Information is power: Civil War edition

Susan Schulten has a typically awesome piece up in the New York Times about the use of the telegraph during the Civil War. Being able to coordinate war efforts in real time was a tremendous advantage for Lincoln, but it wasn't exactly laid out as such when he moved into the White House:

When he took office in March, the telegraph extended only to the Navy Yard and the War Department, not the White House. For several months thereafter the administration had to use the city’s central telegraph office to send its dispatches.

By contrast, the nerve center of the Union war effort in 1861 was found at the headquarters of Gen. George McClellan, who had actually issued a standing order that all messages were to be given solely to him. Such was the situation in October 1861, when telegrams reporting the disastrous Union defeat at Ball’s Bluff were brought directly to McClellan as he met with Lincoln in the White House. McClellan withheld the news from Lincoln, who later learned of both the defeat at Ball’s Bluff and that his close friend Edward Baker had been killed in action. Such a policy was unacceptable, and Lincoln soon transferred control of the telegraph from McClellan’s headquarters to the War Department.

Ulysses S. Grant: Bad for the Jews

I must admit I was not aware of General Order 11, which General Ulysses Grant issued in 1862:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department [the "Department of the Tennessee," an administrative district of the Union Army of occupation composed of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

He apparently did this to stem the black market in cotton, in which some Jewish traders were involved. Grant later rescinded the order and publicly repudiated it, allowing for a titanic influx of Jews back into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. (Okay, that never happened.) At least according to this Wikipedia entry, Grant managed to win a majority of the Jewish vote in 1868, although I'd really like to see the exit polls backing that up.

Is West Virginia legally a state?

Susan Schulten has a great post up about the birth of West Virginia (a.k.a. Kanawha) during the Civil War. But one thing I remain a bit fuzzy on is just how West Virginia legally became a state. Note Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. (Emphasis added)

West Virginia was formed from part of Virginia. According to the Constitution, Virginia's legislature would have had to accede to that, which would have meant the largest state in the Confederacy ceding a quarter of its territory to its enemy. Needless to say, that didn't happen. As I understand it, a Union occupation government in Virginia's northwestern counties simply declared itself to be the legitimate government of Virginia and passed the statehood resolution.

The Constitution doesn't offer the federal government the power to slice apart states to create new ones in the event of insurrection. So I'm wondering how this is even legal. Anyone?

Update: A reader points me to this amazing, if slightly tortured, defense from Abe Lincoln:

The consent of the Legislature of Virginia is constitutionally necessary to the bill for the admission of West Virginia becoming a law. A body claiming to be such Legislature has given its consent.... The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we can call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution, and secession in favor of the Constitution.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Why does no one write about the Civil War like this today?

From a Denver Post front page editorial, April 24, 1861:

The full particulars of the taking of Fort Sumpter by the Charleston traitors, together with the intense excitement created all over the country in consequence, occupied so much of our space Saturday, that we were unable to comment upon that affair as its merits demand. We are at a loss for language sufficiently strong and condemnatory to characterize as it deserves this greatest outrage ever committed against the Republic. The treason of Benedict Arnold, — all the sympathizing efforts of the tories of the Revolution, to give aid and comfort to the British cause, — assume a virtuous hue when compared with this last crowning treachery of the Slave oligarchy.

Takin' care of business, Linc style

More by the artist here.

Gold, slavery, and Colorado

Susan Schulten has another fascinating post up at the NYT's Civil War site. This one is about the interrelatedness of the slavery crisis in the East and the search for gold and silver in the West. As she notes, hundreds of thousands of prospective miners came to the western parts of the Kansas and Nebraska territories in the 1850s hoping to get rich. When southern states seceded in 1861, leaving the U.S. Congress almost devoid of Democrats, Republicans sought to quickly establish sympathetic territories and states in these newly populated regions. Enter the Colorado and Nevada territories. An interesting story and definitely worth the read.

Update: You can hear more about the intrigue surrounding Colorado's eventual statehood in Susan's interview on Colorado Public Radio. As she reports, Republicans pushed for Colorado and Nevada to gain statehood in the early 1860s as a way of assuring more Electoral College votes for Lincoln, whose reelection looked doubtful until shortly before the 1864 election. However, Colorado's own residents voted against statehood at that point, apparently concerned with the costs of self-government. Of course, Colorado became a state just in time to help Republicans rig win the presidential election of 1876.