange rapidly escalated and Thrasher claimed that he told Witkovski “he hoped it would never be necessary to shoot it out.” Witkovski defied Thrasher’s warning against moving his [one] hand toward his pocket. Thrasher’s recollection making his case for self-defense is too good not to quote:

“Witkovski said: ‘Now , it is the time to settle it,” and attempted to raise from his chair, at the same time carrying his right hand behind him. Thrasher says, seeing that he was going to shoot, he slapped [Witkovski] in the face with his hat, and this frustrated him until he [Thrasher] got his own pistol out, and got the first shot. When Witkovski was shot, he fell back in the chair and dropped his pistol.” [Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 15, 1889].  Of course there is no way to verity any of this self-serving prattle, but it does make a great story

The grand jury indicted Thrasher for the murder of Witkovski on Dec. 19, 1889. Reports that Thrasher has been released on bail provoked “great indignation” on the part of Starke citizens who gathered in a large meeting which resolved that “we are more than ever firmly convinced that our mayor, Louis Witkovski, was murdered in cold blood and without shadow of excuse or extenuation.” [Savannah Morning News, Dec. 21, 1889]  If this case wasn’t enough of a circus already, that same night, Thrasher’s attorney, Frank E. Hughes was arrested for contempt of court, arising from allegations of his tampering with the grand jury. Judge Jesse J. Finley fined Hughes $50, which seems later, after Hughes’ guilty plea to have been reduced to $10. Thrasher’s case was continued until the next term. The trial finally got under way with jury selection in early February 1891.

Upon the indictment, Thrasher applied to be released on bail. Florida law in the late 19th century set a high standard for bail in murder cases: the defendant would have to show that the evidence against him was so weak that the judge would have overturned a guilty verdict. Judge Finley – one of Florida’s most respected jurists (as well as a former congressman and Confederate general) – ruled that Thrasher’s claims of self-defense, or “justification,” did not meet this standard and denied bail. Thrasher appealed to Florida’s Supreme Court which found no reason to overturn Finley’s decision. 26 FL S. C. 526 (June 1890). 

Helpfully, the Florida Supreme Court took the opportunity to iterate the standard necessary to win an acquittal on justification (i.e., self defense).  Thrasher faced the burden of convincing the jury “by a preponderance of the evidence.” The traditional, and lesser threshold, of establishing reasonable doubt in a criminal case would not suffice to win acquittal on self-defense grounds. Further, the Supreme Court advised, the “party who seeks and brings on a difficulty cannot avail himself of the rights of self-defense to shield himself from the consequences of killing.” The law certainly did not look to be in Thasher’s favor: if the trial jury were to conclude that Thrasher sought or provoked the encounter with Witkovski that turned violent, the jury would have to convict Thrasher.  

After delays, the trial finally began with jury selection in February 1891 in Alachua County’s impressive new courthouse. Judge Finley, nearly eighty years old, presided. Thrasher was represented by a team of prominent attorneys, including his law partner J. W. Ashby, Robert Wyche Davis (who many years later played a role in Billy Townsend’s Age of Barbarity), Sydney L. Carter, J. N. Liggett and Col. Hugh Miller. One prescient observer remarked that Thrasher was defended by “an array of counsel sufficient to make most any man feel safe of his life.”

On Feb. 16^th, before a “packed courtroom,” B. A. Thrasher waited together with his wife and his mother, whose “pale and sad face excited the sympathy of all present.” [Gainesville Daily Sun, Feb. 15, 1891] The state’s attorney, William H. Wigg, began to build his case. Witnesses testified to seeing Witkovski alive in Gainesville on the morning of Dec. 11, 1889, later hearing gun shots and then finding Witkovski’s corpse in the law office of Ashby & Thrasher, “In an office chair, feet crossed and head thrown back on chair with two bullet holes in the head.” One witness recalled finding Thrasher on the street, within “fifty or sixty yards” of the office, heard him admit to shooting Witkovski and saying he “wanted to see Sheriff Wiengas right away.” Witnesses did not recall Thrasher claiming he shot Witkovski in self-defense. Doctors testified to examining the body and finding one gunshot wound below and to the left of the victim’s left eye, “ranging backward and upward, coming out the head at the junction of the parietal and occipital bones” and a second gunshot hole entering “the lower lip, deflected, fracturing the 2^nd and 3^rd vertebrae.” Daily Sun, Feb. 17, 1891.

The prosecution also introduced into evidence, over the defense’s objection, Thrasher’s statement admitting to the murder made during his preliminary examination back in Dec. 1889. On the morning of the second day of the trial, the state rested its case and Thrasher’s all-star defense team took over. Their first witness, working in an office across the street from Ashby & Thrasher, claimed to have seen through the window a stranger looking over a dead man’s body in Thrasher’s office.

A second defense witness added nothing substantial and the defense quickly abandoned this ineffectual line of argument. At this moment, the defense finally called its star witness: Annie J. Brown.

One wants to imagine the scene as Hollywood film noir. The courtroom is hushed as Mrs. Brown’s name is called and she glides through the swinging doors, strolls defiantly down the center aisle, the click of her heels on the floor echoing in the hushed courtroom, as the packed house stares with mouths agape. (Who plays Mrs. Brown in the movie?) We like to think that the one-time millenary department manager is fashionable dressed and carefully removes a flowered hat and dark veil as she takes the stand.

The defense seized on the opportunity of Mrs. Brown’s testimony to introduce new information to bolster Thrasher’s self-defense claim.  Mrs. Brown testified that she had been employed by Witkovski for four years and left his employ on June 2, 1889. When defense counsel asked the reason she left, the state objected, and Judge Finley sustained the objection. The prosecution next objected to leading questions from the defense about whether in the days before the shooting, Mrs. Brown had communicated to Thrasher “any insults or indignities which had been offered” to Mrs. Brown by Witkovski, and whether within a week before the shooting she had communicated to Thrasher “ any threats made against him” by Witkovski. Brown was allowed to testify that within a week prior to the killing she indeed had communicated to Thrasher certain threats made by Witkovski that he would “take Thrasher’s life or do him serious bodily harm.” None of this crucial, and unverifiable, information was presented by Brown during her testimony at the grand jury proceedings fourteen months earlier. At this dramatic moment, the second day of the trial came to a close.

On the morning of the trial’s third day, Brown returned to the stand. Judge Finley sustained prosecution objections to defense questions asking Brown to state how she came to communicate Witkovski’s alleged threats. Brown then testified that Witkovski had told her that he knew that Thrasher was “her only friend to protect her.” According to Brown, Witkovski warned that he would kill Thrasher if he interfered. Brown concluded her testimony by stating that Witkovski instructed Brown not to elude him again and that “he would not allow anything on earth to stand between them.”

As Annie Brown steps down from the witness stand, the orchestra swells, fainting women are administered smelling salts, children’s ears are released, and flush-faced men swiftly and accurately expectorate an hour’s reserve of chaw into the nearest spittoon.

But the defense was not done. A surprise witness was called: F. S. Kerr, who testified to meeting Witkovski in Starke and again in New York City around Sept. 1, 1889. He also reported meeting separately with Annie Brown in New York. According to Kerr, Witkovski had threatened to harm or take Thrasher’s life if Thrasher prevented him from seeing Annie Brown. Kerr also mentioned that a detective had approached him in New York, but Kerr would not explain himself to the detective whom he considered “as one of a set of scoundrels trying to persecute this woman.”

After testimony that Thrasher had turned in two pistols, including Witkovski’s, to the sheriff, the defense rested its case and began its summation. Col. Liggett insisted on the “right of man to kill another man” when he deemed his life in danger from “overt acts or words on the part of the other in every possible phase.” But Liggett knew what this trial was really about and what the jury was waiting to hear. The attorney then “dwelt with great earnestness and wealth of illustration on the right of man to defend the honor of a woman.” The court’s day ended and, a reporter commented, it was then “universally conceded that the celebrated case” would be decided in Thrasher’s favor. Weekly Sun, Feb. 19, 1891.

On Saturday morning, the prosecution summed up its case. Gamely, the prosecutor attempted to counter Liggett’s dramatic appeal: the state sympathized with the family of the accused while reminding the jury of the “widow and orphans of the deceased,” but also advised the jury that “injured women, the grief of a bereaved family have no place in the jury box.” The prosecution then finally addressed the actual evidence: according to the testimony, Witkovski’s body was found in a position not consistent with drawing a pistol from a sitting position. The one-armed man pulling a pistol from his hip pocket would have moved his body forward, and if shot, should have fallen forward and not back as the witnesses described. In closing, the state instructed the jury that if it did not believe that Witkovski was drawing his pistol when shot, they must convict Thrasher of 1^stdegree murder. Alternatively, if the jurors believed that Witkovski was indeed drawing his gun, they must convict Thrasher of 2^nd degree manslaughter.

The jury retired to deliberate at 11:30 AM. At 2:30 PM, they returned with a verdict of not guilty. There was an “outburst of applause.” Thrasher’s wife, mother and friends embraced him and, “thus end[ed] one of the most celebrated murder cases in the history of Florida.” Weekly Sun, Feb. 26, 1891.

Barton A. Thrasher went on to a long and distinguished career as an attorney. In the supreme irony, Thrasher was appointed judge of Florida’s eighth judicial circuit in 1920, twenty-nine years after he was tried for murder in the same court. Judge Thrasher died in 1929 at the age of sixty-nine and is buried in Gainesville’s Evergreen cemetery.

Barton A. Thrasher never truly stood trial for murdering Louis Witkovski. Instead, the defense team skillfully used the sensational of Annie Brown’s testimony to turn the trial into an assassination of the character of Louis Witkovski. The victim had no opportunity to rebut and defend his name against degrading slander. 

Theories:

1. Everything is true: We’ll assume the complete credibility of Thrasher and Brown: Witkovski, the middle-aged storekeeper, married, father of six, pillar of the community, disabled Confederate veteran, became erotically obsessed with his employee, Mrs. Brown, whom he falsely accused of stealing from the store. He stalked her, confronting  her in New York. Mrs. Brown sought protection from her brother-in-law. Witkovski told Brown he would kill Thrasher if he intervened. The morning the two men met, Thrasher was justified in fearing for his life and shot Witkovski in self-defense.

2. It’s all contrived slander: For this scenario, we’ll consider Thrasher a thug and Brown as devious and ready to perjure herself to save her brother-in-law from the gallows. Brown was indeed stealing from Witkovski’s store by over-running her store account with no intention to fully repay. When Witkovski demanded his money back, Brown ran to Thrasher (who may have more than just a protective family connection to Brown) and distracted attention from her theft by falsely accusing Witkovski of sexual harassment. Thrasher, hypersensitive to Witkovski’s ungentlemanly insult to Brown’s feminine honor or even jealous, casually murdered a blameless man and got off free.

3. Somewhere in the middle: The fifty year old, one-armed shopkeeper and thirty year old divorcee had more than simply a professional relationship. An honest misunderstanding over Brown’s pay and store credit ensued as Brown lost track of her expenditures. Their relationship fractured, but the two still continued to correspond and meet, including the trip to New York. Perhaps this relationship was common knowledge and came to the attention of Brown’s influential in-laws who felt the family honor tarnished. Or maybe Brown simply asked that her attorney brother-in-law intercede to help resolve the financial dispute with Witkovski with whom some sort of relationship continued. Brown, however, did not count on Thrasher acting like a psychopathic lunatic. With Witkovski dead, she made the decision to cooperate in covering up the crime to redeem the Brown family’s reputation and spare her sister-in-law an early widowhood.

Yet, none of their theories would have mattered had the jury not nullified the law and imposed its own sense of justice. Faced with the allegedly impugned honor of a woman, the jury relied on completely unverifiable evidence to ignore the high standard that Florida’s supreme court established to acquit based on a self-defense argument. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the jury every seriously thought that Thrasher feared that Witkovski would take his life: no motive was established for Witkovski to want to kill Thrasher and then to threaten Thrasher in such a way to justify Thrasher preemptively shooting Witkovski in the face. The jury chose to vindicate Thrasher’s  vigilante justice that punished Witkovski for trespassing the social code through his involvement with Annie Brown. 

The above accounts are drawn from detailed newspaper reports. The Alachua County Clerk’s office cannot find the actual trial transcript.

 Florida v. Thrasher, Jurors: 1. OG Barker, 2. CR Holder, 3. WJ Matthews, 4. WR Carter, 5. WP Barr, 6. John R. Dowd, 7. JZ Fletner, 8. WE Johnson, 9. Jas M. Graham, 10. FW Cole, 11. RA Coulter, 12. Lawrence Davis

 

 

The Lazy Redeemer: Paul Ortiz tackles William Watson Davis and the Mythmaker’s Myopia

[Originally posted at bloodandoranges.com: March 4, 2014] 

Anyone with a passing interest in Civil War and Reconstruction-era Florida soon runs into William Watson Davis’s Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida (“CW&RF”).

Davis’s monumental tome and John Wallace’s Carpetbag Rule in Florida are the Scylla and Charybdis of Florida’s nineteenth century historiography: two inescapable and treacherous dangers that the contemporary researcher must confront and eventually navigate.

By 2014, one might have expected that Davis’s gargantuan book (778 pages!) with its antiquated style would be relegated to the libraries of the handful of Dunning School scholars and Floridiana collectors. Davis, however, is possibly more influential than ever. The simple reason for Davis’s relevancy is that CW&RF is fully and freely available and searchable on Google books.

In the most alarming of ironies, the great “revisionist’ works of Florida history that take on and take down Davis (Richardson’s The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, Shofner’s Nor is it Over Yet, Brown’s Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, and Ortiz’s Emancipation Betrayed) are not readily accessible to the curious non-academic reader. Meanwhile, that same reader can’t help but stumble across CW&RT online.

I imagine with horror thousands of history essays churned out by Florida middle school students relying entirely on CW&RF after research and cut & paste courtesy of Google.

Another reason for CW&RF’s survival is the fact that Davis is an engaging and provocative writer. Davis certainly grew up reading Gibbon and the great historian stylists of the past. Like them, Davis seamlessly interspersed sharp opinions, often deliberately provocative, and entertaining asides into a linear narrative not burdened with theory or, for that matter, historiography.

CW&RT was an impressive achievement for an author still in his 20s.

Shofner’s Nor is it Over Yet is a masterpiece that will not be supplanted in the academic world anytime soon. But Shofner’s magnum opus is not as intellectually accessible or nearly as entertaining to read as Davis’s CW&RF.

All this is to say that Dr. Paul Ortiz’s impressive and inventive essay about a creaky old history book released in 1913 could not be timelier.

Ortiz, of course, is one of the pre-eminent academics working in post-Civil War Florida history. He is uniquely qualified to comment on Davis. The esteem Ortiz holds among his colleagues is attested to by his selection to contribute the Davis piece to The Dunning School: Historians, Race and the Meaning of Reconstruction, a collection of essays by prominent Reconstruction scholars released in late 2013 by the University of Kentucky Press.

Ortiz starts by describing the nearly universal acclaim received by CW&RF upon its 1913 publication and the place of honor it held for more than one half century.

Davis’ grip over Florida history was so firm and his influence so complete that, as Ortiz, points out, CW&RF was not only a “product of its times,” but also “helped to shape those times.”

Ortiz then places Davis in the context of those times: investigating Davis’s biography and quoting letters that describe Davis’s youth in rural Alabama in the 1890s, precisely when Jim Crow legislation across the South relegated African Americans to society’s furthest margins as a legal underclass.

Davis’ first published essay, discussing the Deep South lumber industry that enriched his father, plainly reveals that the young Davis fully embraced the prejudices of his time and place toward African Americans.

But Davis was no rube: he excelled at Auburn and then in the graduate history program at Columbia — where he became a favored student of William Dunning. Davis later studied at the Sorbonne before taking up the position of professor of history at the University of Kansas where he taught for decades.

In his discussion of CW&RF, Ortiz starts by conceding Davis’s alleged strengths, where Ortiz goes a bit astray. In an otherwise impressive essay, Ortiz is at his weakest in trying to make a case for Davis’s Civil War narrative.

It is surprising that Ortiz gives Davis as much credit as he does. I disagree entirely with Ortiz’s assertion that Davis’s “use of existing sources is impressive.” One can track the footnotes for entire major sections and find that Davis cites only one or two primary sources.

For example, in the section that Ortiz commends where Davis discusses slavery as a casus belli for the Civil War (pp. 36-46), Davis noted only two newspapers as primary sources.

Similarly, the pages that address the Reconstruction era violence in Jackson County (pp. 567-578, 582-83) rely almost exclusively on the Congressional KKK Hearings of 1872 as a documented source. Davis makes his use of this one source even more problematic when, as Ortiz points out, Davis ignores testimony by blacks contained in the report.

This reader is particularly dismayed that Ortiz falls for Davis’s insinuation that the financial machinations of David Yulee led to war.

While it is possible –- as Davis contends — that Yulee cynically promoted secession as a ploy to escape railroad company debt, Davis offered nothing substantive to support this smear.

Just as Davis could only see blacks through the prejudices of his time, it should at least be considered that Davis’s accusation of war profiteering by Florida’s Jewish senator and railroad developer reflected similar chauvinism.

Ortiz gets on a much stronger and convincing track when he arrives at Reconstruction and addresses Davis’ pervasive bias against African Americans. Ortiz exposes how prejudice forced Davis to contort his logic and contradict himself. While Ortiz went out of his way to find value in Davis’s Civil War narrative, he finds nothing to redeem Davis’s account of the Reconstruction era. As Ortiz astutely points out, Davis’s argument underlying this half of the long book -– that radical reconstruction damaged Florida –- relies on the entirely erroneous premises that Florida’s “carpetbagger” government was radical and that blacks dominated state government.

CW&RT takes on a different connotation when viewed in light of recent work on historical memory. Ortiz alludes to this when pointing out how Davis “relied heavily on interviews with surviving protagonists of Reconstruction.”

Davis concedes his reliance on oral history in his preface when he lists his interviewees. A number of these individuals –- apparently all Southern whites — were well known.

For example, for Jackson County background, Davis interviewed, among others, Mrs. Fanny Bryan Chapman, the Milton family, and “Thomas” Barnes. This Barnes, as Davis concedes later in the text, was probably Joseph B. Barnes (a son of Thomas Barnes) who Davis describes as having been “young Conservative Regulator” (p. 573).

Barnes was likely the source of much of Davis’s “insider” knowledge about the Jackson County War.

Mrs. Chapman was in fact one of the heroic resisters during the height of violence in 1869, but by 1913 the outspoken and independent octogenarian was penning nostalgic essays about ante-bellum life for the UDC and other publications.

David’s interview of Senator William Milton, the grandson of Florida’s wartime governor John Milton and son of Marianna mayor and Regulator-sympathizer William Milton, reminds us of the past’s ability to roil the future, especially in Florida, where the past is largely unknown.

At the time of the Davis-Milton interview, Milton was helping craft the legislation that brought the boys reform institution –- later known as the infamous Dozier school –- to Jackson County.

Just as Davis ignored primary sources that challenged his world view, Davis did not bother with interviewees who might question his predetermined narrative.

For example, in an act of unforgiveable historical malpractice, Davis neglected to interview “carpetbagger” Congressman William J. Purman. Davis makes Purman one of the villains of his work without bothering to talk to him or to his wife, Jackson County’s Leadora Finalyson. Both were alive and well and living in Washington D.C.

Davis also could have easily tracked down African-American journalist and editor T. Thomas Fortune, who frequently wrote about his Reconstruction-era Florida childhood in Jackson County, Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Fortune was living and writing in Harlem while Davis worked on his dissertation a few city blocks away at Morningside Heights. This illustrates Davis’ bewildering failure of initiative and lack of historical curiosity.

CW&RT starts to make more sense when considered as a fusion of Davis’s selective use of primary sources with oral testimony. Ortiz’s emphasis on understanding the context of Davis’ emergence from the Jim Crow South takes on additional significance when considering that Davis’s elderly white interviewees’ memories were similarly shaped by the “victory” of white redemption, reflexive disdain for black capabilities, and an instinctive rationalization of the Regulators’ brutal tactics.

Imbued with the stories of Reconstruction heard during his 1890s youth, Davis found the corroboration he sought in the tales of aged white Southerners remembering their daring feats during dreadful nights four decades earlier.

While CW&RT has limited worth as an accurate account of history, it does indeed possess great value as a powerful reflection of white academic and popular consensus in 1913 about the events of Reconstruction. Within two years, The Birth of a Nation was released the second “revival” Klan launched.  

In another of those unfortunate ironies, Ortiz’s important essay will be locked away in an expensive university press book ($36 on amazon!) and will receive little public exposure.

CW&RF, on the other hand, free from the limitations imposed by copyright and publishers, will continue to influence the curious public. If it were up to this reader, every google click on CW&RT will first be redirected to Paul Ortiz’s “The Not So Strange Career of William Watson Davis’s ‘The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida.’”

 

Longstreet’s Last Laugh: Civil War Narratives, Robert E. Lee, and the “blood was up” idiom

[Originally posted at bloodandoranges.com, March 25, 2015]

Warning: this essay has nothing to do with Florida.

“Longstreet used to say that when [Lee’s] blood was up, there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You just had to hope he would calm down.” Shelby Foote, interviewed by John Carr, 1970, in ed. William C. Carter, Conversations with Shelby Foote (1989), p. 42

 

“[Lee] was confident, excited, the blood was up. He thought the army could do anything.”
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974), p. 281.

 

“After studying the Union position on the morning of July 2, Longstreet concluded that an attack had little chance of success. He urged Lee to move South (toward Washington) and find some good defensive terrain…. But Lee’s blood was up. He rejected the advice.” James McPherson, Hallowed Ground (2003), p 63.

When reading about the Civil War, especially popular biographies and narratives of battles and campaigns, you’ll find that writers reliably deploy a battery of colorful phrases and quotations. Regular readers anticipate the appearance of their favorites. For example, any narrative of naval exploits will include Admiral David Farragut’s defiant declaration “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Writing about General John Bell Hood inevitably prompts repetition of Robert E. Lee’s sardonic observation that Hood was “too much of a lion and not enough of a fox.” Authors alluding to Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking will resort to Abraham Lincoln’s wry request for Grant’s brand of whiskey so he could “send a barrel of it to my other generals.” The fact that none of these quotations can be verified as having been uttered by the alleged speaker does not stop writers from routinely repeating them.

One expression that I’ve come across over and over is the idiom “blood was up” in connection with Robert E. Lee’s decision to assume the offensive at Gettysburg. Some quick googling shows that use of “blood was up” to describe Lee is widespread, but that the origin of this phrase is not clear. Some authors credit the quote to General James Longstreet, and some even give citations; most, however, use the phrase without attribution. I raised the question of the origin of Lee’s “blood was up” at the http://www.civilwartalk.com message board: the knowledgeable members were well aware of the phrase but not sure about its source. Some just assumed that it originated with Longstreet; others thought its origin story apocryphal. This essay is recounts my subsequent investigation into the use of “blood was up” in association with Lee at Gettysburg.

 

Robert E. Lee’s decision to go on the offensive on the second day of the Gettysburg is one of the most dramatic and critical moments in the Civil War. Despite terrain, numbers, and deployment favoring staying on the defensive, Lee ordered his generals to attack. Ever since the battle, soldiers and scholars have tried to understand, explain, endorse, condemn or excuse Lee’s fateful choice.[1]Immediately upon Lee’s death in 1870, his admirers vigorously defended their hero’s performance at Gettysburg and identified a scapegoat for the ensuing catastrophe: Confederate corps commander General James Longstreet. Since Lee was the Lost Cause’s paramount and infallible hero, only Longstreet’s treachery could explain the debacle. Longstreet, however, lived a long life and defied the growing Lee cult by refusing to take the fall for the loss. In the decades after the war,

Longstreet fought in print to absolve himself of blame and in the process raised questions about the soundness of Lee’s decision to go on the offense, which ran contrary to Longstreet’s advice to fight a tactically defensive battle. Longstreet’s questions about Lee, in turn, provoked angry rebuttals from Lost Cause partisans who could not accept any impeachment of Lee’s judgment.

Delving into the post-war dispute between Longstreet and Lee’s defenders about Gettysburg requires rummaging through an immense, confusing literature of argument and counter-argument. Entire chapters are devoted to the history of assigning blame for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.[2] The duality of this debate has presented an irresistible narrative to writers recounting the dramatic moment of Lee’s decision. While not necessarily adopting Longstreet’s excuses and explanations, some authors embrace Longstreet’s challenge by imagining and describing Lee’s temperament. This approach inevitably leads to the question of whether Lee’s choice was calculated after carefully considering the potential options, or whether Lee’s decision-making was impaired by agitation in the heat of battle and, as a result, defied reason.

 

To address the question about Lee’s state of mind when he determined his army’s fate, contemporary writers have increasingly resorted to the dramatic idiom “blood was up.”[3] While evocative and memorable, this word choice is problematic. Frustratingly ambiguous, “blood was up” repeats the question it is being used to solve: the expression can mean that an individual is excited but still commands logic and reason or it can mean that the actor is unhinged by emotion and acting irrationally. Consequently, two writers employing the same phrase can present radically different appraisals of Lee’s record as a commander: an excited general can inspire his troops, while an irrational leader can sacrifice his soldiers’ lives recklessly. Civil War writers have carelessly used the idiom without recognizing both meanings.

 

First, let’s examine the definition and use of “blood was up.” The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “to have one’s (also the) blood up” as being in a “state of rage, to be in a mood for a fight.” The earliest citation in the OED is from 1576 “Some of them when their bloud is vp, will rashlye and vnaduisedlye attempte any thinge, and not care for any perills.”[4] In ante-bellum America, the expression was in common colloquial use to represent a state of high emotion at a time of conflict, although it was not considered quite proper as a literary idiom for use by refined speakers. For example, in an early story Walt Whitman gave the words to a killer: “ ‘I was never ignorant of the penalty’ answered the criminal, ‘and yet I murdered, for my blood was up.’ ”  

 

In the 1850s, Samuel Northup and Harriet Beecher Stowe each used “blood was up” dramatically to describe the state of mind of a slave – society’s most powerless individual – pushed by outrageous injustice to react with rage. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe’s character Haley, a white slave trader uses the “blood was up” phrase in a manner of speech described by the author to be in “free and easy defiance of Murray’s grammar, and… garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions.” In discussing slave-trading, Haley tells another white man about an incident he once witnessed “I knew a real handsome girl, once, in Orleans, as was entirely ruined by this sort o’ handling. The fellow that was trading for her didn’t want her baby, and she was one of your real high sort, when her blood was up.” Solomon Northup/David Wilson use “blood was up” in Twelve Years A Slave to describe Northup’s state of high agitation when fighting back after being attacked by John Tibeats: “…I placed my foot up on his neck. He was completely in my power. My blood was up. It seemed to course through my veins like fire. In the frenzy of my madness I snatched the whip from his hand.” For these authors, maternal devotion of an enslaved woman about to be separated from her child and the self-defense instincts of a black man threatened with violent death by a white man, do not allow for rational, reaction when their “blood was up.”[5]

 

Civil War soldiers similarly used “blood was up” to describe a high state of emotion or agitation, particularly during combat. A few weeks after Gettysburg, Lt. William Wheeler of the 13^th NY Battery, wrote to his family that a particular combat “exactly suited me, as my blood was up, and I did not like the idea of going back with my Battery. Until nightfall I was hardly out of fire once, and I was raised to the highest pitch of excitement; the danger was so great and so constant that, at last, it took away the sense of danger.” John W. Chase wrote in a letter that his regiment was ready to march “on to the rebels whether they had got orders or not for the Celtic blood was up.” The phrase, however, could be used to comic effect, even within the context of combat. Shortly after the war, a Louisiana soldier recalled with great amusement the “grand spectacle” at the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern when his unit’s African American servant bringing up breakfast to the troops came under fire. “Old Jeff’s frightened horse bolted and followed the charging cavalry. The servant’s “blood was up” as, armed with a coffee pot, he participated in the capture of a Union battery.[6]

 

Other soldiers, however, relied on “blood was up” to describe their emotional state during less lethal situations when adrenaline may have risen high, but rational thought and self-control were certainly possible. Charles Johnson of the 81^st Penn. wrote of a training maneuver when his regiment’s “… blood was up and we were determined to go through the gates of Pluto’s dominions if [the General’s] orders brought us there.” Tasked with administering small pox vaccinations to non-cooperative soldiers at Camp Shaw on the South Carolina coast in early 1864, Thomas Wentworth Higginson reported that his unit’s “ blood was up with hard work and we would have held down Maj. Gen Gillmore commanding department & all his staff upon the wharf & vaccinated them all by main force rather than turn back.”[7]

 

Narratives written shortly after the Civil War, regularly used “blood was up” in connection with famous generals, but not to describe General Lee. Usually, “blood was up” represented an admired attribute in the officer. If these generals were in fact irrational or unreasonable, it was in a positive example of military leadership. In his 1866 history of the war, J. T. Headley wrote that when General Edwin V. Sumner received orders to withdraw immediately after the Battle of Savage Station (White Oak), “he obeyed reluctantly, for his blood was up, and he wished to punish still further the presumptuous foe.” An early Thomas J. Jackson biographer told of an incident in the Valley Campaign when Stonewall’s “blood was up; and he delivered blow after blow from his insulted left wing, with stunning rapidity and regulated fury.” In his 1867 “Lee and His Lieutenants,” E. A. Pollard commented about General Joseph Johnston that “when his blood was up, he fought with matchless rapidity, and struck right and left with the blows of a giant.” Or the phrase might be used in connection with a group of soldiers: a campaign biography of U. S. Grant recounting the famous charge up Missionary Ridge stated that the Union troops’ “blood was up, and it was impossible to restrain them.”[8]

 

If “blood was up” was widely used but not in connection with Robert E. Lee in the decades after the war, how did the phrase become so closely associated with Lee, particularly at Gettysburg? Answering this question takes us back to the emergence of the narrative that Lee’s decision-making in Pennsylvania was shaped, or even distorted, by his excited state of mind. The first well-known example of such speculation came from New York Times war correspondent William Swinton, who wrote of Lee at Gettysburg as “[h]aving, however, gotten a taste of blood in the considerable success of the first day, the Confederate commander seems to have lost that equipoise in which his faculties commonly moved, and he determined to give battle.” As a northern journalist, Swinton would not have observed Lee directly at Gettysburg. Swinton, however, cites a first-hand source for this passage: General James Longstreet.[9]

 

Swinton’s implication that Lee’s excited state of mind compromised his judgment is a serious charge. Longstreet was among Lee’s closest confidants, and conversed several times with Lee during the battle. Do we have evidence that Swinton accurately portrayed Longstreet’s observations of Lee on July 2, 1863? Longstreet did record his impression of Lee’s state of mind that day on a few occasions, but the first such report did not come until 1877. Longstreet’s choice of words in an 1877 newspaper article was quite close in substance to the observation Swinton attributed to Longstreet eleven years earlier. Longstreet wrote that Lee “seemed under a subdued excitement, which occasionally took possession of him when the ‘hunt was up,’ and threatened his superb equipoise.” Later, in the same article Longstreet returned to this idea: “There is no doubt that General Lee, during the crisis of that campaign, lost the matchless equipoise which usually characterized him, and that whatever mistakes were made were not so much matters of deliberate judgment as the impulses of a great mind disturbed by unparalleled conditions. General Lee was thrown from his balance….” And again, only a few months later in another article, Longstreet wrote that at Gettysburg: “General Lee had lost that matchless equipoise that usually characterized him.”  In one later account, Longstreet excluded any questions about the soundness of Lee’s judgment or state of mind. In his 1895 memoir, however, Longstreet resorted to the most shocking language he would use about his former commander and friend: “That he was excited and off his balance was evident on the afternoon of the 1^st, and he labored under that oppression until enough blood was shed to appease him.”[10]

 

By the time Longstreet had started writing about Gettysburg, he was already a pariah among his former Confederate officers and his post-war explanations for Confederate military failure had rendered him a scapegoat for defeat. His Republican politics and cooperation with Reconstruction together with his daring to defy the rapidly growing post-death cult of Lee’s infallibility turned Longstreet’s image into that of Judas betraying the Christ-like Lee. Longstreet cemented his discredited, outsider status by persisting in criticizing Lee’s performance at Gettysburg while praising his own conduct.[11] Lee’s defenders, led by former Confederate officers Jubal Early and William N. Pendleton, launched numerous blistering attacks on Longstreet’s performance at Gettysburg. Longstreet’s maladroit retorts exacerbated the dispute and gave more ammunition to his enemies. As Lost Cause mythology took hold among a Southern public eager to embrace the image of Lee as the embodiment of honor and nobility, few nineteenth and early twentieth century historians would dare risk the backlash sure to arise from giving credence to Longstreet’s derided comments about Lee’s loss of equipoise. By the late nineteenth century, the sanctification of Lee became inextricably intertwined with betrayal by Longstreet.[12]

 

The first prominent use of “blood was up” to describe Lee came in the 1930s in Douglass Southall Freeman’s massive hagiography of Lee. Over the course of his four volume biography, Freeman used some form of the idiom in reference to Lee but always in an admirable, even heroic context, free from the taint of Longstreet’s equipoise comments. For example, when arguing with Jefferson Davis over strategy, “Lee would have answered the President’s question and would have said no more, but now his fighting-blood was up.” Or, when hearing of Jackson’s idea to divide the army at Chancellorsville: “The boldness of the proposal stirred Lee’s fighting blood.” Freeman did quote Longstreet’s statement about Lee being “off his balance” at Gettysburg but only to point out Longstreet’s isolation and to discredit Longstreet. In a list of reasons for the Confederate failure at Gettysburg, Freeman’s fourth reason was the “state of mind of the responsible Confederate commanders.” Primary among these offenders, in Freeman’s opinion, was Longstreet who was “disgruntled because Lee refused to take his advice for a tactical defensive.” Longstreet’s “slow and stubborn mind rendered him incapable of the quick daring and loyal obedience that had characterized Jackson.” For Freeman, Lee was always in control of the situation.[13]

 

Almost at the same time that Freeman was writing his Lee biography, Longstreet’s biographers, H. J. Eckenrode and Bryan Conrad, used “blood was up” to describe Lee in a less heroic sense than their contemporary Freeman. To Eckenrode and Conrad, “blood was up” symbolized Lee’s impulsiveness and represented defiantly aggressive decision-making. To explain Lee’s decision to launch a frontal assault at Malvern Hill, the authors speculated that “…perhaps Lee’s blood was up and he preferred fighting to maneuvering.” Also, at Antietam, although his officers “counseled retreat…. Lee’s blood was up and he was prepared for another day of battle.” The authors, however, did not use the idiom to describe Lee at Gettysburg and did not endorse Longstreet’s charge that Lee had lost his balance or equipoise at that battle.[14]

 

The advent of “blood was up” to describe Lee at Gettysburg coincides with the rehabilitation of Longstreet’s reputation and the concomitant willingness of historians to criticize Lee. Shelby Foote’s massive Civil War narrative trilogy represented the beginning of a pivot in popular history in Longstreet’s favor. In his second volume published in 1963, Foote echoed Freeman in his admiration of Lee and accused Longstreet of sulking and assigned him some responsibility for the outcome, but Foote also portrayed Longstreet as favorably as any popular writer in nearly a century.[15] Foote already enjoyed using “blood was up” in connection with many Confederate commanders, (e.g., A S. Johnston, Van Dorn, Richard Taylor, and William H.T. Walker), but did not use the phrase in connection with Lee at Gettysburg. Foote did quote from Longstreet’s article about Lee being combative “when the hunt was up,” but Foote chose to mollify the impression made by Longstreet by excluding the subsequent comment about Lee’s loss of equipoise. In 1963, Foote was not ready to suggest that Lee’s judgment defied reason or that he acted out of excitability.[16]

Foote’s evolving portrayal of Longstreet and willingness to entertain Longstreet’s criticism of Lee is evident in an interview he gave at the end of the decade. To describe Lee, Foote improvised on Longstreet’s post-war “equipoise” comments, telling the interviewer that “Longstreet used to say that when [Lee’s] blood was up, there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You just had to hope he would calm down.” Then, in the third volume of this trilogy, published in 1974, Foote used “blood was up” twice in recounting incidents when Lee came under Union fire during the Over Land campaign. In one scene, soldiers grabbed Lee’s horse’s reins, trying to pull him away from danger, but Lee’s “blood was up; he did not seem to hear them, or even to know that he and they were no longer in motion.” And later, in a similar incident, Lee was in no mind to retreat to safety. “His blood was up, now as before; anxiety was on him.” Consistent with the 1970 interview, Foote was using “blood was up” in the context of reckless disregard for personal safety, not simply courageous leadership. Foote’s 1970 interview story gained wide and indelible exposure when he repeated his statement about Longstreet saying Lee’s “blood was up” in the 1990 Ken Burns The Civil War documentary [17]

At the same time that Foote released his third volume, an unknown writer published the novel that would decisively reverse the public’s perception of Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg and popularize use of the Lee’s “blood was up” idiom. The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara’s novel about Gettysburg, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975 and slowly gained immense popularity, culminating in the adaptation of the novel into the 1993 movie “Gettysburg.” Shaara’s novel represented the turning-point in the rehabilitation of Longstreet’s popular reputation that Shelby Foote had helped to roll forward. Relying heavily on Longstreet’s memoir, Shaara portrayed Longstreet as one of the novel’s heroes and largely adopted Longstreet’s perspective of the battle and of General Lee. Shaara went further than previous writers by presenting Longstreet’s remarks about Lee’s equipoise as credible, instead of merely self-serving. For example, Shaara echoed Longstreet’s memoir and, coincidentally, Foote’s 1970 interview, when writing that Lee “was confident, excited, the blood was up. He thought the army could do anything.” Shaara’s use of “blood was up” at Gettysburg and Foote’s use of the phrase in his third volume to describe Lee under fire, firmly placed the idiom in the context of describing Lee in moments of unreflective, perhaps irrational, recklessness.[18]

 

After The Killer Angels and Ken Burns’s The Civil War, the use of “blood was up” to describe Lee at Gettysburg quickly spread through popular and scholarly literature, but not necessarily with the meaning that Foote and Shaara attached to that phrase. While before Foote and Shaara, it would have been unusual to describe Lee as impulsive, let alone irrational, “blood was up” subsequently became standard trope to describe Lee at Gettysburg. Some authors, unaware of the origins of the phrase, attributed to Longstreet words he never spoke.[19]

Now, the use of “blood was up” to describe Lee at Gettysburg is so widespread as to have become a cliché of Civil War writing. The history of the phrase is indeed confusing, but that is no excuse for writers to continue lazily to repeat it without verifying its origin or accuracy. To add further complications, these same writers have typically ignored the nuanced, but important, differences in the uses of the idiom. All of this has served to cloud the question that “blood was up” is used by these writers to elucidate: was Lee’s decision at Gettysburg reasonable and reached after careful consideration, or emotional, knee-jerk and even irrational?

Some argue that Lee’s decision on July 2, 1863 doomed the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. After that defeat, Lee’s troops never again invaded nor seriously threatened the North. But while consequential, was the decision unsound? Lee never conceded that his decision at Gettysburg was unreasonable. Leading military historians tend to support the rationality of Lee’s decision, at least when considering the options Lee faced. Gary Gallagher evaluated the decision as a gamble but not “entirely unreasonable.” Mark Grimsley observed that “in Lee’s judgment a continued offensive was the only good option available.” Harry Pfanz wrote that “Lee believed that he had no alternative but to renew the attack as early on the following morning as practicable.”[20]

When considering the rationality of Lee’s Gettysburg decision (at least in Lee’s own mind), Civil War writers’ affection for “blood was up” to describe Lee at Gettysburg is not merely confusing but even misleading. As we have seen, the eyewitness evidence of Lee’s excitability at Gettysburg comes only from Longstreet’s post-war observations about Lee’s loss of equipoise. With the exception of the conversation reported by Swinton (but not quoted), Longstreet’s quotations about Lee’s “equipoise” all arose in the course of his efforts to defend his performance at Gettysburg against accusations from Jubal Early and other Lee cult fortifiers. A century later, Longstreet admirers, specifically Shaara and Longstreet, gave credence to Longstreet’s “equipoise” comments about Lee without referencing the context of the bitter debate that had prompted Longstreet to question Lee’s strategy. Shaara and Foote, both novelists, transformed Longstreet’s awkward “equipoise” remarks into the memorable and dramatic “blood was up” – words that Longstreet never wrote. Previously Longstreet’s reputation was unfairly tarnished, but, in an ironic twist, the widespread embrace of Foote and Shaara’s literary spin on Longstreet’s words has resulted in the equally unjust misrepresentation of Lee’s decision-making at Gettysburg. The time is up for “blood is up.”

 

APPENDIX

Examples of authors writing that Lee’s “blood was up” (chronological order):

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974). p. 281. “[Lee] was confident, excited, the blood was up. He thought the army could do anything.”

Geoffrey Ward, Kenneth Burns, The Civil War (Knopf 1990), p. 225 (quoting Shelby Foote about Lee generally, not specifically Gettsyburg).

David G. Martin, Gettysburg July 1 (Da Capo, 1995) p. 506 “Since Lee’s fighting blood was up, Longstreet decided not to push the matter.” [see ft. 182]

David J. Eicher, The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War (Simon and Schuster 2001 ) p. 542, at Gettys: “Lee would have no part of it, however; as we have seen, his ‘blood was up,’ and he could not bear to break off the engagement and appear to be retreating.”

Roy Blount Jr., Robert E. Lee: A Life (Viking 2003), p. 130 “Evidently [Lee] just got his blood up, as the expression goes.”

James M. McPherson, Hallowed Ground (Crown 2003), p. 63 “But Lee’s blood was up. He rejected the advice.”

Glenn W. LaFantasie, Twilight at Little Round Top: July 2, 1863, the Tide Turns at Gettysburg (Vintage, Random House, 2005), p. 49. “Lee would not leave the field to the Federals; his blood was up, and he was determined to attack the Union lines.”

Paul D. Escott:, Military Necessity: Civil Military Relations in the Confederacy (Praeger, 2006) p. 65 describing Lee generally (not specifically Gettsyburg): “His instinct was to attack whenever ‘his blood was up.’”

Barney Sneiderman, Warriors Seven: Seven American Commanders, Seven Wars, and the Irony of Battle (Casemate 2006), pp. 139, 151 At Malvern Hill (not Gettysburg)

Jeffrey C. Hall, The Stand of the U.S. Army at Gettysburg (Indiana 2009), p. 182, “Perhaps General Lee was even secretly pleased that the plans for another complex pair of flank attacks had to be scrubbed. If his ‘blood was up,’ something more direct was the best way finally to crush the Northern army in the East.”

Newt Gingrich, William Forstchen, Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War   (Macmillan 2010) p. 27 “The battle revealed what Henry knew was perhaps the one weakness of Lee, an aggressiveness that bordered on pure recklessness if his blood was up and he smelled victory.”

Ralph Peters, Cain at Gettysburg (Macmillen 2012), p. 178 Lee: “The old man’s blood was up, it was all too plain.”

Philip Thomas Tucker, Barksdale Charge, The True High Tide of the Confederacy (Casemate 2013), p. 49 Lee “whose fighting blood was up after tasting success on July 1.”

Michael Korda, Clouds of Glory (Harper 2014), p. 42 “And once his blood was up, as General Longstreet complained about Gettysburg, Lee was unsparing of his troops and unshocked by fearful casualties.”

Joseph Wheelan The Bloody Spring (2014) p. 99: at the Wilderness (not Gettysburg): “But Lee’s blood was up and he wasn’t listening. His eyes were focused on the front;” and at the Mule Shoe, p. 205: “Lee’s blood was up” stopping fleeing troops.

 

NOTES:

[1] Historian Gary Gallagher writes that “[n]o aspect of Robert E. Lee’s career has sparked more controversy than his decision to pursue the tactical offensive at Gettysburg.” Gallagher, Lee and His Generals in War and Memory (1998), p. 50.

[2] For detailed description and analysis of Longstreet’s fall in reputation and post-war debate over blame for the loss at Gettysburg, see, Gallagher, Lee and His Generals, pp. 57-8, 68; William G. Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant (1987).

[3] For examples, see the Appendix.

[4] OED:“T. Newton tr. L. Lemnie Touchstone of Complexions i. ii. f. 18,

[5] Walter Whitman, “A Dialogue,” The United States Democratic Review, Nov. 1845, p. 362. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncles Tom’s Cabin (1851), p. 5; Solomon Northup & David Wilson, Twelve Years A Slave (1855), p. 111.

[6] Lieut. William Wheeler (13^th NY Batt.) to Family, July 26, 1863, at http://www.totalgettysburg.com/william-wheeler-letter.htm; John W. Chase letter , Dec. 26, 1861 in Yours for the Union: CW Letters of John W. Chase: 1st MA Light Artillery eds. John S. Collier and Bonnie B. Collier (2004), p. 40; W. H. Tunnard, A Southern Record: The History of the Third Regiment Louisiana Infantry (1866), p. 143 (available at: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/abj7391.0001.001).  See also Arthur L. J. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 (1863), p. 24: “After the Harriet Lane had been captured, she was fired into by the other ships; and Major Smith told me that, his blood being up, he sent the ex-master of the Harriet Lane to Commodore Renshaw, with a message that, unless the firing was stopped, he would massacree the captured crew” (available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20928/20928-h/20928-h.htm).

[7] Charles Johnson, Dec. 20, 1861 in Fred Pelka ed., Civil War Letters of Charles F. Johnson, (2004) p. 67. T. W. Higginson, Feb. 18, 1864 in Christopher Looby, ed., Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters (1999), p. 186. See also an account of the Battle of Shiloh: “Like a whirlwind he followed. His Virginia blood was up.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, May 1864, p. 832.

[8] J. T. Headley, The Great Rebellion: A History of the Civil War in the United States. vol. 1 (1866), pp. 42-43; R. L. Dabney The Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen Thomas J. Jackson (1866), p. 502; Edward A. Pollard, Lee and His Lieutenants (1867), p. 407; Republican National Committee, Life and Services of General U. S. Grant, Conqueror of the Rebellion, and Eighteenth President of the United States (1868), p.75.

[9] William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac 1866 (1866, rev. 1882), p. 340.

[10] See Gallagher, Lee and His Generals, p. 49, n.4 & p. 50, n.5; Longstreet in Philadelphia Weekly Times, Nov. 3, 1877, repr. in James Longstreet, “Lee in Pennsylvania,” The Annals of the War Written by Leading Participants North and South (Phil. 1879), pp. 421, 433; Longstreet “The Mistakes of Gettysburg” (Phila.) Weekly Times, Feb. 23, 1878, also in Annals of the War, p. 619 (available at: https://archive.org/stream/annalsofwar00philrich#page/618/mode/2up/search/equipoise); Longstreet, “Lee’s Right Wing at Gettysburg,” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3, (NY 1884, 1888), pp. 339-41 (available at: https://archive.org/stream/battlesleadersof03john#page/340/mode/2up). An 1879 interview suggests that the word “equipoise” was fixed in Longstreet’s mind. Longstreet stated that Lee’s “great soul rose masterful within him when a crisis or disaster threatened. This tended to disturb his admirable equipoise.” New York Times, July 29, 1879; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, (1895) p. 384. Longstreet, again in his memoir echoed earlier language, writing that: “When the hunt was up, [Lee’s] combativeness was overruling.” Ibid., p. 330. Longstreet had difficulty writing because of wartime injuries and typically turned over drafting of his articles to assistants. It is plausible that the exact word choice may not have originated with him. Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, p. 145. The eleven-year gap, however, between Swinton’s use of equipoise in connection with Lee and Longstreet’s first use of it raises the unanswerable question of whether Swinton heard the word from Longstreet or Longstreet (or his amanuensis) borrowed from Swinton.

[11] See Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, p.111-12; 119, 122, 183.

[12] An early exception comes in the little known narrative by journalist Willis J. Abbot, Battle Fields and Camp Fires (Dodd, Mead & Co. 1890), p. 222. Abbot writes that on Gettysburg’s second day “Lee’s blood was up. The success of the day before, added to the almost uninterrupted series of victories won by his army when opposed to the Army of the Potomac, inspired him with confidence.” Abbot later gave a dispassionate account of Longstreet’s conversation with Lee, but ultimately assigned Longstreet much of the blame for the defeat, pp. 255-56. Abbot’s book, however, seems to be entirely forgotten with no influence over later writers.

[13]Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, (1934-35), vol. II, p. 48; pp. 523-24; vol III, pp. 149, 159. A few years later, Freeman would use “blood was up” to describe Jackson in the Valley. Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol, I (1942), p. 454, and Ewell during the 1^st day of Gettysburg, vol. III (1944), p. 90. Freeman quoted Longstreet’s equipoise comment in Lee’s Lieutenants only to dismiss it immediately, vol. III, p. 575.

[14] H.J. Eckenrode & Bryan Conrad; James Longstreet: Lee’s War Horse (1936), p. 81, 132.

[15] Piston places Longstreet in the context of the anti-Longstreet faction. Instead, Piston reports a brief appearance of a few books with “favorable views of Longstreet” in 1959 and 1960 but none afterward with the exception of Glenn Tucker’s 1968 Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg. Although Piston’s book came out in 1987, he did not mention The Killer Angels in his survey of pro and anti Longstreet literature. Piston, pp. 182-83. I think in the context of Foote’s evolving treatment of Longstreet, his Gettysburg account in Volume II does not belong in the anti-Longstreet camp. In my opinion, the pro-Longstreet books from the late 50s and 60s listed by Piston did not have the same popular resonance as Foote’s trilogy.

[16] Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, vol. II, (1963), p. 480.

[17] Shelby Foote, interviewed by John Carr, 1970, in ed. William C. Carter, Conversations with Shelby Foote (U. Miss. 1989), p. 42; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative History, vol. III, pp. 170, 220. Foote: “The first day’s fighting was so encouraging, and on the second day’s fighting he came within an inch of doing it. And by that time Longstreet said Lee’s blood was up, and Longstreet said when Lee’s blood was up there was no stopping him.” Geoffrey Ward, Kenneth Burns, The Civil War(Knopf 1990), p. 225. The Civil War: A Film by Ken Burns (1990), episode 5, min. 31.

[18] Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974), p. 281.

[19] Paul D. Escott, Military Necessity: Civil Military Relations in the Confederacy (2006), p. 65, describing Lee: “His instinct was to attack whenever ‘his blood was up.’” Barry Sneiderman, Warriors Seven (2006), p. 139: “What Longstreet later wrote about Lee during a later battle – ‘his blood was up’ – is apt here as well.” David J. Eicher, The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War (2001 ) p. 542, at Gettysburg: “Lee would have no part of it, however; as we have seen, his ‘blood was up,’ and he could not bear to break off the engagement and appear to be retreating.” Carl Rollyson, Reading Biography (2004), p. 54: credits Grant for “blood was up” to describe Lee.

[20] For Lee’s brief explanations of his decision at Gettysburg in his own words and as reported by fellow officers,sSee Gallagher, Lee and His Generals, pp. 52-57. For Gallagher’s evaluation, Ibid, 74-76; Mark Grimsley: “Review Essay: The Continuing Battle of Gettysburg” Civil War History, June 2003, pp. 181-187: 183; Harry W. Pfanz, Gettysburg – Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill (1993), pp. 81, 84.