41. Lowell Daily Citizen and News, January 25, 1865; New Orleans Times, February 3, 1865; Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1865; Christian Advocate and Journal, February 2, 1865.
42. Grinnell, Men and Events, 163; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, April 17, 1872; Daily Iowa State Register, September 28, 1867. Grinnell discusses the incident in his memoir to counteract the “hasty public judgment that I should have fought my assailant, and, without his apology, taken the life of a criminal.” On the new, more martial ideals of Northern manhood that emerged from the war, see also Arnold, “Virgin Soil of Kansas,” 246.
43. See esp. George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007; orig. ed. 1984); Wyatt-Brown, Shaping of Southern Culture, 270–95.
44. Simpson, Good Southerner, 287–93. Wise’s two eldest surviving sons became Republican congressmen; his oldest son died under Wise’s command during the war. In 1870, Wise was attacked in the press for his role in the Cilley-Graves duel; he thought it was an attempt to strike at Grant, whom he supported. Wise to unknown correspondent, January 27, 1870, Henry A. Wise Papers, UNC.
45. French, diary entry, March 9, 1862, Witness, 390. The song—“The Patriotic Diggers” by Samuel Woodworth—was about digging trenches for protection against the British. Gerry Silverman, New York Sings: 400 Years of the Empire State in Song (New York: Excelsior Editions, 2009), 38–39. The reference to the Revolution was “Recollect our dads gave you once a basting.”
46. French, diary entry, July 17, 1863, Witness, 427; Wallner, Martyr, 350–51; Nichols, Pierce, 522–23.
47. French, diary entry, March 20, 1864, Witness, 447.
48. Ibid, September 25, 1864, and July 10, 1863, 457, 427.
49. Ibid., April 6, 1865, 469.
50. Ibid., April 17, 1865, 474.
51. Cresson, Journey into Fame, 108. Cresson, Daniel’s daughter, was a noted sculptor like her father.
52. French to George McLaughlin, December 5, 1863, in History of the Great Western Sanitary Fair (Cincinnati: C. F. Vent, 1864), 165–66. McLaughlin had asked French to write a poem for the fair; French declined but sent along the original draft of his Gettysburg hymn and described its composition.
53. French, diary entry, November 22, 1863, BBFFP; French, “Hymn Composed at Gettysburg for the Consecration, Nov. 19, 1863,” BBFFP.
54. French to Francis O. French, April 24, 1865, BBFFP; Affidavit of Robert Strong, March 20, 1876, in Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Washington: Published by editor, 1911), 272–73.
55. French, diary entry, June 17, 1869, Witness, 596.
56. Cresson, Journey into Fame, 19.
57. On the details, see Stahr, Seward, 435–38.
58. French, diary entries, April 15, 1865, and April 15, 1866, 469–71, Witness, 507. Sometime that day, French loaded his revolver; ibid., July 5, 1865, 482. See also his account of that day in “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Statue of Abraham Lincoln, Erected in Front of the City Hall, Washington, D.C.” (Washington: McGill & Witherow, 1868), 12–15. In the speech, he says that he couldn’t “leave the inanimate form of him of whom I had seen so much, and whom I loved so well in life.” Ibid., 10.
59. French to Francis O. French, April 24, 1865, BBFFP.
60. Ibid.
61. French, diary entry, November 23, 1866, and February 6, 1867, Witness, 525, 528.
62. Ibid., February 6, 1867, 528.
63. Ibid., July 17, 1866, and May 26, 1867, 511, 539.
64. Ibid., February 21, 1866, Witness, 502–503; French to Andrew Johnson, February 8, 1866, The Papers of Andrew Johnson: February–July 1866, ed. Paul H. Bergeron, vol. 10 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 57–58.
65. Globe, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 23, 1867, 1523–26. French wrote the poem in April 1861. For the poem in broadside form, see repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:282409/, accessed June 4, 2015.
66. Act of March 2, 1867, Section 2 (14 Stats., p. 466).
67. French, diary entry, February 24, 1867, 531. See also ibid., February 6, March 3 and 11, 1867, 528, 533.
68. Ibid., May 12, 1867, 539. See also ibid., December 8, 1867, 549. On the elimination of the commissioner, see William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001), 342–43.
69. French, diary entry, March 8, 1868, Witness, 560.
70. Emphasis in original; even now, however, French considered having the poem published in future. Ibid., January 31, 1868, 553. He wrote it in August 1867.
71. Ibid., April 2, July 10, and August 2, 1867, 535, 539, 543.
72. French had filled the position from 1847 to 1853. Ibid., November 10, 1867, 548.
73. Ibid., February 10, 1868, 556. See also ibid., June 6, 1869, 594–95.
74. Ibid., November 8, 1868, 584.
75. Ibid., August 15, 1868, 576–77.
76. Ibid., August 26, 1868, and October 10, 1869, 580, 604.
77. Ibid., November 13, 1869, 605–606.
78. Ibid., July 31, 1870, 622.
79. Frank O. French, diary entry, ca. August 14, 1870; F. O. French to Ellen French, August 12, 1870, BBFFP.
80. French, diary entry, August 8, 1870, Witness, 622–23. Emphasis in original.
81. Sarita Brady to Anne Ransford French, August 15, 1870, typescript, BBFFP.
82. Evening Star, August 12, 1870; National Intelligencer, August 15, 1870; Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1870; Daily National Intelligencer, March 28, 1851.
83. Sarita Brady to Anne Ransford French, August 15, 1870, typescript, BBFFP.
84. National Republican, August 24, 1870 (based on typescript in BBFFP). On Lodges of Sorrow, see “Lodges of Sorrow,” Masonic Monthly 2 (November 1864): 379–80.
85. NYT, August 14, 1870.
86. Clipping from The Home Journal, November 23, 1861, BBFFP.
88. National Freemason 1 (October 1863): 68–69. French’s opening paragraphs describe his intention to describe what he witnessed. He began his memoir of sorts on May 5, 1856; between 1863 and 1865, the National Freemason published it serially under the title “Congressional Reminiscences.” It doesn’t seem to extend past French’s first five years in Washington. Ibid., 1 (June 1863); 2 (July 1863); 4 (September 1863); 5 (October 1863); 6 (November 1863); 7 (December 1863); 1 (June 1864); 2 (July 1864); 5 (October 1864); 6 (November 1864); 8 (February 1865); 11 (April 1865).
89. French, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Statue of Abraham Lincoln, Erected in Front of the City Hall, Washington, D.C.” (Washington: McGill & Witherow, 1868), 14.
90. The recent burst of scholarship on the decline of congressional civility since the 1980s generally argues: Congress is us. Loomis, Esteemed Colleagues; Uslaner, Decline of Comity; Juliet Eilperin, Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship Is Poisoning the House of Representatives (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Ahuja, Congress Behaving Badly; Mann and Ornstein, The Broken Branch.
91. French, “A Vision,” June 13, 1869, BBFFP. The poem appeared in the Civil Service Journal under the datelin
e July 31, 1869.
APPENDIX B
1. John Fairfield to Ann Fairfield, January 29, 1836, John Fairfield Papers, LC.
2. Henry A. Wise to Henry A. Wise, December 10, 1856, Wise Family Papers, LC; T. C. Day to John Bigelow, November 25, 1856, John Bigelow Papers, NYPL. See also ibid., December 1, 1856, and a “Quite confidential” memo—allegedly from Jessie B. Fremont—detailing a conversation between F. P. Blair and her father, Thomas Hart Benton. John Bigelow Papers, NYPL.
3. On Potter’s attempt to refute newspaper stories about the kicking, see Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., February 26, 1858, 889–90; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 6 and 8, 1858; Sandusky Register, March 12, 1858.
4. For an invaluable discussion of these histories, see Woods, Emotional and Sectional Conflict, 4–7; Ayers, What Caused the Civil War?, 131–44.
5. See “Note on Method,” Freeman, Affairs of Honor, 289–93.
6. Particularly helpful in understanding the historical context of emotions is Strange, Cribb, and Forth, Honour, Violence and Emotions in History, 1–22. For a fascinating consideration of the role of strong emotions in politics, see Martha C. Nussbaum’s Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); and Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Nussbaum emphasizes the importance of forgiveness and civility over anger; The Field of Blood is a story of anger leading to justice.
7. Ayers, The Thin Light of Freedom, xxi.
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Please note that some of the links referenced throughout this work may no longer be active.
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