I cannot conceive of a worst possible
moment for the young men to deliver their false missive. Two weeks
before, the three day battle of the Wilderness had killed and wounded
some 17,666 Federal soldiers. And just three days later General Grant
led the same weary army into the seemingly endless meat grinder of
the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, which this early
morning of May 18th, 1864, was still grinding on, having
killed and wounded another 18,400, including legendary Union General
John Sedgwick. Three days ago, in the Shenandoah Valley yet another
Federal Army, this one 6,275 men strong, had been ambushed by an
even smaller rebel force in the Battle of New Market. The Federal
troops had suffered 13% causalities, and retreated some 35 miles to
Strasbourg, Virginia. It seemed as if everything the Federal
government attempted in this third spring of the American Civil War,
was producing only disaster. And then these young man arrived at 3:30
in the morning, with their missive, to seemingly drop the other shoe.
It purported to be a bulletin from the
Associated Press, which had been in business since 1848, and
contained the text of a White House Proclamation. In language
typical of the President, it began, “In all seasons of exigency, it
becomes a nation carefully to scrutinize its line of conduct, humbly
to approach the Throne of Grace, and meekly to implore forgiveness,
wisdom, and guidance.” The operative passage began in the third
paragraph. “In view, however, of the situation in Virginia...and
the general state of the country, I, Abraham Lincoln...by virtue of
the power vested in me by the Constitution...call forth the citizens
of the United States, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five
years, to the aggregate number of four hundred thousand, in order to
suppress the existing rebellious combinations...”
The reaction to news of a new half
million man draft, in the city which the year before had produced
three days of rioting (above) in response to the first draft call in America,
was expected to be even more violence. One hundred twenty had died in
the summer of 1863, at least eleven African-Americans had been lynched, untold
numbers beaten, and fifty large buildings had been burned down. Many
on Wall Street took this as a sign the Federal government was losing
the war, and they expected investors this spring of 1864. to dump
their stocks for gold..
At first glance the notice seemed
legitimate. It was written on the same cheap oily tissue paper used
by the Associated Press, but had not arrived in the usual fashion. Several
editors were suspicious, but there were only moments before the
deadline to start the presses for the morning papers. Under this time
constraint, and fearing they would be “scooped” by competitors,
three Democratic leaning papers rushed the story into the print – The World, the
Journal of Commerce, and the Brooklyn Eagle. But the night editor of
the Times, a Republican paper, did not recognize the handwriting, and
found it had not been delivered in an AP envelope. He held his own
presses while he dispatched a messenger for confirmation. The AP
editor replied, “The 'Proclamation' is false as hell and not
promulgated through this office. The handwriting is not familiar.”
Wall Street was in an uproar that
morning, with investors and brokers crowding all the newspaper
offices (above), demanding an answer. Was the proclamation real or not? When
the markets opened, the price of gold rose about 10%, but quickly
fell back after William Seward, Secretary-of-State and Edward
Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary-of-War, both issued statements declaring
the report to be “an absolute forgery.” And if the administration
had stopped there everything would have been all right. But Lincoln
himself ordered the local commander, General John Dix, to seize the
offices of the Journal of Commerce and the New York World, and to
”arrest and imprison...the Editors, proprietors, and publishers.”
It seemed the bloody mess in Virginia was making everybody a little
jumpy.
The Journal of Commerce was a small
anti-slavery newspaper founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse,
inventor of the telegraph. But the owners opposed the Lincoln
administration's decision to use force to put down the rebellion. So
the Postmaster General had refused to deliver the JOC via the mail,
crippling the paper outside New York City, where most of its 35,000
readers lived. William Prime, business manager of the JOC, wrote to
his wife that afternoon, “Found on coming down town that we, in
common with the World...had been hoaxed by a most ingenious
scoundrel.” That evening Federal soldiers arrived to close down the
paper and arrest the guiltless Mr. Prime.
Considerably less innocent was the two
cent per copy, “New York World”. The paper was owned by the
Democratic National Committee, and directed by the DNC chairman,
August Belmont. In its pages anything with a whiff of Lincoln or
Republicanism abut it was opposed. Every day the paper was filled
with articles warning of the threat of the ballooning war debt, and
criticism of the administration's military strategy. Its editorials
called for repeal of the emancipation proclamation, and a negotiated
peace with the Confederacy. It was the platform of the Democratic
Party in 1864. But these were not entirely the position of the
editor, Mr. Manton Malone Marble.
Marble (above) was a newspaperman with printer's
ink in his veins. Employed as the Night Editor, he had bought the
bankrupt World in 1861, dreaming of a non-partisan fact based style
of journalism. But after just six months he had been forced to seek
new backers, and the Democratic Party had eagerly stepped in. Marble
lost friends and staff members when he signed the deal, and the joke
among journalists in the city was that Marble was now little more
than a conductor for the stories Belmont wanted in the paper day in
and day out. But there was still a spark of independence in the man,
and when he learned from an alert staffer, before dawn on the morning
of 18 May, 1864, that his paper had published the
proclamation, he ordered all copies still unsold to be withdrawn from
street vendors, and dispatched a fast ship to stop and board a
steamer “Nova Scotia”, to return the bundles of the newspaper bound
for England - even buying back the free copy provided to the boat's purser.
It made no difference, Marble was arrested the evening of 18 May,
and the offices of “The World” padlocked shut.
That very night the member papers of
the Associated Press telegraphed the President, strongly defending
Prime and Marble. The next day several of editors, including Horace
Greeley, of the Republican leaning Tribune, joined the chorus of
demands that Marble and Prime be released. And it began to occur to
Lincoln, that he had stepped into something unpleasant. He also had
the calming influence of General Dix, who seems to have quickly
suspected, along with the members of the AP, that this was not a
rebel plot, nor even a Democratic one.
At the same time he arrested Prime and
Marble, Dix also ordered the arrest of Joseph Howard, night editor
of the Brooklyn Eagle, the only other paper to actually publish and distribute the false
proclamation. Within a day Howard, who had previously been the
private secretary to the abolitionist firebrand minister Henry Ward
Beecher, confessed. He had conceived the fraud as a way to clear
himself of debts. Howard assumed the false proclamation would drive up
the price of gold, in preparation for which he had bought gold
futures “short”, on credit. As one historian has noted, “Nothing
worse was ever done for the purpose of speculation.” Two days
later, on Saturday morning, 21 May, police detectives
stopped and arrested Francis Mallson, a reporter for the Eagle, who
had actually authored the fake telegram. Francis had just been drafted, and
was on his way to report for duty. He had hoped the scam would
provide for his family while he was in the army. The next day, Sunday 22 May, military authorities released both Prime and
Marble. But the damage had been done.
Marble was in a rage. He laid the
blame for his arrest directly on Lincoln's head. On Monday, 23 May he unleashed
his pen, in a letter that took up several columns. “Not until
today,” Marble wrote, “has The World been free to speak. But to
those who have ears to hear, its absence has been more eloquent than
its columns could ever be.” He then went on to do his very best to
prove that contention wrong. Lincoln had acted, wrote Marble, “for
the purpose of gratifying an ignoble partisan resentment” He
wondered if the Times or Greeley's Tribune had published the
Proclamation, “would you, Sir, have suppressed the Tribune and the
Times as you suppressed the World and the Journal of Commerce?” He
then answered the question for Mr. Lincoln. “You know you would not... Can you, whose eyes discern equality under every
complexion, be blinded by the hue of partisanship.” George
Templeton Strong, an diarist and observer of politics in New York,
noted, “The martyred newspaper...vomits acid bile most copious.”
Marble now became the publicist for the
Democratic Party, and its champion, General McClellen (above, center). He spent the next six months retelling and even
creating every lie conceivable about Lincoln, charging him with
wanting to force race mixing on the public, and ignoring the pain and
sacrifices of Union soldiers on the battlefield.
And it might have
worked, excerpt on 2 September, 1864, Union General William Tecumseh
Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, the rail and industrial heart of
the Confederacy. In that instant it was clear Lincoln was winning the
war, and the Democrats were revealed as defeatists, with no
answers, only protests. That November Lincoln received only 33% of
the vote in New York City. Despite that, he won the state, if barely,
on his way to re-election, 55% of the popular vote, and 212 electoral
votes to Democrat General George McClellan's 21
The World did not accept defeat,
disparaging Lincoln's speech the day after Lee had surrendered, on the night of 13 April, 1865. It described the President as groping “like a traveler in an
unknown country without a map.” The following night John Wilkes
Booth murdered the President, transforming Lincoln into a martyr, and
the The New York World and it's editor into a petty, vindictive and racist party
mouthpiece.
- 30 -
So at 8 a.m. on the last day of June, 1863, when the 1st and 7th regiments of Michigan volunteer cavalry cantered up the Baltimore Pike into Hanover (above), they were unsure of the reception they would receive. A halt was called and their commander, newly promoted General George Armstrong Custer, ordered most the men to dismount and posted sentries on all the roads into town. Meanwhile, the newly appointed Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, commander of the 3rd Cavalry division, greeted the townsfolk and asked for information. He found them pleasant and helpful.
So, after a short rest, when the 1st West Virginia cavalry, under Union General Farnsworth, arrived, Custer and Kilpatrick and the Michigan men remounted and continued on to the northeast, toward the Pigeon Hills and Abbottstown beyond. They were looking for the Rebel army, said to be somewhere in the area.
In their turn the West Virginians were replaced in Hanover by the 5th New York. And about 11 A.M. the newly formed 18th Pennsylvania cavalry regiment limped into Hanover and the New Yorkers mounted up and, in their turn, began to head toward Abbottstown.
Pennsylvanian Captain Henry Potter, commanding 40 men, relieved the New York pickets southwest of Hanover, out on Fredrick road. Their officer informed him of some suspicious men seen lurking at the edge of a nearby wood. When the New York boys left, Potter decided to investigate. He and some of his men advanced down the road to the southwest of Hanover. Three miles later, at a road junction and small farm owned by the Butts family (above), Potter's command was suddenly cutoff by 60 mounted men in grey who appeared behind him. They were members of the 2nd North Carolina cavalry, and their officer demanded that Potter surrender. Instead, Potter ordered his men to draw their pistols and charge.
They burst through the startled Rebel line, killing one Confederate trooper and wounding several others. Four of the Pennsylvania men were also killed, but they broke through and raced back toward Hanover. The rebels gave chase.
This became a three mile gallop across the countryside, both sides firing wildly. As the pursuit neared Hanover it uncovered the men Potter had left behind. Their seven shot carbines forced the Confederates to pause. But as more of the North Carolina horsemen arrived, they swarmed over the federals who retreated back down Fredrick street and into town.
The center square of Hanover was now jammed with the federal cavalry division’s supply train and ambulances, as well as the rear guard of the 5th New York which had yet to leave town. General Farnsworth was trying to disentangle the one from the other. But he was overrun by his own retreating men, with the rebels pressing closely behind. Farnsworth's federals were driven out of the town.
Farnsworth quickly reformed his troopers, and was reinforced by more who were counter- marching toward the sound of the guns. With the New York rear guard and most of the Pennsylvania regiment, Farnsworth launched a dismounted charge back into the town. The federals now swarmed through the narrow side streets and alleys around the square.
Now the mounted rebels found themselves engaged in close combat in the narrow side streets of Hanover, (above) where there was little room to swing a saber or maneuver a horse. The commander of the Confederate troops had his own horse shot out from under him, was thrown into a vat of dye and was then captured by a New York trooper.
The Confederates were forced to withdraw. As more confederate troopers arrived, they formed battle lines on the hills to the south and west of Hanover, while the Federals were in a defensive arc centered on town (above). Rebel artillery began to lob shells. Battery E of the 4th U.S. Horse Artillery responded.
At this point General Kilpatrick arrived back in Hanover, having driven his horse so hard that it immediately broke down and died. He thus lived up to his nickname of General “Kill Cavalry”.
Kilpatrick put Custer’s dismounted men to the west of Hanover, and the fair haired Custer (above) began to press toward the Confederate artillery position, forcing the rebels to reinforce that flank and pull their artillery back.
And just for a few moments it looked as if a great battle might be fought here (above), with both sides feeding in men until the battle grew to a maw that ground up humanity by the thousands. But it was not to be. That night the Rebel cavalry commander, J.E. B. Stuart, slipped his troopers around the union right flank (to the east) and headed to the north, toward Dover and away from the Confederate main body. . In the morning Kilpatrick’s horsemen followed the Confederates, to the north and to the east. There was to be no great battle in Hanover.
But, that same morning, July 1st, 1863, the 2nd Federal Cavalry division was probing 12 miles due west of Hanover, and found not Confederate cavalry but infantry, the entire right flank of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. It was this force that J.E.B. Stuart was supposed to be screening, and protecting. And it was this battle which would grow over the next three days into the climatic struggle of the American Civil War, in and around a small Pennsylvania crossroads town no larger than Hanover, but destined to be more famous; Gettysburg.
It was an accident of history that Hanover was not the site of the war’s crucial battle: lucky Hanover. It was a combination of human blindness and ambition, and accidents of terrain and of timing that the battle of Hanover produced 28 dead, 123 wounded and 180 missing or captured.
.Meanwhile at Gettysburg these same imponderables produced 7,864 dead, 27,224 wounded and 11,199 missing or captured. And that illogic is what is called the logic of war.
The first soldier killed at Hanover, out near the Butts farm, was Corporal John Hoffacker. He had served in the 18th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry for all of two months, and he died barely 20 miles from his home. That too is the logic of war.
