It Happened Here--The Judge's Youngest Brother Visits  

                 

  William Crane was a pillar of the community in Port Jervis, New York in the 1890's. A prominent lawyer, the sobriquet of "judge" had stuck with him though he had served but one year as a temporary judge for Orange County.  In 1891 his brother Stephen came for what would be several extended visits.

 Born in Newark, N.J., Stephen was the youngest of fourteen Crane children.  Four of Stephen's  siblings closest in age to him had died in their infancy so there was a large gap in age between the youngest Crane and his surviving brothers and sisters, who often served more as mentors and parents than peers. His sister Agnes, fifteen years his seniors, was largely responsible for his early upbringing and education, and first stirred his interest in writing and self-expression. The Cranes' father, Rev. Jonathan Townley Crane who became the pastor of the large Drew Methodist Church of Port Jervis was consumed by church business as was his mother in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and various church charities and other church functions. Reverend Crane died suddenly when Stephen was eight.

Stephen's brother Edmund became his caretaker, taking him to Hartwood New York. Later his mother moved to the Methodist community of Ashbury Park, N.J. enrolling him in the Ashbury Park School and two years later Pennington Seminary.  Stephen rebelled against the seminary's strict behavioral code. He  declared he wanted to pursue a military career and prepare for West Point.

Rt.9H Claverack

His family next enrolled him in Claverack College, a combination quasi-military-college preparatory school and junior college, also affiliated with the Methodist church. By now, a teenager in full rebellion, the youngest Crane was at loggerheads with a school administration  that promoted a highly structured classical education, that discounted creativity; one that promoted strict  Methodist behavioral standards.  Though he excelled at military drill and exercises, and participated in literary societies, he hated his courses and would often stay up late (smoking and playing poker),  then sleeping in and

Last surviving building on Claverack College campus*

missing his classes. After two and a half years the young scholar was still a freshman!

The family, being at wit's ends, brother William intervened.  William Crane, who was something of an amateur historian had enchanted young Stephen with stories of the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.  Stephen's Uncle, Wilbur Fisk Peck had been an army surgeon's assistant and had become the head of the Army hospital at Yorktown, though the experience had left him a shattered man and an alcoholic. Stephen carried Uncle Wilbur's sword in military exercises at Claverack.  So it was left to William to express to Stephen a belief that another war was not likely in Stephen's lifetime and consequently, opportunities for military distinction and advancement would be unlikely for someone pursuing a military career.  Much of the Crane family's wealth had come from shares of Pennsylvania coal stock.  Perhaps he should consider a career in mining engineering!

In 1890 Stephen was off to the mining-engineering program at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.  Lafayette, like all of his previous educational experiences was church-rooted--in this case Presbyterian, not Methodist, with bible study and daily chapel attendance required. It featured a fixed four year program, that allowed no elective courses. It didn't take long for Stephen to realize he had probably jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The first semester he took seven courses and failed five of them.  His worst grade was in "Theme Writing"  (a Zero!)  Being an engineering program, students enrolled in it were required to write on assigned technical subjects using specialized jargon.  Stephen wasn't interested.

The realization that her son was not cut out to be a mining engineer led Stephen's mother to seek a place for him at Syracuse University. Because her wayward son had attended Claverack, one of the University's preferred  college preparatory schools, and because Stephen's grand-uncle was Bishop Jesse T. Peck, one of the University's founders, Mrs. Crane pulled some strings and got him admitted with a scholarship.  She even arranged for him to board at the Bishop's widow's residence.  Stephen probably agreed only because Syracuse had a good baseball team;  he was passionate about baseball and an excellent catcher in his own right.  His housing arrangement lasted only a few days before the Bishop's wife and the rebellious, unconventional Crane mutually agreed to part company. While at Lafayette, Stephen had pledged at Delta Upsilon fraternity and soon found lodgings at the DU house on the Syracuse Campus.  There he became something of a leader of his fraternity's rebels, occupying an unused, unheated  cupola in the fraternity house to smoke, play cards and sing bawdy drinking songs, with his new friends.  Crane took courses mainly in history and literature that he thought would interest him, and did not follow a degree program.  As one semester turned into two semesters Stephen spent more and more time writing stories, beginning a novel  Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and often going out into the streets to observe people. By the third semester he failed to register for a single course.   For  a few summers he had worked for his brother Townley as a reporter hustling up leads and stories for him along the Jersey shore summer communities, for Townley's news service that provided copy for several large and small newspapers.  When one of his professors confronted Stephen about his lack of interest in academics, and Stephen confessed he was more interested in writing and journalism, Professor Little offered to try to get him a reporter's job. Stephen started as the Syracuse correspondent for the New York Tribune, and soon he was frequenting the police courts, tenements and red light district of Syracuse.  By the end of his Spring semester Crane would inscribe on the wall of his fraternity house cupola 'Sunset--1891--May--Steph. Crane'.

Summer 1891 would begin a period where Stephen would divide  his time between visiting his brother Edmund, in Hartwood, and camping with family in rural Sullivan county; staying with brother William in Port Jervis; and living a bohemian lifestyle with other artists, on the edge of the Bowery in NY City. There he would continuing gathering material for, and revising and polishing "Maggie."  From his experiences in the country would emerge several short stories, several published at the time and posthumously collected into Stephen Crane:  Sullivan County Tales and Sketches.

After experiencing frustration at getting "Maggie" published**, Crane was at a friend's in New York and considering writing a civil war pulp fiction/action story or novel to get some quick cash.  (A new generation of readers was discovering the civil war  as both a subject of romantic/action fiction, and as a more serious historical object. )  As he poured over a stack of Century Magazines containing a series on "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"*** he realized they all focused on what happened and what their main actors said and did,  not what their participants thought and felt and how they were effected by events.  The germ of the idea for Crane's greatest novel, the one that would make him famous, was born.

Port Jervis would be the source of several of the images and insights that Stephen would be incorporated into his stories and novels.  Orange Square is a small city park, diagonally across from the Drew Methodist Church.  The summer before his father died, Stephen witnessed a catastrophic accident. Two black Civil War veterans of the U.S. Colored Volunteer Heavy Artillery  were readying a cannon for the start of the annual Forth of July celebration.  Suddenly a horrific fireball blew the two artillerymen across the park. One died shortly; the other survived with the features of his face largely blasted away and charred, with but one staring eye intact--a terrible memory for an eight year old boy to carry with him. In 1892 a second incident would occur across from William's house, days before Stephen's return from a sojourn doing correspondent work on the Jersey shore. A black man, falsely  accused of raping a  woman was hanged twice by a mob of some 2000.  William and a few others had tried in vain to stop the hanging.  He had given a deposition at the inquest. Stephen would have learned all about it from his brother, and Tribune articles when he returned. Undoubtedly he participated in many conversations about human nature, prejudice, fear and mob violence. Five years later the emotional freight of these two incidents would appear in Crane's "The Monster".

In 1886 Orange Square received a monument dedicated to Civil War veterans.  It became a focal point for Fourth of July celebrants and veterans, principal among them, veterans of the 124th New York State Volunteer Regiment raised in Sullivan and Orange Counties, nicknamed the "Orange Blossoms".  After Crane had decided to write something about the Civil War he began to frequent the park to talk to veterans about their experiences. They quickly disabused him from any lingering notions of inherent glory in combat he may have had,  but they also galvanized him into returning to William's house to write a first draft of The Red Badge  of Courage.

The Red Badge of Courage would catapult Stephen Crane into literary fame.  His desire to experience life close to the characters he was attempting to create would lead him to a life of hardship and adventure the next few years: sailing with "filibusters" trying to aid the Cuban revolutionaries, being shipwrecked in an open boat, attempting to reach the Greco-Turkish War, reporting on the Spanish American War  and charging up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.  In seven years of writing he would produce five novels, two novellas, two collections of poetry, over 200 stories and sketches and dozens of newspaper reports. But Crane's "strenuous  life" along with heavy smoking would have consequences for the slight-built author.  By the summer of 1900 Crane would be dead of tuberculosis, at age 28.

*For years, a private residence, this building, built in 1869, was  owned by Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin and is up for sale as of 7/1/19--asking price $1.7 million. 
**Popular themes were either of the downtrodden girl with a heart of gold saved by the wealthy hero, or moralistic tales of wanton girls eventually brought down by the wages of sin. "Maggie" was neither of these, but instead a naturalistic unblinking look into life in the Bowery. Eventually, Stephen would self-publish his novella, using his inheritance from his mother's estate. To Crane's great disappointment, it would go largely unnoticed.
***Ulysses Grant contributed  to this series and it would launch him on his life's final project as an autobiographer.  See
NYSHM:  It Happened Here--Ulysses S. Grant on Horses, Smoking, Dying and Determination   7/ 9/18. 

In addition to the usual Wikipedia/ online sources, Paul Sorrentino's Stephen Crane, A Life of Fire. Cambridge, MA. 2014. is readable and multifaceted.


Marker(s) of the Week--   First things First!

Rte. 23, Windham

Sometimes among the first early settlers on the frontier were people of extremely limited resources. For these hearty souls getting their first crops into the ground and harvesting them so they would have food superseded all other needs including building a decent home.  A few NYSHMs suggest to us  the precarious nature of their existence.

Rte. 7, Duanesburg

                                                                 

It Happened Here --Veterans Laid to Rest

Cemetery on Turnpike Rd., Cambridge

                

                                                                 

Across New York there 

are many NYSHMs

marking the graves 

of veterans

 

Encampment outside the walls of Ft. Ticonderoga

Very often on Colonial, Revolutionary or War of 1812, battlefields or encampments these are the only markers; the individual graves are unmarked.

Ft. Pike, Pike Rd., Sackets Harbor

The Graves of some 200 War of 1812 American Soldiers were lost to history until accidentally rediscovered in 1988!

Riceville Cemetery, Riceville Rd. Mayfield

Others are remembered in
cemeteries far from where
they were buried.

                                                                                               

Salem Cemetery, Archibald St., Salem

 Many veterans who survived their battles, and returned to live in their communities and live out their natural lives are remembered in community cemeteries, or in single family plots     

Two Albany Co. Militiamen who
may have served at the battle of
Saratoga lie buried in a plot off
of Creble Rd. near Rte. 9W,                     South Bethlehem

Up until WWI recruits from an area/community
 often served together in one unit. If that unit
came under heavy attack or saw repeated heavy
action it might be decimated.  The result
could be catastrophic for the communities from
which they came, for years to come.  In the Civil War tiny Hartford, NY, in northern Washington County contributed 65 of 134 men enlisted in Company E of the 123 Regiment, New York Volunteers, in one day. Fourteen Hartford men from that company died. If the casualty averages hold for that unit, 2x that number would have suffered wounds and half of them would have resulted in amputations!

With nine others who died in five other units, the men of Hartford might have suffered some 69 casualties, dead and wounded!

It may come as a surprise that New York is also home to one of the larger northern Civil War cemeteries of Confederate veterans. In 1864 Elmira's Camp Rathbun, built to train Union army inductees from central New York, was converted into a prisoner of war camp. Before long, the prison was grossly overcrowded and with appropriations falling behind increased
need, prisoners were reduced to starvation rations. With inadequate housing (some 2000 remained housed in tents well into the New York winter) alarming numbers succumbed to disease. By war's end only the infamous Confederate prison camp,  Andersonville, would see a higher death rate*.

Confederate Graves At Woodlawn National Cemetery

Confederate Monument

Perhaps a single bright spot in this rather dismal episode was the work of one man,  John W. Jones, a former escaped slave charged with burying the 2973 Confederate dead from Elmira Prison.  Jones meticulously buried each veteran, recording the location of each grave and preserving each soldier's identity, so that in later years individual monuments could be erected to the veterans. 

Union graves at
Woodlawn National
Cemetery, Elmira

Church St., Valatie

Throughout New York 
State there are NYSHMs
attesting to the sacrifice
of New York's veterans
and the communities 
they came from.





*A future post will be devoted to "Hellmira".



Next Week--Z. Pratt (Part 2) Farmer, Banker, Soldier, Monument Maker

It Happened Here --The Man who Didn't "Invent" Baseball (but did a lot of other things.)

Abner Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa and moved with his parents at a very early age to Auburn, New York and is most famous for something he probably didn't do. 

Albert Spaulding was a professional baseball  player, manager and baseball executive who founded the National League.  In 1877 he used a glove to protect his pitching hand, then his baseball gloves became a major seller in the A. G. Spaulding Sporting Goods Company, a company he founded that dominated the sporting goods industry. In 1905 he published a book about baseball which featured an article by British-born Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter and early baseball statistician whose "box scores" helped excite interest in the game. Chadwick asserted that baseball grew out of the British games Cricket and "Rounders." Spaulding took offense at Chadwick's article and called for the creation of a commission to determine the "real" origins of the sport.  Albert G. Mills, a former president of the National League headed the Mills Commission.  Spaulding took care to make sure that no one who supported a foreign origins theory of baseball was appointed to the commission, and further revealed his bias to a reporter before the commission released its findings by writing "Our good old American Game must have an American Dad." The commission advertised for anyone who knew anything about the early days of baseball to write the commission. After a year of meager responses, they received a letter from Abner Graves who claimed, as a five year old boy in 1839, he was with a twenty year old Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York when Doubleday took a stick and scratched out in the dirt a diagram for a new game he had created and Graves had helped him set out the bases. On December 30, 1907, citing this letter as evidence, the Mills Commission announced it findings: an American, Abner Doubleday had "invented" baseball*. 

On Front St., Ballston Spa

Spaulding enthusiastically supported the Commission's conclusion, writing about it in his 1911 America's National Game.  In 1936 residents of Cooperstown, trading on the Doubleday/Cooperstown story sought to build a tourist attraction in Cooperstown. In 1939 the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened its doors and soon after, Doubleday Field was named in his honor in Cooperstown.

The Doubleday House in Ballston Spa

 For nearly half a century Doubleday and Cooperstown were largely accepted as the "inventor" and "birthplace" of baseball until a new generation of historians began to scrutinize the evidence, and found it lacking. Abner Graves story had no corroboration. (Graves, later accused of murdering his wife was judged incompetent to stand trial and was sent to an institution for the criminally insane.) Doubleday, himself, never claimed to have created baseball, nor do any of his rather extensive writings mention it. (One acquaintance reported the General actually did not like outdoor recreations.) Mills, coincidentally, was friends with Doubleday, but never claimed to have any personal knowledge of Doubleday's involvement with baseball's origins, though as someone who helped organize Doubleday's funeral in 1893, he probably was asked about Doubleday's personal history. (Mills could, however, attest to the old soldier's character and suitability as a father figure to baseball.)  Finally, historians have documented that Abner Doubleday was in his first year at West Point throughout 1839, and not in Cooperstown. A detailed record of his daily expenditures and underclassman demerits -- (He was an average cadet.) --confirm he was primarily occupied at West Point.

Abner Doubleday graduated from West Point  in1842 to begin a lifelong career in the military. Perhaps because he had shown considerable aptitude in mathematics he was assigned to the 3d U.S. Artillery and served in several coastal batteries.  At the beginning of the Mexican War he was transferred to the 1st Artillery, joining General Zachary Taylor in his invasion launched through Texas. At the Battle of Monterrey he experienced his first bombardment and artillery duel.  Before the events leading up to the Battle of Buena Vista his unit was re-equipped with larger guns, turning it into a "heavy artillery" unit.  Doubleday was tested in a long forced march through the desert heat and mountains that severely tested both men and their artillery trains.

After the war,  Doubleday was assigned to investigate damage claims of an American miner operating in Mexico and discovered they were largely fraudulent. His work on the case opened up for him a secondary career in military justice. A stint at fighting the sub-tropical swamps to build a road near the present day Miami followed, during the 3d Seminole War (1855-1858),  then it was back to coastal artillery duty, up north.

 Had it been different times, a coastal artillery assignment might have been a sedentary, routine job, but the United States was drifting toward Civil War and Doubleday found himself at the epicenter of the coming conflict. Doubleday was sent to Fort Moultrie, a crumbling old fortress that had last seen action in turning back a British expeditionary force in 1776.  It was commanded by Major Robert Anderson, a southerner. In 1861, as the clamor for secession increased,  and states one by one dropped from the Union, U.S. government forts and facilities became a central issues as seceding states demanded they be turned over to them. Fort Moultrie, located on a narrow spit of shifting sand was indefensible from attacks from land so Major Anderson, acting on his own initiative made a decision.  Fort Moultrie was abandoned and the tiny garrison secretly moved into another heretofore unoccupied fort located in the center of Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter. The southern secessionist forces were outraged, and gave Major Anderson an ultimatum--get out or be attacked!  Anderson held firm, and as the world held its breath, the Confederates opened fire. As Southern forces began to pummel Fort Sumter into rubble Anderson could not bring himself to personally fire on his own countrymen and the task fell to Captain Doubleday.  The bombardment, and the Fort's counter-fire continued for several days but in the end it was inevitable Anderson must surrender, and Doubleday became known as the first man to fire against the Confederacy.

As the war grew in scope and ferocity, Doubleday would have many commands, and would advance to the rank of Major General.  In May 1861 he was appointed as a Major in charge of artillery for the 17th Infantry under General Patterson, operating in the Shenandoah Valley;  then as a Brigadier General of Volunteers, commanding a brigade in General McDowell's Corp in February 1862. Doubleday assumed command of his division at the Second Battle of Bull Run when his commander, General Hatch was wounded. He led the division at the Battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg. 

 Doubleday was promoted to Major General of Volunteers, commanding the 3d Division, I Corps 
at Chancellorsville and a few days later took over command of I Corp when General John Reynolds was killed  in the early hours on the first day of the battle for Gettysburg. Doubleday led a stubborn fighting withdrawl through the town of Gettysburg, holding back advance units of the whole Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, preventing a disasterous rout until reinforcements arrived.
Doubleday's 9500 men held off an army of 16,000 rebels and seven of his brigades suffered 35 to 50% casualties. By the next day when his Corp reached a more secure position on Cemetery Ridge a tally of his "effectives" was down to 1/3 his initial force.  Doubleday's conduct should have entitled the General to keep his new position, but his commander, Gen. George Meade, on the basis of old prejudices growing out of the Battle of South Mountain, incomplete and erroneous reports gave permanent command of I Corp to John Newton, a less experienced officer.

Following the battle, and Meade's snub, Doubleday returned to Washington and assumed administrative duties that included commanding Washington's defenses and presiding over the Courts Martial.  Doubleday and his wife Mary became friends with President Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln and were often seen at events together. Doubleday rode with Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg to commemorate the National Cemetery, there.

In August 1865 Doubleday mustered out of the Volunteer Service and returned to the downsized regular army at the rank of Lt. Colonel, assigned to the 35th U.S. Infantry. He was stationed in San Francisco, and became involved in a project to adopt a cablecar system of public transportation to replace the system of horse drawn omnibuses in the hilly town that quickly fatigued and wore out draft animals. The system and innovations that Doubleday's group promoted and patented formed the basis of the system still in use in San Francisco, to this day. (Doubleday's exact role in this project, given that he was still a full-time army officer, is unclear.) 

The Colonel's last military assignment was in 1871 with the 24th U.S. Infantry at Fort McKavett, in charge of a regiment of African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" on the wild Texas frontier. Incidentally, this is the only time any of Doubleday's papers mentions "baseball." Concerned that boredom and poor morale was contributing to high desertion rates, Doubleday wrote his superiors asking that he be allowed to use some surplus base monies to buy "baseball implements." (-not terminology suggesting someone especially familiar with the game!) His request was denied.

The old soldier mustered out in 1873, moving to New York, then to Mendham, New Jersey.  For the next twenty years he was interested in spiritualism and was active in the Theosophical Society.  In 1893 he died and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, located on the former estate of his one-time adversary General Robert E. Lee.




*There were many Doubledays living in and around Cooperstown at this time,  but this Abner Doubleday was not one of them. They included a cousin, also named Abner from Richfield Springs, who was 10 years old in 1839.  If Graves was off by a few years,  perhaps this was the Doubleday who could have laid out the game. (Graves, after all, was recollecting an event from his youth, some 68 years before.)


Next Week--It Happened Here -- "Dallas" on the Hudson ? 

It Happened Here --War Stories

Fortunately, for the people of New York State the American Civil War was fought miles away from New York's borders.  Blood soaked fields and bullet riddled woods and shattered cities were not a part of New York's direct experience. But as the most populous state in the Union,  New York supplied the most soldiers, suffered the most casualties, was home to some of the biggest war industries, and was site of one of the largest prisoner-of-war camps in the North.  New York was profoundly effected by the war. Within a few years monuments to the War's survivors and memorials to its dead would spring up in nearly every city and small town with a park or village green across the State, as they did in Virginia or the Carolinas. And from its onset, the war generated war stories.

The war stories told at the beginning of a conflict, and while it is going on, tend to be different from the war stories told by veterans after the war is over. (And quite different, too, from the author-less rumors that are current throughout a war.) The stories told in the early stages of war tend to laud the patriotism, selflessness, and bravery of our own soldiers while vilifying and emphasizing the cruelty of our enemies. In the Texas Revolt of 1836 such stories gave rise to the cry "Remember the Alamo," and similarly, (with more than a little help from America's jingoistic press) gave resolve to the troopers in 1898 storming San Jan Hill, shouting, "Remember the Maine".

On the other hand, war stories told by veterans are often somewhat different, and told for different reasons, focusing more on the capriciousness of war and the ironies of survival. The horrors of war are shared with other veterans for the cathartic effect sharing them seems to have. Personal recollections of people and events are shared to help old soldiers make sense of them and put them in some kind of historical perspective.

One of the first war stories to come out of the Civil War was the story of Col. Elmer Ellsworth, the first union officer killed in the Civil War.  Elmer Elsworth was born in Malta, New York in Saratoga County in 1837, the same year his father lost his tailor business in the Panic that year and was forced to try to make ends meet by doing odd jobs and peddling pickled oysters, door to door. At age 11 his family moved to Mechanicville. The younger Ellsworth was small in stature and was teased with the nickname "oyster keg" but from an early age he dreamed of military glory and became a student of military tactics and drill.

 At an early age he left home and headed west.  A few years before the beginning of the Civil War, Ellsworth found job as a clerk in a patent lawyers' office, near Chicago. Though he was barely eking out an existence as a clerk, he found time to join a local militia unit, the Cadets of the National Guard.  Local militias, decades removed from the last domestic war (in 1812) had become mainly social organizations like weekend softball leagues or sportsman's clubs. Their training was minimal and arms and equipment mismatched and antiquated..

Around this time Ellsworth met Charles DeVillers, a fencing instructor in a local gym. DeVillers was a veteran of the French Zouaves, a group of exotic colonial regiments based in Algiers known for their dashing appearance and daring precision bayonet tactics. Ellsworth became his eager student and in a few months had transformed himself into an expert fencer, an acrobat and a drill instructor/choreographer. Ellsworth's apparent knowledge and enthusiasm led him to be elected as the unit's major, and Ellsworth set out to transform this doughty, lackadaisical militia into a precision drill team, inspired by the Zouaves. After a few local exhibitions the U.S. Zouave Cadets, as they now styled themselves, became a sensation and were booked on a national tour that  took them to two dozen cities in the north and northeast.  On their next-to-last stop in Springfield, Illinois  Ellsworth met with Abraham Lincoln and secured a job with him as one of his law clerks.* 

County Rte 108, east of the roundabouts, Malta

 Through the summer of 1860 he worked with Lincoln in his office and on his campaign, while
Lincoln kept a low profile. When his employer went to Washington,  Ellsworth went with him; then as the country mobilized for war, he offered an idea. The showman major would raise a regiment of real soldiers by recruiting among New York's firemen, who had shown tremendous enthusiasm for the Zouave Cadets. Lincoln approved and in a short time Ellsworth was Colonel to the 11th Volunteer Regiment, the "Fire Zouaves."

When Virginia seceded from the Union in May 1861, Colonel Ellsworth used his influence with the President to get his unit assigned on the first raid into Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac. Entering the city, he learned another body of attacking troops had secured an agreement with the Rebel forces.  The Union forces would be allowed to occupy the city if the Rebels troops could withdraw peacefully.  Disappointed, Ellsworth reconciled himself to the notion there would be no opportunity for glory that day! Ellsworth had sent his men ahead to occupy the telegraph office when he remembered a large Confederate flag he had passed, flying from a flagpole atop the Marshall House Inn.  Ellsworth had observed it through a telescope from the White House with Lincoln's family and it had become something of a symbol for the President's critics of the President's reluctance to take decisive action. Turning abruptly,  Ellsworth took four soldiers with him and entered the hotel. There he encountered a disheveled James W. Jackson, the proprietor who pretended to be a border who said he knew nothing about the flag.  In fact, Jackson was an ardent secessionist and slaveholder with a penchant for violence.  Ellsworth and his men rushed passed Jackson up the stairs to the roof.  On the way back down Ellsworth, encumbered with the massive flag, ran into Jackson on the second floor landing. Jackson was now armed with a double barrel shotgun and he fired both barrels at the Colonel at extremely close range. Ellsworth died instantly. A second later Corporal Francis E. Brownell shot Jackson in the face and bayoneted him repeatedly.
 

A photograph of a display of Ellsworth relics exhibited at a U. S. Sanitary Commission benefit (predecessor of the Red Cross) in 1863. Throughout the war Ellsworth memorabilia were used for this purpose and for recruiting, and often featured the bloodstained coat and shirt Ellsworth wore when he was shot.
After the War, the Democratic Party complained Republicans used the Democrats mixed support of the War to link them with the Rebels, and condemn them as "the Party of Secession" a tactic they called "waving the Bloody Shirt" (picture on display at the NYS Military Museum, Saratoga)

 Coat of Col. Ellsworth--Cleaned of Blood when it was conserved, it still shows the fatal damage from Jackson's shotgun blast. Not until 1862, after several friendly fire incidents were all Union troops required to wear blue. (on display at NYS Military Museum, Saratoga)



Within hours, news of the incident was telegraphed to every state in the North. Ellsworth's body was taken to lay in state at the White House. Lincoln was devastated. "My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?"he was heard to murmur.  The funeral was delayed by the thousands that trooped past the body as it lay in state in the East Room. A large military parade accompanied the hearse which brought the body to a special funeral train that would take the Colonel's remains to New York City where tens of thousands more would view the coffin, on its way to Mechanicville. A focal point of that parade to the train station in Washington would be Corporal Brownell who marched with the captured Confederate flag impaled on his bayonet**. The story of Ellsworth's death created a new national martyr. Only a 24 hour Zouave guard prevented the Confederate flag from being cut up into thousands of relics for private veneration. A floodgate holding back the rising antipathy toward the South seemed to have burst. In May Lincoln asked for 42,000 more volunteers. Within a few weeks, fueled by news of the attack on Fort Sumter and the story of Ellsworth's death, five times that number had enlisted.

NYS Rte 32, Mechanicville

                                                                  
                                                                         ---------------

Corporal James Tanner's military career came to an end on August 30,  1862.  He had enlisted when he was 17 in the New York 87th Volunteer Infantry and fought through the long arduous Peninsular
Campaign in the battles of Fair Oaks, Williamsburg, Siege of Yorktown, Seven Days' Battles before Richmond, and Malvern Hill. When his unit came under fire at the Second Battle of Bull Run, he and his fellow infantrymen had been ordered to lie down, to avoid enemy cannon fire.  Then an exploding shell ripped off one of his lower legs and destroyed the foot on his other leg.  Carried unconscious to a farmhouse field hospital he was left by his retreating comrades to the care of the Confederates and was exchanged a few days later.

NYS Rte 7, west of Richmondville

 Somehow Tanner survived his grievous wounds and was fitted with wooden prostheses after a few months. Returning to New York, Tanner became active in Republican politics and secured for himself a position as a doorkeeper for the New York Assembly.  Tanner studied stenography and in 1864 landed a job in Washington as a clerk in the War Department.  In April 1865 he received an urgent call from Secretary Stanton who summoned him to the Petersen Hotel, across from Ford's theater where, as President Lincoln lay dying, he recorded all the incoming information about the assassination.

A year later he returned to New York State to earn his law degree and begin his climb in Republican politics and increasingly important public offices. From its formative days,  Tanner was a most active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the great Union veterans organization, that developed out of the war. The garrulous Tanner enjoyed the company of other veterans, never missing an annual encampment in 48 years, becoming its President in 1876. Tanner would go on to organize a fund raising campaign to build a 600 bed Soldier's Home for New York's disabled veterans in Bath, New York, then pressure the State government to support its upkeep.  Later in Virginia, he would inspire and instruct Confederate veterans on a similar campaign that resulted in the Confederate Home in Richmond, Virginia.
 

*Ellsworth had met Lincoln a year before and had made a favorable impression on him. Since then he had become engaged to Carrie Spafford. Her father, an Illinois businessman encouraged him to seek out Lincoln to pursue a more lucrative career path, and may have facilitated the meeting.

**Brownell was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor for killing Jackson!

Marker of the Week -- Who knew?!   I had always assumed the Town in Saratoga County named Malta was named for the rather large island in the Mediterranean Sea, once a British Protectorate, home to Crusaders and scene of a spirited defense by British forces during WWII, etc.

There are certainly many towns in New York named for countries.  New York has a China, a Sweden, a Mexico, a Peru, a Greece and a Russia, and there are probably others. It would be interesting to investigate the who, why and when of the name change--perhaps if "NYSHMS: It Happened Here" looks at the Temperance Movement, in some future post.