Civil War Sampler #7: Strength in Union

My seventh Civil War Sampler block is Strength in Union:

Strength in Union, completed October 15, 2018

This one is extremely straight-forward in the choice of color and pattern. It’s all very patriotic with red, white (light), and blue and tiny stars in each fabric.

There’s really not much more to tell on this one. The stories from Barbara Brackman in the book (can’t find this one on her blog?) discuss earlier secession threats (I legit just typed “threads” the first time- ah quilting) prior to the Civil War.

One such threat came as early as the 1780s, regarding the ill-fated Articles of Confederation, which gave a bit too much power to the individual states. Like, seriously, guys, are we gonna be one nation or not? I remember being assigned this long, dry book about the Philadelphia Convention as the last reading assignment for the term, in one undergrad class…and weirdly really enjoying it. Like, OK we’re not leaving here until we sort this thing out, should we just scrap the old one and start again? yes? yes? OK latch the windows, let’s do this thing… Aww yes.

During the War of 1812 (basically the LAST last battle of the American Revolution, England’s last hurrah before they REALLY gave up), there were those who thought maybe the United States shouldn’t stay united.

In the early 1830s, there was the Nullification Crisis, which again boiled down to individual states looking out for themselves and finding ways to “nullify” federal laws that harmed their own interests.

The three above are mentioned in Brackman’s book. There’s only so much room in the book, of course, but a few other things that come to mind where everybody had to do some crazy “dancing” to try to placate many individual states (or regions), with “battle lines” drawn basically North/South, included the Missouri Compromise (1820), the (failed) Wilmot Proviso (1846), and the Compromise of 1850/ Fugitive Slave Law (1850). These were all mostly about slavery, and the ones that passed tended to “keep things even” as to slave states vs. free states, particularly in the Legislative Branch. (This was very important to everyone at the time, as they failed to deal one-and-for-all with the issue of slavery—until the Civil War.)

One last thought on this…reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 speech “A House Divided” :

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

That first line is evidently a paraphrase from the Bible, Gospel of Mark 3:25, in which Jesus says: “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

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Civil War Sampler #6: Port and Starboard

My sixth Civil War Sampler block is Port and Starboard:

Port and Starboard, completed September 21, 2018

To be honest, there is nothing symbolic about the colors in this one. I just felt like putting pink and green together. It’s not a combo I usually gravitate towards, but at the same time I know it goes all right together, so I figured, what the hell, this is as good a time as any to try it out. 

Honestly, the only other thing I can even think to say about my particular block is that I did that thing I like to do, with the dark pink at least, where if the print has a noticeable pattern, I try to pay attention to which direction things are “going” and plan accordingly so they’re not all random and “messy” looking. So, if you look closely, you’ll see that on two of the dark pink “bow-ties” (for lack of a better term), the vines are “growing” downwards and on the other two, they “grow” up.

The stories Barbara Brackman told for Port and Starboard center around the Union capture of Port Royal Sound near Charleston, South Carolina. As usual, there is more on her blog than what she could fit in the book, and one of the additional bits is the following sentence:

The city of Beaufort was the largest town in the area of swampy island  plantations owned by the Rhetts, Barnwells, Pinckneys and Colcocks and worked by thousands of slaves.

If I wanted to get REALLY silly (and lie to you), I could say, “Oh yeah, I totally used pink in this one because of the Pinckneys.” Untrue. Didn’t even read that until I looked up Brackman’s “Port and Starboard” blog post to write this entry.

BUT, I do vaguely recall from history class(es) that the Pinckney’s were kind of a big deal in South Carolina. Ah yes, two of them (both named Charles) signed the U.S. Constitution.

Apparently, you can still visit the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, a bit outside of Charleston (about 20 minutes inland from Isle of Palms) — which sounds kind of awesome and has the added bonus of being a National Park site and therefore free.

Civil War Sampler #5: Hovering Hawks

My fifth Civil War Sampler block is Hovering Hawks:

Hovering Hawks, completed August 16, 2018

Barbara Brackman’s stories for Hovering Hawks focus mainly on “Jayhawks” or “Jayhawkers,” which is (apparently) a term for thief that originated during the Kansas Troubles just before the Civil War. I can see that (hawk = thief), seeing as how they both do their “snatching” — hawks of tiny creatures from the ground, thieves of…whatever stolen items.

Today I learned that the first thing you will find if you Google “Jayhawk” is a bunch of stuff about the University of Kansas, which was founded in 1865, and decided to make their mascot the “Jayhawk.” This is apparently also a common nickname for anyone from Kansas, such as people in Ohio are often called “Buckeyes,” whether they attended Ohio State or not.

But I digress… I went with a more literal color choice for the Hovering Hawks block again. I looked for earthy browns that might look like the colors of hawk feathers for the center parts, and I chose blue for the outside, like the sky. The lightest fabric also has some blue in it, which sort of ties it to the blue fabric.

Civil War Sampler: #4 Catch Me If You Can

My fourth Civil War Sampler block is Catch Me If You Can:

Catch Me If You Can, completed July 19, 2018

This is another block where I read the stories first and let that help me choose the fabrics. The stories Brackman chose to go with this block were about slavery, escape, emancipation.

I elected to go with something fairly literal to the stories. I chose fabrics with sort of “winding” patterns– zigging and zagging around in various directions, like you were trying to “lose” someone…like if you were running away from someone (or somewhere). And I think you can guess that the warm tans and chocolatey browns are meant to represent the skin tones of the African American slaves.

One of the stories Brackman mentions on the web is about a slaveholder named William Dunbar. While unrelated as far as I know, the library where I work is named after an African American poet from Dayton — Paul Laurence Dunbar — perhaps you’ve heard of him? His parents Joshua and Matilda Dunbar had both been slaves (in central Kentucky). His mother was freed with the 13th amendment; his father had escaped earlier to Canada and served in Massachusetts Regiments during the Civil War. The two didn’t marry until after the war. (Learn more from Wright State University Libraries’ Dunbar biography,  this Oxford University Press article, or the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database.)

Another of Brackman’s stories talks about “a slave in Kentucky, who accompanied her mistress across the river to Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio” (and promptly made her escape). Can you imagine? Having Ohio RIGHT THERE. I grew up near the Ohio River. It’s…wide…but it’s not THAT wide.

Not surprisingly, there were a number of “stops” on the Underground Railroad that were just across the Ohio River, such as two in Ripley (Brown County) that I heard about for years but still never managed to actually visit: John Rankin House and John P. Parker House.

Despite being a “free” state, an Ohio law passed in 1804 (just one year after statehood) required all free blacks to register with the county courthouse and prove that they were in fact free. These are often called “manumission” registers; manumission meaning “freed from slavery” (in Latin, literally, “sent from hand” or released). We have some of these manumission registers at the archives where I work, such as this 1834 manumission record book from Miami County.

Speaking of manumission, someone I researched extensively in about 2012 was a slave-holder who freed his slaves. Horton Howard was, among other things, a Quaker living in North Carolina in the 1790s. He freed his slaves before moving to Ohio about 1799 or 1800. (You can read more about Horton Howard here, with the slave-holding part starting at about the third paragraph.)

Another local historical figure with whom I am reasonably familiar — but who did not do so well with the whole “manumit when you move to Ohio” thing was Col. Robert Patterson, a founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and later Dayton, Ohio. I don’t know all the details, but let’s just say that some of his servants who were enslaved in Kentucky also came to Ohio with them and continued to work for him, and there was definitely some question as to what the situation. There’s even a court case about it in the Montgomery County Records Center & Archives:

Robert Patterson slave case, 1805, Montgomery County (Ohio), Clerk of Courts, Book A1 Vol 2 page 60

You can learn more about the Robert Patterson slave controversy in this 2006 Ohio Valley History journal article by Emil Pocock or this 2017 news article by Tom Eblen about the Patterson cabin on the campus of Transylvania University, which I have visited (twice), btw:

Lisa at Patterson Log Cabin, Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, May 2015

Just today I stumbled upon the stories of more enslaved people as a result of something a researcher mentioned. A couple traveling the Aviation Trail in pursuit of Wilbear happened to mention that their daughter volunteers at a house museum. I asked them where, and they said Dinsmore House in Burlington, Kentucky. (Never heard of it.) They said it was near the Ohio River, a little ways from Cincinnati. So I Googled it. I do love house museums. I was impressed that they have dedicated an entire page (and a long one at that) to naming all of the known slaves (21 of them) and describing what is known about each of them. Nice work, Dinsmore House!

Civil War Sampler: #3 Barbara Frietchie Star

My third Civil War Sampler block is Barbara Frietchie Star:

Barbara Frietchie Star, completed July 14, 2018

This is the first one where I read Brackman’s story first, thought about it, and then chose colors. The anecdote is about a fiery old woman named (of course) Barbara in Frederick, Maryland.

I was not totally inspired, design-wise, by anything particular to this story, so I zeroed in on the part about Maryland. I looked up what the Maryland state flag looks like. And I took color inspiration from that: red, yellow, black.

Maryland state flag (public domain image from Wikipedia)

(Wow, there is a lot more information you can learn about the Maryland state flag on Wikipedia, which I only looked at just now…for instance, apparently, it is one of only 4 U.S. state flags to not include the color blue. Huh.)

There’s not a lot else to say about this one… I was a little afraid it might be a disaster with those two reds…and the black and yellow…because, no offense to Maryland, but that is not a bunch of colors I would have been likely to put together myself… But I think it came out okay. Here’s to harmless experiments that come out better than anticipated!

Civil War Sampler: #2 Star of the West

The second of my Civil War Sampler quilt blocks is Star of the West.

Star of the West, completed July 8, 2018

This is another block where I simply picked colors I liked. I did not make any particular effort to connect the colors or prints to the story next to the pattern in Barbara Brackman’s Civil War Sampler book.

In this case, the story in the book happened to be about John C. Fremont. I guess you could say Fremont makes a good “Star of the West,” as he briefly commanded the U.S. Army’s “Department of the West” during the Civil War. He also held high offices in California and Arizona in the mid-to-late 1800s (definitely the Wild, Wild West indeed for those far-western states!).

You can read the stories on Barbara Brackman’s Star of the West blog post.

While I don’t have a lot to say about John Fremont, this caught my eye when skimming the blog post:

Star of the West (#1128 in BlockBase) is an old block with many other names, among them Clay’s Choice and Harry’s Star. Both names, according to Ruth Finley in her 1929 book, were tributes to Henry Clay, an earlier politician who also ran unsuccessfully for President.

Now, Henry Clay, I can work with.

There’s a reason why my entry for “Political Views” on Facebook says “Whig Party” and has for years. (I’m not even joking.)

When I think of Henry Clay, a few things come to mind, and I’ll take them in chronological order.

One of them is simply that I can hardly think of Henry Clay without thinking of John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, because, all being important political contemporaries, they always found themselves in the same chapter of whatever K-12 American History book.

The second thing is a reminder of my time working at Dayton Metro Library. We had a few letters written by Henry Clay (at least two in the Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection, which I processed). There was one researcher, an older gentleman from the area of Lexington, Kentucky, where Clay had lived (now a house museum) and where (if I recall correctly) the gentleman now volunteered – the man came up to visit (about 2 hours by car) and review those letters. He stands out because he had such a handsome accent; I think he was originally from Tennessee. But I digress.

Perhaps more importantly, what’s not to love about items in your local history collection that were written—and touched!—by people “famous” in the history books? I mean, sure, we all have our local heroes, but Clay appears in history textbooks nation-wide.

He came to Dayton once—Henry Clay, that is—in 1842. I suppose it could have been more than once, but the time everyone always seems to be asking about when they would ask us about “the time Henry Clay came to Dayton” was in September 1842. You can read an article that Howard Burba wrote about it in 1932. Burba called the September 29, 1842, rally “the date of the most spectacular political rally in this city’s history.” There’s also some references to a “barbecue” that I still don’t fully understand? More from The Papers of Henry Clay (note: that “Samuel Forres” in the Joseph Crane et al. letter should be Forrer – yeah, that Samuel Forrer).

And finally, the third thing is just my visit to Ashland, the estate of Henry Clay in Lexington, Kentucky, when I was there for the Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting in 2015.

Henry Clay’s Ashland Estate, Lexington, Kentucky, May 2015

The house is now a museum that you can tour, and the gardens are a sort of public park. (I saw lots of people just strolling along, some even walking their dogs, on the grounds. The only part that costs money to enter is the actual house.)

Back view of Ashland Estate, Lexington, Kentucky, May 2015

I think my absolute favorite part of the entire visit was sitting in Clay’s “back yard” (for lack of a better term) on a blanket on the grass eating my lunch. The above photo is from that moment, my vantage point from my comfy spot on the ground.

If you’re interested, you can learn more about Henry Clay and his Ashland Estate (like how to visit).

Until next time! (My third block includes symbolic colors! I’m sure you can’t wait.)

Civil War Sampler: #1 White House

As promised, here is the first of my Civil War Sampler quilt blocks.

This square is called White House (read story, view pattern and other examples on Barbara Brackman’s blog). It is the first square in the book (though not so on the blog), and I am doing them in book-order.

White House, completed June 30, 2018

As I mentioned in my previous post, I made my first two blocks before actually reading the stories that went along with them. I was too excited to start sewing to bother with any non-essential reading! Therefore, this first block is done in purple and gold simply because I love purple. I had given no thought to the title of the block or the story when choosing the colors. (If I had, I imagine I likely would have gone with something literal, involving white—although the flower print is on white—or something red, white, and blue.)

I did give special extra thought to figuring out how to do the gold pieces as single rectangles instead of the two-squares method shown in the pattern, because I wanted to use that striped fabric and not have the stripes line-up wrong. Silly me, it didn’t occur to me until I was all done that maybe I should have done the same thing with the purple flowered print as well; oh well, it’s not as obvious or bothersome in the print as it would have been in the stripes.

Something I just thought of while writing these blog posts is that, if you think about it, you could say that the colors of purple and gold were good choices for a block strongly tied to the leader of the nation.

For one thing, the color purple has long been associated with royalty because it was a very expensive color to make, and only the richest could afford it. (More on purple as royal from History.com.) And gold would go along with that, because obviously gold is expensive as well. (I picked it because it looks good with purple…probably because of that whole color-wheel thing.)

And then, using the “royal purple” as a segue: there have been many comparisons between United States Presidents and kings, usually in a negative way from opponents.

The first one I thought of was “King Andy” – Andrew Johnson, who was Lincoln’s vice president and of course then became president after Lincoln was assassinated.

“King Andy, How He Will Look And What He Will Do,” cartoon by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, 1866 Nov 3. (Image via NewYorkTimes.com)

In looking for the above cartoon online (I had seen it before a long time ago), Google searches for “King Andy political cartoon” promptly returned first and foremost a caricature of of President Andrew Jackson from 1833.

Then, I thought, I bet somebody at some point claimed that Abraham Lincoln himself was behaving like a king and made a comic about it. *googles that* Sure enough, I found this one:

“King Abraham before and after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation,” Southern Illustrated News, 1862. (Image via Lehrman Institute, “Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom”)

The Lincoln cartoon doesn’t make much sense (or fit the royal theme) without its caption: “King Abraham before and after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.” For more on the symbolism in this cartoon, I highly recommend checking out the Lehrman Institute’s “Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom” site where I found it.

Though I’m sure just about every president has probably been negatively equated with a “king” at some point or another by somebody, a few other examples come to mind, not necessarily negative ones.

The first president George Washington is sometimes referred to as “the man who would not be king” (such as in this 1992 PBS documentary by the same title), alluding that he could have been king (Americans were used to having a king, they just didn’t want George III anymore, right?), but that he did not wish it to be that way.

I also think of a couple of 20th century presidents and something I remember Dr. Ed Haas talking about in an undergrad Modern American History course. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) was elected to FOUR terms as president (though he didn’t serve much of the 4th term because he died). That is a long damn time to have the same president, am I right?

(Ronald Reagan was president for most of my early childhood, and I think at the time I just assumed that’s how the world was. I wonder if kids in the 1930s and early ’40s thought this about FDR?…but I digress.)

Consequently, in 1947, a Republican-majority Congress, miffed about the whole 14+ years of Democratic presidents thing, created the 22nd Amendment, limiting presidents to two terms in office. Ratification was complete in 1951. (More on FDR & the 22nd Amendment from the National Constitution Center.)

A couple years later, it sort of bit them on the ass when Republican Dwight Eisenhower became president, winning two terms quite handily over his opponents and (according to my professor) might have served even longer with popular support, but we’ll never know now, will we?

Boy, for not giving a lot of symbolic thought to the color and fabric choices in this first block before I made it (beyond, you know, “oooh purple!”), I guess I’ve sure given it a lot of thought in hindsight…

Until next time!