H.U.G. - The Transformation of U.S. Grant

Everywhere you go in the United States you find high schools, particularly in urban areas, named U.S. Grant High School. Oklahoma City has one. So does Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego and a many other cities. Kids attending one of those schools have no idea how close their school came to being named H.U.G. High School. Ulysses S. Grant, the man after whom these high schools were named, was a Civil War Union General, the 18th President of the United States, and the man credited, along with President Abraham Lincoln, of ultimately preserving the Union. Few people know that Ulysses S. Grant was not his given birth name. In a day when most people were known by their initials or nicknames, H.U.G. was the given name of the man who would become our President.

On April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, Hannah Simpson Grant gave birth to our future 18th President. Hannah's husband, Jesse Grant, was a self-educated leather producer (tanner) who suggested they draw names from a hat. Having taught himself the classics - and proud of his knowledge - Jesse wrote down several names from ancient Greek history and Latin literature: names like Ulysses, Heracles, Perseus, and many more. Jesse Grant pulled out the name Ulysses from the hat.

Jesse, in a concession to his devout Methodist wife who wanted a more biblical name for their son, agreed to make "Hiram" the first name of their boy. Hiram is the biblical name of the man who built Solomon's Temple. So, Hiram Ulysses Grant became the given name for the man we know today as Ulysses Simpson Grant.

In pre-Civil War America, people often used their initials as their name. If you look at any census prior to 1850 you will see many names written out with initials. For example, Josh Lee would be  J.L.; Fred Tinsley Cherry would be F.T.C.; and Hiram Ulysses Grant would be H.U.G.

That's right. H.U.G.

These initials caused a great deal of consternation for our nation's future President when he was a schoolboy in Ohio. "H.U.G. (and) stop it." "Give me (a) H.U.G." "Come here (and) H.U.G." -- The jokes were constant. The family was poor in those early days, and since Ulysses was the oldest child, everyone was unsure how H.U.G. could afford to continue his education after high school. Finally, with the help of an Ohio Senator, H.U.G. received an appointment to West Point, which was the best free education of the day, albeit with a military commitment. Jesse Grant was delighted his son was going to West Point to become a military man because "he will never amount to anything in business."

As Ulysses packed up his belongings to move to New York, the initials H.U.G. were placed on his suitcase. Knowing the razzing that would come his way from his classmates - young men who would later compose the infamous Class of 43 at West Point - Ulysses wiped the initials H.U.G. off his suitcase and never allowed them to be used again. It would simply be Ulysses Grant.

However, when he arrived at West Point and signed his papers Ulysses Grant, the enrollment officer told him that the Ohio Senator had nominated him as Ulysses S. Grant. "You either have to sign these papers as Ulysses S. Grant or go home." The "S." assigned young Ulysses by the Senator stood for "Simpson" - the maiden name of Ulysses' mother. The Simpsons were friends of the Senator. Ulysses signed his name Ulysses S. Grant, but shortly his classmates were calling him U.S. Grant, and later by a knick name they gave to him - "Uncle Sam" or "Sam" for short, a play on the U.S. in Grant's name.

The name U.S. Grant and the nickname "Sam" both stuck. U.S. Grant graduated 21st out of his 39 member Class of 43, but first in horsemanship. He went on to serve in the military with distinction during the Mexican War, and afterwards, as a quartermaster for the Army in California and Oregon. He was forced to resign from the Army on July 31, 1854 because of his struggle with alcohol, accused by his superior officer of being drunk while handing out paychecks.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, U.S. Grant was almost forty years old, out of the Army, financially broke because of multiple business failures, and considered a failure by most people. George McClellan, a classmate at West Point, refused to meet with Grant to discuss a possible readmission into the Army when the Civil War began. U.S. Grant's life as a soldier was over.

Dejected and depressed, U.S. Grant went back to farming and shop keeping in Illinois. It was only when the governor of Illinois asked Grant to get into military shape a ragtag group of state volunteers - many of whom were drunkards and former prison inmates - that U.S. Grant got back into the War. He advanced through the state militia ranks, becoming a state appointed General. After many initial, aggressive victories against the south, he came to the attention of President Lincoln. U.S. Grant would eventually become the General-in-Chief of the United States Army - promoted to the position by Lincoln - and the man Lincoln credited with singlehandedly bringing victory to the Union.

 U.S. Grant would later serve two terms as President of the United States  (1869-1877). If you were to compare all the Presidents when they were thirty-nine years of age, U.S. Grant would be the one most people would say had no chance of becoming President.

The fact that he did become President was a testament to timing, fortitude in the face of affliction (war and rejection), and of course, Providence. Two things strike me about the story of U.S. Grant:

(1). It is the man who makes the name, not the name that makes the man, and
(2). It is not nearly as important that a man start well as it is that he finishes well.

The DNA of John Wilkes Booth: Nothing to Lose and Much to Learn about a Tragic Love Story

 

John Wilkes Booth

The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, possess three vertebrae specimens that, according to the government, come from the body of the man who killed President Abraham Lincoln.  The vertebrae were taken from John Wilkes Booth during the official autopsy performed on April 27, 1865.  Booth had been killed a day earlier, April 26, 1865, after being shot by Union sergeant Boston Corbett at Garrett’s farm in Virginia. However, there is an ongoing effort today by Booth's descendants, using the services of DNA specialists, to prove John Wilkes Booth did not die at Garrett's farm on April 26, 1865, but actually lived for an additional forty years, dying in his early sixties. Booth's descendants have long believed John Wilkes Booth escaped the Union's attempts to capture him.

Joanne Hulme, a distant Booth relative, wrote on March 2011, "At no time did any of John Wilkes Booth's family identify the body at Garrett's farm; not on the Montague, not at Weaver's Funeral Home, and not at the barn. The government could have brought the Booth family forth, but chose not to. Joseph Booth, John's brother, said numerous times that neither he nor Edwin Booth ever identified the body." Over 95% of all Booth descendants today believe the so-called 'body in the barn' was not that of forefather John Wilkes Booth.

The body buried at the Arsenol

Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered the body in the barn to be immediately and secretly buried in the Old Penitentiary on the grounds of the Washington Arsenal, land now a part of Ft. McNair. A grave was dug beneath the prison floor on the evening of April 27, 1865, and the remains, wrapped in an army blanket and placed in a gun box, were lowered into a hole and covered by a stone slab. One photograph of the body had been taken during the Booth autopsy and it was given to Stanton, but the photograph immediately disappeared. Unlike Booth's diary which was also given to Stanton and disappeared but then reaapeared two years later, the autopsy photograph, which could have identified the body as Booth's, never reappeared.  Nearly four years later in February of 1869, President Andrew Johnson ordered the body exhumed and given to the family. Ironically, in Baptist Alley behind Ford's Theater, the very alley in which Booth had made his escape after assassinating the President four years earlier, the casket was opened and the decomposed body, now a skeleton, was for the first time shown to a representative of the Booth family.

The skeleton was then taken to Baltimore and re-buried in February 1869 in the Booth family plot at Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. Booth's granddaughter Izola Forrester wrote in her 1937 book This One Mad Act that it was common knowledge in the Booth family that John Wilkes Booth did not die in the barn at Garrett's farm. Blanche DeBar Booth, John's niece, swore in an affidavit late in her life that her uncle John tried to contact her after the turn of the century, and that both Edwin Booth (John's brother) and Mary Ann Holme's Booth (John's mother) had personally met with John Wilkes Booth after his alleged death in April 1865. 

Circuit Court for Baltimore, Maryland

In October of 1994, a petition was filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore, Maryland to "exhume the alleged remains of John Wilkes Booth from Green Mount Cemetery (in Baltimore)."  Two descendants of Booth, a great-niece named Lois White Rathbun and a second cousin named Virginia Eleanor Kline, filed the petition. The Booth family was assisted by historian Nathaniel Orlowek, historiographer and professor Arthur Ben Chitty from University of the South, and Washington D.C. super lawyer Mark S. Zaid. The cause for the petition was the belief that John Wilkes Booth was not shot and killed on April 26, 1865, at Garrett's farm, but escaped Virginia and eventually lived in Tennessee and Texas under the alias "John St. Helen" and then eventually moved to Oklahoma under the alias "David E. George" where Booth eventually died in Enid, Oklahoma on January 13, 1903 (see Statement of Case: Appellate Brief). Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan ruled against the Booth family and declared the body buried at Green Mount could not be exhumed. After losing on appeal, the Booths turned their attention in 2010 on an effort to exhume the body of John's brother, Edwin Booth, buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge MA. Once Edwin's body is exhumed, DNA will be compared to the vertebrae taken from the body in the barn.

If the DNA of Edwin Booth matches the vertebrae the government claims to be from John Wilkes Booth, then the "Booth Legend" will be laid to rest. If not, the interest in the man named John St. Helen/David E. George will explode. Either way, there remains an incredible and mostly unexplored story of love, tragedy and mystery--the story of David E. George.

The Suicide of David Elihu George

David E. George

David Elihu George committed suicide in Room #4 of the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid, Oklahoma on Tuesday morning, January 13, 1903, by drinking strychnine poison. Mr. George was in his early sixties at the time of his death, and little was known about him when he died. David George had come to Enid just a few weeks earlier, in December 1902, and lived in the Grand Hotel paying for a week's rent at a time. He went about town verbally advertising himself for hire as a house painter. Mr. George was in his early sixties, was known to drink heavily at night in the bars on the town square, was occasionally seen by the proprietors of the hotel sitting in the lobby reading vaudeville and/or theatrical journals. He also possessed an affinity for quoting Shakespeare. Very little else was known about this stranger--until after he died.

The Enid Wave published in its January 13, 1903 afternoon edition a one-paragraph article about the David E. George suicide. A local pastor, Rev. E.C. Harper, brought the nickel paper home and read the headline to his wife Jessica. The couple had moved to Enid just a year earlier from El Reno, Oklahoma. While her husband was a pastor in El Reno in 1900, Mrs. Harper had attended to a "David George" on his sickbed. The deathly ill man had confessed to Jessica Harper that he was "John Wilkes Booth," wishing to clear his conscience of "killing the greatest man who ever lived." Mr. George, would eventually recover from his serious illness of 1900, and continued to work in El Reno, never mentioning again his alleged real identity. Mrs. Harper and others in El Reno, including Rev. E.C. Harper, dismissed the George's 1900 'Booth confession' as either the delusions of a sick man or the deception of an insane man.

The Grand Hotel, Enid, Oklahoma today

Upon reading the Enid newspaper account of  David E. George's suicide that Tuesday evening, January 13, 1903, the Harpers wondered if this "David E. George" who died earlier that morning at the Grand Hotel could be the same David George they had known in El Reno. Mr. Harper went down to the town square and entered the Penniman Furniture Store, which doubled as a funeral parlor, and viewed the George body. With no known relatives in Enid, the body was under the care of embalmer W.H. Ryan.  Rev. Harper saw George's body and realized it was the same man that he and his wife had known in El Reno. The minister suggested to W.H. Ryan that government authorities should be notified because "this man confessed to my wife that he was John Wilkes Booth." It was the next day, January 14, 1903, that the Enid newspapers had a field day with the testimony of Rev. and Mrs. Harper. Enid officials did handwriting analysis of David George's and John Wilkes Booth's handwriting and noted uncanny similarities. The body of George was carefully examined and several distinguishing and unique features in common with Booth were noted. The death of David E. George and his "Booth confession" to Mrs. Harper spread throughout the country via newspapers.

Finis Bates

Enter Memphis, Tennessee attorney Finis Bates. Mr. Bates read in the Memphis newspaper the story about David George's suicide and wondered if this man who confessed to being Booth could be the same man Bates knew as "John St. Helen" years earlier in Texas. Thirty years before, in the early 1870's,  Finis Bates was a young lawyer in Granbury, Texas. He had represented a man named John St. Helen in a tax and liquor license case. In late 1872 Bate's client, John St. Helen became ill. St. Helen called for his attorney to come and see him. Just like David E. George would later confide to Mrs. E.C. Harper in 1900 that he was in fact John Wilkes Booth, so too John St. Helen confessed to Finis Bates that he was John Wilkes Booth. However, unlike Mrs. Harper, the curious young lawyer who heard the confession took St. Helen at his word and probed his client about the Lincoln assassination. Bates transcribed St. Helen's answers to his questions and would later discover that John St. Helen knew facts and information about the case that the government had not yet released to the public in 1872. Shortly after confessing he was Booth and giving to his attorney specific details of the Lincoln assassination, John St. Helen disappeared. Finis Bates would eventually move to Memphis, Tennessee where he became what was then called Attorney General (assistant D.A.). Bates worked for over twenty-five years seeking further information about John St. Helen and/or anybody who claimed to have seen John Wilkes Booth after 1865. In 1900 Finis Bates filed paperwork with the federal government, giving them information from the notes he transcribed during John St. Helen's 1872 "confession." Bates requested that the government's John Wilkes Booth reward money be given to him (Bates) on the premise that the government had made a mistake and killed the wrong man in the barn at Garrett's farm. Bates argued to the government that he (Bates) knew the current identity of Booth (John St. Helen) and that he could help the government capture him. The government sent a form letter back to Bates saying Booth had already been captured and killed.

After reading of the death of David E. George and his confession to being Booth, Finis Bates would make his way to Enid, Oklahoma by train in the spring of 1903 to see if George could in fact be the man he knew as John St. Helen. Finis Bates entered Penniman's Funeral Home and, according to Mr. W.H. Ryan, turned white as a sheet when he saw David E. George's body and exclaimed, "My old friend! My old friend John St. Helen!"

Finis Bates believed so much that David E. George/John St. Helen was in fact John Wilkes Booth that he went on to stake his professional reputation on proving it. He was not alone. The first President of the Oklahoma Historical Society, W.P. Campbell, believed David E. George/John St. Helen was John Wilkes Booth. The two books these two men wrote defending their views are available on-line. The titles of the two narrative books are self-explanatory: John Wilkes Booth: Escape and Wanderings until Final Ending of the Trail at Enid, Oklahoma, January 12 (sic), 1903, by W.P. Campbell, and The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth: Or, the First True Account of Lincoln's Assassination, Containing a Complete Confession by Booth (published 1907) by Finis Bates. These two books are lampooned by many, but Bates' book became a bestseller (70,000 copies) within just a few months of its publication in 1907. Both these men wrote emphatically that John Wilkes Booth died in Enid, Oklahoma on January 13, 1903. The impending DNA tests by the Booth family will either destroy their century-old Booth escape premise or the DNA tests will cause many historians who have mocked Bates and Campbell to re-read their material with greater focus.

What piques my curiosity is the life of John St. Helen/David E. George from 1865-1872 and how he came to first encounter attorney Finis Bates in Granbury, Texas. Where did John St. Helen/David E. George come from? Who was he? What about his family? If he is proven not to be Booth, how long did he carry out his Booth deception? It is incontrovertible David E. George and John St. Helen are the same man. One does not have to come close to believing David E. George is John Wilkes Booth to see that David E. George is John St. Helen. Where was John St. Helen prior to appearing in Texas in 1872? I believe the answers to these questions from the beginning of understanding a tragic love story, regardless of your view of "The Booth Legend."

The Mystery of the Love Story Begins
 

In early February 1903, not quite four weeks after David E. George died in Enid, the mayor of El Reno (Booth's former place of residence for at least three years immediately prior to Enid), received a letter from Mrs. Charles Levine of New York City. The Enid Eagle, Enid's morning paper, reported on this letter in its February 19, 1903 edition. Mrs. Levine wrote that she was the daughter of John Wilkes Booth, and if indeed, David E. George was Mr. Booth, she was entitled to his estate, an estate that the papers were then reporting to be quite sizable (later discovered to be untrue). Most modern historians, including C. Wyatt Evans, dismiss Mrs. Levine's letter as an attempt by a greedy easterner to either glean money or gain fame by inserting herself into the David E. George drama playing out in Enid, Oklahoma. C. Wyatt Evans lumps Mrs. Charles Levine into a very broad category of other crazy "interlopers" who tried to profit from the George death, and only devotes one paragraph to Mrs. Levine in his otherwise excellent book The Legend of John Wilkes Booth: Myth, Memory and a Mummy. Evans places his information about Mrs. Levine in the same paragraph as his description of quack "palm reader"  who also sought to profit from the George story by reading the dead man's hand. I believe, respectfully, that C. Wyatt Evans is wrong about Mrs. Levine's motives for "inserting herself" into the George drama in Enid.

Marriage License of John W. Booth to Louisa J. Payne February 1872

Mrs. Charles Levine was born Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth in Payne's Cove, Tennessee, a few miles west of Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1873. She was the daughter of Louisa Holmes Payne and John Wilkes Booth (see marriage certificate to the left).  Louisa J. Payne was a Confederate Civil War widow. Her first husband, Confederate soldier C.Z. Payne, died in 1865 toward the end of the war.  Louisa was left to care for her young son McCager (or "Cage"). Louisa worked as a seamstress for the recently opened University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. In 1871 Louisa met a man named Jack Booth who claimed he was a "distant cousin" to John Wilkes Booth. Louisa fell in love, and she married Jack in February 1872. However, after the wedding, Jack told Louisa that he had a past, and his name was not really Jack. When she pressed him for the truth, Jack told her he was actually John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of the Republican President. Louisa, a devout Christian and southern Democrat, could forgive her husband for his war actions and personal deceptions to her,  but she insisted that he sign their marriage certificate with his God-given name. And so, on February 24, 1872, a new certificate was signed in the presence of Rev. C.C. Rose, listing the marriage of John Wilkes Booth and Louisa Payne. The late historiographer for the University of the South, Dr. Arthur Ben Chitty, did extensive research into Louisa Payne and her marriage to the man claiming to be John Wilkes Booth. Dr. Chitty eventually discovered the marriage certificate itself, located in the Franklin County Courthouse in Winchester, Tennessee. Dr. Chitty archived at The University of the South several audiotape interviews of men who personally knew McCager Payne, who in 1872 became John Wilkes Booth's step-son. Dr. Chitty discovered that McCager had intimate knowledge while a youth that his stepfather was actually John Wilkes Booth.

As a newly married couple Louisa and John Wilkes Booth moved to Memphis, Tennessee because, as Louisa would later say, "my husband had been told he would be paid a large sum of money owed him for his offical work on behalf of the Confederacy." While in Memphis, Louisa overheard some men on the street discussing her husband and pointing out where the "skunk" was now living. Louisa informed John that men knew who he was and his life was in danger. John told Louisa that it would be better if they separated for a season. He would go to Texas and she should go back to Tennessee until things cooled off. John promised Louisa that he would return to Tennessee after things settled down.

Louisa went back east to Payne's Cove Tennessee and the man claiming to be John Wilkes Booth headed south. Unbeknown to the couple at the time, Louisa was pregnant with John's child.  Louisa Payne would give birth to Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth, named after one of John Wilkes Booth's sisters while living alone in Tennessee in early 1873. Her second husband, the man she first knew as "Jack Booth," but later claimed to be "John Wilkes Booth" went to Granbury, Texas -- and would change his name to John St. Helen. Historian Steven Miller suggests that John St. Helen, the man who confessed to being "John Wilkes Booth" to attorney Finis Bates, is a different man from the person who married Louisa Payne. My research on a book about the Lincoln assassination and the bizarre connections to Enid, Oklahoma suggests they are the same man. This man--Jack Booth/John St. Helen, David E. George, is either a deluded and deceptive man who pretended to be John Wilkes Booth for over four decades, or as many in the family of John Wilkes Booth now believe, this man was actually John Wilkes Booth himself.

DNA testing in 2011 could help solve the mystery.

Back in Tennesee in 1873, Louisa Booth received financial help from the family of her deceased first husband (C.Z. "Zeb" Payne). She went to work caring for her son McCager and her newborn infant girl. Louisa kept hope that her husband would return to her from Texas, but she never heard from him. In 1879, seven years after marrying the man who claimed to be John Wilkes Booth, beautiful 36-year-old Louisa Payne was raking and burning leaves in her front yard when her dress accidentally caught fire. Louisa ran to the creek in an attempt to extinguish the flames, but the burns on her body would prove to be fatal for her. Before she died, Louisa called her six-year-old daughter Laura Ida Booth and her fourteen-year-old son McCager Payne to her bedside. The mother informed her children that Ida's father was John Wilkes Booth. McCager would later tell friends at the mill where he worked late in his life that he already knew John Wilkes Booth was his stepdad because of conversations he had overheard between his mom and stepdad when he was a boy. Caught listening in one time by his step-dad, McCager was threatened that if the boy told anyone that his step-dad was John Wilkes Booth, "I will kill you."

After the death of her mother, young Laura Ida Booth would go to live with friends and family. Laura Ida Booth eventually became an actress herself and married a fellow actor named Charles Levine in New York City. When Mrs. Charles Levine heard of David E. George's death in Enid, Oklahoma in early 1903, and that David E. George had claimed to be "John Wilkes Booth" before he died, Mrs. Levine sent her letter to the mayor of El Reno claiming George's estate "if indeed he is John Wilkes Booth."

Mrs. Charles Levine was serious in her query about Booth's estate, believing herself to be his daughter. Her letter should also be taken seriously by historians. Again, one of two options is possible regarding the man who appears as Jack Booth/John St. Helen/David E. George/ and who fathered Laura Ida Booth: (1). Either this man is a devious and/or deluded individual who kept up a false front for four decades about being John Wilkes Booth, or (2). This man is actually John Wilkes Booth.

To take the latter position opens oneself up to ridicule from mainstream historians. I remain personally unpersuaded. What is certain, however, is this: The DNA testing of the vertebrae from 'the body in the barn' will either be a match to John Wilkes Booth and lay to rest the "Booth Legend" or the DNA testing will NOT provide a match and the escape theories for Lincoln's assassin will explode. Either way, historians ought to give Laura Ida Elizabeth Booth (Mrs. Charles Levine) and the letter she wrote to the mayor of El Reno in February 1903 far more serious attention than they are currently being given.

Stay tuned ....

A Fascinating Multi-Media Presentation on a Remarkable Yet Little Known Civil War Event

Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?

On Monday, March 7, after making a couple of stops in Oklahoma City, I ventured twenty miles south to the campus of the University of Oklahoma. My destination was Monett Hall, formerly the University's Law Library, but now the building that houses the Western Heritage Museum. The Museum is free, but my desire was to be able to see something that I knew the staff at the Western Heritage Museum kept in the vault. A poem, handwritten on both sides of a legal size piece of paper by Abraham Lincoln, was my objective. The poem, authored by William Knox (1789-1825), is a dark narrative on man’s mortality. Lincoln considered Knox's poem, entitled "Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?" to be the finest poem ever penned.

President Lincoln quoted portions of Knox's poem from memory so often that many thought he was the original author. While campaigning in Illinois in 1849, Lincoln and his associates were entertained by a trio of ladies who sang for them. Lincoln, pressed by the trio to sing something himself, politely declined but offered to quote a poem. When Lincoln finished reciting the verses of Knox’s poem, those who heard him had been moved to tears. One of the young ladies in the trio requested a written copy of the poem. During the night Lincoln wrote out the verses on a piece of parchment and gave it to the woman at breakfast the next morning. Henry Benjamin “Heine” Bass (1897-1975) from Enid, Oklahoma purchased this piece of Lincoln memorabilia in the 1930’s and he considered it the most valuable artifact in his vast Lincoln collection. It is part of the Bass Collection at the Western Heritage Museum, but is not displayed for the public. I would estimate the artifact's worth to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I was pleasantly surprised that the Museum staff pulled the poem out of its vault for me to see. There is something deeply moving when sitting at a table and reading a poem you know to be Lincoln's favorite, written with his own hand. This particular piece of Lincoln memorabilia has never been photographed, at least in terms of published photography. I was surprised by a couple of curious things regarding Lincoln's handwriting and the piece of parchment itself. But it was the somber tone of Knox's words, read slowly by me at the table out loud (on behalf of the archivist who wished to hear the poem read) that moved me the most. Below is the poem in its entirety. The book I am writing on John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett takes its title from one of the lines in the poem - "A Transient Abode."


OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?
by: William Knox (1789-1825)

Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.


The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high
Shall molder to dust and together shall lie.


The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,--
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.


The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure,--her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.


The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.


The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep;
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.


The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven;
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven;
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.


So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.


For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.


The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.


They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
The scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.


They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.


Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.


'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Sectionalism, Fractionalism, and the Separation of Union: A Case Study of What Leads People of Principle to Fight

Alan C. Aimone is the Chief of Special Collections of the United States Military Academy Library, West Point, New York. He researches and writes historical articles, principally on West Point, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and Hudson Valley history. I wrote last week of Alan's kindness toward Rachelle and me as we visited with him at West Point. On the way home from New York I was able to read Alan's lengthy and scholarly article in the December 1991 edition of Blue and Gray Magazine entitled "Much to Sadden and Little to Cheer--The Civil War Years at West Point."

West Point, our nation's premier military academy for army cadets, became filled with tension in the months preceding the Civil War. Plebes (first year students) and cadets found themselves abandoning the traditional harmony of "God and Country" for the sectionalism of "north" and "south." In his article, Alan Aimone writes of the first recorded fist fight on the grounds of West Point over the division arising from principled differences that formed the cause of the Civil War. The fisticuffs between Emory Upton (Class of May 1861) of New York and Wade Hampton Gibbes (Class of 1860) of South Carolina was "the first determined stand by any Northerner against the long, aggressive and unchallenged dictatorship of the South" against those West Point cadets who held to abolitionist principles.

Cadet Upton had attended Oberlin College in Ohio, an institution that was "hated and despised by the South for ... admitting negroes as students." Cadet Gibbes made unflattering comments to his Southern friends regarding Upton's "intimate relationship with Negroes." Battle lines were then drawn and a fight was held behind closed doors in the barracks while a crowd of cadets gathered in the hall to listen to the skirmish. A contemporary of the fight's participants, cadet Morris Schaff, stood in the hallway and later wrote home describing the scene:

From time to time we could hear angry voices, the scuffling of feet, and those other dull sounds which fall so heavily on the ears ... (W)hen the fight was over, I saw Upton's resolute face bleeding. Upton's roommate and his second in the fight, John Isaac Rodgers, stood at the top of the stairs and defied the mob of cadets, yelling, 'If there are any more of you down there who want anything, come right up!' No one accepted his challenge. I am satisfied that the South then and there beheld what iron and steel there was in the Northern blood when once it was up."

This interesting anecdote gives some insight on why people of previous harmony wind up fighting.

(1). When differences in beliefs are not debated with civility, and one side or the other begins to personally denigrate and ridicule the character and personhood of those who believe differently, the beginnings of a fight emerge.

(2). From the group being abused personally--usually those who hold to a minority viewpoint--there arises one who stands firm against those who denigrate and abuse.

(3). When those in control feel  threatened or are challenged, they will attack with ferocity, believing themselves in danger of losing their dominating position.

(4). If the minority leader successfully holds his ground, others who also hold to the same viewpoint are emboldened and begin to rally, eventually feeling safe enough to issue challenges of their own to those who have personally denigrated those with whom they disagree.

(5). Eventually the fight will cease because those who love to bully and attack those with whom they are exposed as lacking the kind of character needed in true leaders.

An illustration of all five principles at play in a modern "fight" among Southern Baptists is forthcoming.

In His Grace,

Wade

Listen My Friends and I Will Tell of the Daring Ride of Lieutenant Averell

Many would consider Paul Revere's horseback ride in 1775, made famous by Henry Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride, as the most incredible horseback adventure in American history. But for sheer thrills, intrigue, danger and superior horsemanship, the greatest horseback ride in American history is the little known, but startling journey of Lieutenant William Woods Averell through Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) at the beginning of the United States Civil War. On April 17th, 1861, Lieutenant Averell set off from Washington D.C. to hand deliver an order from Abraham Lincoln and the War Department to Union soldiers stationed at the US forts in Indian Territory. The order called for the immediate evacuation and removal of all United States Federal troops to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Averell, under civilian disguise, travelled by train to St. Louis. He then took a carriage from St. Louis, south, to the Arkansas River. He crossed the river by ferry and entered Fort Smith, only to discover it had already been captured by Confederates. Maintaining his disguise, Averell managed to buy a horse (wild and unbroken), and began his horse ride to Fort Arbuckle, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), 200 miles from Fort Smith. It is this horse ride, begun on April 27th, 1861 and completed on May 5, 1861 when Averell handed the War Department order to United States Colonel W.H. Emory at Fort Arbuckle, that is arguably the greatest horseback adventure in American annals--particularly because it involves one Union soldier traversing through territory buzzing with fight hungry Confederates, angry Indians, wild beasts and Oklahoma spring storms.

Background to Averell's Ride

With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, President Andrew Jackson and the United States Congress began forcibly removing the Indians who lived in states and territories east of the Mississippi. The government 'gave' to these Indians land west of the Mississippi, called Indian Territory, which encompassed the lands that would eventually become the states of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The southern portion of Indian Territory, the territory that now represents the state of Oklahoma, was first officially surveyed for the United States government in 1828 by Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary to the Indians. McCoy wrote to President Jackson after his survery and suggested that the "Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Seminoles and Chickasaws," be given this southern portion of Indian Territory (Oklahoma), because it was a suitable replacement for the woods, rivers and agricultural lands of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida--the places where these Five Civilized Tribes then lived east of the Mississippi. The Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Seminoles and Chickasaws were called "civilized" because, unlike other Indian tribes, they had adopted Western customs, had purchased land for farming, and were integrating themselves into United States southern culture. But the whites wanted even these "civilized" Indians out of the states and territories east of the Mississippi.

The government agreed to Isaac McCoy's recommendation, and the Five Civilized Tribes were relocated to southern Indian Territory, within the boundaries of what we now call Oklahoma. The forced marches to the west endured by these civilized tribes, under the supervision of the United States Army, began with the Choctaws in 1831 and ended with the Cherokees in 1838/1839. These different journeys became known to each tribe, respectively, as their Trail of Tears. Tens of thousands of Indian men, women and children died on these ill-fated and poorly prepared for journeys. By the dawn of the 1840's, the eastern Five Civilized Tribes had completed their forced relocation and resided within the borders of southern Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

Forts Built In Oklahoma to Protect the Civilized Tribes

However, there was a problem with the relocation from the start. There were Indians already in Indian Territory. These "wild" Indians, known as Plainsmen Indians, resented the civilized tribes coming to their land. The Osage Indians were at war with the Cherokees, the Chickasaw and Choctaw found themselves fighting the Comanche and Apache, and the Creek and Seminole Indians were often raided by Plainsmen tribes who would steal their horses and cattle, ravage their crops, and even capture their women and children. The United States government was forced to build and then heavily staff some additional army forts in Oklahoma to keep the peace among the Indians. Fort Smith (Arkansas) had been established in 1817 and was considered to be the gateway into the unknown wilderness of Indian territory. Seven years later (1824), Fort Gibson became the first United States fort established within Indian territory. Fort Gibson became the receiving and processing place for all civilized Indians who were being relocated from the east during the 1830's. However, Fort Smith and Fort Gibson did not supply enough manpower to keep the peace among the Indians in Indian Territory. In 1842 General Zachary Taylor and was commissioned to build Fort Washita. Fort Washita, pictured here, still stands at its original location, nineteen miles above where the Washita River meets the Red River, near Durant, Oklahoma at the northern end of the modern man-made Lake Texhoma. Fort Arbuckle was built in 1851, at the northern base of the Arbuckle Mountains, about seven miles east of modern day Davis, Oklahoma. Ft. Cobb (1859) was the last fort built by the United States army in Indian Territory prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. By the time of the Civil War, nearly 1,500 United States infantry, cavalry and artillery troops were stationed at Forts Smith, Washita, Arbuckle, and Cobb. Fort Gibson had been temporarily closed due to widespread and severe illnesses among the troops. In addition to these troops, there were support personnel, family members, and other United States citizens stationed in an around at these forts.

The Beginning of the Civil War

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter, the United States garrison located in Charleston Harbor. The Civil War had begun. The War Department of the United States, with the approval of President Abraham Lincoln, decided that it was best to evacuate the United States military forts in Indian Territory and withdraw all troops and personnel to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Texas had already seceded from the Union (February 1, 1861), and word came to Washington that Arkansas would be next (Arkansas seceded on May 6, 1861). The U.S. Army forts in Indian Territory would be under attack by the Confederate Army soon, and Lincoln felt that the troops stationed at these Indian Territory forts would better serve the United States effort against the Confederates by evacuating the forts and handing Indian Territory over to the Confederacy rather than staying to defend the Indians.

But how could word be given to commander Colonel W. H. Emory, First United States Cavalry, the soldier in command of the district embracing Forts Washita,Arbuckle and Cobb in the Indian Territory that he and his troops were to evacuate? There was no telegraph capability in Indian Territory. How could this evacuation order from Washington D.C. be received by the Union commander in Indian Territory (Oklahoma)? A messenger needed to be sent.

Enter United States Lieutenant William Woods Averell and the most amazing horse ride in American annals.

From Washington, D.C. to Fort Smith

William Averell was born in Cameron, New York. As a boy he worked as a drugstore clerk in the nearby town of Bath, New York. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1855 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Mounted Rifles. His early assignments included garrison duty at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and the U.S. Army Cavalry School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1857 he was sent to Fort Defiance in New Mexico, where he was critically wounded in action in 1859 during a skirmish against the Indians. Woods was trasnsported back to Washington, D.C. where he was placed on the disabled list for two years. He had fully recovered and his readmission papers were signed four days after the firing on Fort Sumter.

On April 17, 1861, Lieutenant Averell was handed a special War Department order that was to be hand carried over 2,000 miles and given to the commander of the Indian Territory forts. His instructions were to proceed by train to St. Louis, then by coach to Fort Smith, where the quartermaster would outfit him with a horse and supplies that would carry him for the remainder of his journey to Fort Arbuckle (200 miles from Fort Smith), where Lieutenant-Colonel Emory was headquartered. Averell would travel in civilian clothes through the heart of the Confederacy. The special orders would be hidden on his person, and he was instructed to escort the Union troops from Fort Arbuckle north to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and then make his way back to Washington, D.C. as quickly as possible with a report on the success of his mission. Lieutenant Averell kept a diary that is part of the Official Record of the Union and Confederate Armies. Volume 53, pages 493-496. Averell's journey to St. Louis is in his own words:

"Providing myself with a rough traveling suit of citizen's clothing, I left Washington at 2.45 p. m. on the 17th of April, by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. At Harper's Ferry, where the train stopped for a few minutes, I saw Capt. Roger Jones, commanding a detachment guarding the arsenal at that point, who informed me of his apprehensions of an attack, and that, aware of the insufficiency of his force to defend the public property, he had made arrangements to destroy it and withdraw his small force into Maryland. The towns and villages through which my journey to Saint Louis was made were alive with agitated people turning out volunteer in response to the call of the President. I arrived at Saint Louis on the evening of the 19th, and left on the morning of the 20th by the first train to Rolla, Mo., where I arrived, 115 miles distant, at 5 in the afternoon.

Leaving Rolla by the first stage coach at 5 a. m. the 22d, with several prominent Southern gentlemen as fellow-passengem, I proceeded, with changing horses, mails, and passengers, toward Fort Smith, through towns wild with secession excitement and rumors of war. The unruly temper of the people and their manifest readiness to embrace any pretext for violence made it necessary for the safety of my dispatches and their suceessful delivery that my name and character should remain unknown. Having assumed a name and purpose suitable to the emergency, I experienced no great difficulty in passing safely through several inquisitions. I was obliged to drive the stage a greater part of the distance between Classville and Bentonville, on account of the drunkenness of the driver, there being no other male passenger. At Evansville I met the intelligence, which momentarily astounded me, that Fort Smith had been captured by a force of secessionists 800 strong, which had come under the command of Colonel Borland from Little Rock. Near the foot of Boston Mountain, on the southern side, the rumor was confirmed by the passengers of a eoach from Fort Smith which we met, happily in a pitchy dark night, which prevented my recognition by some of the lady passengers, wives of army officers who might have known
me."

Trouble in Fort Smith

After avoiding recognition, Averell crossed the Arkansas River by ferry and arrived in Fort Smith on the morning of April 27, 1861, ten days after leaving Washington. However, as he came near the fort he discovered that it had been overtaken the day before by Confederates, the quartermaster who was to resupply him and give him a horse to finish his journey into Indian Territory was in the brig. Averell describes what happened next in his diary.

"Exchanging my gold watch and a little money for a horse, saddle, and bridle with a man whose principal incentive to the trade was his apprehension of losing his horse by public seizure, I mounted for the remainder of the journey. It was 260 miles to Fort Arbuckle (ed. note: Averell overestimates the mileage here). Having been out of the saddle two years on account of my wound, and having just completed a toilsome, jolting journey of 300 miles in a coach, I was in poor condition for the struggle before me. The horse was unbroken to the saddle, and after a fierce but unsuccessful effort to throw me ran wildly away through the sucessive lines of drilling troops, but I managed to guide him in a westerly direction and mastered him before reaching the Poteau River. This stream, 100 yards wide, was bank full and the bridge destroyed. Removing my heavy black overcoat, I swam the horse across, after a fearful struggle, in which I lost my overcoat and also suffered some injury from being struck by the horse."

The Greatest Horse Ride in the History of America


The journey by horseback from Fort Smith to Fort Arbuckle is the stuff of a modern Hollywood adventure movies. Averell is recognized as a Union soldier just a day out of Fort Smith by some Confederates and is chased through the wooded mountains of eastern Oklahoma. He manages to escape, and finds an Indian guide to help him navigate the strange territory, but he becomes lost, as well as loses his guide, during a fierce Oklahoma spring storm. He manages to eventually get back on track and has several encounters with wild beasts and a few Indians, only to eventually meet up with the Union soldiers for whom he came to give the special War Department order. When Lieutenant Averell handed the order of the War Department to Colonel Emory, this very dramatic scene set the course of the Civil War in Indian Territory. The meeting took place on the Fort Washita-Fort Arbuckle military road near the vicinity of present day small town of Reagen in Johnston County, Oklahoma on May 3, 1861. Averell's amazing journey is detailed in full in an article written by Muriel Wright in the 1961 Oklahoma Historical Chronicles. William Averell left Washington, D.C. on April 17th, 1861, just five days after the firing on Ft. Sumter. His entire trip to the heart of Indian Territory took less than three weeks, an astonishingly fast trip considering the circumstances under which he had to travel (train, carriage, horse), and the knowledge that if he were caught as a Union soldier on a mission in civilian clothes, he would be shot or hung.

The Evacuation to Kansas

Another reason I find this story so fascinating is because the route taken by Averell, Black Beaver and the Union troops leaving Indian Territory for Kansas led them right through my hometown of Enid, Oklahoma. In 1861 Enid was not a city. The land on which the city now sits is in the middle of what was known in 1861 as The Cherokee Outlet. The United States had promised the Cherokees in eastern Oklahoma a route to the Colorado mountain hunting grounds, unencumbered by white settlers, so the land was "given" to the Cherokees as an "outlet" to Colorado "as long as grass grows and the waters run." The several hundred Union soldiers and loyalists who were evacuating Forts Arbuckle, Cobb and Washita in May of 1861, heading to Kansas, were being led by a Delaware Indian scout and tracker named Black Beaver. Their journey north took them directly through the heart of the Cherokee Outlet. The caravan stretched over one mile long and included many wagons, a few cannons, all the supplies from the forts including horses, hound dogs, a few cattle, plus over two hundred women and children. Black Beaver had been a captain in the United States Army during the Mexican War (1846-1848) and had once lived among the Cherokees himself. He was familiar with the Indian routes taken during hunting season, and he knew that, where the city of Enid now sits, there were five natural springs that flowed into a natural watering hole that gave cool refreshment in a portion of Indian Territory that had few such watering holes. Black Beaver guided the U.S. troops north and on or around May 14, 1861, one thousand United States soldiers and U.S. citizens either refreshed themselves or encamped at what we now call Government Springs Park, the heart of what is now the city of Enid. Black Beaver would successfully and safely lead the troops, including Lieutenant William Averell and Colonel Emory, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, arriving the last week of May, 1861. Hearing that Black Beaver had led the Union troops north, the Confederates who had moved into Indian Territory from Texas and Arkansas took over the abandoned U.S. forts and intentionally destroyed Black Beaver's home and crops. The United States government never fully reimbursed paid Black Beaver for his heroic work on behalf of the U.S. troops at the beginning of the Civil War. Eight years later, in 1969, at the urging of Colonel Emory, the War Department finally gave $5,000 to Black Beaver, though his losses in 1861 amounted to well over $20,000. Late in life Black Beaver would come to faith in Christ and became a Baptist preacher in Oklahoma, I.T., dying on May 8, 1880 at the age of 74. His body is buried, with honors, at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and his grave is registered as a National Historic Site.

The Chisholm Trail Follows Black Beaver's Trail

During the Civil War an Indian trader named Jessie, Chisholm who had moved to Wichita, Kansas, from Indian Territory at the start of the Civil War as well, would sometimes make his way back into Indian Territory to trade goods with the Indians. He would continue this practice after the Civil War as well, loading up on supplies in Wichita and taking wagons south to trade with the Indians near Council Grove (Oklahoma City). The route that Chisholm followed as he went south, and then back north, was the same trail that Black Beaver had blazed four years earlier. The route could still be seen by Chisholm because f the deep impressions and ruts left in the ground by the mile long U.S. Army caravan in May 1861. Chisholm died in 1868, but for twenty years after his death, Texas cattle drovers moved their longhorns from Texas to Kansas following the same trail through Enid, Oklahoma. Millions of steers were driven along what the cowboys called The Chisholm Trail in honor of Jessie Chisholm, but was more accurately called the "Black Beaver Trail" by the Indians in honor of the Black Beaver's sacrifice on behalf of the United States government in leading the U.S. troops out of Indian Territory in 1861.

William Averell's historic ride from Washington D.C. to Indian Territory, to Fort Leavenworth and then back to Washington D.C. from April to June 1861 is a little known historic ride which caused a ripple effect on other events through the end of the century. The abandonment of Indian Territory by Union soldiers led to the Confederates invading Indian Territory unapposed, and the Five Civilized Tribes, for the most part, signed treaties with the Confederates and fought against the Union army during the duration of the war. It was the Indians decision to side with the Confederates that led the U.S. government, after the war, to break the contracts signed with the Indians prior to the war that gave the land in Indian Territory to the Indians "as long as the waters run." Still the waters run, but we whites now live in Oklahoma because the United States government opened up Indian territory to white settlement in the late 1880's and 90's through a series of land runs, including the largest land run in the history of the world, The Cherokee Strip Land Run of September 16, 1893. On that day, Enid, Oklahoma, was founded. The government land office was located at the famous natural springs used by Black Beaver and the Union troops thirty two years earlier, and the city was plotted around those springs, renamed "Government Springs." The Cherokee Land Run was popularized in the movie commemorating the 100th anniversary of the run, the 1993 Ron Howard movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

But back to William Averell.

For his bravery, Lieutenant Averell was promoted upon completion of his historic ride. He went on to lead Union troops in several successful battles against Confederates in the east. On retirement from the military, Averell would hold the rank of general. After his military retirement, Averell was appointed general consul to British North America (1866-1869). William Averell was particularly innovative and he died a multi-millionaire after profiting from several inventions, including American asphalt.

I find the Civil War connections to Enid, Oklahoma, including the fascinating John Wilkes Booth, Boston Corbett, and Abraham Lincoln connection, to be nothing short of extraordinary. I hope to compile a short book documenting several of the more startling ones.

In His Grace,

Wade Burleson

The Tragic Love Story of Vivia Thomas: The First Female to Enlist in the United States Army

Females have made incredible progress in terms of their collective advancement in numbers and rank within the United States armed forces, particularly since World War II. However, one of the little known episodes in United States military history is the enlistment and death of Private Vivia Thomas (1840-1870), U.S. 6th Infantry, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Her life, one that Hollywood would have a hard time imagining and some call legend, is currently being researched for a book I am writing. She could very well be the first woman ever to enlist in the United States Army, albeit under false pretenses. The photograph to the left is Vivia's tombstone, on the southern end of the Officer's Circle at the center of Fort Gibson National Cemetery, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. The fact that Vivia is buried in the Officer's Circle, the only enlisted soldier given that honor, gives creedence to her remarkable story.

Vivia's Death

Nearly 140 years ago, on a bitterly cold morning in January of 1870, a lone sentry patrolled the grounds around the U.S. army military outpost called called Fort Gibson, Indian Territory (present day eastern Oklahoma), and discovered the body of one of the fort's soldiers, a young private the soldiers called "Thomas," lying across a grave in the cemetery just north of the fort. The body was taken to Fort Gibson's infirmary, and as the doctor began to perform his examination to determine cause of death, a shocking discovery was made: the soldier was actually a woman..

The doctor immediately reported the strange discovery to the Fort Gibson's commanding officer, and an inquiry began to determine how female soldier had managed to pass herself off as a man and get into the United States Army. It was known that "Thomas" had enlisted in the U.S. 6th Infantry, stationed at Fort Gibson, just a few weeks earlier, but nobody knew the background of young Thomas. Eventually, a minister who assisted the soldiers at Fort Gibson's came forward with one of the strangest stories in American military history. It seems that just a few days before "Thomas" had told the pastor her secret. As the commanding officer and chief medical officer listened minister tell the story of a the young woman named "Vivia Thomas," events were being set in motion that would eventually lead to her burial in the Officer's Circle of Fort Gibson's Military Cemetery.

Vivia's Life as a Boston Brahmin

Vivia Thomas was born into a wealthy family from Boston. From a child, she received all the special privileges of the Boston Brahmin, including the finest education and invitations to all events involving Boston's upper society. It was during one of Boston's elegant parties at the conclusion of the Civil War that Vivia met and fell in love with a handsome Union Army officer.

Boston, Massachussets in the 1860's

The courtship continued and deepened for several months until one day Vivia's family excitedly announced that Vivia was engaged to be married. Wedding plans were announced to the Boston elite, and Vivia's dreams of marriage and family seemed to be on the verge of fruition. Those were happy days for Vivia Thomas.

Sadly, just prior to the wedding day, the young United States Army officer disappeared. He left Vivia a lengthy, apologetic note and explained that though he loved Vivia, he was unsure married life was for him. He wrote that he felt his heart was pulled toward the western frontier and that he had made arrangements with the U.S. Army go west. He wanted adventure. Though he would not specify his post, the letter detailed that he would be stationed at one of the many frontier army outposts of the United State. He did not feel it would be fair to force his wife to leave the comforts of Boston to endure the wilds of the frontier. For this reason, he was breaking the engagement and going west alone.

Broken hearted, and deeply embarrassed for the humiliation she had brought to her own family, young Vivia Thomas determined to leave Boston and go west in search of her lover. Through offical inquiries Vivia learned that her fiance was being stationed at Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory, and one day she suddenly and secretly left her home and family to go find her lover. Her journey west began.

Vivia's Journey West

During the several months it took for Vivia to reach Indian Territory, which included river rafts down the Ohio and Missisippi, and up the Arkansas River, Vivia cut off all of her long, flowing hair and started dressing in men's clothing. She rarely spoke, and would avert anyone's gaze, and would often roughen her face with dirt and coal. At first, her motive had simply been to disguise herself for protection while traveling through rough country as she headed to the frontier to find her lover. The disguise, however, proved successful. Vivia soon became known as "Thomas" and upon arrival at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory via the Arkansas River, she determined to get close to the young officer who had jilted her by enlisting in the 6th U.S. Infantry stationed at Fort Gibson. In those days, when the Army would often receive substitute solders, it was not uncommon for enlisted men to join the ranks of Army Infantry with little knowledge of the soldier's background.

In the weeks that followed, as "Thomas" went about doing various jobs at the fort, including patrolling for Indians, cooking, cleaning and sundry other tasks assigned enlisted men, she was able to hide her identity well. She carefully stayed away from her former lover; but she would watch him closely. Vivia would often find herself vacillating between thoughts of revenge for her hurt and a reunion that would end in an embrace of long lost love.

Vivia's Discovery

One night Vivia decided to secretly follow her former lover as he left the fort. The young officer travelled a short distance from Fort Gibson where Vivia observed him greet with a hug and a kiss a young Indian woman. It seems that the officer had begun a courtship with an Indian woman who lived a short distance from the fort. Vivia would soon discover that her fiance had been making regular evening trips to visit his Indian lover. Vivia followed him through the darkness on many occasions, each time growing more and more bitter.

How could he leave Boston, Massachussets and let her face the humiliation of family and peers? How could he move west and fall in love with an Indian! How could he? The more she thought about what he had done to her, the more the cloud of bitterness descended over her soul.

On a cold winter evening in December 1869, Vivia followed her former lover on his nightly rendezvous with his Indian girlfriend. She waited for him behind an outcropping of stone, debating whether or not to confront him. The longer she waited the more her bitterness motivated her to not reveal herself, but to extract revenge by simply ending his life in payment for how he had ended hers. When the officer finally headed back to Fort Gibson that evening, he rode by on his horse, and Vivia shot him. She never said a word. She never revealed herself to him. She simply shot him, hitting him in the chest and knocking him off his horse. Immediately, she was overcome with overwhelming remorse. She went to where her former lover lie on the ground, only to discover she had shot him dead. With tears streaming down her face, she quickly made her way back to Fort Gibson, where she slipped into her bunk, quietly grieving over the murder.

The next morning, the body of the officer was discovered by a passerby and brought to the fort. The soldiers at the fort assumed that he had been killed by Indians. A small cavalry from the fort went out to search for clues, but in a few days the case was closed. The Indians had ambushed an officer of the United States military.

Vivia's Guilt

The guilt over what she had done overwhelmed Vivia. She continued to leave her quarters every night, but this time she would make her way to Fort Gibson's cemetery. She would go to the young man's grave and weep uncontrollably, praying for forgiveness. Within a couple of weeks, she broke down and told her story to the minister of the fort. She knew he would be honor bound to not divulge her confession. But a couple of nights later, with temperatures below zero degrees, on January 6, 1870, Vivia went to her former lover's grave. This time she stayed for hours, well into the early morning of January 7th. At reveille, a soldier walking the grounds of the cemetery found the body of the soldier he knew as "Thomas" lying prone across a recent grave. Vivia Thomas had frozen to death.

Upon hearing the story of Vivia Thomas from the minister, the commander and military officers made a decision about the burial for this young lady. They had never liked her fiance in the first place because of his various attachments with the local Indians, and they all felt deep admiration for Vivia because of the courage it took for her to traverse the United States - alone - to find her lover. In their own small way of acknowledging that never in the history of the United States military had a woman ever been enlisted in the infantry, and in appreciation of her dogged determism and heroic courage, they gave to Vivia Thomas a plot in the prestigious officer's ring of the Fort Gibson National Cemetery.

Next time you are near Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, take time to find her tombstone. Every grave holds a story, and Vivia's is one of the more remarkable ones.

In His Grace,



Wade Burleson