Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office Unveiled
On April 12, the centennial of Clara Barton’s death, visitors climbed two flights of dusty wooden stairs in an old Washington, D.C., building to get a glimpse of the modest suite where the Civil War legend had masterminded a monumental postwar operation: tracking down missing Union soldiers. It was the perfect occasion to lift the curtain on an ambitious project that will make Barton’s once-forgotten quarters the centerpiece of a museum, research center and institute. Barton’s impact is international, said George Wunderlich, executive director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, because she not only founded the American Red Cross but pushed to expand its role beyond wartime relief to include responses to natural disaster. “Her legacy is bigger than this place, much, much bigger.”
The building had been just another derelict structure in Washington’s downtown until Richard Lyons of the General Services Administration (GSA) discovered some of Barton’s documents and belongings in the attic in 1996. Barton rented the space during the war to live in, as well as office space where she collected medical supplies donated for battlefield missions. After the war she used the office to help families searching for missing soldiers. The sign on the street entrance read in bold type, “Missing Soldiers Office,” followed by “3rd floor, Room 9, Miss Clara Barton.”
Historians and others rallied to save the building at 437 7th St. N.W., near Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, more than 15 years later, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine has signed an agreement with the building’s owner, the GSA, to manage the space. The tentative opening date for Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office is 2013. Leading the effort as superintendent and historian of the new facility will be Susan Rosenvold, previously director of operations at Antietam National Battlefield’s Pry House Field Hospital Museum.
Appomattox Gains a New Museum of the Confederacy
When traffic and neighboring obstructions made it hard for visitors to reach the Museum of the Confederacy in downtown Richmond, officials knew it was time to build satellite facilities. The first opened recently in an architecturally simple, 12,000-square-foot brick building in Appomattox with plenty of parking. Several large signs direct visitors to the building, but no Confederate flag will be displayed outside. Instead, a row of banners— one for each state that seceded—lines the entrance, culminating with a much larger U.S. flag. All the Confederate flags will be on display inside the building. Museum president and CEO Waite Rawls said the outside display is meant to exemplify reunification.
The 11 galleries inside are long on “wow” power. On exhibit are the 22 original Confederate flags, Robert E. Lee’s uniform, the highly decorated sword he wore to the surrender ceremony on April 9, 1865, and the pen he used to sign the surrender documents. That ceremony took place at the home of Wilmer McLean, a few miles away at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.
The museum, which is now open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., features a series of interactive displays that are well suited to children. One that would appeal to both adults and youngsters is a wall of 64 photographic portraits, including about 25 African Americans. When the visitor touches a face, a caption appears identifying each individual and chronicling his or her life during and after the war. Visitors may be surprised to find that the presentations are more evenhanded than they might have expected from a museum with “Confederacy” in its name.
National Slavery Museum: A Dream Deferred
After two decades of working to build a national museum focusing on slavery, former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder got a boost in 2001 when the city of Fredericksburg donated public land for the project and donors chipped in with money and artifacts. But the museum was never built, and in 2011 it filed for bankruptcy, citing a debt of $7 million. The project also recently lost its tax-exempt status after failing to file necessary tax returns. Creditors have requested payment of millions of dollars of unpaid debt, and some donors have asked for their donations to be returned. A museum attorney recently filed a reorganization plan to be considered by the creditors and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge. At press time, a decision in the case was pending.
Petersburg Plunderer Sentenced
A Petersburg, Va., resident was recently sentenced to one year in federal prison and fined more than $7,000 after pleading guilty to unlawfully removing Civil War relics from a battlefield. John J. Santo appears to have made his living for several years by selling Civil War items he had found using a metal detector on the Petersburg National Battlefield. When investigators searched his house, they found more than 9,000 artifacts, including belt buckles, bullets and buttons. They also found a diary listing his every visit to the battlefield over the previous four years and what he found. The tally included 18,000 bullets, 91 buttons, 68 fuses, 31 cannonballs and shells. Based on that document, investigators concluded he had sold a number of his finds, including about half the bullets, before he was arrested.
Battlefield authorities already knew they had a thief on the property because they had seen several holes that had been dug. Santo was finally caught in the act when motion detector cameras were installed.
First Taste of Freedom!
With a fireworks display and a Pennsylvania Avenue parade, Washington, D.C., residents honored the 150th anniversary of the DC Emancipation Act, the first piece of federal legislation that freed slaves and the only emancipation measure that included the compensation of slaveholders. The bill, which was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862, freed slaves in Washington. It also offered $100 to any who wanted to leave the country for the “Republics of Hayti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.”
Emancipation was immediate, but compensation of slaveholders took some time. Only slaveholders who had remained loyal to the Union could apply, and the process involved a petition in addition to an interview with city officials. By the end of the process, close to 3,000 people had been freed and 930 petitions for payment—which could be up to $300—had been accepted.
Lincoln expert Harold Holzer, speaking at the anniversary celebration of President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home, noted that the president was conflicted about having immediate versus gradual emancipation in the capital. “I would say that by the winter of 1862 he was fully in support of ridding the capital of slavery,” Holzer said, “but remained genuinely worried that if freedom came immediately, indigent and unhealthy slaves would be cast out into the streets with no way to take care of themselves. In the end, however, when the House and the Senate sided with immediate, rather than gradual, emancipation, Lincoln signed on.”
Prize Parcels at the Cedar Creek Battlefield
Two renowned but privately owned sites at Virginia’s Cedar Creek Battlefield may soon become open to the public. One is the handsome monument to the 8th Vermont Infantry, a unit that held off Confederates at great cost during the fight there, losing 106 of 159 men engaged. The other is Rienzi’s Knoll, the site where Phil Sheridan rallied his troops for a counterattack on the afternoon of October 19, 1864. The parcels cost $1.3 million, but Civil War Trust President Jim Lighthizer recently announced that nearly $1 million in grant money is already available for the project.
The Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Park is the only national park in the country co-owned by private entities and the federal government. The Trust’s two parcels would add 77 acres to the 1,400 acres already preserved.
Great Catch: Civil War Coded Telegrams
A TROVE OF 35 MANUSCRIPT ledgers of coded telegrams sent and received by the War Department during the Civil War was recently purchased by the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Collection in San Marino, Calif. Belonging to telegraph pioneer Thomas J. Eckert, the ledgers included more than 100 messages from President Abraham Lincoln, who went by code names such as “Ida” and “India.”
Eckert began his career as an operator for the Morse Telegraph Company. After heading telegraphic operations for Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, he was appointed chief of the War Department’s military telegraph unit in Washington.
The president spent so many hours waiting for telegrams from his generals that Eckert got to know him well. On April 14, 1865, the night the president was assassinated, Lincoln invited Eckert to Ford’s Theatre, but Eckert declined. Eckert eventually became president of Western Union.
Originally published in the August 2012 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
