BLIND LOVE

 

I am certain William Johnson believed he was dying in the name of love. And the object of his passion, Mrs. Jane Housden, may have believed the same thing. The official record tells us merely that this criminal class Romeo and Juliet were charged with the murder of an innocent man in open court - something you don't see very often. So when you do, it inspires contemplation, which follows.

The year was 1714, and the place was London. To describe life in this age as brutal and short is accurate, but a bit misleading. Average life expectancy was under 40 years of age, but that was because 12% of all children died before their first birthday. 

If you made it to thirty years of age in 1714 you could expect to live to be sixty, unless you lived in Newport Market section of London, where the overcrowding and lack of sanitation almost guaranteed you would still be dead by forty. But if you made it to sixty, even in Newport Market, you could expect to live till you were 72. There just weren’t very many who made it to sixty.

William Johnson (aka William Holloway) had been born in Newport Market. He was apprenticed as butcher (above), and then, because of his brains, became a surgeon’s assistant. 

By the age of 33 William's ambition moved him into the profession of footpath -  a thief who waylaid fellow pedestrians at gunpoint and robbed them. But William was known to have badly beaten several of his victims, and was suspected in at least two murders. But William also had the ambition to be a highwayman. But for that he would need a horse. And, alas, William fell victim to his ambitions.

 Early in 1710 he stole a bay gelding, the property of Mr. Evelyn Pierrpoint, a member of the peerage and a leader in the House of Lords. Pierpont was very popular in upper crust social circles, and closely tied to the crown. Being thus connected, this theft of his horse was investigated with zeal, and it was not long before William was suspected and incarcerated for the theft.

It was not unusual for convicted thieves to be condemned to death, and on 4 June, 1711, in the Old Bailey Courthouse, William was so convicted. But because he pleaded guilty his sentence was commuted to transportation to America. Five weeks later, while William was confined in the pestilent Newgate prison (above) awaiting shipment, he escaped. It was a singular achievement and as such it was a further insult to the honor of the upper crust that resulted in the arrest of William’s own lady love, Jane Housden, charged with her third “coining” offense.

At the other end of the criminal hierarchy from highwaymen were clippers. In a world without paper currency, every coin was literally worth its weight in silver or gold. In England the basic unit of currency was the “Pound Sterling”, which was minted from 16 ounces of real silver. This meant that merchants could short change their customers with the simple application of a file. Many “honest” shopkeepers rented out their cash boxes overnight to clippers, and many a shop’s customers found their change shaved of 2 or 3% of its face value, thus inspiring the descriptive phrase, “a clip joint” as a shop where you were cheated. This was the reason coins came with a date stamped on them. The longer a coin was in circulation the less reliable was its face value.

In the 1690’s the English Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. William Lowndes, wrote “it is a thing so easy…even women and children…are capable of the act.” The act was filing off silver from a coin, melting the filings and pouring them into a counterfeit mold. It was not uncommon for a raiding constable to discover “a woman sitting beside the fire finishing a pile of counterfeits with a knife and file, while her husband occupied himself with hot flasks and other coining tools.” It was estimated at the time that a pair of crooks …could produce twenty-five pounds of silver filings in a day - and this when a family could live quite comfortably on fifty Pounds a year.

Mrs. Jane Housden (aka Jane Newsted) had been arrested in 1701 for “coining”, and given a pardon. She was arrested again on 9 September, 1710, and pardoned again on 6 June. But officials then had warned that that if she were arrested a third time for the same offense, there would be no pardon; which made it so serious when Jane was arrested once again on 13 August, 1714. I suspect that this time Jane’s arrest was part of a trap. From informers the authorities knew that Jane had often alerted William to wealthy travelers. (about 20% of all women in London worked at least part time as prostitutes.)  And they knew that Jane was William’s mistress. A warrant had been prepared in advance for William’s arrest, signed by Lord Chief Justice Parker, himself, just in case William should appear at Jane's trial.

The date was Wednesday, 10 September, 1714.  Driven by passion and or love William slipped into the central court room at the Old Bailey with two loaded pistols in his coat pocket. He waited by “Door at the hole”, where under guard, visitors were allowed to pass food, drink and money to prisoners waiting in the docket. He managed but a few whispered words with his Jane before a constable and a turnkey placed him under arrest.

The instant they attempted to clap him in handcuffs, William drew a pistol. The turnkey leapt upon him, knocking the gun from his hand. Both men tumbled to the floor, the turnkey knocked silly. Jane seized the weapon, but another constable knocked her to the ground. Enraged, William fought to his feet, and leveled the second weapon. The constable jerked William’s arm up and drove a shoulder into his waist, as the head turnkey, Richard Spurling, raced forward to help. In the struggle, the gun went off, firing over the Constable’s head, but striking Mr. Spurling in the chest (above), killing him instantly.

The judges, shocked at the interruption, decided there was no point in continuing Jane’s trial for coining, and immediately tried her and William for the murder of poor Mr. Spurling,  A jury made up of witnesses to the murder was impaneled. The case was argued by other witnesses to the murder. The verdict was guilty for both defendants, delivered by even more witnesses to the murder. The punishment was set by yet a third group of witnesses to the murder, as death -  all while the corpus delicti was still warm. It had been a singular day in the Old Baily.

This time there was no pardon and no escape. At 9:00 on the morning of 19 September, 1714, William and Jane were loaded into a cart along with their hangman and the prison chaplain. Lead by constables and followed by a squad of soldiers, the sad procession passed up Holborn Street, then St. Giles Road, to Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street), with several stops along the way at pubs where the condemned were encouraged to imbibe. Finally they reached the traditional site of execution, where a large crowd waited, at a spot where there once had stood a tree.

As the old poem went, “I have heard sundry men oft times dispute, Of trees, that in one year will twice bear fruit. But if a man note Tyburn, 'will appear, That there’s a tree that bears twelve times a year.” And there, from a rude gibbet, a rough wooden beam, William and Jane, hopefully blind drunk, danced together at the end of their ropes. The prison chaplain read Pslam 51 3; “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” There was very little comfort in that passage, but then comfort was not the point.

The sin, in this particular case, was that William Holloway had murdered a man in open court, in front of witnesses, and Jane Housden had been foolish enough to love him. They were both sins that were to be repeated untold times over the next 300 years, and probably for another 300 after this.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty-Nine

 

The whistle on the approaching locomotive shrieked in desperation. Angry hands grabbed the big iron “harp switch”, and forcefully slammed the flagged handle aside. With a ringing thud the lever shoved the twin iron rails 3 inches, opening the point.

A cheer rose from the men watching round the station. The 4 large drive wheels on the locomotive abruptly stopped turning, and white yellow sparks danced where the iron wheels now slid along the iron rails. One of the thin men shouted, “We are done walking, General!” The rabble cheered again. One of the rebel officers drew his Navy Colt revolver from his belt.

The trouble began after the Army of Mississippi reached the Southern Railroad 12 miles east of Jackson. They had been marching for a week, from Vicksburg to Edwards Depot, to Raymond, 3 more days to the Pearl River, 2 more days to be ferried across and to march north to Brandon. They had been promised they would board cars of the Southern Railroad for the 40 mile ride to Enterprise, and then a one day march south to new camps where they would be fed and rested while they waited to be exchanged for Yankee prisoners. 

These 30,000 sick, exhausted Confederate soldiers watched train after train disappear toward Enterprise, carrying everything from supplies to the Mississippi Governor and his state's records. Then, on Wednesday, 15 May the men were told there would be no trains for them. Discipline collapsed.

Private Epram McDowell Anderson, a 21 year old from the First Missouri Brigade, witnessed the riot of weary men. “Efforts were made,” he wrote a year after the war, “by moving the switch, to throw the trains...from the track...officers had to draw and threaten to use their side-arms before the mob could be subdued. (Later) One man got up in the plaza of Brandon and offered to...go and hang (General) Pemberton, the traitor.” And the dispirited remnants of the Army of Mississippi had to complete their journey via “shank's mare” to the Chickasawhay River and Enterprise, 12 miles inside Alabama.

General “Old Joe” Johnston (above) had to stop the trains, to protect the locomotives. West of the still damaged Pearl River bridge some 90 steam engines had been or soon would be lost. None of these could be replaced. 

And while the Confederacy did everything it could to keep the Yankees from learning of the Brandon riot, 32 year old William Nugent, one time lawyer and now Mississippi Inspector General admitted in a 28 July letter to his wife Eleanor that, “...after the fall of Vicksburg I entertained the most gloomy forebodings...The great demoralization produced in our army...was enough to make one dispirited.” He hoped, he said, that with time the officers could, “...reorganize and re-discipline our army...”. It was a desperate hope. But with the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederacy had little left but desperation.

Disaster followed upon disaster. On Thursday, 9 July the outpost of Port Hudson surrendered 6,500 men to General Nathaniel Banks. On Friday, 10 July Joseph 'Old Joe' Johnston and his Army of Relief retreated back inside the defenses of Jackson. 

But with the Pearl River Bridge still not repaired, his 28,000 men had no hope of defending the town against the 40,000 Yankees gathering outside its trenches. The weather was hot, General Sherman noted, adding that “...on the morning of July 17th the place was found evacuated. General Steele's division was sent in pursuit as far as Brandon...but General Johnston had carried his army safely off, and pursuit in that hot weather would have been fatal to my command.”

And with that anticlimax, the Vicksburg campaign came to an end. Confederate President Jefferson Davis (above) had no doubt who and what was to blame for the outcome. Vicksburg was lost, he insisted, because of a “want of provisions inside and a general outside who would not fight.” The latter being the cranky and passive-aggressive Joe Johnston - whom Davis had appointed. 

But what about the general inside, the uninspired and uninspiring Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton (above)? He was also Davis' choice. And Davis had advised him not to follow Johnston's' advice. It seemed to be all of a piece, that and Davis' refusal to admit any personal culpability in the disaster, 

The Vicksburg Campaign began in December of 1862 and had lasted 7 months through July of 1863. It cost the Yankees 10,000 dead, wounded and missing, while the Confederacy suffered over 45,000 causalities. 

In just 7 months, Jefferson Davis' insistence on holding Vicksburg and Port Hudson, even after Grant had destroyed the Pearl River Bridge, had cost the Confederate government an entire field army, as well as all but a 12 mile eastern sliver of the state of Mississippi, some 48,500 square miles of sovereignty lost.

Jefferson Davis' culpability in this disastrous campaign proved a damning indictment of his military skills. The President of the Confederacy had no business telling any general where to place his men.

David Dixon Porter (above),  the 53 year old Admiral of the Yankee brown water navy, had been accused of never praising a superior. And he was never a close friend of Grant's. But he had nothing but praise for the Major General. 

“No ordinary general could have taken Vicksburg” said Porter. “Some men would have given it up....some would have demanded half the resources of the Union; but Grant never wavered in his determination, or in his hopes of success."

Most important of all to Midwest farmers, a war which had seemed a stalemate 7 months earlier, was now clearly on the path to victory. As Lincoln put it, “The father of waters now ran unvexed to the sea.”  And that was the achievement of Major General Grant.

-30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Eighty-Eight

 

The tall, thin, dark haired woman with the lantern jaw raised a flat hand to shade her eyes from the setting sun. She watched the creaking sad wagon pulled slowly on wobbly wheels by the long shadow of a weary mare. Like so many beasts this summer, the filly's ribs showed through her dust covered hide.

Mary's heart rose and then fell when she recognized the familiar hulk of Father John O'Bannon (above)  holding the reins. Her husband had to be in the wagon.  The priest had brought John to her. In the back of an ambulance.

A commission of officers from both armies (above)  had drawn up and supervised the signing of paroles for every rebel soldier in Vicksburg. With that slip of paper soldiers could justify their absence from the battlefield, back home or in transient to home.  

Such a valued prize (above)  brought out the 31,000 who surrendered over the 18 to 20,000 'effectives' Pemberton had mustered to defend the city. That 'missing third' of Pemberton's army were the flotsam that collects around any army, particularly a losing one, particularly a badly run one, trapped in an urban area.

The 400 structures of Vicksburg (above) offered deserters and malingers 400 places to hide. It was relatively easy for men seeking to escape the constant shelling and sniping to find a quiet place to sleep, or even a meal away from the trenches. Considering the quality of the official rations, there was little advantage to staying with their units. Most did, but at least a third chose to fend for themselves. Once surrendered, the starving Army of Mississippi was kept alive by the Yankees, but as soon as they marched unarmed out of Vicksburg, they were consuming their own food again. And Grant's goal was to reclaim his supply lines  as quickly as possible.

Finally, at nine on the morning of Saturday, 11 July, 1863, 7 days after the surrender, the garrison of Vicksburg, “...waved a parting adieu to the scene of that terrible and bloody drama...”, or so remembered 21 year old private Epram McDowell Anderson.  There was the humiliation of spot searches as they left the city, to be certain they took no weapons with them. But after that brief reminder of their helplessness, the Army of Mississippi was sent on their way,  Private's Anderson's 1^st Missouri infantry were the lead regiment on the march, and he wrote, “Never was an army more grateful than ours on leaving Vicksburg. It was like a prisoner who has been unshackled in his cell and turned lose to breath again the pure air....rejoicing in a sense of freedom....” 

General Grant had offered rebel General John Stevens Bowen (above)  the option of staying in the city until he had fully recovered, but the southern gentleman insisted on accompanying his regiment, at least in part because, as private Anderson pointed out, “The first day's march brought us to Edwards.”

That winter Mary Lucrecia Preston Kennerly Bowen (above) was 28 years old and about to deliver her third child. With an infant mortality rate of 20% under favorable conditions, she had chosen to hole up on the plantation of “friends” 17 miles to the east, outside of Edward's Depot, with the wives of 2 of John's subordinates – Colonel Pembroke S. Senteny and Major Eugene Erwin of the 2^nd Missouri regiment - as her midwives.

A native of St. Louis, Mary was an army brat and a fierce daughter of the south - her three brothers were fighting for the Confederacy. In the spring of 1862 Mary had left her children in her mother's care and rushed to Tennessee to nurse John after the general had been wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. John's recovery was confirmed when the couple conceived their 3^rd child. Mary then followed John to his new posting at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. She stayed there until March of 1863, when her “time came”. But on that July evening, Mary already knew that both of her midwives were now widows. And when reunited with her husband that Sunday evening, she came face to face with the  war so many of her generation had sought.

In Vicksburg, John Bowen (above) had consumed contaminated water or food touched by the contaminated hands of another. This had infected him with an alien bacteria, which had then killed most of the native bacteria which digested his food. After that, nothing he consumed reached his cells, but dehydration would kill him long before he starved to death. 

John's eyes were sunken. His mouth was dry, his lips cracked. He had a fever so high he kept passing in and out of conciseness. His belly was bloated. Most of the food and water he forced down was quickly vomited back up. He had little energy to even sit up. His gut kept cramping and he was plagued by the constant urge to defecate. When he did his stools were watery with blood and mucus. It was called the flux, or the bloody flux. In modern vernacular it was diarrhea, and it killed far more soldiers than did guns.

Sunday morning the Confederate army resumed their march, forced south to avoid fouling Sherman's supply lines as he advanced again on Jackson.  After 2 miles the road dropped off the high ground and forked, with the right passage leading another 14 miles to Raymond. But Father O'Bannon realized his patient could go no further. He sought assistance at the Morrison plantation along the Raymond Road, but was informed by the overseer that all the slaves had marched off to Alabama, leaving no one to help the General. The man suggested they should take the south fork, down the Mount Moriah Road, another 2 miles to home of John Walton.

The single story house was called Valley Farm (above), and had been occupied by John Walton Jr. and his wife Margaret since at least 1850. After they carried the general into the house, Father O'Bannon wrote in his notebook, “July 12, General Bowen was too sick to move any further.” It would be an ugly night. Every hour John became weaker.

By midday on Monday, 13 July, 1863, Major General John Stevens Bowen was dead. Neighbor Robert Dickson supplied a coffin of rough wood. And one of the best hopes the Confederacy had for a second generation of military leaders was buried in Mr. Walton's garden, while Mary sobbed quietly at the graveside.

Monday morning, 13 July, the rebel army continued their march east, fading away a little bit more with every man who, hearing the gun fire from Jackson, and clutching his parole (above),  fell out of the line and started for home. Many would return when they were exchanged for captured Yankees. But many would not. On Wednesday, 16 July, the Army of Mississippi reached the Pearl River 10 miles below Jackson, and crossed into Alabama, back into Confederate held territory.

Mary Kennerly Bowen stayed on in Raymond, to remain close to John. Come the cooler months, she saw that John's body was moved to consecrated ground in the nearby Bethesda Presbyterian Church Cemetery (above).  Then, Mary followed the rebel army, this time to Atlanta. She served as a nurse during that campaign, and was even wounded in the Battle of Altoona. 

In September of 1864, when Atlanta was captured by General Sherman, the red headed Yankee offered an escort to see Mrs. Bowen back to her children in St. Louis. But the unrequited rebel proudly refused.  And so her children remained partners in her war.

- 30 -