John Ford Shelby Footebarry Crompton PO box 4017, Patterson, vic, 3204 Ph 9557 7872 Email: [email protected] Newsletter Editors: Warren Davey 85 yarra St, Williamstown, 3016

OUR MOTTO: Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice

Official Newsletter of the American Civil War Round Table of Australia Inc.November 2013. Number 461

In this MN

Meeting to be held at the Retreat Hotel 226 Nicholson Street Abbotsford. Drinks and congenial talk at the bar with meals 6.30 to 8.00. Formal proceedings kick off at around 7.30pm sharp (approx) thereabouts! Upstairs in the still magnificent Carringbush Room. Our meetings are scheduled for the 4th Wednesday of each month except December.

NEWSMINIE

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

QuOTAblE QuOTES

The club now provides Free coFFee and Tea To members aT The inTerval each meeTing.

From the Editors 2Gettysburg Address 3Crompton’s Rave 4CSS Shenandoah 6The Hour of Peril 8

WEdNESdAy 27Th NOvEMbER

John Ford Shelby Foote

Our Patron Saints

Lecture: –

CSS

Shen

ando

ah

Our Next Meeting

a Byard Sheppard Special !!

henry Fonda as young Mr lincoln (1938)

President: Dale BlairP.O. box 59, Emerald, vic, 3782Ph 5968 4547 Email: [email protected]

Vice-President: Chris Hookey2 burnside Avenue,Canterbury, vic, 3126Ph 9888 5744Email: [email protected]

Secretary: Ian Caldwell47 Pavo Streetbelmont, vic, [email protected]

Treasurer: Jeff Yuille41 hampstead drivehoppers Crossing, 3029Ph 9748 7996Mob 0412 523 199Email: [email protected]

Public Officer & Correspondence Secretary: barry Crompton PO box 4017, Patterson, vic, 3204Ph 9557 7872Email: [email protected]

Newsletter Editors: Warren Davey85 yarra St, Williamstown, 3016Ph 9391 [email protected]

Ross Schnioffsky 104 River St, Newport, 3015Ph 9391 [email protected]

Secretary/Treasurer (Sydney Organisation)Brendan O’ConnellP O box 200St. Ives, SydneyNSW 2075Tel: 2 9449 3720 Fax: 2 9988 4067 Email: [email protected]

The American Civil War Round Table of Australia

Dues $Aus 25.00 for DigitAl news-letter or $Aus 30.00 for A snAil mAil newsletter pAyAble to

ACwrtA,C/o treAsurer, Jeff yuille

As Frank would sing…One for my baby and one more for the road…

http://acwrta.tripod.com

Warren & Ross from the editors

NOvEMbER MINIE NEWS 2013 2

Welcome to the November 2013 edition of MN. The month of November tolls the bell for the final meeting of the year for the ACWRTA. byard Sheppard will be officiating at this meeting. We have absolutely no idea of the content of his presentation but going on past results we should be in for a good evening.your editors made it back to the land of Oz from the vibrant Southwest uSA with wonderful memories and enough photos to reconstruct the trip almost hour by hour! digital photography has taken the cost out of holiday snaps and our digital devices today are clogged with thousands of very poor photos that we somehow feel the world needs. It is only the bravest of us who actually ditch our dodgy photos.November sees the 150th anniversary of lincoln’s Gettysburg Speech and the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Editor Warren has no idea what he was doing for the former but has indelible memories of that fateful day on November 22nd 1963.back in lincoln’s day with less media, fewer people would have been present to hear the oration and it would have been days later that the full text of the short speech would have spread across the country. lincoln’s speech took time to create a head of steam until it arrived at its iconic status we accept today. but with JFK, the act, and its repercussions were pretty much instantaneous with a massive worldwide coverage.Garry Wills book on the Gettysburg Speech is a revelatory piece of non fiction writing and a wonderful explication of the context and background to the famous speech. As Far as Kennedy is concerned there is a whole host of books of varying quality analyzing his life in ways not to dissimilar to that of lincoln and also a good deal of forensic tomes trying to sort out what actually happened in dealy Plaza, dallas and the roller coaster days that followed.A big thanks to our “President’s Eleven” who took the floor at the October meeting. your editors were sorry to have missed the presentations but according to the venerable view of our barry they were all successful and well worth the attention. here’s hoping for a good roll up at the Retreat to finish the year in fine style and we wish byard all the very best on his cagey approach to his November presentation. Cheers.

50 Years...John Fitzgerald Kennedy

1917-1963


The Round Table has now joined the 21st century with the creation of our own Face Book page. To join log on to Facebook

Byard SheppardFace Book Moderator

Attention all Round Table Members

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Delivered on 19th November 1863

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS


Nights at the Round Table

With

Barry Crompton

A good meeting in September with Mike Kaltenbaugh speaking on Civil War supply and then last month at the Melbourne Round Table meeting, the October meeting saw seven of our members giving 10-minute talks. Meanwhile the October meeting in Sydney saw Mick bedard over from America and speaking to their members. byard Sheppard will speak to our group in November on a topic related to that month but one that he is keeping closed to his chest.

Australia Post released a set of stamps recently with headline news – one of the stamps was for Cyclone Tracy with devastated darwin on Christmas day 1974; another was the winning of America’s Cup in 1983. That brought back memories of me on holiday to the uS the week after the win. Apart from the link that the original yacht “America” had first won the cup in 1851 by the Royal yacht Squadron for a race around the Isle of Wight in England and

was then owned by a syndicate under Commodore John Cox Stevens of the New york yacht Club. On September 1, 1851, the yacht was sold to John de blaquiere, 2nd baron de blaquiere, who raced her only a few times before selling her in 1856 to henry Montagu upton, 2nd viscount Templetown, who renamed the yacht Camilla but failed to use or maintain her. In 1858, she was sold to henry Sotheby Pitcher.Pitcher, a shipbuilder in Northfleet, Kent, rebuilt Camilla and resold her in 1860 to henry Edward decie, who brought her back to the united States. decie sold the ship to the Confederate States of America the same year for use as a blockade-runner in the American Civil War. decie remained aboard as captain. during this time she may have been renamed Memphis but the details are unclear. In 1862, she was scuttled at Jacksonville when union troops took the city. (From Wikipedia).When Australia won the race in October 1983, the first time it had been won outside of America’s team, the Australian

Prime Minister was jubilant and scenes of Aussies at home celebrating were broadcast on the local Tv. A week later I arrived in America to begin a tour of the battlefields and Round Tables, one of my first jobs was to give a talk at the CWRT of San Francisco at the Presidio. On my arrival, the president of the Round Table and her husband (Margaret and Ken Fitzgibbons) had put together a sign “Aussie Go home” in jest. Fortunately the talk went down a treat, I enjoyed a few days in San Francisco and went on my way after that to the eastern states and more Round Table meetings, fondly remembering the time that the Aussies came to the fore.

From: “leisa lees” <[email protected]>Subject: civil war veterans beechworth date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 11:36:16 +1000 hi barry thought you might like this, have you come across anything on the men I sent you? hope all is well leisa leesOvens and Murray Advertiser Wednesday 16 June 1915:dEAThS AT ThE OvENS bENEvOlENT ASyluM. - On Wednesday last there died at the Ovens benevolent Asylum one of the few remaining veterans of the Crimean war in the person of William Nicholes. The old chap had been for 17 years an inmate of the Asylum, being admitted from violet Town. he was 92 years of age on the 25th May last, and was a maker of hearth-rugs, many of which he disposed of to local residents. Nicholes came from a long-lived family, his mother having died at 100 years of age, and his grandmother at 115. Nicholes fought in the Crimean war, and also in the American war, having as a comrade in the latter Mr. Jacob hoffmann, of beechworthJacob hoffman we already know about through the good work by bob Simpson and Roy Parker in the early days; so far I haven’t been able to confirm William Nicholes and I think that he may be registered in the Civil War database under a variance of that surname which makes it even more difficult to isolate.

Sale of Gettysburg MagazineThe Gettysburg Magazine has just been sold to the university of Nebraska Press.

Two days to go and we get to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.Curiously, the United States Postal Service didn’t commemorate the centennial and have not organised one for this year either although the did get to issue a stamp for the eighty-fifth anniversary in 1948. However our friends in the Capital District Round Table of New York will be issuing a commemorative postmark to be cancelled at Gettysburg on the day.The week after this will also see the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln issuing the first Thanksgiving proclamation to hold a special day of thanks on the fourth Thursday of November. Although Melbourne (nor Australia itself) will be officially allowing us to sit down to turkey and the trimmings, I’m sure that I shall remember our good deeds for the year.According to the Civil War Book of Days from the Vermont Humanities Council – he actually started work on his address two days earlier so as I type this up, November 17 was the day he started to pen those famous words.


Work is underway to get Issue 48 on press and everything caught up to date. Current subscribers will be receiving the issues they are due. With the university’s long history of publishing quality history titles, including numerous works on the Civil War, they will continue producing a magazine readers will love. To contact the university: phone: 402-472-8536 email: [email protected]

Congratulations to Keith Wilson, his book “Campfires of Freedom: The Camp life of black Soldiers during the Civil War” is now available to download on Kindle for uS$9.99, the print edition has a price of uS$39.00 so here’s an opportunity to get a copy for reading on the go.Amazon haven’t seen fit yet to re-issue Angus Curry’s book on the Shenandoah on Kindle and the price for the hardback is still fairly consistent with the original publication date although there were a couple of higher-priced copies if you were desperate to get your hands on an edition.

The November issue of America’s Civil War has several articles of interest – a new museum has opened at the Gettysburg lutheran Theological Seminary that had served as the largest field hospital during and after the battle.The North Carolina department of Cultural Resources has put the master index of the first eighteen volumes of North Carolina Troops online.The Tennessee Civil War commemorations for the one hundred

and fiftieth anniversary this month and next month include a four-day exposition at the Chattanooga Convention Center between October 9 and 12; the city of Knoxville has a number of events in October and November and then of course November 2013 will also see the 150th anniversary of lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

lowell Griffin sent over the latest issue of the Confederate veteran magazine for September-October 2013, one article retells the story of fund-raisings activities to commemorate Mississippi troops at the battle of Shiloh – a monument is due to be placed in 2015, so far $425,000 has been raised through donations and more funds are being accepted to raise the required amount.

I noticed that the sequi-centennial has seen the release of a lot of new books on local subjects in the Civil War. The same thing happened during the centennial when cities, towns and counties along with the states did a great job of producing pamphlets and booklets that were great historical records for those places – now with the change of digital media, I can see a lot of new books available on Kindle as ebooks and similar, primarily due to the history Press which releases books of about 130 pages or thereabouts which the major publishers wouldn’t print in that small quantity. The other handy place to get them to the public are the so-called vanity presses and McFarland’s seem to do an excellent job of small-run prints as well as access to the internet.Some of the university presses are

producing ebooks and I hope to keep buying them as they become available. It might be the scholarly tomes are missing but for local interest, they are ideal vehicles to get their message across.

Interesting episode of the series “Finding your Roots”on SbS which had been on uS Tv in 2012 – this one concentrated on two New Orleans musicians and their ancestors – bradford Marselis and harry Connick Junior, harry had one ancestor who served in the 15th Confederate Cavalry as a resident of Mobile.I believe that Gone With The Wind was getting another airing recently at the Australian Centre for Moving Images at Federation Square in Melbourne. After the good crowd we witnessed at the Astor Cinema in Melbourne during September, there are still legs in the old girl – considering that there is a new digitized copy of the Wizard of Oz made recently (also produced and released in 1939), I guess that GTWT must be just around the corner.

More information on Civil War movies – thanks to member bill Fenner for sending over a copy of the dvd set of the Ken burns series which had been issued for the sesqui-centennial and re-digitised for high definition. Oddly enough the Australian edition is still in the original 4x3 ratio while Amazon has another edition letterbox format suitable for our wide-screen Tvs and has an additional 10 minutes or so in the series. I was also down at the local dvd shop and found something new in the history section, “Gettysburg legacy” by the discovery Channel team, produced in 2013, 140 minutes in three episodes, Aus$12.98 and with a 20% discount down to $10.38 for this disc.hyand’s Military bookshop had a sale at their building on Saturday and Sunday 5 and 6 of October 10 a.m. till 3 p.m. and several of our members picked up some material to add to their libraries.

Gettysburg lutheran Theological Seminary


It became a curious book-end to a long and grisly conflict that claimed more than 600,000 lives and forever shaped a nation’s character. And it was played out in Melbourne, almost 150 years ago.In January, 1865, in the last months of the American Civil War, the Confederate warship Shenandoah sailed unannounced into hobson’s bay. Staying 24 days, she secretly enlisted 42 men to fight for the Southern cause.In a curious twist, it was the Shenandoah, with its small band of Australian sailors, that fired the last shots of the war. years later the british government would pay millions of pounds in damages to the united States because of the ship’s Australian visit.“The Shenandoah had a huge impact,” said barry Crompton of the American Civil War Round Table in Australia (pictured right), a group of local enthusiasts planning the 150th anniversary commemorations in 2015.“Melbourne scaled-up its defences because of the Shenandoah. Cannons

were installed in 1867 on the shore line and an ultra-modern ship was commissioned to represent victoria’s sea power.”That ship was the two-turreted ironclad Cerberus, which patrolled Port Phillip bay from 1870 until it was deliberately sunk to create a breakwater at beaumaris in 1926.The arrival of the Confederate States’ Steamship Shenandoah in hobson’s bay on the evening of January 25, 1865 shocked the young british colony – settled less than 30 years previously.Queen victoria had proclaimed the Confederacy a power belligerent to Great britain and here, suddenly, was one of its front line vessels on Melbourne’s doorstep. her eight heavy guns of three-mile range could easily have pulverised the fledgling capital.however, the ship’s captain, Commander James Waddell from North Carolina, declared neutrality, asking Governor Charles darling for permission to take on coal and supplies, land prisoners and repair a broken propeller.The Shenandoah’s previous port of call

had been Madeira in the mid-Atlantic, where Waddell had received orders to load coal in Melbourne and then head to the Pacific whaling grounds for the peak June season. En-route south, Waddell captured eight ships and took aboard prisoners.despite this, the Shenandoah was vastly short-handed. Its complement was only 43 men and the ship was built for 130. Was her secret mission in Melbourne to recruit crew for the Confederate cause?With permission granted, the ship transferred to dry dock in Williamstown on the other side of hobson’s bay.“Australia Post made a special Williamstown postmark for the 125th anniversary,” said Mr Crompton. “We’re talking to them about repeating something similar for the 150th.”In yet another twist to a story that has all the makings of a buccaneering movie, Melbourne writer Paul Williams, in a soon-to-be-published book, CSS Shenandoah: The untold True Story, claims he has uncovered evidence that Captain Waddell had an adulterous love affair while the ship was berthed in

http://www.thecitizen.org.au/features/melbournes-confederate-connection-150-years

Melbourne’s Confederate connection, 150 years onWords by Sally Stewart


I was asked to answer a few questions for a journalist university student who was preparing an article on the CSS Shenandoah in Melbourne and gave her some insight into what we thought about it.

Australia.“It happened in Melbourne and it was with one of his prisoners, Mrs lillias Nicholls, who was a yankee,” Mr Williams revealed.“They were spotted in the city by the Master’s Mate, Cornelius hunt. To be seen fraternising with the enemy like that was terrible at the time and he blackmailed Waddell.“Mrs Nicholls’ nephew, Clark, is still alive, living in Searsport in Maine. he remembers her well: she didn’t die until 1933.”The repaired Shenandoah sailed from Port Phillip bay on February 18. On board were fresh supplies, coal and 42 additional passengers. When the ship entered international waters, all of the Australians signed on to the Confederate cause using false names.Waddell’s orders were to destroy union merchant vessels, especially whaling ships. Whalers were vital to the union war effort because in the 1860s whale oil was crucial in the manufacture of arms.The Shenandoah had both steam and sail power and sped to the far north Pacific where, by June, she had sunk 38 ships, claiming 10 on a single day.Such was her devastating success the Illustrated london News reported that the Shenandoah had single-handedly driven the price of whale oil up from 70 pounds to 120 pounds a ton.“It’s been said the Shenandoah’s destruction of the whaling fleet changed attitudes to whaling,” said Mr Crompton. “The oil price went so high it forced people to consider alternatives and

to think about whaling itself. It was a forerunner to the whole Greenpeace movement.”Then, unwittingly, the Shenandoah’s crew, half of them Australian, fired the last shots of the Civil War – aimed at a union whaler in the bering Sea on the edge of the Arctic Circle – on June 22. In fact, the war had already ended. General Robert E lee hadsurrendered two months earlier on April 9; Abraham lincoln had been shot dead on April 15.Waddell gambled on more lenient treatment in England than in a union court, surrendering the Shenandoah in liverpool, England in November 1865 having been pursued all the way by union vessels.The dash paid off: captain and crew walked free. At a roll call, none claimed british citizenship so the sailors fell outside of british jurisdtion, despite it being recorded that many spoke with broad Scottish accents.Not one of the Melbourne sailors who signed on has been traced with certainty: all feared individual prosecution from the united Staes for piracy and once ashore in liverpool, they vanished.but the Shenandoah’s blitz was not forgotten. In 1872, an international court ordered britain to pay millions of pounds damages to America for “improperly allowing” her to increase her crew and coal supplies in the british colony of victoria.“The Shenandoah is the only direct link between Australia and the Civil War,” noted Mr Crompton. “It’s a

great tale with many knock-on effects. We’re talking to both the AbC and an independent film producer about making a documentary.”Shirani Aththas, of the Australian National Maritime Museum, agreed: “yes, the Shenandoah was a very significant vessel and its Melbourne visit is an intriguing and important story in Australia’s past. As we get closer to January 2015, we will certainly be looking at how [the museum] may be able to support the anniversary.”Melburnians in 1865 were thrilled by the rebel ship. Over 7000 visitors were shown around by the officers, who reported “standing room only” on deck. They were besieged by invitations to socialise. boom-town ballarat, the site of the 1854 Eureka Stockaderebellion, welcomed them as heroes and a ball held in their honour at Craig’s hotel on lydiard Street ended at four in the morning.The American Civil War has been called the last romantic war and the first modern war. A ball in Gone with the Wind dress is planned in Melbourne, while Craig’s hotel plans to host a commemorative ball in the original ballroom in January 2015.The local Civil War enthusiasts hope to travel from Melbourne by steam train. “but we really need a company to underwrite the commemorations,” said Mr Crompton. “Maybe an American company? John Pemberton, who invented Coca-Cola ... he was a Confederate doctor in the Civil War.”

Barry Crompton


It was February 1861, and Abraham lincoln had just launched a 12-day celebratory train journey from his home in rural Illinois to Washington, where he would soon be inaugurated as 16th president of the united States. The country was in turmoil — seven Southern states had seceded from the union — and on the cusp of civil war. Many wondered whether the country lawyer and one-term congressman had the skills necessary to rescue the nation; others didn’t want to give him the chance. Talk of assassination was in the air.Though we all know how the story turned out — lincoln steered the country through four years of war and preserved the union — that ultimate outcome was hardly assured. As daniel Stashower recounts in his dramatic “hour of Peril,” lincoln’s presidency was very much in the balance as a private detective and his operatives raced to uncover a plot to kill the “Railsplitter” before he could reach Washington.

Stashower’s book revolves around the efforts of Allan Pinkerton, a legendary private detective who claimed to have uncovered a plot to kill lincoln during his train tour’s last stop in baltimore, a.k.a. “Mobtown.” This vital port city just a few dozen miles north of Washington had strong Southern leanings and a reputation for notoriously violent street gangs.Pinkerton hadn’t set out to uncover a potential assassination plot but

stumbled across it while investigating potential sabotage of a railroad. Soon Pinkerton and his operatives were navigating the dark streets and saloons of baltimore, trying to pry clues from Southern sympathizers. They eventually determined that a mysterious group intended to kill lincoln when he pulled into the city by distracting police and attacking the president-elect as he changed trains.Stashower, a novelist, smartly uses the train’s journey as a narrative arc, allowing him to tell the broader story of prewar America and providing insight into the traits that would make lincoln such a great leader — his sense of humor, calm demeanor and courage. The chugging train also injects the book with momentum and suspense as it nears baltimore; readers will cringe as crowds surge past policemen protecting lincoln, highlighting the president-elect’s lax security, which consisted of just a handful of aides acting as ad-hoc bodyguards.A key goal for an author of history is to persuade his or her readers to forget what they know and to relive the world as it unfolded for characters of the time — with outcomes uncertain. For the most part, Stashower accomplishes that objective, and readers will be cheering for Pinkerton and pleading for lincoln to heed the private eye’s advice to abandon his scheduled events in baltimore and instead slip quietly through Charm City.To the modern reader, this recommended diversion makes complete sense, particularly in light of the country’s history of presidential assassinations and near-assassinations — lincoln would be slain at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. but to those living in that era, the decision is a far more difficult one — the country had not yet lost a president to violence, and lincoln did not want to be seen as sneaking through baltimore on the eve of war. And he would rather not have alienated the Southern-leaning residents of Maryland, a border state he desperately needed to preserve in the

union. In the end, Pinkerton succeeds, and lincoln slips unnoticed through baltimore ahead of schedule, averting danger.The book unfortunately lacks endnotes or a discussion of sourcing methods, making it difficult to determine the objectivity of Stashower’s reconstruction and preventing this book from being a first-rate work of history. And there has been a long-running historical debate about the seriousness of the baltimore plot; no schemers were ever arrested or charged with anything related to the conspiracy Pinkerton said he discovered. Ironically, some of the blame for that murkiness falls on Pinkerton himself, whose prickly personality and disputes with former lincoln advisers have clouded the results of his investigation.but does it matter if the plot was real? Or is it enough that the key players thought there was a serious threat and took actions that provide insights into characters that would shape the country? The answer, as Stashower ably demonstrates, is the latter: “lincoln’s handling of the crisis and its fallout would mark a fateful early test of his presidency, with many dark consequences,” he writes, adding that “seen in the light of what was to come . . . the baltimore episode stands as a defining moment, making a crucial transition from civilized debate to open hostilities, and presenting lincoln with a grim preview of the challenges he would face as president.”

by Daniel Stashower

The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War

Review by del Quentin Wilber,February 15, 2013

[email protected] Quentin Wilber is a Washington Post staff writer and the author of “Rawhide down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan.”

ThE hOuR OF PERIlThe Secret Plot to Murder lincoln before the Civil Warby daniel StashowerMinotaur. 354 pp. $26.99

John Ford Shelby Footebarry Crompton PO box 4017, Patterson, vic, 3204 Ph 9557 7872 Email: [email protected] Newsletter Editors: Warren Davey 85 yarra St, Williamstown, 3016

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