Rebel Bulldog : The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War [1 ed.] 9780871954213, 9780871954206

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INDIANA HISTORIC AL SOCIETY PRESS | 2017

© 2017 Indiana Historical Society Press This book is a publication of the Indiana Historical Society Press Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center 450 West Ohio Street Indianapolis, Indiana 45202-3269 USA www.indianahistory.org Telephone orders 1-800-447-1830 Fax orders 1-317-234-0562 Online orders @ http://shop.indianahistory.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lantzer, Jason S., author. Title: Rebel Bulldog : the story of one family, two states, and the Civil War / Jason Lantzer. Description: Indianapolis, Indiana : Indiana Historical Society Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017044717 (print) | LCCN 2017028850 (ebook) | ISBN 9780871954213 (epub) | ISBN 9780871954206 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Davidson, Preston Archer, 1842-1914. | Indianapolis (Ind.)—History— Civil War, 1861-1865. | Soldiers—Confederate States of America—Biography. | Indianapolis (Ind.)—Biography. | Butler University—Biography. | Davidson family. Classification: LCC F534.I353 (print) | LCC F534.I353 D385 2017 (ebook) | DDC  977.2/5203—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044717 ∞ No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The paper in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39. 48–1984

Rebel Bulldog: The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War was made possible through the generous support of the Care Institute Funds.

Dedicated to my wife, Erin.

Contents

PR EFAC E xi IN T R OD UCT ION 1 Chapter 1

The Family 5

Chapter 2

The College and the Impending Crisis 25

Chapter 3

Going South 43

Chapter 4

Constitutional Union or Secession? 61

Chapter 5

Failure of Compromise and the Shattered Union

Chapter 6

The Wages of War 109

Chapter 7

Torn Asunder 135

Chapter 8

Seeking Peace 167

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NO T E S 189 BIBL IO G R A PHY 233 INDEX 249

Preface Authors always have a multitude to people to thank, and I am no exception. If anything, I have found that the longer I write the more people I have to thank. In very real ways, this book is a product of my time as part of the Butler University community. My thanks go to Amy Elson and Lisa Markus of the University Honors Program for agreeing to and then supporting a class about Butler’s role in the Civil War that gave impetus to this project. I am also indebted to the Butler University Archives and Sally Childs-Helton, whose knowledge of the university’s past and its collections were of immense aid in both preparing the course and in the opening phase of research on the Davidsons. This project could not have been accomplished without the help of the Butler Library’s interlibrary loan program, headed by Susan Berger. I also owe a debt to the Butler History Department, including Scott Swanson, who brought me to Butler, and to George Geib, Butler’s resident Americanist, who graciously agreed to my request to bring another Civil War course to the school’s curriculum. But chiefly I wish to thank my students in the honors course. I have had the good fortune to have many excellent students at Butler, and those who have been a part of this course are among the best. Eventually, we hope to showcase the university’s contribution to the Union cause on a website, which will be a legacy to their peers who fought in the Civil War. I must single out two of my students though, for special recognition: Amie Wright, who as a freshman took the first generation of my class on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and as a senior opted to take one more class with her old professor. She also served as an unofficial research assistant and sounding board early in the book’s process. Emelia Abbe, another former student of both these courses, provided careful proofreading and analysis of the opening chapter. Both demonstrate the continuing power of the Butler Way. Close to home, I should thank the Indiana Historical Society William Henry Smith Memorial Library, whose staff is always welcoming and helpful. The Indiana State Library, where the staff uncovered some Davidson documents that had long been neglected. Other Indiana

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repositories that provided me research materials include the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the Wabash University Archives, and the Irvington Historical Society, which is housed in Butler’s former Irvington campus library. The Davidson family story is national in scope, and so the generosity of archivists and institutions around the country is also worth noting. The Internet age is an exciting one to be doing historical research, providing instant contact, requests, and even access to material. The aid provided by the Archives of Washington and Lee University, the Davidson family’s school, especially Lisa McCown, is of special note. Washington and Lee sent me a host of documents in PDF form, which greatly aided the research process. The Wisconsin Historical Society, where James Davidson’s papers are housed is also deserving of special recognition, especially Laura Farley. Other institutions that provided aid are: Yale University Archives, Virginia Historical Society, the Library of Virginia University, the State Library of Virginia, the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Museum of the Confederacy, the University of North Carolina’s Archives and Library, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, the Virginia Military Institute, and the Fountain Inn Museum of South Carolina. My thanks as well goes to the Congregational Library in Boston, which remains one of my favorite places to do research, for helping me find more information on the Beecher family in its collection. There are many others who deserve a word of thanks, including Rusty Williams for added insights into the Kentucky Confederate Veteran’s Home and to Catherine Mackey, a descendent of the Davidson family, for information on Preston’s uncle, Charles, as well as family stories. Lastly, and for many years he was an institution himself, I am thankful to Richard Smith, who was my middle school history teacher. Mr. Smith helped make the Civil War come alive for me for the first time and helped propel me toward becoming a professional historian. I hope I am able to convey some of his passion to my students as he did to me. As always, I am indebted to my family. My parents, Jack and Juanita Lantzer, instilled a love of learning in me at a young age and first took me to Gettysburg in the 1980s. I am also lucky to have two terrific sets of inlaws. Time spent at the lake house of my in-laws, James and Kathy Heuer,

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always helps my writing process. And Susan and Bill Hebert are not only supportive of their son-in-law but also quick to watch their grandchildren when I need some time to write. Kate and Nick, my children, have now lived through various book projects. Kate, though only in elementary school, asks questions that make her father very proud of her and confident she could be a scholar in her own right if she chooses. Nick, my “Butler boy” has grown up entirely as a Bulldog, and continually reminds me that there are new things to learn and appreciate. But my largest debt, as always, is to my wife, Erin. This book is for her.

Introduction As part of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, I decided to teach a course on Butler University and the Civil War. While the Butler History Department regularly offers a very popular course on the conflict itself, I wanted to explore the lives of the men who were part of the university’s history, and, I hoped, get my students to connect with their historic peers by doing research on those who had served in the conflict. While preparing the course I did cursory research on the units and men we knew had fought in the war. What I found was remarkable. During the war Butler was known as North Western Christian University. A Disciples of Christ school in many respects, it was a product of the Second Great Awakening and the desire of its founders to have an institution of higher education of their own as a mark of respectability. Located in Indianapolis, it was also something else: a midwestern school nestled in a growing state capital, whose founders counted amongst themselves a large number of antislavery men. Not surprisingly, many of the university’s founders sent their sons and daughters (NWCU was coeducational) to the school. They also worked very hard at recruiting others to do the same, utilizing not only the network of Disciples of Christ churches in Indiana and nearby states, but also their friends and neighbors, especially in Indianapolis. Although planning had begun a few years earlier, the school itself was not in operation until 1855. The date is significant, as it means virtually all of NWCU’s graduates and student body were destined to live through the most tumultuous period in American history: the Civil War. Those first Bulldogs1 were very much involved in the Union war effort. Butler students and graduates were among the first to answer President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers in the wake of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter. They fought in nearly every battle a student of the Civil War has ever heard of, and countless more they have not. They fought in the eastern theater, they fought in the western theater, they made it as far south as Texas and Florida, and some, somehow, even managed to fight at sea. At least eight died while in service, more were wounded, several spent time as prisoners of war (including John V. Hadley, whose epic escape became the stuff of Hollywood ),2 and one, Marion Anderson, won the Medal of Honor.3

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But for all of their accomplishments, both on the battlefield and after the war (Scot Butler, son of one of the university’s founders and himself a Union veteran, took the helm of NWCU and turned it into a first-class liberal arts college),4 one of them caught my eye: Preston Archer Davidson. Like many of his peers, Davidson fought in the war. Unlike the rest of them, he fought for the Confederacy. “Why?” I asked myself. He was from Indianapolis, and hence a Northerner. Of course, his family did have Southern roots, but that was hardly unique in mid-nineteenth-century Indiana. He was a student at NWCU, which everyone knew to be antislavery, if not abolitionist, in its leanings. How did he end up fighting for the South? And what did his classmates and family think of it, especially when Davidson moved back to Indianapolis after the war? What was his cause, or reason, for joining the Rebels in the first place, and how did he justify it? This book is an attempt to answer those questions. The story that follows is one that raises issues and uncovers facts not just about Davidson, his family, his peers, or his school, but about the very nature of the war itself. While it may be impossible to re-create the events of the past, even one as well documented as the Civil War, it is still important to ask probing questions. Perhaps the most compelling in the case of Davidson is why he fought for the side he did. Historian James McPherson has argued that Southerners believed they were fighting for the same cause as the Founding Fathers. In their minds, they saw liberty for whites as entwined with slavery for blacks. A change in the status of slaves would thus imperil the status of whites. Steeped in such ideals and honed by the concept of honor, Southerners felt forced to fight to create a slaveholding Christian republic, even if most would never own slaves. Northerners, on the other hand, fought for preserving the Union, an almost sacred concept, and one that northerners defined in their own minds as the nation looking very much like the North itself. While they may not have believed in racial equality, that Northern definition of the Union also had no room for slavery.5 Many of the answers about Davidson’s decision hinge on family. We know that more 100,000 men from slave states served in the Union army, but we know very little about those from Northern states who fought for the Confederacy.6 Davidson defined himself based on his family’s past and present. The Davidsons were connected to the political

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and religious leadership in both Indiana and Virginia. His father was an expatriate Virginian who remained in close contact with his family in the Old Dominion. His mother was the daughter of Indiana’s governor and through whom Preston grew up knowing the man who gave his name, if not his story, to one of the most important pieces of literature in nineteenth-century America, Uncle Tom. The Davidsons might have resided in the free North, but for Preston, his concepts of family and race/slavery were heavily Southern. He accepted and made his own the Southern cause. Indeed, by using Davidson as a lens, in some respects, it makes the story of the Civil War that much more compelling. If McPherson’s basic concepts of why Americans fought are correct, then where does that leave a man such as Davidson? He was a Northerner who redefined his concept of self and citizenship into that of a Southerner. While converts to a cause are sometimes the most zealous, we will see as his story unfolds that his perception of himself was not always shared by others. Having transformed himself into a Southerner fighting for a cause, Davidson’s story helps to answer a question posed by historian Gary Gallagher, who noted, “It defies modern understanding that any people—especially one in which non-slaveholding yeomen formed a solid majority—would pour energy and resources into a fight profoundly tainted by the institution of slavery. Yet the Confederate people did so. Until historians can explain more fully why they did, the story of the Civil War will remain woefully incomplete.”7 Davidson’s story helps us to better understand the attractiveness of the Southern way of life. And yet, Davidson’s story cannot be just about him. As such, it differs from many accounts of the war as told from the perspective of the front lines.8 He fought alongside and against family and friends on both sides of the sectional divide. Nor is it just a story about a school (or in his case, schools) and how they were affected by the war.9 It is also not just a story that reflects on a family (divided or not)10 or a community at war.11 All of these are important to our understanding of the Civil War, as they enrich the scholarly works that focus on topics such as religion, politics, or specific battles. But in some ways Preston Davidson’s story is unique because it melds all these branches of study into one. That the war was a struggle within a national family, that it was a “brother’s war” is a cliché. It is also accurate, and in Davidson’s case, true.12 How he, and others of

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his generation, saw themselves and the nation(s) they were a part of (or hoped to be a part of) takes us beyond clichés and into the realm of what caused the war he, and they, fought in. If any one man’s story can get us closer to answering Gallagher’s question, I believe that man is Davidson. For here was a Northerner who opted to fight for the South. Here is a nonslave owner, who supported the peculiar institution on the war’s front lines. Here is the story of an unapologetic Rebel Bulldog and his divided and conflicted family in the war that defined our nation.

1 The Family Born in Indiana in 1842, Preston Davidson was the product of both the North and the South, and the midwestern culture they created.1 His was a family network that spanned two states and one that heavily influenced who he was. In many ways, Davidson’s world was defined by his family, in particular his grandfathers. Prominent men in their own rights, Andrew Davidson and Noah Noble bequeathed to their grandson a legacy of success in both public and private life that he was expected to try and emulate in his own way. Their decisions shaped the course of his life.

The Reverend Preston’s paternal grandfather was the Reverend Andrew B. Davidson, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister from Virginia. The Davidson family, like many Old Dominion clans, had a heritage that included relatives who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Andrew was born in 1779 or 1780 into a respected, if not wealthy, family. He attended Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, where he first met Susan Dorman, “a village belle,” who he later married. Upon entering the ministry he served congregations throughout the Shenandoah valley of Virginia, centered in Rockbridge County. For many years he rode out on horseback to attend to the spiritual needs of the valley’s Presbyterians miles away from home (emulating to a certain degree the famed Methodist circuit riders). In 1815 he was named a trustee of Washington College, a post he held for the next forty-two years. As a result, not only did the Reverend Davidson insure the spiritual but also the educational well-being of his family and community.2

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Reverend Davidson’s work helped Rockbridge County have a strikingly Presbyterian-influenced future, which had long-term consequences for his family. As local historians noted, this meant the people were hardworking, interested in education, and exhibited a tenacious loyalty to their community and state.3 Wherever the Davidsons might go, Lexington was always home. Still, the Presbyterian denomination Reverend Davidson was a part of was far from united. Presbyterians were deeply divided over matters of theology, and had been since George Whitefield’s trans-Atlantic revivals during the First Great Awakening. The denomination was split into Old School and New School camps, with Reverend Davidson firmly in the former. The Old School stressed the need for an intellectual commitment to the faith, steeped in traditional Calvinism and its associated predestination of the elect, and the established Church and its forms. They were thus suspicious of revivalists and their tactics. The New School was comprised of evangelicals who supported revivalism and saw nothing wrong with appealing to emotion to win sinners to Christ. The two sides found it increasingly difficult to stay within a single denomination as the nineteenth century unfolded.4 For all their differences, the two schools shared a rich heritage that helped bind them. Presbyterians of both schools had very high standards for the ministry, which put them initially at a disadvantage when compared to Methodists and Baptists as the nation moved west. If they had any advantages, it was in their intellectual rigor. Scotch-Irish Presbyterians such as Davidson were devoted, by the time of the American Revolution, to Scottish Common Sense Realism. Self-evident truths, a common moral sense, and intellectual pursuits based on facts and experience were the basic tenants of Common Sense Realism, and they all contributed to a search for social order and stability. In the young United States, the doctrine had no bigger proponent than John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and signer of the Declaration of Independence.5 Thus, despite the Old/New School rift, according to historian George Marsden, the first half of the nineteenth century “was in many respects the greatest age of Presbyterianism in America.”6 A staunch Presbyterian, Davidson’s sermons were literary tour de forces, as well as examples of American Calvinism at its finest. He was re-

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membered for his combative sermons more than for his pastoral relationship with his congregations. Davidson was not immune to taking on opponents from the pulpit. Indeed, his type of preaching has been described as “earnest and fervent.” Or, to put it another way, “He was often lacking in tack, a fault that made for misunderstanding and the creation of situations that were embarrassing to himself as well as others.” But this did not deter him in his work. He was a church builder, founding or helping to pastor various churches in west-central Virginia.7 The spiritual and intellectual rigor of its ministers influenced childhoods in Presbyterian homes. Andrew and Susan Davidson were the parents of five sons, all of whom were surely instructed in the Westminster Shorter Confession at home. Designed to refute Arminianism (which held that humans had a role to play in their salvation—a point at odds with Calvin’s doctrine of human depravity), the Shorter Confession was a staple in Presbyterian homes as a means to both educate and to instruct children about the faith. It was comprised of 107 questions, with their required answers, which good Presbyterians were expected to know by heart and use to guard their immortal souls from damnable errors. Devotion to the Westminster Shorter Confession helped define the Presbyterians as a denomination.8 With this religious instruction as a base, Reverend Davidson’s sons all attended Washington College. William became a doctor before dying in 1830. James became a celebrated lawyer and took his father’s place on the board of trustees of the college from 1858 to 1882. Henry moved to Richmond to teach before becoming a doctor in Lexington. Charles, who went by his middle name of Baker within the family, became a minister like his father, though his Protestantism was not bound by a single denomination as he served Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal congregations over the course of his ministerial career.9 The Davidson legacy was one of faith, education, and local prominence. It was carried to Indiana by the reverend’s son, Alexander. Born in 1812, Preston’s father came to Indianapolis in 1836. He taught school for a time and also worked in a bookstore.10 He was joined in the Hoosier State by his brother, Baker, the only one of the reverend’s sons to enter the ministry, settling in southern Indiana.11 Alexander no doubt missed home and family in Virginia, but he was determined to make a new life for himself in Indiana.

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INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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1836 Sullivan Map of Indianapolis

Alexander and Baker were hardly alone, they were part of a vast internal migration of Virginians, nearly a million people by the mid-nineteenth century, that not only spread the Old Dominion’s cultural influence throughout the young nation but also greatly affected their home state— draining off talent and treasure to other states. For free people who made the migration, the decision to leave was voluntary, though Virginia slaves were also part of the migration process. The expatriate Virginians formed “a distinctive sub region” that “had a distinctively southern flavor” to wherever they settled.12 While many ended up in slave states (nearly 205,000 by 1850), nearly as many (almost 183,000) were living in free states.13 James Davidson may also have played a role in Alexander and Baker’s decision to leave Lexington for Indiana. James visited Cincinnati in 1836, and while he was “pleased” with the city itself, he thought the white residents “look like a selfish, reserved, bigoted people . . . the women are ugly, and have the appearance of being worn down with labor” (in part because “white servants here do the work of slaves”). By the time he reached Indiana, noting along the way that “these Hoosiers, do not mind the mud,” James had decided that the people of the state “are a rough but kind people.”14 Alexander opted to move at roughly the same time as the trip and to make his home amongst these “kind” people.

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Surely another inducement was the potential economic opportunities in the Midwest. Both the northern and midwestern economies were booming compared to Virginia’s in the 1830s, and it is likely that the Davidson brothers were lured away by the promise of economic opportunity.15 Unlike his brothers, Alexander did not enter a profession such as medicine, law, or the ministry, despite his college education. Perhaps he saw Indiana as a place to invent himself away from his family.16 Whatever his reasons for leaving, he soon found himself in the midst of new circles of influence and power in his adoptive state.

The Governor

FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE INDIANA STATE MUSEUM AND HISTORICAL SITES

Preston’s maternal grandfather was Noah Noble, the fifth governor of Indiana. Born in 1794 in Virginia, Noble moved to Kentucky with his family as a small boy. In the late 1810s, Noble followed his brother, James (later a U.S. Senator from Indiana), to the Hoosier State, eventually settling in Brookville. He quickly entered politics, serving as county sheriff and, in 1824, as state representative from Franklin County as a member of the Whig Party. Two years later, he became receiver of public moneys (succeeding his brother, Lazarus, who had died), holding the post until President Andrew Jackson removed him from office. Noble helped locate and lay out the Michigan Road, and in 1831 his Indiana governor Noah Noble meteoric rise continued when he became the Whig candidate for governor. Noble won the election despite the strength of the state Democratic Party and the presence of another Whig on the ballot.17 Noble had friends and family in Indianapolis, which made his political life easier, as well as his eventual decision to reside there.18 Noble was described as “a warm hearted Virginian, an agreeable companion, and a perfect gentleman” by a friend in 1843. His political success was largely

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tied to his popularity. People liked him, and throughout his political career Noble maintained good relations with people from different political parties.19 Noble was thirty-seven years old when he became governor. He was “tall and slim, with a delicate constitution, a winning smile, feeble voice, and irresistible handshake.” His speech was plain “and well, but made no pretense to eloquence.”20 Everyone assumed that he would seek a second term, as the 1816 Indiana Constitution allowed for consecutive threeyear terms. His main rival for re-election was James G. Read, a prominent Democratic judge. Noble’s popularity, ability to appeal to the wishes of voters, and expert attacks on Read’s ability to run the state resulted in an easy re-election.21 The governor was a devout and influential midwestern Whig. His position and prominence in the state brought Whig heavyweights to Indiana. He wedded and molded the state’s future to the success of Henry Clay’s American System, and was an avid supporter of the Kentuckian. Clay was a guest at the Noble home in October 1842. While his speech at a Noble’s barbecue reception did not leave a rousing impression in the minds of the Hoosiers who came to hear him, another speaker at the Whig rally, John J. Crittenden, did impress them.22 Noble was also a friend and political ally of Indiana congressman Richard W. Thompson. Thompson also was born into a Virginian slave-owning family, but had also made his home and career in the Hoosier State. The two Whigs referred to the Democrats as “the damnable Van Buren Party,” and both men were early supporters of former Indiana Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison’s presidential aspirations.23 As a Whig, Noble was deeply interested in promoting internal improvements for the state. Indeed, this permeated much of his campaign rhetoric during both his gubernatorial campaigns. By the mid-1830s he was one of the leaders of the bipartisan internal improvement spirit that swept the Old Northwest. Noble worked throughout his terms not only on projects such as canals and railroads, but also securing the funding (via loans) and financial wherewithal (via a banking system) to insure that those dreams became a reality. The end result of Noble’s efforts became the System of 1836, which promised significant canal, railroad, and road construction around Indiana as the capstone initiative of his second term.24 The projected cost of the project was $13 million, “or one sixth of

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IHS, BASS PHOTO COMPANY COLLECTION P130

the wealth of the state.” The Mammoth Internal Improvements Act was signed into law in January 1836. It was a very popular idea, though some of Noble’s allies, including Indianapolis lawyer and diarist Calvin Fletcher, expressed worry about how the new law was going to be paid for and implemented. Funding was provided by a series of interlocking bank loans and bond measures, and construction was begun on all the projects at once without any prioritization.25

Broadside used to recruit workers to help build the Central Canal near Evansville.

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Work had hardly begun when the panic of 1837 hit the country, eventually halting construction and plunging the state into debt. The collapse of the internal improvement plan was a shock to the state at virtually every level. Businesses and communities were left reeling as work stopped. The tangled financial mess was virtually impossible to understand or appreciate, including by the state’s lawmakers. Noble was equally helpless. Never the strongest political party leader, Noble seemed unable to provide the guidance needed to deal with the state’s difficult financial issues.26 Though few blamed him personally, he was no doubt relieved to leave office. For all of his political accomplishments and controversies, however, the governor was most proud of his family. Noble was happily married to Catherine Stull van Swearingen (born in 1801), a woman very much his match and who he affectionately referred to as “Kitty.” Their personalities complemented each other, creating a loving home for their children and grandchildren. However, the family did know sadness. Of the fourteen children born to the couple, only Catherine Mary (Preston’s mother, born in 1823) and Winston Park (born in 1834) lived to maturity.27 The Noble home was brick (painted white) and named Liberty Hall. It was Virginian in style, with a center hall and wings. The home had twelvefoot-high ceilings and eight fireplaces on its first floor. A creek that ran through the property and the governor planted an orchard of peach and apple trees, as well as a vineyard. A grove of sugar maples provided the means for syrup. The Nobles had sheep, oxen, calves, and hogs. Sitting in the middle of the family farm in Indianapolis (bounded by the eventually named Washington, Noble, Walnut, and Arsenal Streets), the home was the center not only of family life, but also the governor’s political life. Noble strongly believed that railroads were a benefit to the city and state, and he gave the right of way to two companies to build lines through his property.28 The legacy Preston inherited from the Noble family was one of political affluence and status. He was born into a family connected to some of the most important and powerful figures in the state and nation. Such associations gave rise to all sorts of opportunities and expectations that he felt compelled to live up to.

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The Issue of Slavery Both sides of Preston’s family had firsthand experience with slavery. Considering the early nineteenth century, this is not surprising. There was no real stigma to owning slaves, even in Northern states at the time, and for many Southerners it was a constant reminder of the blessing of liberty.29 However, the American Revolution had opened debate on the institution’s future. Members of Preston’s family were conflicted about slavery’s existence in the new nation. His grandfathers grappled with what it meant to be a white American with the right to own a black slave, but soon his father did too. In many ways, Alexander Davidson was trapped between the family that had raised him and the one he married into, passing a conflicted ideological legacy to Preston. In the Revolution’s immediate aftermath, there was optimism that slavery would disappear. However, the planter class in the South proved incapable of making such a dream a reality.30 The reason was the introduction of cotton, which breathed new life into the cash-crop economy of the South. Coupled with westward expansion, slavery again became both profitable and necessary for planters.31 While Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both believed that slavery needed to be defused throughout the country in order for it to go away, this simply did not happen.32 Northern states, however, were already adopting gradual emancipation laws to end the institution. Thus, a part of the country grew to have no real experience or knowledge about the primary labor system of the other half of the nation. As this happened, slave owners in the South grew wary of anything that might be considered abolitionist propaganda, eventually becoming reluctant even to discuss gradual emancipation. When they did talk about ending the institution, it was never in their lifetimes, only at some point in the vague future. Until that day, slave owners believed slavery needed to be protected, and any duty to uplift an individual slave had to be balanced with the need to keep the growing slave population at work.33 As a prominent Southerner in the early 1800s, it is not surprising that Alexander Davidson’s father, Reverend Andrew Davidson, owned slaves. However, the institution was open to some debate, even in Southern churches, and this got him into trouble. A fellow Presbyterian minister,

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George Bourne, charged Davidson with mistreating his slaves in 1815. The controversy stemmed from Bourne’s belief that Davidson had promised to free a slave named Joe, which Davidson had then refused to do. Bourne, who was developing antislavery principles, alleged that “slave owners, or those who traffic in them, cannot be considered Christians.” The two men’s differences were eventually settled, in part, by the intervention of the local presbytery.34 The clash left a sour taste in Reverend Davidson’s mouth toward antislavery reformers and their activities. He grew increasingly worried about how his fellow ministers in the North were discussing slavery, and how this was influencing public opinion both inside and outside his denomination. Writing in 1844 to Alexander, he noted, “I am truly sick of the everlasting whining about the social relations of the Southern people. It seems to me, that your good people Ministers as well as others are attempting to be wise above what is written and spend a little too much of their time in fixing the standard of their neighbors consciences, when perhaps, if they were to look at home they would find more important matters neglected.” He could find no trace of condemnation of the South’s peculiar institution in “the good Book,” nor any reason why slave owners should be excommunicated in either the Old or New Testaments. The Golden Rule, Davidson argued, when applied to slavery, was how a person had a “right to be treated” if they were a slave, it did not prove that slavery violated Christ’s “Moral Law.” He believed that slaves were being saved to “worship God as it seems right in their own eyes. They join what Church they please. They have the Sabbath to rest and serve God and as a large a proportion of them are professing Christians as the Whites. And in a temporal point of view, they are better off than nine tenths of the lower class of White people.”35 In saying these things to his son, Reverend Davidson was speaking not only as a slave owner but also as an Old School Presbyterian. His branch of the denomination did not believe there was biblical sanction for “aggressive abolitionism.” Slavery was an ancient institution and part of the social order. It became a sin in the eyes of many Old School Presbyterians and other evangelical Protestants at the time only when slave owners violated biblical mandates toward the treatment of their slaves. Slaves might legally be property, but their humanity (and the Christian duty that went along with owning them—to uplift, save, and educate them in the faith) was never to be ignored or violated.36

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Of course, part of the tension of slave owning in America was knowing that this duty existed, and largely failing to live up to it. Indeed, the problem for Southern Christians was that slavery, as practiced in the South, was not up to biblical standards and held within it the potential for very real abuses. Furthermore, even if it was, Northerners increasingly believed that slavery as practiced in the South was vastly different than what had been common practice in biblical times.37 The two sides seemed headed for a confrontation. There are echoes of Reverend Davidson’s dilemma in the story of the wider Presbyterian debate about the institution.38 The denomination had a long history, dating back to the 1790s, of speaking out against slavery. But turning words into actions exacerbated the Old/New School divide. Unlike the Old School, which tended to defend the institution as a regrettable reality, New Schoolers (who tended to be found in the Northeast and Midwest much more than in the South) were more open to antislavery ideas. While not all of them became abolitionists, New Schoolers were more apt to look for some response to the institution beyond platitudes about eventual emancipation or colonization. The harsh opinions that many Old School Presbyterians in the South took toward New Schoolers, officially about theology, was no doubt tinted by the belief that the New School was full of abolitionists of one stripe or another.39 Antislavery sentiment was never as strong, however, within denominations in the early nineteenth century as later Northern abolitionists liked to believe.40 Presbyterians, for example, might blast slavery, but at the same time their churches in the South actively got rid of abolitionist ministers, including Reverend Davidson’s old nemesis, Bourne.41 While moderates believed that attacking slave owners as sinners was unchristian, an increasing number of Northern Christians had fewer and fewer problems with doing just that.42 Such statements further hampered attempts at reforming the institution in the South, as churchgoing, slave-owning Christians often opted not to become church members so as not to have to submit to denominational discipline and expectations when it came to owning slaves. The pronouncements of antislavery Christians also hardened the attitudes of slave owners such as Davidson, and reconciliation between the two camps became increasingly difficult.43 If this was the mindset of his father, Alexander Davidson (and through him, Preston) had a different perspective via his father-in-law. As a child

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in Kentucky, Noble lived on a 300-acre plantation in Boone County along the Ohio River. Not surprisingly, the plantation included slaves. After his father’s death in 1817, Noble and his siblings eventually freed at least some of the family’s slaves. The governor brought several of them north by 1831. Reclassified as servants, Tom and Sarah Magruder, their children, and eventually at least two other former Noble slaves were a constant sight in the Noble home and farm. The governor had a cabin built for them on his property. Noble’s story was hardly exceptional in pioneer Indiana. Many ex-slaves lived near their former owners in some capacity, whether because they had been freed but were aged, or because they still worked for them. Such relationships produced a certain degree of ambiguity on the issue of slavery’s future in the Hoosier State, and many whites actually knew free blacks or former slaves personally, leading to an increase in antislavery feelings.44 In spite of his family’s slave-owning past and his own Southern roots, however, Noble was far from being a Southern partisan on the issue. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, as South Carolina, under John C. Calhoun, began putting forth the doctrine of nullification (and even whispering thoughts of secession if the South’s demands on tariffs and slavery’s expansion were not heeded), Noble and other Hoosier politicians took a stand for the Union. While willing to seek compromise, Noble noted in his first inaugural address that “in the integrity of the Union consists our glory and strength, and upon its continuance depend our peace, prosperity, and happiness as a nation. It is dangerous to trifle with such things.” On the topic of states’ rights, the governor opined that the term was a “theme of declamation, excitement, and I might add, self-aggrandizement in certain sections of the Union. . . . I am a strenuous advocate for the constitutional sovereignty, the distinctive independence of the States . . . I entertain no fears of consolidation from the enactments of the national legislature.”45 Simply put, the fears of some Southerners, such as Calhoun, were unwarranted and dangerous. As for Alexander, he may have voted on the subject with his feet. In the early 1830s there was an attempt at pushing for gradual emancipation in Virginia. However, the measure was defeated by slave owners in the state legislature. Dejected, many who supported emancipation simply joined the thousands of their peers leaving their home state for the new free states in the West.46 Since Alexander left the Old Dominion at this

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time, and later joined a church that was antislavery, it is possible that he was in complete agreement with those who wanted to put slavery on the path of extinction. Considering the importance that slavery came to have in the years before the Civil War—a war in which Preston fought—it is important to put the legacy his grandfathers and father bequeathed him on this issue into context. Preston was born in a free state, where slavery did not exist, but he was not ignorant of the institution. His Davidson relatives continued to own slaves, though they were not part of the planter aristocracy. Preston himself grew up knowing former slaves. At most, he held an ambiguous perspective on slavery, likely sharing the Noble outlook on the institution. As Governor Noble put it in 1837, “upon all questions connected with the institution of slavery, the citizens of this State have been exempt from excitement.”47 If we look again at the letter Reverend Davidson sent Alexander in 1844, it can be read as a mild, fatherly rebuke. The Reverend wrote of “your good people” and “your Western Christians” as he relates the hows and whys of the Bible’s support of slavery. Even if evangelicals in the North were not prepared to support abolition, they were increasingly antislavery, and this worried the elder Davidson.48 Or it could be the first attempt to redeem his son and grandchildren from the errors of the New School, considering where Alexander opted to go to church.

The Davidson Family of Indianapolis As important as his grandfathers were in shaping his legacy, ultimately it was Preston’s parents, Alexander and Catherine, who reared him. His parents provided a stable home, one that blended both their family traditions and offered the Davidson children every opportunity available in the young Hoosier State. Catherine Noble married Alexander Davidson on May 19, 1840, in Indianapolis. As she noted in a letter to a friend who was unable to attend, the two hundred guests who attended the wedding were packed into her father’s house. The ceremony was performed by Reverend Henry Ward Beecher of the city’s Second Presbyterian Church, despite the pastor not feeling well. The food was a bounty (including ice cream). The couple was happy and quickly settled into wedded bliss while living on the Noble farm. Alexander eventually built a home on the property, situated on

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a small hill, and named it Highland House. Beecher, who lived nearby, invited the couple to dine with him a few weeks later. In between, the couple was at the center of the city’s social scene.49 If one family exemplified the spirit of revival and reform sweeping the Midwest, it was the Beechers. Henry’s father, Lyman, helped launch the Second Great Awakening, focusing on spreading the Gospel into the new states in the West and instilling in his children the belief that God was active in human affairs through His followers. After graduating from Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary, where his father served as president, Henry secured a pastorate in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, before being called to Second Presbyterian. Arriving in Indianapolis in 1837, the young Beecher was prepared to learn and grow with his new city and congregation. Beecher was well liked almost from the start and his preaching helped Second Presbyterian grow. Beecher was thought by many to Henry Ward Beecher be a very good pulpit pastor who was learning how to do things outside of the church walls for his congregation. He learned to enjoy home visits, especially at the Noble home. Beecher quickly made an impression, befriending and bringing into the congregation many prominent businessmen and politicians.50 Beecher’s Indianapolis church was brand new and was a product of the Old/New School divide.51 Alexander Davidson, though raised in the Old School, was a charter member of the New School’s Second Presbyterian Church. Perhaps Davidson’s doctrinal shift can best be explained by the democratic nature of frontier religion. The growth of the Presbyterian Church in the West was steeped in evangelical ideas that downplayed formal creeds in favor of deeds. It was not uncommon to shift denominations or congregations as a result of religious revival and fervent preaching. In addition, the new Second Presbyterian church’s membership was comprised of people who were very much a part of Indianapolis’s business, legal, and political communities.52

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Alexander was one of their leaders, and he authored the letter to First Presbyterian in the fall of 1838, cosigned by other members who sought to form a new congregation, asking for formal letters of dismission. He noted that those who were leaving the established congregation, while forming a “separate flock and knell before our common Father around a different Altar, we trust that the same Great Shepherd will feed us both,” that they wished to live as “Christian brethren, fellow citizens, and neighbors” with no animosity between the two camps. Davidson assured the members of First Presbyterian that they were “influenced by no other motive than that of the glory of God, the building up of the Redeemer’s Kingdom” and the ability to seek “their own edification, and growth in grace.” In the end, separation was achieved with little acrimony.53 In December 1841 Alexander was named a deacon of the Second Presbyterian Church. It was the start of his reputation in Indianapolis as being a devout Christian.54 Second Presbyterian was a New School bastion in Indiana’s capital. Securing Beecher had been achieved by recruiting powerful community members, including Noble, in urging the young minister to come to Indianapolis. Beecher was joined for a time by his brother, Charles, who helped develop the new congregation. Charles was the first of the Beecher children to take up the mantle of antislavery and eventually left Indianapolis to go to Fort Wayne to lead a congregation of his own.55 New Schoolers such as the Beechers advocated the practical application of moderate biblical and Calvinistic doctrine (based on the saving grace of Christ) to wider society, via reforms, which was the only way they believed a person could hope to save either themselves or society. True Christians were responsible for doing both.56 The evangelical Protestantism that Beecher and Alexander were a part of dominated the cultural landscape of nineteenth-century America. They knew theology and doctrine, and believed that it was their job “to mind everyone else’s moral business; otherwise, the entire nation would suffer for the sins of a few.” There was to be no middle ground, there was only right or wrong. The ideas of “righteousness and reform” were never far from and quite often linked within these evangelical circles.57 Furthermore, evangelicals believed they could accomplish great things for God and man by crafting a postmillennial Kingdom of God on Earth, paving the way for the return of Jesus Christ. New School Presbyterians believed

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that perhaps the most visible sign of accomplishment would be to wage a successful campaign against slavery. To Beecher, the Bible was clear about the evil of slavery and the damage it was doing to the United States.58 Such open advocacy of reforms and antislavery further widened the Presbyterian divide between the Old and New Schools.59 Politics and religion mixed easily in nineteenth-century Indiana, sometimes with combustible results. When Whig gubernatorial candidate Samuel Bigger was attacked after comments he made about Methodists were taken out of context, Alexander sprang to his defense. In a letter to his brother, James, he said of those who would not vote for his fellow Whig because Bigger had once referred to the president of “the Methodist College in Indiana” as professor instead of reverend over a decade before were “asses.” Still, he was aware of the power of the Methodists in Indiana. His father-in-law helped Bigger by writing a letter to his fellow Methodists to help his fellow Whig carry the election.60 The former governor was obviously not far from the field of politics and civic engagement after leaving office. Noble served on a variety of boards, including one that dealt with the bond crisis created by the internal improvements debacle. He remained popular and prominent in the state, and twice was narrowly defeated for the U.S. Senate.61 He was part of what Democrats called “the Whig Junto” that dominated the party in Indiana and also included Bigger, Samuel Merrill, Calvin Fletcher, and Richard W. Thompson. The group spearheaded a host of moral-based philanthropic and city-building projects, intermixing their faith with their politics. They were steeped in what one historian has called a “WhigPresbyterian-evangelical subculture” that fused religious belief with civic engagement.62 Alexander moved in these circles with ease.63 Being married to Catherine had advantages, chiefly that his father-in-law was the popular former governor of the state, and that fact helped Alexander personally and professionally. In 1840 he was commissioned as Quartermaster General of Indiana. Ever after, he would be addressed as “major,” “colonel,” and even “general.” Three years later, Alexander was also commissioned as a notary public.64 These were happy times. Alexander and his Kate, as he called Catherine, were very proud of their growing family. Dorman, their first born, arrived in 1841. Preston was born August 1, 1842, and three other

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children followed (Noah in 1844, Susan in 1847, and Catherine in 1848). After visiting the Virginia Davidsons, Alexander wrote that he hoped that his brother, James; sister-in-law, Hannah; and their children would come visit them in Indianapolis so that the brothers could “compare children” to see who had produced the better brood.65 Alexander’s world changed on February 7, 1844, when Noble died. A true gentlemen (though some thought he sought popularity and political office too obviously), Noble was mourned seemingly by everyone in Indianapolis. Despite cold and snow, a line of mourners descended on the Noble home, and on the day of his funeral people lined the streets as the governor’s body and mourners left the house and traveled down Market Street to the Wesley Chapel on Meridian Street. Thanks to a request made by Fletcher, Beecher gave the closing prayer at the otherwise Methodist service. Beecher delivered a memorial to the former governor from his own pulpit a week after the funeral. Noble’s death was noted in the Western Christian Advocate and prompted an outpouring of civic mourning across denominational and partisan lines.66 Noble’s death hit his family and political associates the hardest. Alexander believed that “the Whig party of Indiana was shorn of its strength when Noah Noble died.”67 In the midst of his mourning, Alexander received a letter from his father. Writing from Virginia, Reverend Davidson noted that his son had “met with a sore bereavement . . . Such trials must be experienced to know their weight.” And after several paragraphs discussing death, the Presbyterian divine reminded his son that “although the heart is thus deeply wounded and opens its flood gates to give vent to its sorrow; yet we do not mourn as those who have no hope. A voice from the heavenly Messenger cries, dry up those tears thou Mourning Widow and thou orphan children ‘thy friend is not dead but Sleepeth.’”68 The dead, however, made work for the living. Indeed, though he made provision for his entire family in his will, Noble gave Catherine and Alexander the land he had purchased in Indianapolis. The governor also directed that Catherine be in charge of the family furniture should the house be broken up. Noble also made provisions for his family’s former slaves. The Magruder family was not only given money, but also their home and an acre of land. Alexander and George Dunn were named the will’s executors.69

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The brunt of the work of dealing with the estate fell to Alexander. In October 1845 he wrote to James about the mess Noble’s finances were in. Although Noble had died with very few debts of his own, he had essentially become land rich but cash poor, while also leaving a variety of promises and long-term expenses unfunded (in particular, the care of his wife and young son, Winston). The duty of taking care of them fell on Alexander, who hoped that he might borrow some money from James to deal with the shortfalls by paying off the former governor’s other responsibilities.70 The following years were full of more challenges. By 1849 Alexander wrote James that the children were sick, one with “whooping cough.” He had planned to visit Virginia, but was glad that he was here to help Catherine with the kids. He talked of moving from Indiana to “some better country. Both Catherine and myself are getting old faster than our years would warrant.” Alexander suffered from stiffness in his joints and seemingly had lost his strength, perhaps because of heart palpitations. But his ambition to secure a better life had not diminished. Alexander told his brother that he was going to apply for an appointment as register of the land office in Indianapolis. He had political support in Indiana, and hoped that James could use his influence in Virginia to bolster his chances.71 Nothing came of this hoped-for opportunity, perhaps because of the growing disarray within the national Whig Party. In the 1850 census the Davidson household consisted of Alexander, Catherine, their children, and Alexander’s mother-in-law and young brother-in-law. The Davidson children were Dorman (age nine), Preston (age eight), Noah (age six), Susan (age three), and Catherine (age two). While Alexander was successful in his own right (listed as a farmer), the census taker noted that it was Catherine who owned the real estate in the family, valued at $60,000.72 Within a year another tragedy struck. Catherine died on May 28, 1851. Alexander was crushed. In addition to mourning, Alexander’s own health declined, as his inflammatory rheumatism flared up.73 In March 1853 John Ketchum, a family friend, wrote James Davidson a letter about Alexander that no doubt disturbed the Virginian. Ketchum noted that Alexander had never been much of a farmer, and that the Noble-Davidson estate was falling into disrepair. Because of his own illness, Alexander was thinking about asking the courts to allow him to sell some of the land that Noble had left to his children (via Catherine’s inheritance). Ketchum sug-

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gested that perhaps James could help his brother by taking in some of Alexander’s children. In the end, nothing came of Ketchum’s suggestion, but a seed had been planted as to how to deal with future financial problems.74 By 1854 Alexander’s health had improved, as had his prospects, and he remarried. Alexander’s new wife, Martha, was thirty-two years old and from Kentucky. Little is known about her, although the marriage seems to have been a happy one and, considering the ages of Alexander’s children, made a good deal of sense.75 His children needed a mother, he needed a companion, and for a time, at least, the family circle was complete. Preston grew up in a religiously devout home, and one that was politically connected. But it was a home that also held within it a good deal of tragedy. One grandfather was dead. His mother was dead. His father was working hard to keep himself and his family afloat, because of familial expectations and devotion. Distance cut him off from his Virginia family. But it was from their entire family legacy that Preston, and his older brother, Dorman, would need to draw upon as they stepped into the wider world.

2 The College and the Impending Crisis Preston Davidson came of age at an exciting time in the history of his hometown. Life was simple in Indianapolis. Most people owned their own homes, which usually included enough land for them to grow at least some of their food.1 It was an oasis in the midst of the frontier. But it was still a pioneer environment. In some ways, the city was a self-sustaining community, but one that was growing and striving to be more. Preston’s upbringing and familial history shielded him from the harsher aspects of this condition. Being a boy, one who was a descendant of both the Noble and the Davidson families, had its advantages. His rich legacy eventually compelled him to be part of the West’s improvement. If churches were marks of civilization to pioneers, then colleges were indications that a community and/or a state had really made it. The Davidsons were in a good position to benefit and take part in this process. Indeed, their heritage seemed to demand it. Of course, Dorman and Preston also were coming of age in the midst of almost unprecedented sectional tensions, and that, mixed with their heritage, had just as important consequences for themselves, their family, their city, their state, and their nation.2

The Disciples Spiritual forces were at work to help shape these developments. Preston’s parents had been part of the Second Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But in the North, much more than in the South, the revival called people not just back to church, but also to action in the form

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of reforms, which were seen as clear marks of the progress of an American, Christian civilization.3 One of the reforms was promoting education. Protestants put a premium on education and helped create the Sunday School that prompted the movement toward public schools and calls to create institutions of higher learning. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians were all involved, and so to was the new denomination, the Disciples of Christ.4 The Disciples were an emerging evangelical denomination. While the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians were large and in a way established, the Disciples emerged during the Second Great Awakening and were an evangelical movement (such as the big three) but were of similar size and (to a degree) social standing of the Society of Friends and other smaller Protestant denominations.5 Led by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, the Disciples (or Christians) sought to unify all believers (or at least evangelical Protestants) in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. Without officially formulating a creed or doctrine beyond restoring Christianity to its New Testament roots, Stone and Campbell crafted a denomination based on the unity of an evangelical millennial vision.6 Both men had roots in the Presbyterian Church. Indeed, Campbell’s wing of the Christian movement was attractive to many Presbyterians, especially New Alexander Campbell Schoolers on the frontier (though the New School Presbyterians eventually rejected talk of a merger). Other Disciples came out of the Baptists.7 Because of the influx of people into the Old Northwest states, there was already a loosening of denominational loyalty and tendencies toward church “shopping.” Thus, it is not surprising that new denominations such as the Disciples of Christ emerged. By 1850 the Disciples of Christ was the fourth largest denomination in Indiana.8 The Disciples growth is not surprising and it was firmly a part

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of the evangelical Protestantism that was sweeping the frontier. Followers were millennial in their outlook and were a perfect fit for Indiana. In November 1850 Campbell visited the state and left impressed with the possibilities and the hospitality he encountered, amongst the Hoosier Disciples.9 Campbell’s trip came at a precipitous moment. Hoosier Disciples felt “neglected” by the chief founder of their denomination. For more than a decade, they wanted Campbell to to visit them. In some respects, they needed him to come. And he always found a reason why he could not.10 In part, his delay was caused by the growth of the Disciples and his participation in founding a college. In 1841 Campbell started Bethany College in Virginia, based solely, he claimed, on the Bible. Many members of the Disciples hoped that in sending their sons to Bethany, they would actually get to study under Campbell. The campus was also where Campbell opted to build an impressive home for himself, allowing him to keep watch over the denomination he founded and to cast a wary gaze over threats to both his church and school.11 What eventually brought him to Indiana in 1850 was a letter from Ovid Butler. In the letter Butler, a leading Disciple layman and organizer for the Church, announced that Hoosier Disciples had decided to start a college to be named North Western Christian University, and had secured a charter from the state to those ends. This peaked Campbell’s interest, as in his mind Bethany was to be the sole school for Disciples, and the proposed Hoosier school was competition. It did not help matters that Indiana’s Disciples had been less that supportive of his collegiate undertaking from a financial standpoint. Now, it seemed, he knew why. There is little doubt that he worried about a drying up of midwestern funds and students for his school if it faced academic denominational competition.12 Campbell quickly found his way north. His travel to the state, over what he considered to be near impassable roads and seemingly constantly swollen rivers, was a source of contention. He was also displeased about this Indiana “university” (a classification that Campbell found pretentious for a brand-new school), not to mention its regional focus. And yet, he actually enjoyed his time in Indiana and saw in the state much potential for the denomination. Campbell was even impressed with the NWCU plant. While he eventually reconciled himself to the fact that there would be two Disciples schools, there were also lingering feelings of animosity between

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Campbell and the leaders of this upstart institution that reflected, in part, the growing sectional divide about slavery.13

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Ovid Butler and the Creation of NWCU Butler was the driving force behind NWCU. Born in New York in 1801, Butler moved to Indiana in 1825 and arrived in Indianapolis in 1836. Although his family had been Baptists, Ovid joined his father, Chauncey, in embracing the Disciples of Christ. Indeed, the elder Butler was named an evangelist for the Disciples movement in Indianapolis in 1839. A lawyer by profession, Ovid was a devoted layman who was called an advocate of social justice, but that reflects a twenty-first century reinterpretation of the man. He was a devoted Christian (in both the personal and denominational senses), and was among the leading antislavery advocates in Indiana. The school he championed was a reflection of his values.14 Butler’s circle included men such as James Blake, Calvin Fletcher, Isaac Coe, and James Ray, all of whom were prominent in Indianapolis’s affairs. Butler and Fletcher had been law partners until a severe illness in 1847 prompted Butler to retire from the practice of law at the age of fortysix. He was convinced that God had spared his life for greater purposes. The more he thought and prayed on the subject, the more he believed that God was calling him to start a university. His dream was not just a “church school,” nor a seminary that would just train Ovid Butler ministers, but rather a university that would rival schools on the East Coast. Furthermore, Butler believed strongly that the northwest needed its own Disciples’ college.15 From its very start, NWCU described itself succinctly. It would be “Northwest” in honor of its location in the nation, but also because of the Northwest Ordinance that made the land north of the Ohio River free

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from slavery. It would be “Christian” because it was both a religious school (in the broad sense) but also a denominational school (also in a broad sense). And it would be a “university,” not a college. The latter choice was nearly as important as the other component parts of the name, for it showed the ambition of the school’s founders. The school was officially organized on March 5, 1850. In addition to Butler, who served as president from 1851 to 1861, the governing board consisted of Disciples who were committed to higher education. The trustees believed in the mission of the university as defined in the charter Butler drafted.16 NWCU was conceived as an institution dedicated to providing students with a “liberal and Christian education.” From its start, “educational goals were not subordinated to denominational doctrines.” Butler’s school was to be a place where “piety and culture went together.”17 The board sold stock in order to fund construction and pay the salaries of the faculty. At first, only Butler was able to do so. But by June 1852 the board had raised more than $75,000 (at $100 a share) in pledged stock sales, paying 6 percent annually in school script that could then be used to pay for tuition by those designated by the shareholder, allowing the board to make the next step: The drafting of plans and outright construction of a school building. William Tinsley, a recent Irish immigrant who was to make a career of collegiate building design, won the contract for the NWCU plant. Tinsley’s plan called for an impressive “collegiate Gothic” building. In May 1853, with construction under way, the preparatory school (a feeder institution designed to insure all students were ready for college) began.18 By the spring of 1855 the main building was complete (even if not everyone who had subscribed to fund its construction had actually paid), and classes were ready to begin. The school officially opened that fall. The new institution faced constant financial issues in its first few years, but refused to suspend classes; instead, it curtailed or fired its teaching staff.19 But it did have one important advantage. Unlike the Methodists in Greencastle, the Baptists in Franklin, the Presbyterians in Hanover, or the Roman Catholics in South Bend, NWCU was not founded in a small town. It was launched in the state’s capital.20 “Mr. Butler’s seminary,” as Fletcher referred to NWCU, was well outside the city’s limits in 1855. The campus ran two city blocks (from mod-

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Architect’s drawing of the first building planned for North Western Christian University, Indianapolis.

ern Thirteenth to Fifteenth Streets along College Avenue on land donated by Butler) at a time when there were few buildings north of Saint Clair Street, more than a mile away. The nearest house was the Butler home, and the area was heavily wooded. The streets, such as they were, were unimproved and prone to turning into muddy swamps when it rained.21 The dream of a school, however, was now a reality and its birth came at a tumultuous time.

Slavery and Disciples Higher Education The Church, construed by most nineteenth-century Americans to be the array of Protestant denominations, was the nation’s moral voice. What pastors said about slavery, then, mattered.22 Evangelicals who became attracted to antislavery as a reform not only believed that slavery was both a personal and a societal sin, but also that removing it would help stimulate the salvation of all those involved. Antislavery rhetoric flowed out of the Second Great Awakening’s vision of a redeemed America, one purged from sin and vice. That fed into political action, limiting “the options of political leaders” in a growing chorus of moral demands.23 Such talk helped end “the dream of all evangelical Protestants together in a common union.” As Northern Protestants came to accept at least some discussion of the institution their Southern coreligionists were increasingly quiet on the subject. And while abstract discussions of slavery in churches continued to be fine, what Southern slave owners worried about was when sermons started turning to how slavery was practiced.24

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People understood that at the denominational level, talking about slavery could lead to division. Methodists and Baptists toned down antislavery rhetoric in the South during this time, insuring that they would become more socially acceptable to potential members.25 Some Americans held out hope that colonization might solve the slavery issue. It seemed moderate and posed no harm, nor threat to slave owners in the pews. Presbyterians, especially the Old School wing, supported both the concept and the American Colonization Society, as part of a gradual abolition process. When New School Presbyterians pointed out that the ACS would never solve the moral nature of the slavery issue, Old Schoolers retorted that the institution was “in no way prohibited by scripture.” Yet colonization was not viable from either a financial or a logistical standpoint. Not to mention that most African Americans did not want to go “back” to Africa, as they were Americans, not Africans, by the mid-nineteenth century.26 The growing denominational divisions had an impact on Southern politicians. South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun had done more than any Southerner to craft a means of defense for the region’s peculiar institution, while also drumming into the South that it would and should lead the nation’s various branches of government. Any threat to that dominance, thus, was a threat to the South as a region and the future of slavery in the Union. James Mason of Virginia and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi were among those influenced by Calhoun’s vision. Davis, in particular, defended slavery as an institution, including the internal slave trade, and claimed that abolitionists were “waging war” on the South John C. Calhoun simply by daring to discuss, print, 27 and mail tracts on the topic. Southern whites were receptive to the argument, and politicians in the region found it increasingly necessary as the 1840s gave way to the 1850s to embrace Calhoun’s ideas, if they wanted to stay in politics.28

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It was not as though Americans could escape discussing slavery, however, though Congress tried. During the 1830s there was a gag rule in place by which Congress would receive and then table abolitionist petitions in committee so as not to read or debate their contents. This only galvanized the antislavery movement, making those who sent the petitions, at least in their own minds, into defenders of free speech, as well as proponents of freedom for slaves. While the gag rule stifled debate within Congress from the mid-1830s until the dawn of the 1850s, it had little bearing on either discussion or the actions of the wider populace. In 1831 Nat Turner’s slave revolt occurred in Virginia and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison began publishing the Liberator in Boston. Six years later, a Princeton Seminary-educated, Garrisonian abolitionist newspaperman named Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois.29 All these events kept people in both regions talking and debating slavery, whether the politicians liked it or not. In the North, where fewer people each year had any understanding of how slavery was actually practiced and fewer still had any knowledge of slavery in the growing cotton culture, antislavery sentiment was stirring. Indiana was, and always had been, an antislavery state, and, thanks in part of Justice Isaac Blackford (who served on the Indiana Supreme Court from 1817 until 1853), had a legal reputation as such. But it was also anti-

Cartoon satirizing the “gag rule” that prohibited discussing slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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black. Militant antislavery, even abolitionism, was slow in developing and largely mitigated by the majority.30 If Indiana, where NWCU was located, was a good bellwether for the North, then Virginia (home to Bethany College) served the same purpose for the slaveholding South. The Old Dominion was still home to some who advocated a course toward the gradual extinction of slavery as an institution. Nevertheless, Virginia was also a source for the theory of slavery being a positive good (at least for slave owners). As the sectional crisis grew, Southerners increasingly saw slavery not only as a positive good, but also antislavery (let alone abolitionists), in the words of historian Joseph Kelly, as “absolutely evil.”31 A vicious, regional cycle developed that cried out for compromise. As Northern antislavery sentiment grew, Southerners began to make increasing demands for federal safeguards of their institution. In response, Northerners began to see these demands as infringements and abuses of their liberties. Then came the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, “a draconian overhaul” of the nation’s existing laws on the subject. The new law put the full weight of the federal judiciary behind the slave owners. Federal marshals now led posses to recapture accused runaways, who could not offer a defense in federal court themselves because of the color of their skin. Those presiding over their fates were paid, as federal magistrates, more for finding the accused a slave rather than a free man. Recaptures and trials shocked many Northerners and the law’s enforcement led to discussion of slavery’s morality—a topic that politicians in drafting the law had taken great pains to avoid. For their part Southern slave owners were shocked and angered about the Northern reaction to the law and the growth of slavery.32 Thus, at the same time the Disciples were taking off and NWCU was being founded, slavery was growing in the United States. The problem for the Disciples by the 1850s was that they had become a denomination. They were not a Protestant union movement anymore, and as such, they could no longer ignore divisive issues such as slavery, no matter how much men such as Campbell wished otherwise. He still wanted the Disciples to bridge the growing divide between North and South and did not want the Disciples to splinter the way the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians had over slavery. Campbell also knew his Church had to tread carefully.33

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Campbell’s feelings and opinions on slavery were nuanced, complex, and influenced by his faith, region, and position as a denominational founder and leader. He argued that masters and slaves were in a reciprocal relationship, with each having a duty to the other. Thus, owners needed to take care of their slaves, both in terms of clothing and food as well as their spiritual development. Abolition could only come by Christian owners deciding to free their Christian slaves. Campbell believed that abolitionists and proslavery men who argued that God was on their side were perverting the true Gospel (which he, of course, was advocating). Discussion of slavery was a political one, Campbell believed, and had nothing to do with Christianity. Those who raised the issue were promoting discord. Indeed, he wanted all discussion of it to take place outside of the Church. While he held that slavery was not sinful, he did add that it could lead to sin and be a divine punishment for sin. Campbell maintained that because slavery was not condemned by the New Testament, it did not need to be eliminated.34 Campbell’s views were largely welcomed by Southern Disciples. Antislavery Disciples in the North, however, were increasingly disillusioned with the denomination’s leader.35 They were, however, without a voice in the Church’s leadership. Campbell’s compatriot in the Restoration movement, Stone had been more willing to embrace antislavery. He had owned slaves, but freed them. Slavery, Stone believed, was “immoral and unwise.” Stone died in 1844, before the sectional crisis truly heated up, leaving Campbell as the sole voice to guide the Disciples on the topic.36 Campbell increasingly viewed the slavery issue through a sectional lens. He believed that the Fugitive Slave Law had to be followed because America was a republic. If it was a bad law, it would be found unconstitutional or changed. Campbell was echoing the commonly held American belief in the sanctity of a law once passed, which was seemingly acceptable to most whites. But his stance also had to do with his location. The leading Disciple lived in Virginia, alongside his beloved Bethany College.37 However, the law was controversial in places such as Indiana, despite Campbell’s statements, and its enforcement angered and radicalized many Northerners, including members of the Disciples. The law was viewed as something put over on the nation by the South. There was also a growing feeling that the North could not continue to grant concessions to the South regarding slavery, and that this law was the last one Northerners would allow.38

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All of this was compounded by Butler’s announcement that Hoosier Disciples were going to start a school. While abolitionists were a fringe segment of Northern society, and in many places a despised one at that, being antislavery—in a wide variety of manifestations—was quite acceptable.39 Butler, and many Christians in his circle, disagreed with Campbell about the South’s peculiar institution. They found the Fugitive Slave Law to be repugnant and Butler believed Christians should, at a minimum, passively resist its enforcement. He, along with Fletcher and Henry S. Lane (a future governor and U.S. senator from Indiana), were part of a committee to raise arms and men to aid antislavery settlers in Kansas. Furthermore, with Butler’s support, Hoosier Disciples, in addition to founding NWCU, soon launched their own newspaper and even their own hymnbook, all in competition with the Campbell-approved versions.40 Such actions made reconciliation within the denomination difficult. Campbell believed that they had struck a deal—to endow a chair at Bethany and help it financially in return for his acceptance of NWCU. But Hoosiers put a primacy on their school, and Campbell came to believe that NWCU “was a monument to free soil jealousy.” He took particular umbrage with reports that the Hoosier school’s boosters were using the slavery issue to persuade students to attend NWCU in Indianapolis rather than go to Bethany in Virginia. An “antagonistic article” about the new school soon appeared in the denomination’s publication, the Millennial Harbinger, in January 1854.41 There was little doubt that Butler and the school he helped found viewed slavery as a moral problem. Considering how many institutions of higher education in the North had not just alumni but also direct ties to slavery in the South that was no small statement.42 Butler once wrote that “American slavery both in law and in fact is based upon the assumption of the right of one man to enslave another to hold and enjoy him as property.” He doubted if the U.S. Constitution actually gave Congress the power to legislate the reclamation of fugitive slaves. And it was because of slavery that he moved into the ranks of Free-Soilers and then into the Republican Party. He wanted “no slavery outside of the present slave states” and thought that either “slavery or the Constitution must perish.”43 The Bethany-NWCU divide grew deeper in 1856, when Campbell’s school expelled several Northern students with antislavery views. One student was told, or so it was claimed, “To keep his alien and seditious

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views locked within his own bosom.” Campbell was embarrassed that the case was not viewed as one of discipline and that it achieved wide press coverage. He was outraged further when the expelled students enrolled at NWCU and thrived.44 Such expulsions over antislavery views were not all that exceptional. To avoid tension over slavery, Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, headed by Lyman Beecher, expelled rabid antislavery students in 1834 after a series of heated debates about the issue. The Lane Seminary Rebels, as they were called, including Theodore Dwight Weld, went on to found Oberlin College.45 Into this mix came Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Both Henry Ward Beecher (who had left Indianapolis for a pastorate in Brooklyn, New York in 1847) and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, were shocked by the Fugitive Slave Act. If the United States was to mean anything, the Beecher siblings believed, it must stand for something higher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe better, than returning people seek46 ing freedom to bondage in the South. Stowe’s novel detailed for a rapidly growing white, Northern audience the humanity of the slaves owned by Southerners. She believed that everyone was “morally bound to form a correct opinion” in regard to slavery. Though she publicly said God wrote the book through her, Stowe drew heavily on her own experiences and what she read in crafting the novel, including her time in Cincinnati; a trip to Kentucky, where she had seen slaves being bought and sold; and, of course, visiting Uncle Tom Magruder’s cabin on the Noble farm in Indianapolis.47 The cabin became something of a local curiosity after the book’s publication. In 1857 Alexander Davidson took his nephew, Greenlee, to see it when the young Virginian visited his Northern family. Greenlee wrote in his diary that his uncle showed him a cabin near the Noble-Davidson farm

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belonging to a very elderly “negro—now 108 years old who was a slave of his father in law. . . . His name is Tom. To him and his humble cabin the world is indebted for the name of that most infamous—yet most able work Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Henry Ward Beecher knew Uncle Tom when Preaching in Indianapolis and suggested the name to his Sister.”48 The novel and its subsequent popularization via plays polarized attitudes. When a troupe arrived in Indianapolis in February 1854 to perform the New York version of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Play,” Fletcher commented that he had no plans to see the production as he was already “sufficiently with hatred to the slave system.”49 Southerners did not like Stowe’s story. Margaret Junkin, a budding writer living in Virginia, “believed Uncle Tom’s Cabin to be a ‘one-sided book.’” It was a criminal offense to own a copy in some states, and Southerners attacked both the book and its author. While Stowe blasted Northerners for “loving the Union more than the slave,” in Virginia schools Uncle Tom’s Cabin was attacked and Northerners (abolitionist or not) were portrayed as aggressors seeking to destroy the Southern way of life.50 It was into this environment that Alexander Davidson sent his two eldest sons, Dorman and Preston, to NWCU. Though from a Southern, slave-owning family, Davidson did not send his sons to Bethany. Of course, the Davidsons were not members of the Disciples of Christ denomination; they were Presbyterians. And that spiritual legacy was one they carried with them as they entered NWCU. But the Davidson brothers journeyed to Butler’s school with full knowledge of its origins, knowing as well that the debate over slavery was increasingly putting their family in the middle of a divided nation.

The Davidsons and NWCU Higher education was important to Alexander Davidson. His decision to send his sons to NWCU was probably based on a mixture of civic pride, location, and religious devotion. Although the elder Davidson was a Presbyterian, raised Old School, he helped found a New School congregation. The Nobles were Methodists, though Winston (the late governor’s son) was going to Wabash (a Presbyterian school), where he was well received by the faculty before finishing his education at the Kentucky Military School in Frankfort.51 Alexander’s brother, Baker, was a Methodist

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minister, and in October 1859 he seemed to be on the path to becoming a bishop in the Methodist Church, North.52 Perhaps the Disciples-based school showcased a sort of broad evangelical tendency on Alexander’s part. It surely was a financially practical decision, as the boys could live at home while attending school. Just a year old at the time the Davidsons arrived, NWCU offered instruction at three levels: collegiate, preparatory, and the preprep “English School,” and was open to both male and female students. As such, at any given time the student body represented a variety of ages and academic levels. Considering the sorry state of Indianapolis’s high school, the allure of a preparatory department that would funnel into a university curriculum was no doubt an inducement to Alexander when his sons reached the right age.53 Samuel Hoshour was elected president of the faculty in 1858. In charge of teaching religious and philosophical courses, as well as modern languages, Hoshour was later Samuel Hoshour remembered as a good teacher but an “eccentric” president. Before coming to NWCU, Hoshour had taught for a number of years at the Cambridge City Seminary in eastern Indiana, where his students included Lew Wallace (Union general and novelist), Thomas Hendricks (governor of Indiana and vice president of the United States), Ambrose Burnside (Union general), and Oliver Morton (governor of Indiana and U.S. senator).54 The school was in very capable academic hands. Being at the school was serious business with few distractions. Many of the students lived at home and, such as the Davidson brothers, attended classes with family members. Many only spent time with each other in the classroom. But they were also in the city.55 Two of Preston’s classmates, William and Edwin Brevoort, offer some insight into what life was like at NWCU. A cousin wrote Will in 1858 asking if it was true that “school boys are not allowed to think about the girls,” a potentially

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important rule since NWCU was coeducational. Their father, Jason, urged both of them to be “diligent” and continue working hard at improving their skills.56 Surely both Dorman and Preston received similar admonishments, as did their fellow classmate, Scot Butler, Ovid’s son. Not all students stayed the course. For some it was because of family or farm demands. For others it was that the academic rigor was too much for those who believed their destiny was in a trade or behind a plow.57 No such questions or dilemmas emerged for the Davidson brothers. It was expected that they would achieve a college education. Although the younger of the two, Preston took to college naturally. In 1858 he is listed as a member of the freshman class, which included twenty-six young men and two women. Dorman, on the other hand, was still listed in the preparatory department. Freshmen were instructed in algebra, geometry, Cicero, Xenophon’s Anabasis, Virgil, Herodotus, and trigonometry, split up over three sessions, spanning from August until June. Students were expected to attend services on the Sabbath, as well as Sabbath lectures in University Hall.58 In just looking at the various catalogues, one can get the sense that NWCU was growing, indeed, starting to come into its own. And it can be inferred, that Preston was thriving as a result. Of the two Davidson brothers, it seems as though Preston was also the more outgoing. Along with his friends and classmates Platt J. Squier and Charles Lockwood, Davidson joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity in 1860. It was the first Greek organization at NWCU, started in October 1859, and the twelfth chapter of the young fraternity. Other members of the fraternity were Preston’s friend, William Brevoort, as well as Henry Tutewiler and Irvin Robbins.59 Preston also joined in the activities of the school’s literary societies. The Mathesian Literary Society had in its membership Perry Hall, Eli Ritter, John V. Hadley, and Irvin Robbins, and its meetings featured “declamations, essays and debates on a wide variety of topics, a weekly ‘newspaper’ read at the traditional Friday evening gathering, and lively discussions both serious and facetious.” The Pythonian Society, which Preston joined, was founded in 1857. A favorite activity was to formally invite the female members of the student body to meetings.60 Dorman seemingly joined no such groups. Why, exactly, is harder to pinpoint. His name is not included on existing lists. Preston apparently showed a great deal of academic aptitude, because

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when the 1859–60 school year started he was listed as having junior standing. Lockwood and Squier had also made the jump with him.61 The friends and their fellow students studied mechanics, Tacitus, Sophocles, physiology, Cicero, natural philosophy, rhetoric, and botany. As electives, they could study German, calculus, engineering, or Demosthenes.62 In the midst of this exciting time, Greenlee, the boys’ older cousin from Virginia, visited Indiana in September 1857. He noted as he traveled to Indianapolis that the land was “far surpassing in fertility and beauty anything I ever saw.” The Hoosier capital was not exactly what he had anticipated, however. While the streets were “broad” and well laid out, most of the homes “are small frame houses which seem to have just been erected. The City seems to be growing rapidly. The State House is a dingy dilapidated looking structure, unworthy of the name.”63 Greenlee’s trip did allow him to visit his Uncle Alexander’s family. When he arrived at their home, they were at church, so he “strolled around the grove” until they returned. Alexander was both surprised and glad to see his nephew. After supper, Alexander showed him the view from the top of the house. Greenlee marveled at “the most magnificent view imaginable. The whole city lay spread out before us, whilst behind us the whole country was covered with crops—interspersed with groves of trees.” He was impressed with the farm, calling it “a magnificent estate.” Greenlee also noted that some of the land was being sold, with lots going for $250 to $300, as the city grew to embrace the Noble-Davidson lands.64 Before departing for Chicago, Alexander showed Greenlee the German neighborhood, including the Turners’ buildings. The younger Davidson also visited the Statehouse and saw the captured battle flags and trophies that Hoosiers had brought back from the war with Mexico. His train ride to Illinois solicited more amazement at the fertility and bounty of the Hoosier soil.65 Did their cousin’s visit convince Dorman and Preston to eventually leave NWCU? Greenlee had just graduated from Alexander’s alma mater, Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and was on a celebratory trip. The boys were in NWCU’s preparatory department, and the school itself was still young. It is more likely that Greenlee’s visit only reinforced feelings within Alexander that his sons should attend school in Virginia. “I very much desire that all my sons should eventually spend a part, at least, of their college life at Lexington, either in the College or Institute,”

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he wrote James. “I want them to understand the manners and customs and form attachments for Virginia and the South. If trouble should come between the North and the South, and the signs of the times portend such a result, I expect to stand by my native state and I want my children to stand with me.”66 Alexander was a Virginian always. He never truly felt at home in Indiana. Indeed, whatever attachments he had to the North died with his father-in-law (the governor) and his wife. He visited Lexington in the summer of 1859 to investigate sending his sons to the Old Dominion. Dorman was enrolled at Virginia Military Institute, after Alexander verified the costs, and his son expressed pleasure at the idea of spending time with his Southern family. Alexander also came home with information about Washington College for Preston. Both boys soon left NWCU.67

3 Going South The Davidson family may have lived in Indianapolis, but on some level for Alexander Davidson, Virginia’s Shenandoah valley was always home. As historian Jeffry Wert has described it, “the Valley seeped into bones” and “touched souls.”1 From Indianapolis it is 494 miles to Alexander’s birthplace of Lexington, Virginia. In some respects, for Preston, going south to Lexington to finish his schooling made perfect sense. His new home was not unlike his old one, full of family and connections. Virginia was the ancestral home for both the Noble and Davidson families, and Washington College was quite literally the ancestral school for the Davidsons. Lexington, despite being a much smaller town than Indianapolis, was a very cultured one. It boasted not only Washington College but also the Virginia Military Institute, was the county seat, and had many businesses and professionals. The two schools, and their faculty, were the center of the community’s social life. When Dorman and Preston arrived, the town was home to around 3,000 people, a majority of whom were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.2 The spiritual center of the town, and of the Davidson family, was Lexington Presbyterian Church. While Lexington proper was founded in 1777 (and named after the Massachusetts town where the American Revolution began), the church was started twelve years later. Its first minister was Reverend William Graham, who also served as the rector of Liberty Hall Academy, which became Washington College, crafting a close connection between the church and the school. In the 1840s, following a revival that swept the church, VMI, and Washington College, the congregation moved to a new building at the center of town on the corner of

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Main and Nelson Streets. The boys’ uncle, James Davidson was part of the planning committee. James was perhaps a bit more than just a “nominal Presbyterian” as one historian called him.3 Lexington Presbyterian served as an important fixture for both the community and the Davidson family. Southern churches were, from a theological standpoint, conservative. Even as many of their counterparts in the North had begun to embrace reforms in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, Southern Christians largely balked at the idea. They had become convinced that if all were sinners, then none could really be guilty. As Emory M. Thomas notes, this meant “hedonism and fundamentalism coexisted in the Southern soul.” The fear many Southerners had about reforms, including some of the leading theologians, was that any change to the status quo, even if seemingly positive, would destroy all that they knew.4 Slave owners believed that the Bible approved of slavery. Southern theologians constructed a biblically based defense of slavery that helped to put into (theoretical) jeopardy the very humanity of the enslaved. This emergent trend was in response to growing Northern antislavery, but itself prompted a response. Northern Old School Presbyterians, for example, might make room for slavery, but would not allow Southerners to claim that whites and blacks were different species and so the latter could be enslaved perpetually.5 Northern theologians, such as Theodore Dwight Weld, were more than ready to use the Bible to condemn the system of slavery that existed in the South. In addition, abolitionists, such as Sarah Grimke, were prepared to take Southern clergy to task for supporting the institution.6 Not all Southern Christians bought wholeheartedly into the new theology. Those who attended Lexington Presbyterian understood this. As early as the 1830s, the church was both deploring the rise of abolitionism in the North and launching outreach ministries to African American slaves, including a Sunday School program that VMI professor Thomas Jackson was a part of.7 We know very little about Dorman and Preston’s personal religious beliefs. The boys grew up in Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, but how devoted they were then or after they arrived in the South is a matter of speculation. While Southern religion might be deemed “conser-

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vative,” not every Southerner was “born again” either. There was a portion of Southern society that was irreligious, though not hostile to religion, including members of the Davidson family. Regardless, Dorman and Preston would have been surrounded by people and a community in which religion mattered to some degree and that was engaged in the questions of the day.8 Despite it being a center for education, Lexington had limitations, which James Davidson understood all too well. Dorman and Preston’s uncle had traveled across the country and to Europe, and so could easily compare his beloved corner of Virginia to the outside world. While the Valley Pike ran from the town to Staunton, Lexington itself was not on a railroad. There were not many job opportunities. Indeed, his brothers all left, at least for a time.9 Dorman and Preston’s Virginia peers were hoping to restore the state to its past glory. Unlike earlier in the nineteenth century, talented Virginians were now expected to stay at home rather than move west. But the younger Davidson brothers returned to a state far different than the one their father had left. The migration that Alexander Davidson was a part of meant that the Virginia his sons returned to in the late 1850s was more homogeneous than either the state he had left or the one he had moved to (and that they had grown up in).10 Their peers also believed that the previous generation had focused too much on equating success with the “aristocratic ease” that slavery (and family names) could confer. While the “old fogies” saw a good deal of “intellectual arrogance” among the young, who had the leisure to critique without having to actually do the leg work to produce results in the world (which they were quick to point out, had happened in Virginia), young Virginians were sure that their generation’s hard work would produce something even grander.11 It took a lot of work by Alexander to scrape the cash together to send Dorman to VMI (in the fall of 1859) and Preston to Washington College (in the fall of 1860). Part of it had to do with a generally poor economy and a scarcity of money. Nevertheless, Alexander found the funds to cover Dorman’s expenses and debts (such as for a new pair of boots).12 Both boys had grown into fine, educated young men.13 They were ready to make the journey “home” to Virginia.

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The Davidson Family of Lexington The brothers were not coming to Lexington without connections. Dorman and Preston’s uncle, James Davidson, was a dominate force in the locality. James was clean shaven when most men had facial hair and walked with a cane, though it was more ornamental (for appearance’s sake) than anything else.14 A graduate of Washington College, he was an accomplished lawyer as well as a writer of witty prose. As a young attorney, James worked with his maternal grandfather, General Charles P. Dorman (for whom Dorman was named), a member of the bar and a state representative for nearly a decade in the 1830s (where he had been an advocate of internal improvements). By the time his nephews arrived in Lexington, James was “the dean of the Rockbridge bar” with a thriving practice, and was “always more interested in defending principles than in making money,” though in most respects he did both. He was wealthy, well connected, and influential. But despite his popularity, he refused to enter into politics, fearing that being openly partisan would harm his lucrative legal practice.15 By virtually every measure, James Davidson was a success. He owned a home near the courthouse in downtown Lexington, as well as a 160-acre farm outside of town. The Davidson house was a raised, two-story, brick structure (the porch came up a full story to the “first” floor, with the actual ground floor below it), with four columns and four chimneys. James owned six slaves. He was perhaps not as hard of heart as some owners (the institution was considered “mild” in Virginia by Southern standards), but there seems to be little doubt in his mind of the soundness of the institution.16 This led him, in 1858, to condemn the black Sunday School class that Lexington Presbyterian sponsored. The lawyer believed at first it was illegal and disruptive. But after a heated argument with Jackson, James changed his mind. The two men quickly forgave one another for their harsh words, and James came to support the outreach.17 More important than his career or status was his family. James and his wife, Hannah, had eight children, six boys and two girls. Although the oldest boy died in infancy, the other children survived and were named Greenlee, Frederick, Charles, Albert, William, Mary, and Clara. The Davidson home was a warm and nurturing one, full of affection and incredibly close knit. It was also in close proximity to members of the extended family.18

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That family included James Baldwin Dorman, Alexander and James Davidson’s cousin. His father (James Davidson’s grandfather and law partner) was a ten-term member of the Virginia state legislature and the driving force behind the creation of VMI. Born in 1823, James Dorman attended both Washington College and VMI, and then became a lawyer. He served in the Mexican War and returned to Virginia to win election to his father’s old seat in the House of Delegates. Dorman was an advocate of the colonization of freed slaves, founded the Lexington chapter of the American Colonization Society, and was a member of the Franklin Literary Society.19 Dorman and Preston benefited from having their Uncle James close by, as he knew Lexington and its people well, opening doors for his nephews and sometimes his wallet. While waiting for money from home, they could always buy things on his credit. James was indulgent to his children, allowing his sons, Frederick and Charles, virtual open access to his bank accounts.20 The younger Davidsons also had cousin Greenlee to serve as an example. The Washington College graduate was active in the community, a budding lawyer in his own right, and seemed destined to carry on the Davidson legacy in Lexington.21 Coming home to Virginia also gave Dorman and Preston the chance to spend time with their paternal grandparents. The aged reverend surely enjoyed getting to see both Dorman and Preston on a regular basis. In very real ways, the Davidson family seemed to once again be complete.

Dorman and Virginia’s Dilemma The Virginia that Dorman and Preston came to live in was at a crossroads. It was far from backwards, but it was also caught between its cashcrop past and a growing industrial and commercial agriculture future.22 Indeed, Virginia had perhaps the most diverse economy of the South. No one cash crop dominated it (cotton was not king, and tobacco had been on the decline for decades), and Virginia’s farmers, yeoman or planter, were increasingly experimenting with diversification. Virginia also had industry, and the infrastructure (in the form of canals and railroads) to make it (and commercial agriculture) a success.23 Virginia was defining its own place in the nation. But while it demonstrated that the South was far from monolithic in its economy, many of its citizens could not escape the need

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for slave labor and the underlying system that supported it and, thus, their lifestyle.24 For planters, owning slaves created a life of ease and luxury. Slaves were a source of wealth. By the time war clouds were forming the four million slaves in the South were worth an estimated $3 billion. Thus, owning even a single slave shaped how whites saw the world. Most of the nation’s wealthiest men lived in the South. Historian Bruce Levine has noted that roughly a quarter of all Southern whites owned slaves, with the typical owner holding only four to six slaves. About one out of eight owners (about 46,000 individuals) qualified as “planters,” that is, owning twenty or more slaves, but that small number actually controlled more than half of the slaves in the South. Some 10,000 families owned fifty or more slaves, with a select few (about 300 planters) owning 250 or more slaves, and an even smaller number (about fifty planters) owned at least 500 slaves. These latter two groups were the pinnacle of the planter aristocracy, and the dominate force in shaping Southern culture and politics.25 While the Davidsons did not fall into the planter class, they were bound to that class by the color of their skin. Race trumped class as a determining factor of one’s status on some level in the South.26 And yet, many Virginians, including James, realized the state needed to change. The old plantations simply were not as economically viable as newer ones opening up in places such as Mississippi and Alabama, where cotton was becoming king in fresh fields. While Virginia’s soil was far from played out, its white citizens also found that selling slaves to these new plantations was a surer source of income than attempting to transfer from older cash crops (tobacco) to newer ones (cotton).27 While some blamed “Northern greed” for the economic stagnation, Virginians and other Southerners in the 1830s found themselves increasingly worried about how dependent they were on Northern manufacturing, while others pointed the finger at slavery itself for the South’s problems.28 Many in Virginia still hoped that slavery would eventually fade away.29 And yet, chattel slavery seemed increasingly a requirement in the South. For most whites, “slavery was simply an unquestionable fact of life.” Economics derailed emancipation in the Southern states. Slaves were a good investment and so was the internal slave trade. Slave markets fed the national and even international economy and made both American cotton and British manufacturing possible.30

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Slave pen interior, Alexandria, Virginia

However, slavery had to expand in order to survive, whether across the continent or into new lands in Central America.31 People leaving Virginia had already carried the institution with them into new states. Outmigration also pushed the price of slaves in Virginia up, making it lucrative to export people as well as crops. However, this process carried with it some danger for slavery as an institution in the upper South, as it lessened the number of slaves (as part of the population) in those states and made owning slaves less the norm amongst whites as well. It also made the slaves more anxious that they might be sold and thus more apt to attempt to escape.32 No matter where it existed, slavery was a brutal system. Slaves worked hard, were fed very little, malnutrition was common, and food

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was a means to control a workforce that owners feared might revolt.33 Northerners who visited the border states or Southern cities saw only one side of slavery. It was only amongst the planters that slavery as a system became clear.34 Charles Beecher believed that “while we may not judge men and motives we must judge systems and arguments.”35 And that system, with its apex amongst the planters, required that slave owners dehumanize slaves.36 Living within that system altered a person’s perception of slavery. It was easy to be seduced by how easy slavery made life for whites.37 Margaret Junkin Preston is a prime example. A Northerner by birth, the future poet of the Confederacy and sister-in-law to Jackson came to Lexington, Virginia, when her father took the helm of Washington College in 1848. As a young woman Margaret echoed her father’s stance on slavery being an institution that must end and the former slaves colonized. But the longer she lived in the Old Dominion, the more her viewpoint was reshaped by Southern culture. Indeed, by the early 1850s she was beginning to see slavery as a positive, civilizing force for African Americans.38 All these tensions began to take a toll on Southern politics. Both Whigs and Democrats tended to be conservative in the South, and since the 1840s, Democrats in Virginia had been gaining strength, at the expense of the Whigs. They did so by focusing on sectionalism and devotion to their region. This circumvented Whig calls for moral reforms and economic changes (because it would mean changing what the South was). Slave owners began increasingly to support Democrats, exacerbating the death, or self-destruction, of the Whigs as a national political force. Starting with John Tyler’s elevation to the presidency (upon the death of William Henry Harrison in 1841), Southern Whigs found themselves as the political bridge between increasingly demanding, and vocal, Southern Democrats and Northerners of both parties. As the Whig Party faded nationally, and the Know Nothings and then Republicans rose in their place in the North, the Whigs remained alone in the South.39 Sensing the weakness of their old adversary, Southern Democrats continued to talk about slavery in order to accelerate the death spiral of the Whigs. Virginia’s Henry Wise, for example, was an expert at using the peculiar institution as a wedge issue. A former congressman and U.S. envoy to Brazil, Wise had no problem proclaiming that he personally saw the institution as a “weakness” and perhaps even a “wickedness” for the South,

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while at the same time using slavery to divide and destroy his opponents and undermine moderates on the issue regardless of party.40 Wise believed his strategy could lead Virginia back to its glory days. He was elected governor of Virginia in 1855 and soon moved the state out of an alliance with New York politicians and into one that embraced Pennsylvania as its Northern ally. In doing so, he was aided by Virginia Democrats such as R. M. T. Hunter, J. M. Mason, Lewis E. Harvie, and James A. Seddon, who were adherents of John C. Calhoun’s states’ rights philosophy and used it in fashioning Virginia’s relationship to the wider nation.41 It was this political environment that greeted Dorman as he enrolled at VMI. The institute came into being, at least in part, because citizens of Lexington worked to transform a state armory into a military academy (in order to have better disciplined soldiers in the town). Coming into existence before the dawn of 1840, by the next decade the institute needed a new structure. Built in a “rectangular, four-story castellated” style, VMI’s new home was impressive. By the time Dorman enrolled, the student body was approximately 130 cadets. It had the early support of the Franklin Society (a “prestigious literary and debating society”) in Lexington, as well as Major John Thomas Lewis Preston, a family friend of the Davidsons.42 John Preston was VMI in many respects and quite representative of Lexington as a whole. Born in 1811 he was the grandson of former Virginia governor and George Washington administration cabinet member Edmund Randolph. A staunch Presbyterian, Preston was active in the congregation of Lexington Presbyterian Church (helping bring the Reverend William White to the church in 1848), and in the community at large, as well as being a scholar. He married Margaret Junkin, writer and daughter of the president of Washington College, in 1857 after the death of his first wife.43 Dorman, in other words, had a powerful advocate within VMI to call on if need be. While military discipline and order was at the heart of VMI’s existence, education (as sketched out by Preston) was “technical rather than classical.” There was mathematics, science, engineering, languages (Major Preston taught Latin and English), and military sciences. Admittance, which until the Civil War was almost without exception made up of Virginians, was aimed at young men with little education. Indeed, early requirements for admittance were merely that a cadet could read, write, and do basic math. Cadet life was highly regimented.44

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Events far from the classroom had a great impact on Dorman’s time at VMI. It is 538 miles from Indianapolis to Harpers Ferry, but it is only 156 miles from Harpers Ferry to Lexington. The small town with its federal arsenal and weapons factory was soon to be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States. The man who put the town on the lips of every American was John Brown. A New Englander who grew up on the frontier of western Pennsylvania/eastern Ohio, Brown was a Virginia Military Institute cadet in uniform devout Calvinist, failed farmer and businessman, and convinced that slavery was an abomination before God. His convictions took him to Kansas, where he had been among the first antislavery settlers to take up arms against their proslavery counterparts. He was involved in several skirmishes as well as the infamous retaliatory nighttime raid on proslavery opponents that ended with the beheadings of those he had taken prisoner near Potawatomi Creek. Fleeing Kansas, Brown had become a minor celebrity in antislavery circles, speaking in Boston and New York and raising money for more action against the slave power. At some point, Brown came to believe that he was no longer just a means by which God could blot out the stain of slavery, but the means to that very end. His goal, after assembling a team and securing funding, became not more action in Kansas, but rather seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, freeing and arming slaves, and creating an army of liberation to end the institution in the South.45 After renting a house in Maryland near Harpers Ferry, Brown and his men (sixteen whites and five blacks) spent several months conducting training and reconnaissance missions in preparation for their raid. On October 16, 1859, Brown gave the order to take control of the town’s

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points of access, isolating the community and seizing the waiting guns. The plan worked at first. Brown’s men easily took control of the bridges linking the town to the outside world, stopped a train, and took control of the arsenal. Runners were sent out to alert local slaves that their liberation was at hand. But no revolt occurred. Worse still for Brown, the townspeople began surrounding (and firing on) the raiders. Brown could have escaped, but he did not even try. Perhaps he was holding out hope that slaves would flock to him. Or, perhaps he had already decided on a martyr’s path. Within a day, federal troops were joining the townspeople in subduing the raiders. And on October 19, after a brief fight, Brown and those of his men who survived were taken into custody.46 Brown was both seizing on and stirring the fears of Southern whites with his plan. Virginia had been home to massive slave revolts: Gabriel Prosser’s in 1800 and Nat Turner’s in 1831 were perhaps the best known. This history, and the fact that there seemed to always be rumors of potential slave uprisings, made Virginians fearful of what Brown might have unleashed. The discovery of weapons, including specially made pikes, in Brown’s rented home instilled a wave of fear among local slave owners, which quickly spread throughout the South.47 Wise’s anti-Northern rhetoric only grew as a result. He had stroked the fires of distrust towards the North in Virginia during the election of 1856, vowing to arm the state if Republican John C. Fremont was elected president. Brown’s raid caused John Brown him to raise the level of his accusations to new heights. Wise routinely called up militia units, at times even deploying them against supposed imminent threats to the state. He also called on Virginians to “come home” from other states, whether they had moved there or were going to school there, in the wake of Brown’s raid.48

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Wise neglected to note that many Northerners also abhorred Brown’s attack and painted all Northerners as supporters of abolitionism, distorting reality to the point that it pushed some Northerners into being sympathetic to Brown simply because Wise was so belligerent in his rhetoric and antics.49 Hoosier Democrats, for example, reacted to Brown’s raid in a manner that Wise could accept. The Indiana State Sentinel blamed the Republican Party. The paper argued that Brown’s actions were the logical conclusion of the new party’s antislavery rhetoric. Furthermore, it seemed obvious that leading Republicans were in league with the “insurrection.” The paper believed that the South must be allowed to expand slavery, its very way of life, into the common territories. Likewise, Indiana’s leading Democratic voice offered advice to its friends in the slave states, asserting that the best way to crush abolitionist sentiment in the North was to boycott Northern goods.50 The fear and emotionalism caused by Brown’s raid and fanned by Wise’s rhetoric swept through the South. Wild rumors began to circulate that there were “other Browns” waiting to launch revolts throughout the region. Conspiracy stories about Northern backing for Brown (some of which were at least partially true) seemed to prove that the North wanted to see bloodshed and perhaps war overcome the South.51 The raid all but destroyed any hopes of creating a viable opposition party to the Demo-

Harpers Ferry insurrection as depicted in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

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crats in the South. It also undercut Unionists (those who stood against calls for secession), as sectional allegiance and unequivocal support for the institution of slavery became all but impossible to deviate from in the South, especially for those coming of age at the time. Southern nationalism began a rapid rise in popularity, including on the college campuses of Virginia.52 Wise had Brown charged with treason against Virginia and alleged that Brown’s raid was the just the tip of a Northern abolitionist spear aimed at the heart of the South. Although during the time Brown was incarcerated Wise came to like and even respect him on some level, Virginia’s governor had no problem signing off on the abolitionist’s execution.53 The raid and execution sent reverberations throughout the Davidson world, causing family members and their friends to begin to take sides in the looming sectional conflict. VMI’s cadets were ordered to help provide security for Brown’s execution in December. Major Preston led the cadets, including Dorman and Preston’s cousin, Charles Davidson, from Lexington to Charles Town, Virginia, to guard against any possible rescue attempt. The major, in the aftermath of the experience, vowed to stay loyal to Virginia come what may.54 The execution was noted in Indianapolis as well. Preston’s North Western Christian University peer, Henry Tutewiler, wrote in his diary of Brown’s hanging, ending the brief entry with a solemn “amen.”55 Northerners such as Indiana’s Calvin Fletcher believed the South was poised to do violence.56 All of this was too much for Dorman, and by late October 1859 he was having second thoughts about staying in Virginia. Alexander noted in a letter to his brother, “Dorman writes that he has been somewhat unwell, suffering from what has always troubled him when closely confined to study, a nervous headache and which obliged me twice to take him out of school.” He had hoped that the exercise Dorman did as a cadet at VMI would help him. Alexander also noted that his son was homesick, which did not surprise him. He told Dorman to see his Uncle Henry about the headaches, and to visit his Uncle James and his grandparents whenever possible to deal with the homesickness.57 Left unmentioned was any reference to Brown’s raid and yet it hangs over the letter, permeating nearly every line of the carefully written text. How could it not? Despite his last name, Dorman was from the North, and no doubt everyone knew he had previously attended NWCU. Perhaps

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Dorman was overly sensitive to slights (real or imagined); perhaps the nervous headaches did have more to do with his studies than current events. But no sooner was Brown’s body pulled down from the scaffolding than Dorman announced he was returning to Indianapolis. Alexander wrote James a letter of explanation, saying that his son wanted to study mathematics at NWCU for another term and then perhaps come back to VMI. He blamed Dorman’s stress-induced headaches on a hereditary condition, passed to his son from his father-in-law, and begged his brother to use his influence at VMI to make sure that Dorman could return if he so desired.58 We can read both too much and too little into Dorman’s decision. Perhaps he was homesick. Who can blame him? While close to family, he was far from home, largely among strangers, and now in a military academy rather than a liberal-arts school. Maybe, he was, at the end of the day, a Hoosier, a Northerner, and the South was simply to foreign to him. As rhetoric over Brown intensified, perhaps so did Dorman’s unease at being so far from home. Whatever Dorman’s consideration, none of it seemed to affect his brother Preston at all. The younger Davidson was still prepared to head south.

Preston and Washington College Most Americans believed college was about preparing the next generation for leadership. Southerners, by the mid-1800s, were putting a premium on educating the next generation of their leaders in the South, rather than sending them to the North. As a result, by the time Dorman and Preston decided to head to Virginia to continue their education, their peers were causing Southern universities to have a boom in enrollment. Many of those institutions of higher education, including the University of Virginia, were also well on their way to becoming intellectual bastions of proslavery thought. Professors and administrators had to be “sound” on the topic and helped create an environment where the Southern way of life, and thus a sectional defense of slavery, was at the heart of the educational experience.59 All of this was on display at Preston’s new school, Washington College. The college’s president was Reverend George Washington Junkin. A Pennsylvanian by birth and son of a Revolutionary War veteran, Junkin was an Old School Presbyterian minister and had served as president of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and Miami University in Ohio before

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coming to Washington College in 1848. His public life began in 1813, when he decided that God had called him to the ministry. After a battle with illness, in 1830 he switched careers to higher education. His Calvinism helped make him a staunch disciplinarian, and forged him into “a powerful speaker who swayed audiences by his commanding presence, his forceful rhetoric, and his absolute conviction of the rightness of the causes to which he devoted himself.”60 Though highly accomplished and admired, Junkin and his methods were not always appreciated. At Lafayette College he ran afoul of trustees who did not embrace his “grandiose ideas,” and who worried that his sense of discipline was too strict. After moving his family to Miami of Ohio there were new challenges. The Junkins found themselves surrounded by “Methodists, New School Presbyterians, Universalists, and Campbellites.” And then of course there were also students who bristled at their new college president’s opinion of their need for more discipline.61 In 1848 representatives from Washington College approached Junkin to gauge his interest in becoming the institution’s president. His work, even if at times prompting disagreements with students and trustees, had made him a national figure in higher-education circles, especially those that leaned Presbyterian. If Lexington was not exactly Eden, it was perfect for Junkin, his wife, and their children, in most respects. Junkin accepted the job and moved his family into the president’s house, a threebedroom brick structure just a short walk to the college.62 Coming to Virginia meant the Junkins had to deal with the reality of slavery. The reverend believed that the institution was something to be “endured” by the nation and those involved in it, and while not an abolitionist, Junkin argued that someday the peculiar institution must come to an end. Indeed, in 1843 he had taken on abolitionists in Ohio, arguing that there was biblical sanction for slavery and stating that it had a civilizing effect on blacks. After actually living among both slaves and slave owners, he became convinced that while slaves might want freedom, most he encountered in Virginia seemed happy. And, if they were to be free, Junkin continued to support the Old School Presbyterian position that colonization was the best thing possible for both whites and blacks.63 His stance on slavery probably helped Junkin get the job at Washington College. Henry Ruffner, who preceded Junkin as president of the school, openly supported colonization, saying that slavery was the cause

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of Virginia’s outmigration and economic stagnation. He began arguing in the 1840s that the state should divide, with the eastern half keeping slavery and the western half allowing for gradual emancipation. While he was largely giving voice to what many were saying in private, some in the Lexington community felt he was advocating against slavery. This conviction contributed to the board of trustees (including Reverend Andrew Davidson) replacing him with Junkin.64 The college Junkin took over faced issues not that dissimilar to those confronting NWCU or even present-day institutions of higher education. He had to deal with administrative issues, faculty concerns, and, of course, the student body. The young men Junkin was charged with guiding through school complained about exams, about never having enough time to study, and believed that the college was little more than a “prison” due to the president’s rules.65 Junkin, however, enjoyed the give and take, and cherished the close ties between the college and VMI. Those ties were cemented by the marriages of two of his daughters to VMI professors: Margaret to John Preston and Eleanor to Thomas Jackson.66 As Preston Davidson prepared to arrive in Lexington, Washington College seemed to be flourishing. Though he was not the only out-of-state student to enroll at the school, the campus was by and large filled with Virginians. The professors worried about the academic preparedness of each entering class, casting a wary eye on the newcomers. Still, there were friendly, known faces on the campus to greet him. One of Preston’s professors was James Jones White, the son of Reverend Doctor William Spotswood White, the pastor of Lexington Presbyterian Church. And among the members of his class was William C. Preston, the son of VMI professor John Preston and Junkin’s step-grandson.67 Alexander stayed in touch with his son. He sent newspapers (chiefly the Sentinel, the leading Democratic newspaper in Indianapolis) to Preston. Perhaps this is telling, as the paper blamed the rise of the Republican Party for slavery becoming an issue, sure that the new political party was full of people who sought to scare voters into believing that slavery would come to Indiana because of the Dred Scott decision. It even labeled Hoosier members of the party as “villainous.”68 Obviously, the choice of reading material by both father and son reflected where the Davidsons of Indiana found themselves as the sectional crisis grew. Alexander was not a Whig who would make the transition to the Republican fold.

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Preston was about to cast his lot with the South. In doing so he helped to divide his family and his nation. Whatever antislavery feelings Preston might have had before going to Lexington were washed away by his new environment. The positive aspects of the institution for whites were reinforced by his family and new friends. His new school, while dominated by a Unionist president, was also a Southern school. His new church was Southern Old School Presbyterian. Without his brother, Preston was left alone to sort this new world out for himself. It is hardly a surprise that he embraced the South he now knew, rather than the North that had given him life.

4 Constitutional Union or Secession? The year 1860 was a pivotal one for the Davidsons and for the nation. The Davidson family in Indianapolis, according to the 1860 census, consisted of Alexander (age forty-seven), Martha (age thirty-eight), Dorman (nineteen), Preston (eighteen), Noah (sixteen), Susan (thirteen), and Catherine (twelve ).1 Preston, though, was bound for Virginia. And the nation was bracing for the most contentious presidential election in American history. Both events, in large and small ways, tore apart the world as the Davidsons had known it. The emotion that became attached to the issue of slavery made it deadly to political parties.2 The topic created a good deal of political flux as the nation headed toward the presidential election. The Whigs had always been somewhat hamstrung by sectionalism, but now they were dead. The American Party, better known as the Know Nothings, which emerged largely in the North in the mid-1850s, was attractive to many former Whigs. The new party was overtly nativist, reflecting the old Whig belief that immigrant voters cost them victory in 1844. The Know Nothings, however, could not deal with slavery either.3 But the Republican Party could. Considering that it was a sectional party, its rise was simply spectacular. The Republicans became the refuge of a variety of disaffected voters, ranging from Northern Whigs to Free-Soilers to Anti-Nebraska Democrats to the Know Nothings, and their ability to craft a coalition became their strength. By casting a wide net via their party platform, which called for no expansion of slavery into the territories, the Republicans were able to deal with slavery (alluding even to its gradual elimination) without directly threatening slavery where it already existed.4 As the 1860 election cycle loomed, voters began flocking to the Republican banner.

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The Democratic Party, on the other hand, was in disarray. President James Buchanan, the party’s compromise candidate four years earlier, was not seeking re-election and had done little to quell the rising discord about slavery. Buchanan had been at the center of both the Dred Scott and Kansas controversies. The proslavery Lecompton Constitution that was proposed for Kansas had not only caused more discord, but it also ruined the chances for Stephen Douglas, U.S. Senator from Illinois, to lead a united Democratic Party into the 1860 election. Douglas believed Lecompton was a perversion of his popular sovereignty doctrine and resented the president’s tactics at pushing for the document despite public outcry and a competing antislavery constitution that was also sent to Congress. Southerners would not forgive this transgression against slavery. The Democratic Party held its convention in Charleston, South Carolina, a mere six months after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Southern fire-eaters vowed to prevent a Douglas nomination, and in doing so launched a walkout of the proceedings that postponed the selection of a nominee, divided the party along sectional lines, and resulted in eventually two different candidates claiming to be the Democratic nominee for president.5

The Constitutional Union Party and the Election of 1860 Into the cauldron of sectionalism and party politics came a new organization that was the hope of the remaining Southern Whigs: The Constitutional Union Party. Southern Whigs believed that with the Democrats divided nationally and the Republicans being unacceptable to Southerners in general, that with a bit of rebranding the CUP could revive, be swept into power, and halt talk of secession in its tracks. Though some doubted the party’s overall prospects, at the very least supporters of the CUP hoped they could awaken Southerners to the dangers of secessionist rhetoric and educate them on the ability of Southern congressmen to stymie any legislation truly hostile to slavery even if a Republican was in the White House.6 The new party’s hopes were buoyed by the fact that not all Northern Whigs felt comfortable in the Republican Party. As the Know Nothings faded, CUP advocates believed they had a chance to bring old friends into their organization by emphasizing that their way was the only way to preserve the Union. The CUP’s very existence held the potential to upset the balance of power in a nation that had grown accustomed to politics being waged by only two major parties.7

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Nowhere was this seen with more clarity than in Indiana. The state arm of the CUP was made up chiefly of former Know Nothings, and it was officially led by a former Whig congressman, Richard W. Thompson, an old friend and political ally of Governor Noah Noble. In many respects, Thompson was a perfect leader for the new party. But in other key ways he showcased the problems the CUP had in gaining traction in the North. Thompson was too much of a Whig to ever think about fusing the new party with Democrats to stop Republicans, especially since the Republican standard-bearer was Abraham Lincoln (himself a former Whig). Indeed, though Thompson was conservative and against “anti-slavery agitation,” he knew and remembered Lincoln from their time in Congress and preferred a Republican victory rather than one by the hated Democrats.8 Thompson was joined in crafting the Hoosier wing of the CUP by Alexander Davidson. Though Davidson was slowly moving away from his Whig roots, he remained a staunch Unionist. Like Thompson, he had been active for a time with the Know Nothings, but had now embraced the CUP. The two men worked together in helping construct the party’s organization in Indiana. Alexander served as the chairman of the executive committee of the CUP of Indiana and called a meeting for April 12 in Indianapolis.9 At Alexander’s urging, Thompson agreed to serve as a delegate to the CUP’s national convention. Their goal was to form a party that promoted “the Union of the States, the Constitution of the Country, and the Enforcement of the Laws.”10 Both men hoped to see U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky as the party’s presidential nominee. There was an anxious feeling amongst Davidson and his CUP allies. On the one hand, they anticipated the joy of political battle in what was arguably an interesting election year. But they were also filled with dread as they realized that the odds were long against their party and (in ways that many Republicans and Democrats in the North failed to realize) the threat posed by Southern secessionists was quite real.11

Formation of the CUP The CUP’s greatest asset as it headed toward the election season was its unity. Unlike every one of its opponents, the CUP convention had delegates from every state. The party founders, most of whom were “distinguished men,” met in Baltimore on May 9 for their first national convention. The

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convention headquarters was in a large Presbyterian Church, with other meeting space in a nearby “Temperance Temple.” Patriotic bunting and a large picture of George Washington did little to alter the religious space into a secular political one, not that CUP delegates likely cared to begin with.12 Indiana’s CUP delegates came from each congressional district, as well as Thompson and John Hayden. Despite the wishes of Davidson and Thompson, the delegation was pledged to support U.S. Supreme Court Justice John McLean of Ohio for president and U.S. Senator John Bell of Tennessee for vice president. McLean, who had long harbored presidential ambitions, had seen his stock rise by authoring a dissent in the Dred Scot case. He also had helped negotiate the division of the Methodist Church into northern and southern branches.13 Still, the convention and, to a degree, the party, rallied around Crittenden, who most observers believed would be the CUP standard-bearer. But he refused. His official excuse was because of age (seventy-three), but it was also because that was what he did. Crittenden was a protégé of Henry Clay. Indeed, so devoted to Clay was Crittenden that he willingly subordinated his own political chances (and to a degree, his career) to the wishes of the Great Compromiser. Crittenden had studied for two years at Washington Academy in Lexington, Virginia (where he had met Reverend Andrew Davidson) before leaving the “classic” educational model behind for the more “modern” one at William and Mary in 1804. He served in the Kentucky House before and after the War of 1812 (including as its Speaker for part of both times) and became a devoted Whig. In 1835 he returned to the U.S. Senate, after earlier serving two years of an unfulfilled term. He was William Henry Harrison’s Attorney General (though he resigned after John Tyler came into office), and held the post again during the Millard Fillmore administration. In 1854, at the age of sixty-seven, Crittenden was once again elected to the U.S. Senate. He was a staunch Unionist and believed that secession and the dissolution of the United John Crittenden States was “the greatest evil” that

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could happen to the nation. When Clay died, he took up the mantle of finding a way to avoid sectional conflict.14 Nowhere was his handiwork more evident than as the convention began debate about its platform. Crittenden argued that slavery was “a miserable abstraction” when it came to all the issues facing the nation. The CUP hoped to remove slavery agitation from the nation’s political life, something that Thompson agreed with. The delegates fell quickly into line, calling for “domestic peace” without specifying, as one historian has noted, “how to achieve its goal of preserving the Union” beyond standing “for little but calmer heads and a compromise.”15 Perhaps not surprisingly, the CUP delegates drafted a short, Constitution-based platform. While their competition also made reference to the nation’s founding documents, CUP supporters staked their entire party on just the Constitution.16 They claimed that in the past other political conventions had put forward platforms designed “to mislead and deceive the people, and at the same time to widen the political divisions of the country.” Thus, they resolved “that it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNTRY, THE UNION OF THE STATES, AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS.”17 While an abstraction in its own right, such a platform helped the party avoid having to be specific about the issues facing the nation in 1860.18 Platform at the ready, the delegates next crafted an electoral strategy. The Constitutional Unionists believed that if they could take Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia in the South, and Ohio and Pennsylvania in the North, they could deny both the Republicans and the Democrats a majority in the Electoral College. That, in turn, would throw the election to Congress, and that was where compromise might occur. From the outset, they were not thinking they could actually win the election outright (at least not once Crittenden refused to run), rather, they were seeking to deny victory to their opposition.19 With Crittenden out, Bell became the leading alternative CUP candidate. The Tennessean was in his early sixties, was a former Whig, had been in Congress since 1827 (including having served as Speaker of the House from 1834 to 1835), had served in Harrison’s cabinet (as Secretary of War, until Tyler became president), and had been elected to the Senate in 1847. Perhaps most important, though a slave owner himself, Bell had been active

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during the Compromise of 1850, had voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and was generally considered to be opposed to large-scale expansion of the peculiar institution.20 Enthusiasm for the Tennessean swept away all potential rivals. McLean was cast aside, as was Edward Bates of Missouri, Willie P. Mangum of North Carolina, and Sam Houston of Texas. The latter was perhaps the John Bell most interesting name floated at the convention. Houston, was a Virginian (from Rockbridge County, home of the Davidsons) by birth, and was perhaps the most well known nationally of the bunch. But what he was best known for was helping to win Texas its independence and then guiding the Lone Star Republic into the Union. For many in the CUP, he was too much of a loose cannon, still remembered as Andrew Jackson’s protégé, and too close to his Democratic roots for the Whigs, who ran the new party, to even consider.21 Bell won the party’s nomination on the second ballot, and his name gave it a symbol (which they knew was important for electioneering). The CUP’s slogan became “our Bell rings to the sound of the Union, try it!” This was a direct challenge to the Republican’s “rail splitter” image of Lincoln. CUP supporters began to carry bells and formed “Bell Ringers” clubs across the nation.22 Bell’s candidacy seemed to be perfect for the CUP election strategy. Like many who supported him, Bell hoped that the crisis facing the nation would disappear if it was ignored. He personified a party that was cautious. Bell’s main liability as a candidate was that he reflected his party’s position too perfectly. The CUP did not want to engage the only issue (slavery) that everyone was talking about and neither did he. Wanting to appear serious, Bell “created an image of solemnity and glumness that repelled rather

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than attracted,” to the point that he was described constantly as “cold” and “formal,” attracting few new supporters to the new CUP standard.23 His choice in his running mate, Edward Everett, did not help matters. Harvard educated and the first American to receive a doctorate degree from Germany, Everett was a Unitarian clergyman, professor, and president of Harvard University who had severed in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, been governor of Massachusetts, U.S. Minister to the Court of Saint James, and (for a year) Secretary of State. A devout Whig, Everett was a friend, former student, and protégé of Daniel Webster. He was an acclaimed public speaker and a devout Unionist, but was prepared to compromise with the South. While Everett’s selection made sense from a sectionalbalance standpoint for CUP delegates, he was a Whig. And that meant the CUP was running two former Whigs, and not attempting to reach out to disgruntled Northern Democrats. The party also avoided calls for fusion in order to protect its ideological position, meaning that it was only really strong where Republicans were weak.24 To CUP supporters though, their ticket made sense. They reconciled themselves to the idea that they did not have to win the election in order to save the nation.25 There was some notion that Lincoln, despite perceived strengths, would be unable to actually beat Douglas in the North. After all, as one of Alexander Davidson’s friends pointed out, Lincoln had not been able to defeat Douglas in the Illinois Senate race in 1858.26 And, since neither Northerner would do well in the South, Bell had an opportunity to win voters outright. If the election got thrown to the House of Representatives, CUP supporters believed Bell would be selected as a compromise candidate.27

The Election While CUP supporters adhered to their Election Day strategy, Republicans hoped that people, even those born in the South and now living in places such as Indiana, would understand that sectionalism did not have to end in secession.28 Lincoln was a viewed as a moderate by Republicans, but to Democrats, because he was unwilling to alter the Republican platform that called for no expansion of slavery into the territories, he was a radical. To most Southerners and even to some Northerners, the Republican platform’s promise to contain slavery geographically was “ominous.”29

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Would Lincoln’s election actually lead to disunion? Alexander Davidson could not for a moment believe that his brother, James, would support disunion. Indeed, he thought that slave holders in the border states should be the largest proponents of union, since they would immediately be in the line of fire should war break out.30 This insight gave him hope of the CUP’s success. Without a platform to really run on, Constitutional Unionists stressed their candidate’s qualifications. Chief among them was that Bell was the national candidate. CUP supporters painted John Breckenridge’s (the sitting vice president and candidate for the Southern wing of the Democratic Party) supporters as favoring disunion. And yet, Bell could not get any traction beyond the upper South.31 The Constitutional Unionists won over many people in the South who might have leaned toward Lincoln, though they were voting in states that he could not hope to win. The Constitutional Unionists were so steeped in the way the Whigs had done things that they turned off many Democrats.32 As a result, the CUP missed a chance to exploit the Democratic sectional divide. An uncompromising proslavery Democrat could not win in 1860. But moderate Southern Democrats found themselves hemmed in by the tactics of the firebrands and most were unwilling to make the jump to the openly Whig-like CUP. Northern Democrats felt spurned by the CUP, which largely refused attempts at fusion to block the Republicans and refused to reunite with Southern Democrats because of the firebrand treatment of Douglas at the party’s original convention.33 Alexander Davidson was able to convince James to support Bell (he had backed their old friend, John Letcher, a Democrat, for governor in 1859), while their cousin, James Dorman, supported Douglas in 1860.34 The electoral math, however, was in Lincoln’s favor from the start. A united Democratic nominee would not only have needed all the Democratic votes received in the Northern states, but also all the Constitutional Union votes, and in several key states (such as Indiana and Pennsylvania) would have had to actually peel off votes that Lincoln received. No candidate Democrats could muster in 1860 was that attractive. Lincoln did what he had to do and what John C. Fremont had been unable to do four years before, winning Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The GOP nominee’s margin of victory in Indiana was 24,000 votes (collecting a total of more than 139,000 votes). Douglas came in second, and Breckenridge a

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distant third, winning approximately 12,000 votes. Although he ran strong in several counties that bordered the Ohio River, Bell came in last with just over 5,300 votes.35 The CUP candidate captured Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and in many other southern states polled in the second spot behind Breckenridge.36 While he won no electoral votes in the South, Lincoln’s election deeply divided the slave-owning region of the country. In the upper South, including Virginia, many people blamed the firebrands (who were turning into

Abraham Lincoln as he appeared directly after receiving the Republican Party’s nomination as its presidential candidate in 1860.

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secessionists) for the Republican victory.37 The idea of Lincoln sitting in the White House (surely to include William Seward, who had once argued that there was a “higher law” based in morality that trumped the Constitution with its defenses of slavery) disturbed those in the Deep South much more, convinced as they were that it meant the end of life as they knew it. They foresaw a future where the planter class lost control over the white South, an increase in slave revolts, and of a Northern-dominated White House that would work to end slavery. Having divided the Democratic Party with their insistence on a proslavery nominee, they thought very little of dividing the nation in an effort to save slavery. The firebrand mantra was “rule or ruin,” and they were destined to have an opportunity to do both.38 All the while, as historian Stephanie McCurry has noted, not bothering to consider what the slaves might do if there was a war.39 But few Northerners grasped what was happening in the South. In some ways, the nation had been debating the constitutionality (and within the South, the potential merits) of secession since the 1830s. It was neither a new concept, nor was there novelty in its threatened use.40 Many Northerners thought secession talk in the wake of the 1860 election to be little more than bluster. Every time Southerners had threatened disunion before, nothing had happened. Most in the North, including the president-elect, believed the Union to be perpetual and the Constitution an unbreakable contract between the states. If Southerners got their way in 1860 via threats of leaving the Union, there would be no end to their demands in the future.41 The North was counting on Unionists, whether inside or outside of the CUP, to hold firm in the upper South against secessionist agitation. The firebrands, while strong in places such as South Carolina and Georgia, had a hard time making headway in Tennessee and North Carolina, and could only fantasize about securing Virginia.42 James Davidson wrote Virginia governor Letcher in the wake of the presidential election that Rockbridge County was for Union and for Virginia mediating the coming dispute between North and South. He also called those who were for disunion, “lunatics of the [Henry] Wise stamp.”43

Secession Winter Farther South, Davidson would have found a good deal of those Wise “lunatics.” Firebrands expected South Carolina to lead the way out of the

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Union and toward a glorious Southern nation. The Palmetto State had not only tradition on its side (being the birthplace of John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification), but also the perfect political climate to spark what became Confederate nationalism. While most white South Carolinians did not own slaves, more than 90 percent of the delegates at the convention that was called in the wake of Lincoln’s election did. The delegates easily rescinded South Carolina’s ratification of the Constitution and then voted to formally secede from any further association with the United States.44 Firebrands were so caught up in doing things “right” (in terms of the steps and protocols Calhoun and first sketched out) in their quest for secession that few bothered to think about what would happen if they actually succeeded. Such blindness to the ramifications of their actions scared Union men. South Carolina’s secession cast a pall over Virginia. James Davidson believed his state was caught between “abolitionism” and “Cottonism.” He also was confident that any attempt at separation would result in bloodshed.45 His friend, state senator William Frazier, believed what South Carolina was doing was nothing short of criminal. Indeed, there were many in Virginia who shared the basic premise that South Carolina was “madly bent on bring-

Cartoon depicting the movement of several Southern states toward secession in early 1861 as a doomed enterprise.

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ing on war” in order to force the upper South into “her Palmetto Confederacy.” One of his correspondents, Dennis Hart Mahan (West Point professor and father of Alfred Thayer Mahan), said that the only thing that Virginia and South Carolina really had in common was that both were slave states, and that South Carolina was an “arrogant little state” to suppose it could actually lead the South anywhere.46 Secessionists knew they had to act quickly. To delay, even in the Deep South, where they were strongest, was to invite calls for compromise or, worse yet, to take a wait-and-see approach toward the Lincoln administration, which would only lead to calls for political opposition, not the creation of a slaveholder’s republic. As 1861 dawned, only South Carolina had actually left the Union. Though James Davidson and his friends believed that Unionists, at least in Virginia, could hold secession back, the problem was that Unionists in general were hardly unified in their opposition to secession. South Carolina’s firebrands were able to exploit those divisions and begin working on bringing the Deep South into South Carolina’s orbit.47 Their best tactic was to appeal to sectional interest and honor. Southerners had to be convinced that secession would succeed, because it was a radical act with some obvious potential risks. Because Southern politicians had become so used to the rhetoric, and because the vast majority of those politicians were slave owners who controlled any state-level conventions or meetings about secession, it actually took very little effort to convince them that what they were doing was patriotic rather than treasonous.48 Secession, slave owners were told, was the only means to safeguard the peculiar institution that defined the South, as well as protect owners from “race war and insurrection.” Any who doubted such pronouncements were quickly labeled as abolitionists, Northern sympathizers, Republican Yankees, or the like. The opposition was to be shamed or forced into silence.49 Such tactics worked because white Southerners had convinced themselves they had become marginalized in the Union as it existed. Slave owners, especially in the planter class, believed their way of life to be superior, and so instinctively looked down upon the industrial and commercial agricultural revolutions that were transforming the Northeast and Midwest without slavery.50 And because they were superior, it was impossible to conceive that the Yankees either would not let them leave peacefully or stop them from doing so by force of arms.51

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Secessionists were confident that a new nation was viable and that their way of life would spread. Southerners believed they could grow cotton in New Mexico and Arizona and also believed that slave labor could be used to mine natural resources. A Southern Confederacy was sure to prosper, grow, and expand, perhaps all the way to Central America, to where it could link up with Brazil (the other remaining slave-holding nation in the Western Hemisphere). As historian Bruce Levine noted, “Of the fifty delegate who eventually assembled in Montgomery, forty-nine owned slaves, and twentyone were full-scale planters.”52 Their interests were bound to be the Confederacy’s interests. As the Confederate States of America came into reality, few doubted slavery’s place in its creation. Its new president, Jefferson Davis, had long been a defender of slavery while serving in Congress and embraced secession soon after Lincoln’s election (even if he often publicly tried to distance himself from slavery as a cause of secession, labeling it instead as constitutional right the South had simply exercised).53 The Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, was blunter, arguing that while the United States had been founded upon a Declaration of Independence that said “all men are created equal,” the South believed that its “new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea . . . its Jefferson Davis cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”54 Northerners were dismayed and largely disagreed with what was happening in the South. Southerners, especially those talking about secession, seemed to be out of step with where the nation was headed. Northerners

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saw secession as a “deadly assault upon their own rights, welfare, and security” because they equated the United States as a nation with their way of life. An attack on one was an assault upon the other. Because they believed secession “unconstitutional and unjustified,” they had a difficult time fathoming that Southern states actually believed they could leave the Union.55 The Davidsons were caught in between these two sectional perspectives, clinging to the Unionism of their youth, while such a position was becoming virtually impossible to maintain. Southern Unionism was conditional on what was perceived as in the best interests of the South. Honor dictated that one place the Southern way of life above the Union, because if the federal government became hostile due to Northern abolitionist agitation, slavery and all that it meant for whites would be placed in jeopardy.56 What kept the Union alive, at least for a time, was not so much patriotism as economic arguments against disrupting the nation. Alexander Davidson noted to James Davidson in January 1860 that “you slave holders” needed to fight even the “whisper” of disunion, or else face certain financial ruin.57 That thought was very much on the mind of James. He knew that calls for secession “frustrated” his attempts to encourage economic development for his beloved Lexington. Once the secession crisis deepened, it was the merchants in Virginia who felt the economic stagnation first, and passed those uncertainties onto their customers.58 The elder Davidson brothers (Baker, James, and Alexander) all worried about war clouds brewing. Baker was concerned about the “spirit of discord” and the prospect of civil war, something he found “too horrible to think about.” God alone could stop it, but “Providence” seemed to be disinclined to do so. The only hope remaining was for the “conservatives” of both sections to rise up and put a stop to the rush toward war. He also reported to James that he was saying nothing in public at all about the secession crisis.59 Alexander noted: Indiana has ever been recognized as one of the most conservative of all the free states, but even here there is a very large element in favor of subduing and holding in subjection by force, any state or states which may attempt to secede from the Union. This element, I would fair hope, does not constitute anything like a majority of our people, but there are many men of influence who hold to this opinion, fallacious as it is. They are men of strong anti-slavery views, who believe that this question of slavery must be settled in blood and that it might as well be settled now as at any further time. A large majority

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of our people, as I believe, do not hold such views. They are in favor of maintaining the perpetuity of our Union by every just and honorable means. But if the South will go out, they will bid them God-speed.60 Yet, Alexander was doubtful if peaceable secession was possible. He noted that “the North will claim the free use and perhaps the absolute ownership of the Mouth of the Mississippi. Of this demand, the South will not and ought not to concede. The South will demand the rendition of fugitive slaves—the North will refuse, for public sentiment is even now offended to it.” Furthermore, he told his brother, “The Great West will not permit” the nation to be torn apart. Still, Alexander pledged that if war came, his heart would be “With the land of my birth.”61 As some scholars have noted, “more than half the South’s white population, most of whom owned no slaves, opposed immediate secession.” This posed an issue for secessionists, who were worried about delay. Where time was taken, the people consulted, as happened in the upper South, the people halted disunion largely until hostilities had begun.62 To achieve secession it took a supreme effort by “ambitious politicians and their slaveholding allies.”63 In places such as Georgia, in order to get a vote to leave the Union quickly, prosecessionists almost assuredly lied about the vote totals in order to join the Confederacy.64 Southern Unionists were relieved when President Buchanan called for a day of fasting and prayer shortly after South Carolina announced it was leaving the union. Churches blamed the extremists in both North and South, but said little about what should be done to halt the crisis. Unfortunately, this was the extent of Buchanan’s leadership.65 When elected, Buchanan had wanted to “arrest” the growth of sectionalism in general and antislavery sentiment in particular. But his bias in favor of the South only emboldened Southern firebrands and angered Northern abolitionists. The president did become more pro-Union as 1861 dawned, but by then the damage to the nation had been done.66 North Western Christian University alum Perry Hall, who was now a Disciples of Christ minister in Indianapolis, did not think the president did enough. Hall reported in his diary that the fast day was not generally followed in Indianapolis, in part because it was the South that needed to repent. After all, “secessionists” were surrounding federal instillations, such as Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.67 If secession was actually going to take place, and a new Southern Con-

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federacy was to take form, the firebrands who had launched the movement had to be replaced by men who appeared to be more moderate.68 Pro-Union sentiment, however conditional, had to be overcome. And the chief means, in the end, of winning people over was not slavery, economics, or politics. Rather, it was faith.

Secession Religion Christianity’s role in the advent of the conflict should not be doubted. After all, deciding to break away and form an independent nation took a good deal of faith on the part of Southerners. White evangelicals in the South believed that the Confederacy was a chance at rebirth for the American republic. They were convinced that the North, including its churches, had become corrupt, while they had managed to keep themselves, their religion, and their region pure. Southerners put their confidence in God, believing He was on their side to the point that they never contemplated the possibility that they would not eventually triumph.69 Nowhere was this faith in the divine mission of the South stronger than among the region’s youth. Reared in the aftermath of and by parents who had experienced the Second Great Awakening, young Virginians, and others like them, were confident in the purity of Southern Christianity and its ultimate triumph over the corrupt North.70 Perhaps just as important, they had grown up in churches in which Southern clergy had defended not only “the morality of the institution” of slavery, but also assured them that the South was part of a divine mission whose eventual victory was assured.71 It is hardly surprising then that the Confederacy was conceived as a Christian slave-owning nation. Although Methodists and Baptists were the strongest evangelical denominations in the state and region, the Presbyterians were incredibly influential. They “took the lead in reexamining the whole idea of separating church and state” as the secession crisis transformed into the birth of a southern country. Southern Presbyterians, most of who belonged to the Old School, believed by the eve of war that slavery was “biblically sanctioned, economically vital, and socially necessary.” They were convinced the South was special and had a divine mission to fulfill.72 Leading Southern Presbyterians not only embraced secession but also provided the theological arguments necessary to justify it in the minds of their congregations. Ministers such as James H. Thornwell of South Carolina and Benjamin M. Palmer of Louisiana gave secession a divine mandate

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in widely reprinted sermons. Thornwell argued that secession came not from “a conclave of defeated place-hunters who sought to avenge their disappointment by ruin of their country.” Rather, as all those in the slaveowning states knew, their very way of life was at stake. Abolitionists had attacked the internal slave trade, and the South had to protect itself from Northern subjugation. Thornwell believed that the North and South could disagree about slavery, but the morality of slavery could only be determined by the Bible. And on that point, he believed the South was in the right.73 Palmer opined that there “sectional divisions,” were based on “a bastard ambition” and “a reckless radicalism” emanating from the North. Slavery, Palmer noted, had to be preserved. “Need I pause,” he asked, “to show how this system of servitude underlies and supports our material interest; that our wealth consists in our lands and in the serfs who till them; that from the nature of our products they can only be cultivated by labor which must be controlled in order to be certain; that any other than a tropical race must faint and wither beneath a tropical sun? Need I pause to show how this system is interwoven with our entire social fabric?” For good measure Palmer added that “the abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic,” and had “converted [the Constitution] into an engine of oppression.”74 As secession became a reality, Southern Old School Presbyterians formally left the denomination. The official breaking point came in December 1861, but the creation of a new Presbyterian denomination in the South had its origins in the previous Presbyterian General Assembly, when Northern delegates had pushed through a resolution calling for the church to uphold the Union and the Constitution. Thornwell argued that Northerners were “suspect” as a result and could not be trusted. Northern Old School Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge had argued against the resolution that so offended Thornwell, but he fought disunion over slavery with even more gusto. Hodge took aim at both the South Carolinian and Palmer in blasting Southerners who were seeking to make slavery a universal right and a positive good at the cost of both sound theology and the Union. Left alone, Northern Old School Presbyterians began to drift ever closer to reunion with New School Presbyterians.75 Northern Presbyterians, along with most of the other evangelical Protestants in the South, believed that any compromise to avert a war brought about by secession though, would have to be achieved by Southern acceptance of Northern terms.76 Southern churches, however, were no longer willing to even consider

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such a compromise. Southern evangelicals, whether Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian, were soundly divided from their Northern brethren. However, while they might have separated in large part over slavery, there was still a good deal of Unionism (some of it, as the case with Methodists in Rockbridge County, where Lexington was located, tinged with antislavery sentiment) to be found in Southern church pews. They held out hope that prayer might still overcome the crisis. For these evangelicals, secession would not come easily.77 People the Davidsons knew wrestled with the sectional divide over slavery in the churches. Henry Ward Beecher became a Congregationalist in 1847 when he came to Brooklyn, in part to escape the “hierarchy” of the New School Presbyterianism. Additionally, his new Plymouth Church was “popular, prosperous, and unapologetically antislavery.”78 His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, thanks to the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, challenged Americans, but especially Northerners, to ask “what is slavery?” Because, she believed, “every person is morally bound to form a correct opinion with regard to it,” she fought to convince evangelicals in the North to abolish the institution.79 Hall, who had been at NWCU with both Dorman and Preston, was becoming an increasingly open and vocal critic of the Southern institution and its friends in the North, including within the Disciples of Christ. In doing so, he was echoing and at times vocalizing the opinions of Ovid Butler himself.80 Thus, American evangelicals were divided against themselves. The energy that came from the competing denominationalism that had helped spur their growth during the Second Great Awakening, was now harnessed for sectional ends. As the Southern branches of the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians came to endorse secession, Northerners were powerless to stop it. The influence of these churches had helped tip the balance against Union and toward the new Confederacy.

Virginia, Always Virginia Secession was, in some ways, a generational struggle. The old way, the tried-and-true way, for a white male to demonstrate that he had made it in the South was to own land and slaves, and then be involved in the community, perhaps in a professional or political capacity. The problem was that by the 1850s, this model seemed unrealistic to many (there was a perception

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that in Virginia there were already enough doctors and lawyers) and endangered further by the Republican victory at the polls. The solution seemed to be in forging a new path, one marked by the creation of a Southern nation led by Christian gentleman—men who were disciplined, educated, knew their duty, and were morally pure. To save the Southern dream, slavery must be allowed to expand into new territories. Leaving the Union and forging the Confederacy (which was sure to require Virginian leadership) was the price that young Virginians were willing to pay to achieve that goal.81 Preston Davidson adopted these opinions as his own. As historian William C. Davis noted, “The Old Dominion felt rightly caught in the middle from the moment the secession crisis began.” Its “central role” in the crisis was caused by history, tradition, and location, having been so instrumental in not only the Revolution, but also in creating and leading the United States in the years since. That role was not forgotten, indeed, it was deeply cherished by many in the state. But there was also little doubt that Virginia’s status had fallen in recent years. Its leaders had not remained the nation’s leaders. And while the very thought of secession worried many, the allure of being able to lead a nation, this time the Confederacy, was quite powerful.82 The Confederacy needed leaders and Virginia. Secessionists in the Deep South had no real plan beyond leaving the Union.83 For years, secession talk had seemed to be a vent of sorts, for pent-up frustrations. Now that they were no longer part of the United States they had to develop a nation for themselves. To form a viable confederacy, it quickly became apparent, required all the slave states, not just a few. And that meant getting Virginia. As historian Charles Drew has pointed out, the Old Dominion had manpower, industrial capabilities, and prestige—all things that the emerging Confederacy desperately needed.84 How to get Virginia to join the endeavor became one of the Confederacy’s chief aims. Secessionist leaders knew that they would have to overcome Virginian Unionists. That the Old Dominion had not immediately endorsed South Carolina’s decision to leave the United States in December 1860 made the state a suspect in the eyes of many firebrands. That there were some Unionists in Virginia who were willing to publicly say, as part of the 1860 election cycle, that the federal government had a right to suppress any rebellions by force worried others. But the largest cause of concern about

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Virginia joining the Confederacy arose because Old Dominion Unionists were making the case against the “rash secession” that had occurred in the Deep South.85 Virginians wanted any talk of secession to be a deliberate and a deliberative process. For the Davidson family, both in Indiana and Virginia, the world they knew, the one that they had helped construct, was hanging on that process and seemed on the verge of collapse.

5 Failure of Compromise and the Shattered Union The dilemma about the Union’s future was real. While it included factors beyond slavery or sectionalism, it was driven by a public uncertainty surrounding both of these issues. Most Americans seemed to want, and perhaps a majority even expected, that a compromise would emerge, and were confused when it did not. Yet, the lack of compromise is equally understandable. As historian Bruce Levine pointed out, nearly 60 percent of the voting-age population had proven with their votes in 1860 that they were uninterested in further compromise.1 None of them, however, were truly prepared for what unfolded in the months after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president, least of all Preston Davidson. While there was still a glimmer of hope that compromise might happen, the Davidsons were prepared to do their part to try and make that a reality. Many Southerners were distressed that so many were so ready to talk of war rather than seek peace. Southern Unionists had helped put together the Compromise of 1850, which had staved off secessionists at the time. But now most of them, like their fellow Southerners who were secessionists, had rejected the possibility that the federal government could use force to stop states from leaving the Union.2 That common ground on coercion was the exact note secessionist now hit upon. Virginians might love the Union, but they did not want to be forced to do anything. Secessionists made a point of pouncing on any talk coming out of Lincoln’s circle about “coercion.” Fire-eaters argued that the North was now in the thrall of the Republican Party, and that with the former’s size and the latter’s political control of the federal government, the South

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would soon have its beloved system of slavery taken from it. Anyone who questioned this as the ultimate outcome was either naive the firebrands asserted, or in league with the Yankee abolitionists and, thus, a “cooperationist.” Unionists believed that if such talk ceased, they could halt the march toward secession and save the upper South for the United States.3 Unionists in the upper South could only delay secessionists because they exercised virtually no control over events in the nascent Confederacy or in the federal government in Washington, D.C. Their demands to both the Deep South and the North in the opening months of 1861 were rarely treated as either credible or likely to prevent some form of confrontation.4 However, they were willing to try and stop the march toward war, and they had allies in the North. The push for compromise in the North came from economic elites in urban centers and those who were ready to seek accommodation with the South.5 Alexander Davidson wrote his brother, James, in February 1861 about a large demonstration in favor of the Constitution that was held in Indianapolis. The convention was “harmonious” and “unanimous.” It was the feeling of the people, “not the politicians”—comprised of probably three-quarters of the population, of all political stripes, save for the most ardent abolitionist. Alexander was proud that Virginia was still in the Union and seeking to mediate a compromise to avert war. He hoped for a national convention to amend the Constitution and keep the Union together for all time.6 As Alexander’s letter hinted, some people, including the Davidsons, were trying to stave off bloodshed. There ended up being four different, overlapping peace proposals (one each from the House and Senate, the Peace Convention, and the call for a Constitutional convention). However, Congress was too divided—by Republicans who stood by their party’s platform and Democrats from the South who opted to do little because their states had already called for secession conventions—to act to stop the crisis, and the various conventions went nowhere. Although the effort to find a last-minute compromise was a confused mess and destined to go nowhere, some were still willing to try.7

Crittenden’s Hour U.S. Senator John Crittenden, who had turned down the chance to lead the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 election, now entered the

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fray. He hoped to fashion a Compromise of 1860, built upon “the political center,” dispensing with the moral rhetoric that now surrounded the slavery issue, and focusing instead on the political and economic angles of the peculiar institution in American life.8 At the same time, he argued that elections mattered, and their outcome was no reason to talk about dismembering the Union. Secession was simply not something he could fathom, for it was neither constitutional nor legal. He believed that everything that could be done, must be done, to preserve the nation as a whole.9 Crittenden focused on the territorial issue as the core of his compromise plans.10 His proposal was made up of six constitutional amendments and four resolutions. The first proposed amendment resurrected the Missouri Compromise. The second preserved slavery on federal property within slave states. The third required that slavery remain legal in the District of Columbia, so long as it was allowed in Maryland and Virginia, and even then could only be abolished after a vote of the district’s citizens and with appropriate compensation. The fourth prohibited congressional interference with the interstate slave trade. The fifth granted compensation to the owners of rescued fugitive slaves. The sixth was a binding amendment, saying that the previous five amendments could not be changed and prohibiting Congress from interfering with slavery within existing slave states. The resolutions called for the full enforcement of fugitive slave laws, the end of state “personal liberty laws,” an amendment to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to equalize the pay schedule and limiting the powers of marshals to call posses, and, finally, one that called for increased efforts in suppressing the African slave trade.11 Alexander reported to James about a rally in Indianapolis for the Crittenden amendments in February 1861. The people, not the politicians, Alexander reported, wanted a compromise to work. Alexander was not just in attendance, but was one of the organizers of the meeting, sitting on a committee that endorsed the idea of a “border state” confederacy of slave and free states.12 James was working along similar lines in Virginia, promoting the idea that the Old Dominion call a meeting of the other border states and midwestern states to halt the secessionists. James believed that it made much more sense for the upper South to form a confederacy with the Midwest than it did to do so with the Deep South. But the very idea of dividing up the nation in any fashion pained him.13

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As Alexander’s letter suggested, there was no guarantee that disunion would splinter the United States just in terms of a slave/free divide. There were many people, including those living in Indiana, who sympathized with where the South found itself.14 And there were also some Southerners who dreamed of a confederacy that united the upper South with the Midwest (and perhaps some of the far West as well).15 After South Carolina seceded, Indiana’s Richard Thompson wrote Virginia governor John Letcher to urge the Old Dominion take the lead in forming such a union to halt the war fever he feared would soon grip the nation, even if it meant creating a new country. Other Indiana politicians, including Thomas Hendricks, also advanced the idea, barring some sort of miracle from Crittenden and his allies.16 The senator from Kentucky had precious little support in Congress, although he did find help, at least initially from Stephen Douglas and William Seward. However, Crittenden seriously misjudged the climate in

This Benjamin Day cartoon lampoons congressional efforts to pass the Crittenden Compromise as an antidote to Republican intransigence on the slavery issue.

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which he operated. He did not believe he was asking Republicans to give up anything of principle in his proposals, but many newly elected Republicans (including the new president) took their platform stance on no slavery in the territories quite seriously. Likewise, most Southern Democrats, especially from states that had or were contemplating secession, had little desire or incentive to compromise. With every Southern state leaving the Union, the Republican position grew stronger.17 After the failure of the compromise in committee, Crittenden brought his proposal to the full Senate. Here, there was debate as the new year of 1861 dawned. Also here, the failure of Southerners who were in Congress (whether from states that had, or had not yet to vote on secession) to vote in favor of the proposal doomed it.18 Crittenden had aimed his pitch to the upper and border South. But as was the case in Virginia, secessionists did not believe Crittenden offered enough to the South, while unionists believed that it was the bare minimum the South could give to the North. Simply put, not enough proslavery Southerners wanted to compromise at all.19 Crittenden’s attempt to fashion a compromise ultimately failed because the odds were against him from the start. The age of compromise had passed.20

The Last Gasps of Conditional Unionism All was not yet lost. Virginia’s Unionists now rose to try and derail secession, or at least give compromise another chance. They began planning a call for a peace convention, even as the Confederacy was being born in Alabama. Secessionists were concerned that the plan would rally Unionist sentiment in the upper South, and make the Confederacy a rump state rather than a new nation.21 At the center of the Unionists hopes was Virginia’s new governor, Letcher. Described as “a baldheaded, bottle-nosed lawyer,” Letcher was born in 1813, was the grandson of Sam Houston, and a graduate of Washington College. He served five terms in Congress before being elected governor in 1859 (over the opposition of Governor Henry Wise; the two men did not care for one another), taking office in 1860. Although a Democrat, he had supported the idea of gradual emancipation and colonization of slaves (championed by former Washington College president Henry

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Virginia governor John Letcher

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Ruffner), as well as internal improvements. While he personally believed sectionalism was somewhat overblown, Letcher also worried about what the rise of the Republican Party meant for the South and the nation.22 In his January 1861 message to the Virginia legislature, Letcher laid out how he saw the looming crisis for his state and the nation. “The times,” he said, “are indeed full of peril and danger.” The governor believed “the country is torn by dissension; fierce and angry excitement exhibits itself in all sections; passion and prejudice have taken absolute possession of the minds of the people throughout the land.” He laid the blame for the present troubles squarely on South Carolina and its compatriots in the cotton states, who seemed to have an agenda all of their own. However, Virginia’s leader believed that the chief reason that there was a crisis to begin with was because of Northern sectionalism, their enactment of personal liberty laws, and “New England Puritanism.” Letcher asserted that it was time for Virginia to act, calling for a convention that would lay the groundwork for a constitutional convention to do what Crittenden in Congress could not.23 Letcher’s address also noted: “Many of the fanatics in the northern states are constantly calling attention to the fact, that the number of slave owners, as compared with the white population in the slave states, is small; and hence the inference that the non-slaveholder is not loyal to the state, and would not willingly defend the institution. This is a most serious mistake, and is well calculated to make an erroneous impression upon the northern mind. Such a representation does serious injustice to that loyal and patriotic class of our citizens. It is a reflection upon them, not warranted by their conduct, now nor heretofore.” The governor was plain: “I have always reverenced the state rights doctrines of Virginia . . . [and] endorse the doctrine of secession.” And he vowed his “unqualified hostility to the doctrine of coercion by the federal government.”24 While the state awaited developments from the Peace Convention, the governor called for a state convention to consider secession. Many living in the Shenandoah valley believed the convention was a mistake, as it would only help secessionists by giving them a platform to spread their message.25 And yet, in early February, when Virginians went to the polls to elect 152 delegates for the convention, the outcome was an overwhelming victory for conditional Unionists, with open secessionists accounting for only 20 percent of all delegates.26

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Letcher’s convention idea was an attempt to head off the most aggressive secessionists. However, he faced a formidable foe in the form of former governor Wise, who became the public mouthpiece of Virginia’s secessionists. It was a position Wise enjoyed. He engaged in what a later generation of Americans would call brinksmanship in order to further his agenda for the South. Wise was also ready for a war if that is what it came to, though he hoped any conflict would fall under the banner of “resistance” to a Northern invasion, rather than outright “secession.”27 While Virginia’s Unionists kept an eye on the state convention, their real hope was with the Peace Conference that Letcher had helped initiate and was to be held in Washington, D.C. Virginia had seized the role of mediator in the national conversation and for Unionists in other states it could not have come a moment too soon. Many hoped that the Peace Conference would halt secession in its tracks. After all, Virginia was important, large, and could not be ignored. By nationalizing the discussion, not only were Virginia Unionists giving compromise another chance after Crittenden’s failure, but they were also forestalling secession calls from within Virginia. By holding the event in the nation’s capital, the organizers hoped to influence members of Congress and force a constitutional compromise. The move was viewed by many as the last hope for a united nation. Most in the upper South were prepared to follow the Old Dominion’s lead when it came to secession or loyalty to the United States.28 Soon enough, delegates began arriving for the Peace Conference. As historian Thomas Fleming noted, “There was no shortage of political skill and experience at the conclave. Among the 132 delegates were 6 former presidential cabinet members, 19 former governors, 14 ex-senators, and 50 ex-congressmen.” They represented twenty-two of the thirty-four states, with no delegates coming from neither the seven states that had already seceded, nor from Oregon, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. While most of the delegates were in their late sixties or early seventies, it was hoped that these sages might do what the younger generation had failed to do and craft a workable compromise.29 There was reason to hope. Union sentiment was very strong in places such as Indiana. Indeed, as Governor Joseph Wright said, “Indiana knows no North, no South, nothing but Union.” Many Hoosiers were also proponents of compromise. As Alexander had noted to his brother, there were meetings around the state demanding some sort of solution, some sort

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of compromise. While Republicans were generally reluctant to support accommodations for the South, Governor Oliver P. Morton did appoint commissioners to attend the Virginia-backed conference. Democrats in Indiana believed that Morton had sabotaged the Hoosier delegation to the Peace Conference by only sending “ultras” to represent the state, but the fact remains that the Hoosier leader felt the political need to send representatives to the meeting. Not every Republican-controlled state did so.30 The leadership of the Peace Conference fell on former president John Tyler. The nation’s former chief executive and leader of Virginia’s delegation, Tyler, believed that the fate of the nation depended on what he was able to accomplish at the meeting. He was a devout Unionist, but felt equal allegiance to the South. Like many of his fellow Virginians, Tyler did not want to have to pick “between slavery and the Union.” While Tyler was orchestrating the conference, his actions united adversaries. Although both Lincoln and secessionists doubted the meeting would actually work, the conference’s very existence “gave hope to those who believed it bought the republic time.” It also convinced many observers that Americans would accept whatever the conference proposed.31 The former president believed the nation had “fallen on evil times.” He had initially hoped the conference would only be between six free and six slave states. Letcher and the Virginia legislature, however, had opted to make the call to all of the states. Tyler recognized John Tyler that this would give Northerners a strong hand, perhaps too strong for the South to accept any of its proposals.32 Headquartered at the Willard Hotel, and utilizing a nearby Presbyterian church for a meeting hall, Tyler saw to it that large pictures of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay were a part of the program. Virginia had started the nation, and Tyler believed only Virginia could save it. As the conference chair, however, he presided over a meeting

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not of Olympians, but of what observers concluded were old, tired men. Southerners were insulted that an Ohio delegate, who it was rumored had praised John Brown, was named to a temporary chairman’s position. Northerners quickly grew skeptical of any positive outcome, casting doubt that any of the conference’s proposals would garner the necessary support to pass constitutional amendments. This fear proved prescient.33 As James Davidson noted to his cousin, James Baldwin Dorman, any delay in considering the proposals from the conference played directly into the hands of the secessionists.34 In order to try and shore up support, Tyler met with Presidents James Buchanan (outgoing) and Lincoln (incoming). Buchanan suggested that Congress should pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to own slaves, to take slaves into the territories (until statehood defined the state itself), and for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But he also undermined the peace process by blaming the secession crisis on the Republican Party and claiming that while he was personally opposed to secession (and did not believe it to be constitutional), he had no means to prevent it.35 Lincoln’s encounter with Tyler did not go well, either. Tyler brought two conference delegates with him to meet Lincoln—James A. Seddon of Virginia, who claimed Lincoln had supported John Brown, and William Dodge of New York, who placed the future of peace and war on Lincoln alone. The two men challenged the president-elect, turning what began as a cordial affair into a political debate that had little chance of winning Lincoln over to support the conference’s recommendations.36 The Peace Conference, despite Virginia’s support, failed. As word spread that there was to be no grand compromise, conditional Unionists in Virginia and throughout the upper South began to equivocate. A disappointed Tyler still hoped war would be averted, but began to talk about the possibility of secession.37 The Davidsons were largely outside observers to the Peace Conference and its ups and downs. Alexander wrote to James in February as the conference was winding down and the focus shifted to the Virginia convention, of how proud he was of his “Mother” state and how sure he was that if it held firm, Virginia could still force a settlement upon the states that would save the Union. Regardless, he continued to pledge his love to his family in the South.38 But Alexander was not the only one writing letters. Preston wrote to

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his father during this time as well, telling him that for the nation “it does indeed look dark ahead.” Although Northern born, Preston had thoroughly adopted the ideas of the Young Virginia movement as his own, offering his own insight on the Peace Conference: “If the Constitution was amended as to forbid the discussion of slavery in Congress and take from her any legislation power the people of the South might submit.” He added, “I am glad that I am South at the present crisis and wish that the whole family was.” Preston reported that he was attending various meetings around Lexington, which he described as “noisy,” some of which were beginning to throw insults and denunciations toward President George Washington Junkin of Washington College. While he remained “your affectionate son,” affirming that familial bonds were not dividing, Preston also informed Alexander that sectional bonds were breaking quickly, writing ominously that “I almost prefer a Southern Confederacy” to Union.39

Virginia’s Decision Preston’s letter summarized without explaining in detail, which surely would have grieved his father, much of what was transpiring in both word and deed in Virginia during the secession winter. Tensions were mounting in Virginia and Preston could have come home to Indiana. Though he had lived in Lexington for only a few months, Preston opted to stay in the South. He was no longer just studying history, but living it, and found the experience exhilarating. He was no longer a Hoosier, but a Virginian, as much a son of the Old Dominion as his father, uncles, or cousins. By staying he not only had a ringside seat for dramatic events but also the opportunity to be a part of them. And that was a chance he was not about to pass up. Deciding to stay in Virginia altered the course of Preston’s life and made him into a participant in the greatest event in American history, the Civil War. The “noisy” talks that Preston reported to his father had much to do with the Virginia convention, called by Letcher to decide the state’s stance on secession. Washington College helped put on various forums about the candidates running for delegates to the convention. While there were secessionists in the area, Rockbridge County easily elected two Unionists as its representatives, Samuel McDowell Moore and James Dorman (a Davidson family cousin, who the secessionists had targeted for defeat).

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If the county remained staunchly loyal to the United States, the college was a different matter. Most of the students believed secession to be a right and that a civil war was looming. One of Preston’s fellow students, Andrew Brooks, blamed the whole situation on the North, claiming the “threatening and insulting way” the Republicans were acting, the refusal to compromise by giving the South “the barest justice,” and Lincoln’s plans to force the states to remain in the Union as reasons why hostilities were sure to happen.40 Preston likely concurred in Brooks’s judgment. Per the decision of the Virginia state legislature, the convention convened on February 13, 1861. After taking their seats, the convention voted 104–45 against secession, despite the impassioned pleas coming from the state’s own fire-eaters, South Carolina, and beyond.41 If this initial vote bolstered the spirits of Unionists, whose supporters claimed that “Virginia should not bow before King Cotton” and called South Carolina a “little impudent vixen,” we must remember that they were conditional Unionists. Their support for the United States hinged on their belief that life in the South would be largely left alone by a Northern dominated federal government.42 While they showed strength at the outset, the problem for the Unionists at the convention was that they had shallow popular support that was

A John H. Goater cartoon critical of the secession of several Southern states during the last days of President James Buchanan’s administration.

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heavily influenced by the course of events that they themselves had little control over. As a group, most of the Unionists were either former Whigs who had supported John Bell or were Stephen Douglas Democrats during the 1860 election cycle. They included merchants, who worried about secession disrupting the business environment, as well as planters and farmers who owned slaves, but believed in the Union for patriotic reasons and were not necessarily dependent upon their slaves for their own livelihoods.43 As the convention continued and the crisis deepened, the majority found that whatever else they might be and think, they were always Southerners first and foremost. Though it took several months for sectionalism to triumph at the Virginia convention that it did is hardly surprising. Southern Unionists outside of the Old Dominion had never been able to count on all the former Whigs. Men such as Alexander Stephens of Georgia rather seamlessly made the jump to sectional or regional politics, as espoused by the secessionists. While Stephenson had at first opposed secession and appealed for “moderation and calm,” once Georgia left the Union, he was more than willing to serve the Confederacy.44 In the case of Stephenson, what secessionists discovered was that if they could appeal to Unionist selfinterest, in a tone of reasoned moderation, while also spinning national events to paint Northerners in the worst light possible, they could bring even conditional Unionists into the Confederate fold. Failing that, they could always browbeat their opponents and alienate them from the rest of Southern society.45 While secessionists might have been able to co-opt someone such as Stephenson, they were never able to make much headway with someone such as Junkin. The president of Washington College was an unabashed Unionist who believed the United States and its federal government was ordained by God. Although perhaps the majority of the student body he presided over was secessionist sympathizers, they all resided in a community that was labeled “an abolitionist hole” by secessionists at the state level. Junkin called for moderation and nonaggression on the part of the North and refused to agree with his sons-in-law (Virginia Military Institute professors Thomas Jackson and John Preston) that loyalty to Virginia trumped that to the United States.46 Junkin brought these sentiments into the classroom. Until Lincoln’s election in 1860, his class on the U.S. Constitution was one of the most

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popular offered at the college. But after students began to fall under the banner of secession, classroom debate became more heated and pointed. Junkin’s attempt to demonstrate to the students the errors of their way led to taunts and graffiti, calling the college president a “Pennsylvania abolitionist” and “Lincoln Junkin.”47 Not all the students at Washington College supported secession. One of Preston’s peers, John Lightener, wrote a friend in December 1860, “I expect to go South and whip S.C. [South Carolina] back into the Union. I am opposed to Disunion.”48 Edward Moore, a junior at the school, believed there was a direct correlation between how far South a student came from and how supportive of secession he was. Most of the Virginians Moore noted, were pro-Union. But secessionist sentiment grew with each passing day. The Young Virginians at both Washington College and VMI met often to talk about the progress of secession and to prepare to take action, including purchasing Bowie knives from a local blacksmith. It was only a short time before they began disrupting pro-Union meetings in Lexington.49 It became harder and harder to just study.50 Preston’s cousin, Albert Davidson, was known as a conditional Unionist at the University of Virginia. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary about that. But as the secession crisis deepened and debate intensified, Albert found himself isolated by his peers. It became “very hard” to uphold “the conservative ground” as his fellow Union men went “over to the other side,” not to mention to endure the taunts of “old fogie” and “submissionists” about himself and his father. The only silver lining in the war clouds was that several of the most rabid secessionists at the school had already gone home to South Carolina.51 By the time Albert was writing home to his father, Preston had likely already crossed over to the secessionist camp. By the time the Virginia convention took its first vote, the Young Virginians at Washington College and across the state believed that their moment in history had arrived and wanted to seize it. They began to openly advocate for secession, demanding that prosecession speakers be allowed to address them on campus. Patience and moderation were no longer part of their vocabularies.52 The tipping point in Lexington came on Washington’s Birthday. In what was possibly a coordinated approach, incidents occurred at both

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Washington College and VMI, exciting the student bodies of both schools and upsetting administrators. After a heated discussion at a literary society meeting, a vote of 43–8 was tallied in favor of secession at Washington College. Shortly after the vote, Henry R. Morrison and a group of students draped a blue flag with a red star in the middle and the word “disunion” painted above the star on a statue of Washington. Junkin ordered the flag removed. When it was later stolen from his office and reappeared on campus, Junkin confiscated it and burned it. A similar series of events happened at VMI. The campus was alive with the sounds of prosecessionist speeches, which culminated in a pro-South Carolina flag being unfurled on campus. Jackson ordered it hauled down. After these run-ins, all was quiet for a time as attention shifted back to the Virginia convention.53 The Virginia convention was just as on edge and divided as the two schools in Lexington. Unionists were strong enough to keep secessionists at bay, but only as long as there was no military threat to the nascent Confederacy. A middle ground was beginning to form, wherein the convention would issue an ultimatum of sorts to the federal government, trading their loyalty for noninterference with slavery and the states of the Deep South. Secessionists, however, were organizing and knew that they had to get popular passions high enough to endorse leaving the Union. Within the convention, secessionists organized and turned to former governor Wise, who decried opponents of leaving the United States as “cowards and poltroons.”54 Conditional Unionists were also dismayed to discover how far secessionists were willing to go outside the convention to advance their cause. Samuel McDowell Moore, a delegate from the Shenandoah valley, believed it was “the Negro traders” who “furnished the money to buy” a pro-Union newspaper in Richmond (and then others around the state) in the midst of the convention to sway public opinion. He raged against Wise, whom he believed was beholden to the whims of the Cotton South. But Moore and his fellow Unionists also lived under the growing threat that secessionists were prepared to move from rhetoric to violence to silence Unionists. The convention became increasingly volatile.55 Into this volatility came the secessionist delegations from the Deep South, seeking to “flatter” Virginia into the Confederacy. The commissioners arrived from Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina in February

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and came to prove that Virginia should no longer be in a union with the North. For proof, they pointed to Brown’s raid and argued that Northerners were not only going to end slavery, but also going to humiliate the South and subject it to domination by blacks. The commissioners said that Southerners could not trust the future of slavery to a Northern-dominated government. Secession was the only choice.56 Georgia dispatched one of its leading secessionists, Judge Henry L. Benning, to Virginia to try and sway the convention. Benning made no bones about why his state had left the Union: “It was the conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.” There was no hope in a union with the North, because of the ascendency of the Republican Party, Benning argued. And if the South did not act now, “we will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back into a wilderness.” But if Virginia joined with the rest of the Southern states, it could help forge a true “confederacy,” and this new nation would be an economic magnate that would attract immigration (from the North) and would bring about prosperity now unimaginable. The North could offer Virginia nothing, Benning concluded, while the South held out a bright hope for the future.57 Reaction to the Southern commissioners was to provoke more talk, as well as solidifying previously held positions on secession. The Deep South “ambassadors” gave great speeches, but changed few minds. Upper South delegates did not enjoy hearing from South Carolinians. Indeed, Letcher got up and left in the middle of the South Carolina commissioner’s address.58 In the end, the commissioners simply added to the chorus of debate. Missing were Northern voices. Southerners, including Virginians, talked to each other, but they seemed not to care if the rest of the nation was involved in the conversation or not. Had Southerners, especially in the upper South, been open to hearing from the North, they might have grasped that Northerners would not allow the Confederacy to control the Mississippi River, and they said so in Congress. Northerners also supported the defense of federal property rights within Southern states. Because they believed in union, because they felt bound together, the North could not allow secession to happen and the United States to be broken apart. Peaceful secession was not possible.59 As James Davidson was told by a

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correspondent in February 1861, “the right of a state to secede at pleasure can never be admitted by the Northwest.”60 Unionists at the convention attempted all sorts of procedural maneuvers to buy themselves and the nation more time. On March 1 James Dorman offered a resolution to let the people of Virginia vote on secession (a motion that failed to pass). Three days later he proposed another unsuccessful resolution, tied to a constitutional amendment that would deny African Americans the ability to become citizens of the United States. Despite the failure of these proposals and the work of secessionists both in and outside of Virginia, the Unionists held firm and the Old Dominion stayed in the Union.61 One reason for their perseverance was their belief that the Lincoln administration would not use force to keep the Deep South in the Union. This belief was fostered by meetings that Virginians had with leading Republicans, including Lincoln himself both before and after his inauguration. While the president was attempting to keep all channels open, and Virginia in the Union, it is a fair assertion that Lincoln was vague enough in his responses that the Southerners heard what they wanted to hear in his replies to their questions. Though his meeting with Tyler had not gone well during the Peace Convention in February, Lincoln had also met a delegation that included William C. Rives in which he reportedly promised that if Virginia would stay in the Union, he would be willing to give up Fort Sumter. At the request of Virginian congressman Alexander Boteler, Lincoln halted a planned Republican-backed Force Bill in early March that would have authorized him to deploy the armed forces to maintain federal property in South Carolina and other seceded states. John Baldwin and John Botts tried to convey to Lincoln in their meeting with him that Unionists could not hold out forever without some clear signal from the White House. Lincoln told Alexander H. H. Stuart that if the Virginia convention would pass a clear pro-Union resolution, he might be able to reciprocate. However, if it was ever pondered by Unionists meeting in Richmond, such a resolution was never offered.62 Another Virginia Unionist Lincoln met with was James Davidson. Traveling to Washington ahead of the inauguration, James met with Crittenden and had the opportunity to talk with the president-elect at the Willard Hotel. Though it was only a brief discussion, the elder Davidson conveyed to Lincoln Virginia’s opposition to coercive measures to halt se-

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cession on the part of the federal government. After the meeting, James sent a letter to Letcher, on whose behalf he may have traveled to Washington, informing his friend that he believed Lincoln would give peace a chance and wanted to keep lines of communication open to the upper South.63 Davidson’s feelings about Lincoln were only reinforced after reading the text of his inaugural address. While there was some tough language in the speech, Davidson wrote Letcher that this was to be expected. James wrote his cousin, James Dorman, that it appeared to him that there were “several fingers” involved in constructing the address. Lincoln, Davidson concluded, had attempted to please everyone, just like any other “Northwestern man” would do. At the same time, he was also sure that Lincoln’s plan was to put “the responsibility of aggression upon the South.”64 In many respects Davidson’s fellow Southerners were the problem. He believed that “the fire eaters” were attempting to pervert “the meaning of the Inaugural.”65 Included in that group was his nephew, Preston. At the same time his uncle was writing the governor and his cousin about meeting with the president, the younger Davidson crafted a letter to his father that largely distorted what James was reporting. Preston told his father that James was “mostly disappointed” with Lincoln “and disgusted to an equal degree” by the nation’s new president. Preston also conveyed that it seemed increasingly likely that Virginia was going to join the Confederacy.66 Under false pretenses or not, the tide was running in Preston’s favor. Though into April James Davidson believed that if Unionists at the Virginia convention held firm they could prevent secession, his cousin, James Dorman, reported that the situation was getting “worse and worse” and that the advocates of the Confederacy were gaining ground. Secessionists began to argue that it was within Virginia’s power to prevent a war. By adding their strength to the Confederacy, the Old Dominion would deter Northern aggression. Though Unionists doubted this, it was popular among a public on edge who did not seem to realize that either way Virginia went, the state was likely to be a battlefield.67 Unionists began laying the groundwork for supporting the Confederacy. Speaking in opposition to secession, William Henry Bagwell Custis noted that passage was “a declaration of war against our government.” Such a war, he believed, would ravage Virginia, for the state could not

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defend its coastline, let alone its northern boundary. And yet, he vowed to remain loyal to Virginia, whatever course the state should take. James Dorman agreed, saying that if war was upon the Old Dominion then the only side Virginia could be on was that of the South.68 What spurred this move by Unionists was the situation in Charleston harbor. Fort Sumter was about to be resupplied by sea, which was decreed an act of war by South Carolina officials. Though Lincoln had earlier flirted with the idea of abandoning the fort, the president now believed that he had to take a stand against secessionists, even if it might spark hostilities. He had been warned by Virginia’s John Baldwin that if the cannons of the fort were fired, even in defense, Unionists in the Old Dominion would be forced to side with the secessionists. The president had also been urged by Virginians William Goggin and Robert Scott that he must refute the Republican platform in order to stave off secession. However, Republicans in Washington believed that the president could not back down now, or there would be no end to future demands by the South, Lincoln was clear to a Virginia delegation led by William Preston that if South Carolina attacked the federal installation, he would meet force with force. He hoped that a flashpoint might give Southern Unionists something to rally around. Barring that, he hoped it might at least force Virginia to adjourn its convention.69 Virginia, however, neither adjourned nor called a new convention to ponder the changing circumstances. Rather, the same group of delegates that had been in place since February continued to sit and decide the Old Dominion’s side in the sectional confrontation. On April 4, 1861, Virginia’s special convention held a vote on submitting a secession vote to the people of the state. It lost 88–45.70 The news that South Carolina had opened fire on Fort Sumter changed that calculus. Secessionists in Virginia went “wild and devilish with excitement.” In Richmond they went to the Governor’s Mansion and asked Letcher to make a speech. He only offered the hope that everyone would stand by Virginia, prompting the secessionists to begin giving speeches of their own, calling for the state to leave the Union.71 Secession jubilation soon found its way to Lexington. On April 13, the day after the firing on Fort Sumter, unionists and secessionists brawled in Lexington after secessionists put up a prosecession flag and damaged the planned Unionist flagpole. The community’s Unionists blamed VMI

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General view of the city and harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter

cadets for the incidents and only the arrival of the Rockbridge Rifles, Lexington’s militia unit, halted the violence.72 It was during this period that students at Washington College rigged up a secessionist flag over a statue of George Washington on campus, which Junkin ordered taken down and burned. Pieces of the flag were salvaged from the flames and prosecessionist students proudly wore them in their buttonholes. A new flag appeared the following day, and it was taken down by Junkin’s stepgrandson, William C. Preston, who told the crowd that until Virginia seceded, flying the flag was inappropriate. James Davidson conveyed these events to his cousin, James Dorman, at the convention. Junkin wanted the students disciplined, but the trustees delayed, waiting to see what the state would do.73 Secession came to Virginia soon enough. In the wake of Fort Sumter, the Lincoln administration put out a call for volunteers to crush the rebellion. Letcher, after hearing opposition from all over the state to aiding the federal government, replied that Virginia’s militia would not join in such an action, telling the secretary of war that “you have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so we will meet you.” Until the request was

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made, Letcher, being an astute politician, had been able to balance the various demands of Unionists and secessionists fairly well. But now that war had commenced, conditional Unionism all but vanished in Virginia.74 The news of the firing on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln’s decision to call up volunteers “electrified” Virginia. On April 17 the state convention reluctantly voted in favor of secession (88–55), which was then sent to be popularly decided in a referendum in May. The other upper South states (Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee) all followed suit. Virginians convinced themselves that “a vote against the ordinance is treason to Virginia” and “an invitation to Lincoln to march his army of cut-throats and robbers into and through” the state. The Staunton Vindicator said: “We want to hear of no ‘Union’ votes. They will be regarded as an endorsement of Lincoln’s policy to overrun and devastate our homes and heritage, and make Virginia the booty of a hireling soldiery.”75 Once secession came, pro-Union talk disappeared. Part of it was intimidation. Part of it was pride, or loyalty to Virginia. And part of it was self-preservation. The Unionists main problem, according to Bruce Greenawalt, was that they could never solve the predicament of “how far a government of Virginia could go to protect itself against a faction, at first a minority, which used intrigue, legislative trickery, mobs, riots, and personal threats to gain its objectives.” Virginians and other Southerners ultimately rationalized their decision to join the Confederacy as the only means to stop an out-of-control government in Washington. Lincoln’s call for volunteers was all the proof they needed.76 In addition, Southern Unionists understood that their continued wealth was tied not only to slavery, but also to a stable nation. The Confederacy seemed to offer both.77 There was more to it, however, than just a hoped for stable, slave society. What perhaps swayed many white Virginians was that they agreed with their Deep South cousins that a state could leave the Union if it wanted to. Virginians realized that supporting secession would destroy the United States, and yet, as one of them put it, “the North has injured and insulted the South and refused to make amends.”78 It was time, said another, “to quit the damn north.”79 For all the bravado, there was also anxiety among secessionists, which only spurred them closer to the Confederacy. Virginia realized that if war came, it would be a battleground, and worry of a Northern invasion

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tended to unite Virginians with other Southerners.80 What was needed was action, and Wise stepped in. During the final debate over secession, Wise rose before the other delegates and dramatically announced, while brandishing a pistol, that he had ordered militia units loyal to him to seize Harpers Ferry and the Norfolk Naval Yard, securing their weapons (Harpers Ferry contained some 15,000 stands of arms), and strategic locations. Wise may have acted illegally, but his theatrics raised a new question for Virginians: Would they rather kill their fellow Southerners or Yankees? The answer was that Northerners made better targets, both literally and figuratively, than did other white Southerners.81 Nowhere, outside of Richmond, was this transformation from conditional unionism to secessionist sentiment more clearly seen than in Lexington. Reverend William Spotswood White of Lexington Presbyterian called the change in public opinion toward secession a “revolution.” He argued that the North had declared war on the South, with the flashpoint being Lincoln’s call for volunteers. Although he had previously supported the cause of Union, he now exhorted his congregantion to “rebel” against a tyrannical government, arguing that in doing so they were not actually being secessionists.82 It was a nuanced stance both politically and theologically, and one that was quickly embraced by people Preston Davidson knew. Valley delegate to the convention and Davidson family cousin James Baldwin Dorman accepted White’s logic.83 Alexander S. Paxton, one of Preston’s classmates at Washington College, went a step further, blaming the coming of war entirely on “Old Abe Lincoln.”84 Indeed, the campus of Washington College was now openly embracing the cause of Southern independence. The administration received requests for military classes and was given a petition to fly a secessionist flag over the school’s grounds. The students noted of the latter request that “there can’t be opposition from any quarter now, save from the enemies of Virginia” to the flag.85 Junkin and his unionism was no longer an obstacle. Shortly after learning that the Old Dominion had approved secession, Junkin resigned. He then began to sell his property and prepared to leave not just Washington College, but also Lexington and the state he had called home for more than a decade.86 All of this gave the Davidson brothers much to talk about. On April 18 Baker commented to his siblings that “we have fallen upon evil times.” In Evansville, Indiana, a Union meeting seemed to him to be more about

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bloodlust than it was keeping the nation together.87 Two days later, Alexander told James: “I never wrote to you with a sadder heart than now. Our country—the happiest, the most wonderfully prosperous of any other under the sun, in the incipient throes of a civil war, my aged parents and my brothers and sisters on one side of the dividing line, myself on the other, what part can I take in this dreadful drama? God knows I love my country, my whole country. I love Virginia, for she is my mother . . . and how can I dare to lift the hand of violence against her? And yet, if I do not evince a willingness to do so, I am charged with a way of fealty to the government.” He wanted to be neutral and still hoped for compromise. But the more troops that arrived in Indianapolis, the more Northerners believed that the war would come and the less neutral Alexander believed he could be. Indeed, he thought the problem was radical Republicans. “Will a Just God,” he wrote James, “permit such men to succeed in their hellish designs? I cannot believe it.”88 War preparations now began in earnest, though not quickly enough for everyone. Until late April, some secessionists believed that Letcher was in the thrall of his Unionist friends and would not actually prepare Virginia for war. Some feared any delay, in either the secession vote or troop mobilization, would invite a Northern invasion. Such fears were unwarranted. While Letcher did not care for many of the Confederacy’s early leaders, he was prepared to join the rebellion. As for fearing that the North might invade, Southerners failed to realize that their former countrymen were as disorganized and unprepared to fight as they were.89 On April 24, 1861, the Commonwealth of Virginia entered into “a speedy union” provisionally with “the other slave states” that comprised the Confederate States of America.90 Within a month, on May 23, Virginia formally rescinded its ratification of the U.S. Constitution, due to the fact that “the Federal Government having perverted” the powers bestowed upon it were causing “injury” to “the people of Virginia” and contributing “to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.”91 The Old Dominion was now a part of the Confederacy. While many people did pledge loyalty to their state over the United States as a nation, there were many people, North and South, who did not. Their country was the United States. Even if they adhered to states’ rights as a doctrine, it did not follow that they resided in the South. Plenty of Northerners believed the idea of state sovereignty applied to, for

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example, Indiana or Pennsylvania, as much as it did for Virginia or South Carolina. The argument about personal liberty laws had proven that to be true. How one saw oneself and what his or her relationship was to the state and nation was an individual choice. In Preston’s case, he saw himself as a Southerner, and the process by which he arrived at that identity was similar to other Confederate nationalists and much easier than what might be expected, considering his Northern birth.92 Perhaps the best known example is that of Robert E. Lee. The son a Revolutionary War hero, married into George Washington’s extended family, and one of the top officers in the antebellum U.S. Army, Lee initially hoped that Virginia could act as a “peacemaker” and “waited to see what Virginia would do,” spurning the offers of a major generalship made by both the United States the Confederacy. He opposed both secession and war, yet he came to embrace both. The reason was twofold. First, Lee valued stability and order, both of which were grounded much more in Virginia, his state, than the nation that he served. The second reason was that Lee was not opposed to slavery as an institution, being a slave owner himself. He hoped it might go away at some point, but he also felt no need to worry about when God (or “Merciful Providence” as he put it) would actually get around to doing so. Furthermore, as a master, he had no problem ordering, and supervising, the whipping of slaves.93 He easily became a Confederate nationalist once the fighting commenced.94 Considering the life of the man who soon became one of Preston’s commanding officers, Elisha Franklin Paxton, can offer more insight. Paxton was born in Rockbridge County in 1828. While Preston was a toddler Robert E. Lee, circa 1850 in Indianapolis, Paxton was

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completing his degree at Washington College. After graduation, he attended Yale University for two years before returning to the University of Virginia to study law. He moved to Ohio, where he became a skilled landclaims attorney. In 1854 he returned to Lexington, Virginia, and set up a law practice. When the secession crisis began, he took the lead in debating Lexington’s Unionist majority, including Junkin, on the constitutionality of secession and the feasibility of Virginia joining the Confederacy.95 Both Preston and Paxton had roots in Virginia, were college educated, and spent time in the North. As Paxton’s son described the coming of the war upon his father: “He was a man of intense feeling, when aroused, and had early adopted the view of the Constitution of the United States, which came to him from his fathers. To him the right of secession was as clear as the right of trial by jury. The State was sovereign and in the hot blood of his youth he believed the time had come to secede.” So the war in which he entered was for the defense of his home and fireside and against an invading foe.96 Considering that his son also noted that Paxton pushed for secession delegates to Virginia’s convention, there is perhaps more to it than the above indicates. However, the important thing is the emphasis on the sovereignty of the state. Here is what binds Paxton to the Davidsons (both Preston, his cousins, and his uncles), as well as to men such as Lee and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson: The belief that state trumped nation, even if it meant, in Preston’s case, embracing a different state and region than those of his birth.97 The Southern cause that swept up men such as Davidson, Lee, Paxton, and Jackson was, in some ways, about transcendent things, about how they felt about a region and how they lived their lives. It was a visceral feeling of being Southern, of sectional identity that trumped national sentiment toward the United States.98 But those feelings were not enough for all men from the South. As compelling and at times gut wrenching as these personal decisions no doubt were, many Virginians and other Southerners remained loyal to the United States.99 The push for secession might have won Preston, Lee, and others to the South, but it cost Virginia the likes of Junkin, who was so outraged over secession that he left Lexington for Pennsylvania.100 It also cost the state George Henry Thomas. Like Lee and Jackson, a West Point graduate, he was viewed as a potential military leader by many in Virginia. Unlike Lee and Jackson, however, Thomas believed that his oath

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as a U.S. Army officer trumped loyalty to his home state. The decision (and his subsequent career guiding Union armies to victory in the West) caused him to largely be disowned by his family and virtually blacklisted by Virginia.101 Leaving the United States was not just a decision that had personal implications, it led to issues for the states who seceded as well. Southerners had not stopped to think how they would actually guarantee the expansion of slavery (which was protected by the Dred Scott decision and territorial ordinances in the United States) nor stop fugitive slaves from escaping (the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was in place).102 Furthermore, once they opened the door to secession, they found that they could not keep it closed. Areas of Alabama and Tennessee contained large concentrations of Unionists, who were not loyal to the Confederacy. In Virginia, secessionists watched as the western counties, full of Unionists and others with longstanding political grievances with the eastern planters, voted to detach themselves from the Old Dominion (eventually resulting in the creation of a new state, West Virginia).103 Virginia’s decision and its ripple effects extended beyond the South. In Washington, D.C., the loss of the Old Dominion to the Confederacy produced both fear and anger. There was worry that rebel forces might march on the city and take it for the Confederacy, which was not out of the question, considering that it was surrounded by slave states, had few defenses in place, and was full of Southerners of questionable loyalty. Luckily for the North, the South’s armed forces were not prepared to do anything beyond seizing a few key points, such as Harpers Ferry. Northerners were also upset that Virginia had put the nation in such a position. Unlike Kentucky, which at least attempted to be neutral, Virginia had turned its back on the nation it had helped to found. Northern public opinion tended to blame the Old Dominion second only to South Carolina when it came to culpability for the severed Union.104 Although the loss of Virginia to secessionists was both troubling and disappointing to the Union cause, it was cause for celebration in the South.105 Everyone realized history was being made. In looking back, NWCU alum Perry Hall noted that “the year 1861 will be an ever memorable one in the history of the United States of America” because of the

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“mad efforts” by the South “to destroy the national existence.”106 As one Virginian noted to James Davidson, “we have before us, war, with all its horrors.”107 The Davidson family would soon experience the horror of war.

6 The Wages of War While secession’s supporters were triumphant, the drama of building a nation was now at hand. For all the idealism and hubris that went with it, the vast majority of newly minted Confederates believed that they would ultimately be successful in creating a slave-holding republic. They also understood they were risking everything they knew for a dream of what might be. Additionally, Confederate nationalists found that it was one thing to leave the Union via secession, it was another to create a nation, especially in the midst of a war. With the Confederacy’s capital being moved to Richmond shortly after Virginia’s decision to leave the United States, Virginians were assured not only of being at the heart of the new nation, but they were also ground zero for the impending conflict to secure that nation’s very existence. The Davidson family was part of this process.1 For the Davidsons of Virginia, including the transplanted Hoosier Preston Davidson, debates about what the future held for the Confederacy were swept aside by the reality of what was happening at the moment. Creating an army went hand in hand with creating a nation. Virginia governor John Letcher set a quota of 10 percent of white males to fill the militia’s ranks, and the youth of the state rallied to meet the request. These first recruits were “more citizen than soldier.” Like their Northern counterparts, most were single, young, and had no previous military experience. Those factors made their decision to enlist not only momentous for them (and for the nation they were fighting for), but also terribly exciting. These young men felt as though they were part of something historic. Preston and his Virginian cousins were among the first to answer Letcher’s call to arms.2

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Southerners flocked to enlist for a variety of reasons. Writing a few decades after the war, Confederate veteran and Richmond mayor Carlton McCarthy asserted, “No man can exactly define the cause for which the Confederate soldier fought. He was above human reason and above human law.”3 There was a bit more to it though. Modern historians recognize that “Young Virginians were in part motivated to join the Confederate war effort to prove that their generation possessed manly courage and selfdiscipline.” That courage was connected to godliness in their minds and the belief that God was surely on their side.4 Such sentiment now coursed through Preston’s veins. His father knew that his son would be tempted by these arguments. Alexander wrote to his brother: “If there should be a requisition for troops in Rockbridge, on no account allow Preston to volunteer.”5 But his father’s plea from the North arrived too late to deter his son. Preston had been raised, at least in part, to see Virginia as “home,” despite his birth, childhood, and education in the North. Just as he fit the pattern of early enlistees, Preston was typical of those who had family or economic ties to the South in believing that the sectional crisis and secession were mostly the fault of the North. What makes Preston unique is that he translated those feelings into actually fighting to create the Confederate States of America.6 The patriotic stirrings were hardly unique to Preston of course. Hoosiers were rallying around the flag of the United States. On April 16, 1861, Governor Oliver P. Morton called for the formation of six regiments to suppress the rebellion and began laying the groundwork for creating the Indiana Legion, a corps of men to defend the state and nation. The governor asked the churches of Indianapolis to ring their bells in order to help remind people of meetings and to help welcome and send off the new recruits. And so the state’s capital was alive with noise and an influx of citizens-turned-soldiers ready to march off to preserve the Union.7 The pealing of the bells no doubt unnerved Alexander Davidson, as he awaited word about both his son and his family in Virginia, as did the actions of his brother-in-law, Winston Noble. Preston’s uncle was among the first to answer Morton’s call to arms. He was a member of the National Guards, an Indianapolis-based militia unit, which formed in 1856 and served during the Civil War as part of the Eleventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Winston, however, enlisted for three months in

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Oliver P. Morton

the Seventeenth Indiana in June 1861 and became quartermaster of the regiment with the rank of captain, deploying to western Virginia before returning to Indiana. Perhaps in part out of deference to his brother-inlaw, his service with the Seventeenth lasted only through the summer. Noble spent the rest of the war at home, while also serving as part of a refugee committee at Christ Church to help Southerners who fled the conflict and found themselves in Indianapolis.8 During the summer of

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1861, his decision added to Alexander’s anxiety over his own position in the community. Alexander wrote to his brother, James, on April 20, 1861, that he was “neutral” when it came to the looming conflict. And yet the mood and attitude of Hoosiers unnerved him. No one, as yet, had called him “a traitor,” but some neighbors had hinted that he should go back to Virginia. He described Indianapolis as “a great seething caldron of excitement.”9 A month later, he wrote James that the blame for the war crisis was to be found in Northern churches and pandering Republican politicians who were keeping war fever alive and preventing any sort of compromise to take hold.10 Compromise was no longer possible. Patriotic feelings were now mixing with thousands of men equipped with weapons and sure of the righteousness of their cause. Although Alexander might blame Northerners for rhetoric that was taking the crisis to a boiling point, Southerners were doing exactly the same things. As one Virginian put it, the South could not “submit to be governed by so base and degraded a race” as Northerners. In the camps of Confederates, abolitionists (which was quickly becoming shorthand for Northerners) were “fit subjects for Hell.” Northerners who dared invade “Virginia’s sacred soil” were “hired mercenaries.” They

Lithograph depicting the North’s rallying to the Union cause at the Civil War’s outbreak

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were so sure of their righteous cause that many Southerners doubted if the North would (or even could) fight the South, as the Yankees “are the biggest cowards on the face of the earth.” The war, most Southerners told themselves, would be over quickly.11 Not everyone agreed. Preston’s cousin, Greenlee Davidson, believed the war would be a long struggle. Indeed, he wrote his father in June 1861 that the conflict was likely to require “the services of every able bodied man in the state” in order to prevent Virginia from being “overrun.”12 To win the war, the North had to conquer the entire South, and that is what it intended to do, starting with Virginia.13

Enlisting for the Cause Virginia, for the Davidson family, was the Shenandoah valley, and its heart was Lexington. Having left the Union, the valley’s residents now began to turn out to defend their home and to make the Confederacy a reality. Military units full of green recruits were formed and began to train.14 What they lacked in military experience, they made up for in enthusiasm. Not surprisingly, many of the soldiers coming out of Washington College and the Lexington area were influenced by the Presbyterian Church. Religion buttressed the men in the field and the church became a place to rally support for those heading to the front. The women of Rockbridge County, often via their congregations, organized to equip the men as they marched off to the front. Congregations made uniforms and bandages, and the women of Falling Springs Presbyterian Church even made the Liberty Hall Volunteers (a unit chiefly comprised of students from the college) a flag.15 Enlistments were made not only because of deeply held convictions, but also because of what friends and family were doing. So, despite his father’s wishes, Preston was a prime candidate for enlistment. He was five feet, nine inches tall, healthy with a fair complexion, dark hair, and blue eyes.16 Preston and his cousin, Frederick, both joined the Rockbridge Rifles on April 15, 1861. Fred, as he was known within the family, born in March 1838, was nearly five years older than Preston. He had studied at Washington College for a time before going to the University of Virginia and then becoming a notary public.17 By enlisting together, the two cousins could look out for each other.

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While there were several options for units to join, there was little surprise that Preston joined the Rockbridge Rifles. Originally organized in 1859, in the wake of John Brown’s raid, the unit had as its commanding officer Samuel Houston Letcher, the brother of Virginia’s governor and family friend of the Davidson cousins. Born in 1828 the younger Letcher was a Washington College graduate, lawyer, and newspaperman. When the Rifles were put on a war footing in April 1861, he was elected captain. Letcher was joined in leading the Rockbridge boys by Elisha Franklin Paxton, a Lexington lawyer and early advocate of Virginia’s secession.18 To add a further level of familial oversight, Preston and Fred were also watched over by their uncle, Henry Gamble Davidson. Born in February 1824, he had attended Washington College, graduated from the University of Virginia, and then earned a medical degree at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1851. He was back in Lexington, living and working as a doctor, when the war broke out. He was appointed as the Fifth Virginia’s surgeon in July 1861.19 While his enlistment in the Rifles makes a good deal of sense, it is interesting that Preston, who was a member of the class of 1860–61, did not join the Liberty Hall Volunteers. The Liberty Hall unit was comprised chiefly of Washington College students and professors, who served in the Fourth Virginia Regiment. Of the seventy-three initial enlistees, fiftyseven were from the college. Forty-four of that number were members of Preston’s class at Washington College. An additional fourteen of his classmates served in units other than Liberty Hall, closer to their homes. The men from Liberty Hall, thanks to early instruction from Virginia Military Institute cadets, were considered more than capable when it came to knowing how to drill. But perhaps it tells us that familial ties were once again stronger than college ones.20 Although joining the war effort meant postponing school and the future, a college education marked the men who enlisted in a number of ways. Many of them served as officers and several as surgeons. Their surviving letters are often of clear prose, with insights into camp life, the war, and relationships, both in the field and at home. And for those who served in the same units, the college bond also promoted a deeper sense of comradery.21 Preston marched off to war with other friends and relatives as well. VMI sent professors J. T. L Preston and Thomas Jackson to serve both

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Virginia and the Confederacy.22 Preston’s cousin, Greenlee, was tapped by Letcher to serve as his personal aide-de-camp, no doubt both a point of pride and relief for his father, James, who had, at his son’s request, asked his old friend the governor for such a posting. Greenlee, who was tall and sported a then fashionable goatee, looked smart in his new uniform and was “determined to take hand in the fight.”23 Another of Preston’s cousins, Charles Davidson, also took an initial duty assignment as an aide to Virginia’s governor. Charles was a recent graduate of the VMI who had been attending law school at the University of Virginia when the war broke out.24 Both of Preston’s cousins eventually left the service of the governor in order to directly take the field of combat. Though Washington College students were trained by VMI cadets before marching off, there is no indication that Preston had received military training prior to the secession crisis. He knew many who had, including his brother, Dorman, thanks to his proximity to VMI. But while they had expertise, the student cadets had to watch the Rockbridge Rifles march off to war, for most of them were to remain in Lexington.25 Letcher ordered the Rifles and other Lexington units to Harpers Ferry on April 17, 1861. They were initially assigned to the Fifth Virginia Regiment.26 The next day, the Rifles drew arms from the state arsenal at VMI, said their tearful good-byes to family and friends, received benedictions and prayers from the local clergy, and marched off into the valley, 103 men strong. According to the Lexington Gazette they were leaving to defend “the rights bestowed upon us by our fathers . . . and to protect and defend them from those who instigated by folly and wickedness, would deprive us of our dearly loved institutions.”27 That same day James Davidson wrote a short letter to his brother, Alexander, noting that “the Rifle Company left out for Harpers Ferry. Preston . . . went with them.”28 The Rifles marched along modern-day Interstate 81 from Lexington, traveling northeast, passing through Staunton, Mount Sidney, Harrisonburg, and Mount Jackson by April 21. They then took a train to Strasburg, then Winchester, and arrived at Harpers Ferry by rail on April 23. The Rifles were then positioned at the Bell factory, and on May 15 were officially mustered into service.29 Life for the newly minted soldiers was largely an adventure during this time. One of the men who served alongside Preston, R. Henry Campbell, wrote his father in mid-April that the people they encountered “could not treat us better if we were their own

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sons.” Campbell told his mother that one of the benefits in being part of the Rifles was that since their company was led by the governor’s brother, they got virtually anything they asked for.30 On April 23 Alexander put pen to paper to write James. He had received a letter from Preston announcing that he was going to Harpers Ferry. Alexander was both proud and frightened for his son. The elder Davidson wrote his brother for news if any family members who were with Preston, while also inquiring if James might be able to get the Hoosier Davidson out of the army, perhaps even having Letcher order him out of the service and back to Lexington. That being said, Alexander wrote that Preston could not come home to Indianapolis now, as “I doubt his life would be safe here.” He would be susceptible to mob violence or charges of treason, Alexander believed. Davidson put all his hope in his brother, since he could write neither Letcher nor Preston without raising the eyebrows of his “bloodthirsty” Hoosier neighbors.31 Indeed, Indiana was quickly becoming the rock of the Union armed forces. Mobilization in the state outpaced the ability to supply the recruits. Ultimately, close to 200,000 Hoosiers served out of an 1860 population of eleven- to fifty-year-old men of 306,000. They wanted to preserve the Union and crush the rebellion, though few would have said the reason they were fighting was to end slavery.32 Among those enlisting were a good number of young men that Preston had gone to school or church with. At North West Christian University it seemed as though nearly all the student body went off to war, putting a financial strain on the school. The students who remained on campus drilled an hour a day and called themselves the Hoshour Guards in honor of the school’s president, Samuel Hoshour. Many of the young men of Second Presbyterian also enlisted to fight for the Union.33 The elder Davidsons had a different sort of excitement to deal with, and it involved their brother, Baker. Reverend Davidson was conflicted over where he stood with his family when it came to the crisis now engulfing the nation. He was worried that James was mad at him “on account of his views of our present difficulties.” Baker thought about leaving the Northern Methodist Church and going to Virginia. Alexander wondered if their brother might join the Southern Presbyterian Church.34 Ultimately, nothing came of this speculation, as Baker remained in Indiana (joining the Episcopal Church), and the brothers’ bond remained strong despite the looming conflict.

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Harper’s Weekly drawing of the burning of the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, April 18, 1861

Becoming a Jackson Man In the spring of 1861 Harpers Ferry was a “peaceful town on the Potomac River surrounded by rivers and hills, and served by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.” It had attempted to move past the infamy of Brown’s raid, but the secession crisis and impending war prevented its return to tranquility. On April 18 federal forces set fire to the arsenal and left the town. Almost immediately, two Virginia militia companies moved into the community to save what arms and supplies they could. The arsenal aside, Harpers Ferry was viewed by many as a strategic location at the top of the Shenandoah valley and was assumed to be a target for Yankee attack. As such, it quickly became a converging point for local militia units and a place where volunteers flocked. Just as quickly, officials in Richmond realized a guiding hand was needed to oversee these zealous volunteers. Letcher believed Jackson was the man for the job.35 Jackson was thirty-seven years old when war broke out. A graduate of West Point who had served with some distinction in the Mexican War, Jackson had resigned his commission in 1852 to become a professor at VMI, where he likely had Dorman Davidson as a student. A stickler for

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rules and order, as well as a lemon-sucking eccentric, Jackson was often the butt of jokes, ridicule, and at least two duel challenges from his students. But his piety and sense of duty and devotion to the Presbyterian Church also won him many admirers. The men he came to command quickly became a reflection of his personality.36 Letcher sent Jackson to Harpers Ferry to turn the volunteers into an army. When Jackson arrived in the town, he told the men they could enlist for either one year or for the duration of the war. The overwhelming response was for the latter option. He then set about drilling them into military shape, via fourteen-hour days using VMI cadets as instructors. While his notions of drill and military life grated on many, as the summer of 1861 went along his men came to respect his desire to make them battle ready. Jackson’s discipline turned cocky optimism into a determination to win.37 Once the Rifles arrived in Harpers Ferry, life took on the rhythm of military camp life. As Henry Campbell noted to his mother, a typical day under Jackson went like this: “We go to Reveille at 5 o’clock a.m., squad drill at 5 ½ o’clock, surgeons call at 6 ½ o’clock, at 7 we have breakfast, at 8 first call for guard mounting, at 8 ½ second call for guard mounting, orderly hours 9 until ten, squad drill at 10 ½ to 11 ½, Battalion drill 11 ½ to 12 ½ dinner 1, squad drill again 2 ½ to 3 ½, dress parade at 6, retreat at sundown, supper at 7, tattoo at 9 ½, taps at 10. Besides this we have to walk guard.” Their day, in other words, was full. It was also (largely) “dry,” as Campbell noted Stonewall Jackson that Jackson had “forbid the Liquor Dealers to sell to the soldiers.”38 Actually being in the field was both exhilarating and something of a shock in those first few weeks. The men at Harpers Ferry were, for the most part, close to home. Many of them were farmers. But, even if they were from rural areas, the vast majority of Southerners had never lived outside before. It was a struggle to learn where to build a camp, how to start a campfire, and cook a meal, which was something either women

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or slaves were responsible for at home.39 Camp life also meant disease, including dysentery (a chronic problem), typhoid, measles, diarrhea, and even smallpox. These conditions could lead to disillusionment, being absent without leave, and even desertion. Indeed, some of the Confederacy’s early volunteers quickly lost heart as they discovered what being a soldier was going to mean.40 Preston’s experience at Harpers Ferry showcases all of these early difficulties. On May 3 he wrote his Uncle James detailing his experiences to date. According to Preston, the worst part about military life was the cramped sleeping quarters, made worse by having to sleep with their arms, as they expected an attack at any moment. He reported that the Rifles had spent time on the Maryland side of the Potomac River, guarding the heights from a possible Union seizure. This meant making “little wigwams” out of poles and leaves, which were just as inviting to snakes as they were to the men who built them. Preston let his uncle know that he had been sick two days since they left, but was fine at the moment. The Rockbridge companies were very happy that Jackson was appointed and he also reported that Fred seemed to enjoy soldier life.41 When James eventually visited Fred and Preston at Harpers Ferry, he left with a feeling of pride, but also deeply saddened to think that some of the boys would soon fight and die.42 James made sure to write Alexander soon after his visit. He knew that his brother wanted word about his son and still held out hope that Preston might come home, so long as there was not a major battle and the war spirit in the North dissipated.43 James reported to Alexander that both Preston and Fred were doing well, indeed, seemed to be comfortable and well on their way to becoming “first rate soldiers.” He was impressed with the camp, and stressed to his brother that the boys did not have access to liquor. He was also happy to pass along that neither of them had been seriously sick, adding that he also prayed that “God grant that some power would intervene to stay this fratricidal war.”44 Even with his brother’s letter, it “was a great burden” on Alexander’s mind not knowing Preston’s fate daily. He prayed to God constantly to preserve his son and had a foreboding about what might happen if a battle occurred. Writing his parents, Alexander noted, “If, in the providence of God, he shall fall, a sacrifice in this most unrighteous war, I pray that my brothers will see that his body is brought to Lexington and decently

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interned [sic] in the old church yard. Charge James especially with this duty.”45 Alexander Davidson also worried about his parents as the war clouds grew darker. His concern centered on their proximity to VMI, which he believed would be considered a target by the Union army. Alexander told them that they should expect “no mercy” from the North. The talk in the West was that the “rebel” states were to be subjugated unless they came back into allegiance to the federal government. There were also rumors that the U.S. government would use confiscated property to pay for the war. Sounding very different than the young man who had helped found a New School Presbyterian congregation, Alexander wrote, “we have grown to[o] prosperous and forgotten God. Slavery is by no means the great sin of the U.S.”46 Invoking God came naturally to the Davidsons, as it did to most nineteenth-century Americans. Faith pervaded American society and it produced remarkably religious armies during the war. Prayer meetings and religious life were a constant within what became the Stonewall Brigade from its start at Harpers Ferry to the very end of the war. Jackson had Reverend William Spotswood White of Lexington Presbyterian come and preach to his men, and kept in touch with his minister afterword.47 Although not all Southern soldiers were receptive to the religious exhortations in the midst of their camps, churches and ministers were integral in preparing young men to not only fight and die for the Confederacy, but also to kill their fellow Christians.48 While the soldiers were quickly becoming Confederates, they understood that there were still people in Virginia who loved the Union and whose transformation might take longer. When the Rifles passed through Martinsburg in May, Campbell noted it was not uncommon to hear “Hail Columbia” or the “Star Spangled Banner” being played by residents. Yet, over the course of a month, the citizenry took a shine to both the Virginian soldiers and their cause. Campbell later wrote home that the ladies were bringing the soldiers “bouquets every day; and are continually sending invitations to dine and take tea with them,” as well as pinning the “Secession flag” to their dresses.49 While the young women were no doubt a pleasant distraction, the Rockbridge companies’ main source of companionship was with one another. They stuck together in camp, despite not all being part of the

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same units or companies.50 The students turned soldiers in particular looked for former classmates in camp. They saw each other, for example, at Winchester in mid-June 1861. Some members of the Fourth Virginia, who had gone to school with Preston, found that in the town some of “the ladies are more patriotic than some of the Gentlemen.”51 While at Harpers Ferry, the troops were becoming the Stonewall Brigade. Jackson’s units were the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Twenty-Seventh, and Thirty-Third Virginia infantry regiments.52 The Rifles were originally assigned to the Fifth Virginia as Company B (the other companies were from Augusta and Frederick Counties), and then became part of the Fourth Virginia around July 1. By the time the Fifth was on its way to Manassas Junction, members of the Rifles were transferred again, this time to the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, under the command of Major Andrew Jackson Grigsby (a Washington College alum) and Lieutenant Colonel John W. Echols (who had attended both VMI and Washington College).53

First Fight If the month of May provided a lack of fighting for the newly minted warriors, most believed battles were soon to be fought. Indeed, the Confederates were impatient to fight.54 Clashes of arms, after all, were believed to be indications if God was supporting one side or another. How would they know for sure if God was fighting with them until there was some actual fighting? Nowhere was this anxiety and anxiousness more acute than in Virginia. Much of the northern and western portions of the state were destined to be either battlegrounds or virtual no-man’s lands over the next four years. Secessionists had downplayed what at the time was a very probable reality looming over the Old Dominion. Now it was about be a reality. Preston and his fellow Virginians were worried about if they would fail or thrive when combat finally came, and having trained to fight, having lived on rumors of Yankee armies advancing (as well as the supposed atrocities the Northerners were committing against Virginia’s ladies and private property), they were ready to get to the business of war.55 Their chance to test their metal came soon enough. General Joseph E. Johnston, a native Virginian, West Point graduate, Mexican War veteran, and highest ranking U.S. Army officer to resign and join the Confederacy,

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took command at Harpers Ferry from Jackson on May 23. Within a week he was ordering men to Winchester. Johnston believed that abandoning Harpers Ferry would allow his army freedom of movement and the ability to assume the offensive, rather than being stuck in a defensive position when the North’s armies began to march south. He abandoned the town altogether on June 16.56 Johnston’s theory was soon put to the test. The Battle of Falling Waters (or Hokes Run) was a successful use of a smaller Confederate force besting and confusing a larger federal force. By later standards it was really a skirmish, but in the early summer of 1861 it was the first major clash of arms the Virginians under Jackson had experienced. On July 2 the Fifth Virginia was ordered by Jackson to engage some of Union general Robert Patterson’s men near Falling Waters on the Potomac River, some six miles from Williamsport. Here, the members of the Rifles had their first taste of war, including coming under friendly fire at one point in the engagement, and suffering their first fatality.57 The determination of the Virginians under Jackson made it appear as though they were a larger force than they were. Their intensity and zeal so shocked Patterson that he slowed his previously aggressive thrust into the Shenandoah valley, and became one of the first Northern commanders to overestimate his opposition. While the Confederates retreated, abandoning their camp and losing some tents, Patterson’s advance ground to a halt, allowing Jackson’s men to move toward Manassas Junction. The Battle of Falling Waters meant the Virginians now had battlefield experience.58 With the experience came practical knowledge that no amount of drill could instill. Under optimal conditions, Confederate infantrymen carried a gun (in the case of the Rifles, most carried a rifled musket), cartridge box, forty rounds of ammunition, a bayonet, a haversack, canteen, and a blanket roll. Most of the time this thirty to forty extra pounds of equipment was carried by the men as they marched from place to place. While soldiers did not need to carry all of it with them into battle, at Falling Waters the Virginians learned valuable lessons, such keeping their ammunition and canteen with them even in the midst of combat.59 It was after Falling Waters that the Rifles were transferred to the Fourth Virginia Regiment. It was with the Fourth, starting on July 3, that the Rifles marched to Manassas Junction. The men Preston Davidson was

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serving with were already “ready for a fight.”60 They were ordered to quickly link up with Johnston, as there were rumors of a much larger Yankee thrust about to come into Virginia. Johnston’s command was to support General P. G. T. Beauregard’s forces. The man who had overseen the bombardment of Fort Sumter was in command of some 6,000 Confederates at Manassas Junction and was in desperate need of reinforcements. A “grandiose” thinker according to one biographer, Beauregard hoped to craft a grand strategy for using the army to take Washington, D.C., and win the war. But he was also impulsive, and in the early days of July doubted he had enough men on hand and feared a crushing defeat. Preston Davidson and men under Jackson’s command were to arrive just in time.61

Meeting Mars When Jackson’s brigade was sent to support Beauregard, the men did not know if they were heading to a fight or not. After a thirty-mile march from Winchester (which included crossing the Shenandoah River), they boarded trains, taking them the remaining twenty-eight miles (at four miles per hour) to Manassas Junction, some twenty-five miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Once they arrived, they were placed on the extreme right of the Confederate line near Blackburn’s Ford (behind Bull Run Creek) and began their wait for the enemy. Their positions were on rolling farmland, which was interspersed with wooded thickets, smaller creeks and ravines, and split-rail fences. The pastoral setting belayed the horrific fighting that would soon take place and the night before the battle, according to historian William C. Davis, “was the twilight of America’s innocence.”62 The Union army was led by General Irvin McDowell, an Ohioan by birth, a graduate of West Point, and a Mexican War veteran who had made a career out of the army. His objective in moving into Virginia was to take Manassas Junction and sever the rail line that ran from the Shenandoah valley to the eastern part of the state. McDowell really did not want to engage the Confederates, as his army was green, but had no choice due to political pressure. Though he was thinking in offensive terms, McDowell delayed his attack, which, combined with Patterson’s failure in the valley at Falling Waters, gave the Confederates time to shift reinforcements to Manassas.63

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Union general Irvin McDowell

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Sunday, July 21, 1861 was a day “set apart for sacred things,” but as one Virginian noted at the time, “the history of this generation in future ages will speak of this as a bloody day—a day of war and bloodshed.”64 As dawn broke that morning, McDowell’s forces opened up “a light cannonade” on a portion of the Confederate line. Although Lexington was far from the front lines, the eventual rumble of artillery along Bull Run could be heard in the town. The bombardment was shocking to all who heard, felt, and took part in it. But the real shock was to come with the battle itself.65

Henry House As the Union cannons boomed, Jackson’s men were ordered to support units under the commands of Generals M. L. Bonham, Phillip St. George Cocke, and Bernard Bee, who were already on the line. They arrived as fast as they could, out of breath, in need of water, and with a mixture of nervous energy and trepidation at what was to come. The calm they appeared to exude was the result of expending energy to get into position.66 Confederate forces were spread out over an eight-mile front. As luck would have it, the bulk of the Southerners were at the most defensive point, even though Beauregard still hoped to go on the offensive. Jackson’s men were arrayed with the Thirty-Third on the left flank (closest to Sudley Road), then the Second, Fourth, Twenty-Seventh, and Fifth, which anchored the right flank, closest to Young’s Branch and the Warrenton Pike. The Fifth’s center was on the Henry House Hill, making Jackson’s men “the keystone to the entire Confederate line.”67 Jackson moved his men to “a pine thicket” on Henry House Hill, between the Henry House and a small home belonging to the Robinson family. Henry House Hill was the “high point” of the battlefield, a plateau covered with wiry grass. A ravine, through which Young’s Branch flowed, separated it from Matthews Hill.68 The land was owned by Judith Carter Henry, an eighty-five-year old widow. Since the death of her husband, Henry’s farm had largely been untended, with grasses and trees sprouting up in the once cultivated fields and pastures. But Henry, who was an invalid, still lived in the house, cared for by her son, daughter, and a slave girl hired out from a neighbor. She was destined to die in her home, after

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it was shelled by artillery during the battle, becoming one of the first civilian casualties of the war.69 The Virginians were positioned on the reverse slope, or military crest of the hill, so they were both somewhat shielded and hidden from the guns of the Northerners. They hugged the hill for some three hours. During that time, they were under bombardment and could see Union infantrymen massing for an attack.70 William Tecumseh Sherman later recounted that Jackson’s men, being located “about the Henry House, which was clear, open, and gave them a decided advantage.”71 Preston’s unit took up position on the nearby William M. Lewis plantation “Brownsville.” Covering some four hundred acres, it had a main house, several outbuildings, and quarters that housed over twenty slaves.72 The Confederates to Jackson’s left were shoved off of Matthews Hill and across the fields toward Henry Hill. The Union forces broke the Confederates there after Sherman’s men crossed Bull Run at Poplar Ford. Indeed, McDowell probably missed a chance for a victory by failing to clear Henry House Hill after securing Matthews Hill.73 The Union commander may have paused thinking that the battle was essentially won. In the end, McDowell overestimated what his green troops could and would be able to do. When faced with an eventual counterattack after a long day of march-

First Manassas battle scene, with Union troops retreating toward Washington, D.C.

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ing and fighting, the Union forces became “unnerved.” The federal hesitation was all Jackson needed to secure his place in history.74 As Confederates under South Carolina’s Bernard Bee pulled back from Matthews Hill, they encountered Colonel Kenton Harper’s Fifth Virginia in the woods near Henry House Hill and rallied around their fellow Confederates. At about 1:30 p.m. Jackson’s men were finally engaged as part of an artillery duel, with the Confederates enduring shot, shell, and debris as they clutched “the red clay ground.” The barrage nearly broke the Thirty-Third. At about 3:30 p.m., Jackson decided to attack. The ThirtyThird had already been beaten back by the Eleventh New York and First Michigan, so he turned to the Fourth and Twenty-Seventh Virginia Regiments, ordering them to advance and to not fire until within fifty yards, in an attempt to take the Union artillery. Their charge produced the first Rebel yell of the war according to one commentator, a pent-up scream of aggression, fear, and righteousness. They endured a barrage of canister, took the guns, and held them after fierce fighting.75 The battle itself was one between two raw, green armies. Jackson’s men were noted in the official report for their “firmness,” garnering the Stonewall Brigade mythic status. Jackson himself gave the credit to God. Jackson, Bee, and General Nathan George Evans did much more than Beauregard to secure the victory.76 And yet, as historian John Keegan has pointed out, even with the bravery of Jackson’s men, there is no good reason as to why McDowell’s army broke and ran. Indeed, at the end of the day, the Confederates were just as unorganized, though they held the field, as the Northern troops ran back to the safety of Washington, D.C.’s ring of fortifications.77

Aftermath There was a sense of disorientation after the battle. Those Confederates not tending the dead or wounded chased the federals and looted discarded Northern baggage. Mostly though, if they were able, the Confederates just watched the Yankees run north. While some, mainly officers and politicians, debated chasing after them, for most of the soldiers it was time to recover from the shock of battle and celebrate a Southern victory.78

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A triumphant mood swept over the Confederacy. Most Southerners were sure their win over the federal forces was proof that God was on their side (after all, the battle was fought on a Sunday, when most Americans were at church) and that very soon the Confederate flag would fly over not only the White House, but also in the remaining slave states that had yet to secede. This blessed assurance would be crowned by the North accepting Southern independence. In the glow of victory they missed out on the fact that the South won the field despite “a record of bungled orders” and “sudden shifts in strategy” on the part of the commanding generals.79 For now, that did not matter. As Elisha Paxton told his wife, “We spent Sunday last in the sacred work of achieving our nationality and independence. The work was nobly done, and it was the happiest day of my life, our wedding day not accepted. I think the fight is over forever.”80 Andrew Brooks, one of Preston’s classmates who served with the Liberty Hall Volunteers, wrote home weeks later that he doubted if “the Yankees are ready fight us yet—their loss was too great on the 21st of July for them to have recovered from it so soon.”81 While Southerners saw the victory at First Manassas as proof that God endorsed their cause, for Northerners the outcome produced soul searching and bitterness, since failure in war was seen as a punishment for sin by most Americans. Fear gripped the North over what might happen next as poorly composed press releases made their way across the nation.82 North Western Christian University alum Perry Hall wrote of the battle: “disastrous news from the seat of war. People feel gloomy and sad.”83 But as time passed, Northerners realized that First Manassas was not an impediment to their hopes of ultimate victory. It “was a limited affair, with no strategic advantage gained or lost and with both armies remaining intact.” Very slowly, nearly everyone realized that First Manassas was “the great day of awakening for the whole nation, North and South together.” What it showed Americans was that battles in this war were going to be bigger and bloodier than what they had experienced before.84 The victory for the South came at a tremendous cost. The battle at Manassas was “so destructive” it was a shock.85 The Lexington-based regiments were among the hardest hit. The federal artillery decimated the Fourth Virginia. The Twenty-Seventh Virginia became known as the “Bloody 27th” because of the battle, after leading a charge into the Union

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“maelstrom,” which included enfilading fire from Yankee infantry and canister shot from Northern cannons. The Thirty-Third lost five more men (146 total) at Bull Run than did the Twenty-Seventh, and were the hardest hit of Jackson’s men.86 Preston’s peers in the Liberty Hall Volunteers also suffered at First Manassas, with five wounded and six killed (four by cannon fire, two by gunshot).87 Alexander Davidson worried that his son and nephew were at Manassas, and had “anxiety” about their fates, noting as much to James in a letter on August 12, pressing his brother for information, any word at all, on Preston, including if he could confirm if his son had been at the battle or not.88 As it turned out, he had good reason to be anxious. Both Preston and Fred Davidson were among the casualties of the battle. The first confirmation likely came via letter.89 Henry Campbell, a member of the Rockbridge Rifles, wrote his mother shortly after the battle ended about what had just occurred. While misestimating Yankee deaths, Campbell also noted that “our company was awfully cut up” and “fared rather badly”: Asbury McClure was killed. He died in the arms of Sandy Gordon and James Gillock. Joel Neff, Jonathan Moody, Preston Davidson and Charley Rollins were wounded, and Miller was wounded mortally. Moody and Davidson were wounded in the shoulder. Charley was knocked down by a piece of shell and cut on the head, he is not hurt much just a small cut on his head . . . Tom Rollins came out unhurt, Joe Neff is wounded in the hand. . . . Our regiment drove the Yankees back at the point of the bayonet. Joe Neff knocked a Yankee’s brains out with the butt of his gun. . . . We took 6 pieces of Rifled Cannon. General Patterson has been taken prisoner.90 Campbell apparently did not know that others from his unit were also dead or wounded, including Fred. In fact, there were about 2,000 Confederate dead, wounded, or missing, with Jackson’s men accounting for nearly a quarter of the number. Northern casualties, on the other hand, were approximately 1,600.91 The battlefield, with its littered dead and wounded men and animals (including a dog that had adopted the Rockbridge Rifles as his own), was a “horrifying site.”92 It rained after the battle, turning the area into a muddy morass. The Francis Lewis house, “Portici,” became a field hospital, after having served as Johnston’s headquarters for part of the day. The wounded were laid in

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the yard, waiting to be tended to, and so were exposed to the rain as it fell. Sanitary conditions then plummeted, as the Confederates remained in the area of the battlefield, the living keeping watch upon the dead.93 The initial misreporting of who was dead or wounded is hardly surprising. There is an isolation that comes with fighting, as historian Jeffery Wert put it, “as if trapped in a cocoon. A soldier’s reality covered only a small area around him.” Historian Edward Ayers adds for the benefit of modern readers as well that these young soldiers were caught up in “unbelievable noise” and in the midst of “immense confusion” for that time. To be wounded on a battlefield, and have to wait for transport to a hospital, was to know what vulnerability truly was.94 The Davidson cousins learned this firsthand. Preston was a casualty of a minnie ball, like the majority of the wounded during the Civil War. The conidial-shaped, hollow-nosed, soft lead, .58-caliber bullet flattened on impact. Fired at a low velocity by a Yankee soldier, the ball tore through Preston’s shoulder and likely left a “bursting exit wound.” Records indicate that he lost his gun during the battle; no doubt he dropped it when he was hit and it was left on the field when he was removed.95 Perhaps, Preston’s Uncle Henry tended his wounded shoulder. Perhaps he also stood beside his nephew Fred as the young man died as well. Wounded arms and legs could be patched up or amputated. Wounds to the chest were virtual death sentences, with the dying soldiers made as comfortable as possible in their final hours.96 According to Paxton, Fred “fell just as he and his comrades were taking possession of a splendid battery of the enemy’s cannon, and those who defended it were flying from the field.”97 Fred died at the Lewis House that night from his wound,98 and his final words were, “tell my Mother I died for a glorious cause.” Paxton asked his wife to “call upon Mrs. J. D. [Hannah] Davidson for me, and say to her she has reason to be proud of her brave boy. It was by the heroic services of men like him who have sacrificed their lives that the battle was won.” Fred requested to be buried on the battlefield, which was honored after consulting his father (who got permission from the Confederate government to come to Manassas to make sure it was done properly).99 Fred’s interment, and all the other burials, happened as quickly as possible for sanitary reasons.100 Davidson family cousin James Baldwin Dorman visited the Manassas battlefield on July 25, 1861. He saw Samuel

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Letcher, who took him “to the grave of poor Frederick.” And though he wanted to bring the body home, he could not.101 All the graves were marked with wooden slats shoved into the mud. But the graves were not dug deep enough as it turned out. According to accounts: “A month after the battle they [men of the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment] found hundreds of shallow graves scattered over the fields. Rain had washed much of the dirt away, and skeletal remains protruded from the ground. Hogs were feeding on the dead. It was not what the young men had expected to find. Few, in the immediate post-Sumter excitement, had allowed themselves to imagine what the horrors of war might really be like. But after Manassas, the soldiers had no choice.”102 Perhaps this is why James Davidson later had his son’s body exhumed and brought back to Lexington. Fred’s death also affected his brother, Greenlee. James Davidson charged his eldest son with settling Fred’s affairs and acquiring the final pay for “Poor Fred,” as Greenlee referred to him. Later in the war, Greenlee passed through a portion of the battlefield where his brother had died. If he felt anything, he did not convey it to James Davidson in the letter he wrote in August 1862.103 As for Preston, having survived the battle, he now had to survive recovering from his wound at a time when Americans, North and South, had little concept of mass causalities or how to treat wounds that became infected. In the wake of First Manassas, civilians were pressed into services as orderlies and nurses, homes and then whole towns were transformed into hospitals and rehabilitations centers. As Virginian Cornelia McDonald put it in 1861, “We did not begin to realize the horrors of our victory [at Manassas] till . . . the wagons began to come in with their loads of wounded men; some came, too, with the dead.”104 To ponder just how fortunate Preston was to survive, one need look only at the fate of his commander, Jackson. Nearly two years after First Manassas, Jackson was wounded three times by his own men after a dusk reconnaissance mission at the Battle of Chancellorsville. While being transported on a litter, one of the men carrying him was hit, dropping the general to the ground (where he struck his chest either on a rock or stump). He survived two ambulance wagon rides and the amputation of his left arm. What killed Jackson, and around a quarter of those like him who had an arm amputated, was infection. Gunshot wounds often contained bits of “foreign material and devitalized tissue (dead skin, bone,

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muscle, or hair)” in them, which “provide a positive environment and nutrition for bacteria to grow in and multiply.”105 Although Jackson received his wounds two years later and received superior care because of his rank, he died. Simply put, Preston was lucky. The South was just not prepared for the number of wounded it now had to tend, meaning that care and treatment was both chaotic and rather hit and miss.106 Preston ended up at the hospital in Charlottesville, where the Confederates constructed a 500-bed facility that eventually cared for about 22,000 men, utilizing both public and private buildings in the city at its peak. It opened just in time to deal with the wounded from First Manassas. Preston remained there from late July until early December.107 In many ways, Preston was fortunate to survive hospitalization. Conditions in the hospital at Charlottesville contributed to many deaths and much disgruntlement among Confederates who ended up there. At the same time Preston was under treatment, a letter signed by thirtyfour patients was sent to Confederate president Jefferson Davis claiming that hospital-borne disease was “wasting away the glorious army of the Potomac. We have lost 10 times as many men by sickness as by warfare . . . and no additional means used to prevent the spread of the fearful pestilence.” The letter writers blamed “unfit” surgeons, heaping special scorn on those transferred to Confederate service from Virginia for political reasons. Needed supplies, including food and care packages, were not being brought from the train station to the wounded.108 The situation was intolerable. But Preston survived it all and in doing so became a war hero. The victory at Manassas meant “immediate glory” to those who had fought there and outpouring of concern on the part of friends, family, and the general population. Preston’s wound was bad enough that Paxton noted that everyone would know where he had been to receive it once he returned to Lexington. Albert Davidson was less concerned about his cousin’s heroic status and much more so about his ability to recover from his wound. Fred’s younger brother wrote his mother saying, “give my love to Preston. I hope he will be well soon.”109 A similar thought raced through Alexander’s mind upon learning the news that his son had been wounded. The patriarch of the Hoosier Davidsons was able to make his way to Virginia to see his injured son. In the early stages of the conflict, it was not unheard of for people to obtain

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passes that allowed them to go through the lines for both public and private reasons. In Davidson’s case, he used his connections and Kentucky’s neutrality to his advantage. He had in his possession by the time he made his way back north letters of introduction that vouched for his reputation by Isham Harris, the Confederate governor of Tennessee; his old friend Letcher, the Confederate governor of Virginia; and General Simon Buckner, leader of the Confederate forces in Kentucky.110 Whatever Unionist sympathies remained within Alexander were cast aside by his determination to see his son. But his journey back to Lexington served another purpose as well. He was able to be in Virginia when his father died. Frederick and Preston’s grandfather, Reverend Andrew Davidson, died a few weeks after the battle that made both his grandsons veterans.111 One wonders what the patriarch of the Davidson family thought of the conflict that was already so destructive to his progeny. He had seen war before, having been born in the midst of the American Revolution and coming into his own as a young preacher during the War of 1812. During that conflict, Davidson had preached a sermon in which he asked God to safeguard “the great cement of the Union, the Federal Constitution!”112 But the sectional strife over slavery undoubtedly made him accept Virginia’s secession. The reverend’s death was noted in the valley he had so faithfully served, even with news about the aftermath of Manassas still dominating the headlines. He was described as a “self-denying, laborious, and successful minister of the Gospel.”113 Alexander was at his father’s side when he died. He wrote James a brief note, asking him to buy the old reverend a new suit and to have the coffin made. He also noted that their father passed “calmly, as if asleep.”114 How much time Alexander had with either his father or his son is unknown. Preston was furloughed to Lexington following his hospitalization, arriving at his uncle’s home in mid-December for a stay of sixty days.115 According to his records, Preston’s right shoulder had developed anchyclosis (a generic term) or fusion of the shoulder joint during the course of his stay at the hospital. The fusion might have been the result of healing in a poor position (caused if Preston was immobilized during the recovery process), or even from a possible septic infection caused by shrapnel.116 Subsequent evaluations by doctors led to a discharge from service by order of Brigadier General Charles S. Winder on April 17, 1862.117 Historian Bruce Greenawalt says that Preston was James David-

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son’s “favorite nephew.”118 Part of that closeness, was no doubt born out of Preston’s wounding and rehabilitation in the wake of Fred’s death. The battle Preston had survived, in the words of historian Wert, “marked a passage for those who experienced it and for the entire country.” Blood had been spilled. The world as they knew it would never be the samen.119 While there was much made of the victory, at least some of the Confederates admitted to “uneasiness” after it was over. Captain James Jones White, a former Washington College professor who served as the Liberty Hall Volunteers’ chaplain, noted that war meant death to and the wounding of friends and foe alike. His observation about the reality of conflict weighed on him, Preston Davidson, and their fellow combatants on both sides much more than it had a few weeks before.120

7 Torn Asunder The Battle of First Manassas, or Bull Run, was just the beginning of the war. The North and the South were now so divided that they could not even agree on what to call the battles they fought. The transition from countryman to foe was easy. Philander Smith, a North West Christian University alum who served with the Eighth Indiana, referred to Confederates as “the enemy” and as “rebels” in 1862.1 Fighting during the rest of the conflict was on a level of carnage and with enmity unthought of when South Carolina voted to leave the Union in December 1860. Historians have made much of class and race when it comes to the Civil War. But perhaps we should add another dimension—age. Looking at pictures from the time, such as George B. Covington of NWCU or Preston’s cousin, Greenlee Davidson, one is struck by how young many of these soldiers were. This was, in many ways, a war fought by the nation’s youth, including Preston Davidson. The Confederacy that Preston fought for included Virginia, and the Old Dominion was ground zero for the war. The home front and battlefront were often intermingled and the landscape became desolate. Common sacrifice bound Virginians together. Fighting Yankees took precedent over, at least in the first few years of the conflict, grumbling about what the President Jefferson Davis’s administration was doing in conducting the war. They were willing even to sacrifice principles in order to try and achieve victory, including creating an increasingly centralized government and debating imposing taxes, impressments, and even ending slavery.2 It hurt Virginians’ pride to see Union forces on the march in their state. What kept the South going, on some level, was merely resisting the North. As the Union adopted a “hard war” strategy, Southerners became

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more committed to the idea that they must be stopped, lest the entire South be open to atrocities and plunder. Northerners could not possibly be fighting for a righteous cause. To admit that, was to open the possibility that God might be on their side. Thus, Northern patriotism was believed to be spurred by “alcohol, money, or political gain.”3 Therefore, Confederate public sentiment wanted to see their forces on the march, not on the defensive. Over the course of the war, the Confederacy mobilized approximately 80 percent of its white male population to fight for its independence. This astounding statistic was made possible by slavery, which kept the home front functioning. However, such mobilization came at a price. Slowly, but surely, the South was running out of white men to fight the Yankees. Additionally, the longer the war went on, the less food and money civilians had at their disposal. The mainstay of the Southern agricultural economy, done at the expense of growing foodstuffs, was predicated on the sale of cash crops. The war, diminishing manpower, and blockade by the Union navy worked to grind the Southern economy to a halt, causing skyrocketing prices on the food and goods that did remain and leaving thousands of soldiers and civilians across the South increasingly malnourished.4 All of this was obvious to the Davidsons. Preston’s cousin, Charles Davidson, noted with some dismay in the winter of 1861 that “the country people have neither patriotism, hospitality or conscience and charge us the most exorbitant prices for everything we get, for instance butter .50 a pound, corn meal $2.00 a bushel and other things in proportion and they make it seem as if it is a hardship to part with their products.”5 A year later, Preston’s cousin, Greenlee, wrote home that “many of our soldiers are thinly clothed and without shoes . . . very few of the infantry have tents.”6 He also noted refugees, living not in homes, but wherever they could find shelter, away (it was hoped) from the armies.7 These trends were evident in Preston’s Washington College classmates who were serving with the Liberty Hall Volunteers. Andrew Brooks noted in a letter home in September 1861 that camp life brought with it “a general air of neglect and confusion” on the part of soldiers to the countryside.8 Another one of his peers from the college, Alexander S. Paxton, grew upset at his fellow Virginians who claimed to worry about the men in the front but who charged high prices for goods those same men desperately needed.9

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Preston though remained in somewhat of a bubble, insulated by his family and recuperating in Lexington. But in Indiana, he was not forgotten. News of his father’s trip to see him got out as did his decision to enlist in the Confederate cause. In January 1862 the Pythonian Literary Society of NWCU met and formally expelled him from its membership.10 Now more than ever before, his destiny lay with the South.

Death Stalks the Land Of course, in order for Preston to fulfill his destiny, he would need to survive the war. Although he was convalescing, word no doubt reached him in regular intervals that death was becoming an all too common reality among those that he knew. The deaths of friends and loved ones shaped how he saw himself and the role he believed he still needed to play in the war. Rather than fostering depression, which might lead to suicide, news of death only steeled his resolve to live.11 That being said, news was grim for many people that Preston knew. His classmates from NWCU offer a snapshot of what was happening on the Union side of the war. There were fifty-eight members of the preparatory class of 1857–58, of which both he and Dorman had been a part. Of that number, at least twenty-four served in the Civil War. Many served as officers in units from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, fighting in both the western and eastern theaters of the conflict. At least one, J. W. Armstrong of the Seventeenth Indiana, was wounded.12 In addition to the preparatory students, there were an additional forty-six students enrolled at NWCU during Preston’s second year there. Of that number, at least eleven enlisted in the Union cause.13 One of them was Charles Harding Cox, who served in the Seventieth Indiana. Cox was a class behind Dorman and Preston, and a classmate of Steven Sedam, who summed up the feelings of many in the student body, saying he was prepared to fight “until [the] extermination of every southern sinner in arms.”14 One NWCU alum, an upper classman when Preston first started college, became a living hero. Marion T. Anderson joined the Fifty-First Indiana in 1861. He was captured in 1863 and was taken to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, before escaping in December, after seven months of imprisonment. He married Ovid Butler’s daughter, Janett, in January 1864 but soon returned to the army. During the Battle of Nashville in De-

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cember 1864, after several previous assaults had been repulsed, Anderson led Company D of the Fifty-First “over five lines of the enemy’s works, where he fell, severely wounded.” He “was struck by a rifle ball as he was turning to give some command to his men the ball entered a few inches to the left of his spine coming out [thanks to a surgeon] above the point of the hip on the right side.” He fell from his horse, escaped a shelling (that his men fell back from), and made his own way back down the hill. For his bravery and determination, Anderson received the Congressional Medal of Honor.15 The most remembered death amongst the NWCU alumni was that of Joseph R. T. Gordon, a member of Dorman and Preston’s prep class. Gordon was later described as “a young, spirited youth of the class of ’63,” and a man who had “wonderful mental brilliancy and promise.” He enlisted in September 1861 as a private in Company G of the Ninth Indiana, served in western Virginia, and fought and died at the Battle of Allegheny Mountain in December while trying to find an officer to lead a charge he had put together. Before he fell, he was credited with killing five Rebels. His father (a leading Hoosier Republican) noted that at the time of his death, Joseph was writing a letter home about why he needed to be in harm’s way. It was because his father had taught him to value “freedom,” and to honor God, country, and family.16 He was remembered by Scot Butler, the son of Ovid and a classmate of both Preston and Joseph’s. The younger Butler wrote after the war: One day when with his comrades he rushed in deadly charge across a lead-swept field, panting, not more from physical exhaustion than from exaltation of spirit, joyous with the fierce joy of battle, confident, victorious, with fair brow upraised—in that supreme moment there came one lightening flash of agony and death claimed him. So he died—died at seventeen—and the fair promise of his years were snuffed out with a musket shot. He died a boy, but he died with men, and his soul, too goes marching on. Gordon’s portrait hung in the NWCU chapel into the twentieth century.17 Preston lost another friend, NWCU classmate, and fraternity brother when Platt J. Squier died at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. As his brother, George, described it in a letter home, “a musket ball struck on the right side of the bowels and passed through the point of the hip bone.” Though Platt initially survived, thanks in large part to his brother’s assistance,

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between the wound itself, being transported, and medical conditions of the time, he eventually died.18 Other NWCU students Preston knew paid the ultimate price for preserving the Union as well. Lieutenant Colonel Squire Isham Keith of the Twenty-Second Indiana died at Chaplin Hills, Kentucky (near Perryville), in 1862.19 Marshall P. Hayden of the Fifty-Fourth Indiana was captured at Chickasaw Bayou in December 1862 and died from his wounds in a Confederate prison in Vicksburg in January 1863.20 Lieutenant Covington of the Seventeenth Indiana, whose last words were, “tell father and mother that I have tried to do my duty, and that I die a Christian soldier,” was shot by a Confederate sharpshooter at Dallas, Georgia, in May 1864.21 Also dying in 1864 were Sergeant Major Marion Elston of the Thirty-Seventh Indiana (at the Battle of Atlanta), Captain Addison M. Dunn of the Fifty-Seventh Indiana (at the Battle of Franklin in 1864), and John Doyal of the Seventh Indiana, who grabbed his unit’s colors at the Battle of the Wilderness and was shot three times before he died.22 Perhaps the biggest loss to NWCU though was Perry Hall, the “brilliant young preacher.” Hall turned twenty-five in 1862 and war fever gripped him. He believed Christians should view the conflict as crushing a rebellion, not a war of conquest, preached in favor of the Union cause (to combat antiwar Disciples), and to Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton in Indianapolis as well. By the summer of 1862 his wife told him that he could enlist if he got a chaplaincy. Though he refused to “electioneer” for the post, Hall did use his friendship with Governor Oliver P. Morton’s wife, Lucinda (who was a Disciple), to talk to the governor about such an appointment, as well as make his hopes known to other friends already in the service. He was appointed to the Seventy-Ninth Indiana in August. Hall died from camp illness (likely typhoid) before the end of the year.23 Death also claimed friends and family fighting for the Confederacy. By 1863 the war had taken a heavy toll on the Lexington community, especially on people Preston knew and loved. His classmate, Willy Preston, the son of Virginia Military Institute’s Colonel John Preston and one of the Reverend William Spotswood White’s sons who marched with the Liberty Hall Volunteers, Hugh White, were both killed at Second Manassas in August 1862.24 Less than a year later, at the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Confederate victory came at a tremendous cost. Stonewall Jackson, the architect of the battle plan, was killed by his own men. Also falling at the

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battle were Elisha Paxton and Greenlee. All three were buried in Lexington’s cemetery, with Jackson’s burial coming close to being a state funeral in its scope, and an event that Preston may very well have taken part in as part of the honor guard of convalescing soldiers who marched in the procession to the burial grounds. While Paxton was missed, Jackson’s death deeply moved the people of Lexington and shocked Southerners, some of whom now wondered if God was for them or not.25 Preston knew all three men well, but of course he felt his older cousin’s loss more personally. Greenlee’s unit had been in heavy fighting during the first day and was not engaged on the second day, but Davidson opted to join an infantry charge, where he was mortally wounded. Greenlee had left his post as aide to Virginia governor John Letcher in 1862 in order to take a field command in an artillery unit. Prior to the battle, the twenty-nine-year-old had remained healthy and had proven himself to be a good officer. Like his brother, Fred, his last words as conveyed to his family were full of calm, duty, and about home. Greenlee’s death was hard on both his parents. James Davidson noted that his son’s “untimely death weighs upon me.” Hannah Davidson soon received a letter from cousin James Dorman that he prayed for “God [to] pity and support you.”26 Death was also stalking the institution of slavery. For Northerners, the war had commenced as a means to preserve the Union, but with each day federal troops were in the South the root cause of the war—slavery—was also being called into question. Union soldiers came to see the institution as a “blight” that was keeping the South from reaching its full potential. That realization, of course, did not always extend to outright abolitionist sentiments, but it did open the door for talking about slavery’s destruction as a positive for all involved.27 Not surprisingly, President Abraham Lincoln had reached much the same conclusion. Following the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, the president issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, to take effect on January 1, 1863, if the rebellious Southern states did not return to the Union. When that happened, the destruction of slavery was an official war aim of the North and Union forces were now armies of liberation, with their advance speeding up the self-emancipation among slaves that had started with the war itself.28 Just as the deaths of friends and family affected Preston and the rest

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Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Jackson gravesite

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Abraham Lincoln signs Emancipation Proclamation

of the Davidson family, the potential destruction of slavery as an institution also lingered over their heads. While not part of the planter aristocracy, both Preston’s grandmother and his Uncle James owned slaves and relied on them in numerous ways. Indeed slaves assisted Preston, in his convalescence. To answer the call to arms again, in 1863, would mean he and his cousins were fighting to preserve slavery as an institution.29

“We’ll Stand by the Cross” The war Preston was involved in was seen in providential terms, both in the South as well as in the North. It gave both sides heart to continue the war, sure as they were that God was on their side. Churches kept the morale of the civilian population high, even as they largely failed to “prepare either side for the carnage” brought on by the conflict.30 As Preston thought of his future, he perhaps came to believe that God had spared him at Manassas because there was work for him still to do on behalf of his family and his country. Having been part of the Stonewall Brigade, even in its infancy, Preston had experienced what faith in the military was like.31 He had grown up a Presbyterian, experiencing both the Old and New Schools, and been exposed to notions of a Christian gentleman as defined by the Young Virginia movement at Washington College. Preston, back in the embrace of Lexington Presbyterian, having experienced fighting, dying, and civilian suffering, was ready to view the war as a religious crusade on behalf of Southern independence.32 In doing so, he was following trends within American evangelical Protestantism in the South during the war. Southern clergymen constructed the myth of pious (and thus righteous) Confederate soldiers at Bible and prayer meetings, while their Yankee foes gambled and played

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cards. Full of pride and led by “religious fanatics” who dared to condemn a biblical institution (slavery) as a sin, the South would triumph in the end. But as Southerners grew desperate, such promises were not enough. If Southern independence was a crusade, and while the South might be witnessing some divine judgment on the battlefields, then God was involved, and that meant there could be divine deliverance. They told their congregations to trust in God and fight the Yankees even harder.33 As the Southern hymn, “The Star-Spangled Cross and the Pure White Field” attested: For years we have cringed to the uplifted rod, For years have demanded our right, Our voice shouts defiance, our trust is in God, And the strong arm that gives us our might.

Our hills and our vales with the death shriek may ring, And our forests may swarm with the foe, But still to the breeze our proud banner we’ll fling, And to Vict’ry or Death we will go.34

Not surprisingly, the Southern Presbyterians Preston knew best took the lead in constructing a theological argument for both the Confederacy and for the war. They argued that Christianity in the North had been perverted and that only in the South did the true faith reside in an orthodox manner. Slavery, according to Robert Lewis Dabney, who opposed secession but served as a chaplain to the Eighteenth Virginia and briefly as Jackson’s chief of staff, was a good thing, and abolitionism was an “infidel,” “anti-scriptural” idea.35 By 1863 American churches were no longer pretending to be politically neutral. In the North, this meant affirming or reaffirming their denominational loyalty to the Union and even blessing the use of force.36 When the Civil War broke out, New School Presbyterians, whom Preston had been raised among, tended to align their denomination not only with the cause of the Union, but also with the abolition of slavery. As historian George Marsden has noted, the New School Presbyterians believed “it was the duty of Christians to help preserve the federal government.” To join the Union army was a sign you were a good Christian. To join with the Confederates was to rebel against God Himself, since He had placed the Lincoln administration into power. But the war was also a sign that the United States was under divine judgment because of slavery. It took

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Old Schoolers, who were always very supportive of the Union, until 1864, however, to embrace emancipation.37 The Disciples of Christ, the denomination that had helped create NWCU where Preston had first attended college, like the Old School Presbyterians, were a bit more conflicted. Officially, they did not want the war to interfere with a Christian’s duty to God and the denomination did not splinter because of either the conflict or slavery. This was only accomplished because there was no national denominational hierarchy. Disciples supported both sides in the conflict. And it shattered the “communication between churches of the North and South.”38 Alexander Campbell, the denomination’s founder, was distressed by the war’s outbreak. His family was divided, with a son serving the Confederacy and a nephew fighting for the Union. Campbell was a pacifist and refused to support either side. He had a kindred spirit in Hoosier-born Benjamin Franklin, the editor of American Christian Review. A descendant of the founding father of the same name, Franklin was proud of representing the views of the “common man.” He attempted to be the literary voice of the Disciples, in the vein of Campbell and could be very harsh in his criticism.39 Franklin soon turned his attention and his pen toward NWCU. On June 24, 1862, the Review published a scathing attack on the Indiana university. Using Ovid Butler’s antislavery and antisecession views as sources to blast NWCU, Franklin reopened the old feud about the school’s founding and attacked the institution for its “ultraism” and “lobbyism.” Doctor Patrick Henry Jameson, Butler’s son-in-law, offered a resolution against the Review disputing the attack and the allegation that the school was political. Franklin’s loyalty to the Union was also challenged. The board then stated, “For the first time we now state that the members of this board and of the faculty of the institution are true and loyal to the Constitution and government of the United States and warmly and deeply sympathize with the soldiers of the Union who are engaged in the suppression of the present wicked rebellion.” Two members of the board, Butler K. Smith and Judge Jerimiah Smith, were against the resolution. Judge Smith resigned from the board (though he remained on the Business Committee, where he remained a “naysayer”), citing the views of southern Indiana Disciples such as himself who believed the North was in error for waging war upon the Confederacy.40 .

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Though he was no longer part of the board, Judge Smith refused to let the issue go. He did not accept that slavery was a sin, or that it was worth fighting a war over. In 1863, following a round of missives between himself, Butler, and Thomas Wiley (a Disciples minister in Union City, Indiana), Smith had the correspondence edited and published as a book, Is Slavery Sinful? The judge took the position that it was not, while Butler took the opposite stance. The two lawyers tore into each other’s arguments as if they were in a courtroom, leaving the minister in the uncomfortable position siding with one (usually Butler) Disciple against another.41 Smith did not believe that slavery was a sin and that claiming it to be against God’s design was “a perturbation, a disturbance of the thoughts; it excites the passions and prevents reason, reflection, and comparison.” Therefore, “the dominate party” was responsible for “shedding rivers of blood, and wasting millions of treasure, and making thousands widows and orphans, carrying devastation, fire, and sword throughout the land.” In Smith’s reading, the South was blameless when it came to the war. The responsibility for the conflict was all on abolitionists and Republicans.42 Butler countered that Smith “quotes often from the Scriptures, and yet rarely makes a quotation without introducing his own interpretations and emendations.” To the founder of NWCU, this was nothing less than “liberty to tamper” with God’s word and thus, Smith missed out that there was a difference between a servant and a slave in the Bible. But more importantly, he missed out that biblical slavery was not what the South was practicing.43 The Smith-Butler debate settled very little. Life on the campus Preston had left behind continued, as did the war he had been wounded in. Northern and Southern Christians remained divided and at odds and were killing one another. But for Preston, the debate Smith and Butler were involved in was far from hypothetical, and he was preparing to return to the fray not with words but by once again taking up arms for his chosen side.

Preston’s Return to the Front In spite of his injury and discharge from the army, Preston still wanted to do his part for the Confederacy. If we compare Preston to other, similar, wounded veterans, his decision is not surprising. One soldier from

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Georgia wrote home, “I must say that I cannot [leave the army], so long as I know that any of them [doctors] entertain a doubt of my PERMANENT disability.”44 Preston was simply looking for the right opportunity. In the first few months after his wounding though, returning to the front did not look like an option at all. In February 1862 James Davidson wrote to Greenlee about his son’s new company and command. He told him that “Preston would also like to join, but his arm is helpless.” He hoped that Greenlee would talk to Jefferson Davis about his cousin and perhaps find some way for him to serve in Richmond.45 If Greenlee was able to talk to the Confederate president is unknown and it appears as though Preston remained in Lexington. Time though, was on Preston’s side. His wounded shoulder got better, but he also got better at living with its limitations. While it was a hindrance, his shoulder was not truly debilitating. He was young, having just turned twenty-one earlier in 1863, and he had resources at his disposal few other Virginians could match. In particular, he could depend on his Uncle James Davidson’s personal and political connections to the governor of Virginia. Eventually, these factors won out over his medical discharge.46 For one, Preston had daily reminders of sacrifice and death around him. His own wound of course, but by 1863 the fresh graves of friends and family members as well. Walking around Lexington would have eventually led him near the cemetery, where his cousins, Greenlee and Fred, were buried alongside Stonewall Jackson, Willy Preston, and Elisha Paxton. Fighting and dying for a cause fit well with being a Christian gentleman, but sitting out the war and no longer defending your country or ideals did not. It would have been easy for him to vow on their graves that he would honor their memories. To do that, however, meant finding a way back into the army.47 He had likely been thinking about his options long before Greenlee and Jackson were buried. After the Battle of Antietam in 1862, soldiers from the Shenandoah valley, including members of the Rockbridge Rifles and Liberty Hall Volunteers, returned to Lexington for a brief furlough.48 Seeing old comrades put in stark contrast for Preston the life he was now living as a discharged soldier with the service his friends and family were performing in the field. He may have flirted with the idea of joining the home guard (comprised of former servicemen, those who remained at

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home, and those too old or too young to enlist), which was supposed to protect Virginia’s citizens from federal arms, possible slave revolts, and even armed deserters when the various Confederate armies in Virginia were not available. Because the state was the main battleground in the eastern theater, the home guard functioned as a sort of reserve and saw plenty of action. Since his Uncle James helped organize the home guard in Rockbridge County, Preston would have found appointment easy and a military sense of community his for the asking.49 Preston, however, may have considered the home guard beneath him. Having seen action firsthand, he may not only have felt duty bound to go back to the front, but also felt uncomfortable sitting at home with many who had not. Furthermore, there existed a disconnect between the soldiers at the front (and those who had seen action) and those at home. Younger officers in the Confederate ranks were highly nationalistic. Most wanted real commands fighting on battlefields, not sitting and waiting at home. Perhaps Preston missed the rush of battle and the feeling that he actively working for the South’s independence.50 By 1863 the Confederacy was in desperate need of experienced leadership. The Army of Northern Virginia, in particular, was running out of good officers.51 Preston had all the makings of becoming one, and fit all the criteria laid out by historian Gary Gallagher: “[of the] more than 900 field officers in Lee’s army—roughly half of all who served—graduated from colleges and universities. Of those, 44 percent attended institutions in Virginia. Students on Virginia’s campuses during the 1850s thus deserve notice, and ample evidence suggests that many of them defended slavery ostentatiously, portrayed the North as a predatory menace, and exhibited a pronounced allegiance to the South.”52 Despite being a Hoosier by birth, Preston was among them, and was soon wearing a uniform again. Preston joined Company A, First Virginia Infantry Battalion (Regulars), which was also known as the Irish Battalion, on June 10, 1863. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant by Governor John Letcher with pay of eighty dollars a month. Preston helped fill a void in the unit. By the spring of 1863 the First Virginia Battalion was beset not only by two years of combat deaths, but also by disease and desertion, the latter of which was becoming rampant.53

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His new unit had been organized in May 1861. Most of the men came from the Richmond area and many of them were Irish (the largest immigrant group in the South). There were five companies. It served at First Manassas, Cheat Mountain, Seven Days, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and other engagements. By the time Preston arrived for duty, the brigade was assigned to general headquarters and provost guard.54 Once again, Preston was serving with family. Charles Davidson had been with the Irish Brigade since early in the war. A Virginia Military Institute graduate who had been attending law school at the University of Virginia when Virginia had seceded, Charles had served for a time as an aide to Letcher before resigning and being commissioned as a lieutenant with Company E in October 1861. Davidson sported a full beard and served with the brigade without interruption, save when he worked as a recruiter in February 1862. By Antietam, he was promoted to captain with the strong endorsement of several officers from the unit. He served in that capacity, again without illness or mishap, until the end of 1864, when he was detached to command a military prison. Unlike so many others, Charles survived the war and surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.55 Preston was now an officer, which brought with it new responsibilities. He no doubt knew that most of the men under him would not take kindly to humiliation when it came to discipline. Nor would they want him to act like a tyrant. His task of taking command would be complicated by the fact that he was coming into an existing unit. Thankfully, he had both Charles and Greenlee to look up to as examples. Preston knew he needed to look out for his men in both big and little ways. He also knew he needed to downplay the role his family connections had played in getting him his position Luckily, lower-class whites were more apt to respect a member of the younger generation, such as Preston, than they were older Southerners, and he took to being an officer naturally.56 He now found himself on provost duty. The assignment was necessary for the discipline of the army and to guarantee Southern manpower. The mission included: “the purely military duties such as measures against stragglers and deserters, the control of prisoners of war, and the maintenance of military discipline, plus additional duties associated with the pass port system and martial law” according to historian Kenneth Radley.57 It was not glamorous, but it was necessary.

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Halting desertions became increasingly important as the war turned against the South and manpower became harder to find. Deserting was the easiest way possible for men to show their displeasure about any topic that might arise. Some left because of war weariness, others because their officers (the vast majority of enlisted men did not own slaves, while the vast majority of officers did and were used to blacks obeying their orders) did something to upset them. Other men simply did not return to the front from legitimate furloughs—whether to plant crops, tend to family, or recuperate from wounds. The Confederate government recognized this as a problem, and so began to cut the number of furloughs that were authorized, which only led to more deliberate desertions. By 1863 halting desertions became a top priority for the Army of Northern Virginia.58 Such duty could be tedious as well as hazardous. Preston’s cousin, Greenlee, had attempted to be a strict disciplinarian, which led to nearly a quarter of his men (described by his brother Albert as “the hardest cases I ever saw. They are worse than Charley’s Irishmen”) deserting from camp. He had dealt with them by taking out newspaper advertisements to try and capture them.59 Preston’s cousin, Albert, eventually found duty handling new enlistments and tracking down deserters. It was the latter role that cost Albert his life, when he was shot by a deserter on April 9, 1865. He died a month later, at the age of twenty-three, leaving a widow, a newborn daughter, and the unfilled dream of becoming a Presbyterian minister.60 The best-case scenario was to use “seasoned battalions,” which is exactly what the Army of Northern Virginia did with the First Virginia. The unit served in the provost capacity, along with other units assisting it, for nearly the entire war. Preston’s cousin, Charles, grew frustrated at the assignment. At Fredericksburg, the First Virginia formed a “straggler line” to insure that men did not leave the battlefield and try to return home instead of fighting. It was also on provost duty at headquarters at Gettysburg.61 This may have been Preston’s first assignment. In addition to his duty, Preston had to get used to camp life again. Living outside, getting sick, proper sanitation, all these things were on a scale that most Americans (North or South) had no frame of reference for prior to 1861. Scot Butler, Preston’s NWCU classmate, wrote of camp life as being “rude and squalid.”62 Perhaps not surprisingly, Preston was soon sick and at a Lynchburg hospital from September to December 1863. Records

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do not say why, nor at which of the many hospitals (medical professionals had created separate hospitals in converted tobacco warehouses in order to specialize on specific diseases or injuries) that operated in Lynchburg he was a patient at. It is possible that Preston contracted an additional illness while in the hospital, which was common (because of the close quarters in the hospitals), considering how long he remained away from the front.63 But he was most assuredly back in the army now.

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Morgan’s Raid At almost the same time Preston was returning to the field, his brother, Dorman, was answering the call to duty as well. However, the older Davidson brother was not in Virginia, he was in Indiana and he was marching off to fight on behalf of the Union. The impetus for his enlistment was Confederate general John Hunt Morgan’s raid into the state. Hoosiers had worried about a Confederate invasion of the state since the outbreak of the war. Indeed, Confederates under the command of Brigadier General Adam R. Johnson of Kentucky had launched an incursion into Indiana at Newburgh in July 1862. Hoosier resistance and mobilization quickly turned the tide and forced the Confederates back.64 But Johnson’s raid was not the last time Hoosiers would see Confederate gray on the north side of the Ohio River. Another Kentuckian, Morgan, also had his sights set on Indiana. Morgan believed passionately in the Confederate cause and in the destiny of Kentucky as part of the Confederate States of America. His men were officially attached to General Braxton Bragg’s command, but Morgan found John Hunt Morgan Bragg to be too “timid.” Morgan convinced Bragg to allow him to lead a raid out of Tennessee and into Kentucky, but got such a vaguely worded official order that he quickly expanded his operation to include an

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invasion of the North without further consultation with his commanding officer. Moving into Kentucky, Morgan began making his way north to the Ohio River. Scouting for the raid into Indiana was conducted in June. The Hoosier State’s border was far from secure, the Confederates had found ample support in Kentucky, and Morgan’s enthusiasm was high.65 On July 8, 1863, Morgan brought 2,400 men into Indiana. The exact reason for the raid has always been a matter of conjecture. Whether he hoped to divert Union attention from other areas (the Vicksburg and Gettysburg campaigns were both occurring during the start of his raid), or if he hoped to embolden Southern sympathizers (perhaps even liberating prisoners of war) remains up for debate. All that matters is that Morgan’s forces crossed the Ohio River, raided Corydon, Salem, DuPont, Versailles and other small Hoosier towns, and brought the war to Indiana.66 Governor Morton called on Hoosier volunteers to repel the invasion. His request was quickly heeded. Having no definitive intelligence on how many men Morgan had with him, Indiana created thirteen new regiments between July 8 and July 17 to deal with the raid. These units were put together as fast as men could arrive in Indianapolis. As the New York Times noted, “the whole population of the Capitol [sic] were drilling; even the ministers and teachers had formed a military company.” Within fortyeight hours, 65,000 Hoosiers were called into service to stop the Confederates. They were soon positioned to protect Indianapolis and to chase the raiders.67 Dorman Davidson was among those who answered Morton’s call. Dorman was named first sergeant of Company H, 107th Indiana, on July 10, 1863. The unit was deployed outside Indianapolis to protect the capital. While the unit was only in existence for just over a week, two things stand out. First, that Dorman opted to enlist at all. Second, that he did so after his father had died.68 Alexander Davidson died on March 28, 1863. His final years were surely ones of dread and mental anguish. He was worried about Preston of course, but he was also worried about himself and the family he still had in Indianapolis. And for those reasons, he had refused to allow Dorman to enlist in the Union war effort. Alexander wrote his brother, James, shortly after the war started, “I have refused to allow Dorman to go with the company of which he has been a member and an officer for some years.” The reason was because “it would compromise me at home. From

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his father’s letter it would seem that Dorman was involved with military training either with his Uncle Winston Noble or at NWCU after returning home from VMI.69 Alexander needed his son at home, and Dorman was the dutiful son, remaining at his father’s side, helping to watch over the farm and care for his younger siblings. That is not to say that everyone in the community understood what was going on at the Davidson house. Dorman’s lack of participation in the war effort was noted by some Indianapolis residents. He was grouped in with men such as Ed Sunwalt as one of the “stays-at-home.” Alexander’s death freed Dorman to take an active, if limited, role in the war.70 There is one other factor to consider in Dorman’s enlistment, and that is the draft riots of 1863. Morgan’s raid happened at the same time as general discontent in the North against the draft, including in Indiana (where two draft officials were killed).71 While best symbolized by the riots in New York, we should not assume that Dorman was unaware of the draft, the disturbances, or the expectations that as someone who was able bodied and staying at home, he might be expected to either enlist or be suspected as a protestor of the law. Enlisting to repel Morgan after his father’s death not only allowed him to be patriotic, but also dispelled any lingering doubt as to where his loyalty resided. Dorman and his new fellow soldiers were no match for Morgan and his experienced men. However, the Hoosier response dampened Morgan’s spirits and his plan, whatever that may have been. The raid was conducted behind enemy lines, and thanks to the influx of Hoosier volunteers, Morgan and his men had to fight (or avoid fighting) every step of the way. The Confederates also had to pillage Hoosier homes and stores in order to sustain themselves, including “trading” (or stealing) horses with farmers as they cut across the state toward Ohio. While it generated a good deal of fear and excitement, in the end Morgan’s raid accomplished almost nothing for the Confederacy, except proving the loyalty of Hoosiers such as Dorman.72 Dorman’s time in the field was short, but significant. The Confederates under Morgan were repulsed. Dorman had done his duty by taking a stand for the Union, and the state, that Preston had turned his back upon.

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Into the Wilderness While 1863 saw both Dorman and Preston take the field, 1864 saw the Northern cause begin to eclipse the Southern one. Historian Gordon Rhea has labeled it “a season of desperation for the Confederacy,” and both Rhea and historian Noah Andre Trudeau have argued that Southern desperation bred a “nasty edge” to the fighting, with little glory but only hard, difficult, warfare ahead.73 Indeed, there was a sense of overwhelming bleakness engulfing much of the South, nowhere worse than in Virginia. Portions of the state “had been stripped bare,” with abandoned or burned homes, battle-scarred fields, dwindling food supplies, and a population in shock.74 The Army of Northern Virginia passed the winter of 1863–64 with just enough protection from the elements and just enough food, but never enough of either, to stop the worry that things were only going to get worse for the Confederates.75 General Robert E. Lee, in particular, was worried about dwindling supplies. His only remaining asset was his veteran soldiers. They believed in him and his ability to produce victories and doubted if the new commander of Union forces, General Ulysses S. Grant, would be able to defeat them, despite the growing odds against them.76 If their faith was going to bear fruit, then it would need to happen during the spring campaign. The Confederacy was teetering, but not yet falling apart. The prevailing belief in Virginia was that if Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia could drive back Grant, it might also cause other federal armies, especially those in the West, to pause as well. If the general white population was showing signs of war weariness, Southern patriotism (bordering on outright nationalism) was still strong in the army, and many realized that only victory on the battlefield could ensure the Confederacy’s future.77 Achieving those much needed victories could only come through fighting, and fighting meant men would die. And Lee’s aggressive style of combat meant that he lost men in roughly the same proportion as his Northern opponents. By 1864 he had no more reserves to call upon, as conscription in the South was at its peak and could only decline, whereas the Northern armies continued to grow.78 The men Lee now led, including Preston, were not only the Confederacy’s best hope, they were also all the hope the South had left.

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The Overland Campaign, which became better known for its opening series of battles in the Wilderness, marked Grant’s attempt to not just defeat the Army of Northern Virginia, but to destroy it. Lincoln’s belief in Grant was not hard to understand. The president had long been disappointed in the generals of the eastern theater. But in Grant he found a man who would not just fight, but had won victory after victory—Forts Henry and Donnelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Lookout Mountain. The men Grant came east to command did not initially share that faith, believing that the spring always seemed to belong to Lee, but their new commander believed that victory was only a matter of time.79 In the Wilderness, Grant unleashed a massive assault on Confederate forces. From May 7 through May 12, 1864, in a series of battles the Army of Northern Virginia lost about 12,000 men, including famed cavalry officer J. E. B. Stuart. These were men the Confederates could not replace. Just as bad, while Lee was able to block Grant’s army, he could not stop it from launching attack after attack. Grant had seized the initiative and kept hammering Lee’s forces. Even when he faced setbacks, the Union commander never stopped pressing toward his overall goal: the destruction of Lee’s army.80 All that staved off a complete collapse was that at Lee’s request, Richmond rushed reinforcements to help halt the Union advance.81 Among the units rushed forward to stop Grant was Preston’s First Virginia, which was attached to General Richard Ewell’s reserve corps. The First Virginia’s role in all this was crucial in 1864, both in keeping men in the fight and administering prisons. But they also protected vital points (Charles Davidson, for example, was tasked with guarding the Halfway Station on the Petersburg and Richmond Railroad) and were called into action themselves. Ewell was from northern Virginia, a West Point graduate, and a career army officer before the war who had agonized over joining the Confederacy. His religious faith was made deeper by his friendship with Stonewall Jackson, with whom he had worked well with. Ewell used his reserves ably during the Wilderness. More important for Lee, he continued to do so, helping to save Richmond in late September 1864.82 Among the Confederate wounded from the Wilderness campaign was Preston. On May 15, 1864, he arrived in Richmond, after being wounded in both legs. He was admitted to Chimborazo, to Hospital Number 3. Chimborazo was the largest hospital in the South during the war, with

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Wounded Union soldiers at the Battle of the Wilderness

one of the lowest mortality rates (around 9 percent). In constructing the hospital, Confederate officials had learned from the mistakes of the first year of the war. Chimborazo was built in a pavilion style, with plenty of windows and open spaces, since it was found that “the majority of field fatalities . . . were caused by preventable diseases that swept through camps and hospitals.” Preston’s condition was noted as “V S Left Thigh,” and must have been relatively minor, as he returned to duty on May 26.83 By the end of the Wilderness campaign, the only real hope the Confederacy had was a negotiated political settlement brought on by a stubborn defense and even that was but a glimmer of a hope. The Army of Northern Virginia was reeling and for all intents and purposes done as an effective offensive fighting force. While some Southerners believed that Grant’s failure to take Richmond would bring about a stalemate, Lee was not among them. By mid-June, as the Union general began moving his men toward Petersburg and Lee was rushing to defend the city, the Confederate general acknowledged to some of his officers that a siege would mean the end of the Southern goal of independence.84

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Lexington’s Fate

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Part of what Preston was fighting for was the defense of his beloved Shenandoah valley. The Davidsons had a special attachment to the 165mile expanse of earth. Its reputation as the “breadbasket of Virginia,” as well as the communities that were in it (from Harpers Ferry in the north to Lexington in the south), made it valuable to the Confederacy as well, while also making it a target for Union forces. For much of the war, the valley, and in particular Lexington, was spared from the destruction that combat caused. But by 1864 the war finally came directly to the Davidsons’ hometown. It is not as though the valley only now appeared on the federal list of places to occupy. Northern forces had attempted to seize it several times already during the course of the war, but each time they had been repulsed. In 1862 they were defeated (humiliated really) by Jackson. The following year, while most of the valley remained in Confederate hands, the danger of a Union assault returned. Lexington itself was thrown into a panic that fall when General William W. Averell’s forces came into the valley. While a defense mixing home guard, VMI cadets, and Confederate regulars was assembled, ultimately Averell opted to move around Lexington to hit points farther south. This near miss convinced the Confederate government that the valley was secure, and that most of the regular forces could be sent elsewhere. Their belief was seemingly validated in May 1864 when VMI cadets helped repulse a Union advance led by General Franz Sigel at the Battle of New Market.85 David Hunter The situation was about to change, thanks to a switch in Union commanders. General David Hunter, a sixty-one-year old West Point graduate, who had served in the Mexican War, was put in charge of clearing the valley for the North. An antislavery

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advocate, Hunter was an early supporter of Lincoln and had led Union forces in clearing Matthews Hill at First Manassas. Wounded, Hunter eventually returned to the war, abolishing slavery in Florida (ahead of the Emancipation Proclamation and to the chagrin of Lincoln) and had then raised an all-black unit, the Fist South Carolina, to help seize coastal portions of that state. For his actions, Hunter was hated throughout the Confederacy.86 Hunter moved his men from Cedar Creek at the end of May and “defeated the principal Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley” at the Battle of Piedmont on June 5, opening the “breadbasket of Virginia” to Union advances. He then turned his attention toward Lexington. His actions began the destruction and disruption of the area’s “militaryindustrial complex” and forced Lee to move men from the RichmondPetersburg front.87 The Union forces approached Lexington with 18,000 men, to which the Confederates could only muster 1,500. By burning a bridge, Brigadier General John McCausland delayed Hunter’s arrival in Lexington, but the outnumbered Confederates opted to retreat rather than fight. The delay gave civilians, including Margaret Junkin Preston, time to hide valuables and items belonging to VMI.88 Some of the cadets did take shots at the advancing Union soldiers. In response, Hunter’s artillery drove them off, lobbing shells after the retreating rebels (some of which landed in the cemetery, prompting charges that the Yankees were aiming for Jackson’s grave). Both VMI and Washington College were ransacked and vandalized (especially the institute), houses were searched (Governor Letcher’s home was even set afire), and property was “confiscated.” It was the indignity of Northern soldiers in her home that finally made Margaret a devoted Confederate nationalist.89 She was not alone. The raid created the first stirrings of the eventual Lost Cause myth within the citizens of Lexington. Residents simply could not believe that Hunter’s attack and occupation of Lexington (despite the presence of VMI and Confederate forces in the area) had any justification at all. Furthermore, the Yankees were described as “insolent and disgusting,” lacking social graces and common courtesy, the exact opposite, residents were sure, of their own soldiers. Baker Davidson, Preston’s uncle, later referred to the raid as one of “insane malice.”90 It was the reality of war that was shocking. Yes, deaths had occurred,

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but the war was now really upon them. Myth became both a balm and a salve for reality. After all, while they may not have supported secession at first, residents in Lexington (and throughout Virginia) had embraced the Confederacy. What was a war for independence for Southerners was a rebellion against the federal government to Northerners. To believe their soldiers were always Christian gentlemen and those fighting for the Union were barbarians of a kind was to also disregard the facts. As Lee’s move into Pennsylvania or Morgan’s raid into Indiana showed, Southern soldiers could be just as destructive to property as any Union troops.91 Indeed, federal troops often surprised Virginians with their good behavior. And, as NWCU alum Charles Harding Cox noted, as the Union army marched upon Savannah, Georgia, they made sure that “the poor people are respected by the soldiers and their property protected while the rich are persecuted when caught and their barns, gins, and houses fall victims to the invaders match.” Poor whites, resentful that wealthy Southerners had launched the war and then avoided fighting in it, often helped Union forces find where wealthy planters hid goods.92 Creating a mythic reality was better than dealing with emancipation. Just as Hunter’s soldiers presence was shocking to Lexington’s residents, so to was the fact that when given the opportunity, slaves were willing to leave their owners. When advancing Union forces were far away, slaves stayed loyal to their masters, but that did not mean they believed slavery should, or would, survive the war. Many were simply waiting for the right time to flee. Beyond the betrayal for whites was the realization that now they would have to do work for themselves.93 Three of the Davidson family slaves, including one named Tip, left with Hunter’s men following the raid on Lexington. The family also lost some horses. Preston’s cousin, Albert, was very worried about their grandmother, who had only one slave left to tend the farm.94 The loss of property, especially of the human variety, shocked Southerners. James Davidson wrote to Letcher in February 1862 that “the slaves of the Cotton States are different from ours. Ours are family slaves, raised by family attachments. Liberty is sweet to every human being, white or black. We are sacrificing everything for it now. With the temptation of liberty, I would not trust the most faithful slave.”95 Ultimately, the lure of freedom was stronger than any sort of “attachment,” and white Southerners such as Davidson were at a loss to explain why their slaves took it.

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In response to such indignities, Lee sent General Jubal Early after Hunter. Their armies clashed at Lynchburg, after which the Confederates swept north out of the valley, briefly laying siege to Washington, D.C. But neither Early, nor the government he fought for could sustain such a campaign for long, and soon Grant dispatched another general, Philip Sheridan, to finish what Hunter had started. Although Lexington was not attacked again, by the fall of 1864 the “breadbasket of Virginia” was no longer in Confederate hands.96 What happened in Lexington was a symbol of how the war was going for the South as a whole. The longer the conflict went on, the less realistic Southern chances of victory became. There was hope that General William T. Sherman’s march (whether to Savannah, or even later into South Carolina) would end up like Hunter’s assault against Lexington. But by the end of 1864, with both Atlanta and Savannah having fallen to Sherman, Confederate patriotism began to wane. There were cries in Georgia for the state to seek a “speedy peace” with the North. Even some formerly avowed secessionists (perhaps in a bid to remain relevant) began to call for an end to the war.97

The Battle over Bacon Preston witnessed these events from the field. He was present for duty from September 1864 through the end of the year. But during that time his situation changed dramatically. His service record indicates that for November and December 1864, he was present, but under arrest and facing a court martial.98 The story of his court martial is an intriguing one on several levels. But, first, the facts. The legal proceedings were convened in Petersburg on December 13, 1864. The jury was instructed that Preston must be found guilty or innocent of the charge that he acted in a manner of “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentlemen.” The charges were deemed “serious” by the court, and the punishment was to be dishonorable discharge from the service. Preston plead “not guilty” at the start of the proceedings and the case was then heard.99 So far, fairly standard legal language for a court martial. But then modern readers come to the “substantial” charges: Preston was accused of falsely reporting that he had brought a piece of meat (bacon) before the Board of Survey, and then exchanged it for a new piece from the Com-

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missary Department! According to testimony, Preston had attempted to exchange what he believed was some bad bacon at the commissary. He was then told that the only way to do this was if the board had condemned the meat. Preston assured the commissary that it had, and got a new piece of bacon. The members of the board testified that Preston had never come before them with the meat, and that they had found nothing wrong with it when they did inspect it. Preston’s main line of defense was his own reputation and that there had been a misunderstanding. That was not enough, and he was found guilty, with the recommendation that he be dishonorably discharged from the service.100 In his defense, meat was an issue for the Army of Northern Virginia. Pigs were known as the “faithful hog” and the soldier’s “trusty friend,” because they were a staple and, early on in the war, plentiful. Rations for the troops consisted of “mainly cornbread and salt or pickled beef or pork,” though the pickled meat was often “tough and unappetizing.” As early as August 1861 there was grumbling about the quality of bacon available to Confederate soldiers. Over time, even bacon and cornmeal were in short supply as the Union grip on trade goods tightened after the fall of Vicksburg. As bacon became scarce, what was left had been cured earlier in the war and was often spoiled by the time it was eaten.101 Considering the direction of the war and the scant rations for the Army of Northern Virginia during the winter of 1864–65, it is hardly surprising that nerves were frayed and competition over what was available intense.102 In their own way, the accusations about the meat and the resulting trial are not hard to understand. Preston had stepped beyond the proscribed procedures. The charges he was brought up on show how seriously the concept of honor was taken, and the desire on the part of many that the war be conducted by officers in the proper manner. And yet, the fact that the Army of Northern Virginia was trying men over whether or not they thought bacon was edible in the midst of the final months of the war is also ridiculous. Here is an officer who had been wounded, discharged, reenlisted, and had suffered alongside his men for a year and a half now being brought up on charges when, it can be argued, things were looking bleak for the Confederacy and it needed every man it could muster. So, why was the Army of Northern Virginia trying Preston? There is some evidence to indicate that officers were more likely to be court martialed than enlisted men, and that such trials were more apt to happen in

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winter months. There is also some indication that sentences for offenses committed by officers tended to be harsher than was prescribed by the Articles of War. Oftentimes officers were brought up on charges by disgruntled enlisted men, though this was not the case for Preston. Furthermore, when it came to sentencing, Virginians were known for being harsh.103 Perhaps it was because the war was being fought there or because of a heightened (if it was possible) sense of honor and obligation, maybe even a higher sense of patriotism—not just of the Confederate variety but of the American variety as well. If this is true, the deck was certainly stacked against Preston, and his conviction was hardly surprising. There is another angle of the court martial to consider: Preston’s citizenship. Was he being singled out because of his Hoosier roots? In a letter signed by thirteen of his fellow officers that asked the adjunct general to allow him to resign rather than be dishonorably discharged, Preston’s supporters made note that he should be allowed to do so “in consideration of previous soldierly conduct and the fact that, being an alien, he voluntarily bore arms with us.”104 Despite his own Virginia heritage, despite his family name and connections, and despite having been among the first to answer Virginia’s call to arms, Preston was still an “alien.” Of course, this was legally correct. But it is also telling that it was mentioned on this occasion. The states of the Confederacy had the power to define citizenship. In South Carolina’s case (which, according to Stephanie McCurry, was followed by others), a citizen was defined by being a free white person who was either born in the state, born out of state to a South Carolinian father, or was serving in the armed forces of the state. Preston certainly met such criteria for Virginia, and yet the word “alien” stands out. He was not really one of them, at least in the eyes of some with whom he served.105 It is also perhaps telling that Preston’s cousin, Charles, was likely not in camp at the time of the proceedings against him. Would this have mattered? Could his uncle have done anything? There is no evidence to indicate that his family was alerted to his plight. Or much they could have done regardless. But since the charges and trial took just over a month to conduct, there was also little time for them to do anything on his behalf. Interestingly, Preston was not the only NWCU alum to be court martialed during the war. Captain George Wallace of the Seventy-Ninth Indiana was court martialed in May 1863 for being absent without leave, utilizing a pass to Nashville instead to visit Indianapolis. The medical pass was writ-

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ten by the regiment’s assistant surgeon and Wallace’s college friend, John H. Tilford.106 In the end, Preston’s past service, especially the fact that he had been wounded at First Manassas, weighed in his favor. He resigned from the army on January 18, 1865. The Confederacy he had devoted his young life to, which said it no longer needed his services,was dying.107

The Mosby Endgame In some ways Preston’s court-martial and induced discharge may have saved his life, as Southern officers tended not to survive the war.108 But there is evidence to indicate that Preston disregarded the second discharge in much the same way he had the first one. He knew the South needed him. And according to records at Washington and Lee University, he reenlisted, became a captain in the army, and fought on until the conflict was over.109 How was this possible? According to what Preston told his fraternity brothers in Phil Delta Theta, he served with Mosby’s Rangers from February until April 1865. If this was the case, he would have found some fraternal bonds within his new unit to replace the familial ones he had known. At least four other members under Mosby’s command—Thomas W. Bullitt, James B. Bullitt, Philip C. Slaughter, and Oscar D. Miller— were Phi Delts. The Bullitts and Slaughter had attended Centre College in Kentucky, while Miller had gone to the University of Wisconsin before the war. If true, Preston was once again fighting for Confederate independence.110 Although Preston’s name does not appear in the unit history, it is possible that he joined up with the Confederacy’s “Gray Ghost.” Membership in the Rangers was informal, and in the last months of the war it is perhaps understandable that his name never got added. John Singleton Mosby did not abide by “traditional military order” because he found it to be “impractical.” Perhaps this included adding a person to his forces who had just been forced to resign. Furthermore, Mosby was wounded in December 1864 and did not return to the field until February 1865. Preston’s new commanding officer may have assumed it had been done or simply did not care.111

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John S. Mosby (left) poses with his men, Mosby’s Rangers.

Regardless, the Rangers would have been attractive to Preston. Mosby was a protégé of and top scout for famed Confederate cavalry leader, General Stuart. In June 1863 Mosby was authorized to form Company A, Forty-Third Battalion, Virginia Cavalry (Partisan Rangers) as an “irregular” cavalry. For the rest of the war, he led raids against Union forces and provided valuable intelligence to his superiors. The Forty-Third became very good at causing “confusion and chaos,” despite their small number.112 If he joined them, Preston’s final months were full of action. By January 1865 Mosby’s Rangers were attacking trains. On February 19 the Rangers fought an engagement at Mount Carmel Church in Loudoun County near the Shenandoah River. Mosby returned to lead his men in early March 1865. After that, there were several clashes with federal cavalry, including operations in the Northern Neck and scouting missions into the Shenandoah valley.113 In many ways Mosby’s small force was divorced from the tides of the war, fueling and living on rumors as the conflict came to an end. Mosby was urged to surrender by General Winfield Scott Hancock, who sent the partisan raider a letter on April 11 officially informing him of Lee’s sur-

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INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

render. Mosby sought guidance as to what to do before meeting with Hancock’s representatives. Eventually, on April 21, 1865, Mosby disbanded his command rather than surrender. He did not get an official parole until June 17.114 One wonders what Preston thought as the Confederacy imploded around him. Confederates knew, as 1864 started to give way to 1865, that they could not win the war. Yet they held out for a negotiated settlement. Though what they actually hoped to feasibly achieve by then is open to debate. The Hampton Roads conference had failed miserably on that account, and the Lincoln administration was soon pushing for passage of a Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery for good. With Lincoln’s re-election, solidified by his second inaugural address, it was evident that not only would the North prevail but also that God could not be for both sides.115 Southerners, who had held fast to believing that their undertaking had a divine mandate were now forced to consider if battlefield defeats meant God was punishing them. If the war was meant to create or preserve a Christian society that included slavery, then were they being

Freed slaves rush to greet President Lincoln as he enters Richmond, Virginia, April 3, 1865.

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punished for how the slaves were being treated? If defeat was a chance to be humble before God, then what did total defeat mean? Had God abandoned them? Should they continue to fight on, or should they embrace defeat and cut their losses? Such doubts undermined the war effort and set the stage for the final collapse of the Confederacy.116 And collapse the South did. With Richmond’s loss in early April, the flight of the Confederate government, followed soon thereafter by Lee’s surrender, the North’s victory was complete. Very few Confederates or Southerners were ready to continue the war by any means. Davis was “delusional” if he thought the South could win following Lincoln’s re-election. Or, for that matter, that continuing the war via guerrilla tactics could garner recognition of Southern independence from European powers by 1865.117 And in the end, neither did Preston Davidson. The war, for him and for the South, was now officially over.

8 Seeking Peace The war “was a watershed” for those who lived through it and it transformed the reunited United States of America.1 This was certainly true for Preston Davidson. To some extent the world he had known was gone, and the one that replaced it was vastly different. He was alone, even when he was with others, different, even within his family. His wartime experiences not only marked him, but also left him with no one to whom he could truly relate.2 The rest of Preston’s life was shaped by his service. Having survived a wounding (or two) meant coping with a lifetime of physical and mental discomfort. Of course, he was not alone in this, as it was an all-too-common experience for the men of his generation who survived the conflict. They had been exposed to trauma that those who had not been directly involved in the war simply could not understand no matter how sympathetic they might be. Perhaps like others of his generation, he took his wounded shoulder as an “honorable scar.” And yet, his scars also served as a reminder, especially as he walked around Indianapolis, of how his experiences in the war were different than many of his neighbors. Although historians talk of a lost cause when it came to the Civil War, and lost lives, the men who fought in the war and died in the years after it represent something of a lost generation. Veterans carried not only wounds and scars, but also the ghosts of departed comrades. For Preston, most of those ghosts wore gray uniforms.3 For former Confederates, defeat carried with it a shock all of its own. By launching a war to preserve slavery, Southerners unwittingly gave Northern abolitionists the ability to do just that, using the war to destroy the peculiar institution. The aftermath of the war was a transformed

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Ruins of Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the Civil War

Southern society that left former slave owners reeling.4 The transformation, however, was deeper than just the ending of slavery. Men, who were a part of the armies, traveled and saw the country beyond their counties, and women were forced to take on more responsibilities. Planters were less able to be in control of their lands or their slaves.5 The world they grew up in, that Preston had so eagerly embraced, was lost. Additionally, the loss of the war was a shock. The pain in having been defeated was made even worse by the realization that all the sacrifice in blood and treasure was for nothing. Sacrifice, death, and destruction, those were all meaningful, so long as the outcome was victory. But what were Southerners supposed to make of those things in defeat? Why had God allowed it? For some, such ruminations led to hatred and bitterness.

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Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney was “embittered” by the defeat of the South. He “never abandoned his belief that the South’s cause had been right and that slavery was sanctioned by scripture,” and despised Northerners for the rest of his life.6 For some, the war shook their faith to its very core, for others, very little changed in their understanding of God’s plan. It was just now that the divine mission no longer included slavery and involved one nation, not two.7 Bitterness such as Dabney’s was hardly surprising, considering how much faith, emotion, blood, and treasure Southerners had invested in their bid for independence. The destruction of the Confederacy seemed almost biblical in its affirmation of the sin of slavery. Southern Christians were forced to determine if they had lost because they had failed in the trust that God had given them. The defeat of the South also meant that Southerners, who had blasted the North, its churches, and its economic system as unchristian, were now forced to live under all those things. Southern ministers counseled that the Yankees were merely God’s instruments, that they had not been able to defeat the South on their own. For Southerners, winning souls was easier to do, in the long run, than winning the war.8 Religion helped Southern veterans forget why the war had been fought. Even in defeat, former rebels hung to the notion that they had been right on the moral questions that defined the conflict.9 Southern churches attempted to recast the war, helping construct the Lost Cause.10 And that included Lexington Presbyterian, where the Davidsons worshiped. After the war, Reverend William White was aghast that Northern Presbyterians expected Southern Presbyterians to accept Northern opinions about slavery. By 1865 James Davidson, at the urging of his pastor became more active at church, perhaps as a solace for the loss of his sons. The congregation remained active in outreach to the community’s African American population, as well as its majority white congregants.11 Their region’s relationship with God was not all Southerners grappled with after the war. According to historian Peter Carmichael, “Military defeat forced ex-Confederates . . . to renounce earlier beliefs, recognize federal authority, and reinvent themselves as free-labor capitalists.” Virtually all Southerners came to accept their defeat by the North and embraced accommodation with the Yankees, though this did not mean they renounced what they had attempted to do with the Confederacy. On the

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whole, as historian David Goldfield has argued, “Southerners took pride in their defeat, relished and exaggerated their suffering. They lavished more attention on the dead than on the living.”12 Part of this process involved the transformation of the South after the war. The birth of the New South that embraced industry and commerce left many former Confederates bitter. Even to those who had longed for progress along these very lines, the reality was jarring. Some found solace in the idea of a Lost Cause—of the noble South fighting against an unjust North. Ironically, many who helped craft the Lost Cause also spent the decades after the war creating the idea of the war being one of “brother versus brother,” one of equal balance between the two sections, which cast aside not only the issue of slavery but also marginalized, to a degree, Confederate veterans.13 For those such as Dorman Davidson and Winston Noble, whatever else they may have thought about the war, there was no doubt that they had fought for the Union and had saved the republic. On some level, Northerners all believed their efforts had been well worth the sacrifices. Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, Dorman and Preston’s childhood minister, labeled Confederate soldiers as “wrong” as well as warriors for “disruption, rebellion, and slavery.” Union veterans echoed his sentiments, supporting reconciliation, but also detesting the sight of the Confederate flag. In preserving the Union, historian Allen C. Guelzo argued, the North gave the nation a chance at both liberal democracy and racial justice.14 Most soldiers, whether North or South, just wanted to get on with their lives, but that proved difficult. Living in a camp with your brothers in arms for years was different than returning home to your loved ones and living with them. Returning soldiers often seemed “graver” than when they had left.15 Furthermore, surviving the war, even being a hero in conflict, did not guarantee postwar success. Many veterans, North and South, found that surviving in the newly reunited nation was as much of a struggle as the war itself.16 For Preston and many others, trapped in many ways between both regions of the nation, it was even harder.

Postwar Lexington The ancestral home of the Davidsons, Lexington, Virginia, had little room for frivolity after the war. There were lives, homes, and institu-

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tions that needed to be rebuilt. Washington College suffered more than $17,000 in damages, mostly to its laboratories and library. Whites also had to get used to living without slaves, and African Americans had to get used to being free.17 The Davidson family likewise had to move forward without Fred, Greenlee, Albert, or even Preston. James and Hannah Davidson, with the war behind them, had to deal with the realities of their sons’ deaths. James was obviously grief stricken by the loss of three sons in a war he had never wanted. Because “the norms of polite society required . . . that private woe be concealed from public view,” James had to put on a brave face, and so threw himself into rebuilding his community.18 But death and grief were not done with the family. James was destined, fated, or perhaps cursed with outliving all of his sons. While Fred, Greenlee, and Albert died during the conflict, two of their brothers survived, but not for long. William, the youngest, had joined Greenlee in the Letcher artillery for a time before a bout of camp fever debilitated him to the point that he was ordered home. He never really recovered. Ill health forced him to leave the Virginia Military Institute and he died of typhoid fever in October 1869.19 William’s death left Charles as the only remaining son. If there was a bright spot for the family, it was that Preston’s cousin, Charles, not only survived the war, but also seemed poised to follow in the footsteps of both his grandfather and father in guiding the Lexington community. He became very active in promoting and rebuilding his hometown. Charles was a lawyer, member of the Lexington town council, a bank director, and a real estate agent. The war, however, may have shortened his, as he died in 1879.20 Though he could not resurrect his family, James could rebuild his beloved Lexington. He was able to secure financial help from businessman Cyrus McCormick to help Washington College. James also worked to attract other sources of Northern capital to invest in Lexington and Rockbridge County.21 As he put it, “I aim to be loyal to the Union and the Constitution. In this exercise of a natural right, we referred the matter in controversy to the final arbitrament of the sword. Its award has been rendered and now stands a rewarded judgment, in the great Court of last resort. We have submitted to its finality.”22

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The Davidsons were joined by Preston and Fred’s old commander, Samuel Houston Letcher. Following First Manassas in October 1861, Letcher was promoted to lieutenant colonel, taking command of the FiftyEighth Virginia. However, due to illness, he was relieved of command and resigned a year later. Letcher and his brother, John (the former governor), worked with James Davidson to stimulate Lexington’s economy and resurrect their portion of the nation. Like William and Charles Davidson, Samuel Letcher also saw his life shortened by the war, dying in 1868. The former governor died in 1884.23 A year after the younger Letcher’s death, James brought his brother, Baker Davidson, to Lexington. The purpose of the visit was to urge Washington College alumni to rebuild Virginia like the North with its “industrial progress.” It was an emotional homecoming for Baker, who noted that while he was “in my native home . . . I am in the midst of new scenes.” He did not shy away from making references to “the terrific storm” of the war, but his focus was in encouraging “the sons and daughters of Virginia” to get back to the work of making their state great again. Baker was confident that this could be done, because of what his generation had helped to do in “the West.” Baker knew a thing or two about transformation, as he had left Methodism and joined the Episcopal Church in 1861, serving churches in Indianapolis and then in Cincinnati. It was there, in December 1874, that he died from typhoid fever.24 Henry Davidson, James and Robert E. Lee, postwar Baker’s other surviving brother, served throughout the remainder of the war at various Confederate hospitals in Virginia. He came back to Lexington in 1863 for Greenlee’s funeral. After the war, he practiced medicine and sold insurance in Lexington and Richmond before dying in 1884.25 James did not live to walk in Henry’s funeral. But until the day he died in 1882, he spent his time bringing Lexington back to life. Perhaps

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the accomplishment that brought him the most satisfaction was helping convince Robert E. Lee to take over the leadership of Washington College. With Lee as its president, the school benefited from his connections as a source of funds and his leadership in creating an economics department and a law school. He also spearheaded a campus beautification project, ordering trees to be planted, walkways created, and construction of a new campus chapel. Lee quickly became a fixture in Lexington, not just because of who he had been during the war, but because of the type of person he was. The Davidsons became friends of the former general.26 Lee was in Lexington thanks in large part to James Davidson. Preston’s uncle had watched the world he knew come crashing down around him, his family largely destroyed, and the future he had once envisioned replaced by the harsh reality of watching a war engulf him. That he did not succumb to bitterness and despair and instead worked to make a New South and a new Lexington was testament to the special place, the sacred place, the little town in the Shenandoah valley held in the hearts of the Davidson family.

Back Home again, in Indianapolis When the war was over, the Davidson family of Indianapolis faced changed circumstances nearly as great as those of their Lexington cousins. The death of Alexander, the decisions of Preston, Dorman, and their uncle, Winston Noble, during the war, as well as marriages, births, and an altered city, affected the clan. And yet, for all of their differences, they remained a remarkably tight-knit family. It was family that called Preston home. His father had died during the war, and the estate and the land it held needed to be settled. Perhaps Preston remembered the words his grandfather Andrew Davidson had preached at the end of the War of 1812: “The long absent soldier will now be permitted to return to his family and the embrace of his fond friends.”27 He had left a boy of seventeen. The city he returned to as he entered his mid-twenties was vastly different than the one from which he had departed. After taking an oath of allegiance in order to obtain amnesty, Preston headed to Indiana. His journey home was different than for most other Confederates, who trickled home now that their units no longer existed.

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He was not staying in Virginia. Whether he was compelled by his oath or whether, ultimately, loyalty to his siblings (or legal requirement) trumped his desire to reside in Lexington is unclear. Regardless, Preston was soon traveling northwest, past battlefields and scared countryside, on the way to the land of his birth.28 Returning to Indianapolis largely cut Preston off from his fellow Confederate veterans. Once he got home he was forced to endure the arrival of returned soldiers in the state capital. Celebrations happened over the course of the summer and fall of 1865, and led to an influx of soldiers in cities. While veterans in both sections soon began organizing fraternal organizations where they could get back together, trade stories, and renew old bonds, this was not a realistic option for Preston. Politicians in his home state, including Governor (later U.S. Senator) Oliver P. Morton continued to wave the “bloody shirt of rebellion” for years after the war. Preston was to be dependent on his family as his social circle.29 By the middle of June 1865, Preston was in Cincinnati. He did not go directly to Indianapolis, as some friends advised him it might not be safe to do so.30 As luck would have it, Preston ran into one of his uncle’s former slaves in Cincinnati. He wrote James that he had talked to: “Tip, yes Sir, the veritable Tippecanoe loading a box on board. When he had put down the box I said ‘what in thunder are you doing here Tip?’” The former Davidson family slave told Preston that he and the others who had left with General David Hunter’s troops after the Union raid on Lexington were doing well. He also asked Preston to pass along to his aunt and uncle that it was never his intention to run away, but he had been captured by the Union army. Tip reported that two of Preston’s uncle’s other slaves were in Ohio, while another was in the army (a calling Tip had rejected because he “sympathize[d] with the people down Souf” in Preston’s wording).31 The encounter with Tip must have been jolting, on some level, for Preston. To him, the war had been about Southern independence. The war though meant freedom for Tip. Preston harbored no animosity, and seemingly only affection for Tip and the others. But he must have recognized that a South built on slavery was at odds with what Tip now had. On his trip to Indiana, Preston began to formulate a plan for the future. His goal was to move back to Virginia to buy land. He doubted that it was possible for him to actually live in Indianapolis at all, surrounded by Yankees and living in a homestead (the Noble-Davidson estate) he was

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sure was in disrepair. His love for Virginia, where he had lived and fought, was too great. There were a few flaws in his plan, however. He worried that any land he bought in the Old Dominion would be open for confiscation because of his past service with the Confederates. Preston was also unprepared for the feelings that living with his siblings would stir within him. Furthermore, while he did encounter some animosity, living in Indiana also was not quite as bad as Preston had imagined.32 He summed up his feeling in a letter to his uncle James on July 24, 1865: I will have to stay half a year at least (and very much against my wishes) in order to get a division, so that I can dispose of my portion. I think it is best to delay, as by hurrying matters, by putting matters in court now, may call attention to it, and some of the miserable people with which this country is filled may institute proceedings against me . . . I think just as soon as possible I am going to sell out and return South, as no circumstances could persuade or induce me to live North. Every day of my sojourn in the land of the Philistines increases my desire to return to Virginia. I don’t know when I have felt so mad, as I did when I saw that the miserable government at Richmond had changed old Virginia’s glorious motto to an hackneyed abolitionist one. Most of my old friends have met me kindly and evidence much pleasure. The young ladies especially, some are rather grown. I very seldom go out, and never to see any but those whose sympathies I know to be with the South. I still claim my citizenship to be in Virginia and will until I can return.33 James may have attempted to temper Preston’s plan, probably along the lines of his responsibility to his brothers and sisters. In a letter to his uncle in October, Preston again talked about land and about how “I cannot stay in this country permanently, indeed I must say I won’t.” He wanted a little place in the Valley, close to Lexington.34 Preston also floated the idea of moving to Louisiana. He was in correspondence with his father’s cousin, James Dorman Campbell, in New Orleans about the feasibility of growing cotton there. The problem was that the South was economically “stagnate” in defeat and, as a recently paroled Confederate veteran, Preston had no money.35 Unlike Preston, some of his former classmates could not wait to get back to Indianapolis. North Western Christian University alum Henry Tutewiler wrote that “if alive and well I expect to be a citizen of my loved

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home, Indianapolis.”36 But the city both men called home again had changed because of the war. As John H. Holliday put it, “the quiet town with its simple life was gone forever and in its place was the bustling city with new ideas, new aspirations, new ways.” Its population went from approximately 8,000 in 1850 to more than 18,000 in 1860. The war caused it to grow even more. By the time the conflict ended, and Davidson was headed north once again, Indianapolis’s population was approximately 48,000.37 Indeed, in many ways, the city Preston was returning to was a foreign country. Though he saw old friends, Preston did not return to school at NWCU. Perhaps that it is not surprising. It would have been awkward and uncomfortable to return to his former college. Considering what was going on in Indianapolis and Virginia, it is also not surprising that he did not return to Washington College in Lexington, either. His formal education was at an end. In 1863 the board of NWCU unanimously passed a resolution giving a free education to any “young man who may have been or who may hereafter be permanently disabled in the military service of the country during the present war.”38 Obviously, Preston did not qualify. There were advantages to returning to the North. Chief among them was the money to be made in breaking up the family estate, platting the land, and selling it.39 Governor Noah Noble, who had purchased the land in 1832, had in his will divided it between his wife (insuring her “maintenance”) and his children, Catherine and Winston. Preston’s father, Alexander, had been the executor of the will and had paid off his fatherin-law’s debts, provided for his mother-in-law, and taken care of his brother-in-law (who was a minor when the governor died). Alexander, with the approval of his wife and mother-in-law, had sold some of the property to do just those things.40 After the war, it was left largely to Alexander’s children to sort out what had and had not been sold, and to then decide what to do with their remainder.41 Settling the property turned into a legal mess that dragged on for decades. Preston and his sisters had to sue their brother, Noble, to attain some right to the land that was to be divided (their brother, Dorman, was not named in the suit). Preston then had to sue Noble, Catherine, and Susan in 1866 to further clarify the holdings.42 Noah and Susan were also involved in a legal battle over the issue of promissory notes to a third party.43 To further complicate matters, Preston was named in a suit

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between T. C. Harrison and Edward King that was related to Noah’s bankruptcy in 1876.44 Preston was again a part of a much wider lawsuit over the title to the land brought by Jacob Greene in 1882.45 The land ownership was further contested in a lawsuit filed by F. M. Churchman, which named Preston, his brothers, sisters, other family members, and several businesses and individuals in 1884.46 Catherine also sued the city over its decision to take over a private road that Dorman had built and turn it into a proper street; the matter was not resolved until 1890.47 Eventually, the land started to be sold. Preston’s portion was between Saint Clair and North Strees, with Pogue’s Run running through it. The land was platted in November 1865. He initially estimated his portion of the land division to be worth $20,000, which allowed him to stay within the amnesty proclamation (even if the land was actually worth more than that).48 The income Preston received over the coming years from land sales was more than enough for him to live off of for nearly the rest of his life. Preston settled down in Indianapolis, reconnecting with his Grandmother Catherine Noble, who lived until 1874, and spending time with his Uncle Winston Noble. The governor’s son had married Mary Harvey in 1855, with whom he had five children. Though he worked for a time in Alton, Illinois, as a civil engineer, Noble spent most of the postwar years in Indianapolis, where he was active in the city’s Masonic life, the Grand Army of the Republic (taking part in the Washington, D.C., encampment in 1892), Grace Cathedral Episcopal Church (where Baker Davidson served for a time as pastor), and the Indianapolis Humane Society. He died at his home at 1431 North New Jersey Street in December 1899, and left the family farm, which included Liberty Hall, to Dorman.49 With the exception of Dorman, the Davidson siblings were all living in the old family house. While both Preston and Noah were single, their two sisters were married. Catherine was married to George Franklin Miller, originally from Barboursville, Virginia (now a part of West Virginia). He was born in 1843, had served as a page in the U.S. Senate, and joined Confederate forces when the Civil War broke out. He eventually served under General John Hunt Morgan, was wounded in March 1863 at Mount Sterling, Kentucky, fought at Cynthiana, Kentucky, and was captured and imprisoned for nine months. After being freed, Miller rejoined Confederate forces, initially refusing to surrender as the war came to an end, and

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not giving up the struggle until General Albert Sydney Johnston did in North Carolina. After the war, Miller made his way to Cincinnati, got involved in business and eventually moved to Indianapolis. He was active in the city’s Masonic life, served as a deputy U.S. Marshal during the Grover Cleveland administration, and worked in the Marion County treasurer’s office as well as the office of the state auditor. The Millers had two daughters, Catherine Valette (born in 1870, who married Thomas White, and lived until 1958) and Eugnia Preston (born in 1873 and died in 1877). The family employed a Prussian maid, attended church at Second Presbyterian, and was quite happy and successful in postwar Indianapolis.50 While Catherine married a Confederate veteran, Susan (who went by her middle name of Lavallette) continued the tradition of a family divided by war, yet united by love, when she married Union veteran Charles Dickey, who was originally from Pennsylvania and had served in the Thirteenth U.S. Infantry during the war, fighting in the western theater at Vicksburg and as part of the Atlanta campaign. He stayed in the army after the war, rising to the rank of captain (and even for a time that of brevet major), and served with the Twenty-Second U.S. Infantry, chiefly in the wars with the Plains tribes. He was court martialed for drunkenness, but had his sentence commuted by President Rutherford B. Hayes. He and Lavallette had one child, a son named Alexander, who was born in 1887.51 Noah, it seemed, enjoyed living with his sisters and their families. The lifelong bachelor died in 1902 at the age of fifty-eight. He spent his time as a real-estate agent, while dabbling in other small business ventures. But his life does hold one interesting twist on how the Davidson family dealt with the Civil War. In 1861, as the war was just starting to rage, Alexander enrolled his youngest son at NWCU. Like his brothers before him, Noah was placed in the preparatory department, with its focus on Latin and Greek grammar, algebra, and studying the classics. Perhaps this was to deflect some of the tension, once it got out, about Preston joining the Confederate ranks. Noah was entered into the freshman class in 1862, but seems to have stopped his education with the death of his father.52 Of the siblings, Dorman perhaps came closest to living up the expectations of his Davidson and Noble roots. The eldest Davidson sibling married Virginia (Jennie) LeMonde of Kentucky in July 1864. They had five children (Dorman, Helen, Catherine, Retta, and Lavallette). Dorman

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worked as a farmer (even employing Prussian immigrant labor for a time), fire-insurance agent, newspaper salesman (the Farmer’s Review), and stock trader. He was also involved in Democratic politics, serving as a precinct committeeman (he even gave sworn testimony in a federal elections case involving William E. English and Stanton J. Peele in a contested battle for a congressional seat in 1872–73). Though they moved around the city several times, Dorman eventually owned a home in the 1600 block of Broadway in Indianapolis, just two miles from where he grew up and a few blocks from NWCU.53 Surely there were tensions within the reconstituted Davidson family because of Doman’s service and because of the actions of their extended kin. Perhaps interestingly, Dorman’s time defending Indiana for the Union, while brief, as well as his time at NWCU, was not mentioned when a member of the family was contacted by VMI in 1915 (shortly after Dorman died) seeking information on the institute’s alumni. While his children lived out of state, and many of his papers were destroyed, his sister, Lavallette, told VMI that Dorman had not served in the Civil War at all.54 This speaks to wider issues of memory and what post-Reconstruction reconciliation meant, as well as attachments to Virginia that members of the Davidson family still had. Though once again with his siblings, to some degree Preston retreated into himself. The nation got back together so quickly after the war that on some level most white Americans put aside the bitterness that the war had engendered. While he may have lived in Mooresville for a time, he stayed close to his siblings and to his hometown of Indianapolis, living in a sort of familial cocoon.55 But before he died, he did finally return to the South.

Going Home to a Band of Brothers As Preston aged, he reached a point where he no longer could stay in Indianapolis. Part of it was that he had likely never felt completely at home in the Circle City, which never wavered from its support of the Union war effort. Preston was appalled at what the “radicals” proposed in the years after the war and upset at the “scoundrels” in the “Grand Army of the Republic.” It is unknown if such sentiments extended to his Uncle Winston or to the monument that was slowly rising (from 1889 to 1902) in the heart of the city and dedicated to Indiana’s war dead,

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Program cover for Grand Army of the Republic encampment in Indianapolis, 1893

we do not know.56 More likely his decision to leave was because his own extended family was getting older. He needed a place to live and work. Perhaps as well, as he got older, his wounds acted up. In the 1900 cen-

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sus, Preston was found in Lexington, Kentucky, rooming at the home of Sarah Hawkins. A fifty-eight-year-old bachelor, he listed his occupation as surveyor. He had crossed the Ohio River not for work, but rather to find a new place to live.57 Veterans were seemingly everywhere in postwar American society. They were celebrated at gatherings, but they also “quickly receded from the vision of many Americans” as the twentieth century drew closer and they grew older. Part of this had to do with economics. The generation that fought the war was raised, despite industry in the North, in a largely agricultural world. By the dawn of the twentieth century, this world was vanishing just as assuredly as the Old South’s slave-based world had. Veterans were often caught up in the economic ups and downs of this transition. As historian James Marten noted, in the North veterans who struggled in the postwar years after the war “were often seen as agents of their own decline, almost purposefully swimming against the stream of progress, economic growth, and opportunity.” In the South, Confederate veterans in similarly poor circumstances appeared “as victims of conditions outside of their control.”58 In Preston’s case, it is likely that his land-sale money started to run out at the same time his siblings were growing older and his nieces and nephews were marrying and moving away. He needed a new home, and he found one in the Kentucky Confederate Veterans Home. Such institutions were common. Both Northern and Southern states attempted to take care of their aging veterans. Many established pension programs for them, as well as opening veterans’ homes and hospitals, which became a source of pride and debate in state legislatures. Former Confederates were more likely than their former Union opponents to use these programs.59 Although Preston’s decision to journey to Kentucky may seem surprising, in reality it is not. After all, the Davidson family was from there, he had gone to school there, and had served in the war there. Additionally, there was a veterans’ home in Richmond, a city he had spent time in. Preston opted not to go back to the Old Dominion, nor apparently did he seek a pension from Virginia. Perhaps he worried that his court martial would be brought up, denying him relief on both fronts. He also may have wanted to stay close to his remaining family in Indiana.60 For all those reasons, and perhaps for others, Preston now made his home in the Bluegrass State.

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CIVIL WAR FORUM

According to historian Rusty Williams, “the Kentucky Confederate Home was built on and supported by three distinct pillars: energetic Confederate veterans’ groups, a sympathetic public, and a generous state government.” It came into existence after several years of grassroots work with a state charter (and state funds) in 1902. Located in the scenic Pewee valley some sixteen miles east of Louisville, the home was in a former luxury hotel built originally for vacationers and taken over and rehabilitated for use by Confederate veterans.61 Those who came to the home were “old time Confederates,” who believed they had “fought for Liberty” as a “band of Southern brothers.” Upon arrival, the veterans (now referred to as “inmates”) were checked to see if they needed a meal, issued a uniform (many of them were nearly destitute, with the raggedy clothes to prove it), and were given the rules. Inmates were to respect one another and the home. This included a ban on the possession or use of alcohol and religious proselytizing (nonsectarian services were held each week, though they were not compulsory). The veterans were not supposed to leave the grounds of the home (roll call was held each morning and evening) and lights went out was at 9:00 p.m. Violations of the rules could lead to expulsion. Early on, many of the inmates were sick. Others suffered from what a later generation of doctors would label as posttraumatic stress disorder.62 The day started at 6:00 a.m. with inmates falling in for roll call by 6:30

Kentucky Confederate Veterans Home

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a.m. Breakfast then followed. Dinner was served at midday, a large heavy meal of meat and potatoes, served family style. Supper was much lighter and served at 5:00 p.m. In between, the inmates had to entertain themselves. There were books and a piano (with boxes of sheet music) but very few of the inmates seemed to make use of them. Rather, they strolled the grounds and found other things to do, including whittling.63 Thanks to the money appropriated by the state, inmates of Kentucky’s Confederate home did not have to worry about work (unlike their peers in other homes). They could “swing in a hammock” if they wanted.64 Gardening was another activity inmates could take part in. Preston, in 1904, took charge of planting donated bulbs, shrubs, and trees on the home’s grounds. He was close to the home’s matron, Lela Henley.65 These were, by and large, happy times for Preston. Gone was any uncertainty or real obligation. For the final years of his life, no longer saddled with any expectations, he could relax and live in the past.

Memories and Legacies By 1905 there were 220 inmates at the home, with nearly thirty others either on furlough or on sick leave in Louisville. The home became a sort of museum, as well as a tourist attraction, lasting into the 1930s when the Great Depression, falling state revenues, and diminishing need caused it to close. But during its life no matter how nice it was, death was always a part of its existence.66 Preston’s time at the home ended long before it ceased operations. His death certificate from Oldham County, Kentucky, in June 1914 offers a window into his final years, and how he saw himself. He died at the home’s infirmary, with the doctor noting that he suffered from pneumonia and arterial sclerosis. While he had battled his heart issue for the last ten years of his life, it was the pneumonia that claimed him, all in the span of four days. The bachelor was seventy-one years old. Perhaps most interesting of all, Preston told the staff at the hospital that he was born in Virginia.67 In some respects then, he was a rebel to the last. Preston’s death came as news arrived in the United States of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.68 As a new war dawned, the passage of time dulled and diminished the memory of the Davidsons to a certain extent. Holliday, in compiling a history of NWCU alums who served during the Civil War, noted of Preston, “he was in attendance in a

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military school in Virginia when the war broke out and cast his lot with the South.” Of course, while Holliday was working from his memory, we know that memory to be somewhat incomplete. Preston was not at VMI, but at Washington College. It was Dorman who attended VMI, and Holliday neglected to even mention Dorman’s service in repelling Morgan’s Raid.69 Preston was brought back to Indianapolis and buried with the rest of his family in Crown Hill Cemetery. Although Governor Noble was originally laid to rest in Greenlawn Cemetery, when Crown Hill was opened in 1863–64 (due to consistent flooding of Greenlawn), he was reinterred at Crown Hill. His family is there beside him. His wife, Catherine, is buried next to him, midway up a hill in section one. A bit below and to their left are their great-grandson, Alexander Dickey, and his mother, Lavallette (who died in 1928). Below the governor and slightly to the right are Preston, Noah, Alexander, and Catherine Davidson. On the other side of a tree, which grows in the midst of their graves, is Eugenia, Catherine, and George Miller, along with Valette and Thomas White. Below the rest of the family, nearly on their own, lie Dorman and Virginia Davidson and their daughter, Helen Davidson Heywood. The family lies united in death in ways they were not during most of their life after 1860. There is one other person buried in the Noble-Davidson plot. Louisa Magruder, one of the former Noble family slaves turned servants, lies just off to the right of the family she had so faithfully served. It is hardly surprising—she had watched over four generations of the family and remained extremely close to Catherine Davidson Miller. Her grave marker reads simply: “Louisa Magruder, 1808–1900, Daughter of Uncle Tom.” Whether or not Tom himself lies interred near his daughter is a mystery.70 A park and neighborhood is now home to the land the Davidsons grew up on in Indianapolis. The knoll where their father’s home stood is now the centerpiece of Highland Park. It is named for the home that Catherine and Alexander Davidson built. In 1898 Preston’s sister, Catherine Davidson Miller, sold the homestead to the city of Indianapolis under the condition that the house be torn down (its bricks were used for park projects, including gutter work), and that the land immediately surrounding the home be turned into a park. A fountain was placed at the house’s location.71 The sale was perhaps another inducement for Preston to move

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to Kentucky. The only home he had ever known was destined to be torn down. Some of the family’s land eventually became the Cottage Home neighborhood, a vibrant working-class part of the city, home to businesses as well as German and Irish immigrants. While over the years many of these residents were replaced by African Americans, the idea of an integrated neighborhood had its existence in the Magruder family’s residence there nearly a century before.72 The street names in the area, initially at least, reflected the family. Dorman Street for the eldest brother, Campbell Street for the county their grandfather had grown up in in Kentucky, and Archer Street, given from Preston’s middle name. Not unlike his childhood home, however, Archer Street is no more, having been changed to Highland Avenue to reflect the neighborhood park.73 If there is a sense of The Magnificent Ambersons in all this, it should come as little surprise. Booth Tarkington, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author, wrote the book about his native Indianapolis in 1918.74 Little is also left that physically links the Davidsons of Lexington, Virginia, of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Their home served for a time as the chapter house of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, a fitting decision, as the Virginia chapter of the fraternity had been founded at Washington College in 1855 with Greenlee Davidson holding badge number fourteen. Their land became Davidson Park. The Davidsons of Lexington have an obelisk, with their names on it, in Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. Uncle Henry is buried nearby, as is his wife, Kate.75 The institutions of higher education Preston attended flourished in the years after the war. Washington College in Lexington became Washington and Lee University, saved in large part thanks to Davidson’s uncle, James (who continued on the school’s board of trustees until nearly his death) and the college’s new president, Robert E. Lee.76 Two of Preston’s classmates showcased the possibility of postwar success in Virginia that eluded the Davidsons in many respects. Like Preston, James Edward Hanger opted to serve with family rather than classmates. Hanger enlisted in the Fourteenth Virginia Cavalry during the war. At the Battle of Philippi, in June 1861, Hanger was struck by a cannonball. Captured, a Union surgeon was forced to amputate a portion of his mangled leg. Hanger survived and was eventually released and sent home, where

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he designed his own artificial limb. He was soon making them for other wounded veterans, and by the end of the war had created a company that remains in business today: Hanger Orthopedic.77 Another of Preston’s classmates, William Alexander Anderson, went on to a distinguished career after the war. Like Preston, Anderson was wounded at First Manassas (a bullet shattered his kneecap). Discharged from the service, he entered law school and embarked on a legal career that eventually brought him into politics. He served in both the Virginia House and Senate, helped craft the state’s new constitution in 1901–2, and served as the state’s attorney general for eight years. He also served on various boards, including that of his alma mater, until his death in 1930.78 NWCU in Indianapolis likewise was transformed by one of Preston’s classmates. Scot Butler, the son of Ovid Butler and a part of Dorman and Preston’s preparatory class, oversaw the school his father founded well into the twentieth century. In February 1862 he enlisted in the Thirty-Third Indiana. His parents were, of course, worried about his fighting in the war, but in the case of Ovid, he believed that Scot serving was what he had to do.79 Ovid wrote to his son in 1864 that “whatever may be before you, I desire you to trust in God and keep a brave heart and a steady purpose a purpose looking to honor and usefulness when the rebellion shall be remembered with the crimes of the past.” Scot always saw the war as “cruel and unforgiving,” and had a difficult time seeing it in the moralistic and abolitionist terms that his father did.80 The younger Butler came home from war, obtained his degree, married, and taught at Indiana University’s preparatory department. In 1877 NWCU became Butler University, named for his father with the family’s approval. Ovid sent him to Germany for more education. Scot became a professor at Butler and twice served as president, as well as on its board of trustees, guiding its emergence into a modern institution of higher education as a first-class liberal arts university, overseeing the school’s move from near his father’s home to a suburb of Indianapolis in 1878.81 A tablet to Butler University’s Civil War dead was dedicated in 1921, thanks to the efforts of Katharine Merrill Graydon. The inscription proclaims that these dead are “sacred to the memory of patriot sons of alma mater,” and that they gave their lives “to save their country from disunion.”82 Today, the tablet is mounted on an entryway wall in Jordan Hall,

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the main classroom building for the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Education at the university’s third home, the Fairview Campus. NWCU alum Holliday noted that those who served in the Civil War from what became Butler University had compiled “a magnificent record and one worth boasting of,” and the school “has no brighter page in her luminous history than that on which these names of her sons are inscribed.”83 The list he spoke of includes Preston Davidson. For three generations, his family did much to shape the young United States, in large and small ways. The war that nearly destroyed that legacy also gave the nation a new birth of freedom and a chance to remake itself in a new era.

Notes Introduction 1. The Bulldog mascot was not adopted by the university until 1919. Prior to that, Butler’s sports teams were known as “the Christians.” See, “Butler Blue II: Butler’s Mascot, America’s Dog –Why Bulldogs?” http://www.butler.edu/blue2/bulldogs. 2. John V. Hadley, Seven Months a Prisoner (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898). Hadley’s book was one of the main sources behind Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain (published in 1997), which in turn was made into a movie of the same name in 2003. 3. “Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients,” http://www.cmohs.org/recipient -detail/29/anderson-marion-t.php. 4. Barbara Butler Davis, Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2004). 5. James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 5, 18–21, 110, 169. 6. Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), 216. 7. Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 172. 8. See for example, Thomas P. Nanzig, ed., The Badax Tigers: From Shiloh to the Surrender with the 18th Wisconsin Volunteers (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002) as well as Peter Messent and Steve Courtney, eds., The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006). 9. Two Indiana examples will perhaps suffice: James M. Schmidt, Notre Dame and the Civil War: Marching Onward to Victory (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010); Lloyd A. Hunter, For Duty and Destiny: The Life and Civil War Diary of William Taylor Stott, Hoosier Soldier and Educator (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2010). Stott was a student, professor, and president of Franklin College, located just south of Indianapolis in Johnson County. 10. Robert Roper, Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and his Brothers in the Civil War (New York: Walker and Company, 2008). 11. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011). 12. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 14. Chapter 1 1. James M. Berquist, “Tracing the Origins of a Midwestern Culture: The Case of Central Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 77 (March 1981): 1–32. 2. Charles W. Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851–1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975), 3; Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia: 1749–1888 (Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1888), 59, 79, 81, 87; Rockbridge Area Genealogical Society, “Rockbridge County Heritage Book, 1778–1997 (1997), Archives of Washington and Lee University,

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Lexington, VA; George West Diehl, Old Oxford and Her Families (Verona, VA: McClure Printing Company, 1971), 43. 3. “Rockbridge County Heritage Book.” 4. Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14, 135. 5. Ibid,, 38-40, 59. 6. George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), xi. 7. Historical Papers No. 4—1893, Washington and Lee University (Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1893), 191; Diehl, Old Oxford and Her Families, 44. A number of Reverend Davidson’s sermons are located at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. The Archives of Washington and Lee University also has copies of some. 8. “Westminster Shorter Catechism,” http://www.reformed.org/documents/index. html; Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 68; Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 25–27. 9. Historical Papers No. 4—1893, p. 191; Herbert A. Kellar, “A Journey through the South in 1836: Diary of James D. Davidson,” Journal of Southern History 1 (August 1935): 345; Indianapolis Sentinel, December 5, 1874; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961), II. 10. Newspaper clipping, 1863, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. L107, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ISL). 11. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, July 28, 1843, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, ISL. 12. David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), xiii, 141, 172, 284. 13. Ibid., 210–11, 295. 14. Herbert A. Kellar, “Diaries of James D. Davidson (1836) and Greenlee Davidson (1857) during visits to Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 24 (June 1928): 131–33. 15. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970): 206; Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 56–57. 16. Indianapolis Sentinel, December 5, 1874. 17. “Noah Noble,” http://www.countyhistory.com/doc.gov/008.htm; David G. Vanderstel, “Noah Noble,” in Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair, eds., The Governors of Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2006), 70–72. 18. Dorothy Riker and Gayle Thornbrough, eds., Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of Noah Noble, Governor of Indiana, 1831–1837 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1958), 8 (hereafter cited as Riker and Thornrough, eds., Noah Noble). 19. Connersville Watchman, August 22, 1834; Noah Noble, 47; R. Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815–1840, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1978), 2:171; Esther Noble Carter and A .B. Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” Indiana Magazine of History 22 (June 1926): 215. 20. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 3, 19.

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21. Ibid., 34, 276, 285, 291. 22. B. R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County Indiana (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts and Company, 1884), 127; Jane Shaffer Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher: The Indiana Years, 1837–1847 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1973), 168; Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 23, 29, 302–4; Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 210–14. 23.Charles Roll, “Richard W. Thompson: A Political Conservative in the Fifties,” Indiana Magazine of History 27 (September 1931): 183–84; Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 206; Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 370–72; and Noah Noble to Richard Thompson, June 8, 1841, folder 2, box 1, Richard W. Thompson Correspondence and Papers, L 158, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, ISL. 24. Donald F. Carmony, Indiana 1816–1850: The Pioneer Era (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1998), 146–49, 190–201; Vanderstel, “Noah Noble,” 72–75. 25. Carmony, Indiana 1816–1850, pp. 207–15; Noah Noble, 43–45, 377; Buley, Old Northwest, 2:183, 261–62. 26. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 50-51; Buley, Old Northwest, 2:282–84. 27.Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 205; Vanderstel, “Noah Noble,” 71; “History of the Neighborhood,” Indianapolis Star, April 19, 1964; http://www.holycrossneighborhoodassociation.org/hcna9.htm. 28. Gayle Thornbrough, Dorothy Ricker, and Paula Corpuz, eds., The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, 9 vols. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1972–83), 1:219; Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 20; “History of the Neighborhood.” 29. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 156; William J. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), xiv, xv. 30. Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First among Patriots (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 76–78, 82, 162; Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 119. 31. Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 3–5. 32. Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 2013), 94. 33. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 175, 288–92; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 17; Richard Newman and James Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 127; Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 10. 34. Diehl, Old Oxford and Her Families, 44; Charles William Blair, A History of Mossy Creek Presbyterian Church (Bridgewater, VA: Bridgewater Beacon Printing, 2000), 62–63. 35. Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 218–19. 36. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 172–75, 295. 37. Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 5; Oshatz, Slavery and Sin, 3, 68.

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38. Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian, 93–95. 39. Ibid., 90–91, 96–101; Oshatz, Slavery and Sin, 50. 40. Oshatz, Slavery and Sin, 38. 41. Ibid., 39–40. 42. Ibid., 44. 43. Genovese, Consuming Fire, 11, 19. 44. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 21; Vanderstel, “Noah Noble,” 70; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 83, 87; Newman and Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 27; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (New York: Penguin Classics, 1986); Indianapolis Historic Preservation Committee, “Cottage Home Conservation Area Plan,” 2008, p. 22; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 225; David S. Reynolds, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011), 104, 107–8; Ronald L. Baker, Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 177–79; W. Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 38. 45. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 66; Carmony, Indiana 1816–1850, 523–24. 46. Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away, 210–11, 295. 47. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 599–600. 48. Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 218–219; Levine, Half Slave and Half Free, 93. 49. “A Pioneer Wedding: Letter from Catherine M. Noble to Margaret A. Sullivan,” Indiana Magazine of History 16 (March 1920): 38–41; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 116–17; Indianapolis Star, February 7, 1955. 50. Reynolds, Mightier than the Sword, 6; George W. Geib, Lives Touched by Faith: Second Presbyterian Church, 150 Years (Indianapolis: Second Presbyterian Church, 1988), 19–24; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 85–87; “Beecher’s Indianapolis Church,” Indiana Magazine of History 1 (December 1905): 211; Arthur C. Moore, The Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis: One Hundred Years, 1838–1938 (Greenfield, IN: William Mitchell Printing Company, 1939), 40–45; McDaniel, Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery, 30–31. 51. “Second Church Timeline,” http://www.secondchurch.org/timeline. 52. Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, xx; Geib, Lives Touched by Faith, 14, 18; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 78; Moore, Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, 26–27; Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 95. 53. Geib, Lives Touched by Faith, 16-17; Moore, Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, 29–34. There was some debate as to if First Church could actually dismiss them or not, since Second Presbyterian would be outside of the General Session, or if all it could do was to say they had withdrawn from membership. 54. Newspaper clipping, 1863, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers, Moore, Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, 36. 55. Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 160; “Noah Noble,” http://www.countyhistory.com/ doc.gov/008.htm; Peggy Seigel, “A Passionate Missionary to the West: Charles Beecher

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in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1844–1850,” Indiana Magazine of History 106 (December 2010): 325–55. 56. Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 9, 36–37, 44, 48, 52–55, 66–67, 140, 156–157, 170, 174. 57. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 178–85; Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, ix, 1, 10–12, 23, 26, 56–57, 78, 86, 118–19, 228, 248. 58. Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 2–3; Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 184–89; Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 65. 59. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 16. 60. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, July 28, 1843, Davidson collection; L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Zion: The Presbyterians in Early Indiana (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 180–81; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 184. 61. Riker and Thornbrough, eds., Noah Noble, 49–50. 62. Applegate, Most Famous Man in America, 182. 63. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, February 15, 1849, Davidson collection. 64. Notary Public Commission, folder 2 1840–1854, Noble and Davidson papers; Early Military Database, Indiana State Digital Archives, Indianapolis, IN. Davidson’s commission led to him later being misidentified with a Confederate general by the same name. Both Herbert Kellar and Bruce Greenawalt make this mistake. See, Greenawalt, “Life Behind Confederate Lines in Virginia, 207 n2. 65. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, July 28, 1843, and October 16, 1845, Davidson collection. 66. Eli Lilly, History of the Little Church on the Circle: Christ Church Parish, Indianapolis: 1837–1955 (Indianapolis: Christ Church, 1957), 83; Western Christian Advocate, March 22, 1844; Elsmere, Henry Ward Beecher, 221–23. 67. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, February 15, 1849, Davidson collection. 68. Carter and Davidson, “Letters from Correspondence of Noah Noble,” 217. 69. 1844 Will of Noah Noble, folder 2 1840–1854, Noble and Davidson papers. 70. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, October 16, 1845, Davidson collection. 71. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, January 20, 1849, ibid. 72. 1850 census. Considering that most of the city’s residents lived on about $1,000 a year, or less, the Davidsons were easily considered well to do. See, John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 531. 73. Newspaper clipping, 1863, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson papers; Funeral Notice; Alexander Davidson to George Noble, March 2, 1853, folder 2 1840–1854, Noble and Davidson papers. 74. C. B. Davidson to James Davidson, October 14, 1854, and John Ketchum to James Davidson, March 25, 1853, Davidson collection. Ketchum had been named as the commissioner by the Marion County Circuit Court to oversee the sale of twenty lots in 1850 to help pay off Governor Noble’s debts, as well as to provide Winston a secure source of funds for his education. 75. Greenawalt “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia,” 8; C. B. Davidson to James Davidson, October 14, 1854, Davidson collection. Martha Davidson may have preceded her husband in death, or may have quickly remarried after his death in 1863. Either way,

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she is only scantly mentioned in the existing record uncovered thus far, is not mentioned by the time the war begins, and is not buried in the family plot in Indianapolis. Chapter 2 1. John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 530–31. 2. Gary W. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013), 35. 3. David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 5. In his book Goldfield calls what evangelicals were doing “toxic” to the status quo. He also, correctly, points out that evangelicals could be selfrighteous, over confident, and bigots. 4. Grover L. Hartman, “The Hoosier Sunday School: A Potent Religious/Cultural Force,” Indiana Magazine of History 78 (September 1982): 215–41. 5. Henry K. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples: A Comprehensive History of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in Indiana (Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1966), 36. 6. Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 8–9; Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 89; Lester G. McAllister and William E. Tucker, Journey in Faith: A History of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1975), 24, 157; George M. Waller, Butler University: A Sesquicentennial History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 4. 7. George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 113–15; Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1992), 605; Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 67; McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 62. 8. Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 11. 9. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 131. 10. L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths: A History of Indiana’s Churches and Religious Groups (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 101. 11.“Bethany College: Historic Bethany,” http://www.bethanywv.edu/index .php?cID=25,; McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 163–65. 12. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 144–45; Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 102; Waller, Butler University, 16–17; McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 199; Jeffrey M. Herbener, “A House Divided: Slavery and the Restoration Movement,” paper presented at the Austrian Scholars Conference, 2002, copy in the possession of the author. 13. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 148; Waller, Butler University, 18; Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 102–3. 14. Butler University, 6; Barbara Butler Davis, ed., Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004), 1. 15. Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 518; Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 121–23; Waller, Butler University, 1; Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War, 527–28. 16. “Faith, Family, Posterity: The Newsletter of the Dr. James Ford Historic Home (Winter 2006). The board consisted of Judge Jeremiah Smith, John B. New, Benjamin Reeve, Woodson Thrasher, Andrew Wallace, Love H. Jameson, and Elijah Goodwin. See,

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Elijah Goodwin File; Love H. Jameson file; “Sketches of Prominent Citizens; ” Andrew Wallace File; “Woodson W. Thrasher File,” “Benjamin F. Reeve Biographical Sketch by Madison Evans,” Benjamin F. Reeve File; “John B. New Biographical Sketch by Madison Evans,” John B. New File, Butler University Archives, Indianapolis, IN; “Memorandum Book of Eastern Tour, 1844,” page 4–5, folder 1, Jeremiah Smith Papers SC0070, William Henry Smith Memorial Library Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis ,IN (hereafter cited as IHS); Waller, Butler University, 68. 17. Waller, Butler University, 2, 10, 24. 18. Ibid., 11; Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 123–24, 134–38. 19. Waller, Butler University, 27. 20. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 146–48, 168–69; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 10. 21. Waller, Butler University, 1, 44. 22. Richard Newman and James Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 175. 23. Goldfield, America Aflame, 3; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 21, 25; Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 91; Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, 134–35. 24. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 14. 25. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 171, 175, 288–92; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 17; Newman and Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 127; Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 54. 26. Newman and Mueller, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 186; Gutjhar, Charles Hodge, 169–71, 222–24, 296; Marsden, Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 91–92; Goldfield, America Aflame, 101; Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 2013), 95. 27. Fergus M. Bordewich, America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 146–50, 156–57, 204. 28. Ibid., 160. 29. Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 127; Goldfield, America Aflame, 26–27; Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 168–69; W. Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 56, 72; Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 87–88, 130. 30. Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 13, 19, 50; Randall T. Shepard, “Slavery Cases in the Indiana Supreme Court: Where Slaves and Former Slaves Found Hope,” pamphlet (2007). 31. Joseph Kelly, America’s Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Toward Civil War (New York: Overlook Press, 2013), 17, 121, 230.

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32. Bordewich, America’s Great Debate, 320, 329, 363–64, 394–96; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 27; Etcheson, Generation at War, 28–29; Goldfield, America Aflame, 62–63; Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 145; Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), 33. 33. Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 21; McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 189–90; Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, 170; Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 143; Herbener, “House Divided.” 34. McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 193; Herbener, “House Divided; Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 103; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 23. 35. Waller, Butler University, 18–19; McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 194–97. 36. McAllister and Tucker, Journey in Faith, 191; Herbener, “House Divided.” 37. Waller, Butler University, 16–17; Herbener, “House Divided.” 38. Goldfield, America Aflame, 72; Herbener, “House Divided”; Etcheson, Generation at War, 92, 95; Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 303–6; Bowman, At the Precipice, 54, 58; McDaniel, Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery, 194. 39. Goldfield, America Aflame, 27. 40. Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 103–4; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 23, 70; Waller, Butler University, 24; Etcheson, Generation at War, 33. Charles Baker Davidson noted that “the Nebraska and Kansas bill has produced a complete revolution in the political parties here.” See, C. B. Davidson to James Davidson, October 14, 1854, James D. Davidson Collection, S334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN. 41. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 139–43; Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 103. 42. Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 8, 76–77, 115, 137, 140. 43. “No property in Man,” “Freesoil,” “Slavery,” and “Freedom of Speech,” box 2, folders 1, 3, 4, 6, Ovid Butler Papers, M0036, IHS. 44. Waller, Butler University, 18–20; Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 163–68. Among the expelled students were Harvey W. Everest (who later served as the university’s president) and Daniel R. Van Buskirk (who served on its board). 45. Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, 132; “Lane Rebels’ Statement,” http://www .oberlin.edu/external/EOG/LaneDebates/RebelsDefence.htm. 46. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: Penguin Press, 1984); Bowman, At the Precipice, 24–25. 47. C. G. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery; or, a Tour among the Planters (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855), xii; David Reynolds, Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2012); Oshatz, Slavery and Sin, 61. 48. Herbert A. Kellar, “Diaries of James D. Davidson (1836) and Greenlee Davidson (1857) during visits to Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 24 (June 1928): 136. 49. Gayle Thornbrough, Dorothy Riker, and Paula Corpuz, eds., The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, 9 vols. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1972–83), 5:176–77. 50. Goldfield, America Aflame, 82–84; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 64; Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 99. 51. Indianapolis News, December 6, 1899; William Twining to Alexander Davidson,

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July 25, 1848, Noble Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. It should be noted that Twining was a staunch abolitionist, helping to make Wabash a center for antislavery thought in Indiana, and later moved to Missouri in order to help the Underground Railroad. See, “Dear Old Wabash, Archives, page 6,” http://blogs .wabash.edu/dear-old-wabash/page/6/. Winston later became an Episcopalian. See, Eli Lilly, History of the Little Church on the Circle: Christ Church Parish, Indianapolis: 1837–1955 (Indianapolis: Christ Church, 1957), 138. 52. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, October 23, 1859, Davidson collection, ISL. 53. Butler Alumnal Quarterly 3 (October 1914): 105–8; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North-Western Christian University for Session 1856–1857, p. 6; Waller, Butler University, 35. 54. Waller, Butler University, 26–27. Hoshour got the job after Horace Mann turned down the appointment. 55. Ibid., 45–46. 56. “Kate” to William Brevoort, April 25, 1858, and Jason F. Brevoort to William and Edwin Brevoort, April 8–9, 1859, Brevoort Family Papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 57. Waller, Butler University, 37. 58. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North-Western Christian University for Session 1858–1859, pp. 6–7, 14, 17–18. 59. Annual Circular Letters of the Active Chapters of the Phi Delta, Volume 26 (Menasha, WI: The Collegiate Press, 1912), 130; “Fighting Phis,” http:thephideltlegacy.com/military/ fighting_phis/fighting_phis.html. 60. Waller, Butler University, 47, 51; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the NorthWestern Christian University for Session 1856–1857, p. 14. 61. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North-Western Christian University for Session 1859–1860, p. 5. 62. Ibid., 20. 63. Kellar, “Diaries of James D. Davidson (1836) and Greenlee Davidson (1857) during visits to Indiana,” 134. 64. Ibid., 134–35. 65. Ibid., 135. 66. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, December 27 1859, Davidson collection. 67. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, July 12 1859, and Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, October 10, 1859, Davidson collection; “Matriculation List 1860–161,” Archives of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA. Chapter 3 1. Jeffry D. Wert, A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldier of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 15. 2. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961); Stacey Jean Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 22; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (WinstonSalem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 58–59; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge

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County: The Correspondence of James Dorman Davidson Concerning the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 73 (January 1965): 78. 3. “Lexington Presbyterian History,” http://lexpres.org/html/history.htm; Robert F. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989 (Lexington, VA: Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1991), 3, 40–42; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” iv. 4. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 22; Steven E. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 22. 5. Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 326–30; Craig M. Simpson, A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 82–83; Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 155–59. 6. Mason Lowance, Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 53–58, 203–6. 7. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 26, 30, 68. 8. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On, 22–23. 9. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 79; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” ii. 10. Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 26, 37, 42, 53, 59, 68; David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 288. 11. Carmichael, Last Generation, 20, 41, 61–63. 12. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, December 16 1859, December 10, 1860, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ILS). 13. Lowell Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1993), 139. 14. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” i. 15. Ibid. v; Bruce S. Greenwalt, “James Doman Davidson,” History of Virginia: Volume V, Virginia Biography (New York: American Historical Society, 1924), 245; 1860 Census, Fold3.com/; Herbert A. Kellar, “A Journey through the South in 1836: Diary of James D. Davidson,” Journal of Southern History 1 (August 1935), 346; C. L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 2, Archives of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA; J. C. Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 1, Archives of Washington and Lee University. See for example, “A Dream: Picture of the Graham P. Society of Washington College” composed by Davidson in January 1829, in which he skewered members of the college’s student body and its professors. 16. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970), 205; Kellar, “A Journey through the South in 1836,” p. 359; Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 80; C. G. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery; or, a Tour among the Planters (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855), 17.

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17. James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1997), 183–84. 18. Charles W. Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851–1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975) foreword, 4–5, 13; Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 78; 1860 Census, Fold3.com/; Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 2. 19. Charles W. Turner, “James B. Dorman’s Civil War Letters,” Civil War History, 25 (September 1979): 262;, and “James Dorman,” http://www.virginiamemory.com/online_ classroom/union_or_secession. 20. Preston Davidson to Alexander Davidson, March 1, 1861, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers, L 107, Manuscripts Division, ISL; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” iii, 64. 21. Charles W. Turner, Old Zeus: Life and Letters of James J. White (Verona, VA: McClure Printing Company, 1983), 9; Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, 24–26; “Captain Greenlee Davidson,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=859. 22. Simpson, A Good Southerner, 119. 23. William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13. 24. Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 16; L. Diane Barnes, Brian Schoen, and Frank Towers, eds., The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 25. Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), vii, 3–7, 11, 17. 26. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 6–7, 10–11, 21; Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics in a Virginia County, 1834–1869 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), xi; Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away, 295; Wallace Hettle, The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 70–71; Simpson, Good Southerner, xiii, 36; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 12; Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 25, 28–29, 55; Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003), 21. 27. Simpson, Good Southerner, 19; Crofts, Old Southampton, 23–35, 187. 28. Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away, 204–7; Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 52–53; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 285. 29. Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 38. 30. Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 86; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 22; Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 129; Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 17, 170; Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 13. 31. Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 14–15.

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32. Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 5, 41; Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away, 291; Rockbridge Area Genealogical Society, “Rockbridge County Heritage Book, 1778–1997 (1997), Archives of Washington and Lee University. 33. Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 164, 178–79, 314. 34. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery, 19. 35. Charles Beecher, The Antichrist of New England: A Sermon (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee and Company, 1860), 28. 36. Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 207. 37. Joseph Kelly, America’s Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March Toward Civil War (New York: Overlook Press, 2013), 276. 38. Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 20–21, 28–31, 38, 51. 39. Crofts, Old Southampton, 125, 138, 171–172; Gutjahr, Charles Hodge, 302; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 32–33, 120, 276–77; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 981–84. 40. Kelly, America’s Longest Siege, 244; Simpson, Good Southerner, 17, 60–61, 80, 86– 91, 115, 118, 121,130, 188, 226, 286; “Henry A. Wise,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia .org/wise_henry_a_1806-1876; Hettle, Peculiar Democracy, 46; Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia: 1847–1861 (New York: AMS Press, 1971), 48-49. 41. Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 15. 42. James Lee Conrad, The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (New York: Stackpole Books, 1997), 1–6. 43. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989, 44–47, 62–70; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 63, 90–92. 44. Conrad, Young Lions, 13–18. 45. David S. Reynolds, John Brown: Abolitionist (New York: Vintage Books, 2005); Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 4. 46. Simpson, Good Southerner, 215-217; David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 160-162; Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 2013), ix, 1, 5, 7-8. 47. Fischer and Kelly, Bound Away, 208; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 107; Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 13. 48. Harrold, Border War, 203; Crofts, Old Southampton, 171; Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 53; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1954), 1. 49. Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 88-89. 50. Indiana State Sentinel, October, 24, 25 26, December, 19, 22, 1859. 51. George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 31; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 8; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York:

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Macmillan Company, 1954), 3, 16; Gary W. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013), 70. 52. Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 179–80; Peter S. Carmichael, Last Generation, 117–18; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 2; “The Hanging: American Experience, John Brown’s Holy War,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ amex/rown/peopleevents/pande10.htm. 53. Simpson, Good Southerner, 204–5, 214. 54. Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 39–43; Petersburg Daily Express, December 8, 1859; Lexington Gazette, December 15, 1859; Conrad, Young Lions, 26–27. 55. Diary, December 2, 1859, folder 1, box 1, Henry Tutewiler Papers, M0279, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN. 56. Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 45; Coulling, Margaret Junkin, 108. 57. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, October 23 1859, Davidson collection. 58. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, December 27 1859, ibid. 59. Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 236–39; Hettle, Peculiar Democracy, 67; Carmichael, Last Generation, 48, 101. 60. Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 5–9; Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 2–3, 6–8, 11–12. 61. Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 42-46. 62. Ibid., 55–59. 63. Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 17–18; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography, 45-46, 63-65; Simpson, Good Southerner, 102–3. 64. Fischer, and Kelly, Bound Away, 211; “Faculty Lounge: Washington College and the Shift from Anti-Slavery,” http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2011/09/washington-college -shift.html. 65. John P. Lightner to Amanda Catherine Armentrout, December 15, 1860, folder 1, William Francis Brand Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA; “Letter to Mary Susan Brooks,” http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Bro1g08.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/ modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1. 66. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 103, 125, 144–45; “George Junkin: Washington and Lee University,” http://www.wlu.edu/x55751.xml; Turner, Captain Greenlee Davidson, 18. Jackson came to VMI at the urging of his old army friend, D. Harvey Hill, who was a professor at Washington College. 67. Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1749–1888 (Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1888), 125; Turner, Old Zeus, 3, 31. 68. Indiana State Sentinel, August 31, 1858, September 2, 1858, September 8, 1858; Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, December 10 1860, Davidson collection. Chapter 4 1. “1860 U.S. Federal Population Census,” FamilySearch.org/.

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2. Albert D. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1974), 290. 3. Ibid., 127, 289, 295, 304. 4. Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 87; Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1992), 62–63; Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003), 46. 5. Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia: 1847–1861 (New York: AMS Press, 1971), 107; Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 216; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 40–43; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 44. 6. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 68–72. 7. Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 145; Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 104. 8. William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 16; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 90; Charles Roll, “Richard W. Thompson: A Political Conservative in the Fifties,” Indiana Magazine of History 27 (September 1931): 184–194; Mark E. Neely, Jr., “Richard W. Thompson: The Persistent Know Nothing,” Indiana Magazine of History 72 (June 1976): 98–102, 114. 9. Richard Thompson to Alexander Davidson, February 20, 1860; W. K. Edwards to Alexander Davidson, March 29, 1860; Constitutional Union Party Meeting Announcement, April 3, 1860; and N. Sargent to Alexander Davidson, June 23, 1858, folder 3, 1855–1860, Noble and Davidson Family Papers, L 107, Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ISL). 10. Union Party Announcement, August 1860, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers, ISL; Roll, “Richard W. Thompson, 196. 11. Dennis Gregg to Alexander Davidson, July 10, 1860, folder 3, 1855–1860, Noah and Davidson Family Papers; Thornborough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 89. 12. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 354–55; Roll, “Richard W. Thompson,” 200. 13. New York Times, April 13, 1860, and “Justice John McClean,” https://www .supremecourtofohio.gov/SCO/formerjustices/bios/mclean.asp. 14. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961), 31; “John J. Crittenden,” http://www .tulane.edu/~latner/Crittenden.html; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 83–87; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, vi, 10–11, 351–53. 15. Roll, “Richard W. Thompson,” 195, 198; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 92–95; “Constitutional Union Party Ballot 1860,” http://www.virginiamemory.com/online _classroom/union_or_secession. 16. Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 44. 17. “Minor/Third Party Platforms: Constitutional Union Party Platform,” http://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29571.

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18. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 92–95. 19. Ibid, 90. 20. Fergus M. Bordewich, America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 43; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 88; “Getting the Message Out! John Bell,” http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ message/candidates-bell.html. 21. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 49–95; David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 184–85. 22. Goodheart, 1861, p. 36; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 96–98. 23. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 101; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 356; “Getting the Message Out! Campaign Histories: Campaign of 1860,” http://dig.lib.niu.edu/message/ campaignhistory-1860.html; Bowman, At the Precipice, 146. 24. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 99–100, 192-193; Dennis Gregg to Alexander Davidson, September 8, 1860, Folder 4, 1860––1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 67; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 356–57; Roll, “Richard W. Thompson,” 199, 202–3; Richard W. Thompson to unknown correspondent, January 11, 1860, Richard W. Thompson Collection, SC 1456, Indiana Historical Society William Henry Smith Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as IHS); “Edward Everett,” http:// www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/HVDpresidents/everett.php. Everett is perhaps best remembered for his public speaking, which included a national tour in 1858 to raise funds to preserve George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, and later as the official speaker at Gettysburg in 1863, whose two-hour oration was proceeded by (and eventually surpassed in memory by) President Abraham Lincoln’s much shorter Gettysburg Address. 25. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 349–51. 26. J. J. Hayden to Alexander Davidson, July 1, 1860, Folder 3, 1855–1860, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. 27. Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 66; Bowman, At the Precipice, 148. 28. Etcheson, Generation at War, 40. 29. Bowman, At the Precipice, 172; Etcheson, Generation at War, 39. 30. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, January 23, 1860, James D. Davidson Collection, S334, Manuscript Division, ISL. 31. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 188–91, 212. 32. Ibid., 189–90. 33. Ibid., 54–55, 60-61, 151, 170–71, 195, 331. 34. Charles W. Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851–1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975), 8; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County: The Correspondence of James Dorman Davidson Concerning the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 73 ( January 1965): 79; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 80 “James Dorman,” http:// www.virginiamemory.com/online_classroom/union_or_secession. 35. John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 544; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 336–37; David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 178; Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne, eds., Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 35.

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36. William J. Cooper, We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 23. 37. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 85; Marc Egnal, Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), 288. 38. Levine, Half Slave and Half Free, 228, 247, 250; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 9; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 8-10; David Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams, and David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002), 132–35; Ayers, In The Presence of Mine Enemies, 31; William C. Davis and James I Robertson, Jr., eds., Virginia at War: 1861 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 46; James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 107; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1954), 4. 39. Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 31, 225. 40. Mark E. Neely Jr., Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 246–48, 264–67. 41. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 290; Nation and Towne, eds., Indiana’s War, 38–39; Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War, 547; Clemont Eaton, “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21 (March 1935), 511; Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 85–112. 42. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 237, 242–43. 43. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 14–15. 44. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 228-229; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 8; McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 42–43, 52. 45. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 16–17; Bowman, At the Precipice, 183. 46. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 81–84; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 7–8, 11, 13. 47. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 25, 125. 48. Bowman, At the Precipice, 7; Craig M. Simpson, A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 230. 49. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 30; Goldfield, America Aflame, 182, 190. 50. James W. Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda (Tuscaloosa, AL: Confederate Publishing Company, 1957), 9; Goldfield, America Aflame, 176; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 134, 152; Simpson, Good Southerner, 220, 237. 51. “James Henley Thornwell on The State of the Country,” http://civilwarcauses. org/thorn.htm; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 221; Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda, 8. 52. Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), 43; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 36–37. 53. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 275; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 343–44; Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 34, 52–53; Goldfield, America Aflame, 184–185; Ayres, At the Precipice, 39, 47–48. After the

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war, Davis denied that slavery had any part to play in the war’s outbreak. See, Ayres, At the Precipice, 49. 54. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 281–82; Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 128. 55. Ayres, At the Precipice, 16–17; Levine, Half Slave and Half Free, 236; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 299; Goldfield, America Aflame, 177, 195; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 371, 408. 56. Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 109–10. 57. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 8–9. 58. Ibid., 3, 15. 59. C. Baker Davidson to James Davidson, February 21, 1861, Davidson collection; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 51–52. 60. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, December 10, 1860, Davidson collection. 61. Ibid.; Greenawalt, “ Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 9. 62. McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 53, 64–65. 63. Williams et al., eds., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 2. 64. Jones, Saving Savannah, 122–23; Williams et al., eds., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 18, 20. 65. Goldfield, America Aflame, 181; Edgerton, Year of Meteors, 286–87; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 41–43. 66. Ayers, At the Precipice, 261–65. 67. Diary, January 3 and January 4, 1861, Perry Hall Papers, SC 670, IHS. 68. Edgerton, Year of Meteors, 266–67. 69. Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda, 14; Goldfield, America Aflame, 191; Carmichael, Last Generation, 180. 70. Carmichael, Last Generation, 72, 82–83, 90, 108. 71. Charles C. Bishop, “The Pro-Slavery Argument Reconsidered: James Henley Thornwell, Millennial Abolitionist,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 73 (January 1972): 18; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 58–59. 72. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 35–36, 45, 62–63, 73; Charles Reagan Wilson, “Robert Lewis Dabney: Religion and the Southern Holocaust,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89 (January 1981): 79; “Robert Lewis Dabney,” http://www.hsc.edu/The -Record/Alumni-Profiles/Profiles/Heroes/Robert-Lewis-Dabney; Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda, 16–17, 26–29. 73. Bishop, “Pro-Slavery Argument Reconsidered, 20; “James Henley Thornwell on The State of the Country,” http://civilwarcauses.org/thorn.htm. 74. “Southern Presbyterian Review Digitization Project—Benjamin Morgan Palmer,” http://www.pcahistory.org/HCLibrary/periodiclas/spr/bios/palmer.html;“Benjamin Palmer’s Thanksgiving Sermon,” http://civilwarcauses.org/palmer.htm. 75. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 56–57; George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 211; “A Southern Christian View of Slavery by James Henry Thornwell,” http://teachingamericanhistory .org/library/index.asp?documentprint=1124; “New Horizons,” http://www.opc.org/ nh.html?article_id=65; Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy

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(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 312–17. 76. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 36; Goldfield, America Aflame, 194; Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 311, 315. 77. Charity R. Carney, Ministers and Masters: Methodism, Manhood, and Honor in the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011); Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 80–81; Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda, 16, 23; William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 24; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 38. 78. Ayres, At the Precipice, 234. 79. C. G. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery; or, a Tour among the Planters (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855), xii. 80. Diary, January 18, March 12, April 5, June 12, and July 3, 1861, Hall papers. 81. Carmichael, Last Generation, 6, 10, 12, 49, 52, 60, 116, 122–23. 82. “Virginia Memory: Union or Secession,” http://www.virginiamemory.com/online _classroom/union_or_secession; William C. Davis, Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America (New York: Free Press, 2002), 113; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War: 1861, 14; Simpson, Good Southerner, 239; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 108. 83. Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War: 1861, 114. 84. Charles B. Drew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 59; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 121; Simpson, Good Southerner, 219; Samuel J. Mullins to Christopher Yancy Thomas, January 25, 1861, Gravely Family Papers, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA. 85. Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 122–23; Eaton, “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856,” 495; David Williams, Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War (New York: New Press, 2008), 9; Benjamin Franklin Gravely to Christopher Yancy Thomas, January 28, 1861, Gravely Family Papers; Neely, Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation, 251, 274; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 86–87. Chapter 5 1. Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 224; Albert D. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1974), 402, 404; Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 245; Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 277. 2. James L. Huston, “Southerners against Secession: The Arguments of the Constitutional Unionists in 1850–51,” Civil War History 46 (December 2000): 282, 285, 293; Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics in a Virginia County, 1834–1869 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), 176. 3. Bowman, At the Precipice, 43; William C. Davis and James I Robertson, Jr., eds. Virginia at War: 1861 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 6; Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia: 1847–1861 (New York: AMS Press, 1971), 176–77, 181;

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William J. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860– April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 20–22, 24. 4. Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 67–68. 5. Levine, Half Slave and Half Free, 229. 6. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, February 23, 1861, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, In (hereafter cited as ISL). 7. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 314; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1954), 14; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 52. 8. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 85. 9. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 245, 348, 419, 432. 10. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 6. 11. “John J. Crittenden,” http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/CrittendenComp.html. 12. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel,” (thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961), 20–21. 13. Charles W. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson: Letters of a Virginia Soldier,” West Virginia History 39 (Fall 1977): 53; Greenawalt,“Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” x. 14. Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne, eds. Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 53–57; Barbara Butler Davis, ed. Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004), 7. 15. Clement Eaton, “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21 (March 1935): 505. 16. Eli Lilly, History of the Little Church on the Circle: Christ Church Parish, Indianapolis: 1837–1955 (Indianapolis: Christ Church, 1957), 156; Charles Roll, “Richard W. Thompson: A Political Conservative in the Fifties,” Indiana Magazine of History 27 (September 1931): 204; Mark E. Neely Jr., “Richard W. Thompson: The Persistent Know Nothing,” Indiana Magazine of History 72 (June 1976): 103–4. 17. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 380–83, 417; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 288, 296–98, 304–6; Levine, Half Slave and Half Free, 231–33; Bowman, At the Precipice, 268–271; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 71, 96, 112, 151–52. For his part, Abraham Lincoln resisted the Crittenden Compromise, at least in part because it contained the possibility of Southern expansion into Central America, which would have been south of the Missouri Compromise line. See, David C. Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 108. 18. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 392–93, 400–401. 19. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, xv; Craig M. Simpson, A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 246–48; Charles W. Turner, Old Zeus: Life and Letters of James J. White (Verona, VA: McClure Printing Company, 1983), 31; John Herbert Roper, ed. Repairing the “March of Mars”: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861–1865 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 58; Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 126–27. 20. Simpson, Good Southerner, 244–45; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 423–25, 479–80.

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21. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 85-86. 22. “John Letcher,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letcher_John_1813-1884; “Col. Samuel Houston Letcher,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=1080; “Honest John Letcher, Wartime Governor of Virginia,” http://richmondthenandnow .com/newspaper-articles/Honest-John-Letcher; Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 57–59; Wallace Hettle, The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 77–78; Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 136–38; Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 2013), 274. 23. “Governor Letcher’s Message on Federal Relations,” http://history.furman .edu/~benson/docs/techer.htm. 24. Ibid. 25. Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 132. 26. Ibid., 3; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 2. 27. Egerton, Year of Meteors, 244; Simpson, Good Southerner, 179, 229, 241–244, 249– 50; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 6; Eaton, “Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Fire Eaters of 1856,” 495–96, 499; David Williams, Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War (New York: New Press, 2008), 42–43; “Henry A. Wise,” http://www .encyclopediavirginia.org/wise_henry_a_1806-1876; Earl Schenck Miers, ed. John B. Jones: A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary (New York: Sagamore Press, 1958), 3. 28. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County: The Correspondence of James Dorman Davidson Concerning the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 73 (January 1965): 80–81, 85; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 108, 119, 123. 29. Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 258; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 175. 30. Indiana Daily State Sentinel, February 9, 1861; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 46, 104; Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1992), 3, 47, 99–102. Indiana’s delegates were Caleb Smith (a former Whig congressman who worked for Lincoln’s presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican convention), Pleasant Hackelman (newspaper editor, delegate to the 1860 Republican convention, and later Union general), Goodlove Orth (former state legislator and eventual longtime Republican congressman, who had previously been a Whig and a Know Nothing), E. W. H. Ellis (a Democrat and former state auditor), and Thomas Slaughter (delegate to the Republican convention in 1860). 31. Simpson, Good Southerner, 54; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 310–311; David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 183; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 10. 32. Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 256–57. 33. Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 85–88; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 1820–83; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chestnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 11. 34. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 26.

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35. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 38–39, 174–75. 36. Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 259. 37. Miers, John B. Jones, 2; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 3, 7–8; Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 260. 38. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 86–87. 39. Preston Davidson to Alexander Davidson, January 8, 1861, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. L107, Manuscripts Division, ISL. 40. “Letter to Mary Susan Brooks,” http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccernew2?id=Bro1g08.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&t ag=public&part=1&division=div1; Turner, Old Zeus, 33. 41. William C. Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (New York: Free Press, 2002), 113; Marc Egnal, Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), 289; Bowman, At the Precipice, 42. 42. Crofts, Old Southampton, 173; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 122; Simpson, Good Southerner, 240; Charles Reagan Wilson, “Robert Lewis Dabney: Religion and the Southern Holocaust,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89 (January 1981): 81; Turner, Old Zeus, 34–35; McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 69–71. 43. Egnal, Clash of Extremes, 290–92; Bowman, At the Precipice, 182; Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson,” 53. 44. Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 250–53. 45. Turner, Old Zeus, 37–38; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 116–17, 121; Roper, ed., Repairing the “March of Mars,” 39, 50. 46. Crofts, Old Southampton, 179–180; C .L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 3, Archives of Washington and Lee University; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 106, 109, 122, 129; Stacey Jean Klein, “Wielding the Pen: Margaret Preston, Confederate Nationalistic Literature and the Expansion of a Woman’s Place in the South,” Civil War History 49 (September 2003): 224. 47. Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 113; Stacey Jean Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 43; “Letter to Mary Susan Brooks.” 48. John P. Lightner to Amanda Catherine Armentrout, December 15, 1860, Folder 1, William Francis Brand Collection, 11332, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA. 49. James Lee Conrad, The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (New York: Stackpole Books, 1997), 34; Edward A. Moore, The Story of a Cannoneer under Stonewall Jackson (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1907), 23–25; Robert F. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989 (Lexington, VA: Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1991), 72; Carmichael, Last Generation, 134; Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 103. 50. W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes, eds., Faith, Valor, and Devotion: The Civil War Letters of William Porcher DuBose (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 18; Engnal, Clash of Extremes, 293. 51. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson,” 49, 52, 54; Carmichael, Last Generation, 141. 52. Carmichael, Last Generation, 125, 128, 136.

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53. Conrad, Young Lions, 34–35; Moore, Story of a Cannoneer under Stonewall, 23; Carmichael, Last Generation, 129, 139; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 113; Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 43; “Letter to Mary Susan Brooks.” 54. Peyton B. Gravely to Christopher Yancy Thomas, February 19, 1861, Gravely Family Papers, Library of Virginia; Davis, Look Away! 115; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 29–31; “Why Did Virginia Secede?” http://railroads.unl.edu/blog/?p=40; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 173. 55. McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 72–73; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 226; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” xi, 35, 41; Williams, Bitterly Divided, 42. Wise’s son was a captain in a Richmond area militia unit, as well as the prosecessionist editor of the Richmond Enquirer. See, Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle, 132. 56. Charles B. Drew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 60–71; Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 120; Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 197. 57. Harrold, Border War, 198; “Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention,” http://civilwarcauses.org/benningva.htm. 58. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson,” 53; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 168–69; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 7. 59. Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 151; Fergus M. Bordewich, America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 168–69; Bowman, At the Precipice, 85–86; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 310–16; Charles Roll, “Richard W. Thompson: A Political Conservative in the Fifties,” Indiana Magazine of History 27 (September 1931): 205. 60. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 18. 61. McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 72–73; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 226; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 134; “James Dorman,” http://www .virginiamemory.com/online_classroom/union_or_secession. 62. Bowman, At the Precipice, 273; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 201–2; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 25; Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 130–32, 136–38. Early in the war, Boteler served on Stonewall Jackson’s staff. See, “Alexander Boteler,” http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000653. 63. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 22–23, 28, 31–32; Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 87–92. 64. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 22–23, 27–28, 31–32; Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County,” 87–92; Goodheart, 1861, p. 131. 65. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 33; Crofts, Old Southampton, 177; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 23. 66. Preston Davidson to Alexander Davidson, 1 March 1861, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. 67. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 39; Charles W. Turner, “James B. Dorman’s Civil War Letters,” Civil War History 25 (September 1979): 264–65; McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 70; Speech of John Janney, in the Virginia Convention on April 17, 1861, in George H. Reese and William H. Gaines Jr., eds. Proceedings of the

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Virginia State Convention of 1861 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1965), 4:137–40; Speech of Allen Taylor Caperton, in the Virginia Convention on April 17, 1861, ibid., pp. 4:101–2. 68. Speech of William Henry Bagwell Custis, of Accomack County, in the Virginia Convention on April 17, 1861, in Reese and Gaines, eds., Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, 4:135–36; Speech of James Baldwin Dorman, of Rockbridge County, in the Virginia Convention on April 17, 1861, ibid., 4:119. 69. William W. Freehling, The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 42–43; Cooper, We Have the War upon Us, 245, 258-259, 270; Bruce Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and Social Revolution That Transformed the South, New York: Random House, 2011), 46–49; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 12; Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 193–94; Speech of George Blow, in the Virginia Convention on April 17, 1861, in Reese and Gaines, eds.,Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, 4:85–88; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 28; Goodheart, 1861, p. 157. 70. Davis, Look Away, 114; Williams, Bitterly Divided, 41; Egnal, Clash of Extremes, 293. 71. George William Berlin to Susan Miranda Holt Berlin, April 13 and 14, 1861, BerlinMartz Family Papers, Library of Virginia. 72. Carmichael, Last Generation, 142; Conrad, Young Lions, 35–36. 73. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 49; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 114–16, 126–127; Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 43–46. Junkin’s step-grandson, Willie, joined the Liberty Hall Volunteers and was killed at the Battle of Second Manassas. 74. “John Letcher”; Miers, John B. Jones, 1–6; Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 331–32; Crofts, Old Southampton, 9; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 93; James C. Taylor to Governor John Letcher, April 15, 1861, Executive Papers of Governor John Letcher, Acc. 36787, State Government Records Collection, Record Group 3, Library of Virginia. 75. Staunton Vindicator, May 10, 1861; Fleming, Disease in the Public Mind, 268. 76. William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 154–55; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” xi. 77. Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 38. 78. Roper, ed., Repairing the “March of Mars,” 26. 79. Edwin Barbour to Christopher Yancy Thomas, April 8, 1861, Gravely Family Papers, Library of Virginia; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 141–42; Speech of Jubal A. Early in the Virginia Convention on March 6, 1861, in Reese and Gaines, eds., Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, p. 1:427. 80. Williams, Bitterly Divided, 40–41; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 30–32; Egerton, Year of Meteors, 307–8. 81. New York Times, April 16, 2011; John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood, The Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days that Shook the Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 49. 82. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 72; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 114. 83. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 47. 84. “Civil War Diaries and Archive of Alexander S. Paxton,” http://www.cowanauctions

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.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=92379. 85. Turner, Old Zeus, 39. 86. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 49; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 114–16, 126–27; Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, 43–46. A daughter and two sons went North with Junkin, and both boys served in the Union army. His daughter, Margaret, remained in Virginia. 87. C. Baker Davidson to James Davidson, April 18 1861, James D. Davidson collection. 88. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, April 20 1861, ibid. 89. Shanks, Secession Movement in Virginia, 198; Davis and robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 126; Miers, John B. Jones, 7–11. 90. Convention between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Confederate States of America, April 24, 1861, Virginia Convention (1861:Richmond), Records, 1861–1961, Acc. 40586, State Government Records Collection, Record Group 93, Library of Virginia. 91. “Ordinance of Secession,” http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/VA. 92. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates, 1, 6. 93. Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 11, 22; Paul C. Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 265–68; Lockwood, Siege of Washington, 82–83; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 85; Goldfield, America Aflame, 250; Gallagher, Becoming Confederates, 17. 94. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates, 20. 95. John G. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton: Memoir and Memorials (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1907), 2–3; James I. Robertson Jr., The Stonewall Brigade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 165–66. 96. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton, 3. 97. James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1997), 233. 98. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 4–5. 99. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates, 14. 100. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 208–209, 213; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life Behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970): 209. 101. Crofts, Old Southampton, 8, 206–07; Freeman Cleaves, The Rock of Chickamauga: The Life of General George H. Thomas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1948), 3–5, 67; Benson Bobrick, Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 19–20, 65–66. 102. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 368. 103. Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 73–74; McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 74–75, 120; James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861– 1865 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013), 293–95; Bowman, At the Precipice, 173–77; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 149–50; Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 45. 104. Lockwood, Siege of Washington, xiii, 245-247; Goodheart, 1861, p. 273; Wills, War Hits Home, 1–2; Kirwan, John J. Crittenden, 434–35; Freehling, The South vs. The South, 52–53. 105. Lockwood, Siege of Washington, 83–84.

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106. End of year Memo, 1861, Perry Hall Papers. 107. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County, 102. Chapter 6 1. David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 210–11; Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 2–3, 11, 17, 83; Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), 78–79; Earl Schenck Miers, ed. John B. Jones: A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary (New York: Sagamore Press, 1958), 7; William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr., eds. Virginia at War: 1861 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 118; Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 98–103; Bruce Catton, America Goes to War: The Civil War and Its Meaning in American Culture (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), 14; C. Vann Woodward, ed. Mary Chestnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 3 2. “Lexington During the Civil War,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lexington _During_the_Civil_War; William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 36–37; Lowell Reidenbaugh, 33rd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1987), 59; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 127; Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003), 163–64; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1954), 84; Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics in a Virginia County, 1834–1869 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), 193–95, 197–99; William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34–35, 46; John P. Lightner to Amanda Catherine Armentrout, June 29, 1861, folder 1, William Francis Brand Collection, 11332, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970): 210. 3. Carlton McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1865 (Richmond, VA: Carlton McCarthy and Company, 1882. 4. Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 13, 182; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 88; Goldfield, America Aflame, 209. 5. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, April 20 1861, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ISL). 6. Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne, eds. Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 82–83, 149–50; Ed Gleeson, Illinois Rebels: A Civil War Unit History of G Company, 15th Tennessee Regiment Volunteer Infantry (Carmel: Guild Press of Indiana, 1996), 1. Gleeson details the story of thirty-four men from southern Illinois who served together in a Confederate unit. Of that number, only six

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were actually born in the North (including one man from Indiana). 7. John P. Etter, The Indiana Legion: A Civil War Militia (Carmel, IN: Hawthorne Publishing, 2006), 2–3; Augustus Finch Shirts, A History of the Formation, Settlement and Development of Hamilton County, Indiana (Augustus Finch Shirts, 1901), 306; Eli Lilly, History of the Little Church on the Circle: Christ Church Parish, Indianapolis: 1837–1955 (Indianapolis: Christ Church, 1957), 157. 8. B. R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County Indiana (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts and Company, 1884), 303; Indiana’s Role of Honor, 461; Lilly, History of the Little Church on the Circle, 174; Indianapolis News, December 6, 1899. 9. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia,” 208. 10. Ibid., 210. 11. Charles W. Turner, ed. Ted Barclay, Liberty Hall Volunteers: Letters from the Stonewall Brigade, 1861–1864 (Natural Bridge Station, VA: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1992), 16, 19; Miers, ed., John B. Jones, 9; John Herbert Roper, ed. Repairing the “March of Mars”: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861–1865 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 105; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943), 17; Crofts, Old Southampton, 196. 12. Charles W. Turner, ed. Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851– 1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975), 28. 13. William W. Freehling, The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4. 14. Jeffry D. Wert, A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldier of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 14–15; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 117; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 135–36. 15. Goldfield, America Aflame, 236; Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 8; “4th Virginia Infantry, Co. I–The Liberty Hall Volunteers,” http://www.4thvirginia.com/history.html. 16. Robert J. Driver Jr. and Kevin C. Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 39th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 24th Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1996), 100. 17. Lee A. Wallace Jr., 5th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1988), 110; Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 18; Lowell Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg: H. E. Howard, 1993), 139. 18. Reidenbaugh, 33rd Virginia Infantry, 4; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 7; “Col. Samuel Houston Letcher,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=1080. 19. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 110. While Baker, Alexander, and James all wrote to each other frequently, if the two Davidson brothers living in Indiana also corresponded with Henry that correspondence has not been preserved. While it might be assumed that James shared information with Henry, it is also of interest that Henry is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the correspondence between the other three brothers. 20. Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, v, 11, 13; Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia: 1749–1888 (Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1888), 123–26. 21. Roper, Repairing the “March of Mars, 267. 22. Robert F. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989 (Lexington, VA:

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Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1991), 80. 23. “Captain Greenlee Davidson,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer _id=859; J. C. Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 4, Archives of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA; C. L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 6, 12, Archives of Washington and Lee University; Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, 27–28, 34, 38, 73, 81; “Greenlee Davidson War Records,” Fold3. 24. “Charles Davidson, War Records,” Fold3; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 39th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 24th Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers, 100. 25. James Lee Conrad, The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (New York: Stackpole Books, 1997), 36. 26. “Court Minutes, 1898–1903, Rockbridge County Court, Virginia,” http://files .usgwarchives.net/va/rockbridge/courts/minutes-1898-1903.txt. 27. “The Valley of the Shadow: Diary of Michael Reid Hanger,” http://www2.iath. virginia.edu/staunton/harvest/hanger2.html; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 7–8. 28. James Davidson to Alexander Davidson, April 18, 1861, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers, L107, ISL. 29. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 8, 12–13. 30. R. Henry Campbell to his mother, April 20, 1861, and R. Henry Campbell to his father, mid-April 1861, R. Henry Campbell letters, Campbell-Varner Family Papers, Virginia Military Institute Archives Manuscript #0282, Lexington, VA. 31. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, April 23 1861, James D. Davidson collection. 32. Nation and Towne, Indiana’s War, 43–45; John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 548, 556; Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1992), 111, 124, 143. 33. George M. Waller, Butler University: A Sesquicentennial History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 50; Henry K. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples: A Comprehensive History of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in Indiana (Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1966), 170–71; Barbara Butler Davis, ed., Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004), 91, 93, 104; John H. Holliday, “The Students in the Civil War,” Archives of Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana; and Arthur C. Moore, The Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis: One Hundred Years, 1838–1938 (Greenfield, IN: William Mitchell Printing Company, 1939), 63. 34. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, May 12 1861, and Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, August 12, 1861, Davidson collection. 35. Charles W. Turner, ed. My Dear Emma: The War Letters of Col. James K. Edmondson, 1861–1865 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1978), 4; Steven M. Smith and Patrick Hook, The Stonewall Brigade (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2008), 16; William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1995), 17. 36. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 137–140; James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1997), 54–57; Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 456; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 18. 37. Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 17; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War

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in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 32; Conrad, Young Lions, 42–43; Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 30; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 18–19; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 153; Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 220–31. 38. R. Henry Campbell to his mother, May 4, 1861, R. Henry Campbell letters. 39. Davis and Robertson, Virginia at War, 53–54, Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 30. 40. David Williams, Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War (New York: New Press, 2008), 44–45; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 9; Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 23. 41. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, 3 May 1861, James D. Davidson Letters, 2Q495, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, TX; Turner, ed., My Dear Emma, 6–7. 42. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia,” 212–13. 43. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, May 12, 1861, Davidson collection. 44. James Davidson to Alexander Davidson, May 24, 1861, folder 4, 1860–1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. 45. Alexander Davidson to Andrew Davidson, June 28, 1861, James D. Davidson Collection. 46. Ibid. 47. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 78–79; Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 10–13. 48. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 69–70; Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 178; Robert Emmett Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War: An Irish American’s Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 75. 49. R. Henry Campbell to his sister, May 29, 1861, and R. Henry Campbell to his Mother, May 21, 186, Campbell letters. 50. Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 14. 51. Charles W. Turner, Old Zeus: Life and Letters of James J. White (Verona, VA: McClure Printing Company, 1983), 44; John P. Lightner to Amanda Catherine Armentrout, June 29, 1861, and John P. Lightner to Amanda Catherine Armentrout, June 29, 1861, William Francis Brand Collection, 11332, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA. 52. Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 3–6. 53. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 63, 200–202; Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 162; “Colonel Andrew Jackson Grigsby,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=906. Grigsby was passed over for command of the Stonewall Brigade by Stonewall Jackson in 1862 in favor of Elisha Paxton—much to the dismay of most of the brigade’s officer corps. Grigsby said he planned to challenge Jackson to a duel over the slight to his honor, got into an argument with Jefferson Davis, resigned his commission, and sat out the remainder of the war. 54. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 15. 55. An American Turning Point,” http://www.vahistorical.org/civilwar/homefront .htm; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 75; John G. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton: Memoir and Memorials (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1907), 6, 11; Wallace Hettle, The Peculiar Democracy: Southern Democrats in Peace and Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 80; James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought

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in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 78–79; Wills, War Hits Home, 41. 56. “Report of Brigadier General James Longstreet for 1st Manassas (Bull Run),” http://www.civilwarhome.com/longstreet1stmanassas.htm; “Reports of General Joseph E. Johnston for 1st Manassas (Bull Run),” http://civilwarhome.com/johnston1stmanassas .htm; Turner, ed., My Dear Emma, 27. 57. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 14–15; “Reports of General Joseph E. Johnston for 1st Manassas (Bull Run).” 58. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 34; “Falling Waters Battlefield Association,” http://www. battleoffallingwaters.com/newbattle.htm. 59. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 69; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 90; Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 47. 60. R. Henry Campbell to his Mother, 3 June 1861, R. Henry Campbell letters; “Court Minutes, 1898-1903, Rockbridge County Court, Virginia,” http://files.usgwarchives.net/ va/rockbridge/courts/minutes-1898-1903.txt. 61. Robertson, Stonewall Brigade, 90; Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 15; T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 68–79, 94–95. 62. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 16; Robertson, Stonewall Brigade, 35–36; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 134–38, 158; Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 36; Jeffry D. Wert, The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 16; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 152. 63. New York Times, 20 July 2011; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 36; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 189-192; “First Battle of Manassas,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia .org/Manassas_First_Battle_of_Manassas; Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 35. 64. Roper, Repairing the “March of Mars”, 114. 65. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 16; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 118; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 13; “Reports of General Joseph E. Johnston for 1st Manassas (Bull Run).” 66. Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 13; Conrad, Young Lions, 44. 67. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 29–30; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 13; Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 271; Thomas, Confederate Nation 112–14; Reidenbaugh, 33rd Virginia Infantry, 7–9. 68. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 40; “First Battle of Manassas”; Eaton, History of the Southern Confederacy, 153–54; New York Times, July 20. 2011; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 197–98; Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 19, 37–39. 69. New York Times, 24 July 2011. 70. Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 78–79; John Keegan, The American Civil War: A Military History (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 104–5; Reidnbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 14. 71. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 173. 72. “Brownsville Marker,” http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=14174, 23. 73. Wert, Sword of Lincoln, 21. 74. Smith and Hook, Stonewall Brigade, 41; Goldfield, America Aflame, 221; “Historians’ Forum: The First Battle of Bull Run,” Civil War History 57(June 2011): 110, 112; Davis,

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Battle at Bull Run, 252–53; Davis and Robertson, eds., Virginia at War, 37. 75. Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 14–16; Wert, Sword of Lincoln, 24; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 195–196, 207–17; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 192-193; “First Battle of Manassas”; Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 16–18; James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 342; Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 26; Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, 64; Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 41–45. Included in the dead were Charles Bell and Benjamin Bradley, childhood friends and roommates at Washington College. 76. Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 247–48; Smith and Cook, Stonewall Brigade, vii, 124; “Reports of General Joseph E. Johnston for 1st Manassas (Bull Run).” 77. Keegan, American Civil War, 105–6; “Manassas National Battlefield Park-The Battle of First Manassas,” http://www.nps.gov/mana/historyculture/firstmanassas.htm. 78. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 111, 115; Williams, P.G. T. Beauregard, 89–90; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 194; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 239; Wert, Sword of Lincoln, 25–26; Wills, War Hits Home, 103; Donald C. Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier’s Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 138. 79. Steven E. Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 74, 132; Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard, 81–84; Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 26; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 347; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 82; Miers, ed., John B. Jones, 36, 38; Goldfield, America Aflame, 222. 80. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton, 12. 81. Andrew Brooks to Eleanor Stuart Brooks, September 18, 1861, http://valley.lib .virginia.edu/mod/Bro1i18. 82. Peter Messent and Steve Courtney, eds., The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 46; Indiana Daily State Sentinel, 23 July 1861; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 77–79. 83. Diary, July 23, 1861, Perry Hall Papers, SC0670, IHS. 84. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 118; Catton, Civil War, 42; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 200; Goldfield, America Aflame, 223; “Historians’ Forum: The First Battle of Bull Run,” Civil War History 57 (June 2011): 113. 85. Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 23. 86. Reidenhaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 15–17; Reidenbaugh, 33rd Virginia Infantry, 10. 87. Turner, ed., Ted Barclay, 25; Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, 123–26. Over the course of the war an additional eleven members of Preston’s class died in the service of the Confederacy. 88. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, August 12 1861, Davidson collection. 89. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 29; Goldfield, America Aflame, 230, 240. 90. R. Henry Campbell to his Mother, 21 July 1861, Campbell letters. Michael Hanger had a much better feel for the wounded, listing Fred Davidson and Asbery McClure as dead, Bourger, Neff, Rollins Moody, “Press” Davidson, Miller, Northern Parks, Reilly, Wallace, and Ruff as wounded. He also noted that the artillery unit from Rockbridge had seen Jack Jordan, Brockenbrough, and Singleton wounded. See, “The Valley of the Shadow: Diary of Michael Reid Hanger,” http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/staunton/harvest/hanger2

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.html. 91. Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 197; Davis, Battle at Bull Run, 246. 92. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 48; New York Times, July 24, 2011. 93. Reidnbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 19; Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 271. 94. Curran, John Dooley’s Civil, 150; Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 45; New York Times, July 24, 2011. 95. “Preston A. Davidson War Records,” Fold3; Carol C. Green, Chimborazo: The Confederacy’s Largest Hospital (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), 131-134. 96. Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 364. 97. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton, 15. 98. Harrisonburg Rockingham Register and Advertiser, August 23, 1861. 99. Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 110; “Frederic Davidson War Records,” Fold3; Miers, ed., John B. Jones, 37; C. L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 5, Archives of Washington and Lee University; Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton, 15; Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 139; Roper, Repairing the “March of Mars, 116–17. 100. Goldfield, America Aflame, 240. 101. Turner, “James B. Dorman’s Civil War Letters,” 268. 102. David Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams, and David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002), 20. 103. Turner, ed., Captain Greenlee Davidson, 32, 45. 104. Blair, Virginia’s, 38; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 64–65; “An American Turning Point,” http://www.vahistorical.org/civilwar/homefront.htm; Green, Chimborazo, 5–7. 105. Marvin P. Rozear and Joseph C. Greenfield, Jr., “Let Us Cross over the River: The Final Illness of Stonewall Jackson,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 103 (January 1995): 29–46. Other experts contend that Jackson died from the application of too much chloroform. 106. Green, Chimborazo, vii, 65; Peter W. Houck, A Prototype of a Confederate Hospital Center in Lynchburg, Virginia (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House Publishing, 1986), 13. 107. “Charlottesville During the Civil War,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/ Charlottesville_During_the_Civil_War; “Preston A. Davidson War Records”; Houck, Prototype of a Confederate Hospital Center in Lynchburg, 8; Wallace, 5th Virginia Infantry, 110. Evacuation of the wounded occurred shortly after the fighting. James Robert Montague of the Twenty-seventh Virginia was wounded in the thigh at Bull Run. He spent a day or so at the Stone House before being evacuated to Charlottesville. 108. “Complaints about Medical Care in Charlottesville,” http://www .encyclopediaofvirginia.org/. 109. Paxton, Elisha Franklin Paxton, 13; Wills, War Hits Home, 166; Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, 196; Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson: Letters of a Virginia Soldier,” West Virginia History 39 (Fall 1977): 58. 110. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson: Letters of a Virginia Soldier,” 57; “Simon Bolivar Buckner,” http://www.civilwarhome.com/bucknerbio; “Letter of Passage,” 8 October 1861, folder 4, 1860-1864, Noble and Davidson Family Papers. 111. Charles William Blair, A History of Mossy Creek Presbyterian Church (Bridgewater,

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VA: Bridgewater Beacon Printing, 2000), 63. 112. Reverend Andrew B. Davidson, “A Thanksgiving Sermon: Delivered at Oxford Meeting House, April 13, 1815” (Harrisonburg: George Bourne, 1815), 18. 113. Harrisonburg Rockingham Register and Advertiser, August 23, 1861. 114. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, 7 August 1861, MccMss1AH, James Davidson Collection, Box 12/30, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI. 115. “Preston A. Davidson War Records,” Fold3, 19 April 2012. 116. Reidenbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry, 139; “Preston A. Davidson War Records— Discharge Certificate,” Fold3; Jayson C. Hartman, Physician’s Assistant, correspondence with author, March 19, 2012. 117. “Preston A. Davidson War Records”; “Confederate General Charles Sidney Winder,” http://stonewall.hut.ru/leaders/winder.htm. Charles Sidney Winder was from Maryland, was a West Point graduate, and was a member of a distinguished military and slave-owning family. After Stonewall Jackson removed General Richard B. Garnett from command of the Stonewall Brigade in April 1862, Winder was appointed in his place. Winder was an outsider, which upset many within the brigade, and the new general and Jackson soon had personality clashes. He died as a result of wounds sustained at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, while “personally and needlessly” directing the gunners of the Rockbridge Artillery in August 1862. 118. “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia,” 226. 119. Catton, America Goes to War, 27; Wert, Sword of Lincoln, 20. 120. Turner, Old Zeus, 70. Chapter 7 1. Journal, February 10 and June 30, 1862, folder 2, Philander Smith Papers, SC 2775, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as IHS). 2. “An American Turning Point,” http://www.vahistorical.org/civilwar/homefront.htm; William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, eds. Virginia at War, 1863 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009); Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 264, 292–97; William Blair, Virginia’s Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–5, 52, 56–57, 84–85, 142, 149; David Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams, and David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002), 100; Brian Steel Wills, The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 256–58; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel,” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961), 87. Slaveowners were so worried about their slaves that they preferred to send their sons to war, resisted allowing the Confederate government using their slaves as part of their war effort, and at the end of the war defeated attempts to arm slaves who would fight for the Confederacy in order to obtain their freedom. See, Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 284–88, 315, 342; Donald C. Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier’s Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 423–24. 3. Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion

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(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 199, 204; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 76; “An American Turning Point.” 4. Williams et al., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 34; “An American Turning Point”; Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 28–29, 127; “John Letcher,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letcher_John_1813–1884; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 124, 131; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 190, 199, 284; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 136; Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics in a Virginia County, 1834–1869 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), 208; Charles W. Turner, ed. My Dear Emma: The War Letters of Col. James K. Edmondson, 1861–1865 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1978), 101; McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 180–81; Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), 200–202. 5. Robert J. Driver, Jr. and Kevin C. Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 39th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 24th Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1996), 6–7. 6. James I. Robertson Jr., General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 159. 7. “An American Turning Point.” 8. Andrew Brooks to Eleanor Stuart Brooks, September 18, 1861, http://valley.lib .virginia.edu/mod/Bro1i18. 9. “Civil War Diaries and Archive of Alexander S. Paxton,” http://www.cowanauctions. com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=92379. 10. Steve Barnett, “The Civil War—150 Years Ago: January 1862,” http://www .irvingtonhistorical.org/. 11. Steven E. Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 50; New York Times, April 2, 2012. 12. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North Western Christian University for Session 1857–1858, Butler University Archives, Indianapolis, IN; Civil War Index-11th Indiana Infantry,” http://www.civilwarindex.com/armyin/11th_in_infantry.html; “Civil War Index-45th Indiana Regiment, 3rd Indiana Cavalry,” http://www.civilwarindex .com/armyin/45th_in_regiment.html; Augustus Finch Shirts, A History of the Formation, Settlement and Development of Hamilton County (Augustus Finch Shirts, 1901), 319; “The 69th Ohio Volunteer Infantry-Butler County Civil War 150,” http://sites.google.com/site /butlercountycw150/; “Civil War Index-151st Illinois Infantry,” http://www.civilwarindex .com/armyil/151st_il_infantry.html; “Joseph J. Reynold’s Chickamauga OR,” http://www .civilwarhome.com/reynoldschickamauga.htm. 13. “Hendricks County—Biographies—Jacob Lockhart,” http://www.hendcogen.org /biobraphies/1914history/lockhartjacob.html. 14. Lorna Lutes Sylvester, ed. “Gone for a Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harding Cox,” Indiana Magazine of History 68 (September, 1972): 200, 208, 220, 225. 15. Barbara Butler Davis, ed. Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004), 36, 45, 137, 141, 163; “Marion T. Anderson,” http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mtanders.htm. 16. “A Boy Soldier,” http://www.irvingtonhistorical.org/a_articles/a_a_boy_soldier/ a_a_boy_soldier.html; Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne, eds., Indiana’s War: The

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Civil War in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 91–92; “Battle of Allegheny Mountain,” http//www.wvculture.org/history/civilwar/alleghenymountain04.html; John H. Holliday, “The Students in the Civil War,” Archives of Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana; Logansport Democratic Pharos, December 25, 1861. 17. “A Boy Soldier.” 18. Julie A. Doyle, John David Smith, and Richard M. McMurry eds. This Wilderness of War: The Civil War Letters of George W. Squier, Hoosier Volunteer (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 8, 10, 12, 14. Squier holds the distinction of being the first Phi to lose his life in combat. See, “Fighting Phis,” http:thephideltlegacy.com/military/fighting_ phis/fighting_phis.html. 19. R. V. Marshall, An Historical Sketch of the Twenty-Second Regiment Indiana Volunteers (Madison, IN: Courier Company, 1877), 24–25. 20. History of 54th Indiana Infantry, 315: John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 585. 21. Diary, May 26, 1864, folder 1, box 1, Henry Tutewiler Papers, M 79, IHS; “History of Dearborn and Ohio Counties Indiana-1885.” 22. “New Faces of Indiana Soldiers,” http://civilwarthosesurnames.blogspot. com/2012/02/new-faces-of-indiana-soldiers.html; “Captain Addison M. Dunn,” http:// battleoffranklin.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/captain-addison-m-dunn; Andrew Ward, The Slaves War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves (New York: Mariner Books, 2009), 153–54; George M. Waller, Butler University: A Sesquicentennial History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 50. 23. Diary, January 17, July 8, and October 4, 1861, May 2, July 8, July 23, July 25, August 11, August 15, August 18, August 28, September 7, 1862, Hall Papers; “The Civil War—150 Years Ago: February 1862,” http://www.irvingtonhistorical.org; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 116–17; “The College during the War,” The Butler Collegian, 182; Waller, Butler University, 45. 24. Robert F. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989 (Lexington, VA: Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1991), 77, 81; Stacey Jean Klein, “Wielding the Pen: Margaret Preston, Confederate Nationalistic Literature and the Expansion of a Woman’s Place in the South,” Civil War History 49 (September 2003): 226. 25. Jeffry D. Wert, A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldier of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 234; “Rosser Saunders Rock Letter, 17 May 1863,” http://www.moc.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/ rosser_letter_about_jackson_transcript.pdf; James I. Robertson, Jr., The Stonewall Brigade (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 194; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 260–64; Robertson, General A. P. Hill, 191. 26. Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 7, 1863; Charles W. Turner, “James B. Dorman’s Civil War Letters,” Civil War History 25 (September 1979): 276; Charles W. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson: Letters of a Virginia Soldier,” West Virginia History 39 (Fall 1977): 64; C. L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 6, 12, Archives of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA; Charles W. Turner, ed. Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851–1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975), frontispiece, 73, 81, 221; James Davidson to Governor John Letcher’s military aid, June 19, 1863, “Greenlee Davidson War Records,” Fold3; “Captain Greenlee Davidson,” http://antietam.aotw

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.org/officers.php?officer_id=859; J. C. Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 4, Archives of Washington and Lee University; Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 6, 12; Greenlee Davidson War Records,” Fold3. 27. Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 154–55; Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1–2; James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 118. 28. Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 155. 29. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 81–82; Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 82, 197, 255. 30. David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 360; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 1–2; James W. Silver, Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda (Tuscaloosa, AL Confederate Publishing Company, 1957), 64. 31. Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr., “This Great Day of Suffering: Redeeming Memories of the Civil War,” Anglican and Episcopal History 81 (December 2012): 381, 383; Woodworth, While God Is Marching On, 178–81, 206–7. 32. Shattuck, “This Great Day of Suffering,” 379–80. 33. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 250; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 268; Edward H. Sebesta and Euan Hague, “The U.S .Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South,” Canadian Review of American Studies/ Revue canadienne d’etudes americaines 32 , no. 3 ( 2002): 258; Woodworth, While God Is Marching On, 122–23, 133–37, 284. 34. “The Star-Spangled Cross and the Pure White Field,” http://www.civilwarpoetry .org/confederate/songs/cross.html. 35. “Robert Lewis Dabney: Encyclopedia Virginia,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia .org/Dabney_Robert_Lewis_1820-1898, April 11, 2012; Sebesta and Hague,“ U.S. Civil War as a Theological War,” 253–54, 257–58. 36. Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 113; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 269. 37. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 292, 336; George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 199–201, 204–6, 210, 212–14. 38. Henry K. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples: A Comprehensive History of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) in Indiana (Saint Louis: Bethany Press, 1966), 155, 161; “The Impact of the Civil War,” http://www.christianchronicler.com/History2/impact_of.htm; Lester G. McAllister and William E. Tucker, Journey in Faith: A History of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Saint. Louis: Bethany Press, 1975), 204–6. 39. Shaw, Hoosier Disciples, 162; Tucker, Journey in Faith, 201–2, 214–17; L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths: A History of Indiana’s Churches and Religious Groups (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 105. 40. Waller, Butler University, 68–69; Meeting, July 2, 1862, Book 1852–1863, Butler Board Meeting Minute Books, Archives of Butler University. 41. Jeremiah Smith, Is Slavery Sinful? (Indianapolis: H. H. Dodd and Company, 1863).

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42. Ibid., v, 2. 43. Ibid., 147, 164. 44. “A Confederate Soldier Writes Home,” http://www.newsinhistory.com/blog/ confederate-soldier-writes-home. 45. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970): 217. 46. Ibid.; Turner, ed., My Dear Emma, 126. 47. Lexington Gazette, May 20. 1863; Aldo S. Perry, Civil War Courts-Martial of North Carolina Troops (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2012), 4; Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 206–7. 48. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 197. 49. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 275; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 66–67; Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003), 175, 339; Wills, War Hits Home, 23; Herbert A. Kellar, “A Journey through the South in 1836: Diary of James D. Davidson,” Journal of Southern History 1 (August 1935): 347; “Yankees, Blue Pigs, and a Castle: The Northern Neck and the Civil War,” http://www.enonhall.com/html/civilwar.html. 50. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 40; Thomas, Confederate War, 144, 150–51; “27th Virginia Infantry-Camp at the Stonewall Brigade Letter,” http://www.mqamericana .com/27th_Va_Stonewall_Brigade.html. 51. Gordon C. Rhea, The Battle of the Wilderness May 5–6, 1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 12–13. 52. Thomas, Confederate War, 98. 53. “Preston A. Davidson, War Records”; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia, 35–36, 100. 54. Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 23–24; Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 92; “1st Battalion, Virginia Infantry (Regulars) (Irish Battalion),” http://www.civilwar.nps.gov/cwss/template.cfm; Robert Emmett Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War: An Irish American’s Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), xvii. 55. “Charles Davidson, War Records; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia, 3, 7–8, 31, 85, 100; Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 6–7; Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 3. 56. Carmichael, Last Generation, 149, 155, 158, Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War, 136. 57. Kenneth Radley, Rebel Watchdog: The Confederate States Army Provost Guard (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 13, 249; “The Provost Marshal’s Office,” http://www.9thbattalion.org/provost/04-article/article.htm. 58. Perry, Civil War Courts-Martial of North Carolina Troops, 162; Carmichael, Last Generation, 154; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 50, 82–83; Williams et al., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 1–3, 6, 52–53, 115, 157–67; Gallagher, Confederate War, 32; Lowell Reidenbaugh, 33rd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1987), 55. 59. Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 7, 1862; Carmichael, Last Generation, 152–53; Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson” 59, 61–62. 60. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson,” 71.

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61. Radley, Rebel Watchdog, 13, 44–45, 126–27; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 38. 62. Butler Alumnal Quarterly 3 (January 1913): 134; Davis and Robertson, Virginia at War, 50–52. 63. Peter W. Houck, A Prototype of a Confederate Hospital Center in Lynchburg, Virginia (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House Publishing, 1986), 32–33, 40–41, 114–15; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 100; “Preston A. Davidson, War Records.” 64. John P. Etter, The Indiana Legion: A Civil War Militia (Carmel, IN: Hawthorne Publishing, 2006), 8, 77, 84–85. 65. Lester V. Horwitz, The Longest Raid of the Civil War (Cincinnati: Farmcourt Press, 2001), 3, 11, 44: Etter, Indiana Legion, 93–103. 66. James A. Ramage, Rebel Raider: The Life of John Hunt Morgan (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 126, 168–82, 224–25; “1863 Civil War Journey,” http://civilwar.connerprairie.org/explore/civil-war-exploration/Morgan’s; Horwitz, Longest Raid of the Civil War, 15, 68; David C. Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 168–69, 188–89. 67. Indianapolis Sentinel, July 15, 1863; Horwitz, Longest Raid of the Civil War, 57, 75; New York Times, 17 July 1863; Etter, Indiana Legion, 93–103. 68. “Dorman N. Davidson-Civil War,” http://www.indianadigitalarchives.org/. 69. Alexander Davidson to James Davidson, April 20 1861, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; “Dorman Noble Davidson,” Archives Alumni Files, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA. 70. Gayle Thornbrough, ed., The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, 9 vols. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society,1972–83), 7:509 n335. 71. Barnet Schecter, The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (New York: Walker and Company, 2005), 1, 3, 8, 19, 86. 72. Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era: 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1992), 203; Davis, Affectionately Yours, 29; Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War, 254; Schecter, Devil’s Own Work, 110–12; Horwitz, Longest Raid of the Civil War, ix, 1, 77, 80, 90–91, 131. 73. Rhea, Battle of the Wilderness, 8, 31; Noah Andre Trudeau, Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May–June 1864 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1989), vii. 74. Rhea, Battle of the Wildernes, 9, 30. 75. Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 3; Wills, War Hits Home, 108. 76. Gary W. Gallagher, ed. The Wilderness Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 51–53, 57–58; Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 8; Gallagher, Confederate War, 88–89, 152. 77. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 159; Gallagher, Wilderness Campaign, 36–37, 42–47; W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes, eds. Faith, Valor, and Devotion: The Civil War Letters of William Porcher DuBose (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 256; Gallagher, Confederate War, 3, 10–11. 78. Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 38; Rhea, Battle of the Wilderness, 10–11, 19. 79. Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, vii, 10, 13; Rhea, Battle of the Wilderness, 6–7, 46–47. 80. Gordon C. Rhea, The Battles of Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow

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Tavern, May 7–12, 1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 4–6, 10–11, Gallagher, Wilderness Campaign, 146. 81. Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 38–39; Rhea, Battles of Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, 324–26; Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 109, 162, 186. 82. Earl Schenck Miers, ed. John B. Jones: A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary (New York: Sagamore Press, 1958), 368; Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell, 1, 266, 374, 387, 500–502; Gordon C. Rhea, To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 197–98; Radley, Rebel Watchdog, 23, 45–46; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 39–41. 83. “Preston A. Davidson, War Records”; Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 100; “Chimborazo Hospital: Encyclopedia Virginia,” http://www. encyclopediavirginia.org/chimborazo_hospital; New York Times, April 25, 2012. 84. Rhea, Battle of the Wilderness, 441; Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 320–21; Scott C. Patchan, The Forgotten Fury: The Battle of Piedmont, Virginia (Fredericksburg, VA: Sergeant Kirkland, 1996), xiii; Goldfield, America Aflame, 328. 85. James Lee Conrad, The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (New York: Stackpole Books, 1997), 91–99; “Lexington During the Civil War,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia .org/Lexington_During_the_Civil_War; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 135; Patchan, Forgotten Fury, 19, 23. 86. Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 318–21; Patchan, Forgotten Fury, 3–5. Old School Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge was his brother-in-law. 87. Patchan, Forgotten Fury, 204–205; Stacey Jean Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 52–54; Charles W. Turner, “General David Hunter’s Sack of Lexington, Virginia, June 10–14, 1864: An Account by Rose Page Pendleton,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83 (April 1975): 173. 88. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 83. 89. Turner, “General David Hunter’s Sack of Lexington, Virginia,” 174–75; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 136–39; Lowell Reidnbaugh, 27th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg: H. E. Howard, 1993), 105; Conrad, Young Lions, 101–5; Klein, “Wielding the Pen,” 228–30. 90. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 95; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 144; Turner, “General David Hunter’s Sack of Lexington, Virginia,” 173, 176–77; Charles B. Davidson, The Lessons of the Times: An Address Delivered before the Alumni Association of Washington College (Indianapolis: Indiana State Sentinel, 1869), 11. 91. Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War, 66; Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 72–73. 92. Willis, War Hits, 52–53; Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 86; Sylvester, ed. “Gone for a Soldier, 229, 238; Bruce Catton, America Goes to War: The Civil War and Its Meaning in American Culture (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), 56. 93. Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 92, 100, 159, 233. 94. Turner, “Lieutenant Albert Davidson,” 68. 95. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia, 220. 96. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 148; Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell, 406.

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97. Williams et al., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 182–86; Carmichael, Last Generation, 208. 98. Driver and Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 100; “Preston A. Davidson, War Records,” Fold3. 99. “Preston A. Davidson, War Records: Court Martial,” Fold3. 100. Ibid. 101. William C. Davis, A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), 31, 72. 102. Wert, Brotherhood of Valor, 310; McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 163; Carlton McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1865 (Richmond, VA: Carlton McCarthy and Company, 1882), 117; Charles W. Turner, Old Zeus: Life and Letters of James J. White (Verona, VA: McClure Printing Company, 1983), 83; Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1954), 91; Frank E. Vandiver, “Texas and the Confederate Army’s Meat Problem,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 47 (January 1944): 225–33. 103. Aldo S. Perry, Civil War Courts-Martial of North Carolina Troops (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2012), 88, 90, 185, 247, 250; “Discipline in the Armies,” http:// factasy.com/civil_war/discipline.shtml. Unfortunately, perhaps the best source on the topic in the Union army comes from discredited author Thomas P. Lowry’s Curmudgeons, Drunkards, and Outright Fools: The Court-Martial of Civil War Union Colonels (New York: Bison Books, 2003). 104. “Preston A. Davidson, War Records—Court Martial.” 105. McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 79; Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 383–84; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 35. 106. “General Court Martial of Captain George E. Wallace.” 107. “Preston A. Davidson, War Records.” 108. Thomas, Confederate Nation, 233. 109. Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia: 1749–1888 (Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1888), 123–124. 110. “Fighting Phis”; The Scroll of Phi Delta Theta, Volume 25 (Indianapolis: Published by the Fraternity, 1901), 539; New York Times, March 4, April 4, 1910. The Bullitt brothers were from a prominent Louisville family, and were joined in the ranks of Mosby’s men by another brother, Henry. 111. Hugh C. Keen and Horace Mewborn, 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, Mosby’s Command (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1993), 238–39, 311–12; “John Singleton Mosby: Encyclopedia of Virginia,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mosby_John _Singleton_1833-1916. 112. Keen and Mewborn, 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 1, 246; “John Singleton Mosby.” 113. Keen and Mewborn, 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 242–43, 246–61. 114. Ibid.; “John Singleton Mosby.” 115, Goldfield, America Aflame, 350–53, 357. 116. Gary W. Gallagher, Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013), 84; Williams et al., Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, 192– 93; Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 151–53; New York Times, April 27, 2012; Eugene

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D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 45. 117. William C. Davis, An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 79–83; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 302–6; Blair, Virginia’s Private War, 150. Chapter 8 1. William J. Cooper, We Have the War upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860–April 1861 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 272. 2. Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011), 17; Charles Reagan Wilson, “Robert Lewis Dabney: Religion and the Southern Holocaust,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89 (January 1981): 79; James Marten, Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 282–83. 3. Marten, Sing Not War, 76, 80–81; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 266–67; W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes, eds. Faith, Valor, and Devotion: The Civil War Letters of William Porcher DuBose (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), xiii; Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 363. 4. Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South (New York: Random House, 2013), xvii, 290. 5. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), 224–33; Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 34–35; Rusty Williams, My Old Confederate Home: A Respectable Place for Civil War Veterans (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 9; Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 361. 6. Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 154–55; Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 210, 216; Robert Emmett Curran, John Dooley’s Civil War: An Irish American’s Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 388; Wilson, “Robert Lewis Dabney,” 82; Stacey Jean Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy: A Literary Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 57; Mary Price Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1993), 146; “Robert Lewis Dabney: The Handbook of Texas Online,” http://www.tshaonline .org/handbook/online/articles/fda01; “Robert Lewis Dabney: Encyclopedia of Virginia,” http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dabney_Robert_Lewis_1820-1898; David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 402. 7. Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 76–78, 161; Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Steven E. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence:

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University Press of Kansas, 2001), 292–93. 8. Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 65, 70, 103, 127; Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr., “This Great Day of Suffering: Redeeming Memories of the Civil War,” Anglican and Episcopal History 81 (December 2012): 385. 9. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On, 288–89; Shattuck, “This Great Day of Suffering,” 389. 10. Woodworth, While God is Marching On, 290. 11. Robert F. Hunter, Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1789–1989 (Lexington, VA: Lexington Presbyterian Church, 1991), 86, 93, 96; Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia: The Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” Civil War History 16 (September 1970): 226. 12. Carmichael, Last Generation, 2; Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 172; Goldfield, America Aflame, 405. 13. Marten, Sing Not War, 279; Carmichael, Last Generation, 230–36. 14. Henry War Beecher, The Army of the Republic: Its Services and Destiny, pamphlet (Park Place, New York: Christian Union, 1878), 4; Marten, Sing Not War, 275–76; Gallagher, Union War, 17, 77; Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), xviii-xix. 15. Marten, Sing Not War, 47–50, 70–71. 16. Ibid., 10, 26–27, 258. 17. Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston, 148–51. 18. J. C. Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 3, Archives of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA; Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics in a Virginia County, 1834–1869 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), 67. 19. Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,” 5; C. L. Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 13–14, Archives of Washington and Lee University. 20. Robert J. Driver Jr. and Kevin C. Ruffner, 1st Battalion Virginia Infantry, 39th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 24th Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1996), 100; Shields, “Sketch of the family of J. D. Davidson,”6–7; “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 3. 21. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “Unionists in Rockbridge County: The Correspondence of James Dorman Davidson concerning the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 73 (January 1965): 80; Bruce Greenawalt, “Virginians Face Reconstruction: Correspondence from the James Dorman Davidson Papers, 1865– 1880,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 78 (October 1970): 448–49. 22. Greenawalt, “Virginians Face Reconstruction,” 457. 23. “Col. Samuel Houston Letcher,” http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_ id=1080; Charles W. Turner, ed. My Dear Emma: The War Letters of Col. James K. Edmondson, 1861–1865 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1978), 37, 40, 46, 53. Correspondence in the Letcher papers at the Virginia Historical Society note such enterprises as working with railroad companies as well as the development of mineral rights in and around Lexington. See, folders 670 and 671, series 11, John Letcher Papers, Mssil5684aFA2, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA. 24. Charles B. Davidson, The Lessons of the Times: An Address Delivered before the Alumni Association of Washington College (Indianapolis: Indiana State Sentinel, 1869), 3–7,

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12–13, 15–16; Greenawalt, “Life behind Confederate Lines in Virginia,” 226; Journal of the Proceedings of the 24th Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Indiana (Evansville, IN: Evansville Journal Company, 1861), 46; Baker Davidson cemetery record, copy in the author’s possession. 25. Lee A. Wallace Jr., 5th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1988), 110. 26. Herbert A. Kellar, “A Journey through the South in 1836: Diary of James D. Davidson,” Journal of Southern History 1 (August 1935): 348; “The Office of Robert E. Lee– The Legacy,” http://www.mfmdesign.com/lee_final/legacy.html; Donald C. Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier’s Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 490; Klein, Margaret Junkin Preston, Poet of the Confederacy, 64–65; Coulling, Margaret Junkin Preston: A Biography, 152, 156; Paul C. Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 287–89; James Lee Conrad, The Young Lions: Confederate Cadets at War (New York: Stackpole Books, 1997), 161. 27. Reverend Andrew B. Davidson, A Thanksgiving Sermon: Delivered at Oxford Meeting House, April 13, 1815 (Harrisonburg, VA: George Bourne, 1815), 23. 28. Craig M. Simpson, A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 290–291; Marten, Sing Not War, 38–39, 42–43. 29. Marten, Sing Not War, 36–37; Williams, My Old Confederate Home, 15, 22–23; Barnet Schecter, The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (New York: Walker and Company, 2005), 314–15. 30. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, June 20 1865, James D. Davidson Collection, S 334, Manuscript Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ISL). 31. Bruce S. Greenawalt, “The Correspondence of James D. Davidson, Reluctant Rebel” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1961), 103; Greenawalt, “Virginians Face Reconstruction,” 450–51; Anderson, “War Comes to the Davidson Family,” 13. 32. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, June 20 1865, and Preston Davidson to James Davidson, August 27 1865, Davidson collection. 33. Greenawalt, “Virginians Face Reconstruction,” 450. 34. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, October 24 1865, Davidson Collection. 35. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 105, 121; Greenawalt, “Virginians Face Reconstruction,” 451; Goldfield, America Aflame, 398. 36. Henry Tutewiler to Louisa Dunn, letter, folder 3, box 1, Henry Tutewiler Papers, M 279, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as IHS). 37. Indianapolis Historic Preservation Committee, “Cottage Home Conservation Area Plan,” (2008), 20; John H. Holliday, Indianapolis and the Civil War (Indianapolis: Edward J. Hecker, 1911), 594. 38. Meeting, September 30, 1863, Book 1852–1863, Butler Board Meeting Minute Books, Archives of Butler University, Indianapolis, IN. 39. “History of the Neighborhood,” http://www.holycrossneighborhoodassociation .org/hcna9.htm; Indianapolis Historic Preservation Committee, “Cottage Home Conservation Area Plan,” 20. 40. This is the crux of Davidson v. Koehler, 76 Ind. 398 (1881), and the cases that flowed from it. In Davidson v. Bates (1887), the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that part of the

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problem was that Alexander and Catherine’s children had waited too long to make their case (after the statute of limitations had expired). The other problem facing them was that what their father had done in selling off the land was perfectly in his power to do. This was upheld in Davidson v. Hutchins, 112 Ind. 322 (1887). 41. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, September 11 1866, Davidson collection. 42. Preston Davidson v. Noah Davidson, (May 1866), Case 3023, folder 2, box 155, Marion County Circuit Court Records, Indiana State Archives, Indianapolis, IN (hereafter cited as ISA); Preston Davidson v. Noah Davidson, (December 1868), Case 1825, folder 43, box 231, ibid. 43. Davidson v. King, 49 Ind. 338 (1874); Davidson v. King, 51 Ind. 224 (1875). 44. T. C. Harrison v. Edward King (February 1876), Case 7137, folder 10, box 336, ISA. 45. Jacob Greene v. Catherine Miller (September 1882), Case 25015, folder 19, box 313, ibid. 46. F. M. Churchman v. Dorman N. Davidson (November 1884), Case 30799, folder 49, box 294, ibid. 47. City of Indianapolis v. Kingsbury, 101 Ind. 200 (1884); Miller v. City of Indianapolis, 123 Ind. 196 (1890). 48. Greenawalt, “Correspondence of James D. Davidson,” 102. 49. Indianapolis News, December 6, 1899, August 28, 1914; Indianapolis Journal, February 15, 1855; Indianapolis Star, March 22, 1914. 50. Indianapolis City Directory, 1889 and 1891, Fold3; 1880 census; “George F. Miller,” http://www.confederatevets.com/documents/miller_in_cv_11_22_ob.shtml. 51. “History,” http://1-22infantry.org/history3/7478.htm; 1880 and 1900 census. 52. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North-Western Christian University for Session 1861–1862, p. 10, 16; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the North-Western Christian University for Session 1862–1863, p. 7; 1900 census; Catalog of Former Students, Not Alumni of Butler College, 1855–1900 (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck Press, 1900), 13. 53. Indianapolis Star, September 26, 1909; “Document 23,” Index to the Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives for the First Session of the 48th Congress, 1883– 1884 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884), 165–66; Indianapolis Sun, July 14, 1864; Indianapolis Blue Book; 1870, 1880, 1900 census; “What’s In a Name?: Dorman Street,” http://historicindianapolis.com/whats-in-a-name-dorman-street; “Dorman Noble Davidson,” Archives Alumni Files, Virginia Military Institute. In an interesting twist, Dorman’s daughter, Helen, married Edward Everett Gates in 1900. Gates was a Yale graduate, a Spanish-American War veteran, and a Republican. 54.“Dorman Noble Davidson.” 55. Catalog of Former Students, Not Alumni of Butler College, 1855–1900 (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck Press, 1900), 13. 56. Preston Davidson to James Davidson, September 11, 1866, Davidson collection. 57. 1900 census; “P. A. Davidson: Death Certificate,” www.ancestory.com/. His story is similar to his colleague, Benjamin Matchett Donald of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, who also never married and moved to Texas after the war. 58. Marten, Sing Not War, 1, 4, 7, 20, 56–57, 222–23. 59. Ibid., 12–17, 188–89, 200–201. 60. Williams, My Old Confederate Home, 40. 61. Ibid., 4, 62–63, 73–74.

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62. Ibid., 100–101, 110, 116, 146, 173. 63. Ibid., 158–60. 64. Ibid., 179; “Kentucky Confederate Soldiers Home,” http://cwmonuments .wordpress.com/2011/09/03. 65. 1910 census; Williams, My Old Confederate Home, 160. 66. Williams, My Old Confederate Home, 141, 188–89, 244, 255, 262–63. 67. “P. A. Davidson: Death Certificate,” www.ancestory.com/. 68. Indianapolis Star, June 29, 1914. 69. John H. Holliday, “The Students in the Civil War,” Archives of Butler University. 70“Indianapolis Then and Now: Louisa Magruder’s House, 564 N. Highland Avenue,” http://historicindianapolis.com/indianapolis-then-and-now-louisa-magruders-house-564 -n-highland-avenue/. 71. “History of the Neighborhood,” http://www.holycrossneighborhoodassociation .org/hcna9.htm; “Cottage Home Conservation Area Plan,” 19. When the City of Indianapolis considered turning over Highland Park to developers in the mid-1950s, Preston’s niece, Valette Miller White, spoke out against the idea, reminding the city of the deal they had made with the family when the property was originally donated. See, Indianapolis Star, February 7, 1955. 72. “Cottage Home Conservation Area Plan,” 9. 73. Ibid., 21. 74. Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989). 75. Charles W. Turner, ed. Captain Greenlee Davidson, C.S.A., Diary and Letters, 1851– 1863 (Verona, VA: McClure Press, 1975), foreword; “VA Beta History,” http://www .pkpvabeta.com/history. 76. Petersburg Index, June 20, 1868. 77. Washington Times, June 8, 2011. 78. “William A. Anderson,” http://libguides.law.virginia.edu/content .php?pid=229843&sid=1903224. 79. Barbara Butler Davis, ed. Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2004), vii, xi, 1–3. 80. Ibid., 76. 81. George M. Waller, Butler University: A Sesquicentennial History (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 85; Davis, ed., Affectionately Yours, 145–46. 82. Indianapolis Star, 27 May 1921; Waller, Butler University, 51. 83. John H. Holliday, “The Students in the Civil War,” Archives of Butler University.

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Index abolitionism and abolitionists: and higher education, 1, 2; development of in the North, 32–33 Allegheny Mountain, battle of, 138 American Christian Review, 144 American Colonization Society, 31 American Party: and sectionalism, 61 Anderson Janett Butler, 137 Anderson, Marion T., 1, 136–38 Anderson, William Alexander, 186 Antietam, battle of, 140, 146, 148 Appomattox Courthouse, 148 Armstrong, J. W., 137 Army of Northern Virginia, 147, 153, 155, 160; deserters, 148–49 Atlanta, battle of, 139, 178 Averell, William W., 156 Baldwin, John, 97 Bate, Edward, 66 Beauregard, P. G. T., 123, 125, 127 Bee, Bernard, 127 Beecher, Charles, 19, 50 Beecher, Henry Ward: relationship with Noble family, 17, 18, 21; career of revival and reform, 18; pastor at Second Presbyterian, 19; and slavery, 19–20, 78, 170; (illus.), 18 Beecher, Lyman, 18, 36 Bell, John, 64, 65–67, 68, 69, 92; (illus.), 66 Benning, Henry L., 96 Bethany College (Bethany, WVA): Campbell founds, 27; breaks with NWCU, 35–36; represents slave-holding South 33, 34, 35 Bigger, Samuel, 20 Blackford, Isaac 32 Blake, James, 28 Bonham, M. L., 125

Boteler, Alexander, 97 Botts, John, 97 Bourne, George, 14, 15 Bragg, Braxton, 150 Breckenridge, John, 68, 69 Brevoort, Edwin, 38, 39 Brevoort, William, 38 Brooks, Andrew, 92, 128, 136 Brown, John, 90; and Harpers Ferry raid, 52–54, 62, 96, 114; (illus), 53 Bruckner, Simon, 133 Buchanan, James, 62, 75, 90 Bull Run, battle of. See First Manassas, battle of Bullitt, James B., 162 Bullitt, Thomas W., 162 Butler, Janett. See Anderson, Janett Butler Butler, Ovid, 78, 137, 138, 186; founds NWCU, 27, 28–31; and slavery, 28, 35; supports Union, 144, 145 Butler, Scot: presides over NWCU and Butler University, 2, 186; student at, NWCU, 39; serves in army, 149, 138, 186 Butler University (Indianapolis). See North Western Christian University (Indianapolis) Calhoun, John C., 16, 31, 51; (illus.), 31 Camp Morton (Indianapolis), 139 Campbell, Alexander: cofounder of Disciples of Christ 26; visits Indiana, 27–28; and slavery, 33–34; and Civil War, 144; (illus.), 26 Campbell, Henry: correspondence, 118–19, 120, 129 Campbell, James Dorman, 175 Campbell, R. Henry, 115–16 Carmichael, Peter, 169 Chancellorsville, battle of, 131, 139

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Charlottesville VA, hospital at, 132 Cheat Mountain, battle of, 148 Chimborazo Hospital Number 3, pp. 154–55 Churchman, F. M., 177 Clay, Henry, 10, 64, 65 Cleveland, Grover, 178 Coe, Isaac, 28 College of New Jersey, 6 colonization: and slavery, 31 Compromise of 1850, p. 66 Confederacy. See Confederate States of America Confederate States of America: and slavery, 73; and evangelicals, 76; importance of Virginia to, 79; moves capital, 109; Virginia joins, 103–4; percentage of population mobilized, 136; end of, 153, 164–65 Constitutional Union Party: and 1860 election, 62–63, 68–69, 82; national convention, 63–65; and slavery, 65; and secession, 70, 95; makeup of, 93 Corydon (IN), 151 Covington, George B., 135, 139 Cox, Charles Harding, 137, 158 Crittenden, John J.: member of Whig Party, 10; proposed presidential candidate, 63, 64, 65, 82; attempts compromise, 82–85; (illus.), 64 Crown Hill Cemetery (Indianapolis), 184 Custis, William Henry Bagwell, 98 Dabney, Robert Lewis, 143, 169 Davidson Helen. See Heywood, Helen Davidson Davidson, Albert, 46, 94, 149, 158, 171 Davidson, Alexander (Preston’s father), 3, 61; leaves Virginia, 7, 8, 45; arrives in Indiana, 9; and slavery, 13, 16–17; influence of father and father-in-law on, 15, 16; correspondence, 17, 20, 21–22, 55, 56, 58, 90, 103, 115, 116; father writes to, 17; marriage, 17–18, 20, 23; joins Second Presbyterian Church, 18; church leader, 19; executor of Noah Noble’s

will, 21, 22, 176; visits Virginia, 21, 41, 132–33, 137; health of, 22, 23; financial problems of 22, 23; takes nephew to visit Indianapolis sites, 36, 37, 40; sends sons to NWCU, 37–38, 178; wants sons to attend school in Virginia, 40–41, 48; ties to Virginia, 43; and Constitutional Union Party, 63, 64, 67, 68; and 1860 election, 68; anxiety over war and secession, 74–75, 112–13; supports peace convention and compromise, 82, 83, 84, 88–89; worries about family’s safety, 110, 119–20, 129; death, 151, 152, 173, 178; burial, 184 Davidson, Andrew B. (Preston’s paternal grandfather), 64; Presbyterian minister 5, 6; trustee of Washington College, 5; sermons of, 6–7, 173; founder of churches in Virginia, 7; slavery and abolitionists, 13–14, 15; influence on Preston, 15, 17; correspondence, 17, 21; trustee of Washington College, 59; death, 133 Davidson, Baker (Preston’s uncle), 116, 157, 172, 177; leaves Virginia, 7; religious career of, 37–38; worries about disunion, 74, 103 Davidson, Catherine (Dorman’s daughter), 178 Davidson, Catherine (Preston’s sister). See Miller, Catherine Davidson Davidson, Catherine Mary (Kate) Noble (Preston’s mother), 3; birth 12; marriage, 17–18, 20; receives father’s land, 21, 176; death and burial, 22, 23, 184 Davidson, Charles (Preston’s cousin), 46, 47, 55, 115, 148, 149, 154, 161, 171, 172 Davidson, Charles Baker (Preston’s uncle). See Davidson, Baker Davidson, Clara, 46 Davidson, Dorman (Dorman’s son), 178 Davidson, Dorman (Preston’s brother), 22, 61; birth, 20; family legacy, 23, 25; attended NWCU, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 78, 137, 138, 186; at VMI, 41, 51–52, 115,

INDEX

117, 184; arrives in South, 43, 44; and religion, 44–45; under uncle’s care, 46, 47; Harpers Ferry causes doubts for, 51, 55; illness, 55, 56; returns North, 56; and Morgan’s Raid, 150–52, 153; remains out of war until father’s death, 151, 152; in army, 170; postwar life, 176, 178–79; burial, 184 Davidson, Frederick (Preston’s cousin), 46, 47, 119, 171, 172; joins army, 113, 114; death 129, 130, 131, 133, 140, 146 Davidson, Greenlee (Preston’s cousin), 46, 148, 149, 171, 172, 185; visits Indianapolis, 36–37, 40; comments on length of war, 113; serves as military aide, 114–15; writes of hardship of troops, 136; death, 140, 146 Davidson, Hannah (Mrs. James, Preston’s aunt), 21, 46, 130, 171 Davidson, Henry (Preston’s uncle), 7, 55, 114, 130, 172, 185 Davidson, James (Preston’s uncle), 7, 21, 68, 82, 151; influence on brothers’ leaving Virginia, 8; correspondence, 20, 22, 107, 115, 119, 146; ties to church, 44, 169; lack of opportunities in Virginia, 45, 48; and slavery, 46, 142, 158; cares for nephews, 46, 47, 55, 56; status in community, 46; and 1860 election, 68; and secession, 70, 71, 72, 90, 96; supports peace convention, 83; meets Lincoln, 97–98; requests son be assigned as aide, 115; and death of sons, 140, 171; organizes home guard, 147; and Washington College, 171, 173, 185; works to rebuild Lexington, 171, 172; death 172; discourages Preston’s return to South, 175 Davidson, Kate (Mrs. Henry, Preston’s aunt), 185 Davidson, Lavallette (Dorman’s daughter), 178 Davidson, Martha, 23, 61 Davidson, Mary, 46 Davidson, Noah (Preston’s brother): 20, 22, 61, 176, 178, 184

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Davidson, Preston Archer: attends NWCU, 2, 37, 38, 40, 41, 138, 183, 186; in Indianapolis, 2, 22, 25, 173–79; sides with and fights for Confederacy, 2, 3, 4, 58–59, 79, 81, 90–91, 92, 94, 94, 98, 102, 104, 105, 109, 110, 114, 135, 147–50; birth, 5, 20; family legacies, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 25; experiences with slaves, 13, 17, 140, 142, 174; Washington College, 41, 51, 56, 58, 59, 184; arrives in South, 43, 44; and religion, 44–45, 143; under uncle’s care, 46, 47; leaves Indianapolis, 61, 179–80; description of, 113; at Harpers Ferry, 116, 117, 119; at First Manassas, 121, 123, 126, 142; wounded and treatment of, 129, 130, 131, 132, 154; in hospital, 132, 149–50, 154–55; recuperates in Lexington, 133, 137; expelled from NWCU, 137; loss of family and friends, 140, 146; wants to rejoin army, 140, 145, 146–47; returns to army, 147–50, 153; court martial, 159–62; joins Mosby’s Rangers, 162–64; effects of war on, 167–87; leaves Lexington, 171; encounters difficulties living in the North, 174, 175; lawsuits over land, 176–77; does not return to school, 176; reconnects with family, 177; land sales, 177, 181; lives in Confederate veterans home, 181, 183; death and burial, 183, 184; move to Kentucky, 184–85 Davidson, Retta, 178 Davidson, Susan (Lavallette). See Dickey, Susan (Lavallette) Davidson Davidson, Susan Dorman (Preston’s paternal grandmother), 5, 7 Davidson, Virginia (Jennie) LeMonde, 178, 184 Davidson, William (Preston’s uncle), 7, 46, 171, 172 Davis, Jefferson, 31, 73, 132, 135, 146, 165; (illus.), 73 Davis, William C., 123 Democrat Party: and sectionalism, 50, 51, 54, 62, 63; division in, 68, 70

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desertions, 148–49 Dickey, Alexander, 178, 184 Dickey, Charles, 178 Dickey, Susan (Lavallette) Davidson (Preston’s sister), 20, 22, 61, 176, 178, 179, 184 Disciples of Christ: and education, 1, 26, 27; and Second Great Awakening, 25–26; founding of, 26; and evangelical Protestantism, 26, 27; and slavery, 33, 34, 35, 36, 144–45 Dodge, William, 90 Dorman, Charles, 46 Dorman, James Baldwin, 46–47, 90, 91, 97, 98, 99, 102, 130 Dorman, Susan. See Davidson, Susan Dorman (Preston’s paternal grandmother) Douglas, Stephen, 62, 68, 84, 92 Doyal, John, 139 Dred Scot, 58, 62, 64 Drew, Charles, 79 Dunn, Addison M., 139 DuPont (IN), 151 Echols, John W., 121 Eighteenth Virginia, 143 Eighth Indiana, 135 election of 1860, pp. 67–70 Eleventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 110 Eleventh New York, 127 Elston, Marion, 139 Emancipation Proclamation, 140, 157 English, William E., 179 evangelical Protestantism, 19–20, 27; and antislavery, 30; and Civil War, 142–43 Evans, Nathan George, 127 Everett, Edward, 67 Ewell, Richard, 154 Falling Waters, battle of, 122–23 Farmer’s Review, 179 Fifth Virginia, 121, 125, 127 Fifty-First Indiana, 137, 138 Fifty-Seventh Indiana, 139 Fillmore, Millard, 64

First Great Awakening, 6 First Manassas, battle of, 123–27, 128, 135, 148, 157, 172, 186; causalities, 129, 130–31; aftermath, 127–34; (illus.), 126 First Michigan, 127 First Presbyterian Church (Indianapolis), 19 First South Carolina (USCT), 157 First Virginia, 147, 149, 154 Fleming, Thomas, 88 Fletcher, Calvin, 11, 20, 21, 28, 29, 35, 37 Fort Donnelson, 154 Fort Henry, 154 Fort Sumter (Charleston, SC), 97; Confederates fire on, 1, 99, 100, 101, 123; target of secessionists, 75 Forty-Third Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, 163 Fourteenth Virginia Cavalry, 185 Fourth Virginia, 114, 121, 125, 127, 128 Franklin, battle of, 139 Franklin, Benjamin, 144 Frazier, William, 71 Fredericksburg, battle of, 148, 149 Fremont, John C., 53, 68 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, pp. 33, 34, 35, 36, 83, 106 Gallagher, Gary, 3, 4, 147 Garrison, William Lloyd, 32 George Washington College: Preston attends, 41, 56, 184; Davidson family connected to, 7, 58; Junkin leads, 50, 56; and ties to VMI, 58; supports secession, 91–92, 93, 95, 94, 95, 100, 102; students serve in army, 113, 114, 115, 136, 149; damage to, 157, 171; Lee becomes president of, 173; name changed, 185 Gettysburg, battle of, 149, 151 Gillock, James, 129 Goggin, William, 99 Goldfield, David, 170 Gordon, Joseph R. T., 138 Gordon, Sandy, 129 Graham, William, 43

INDEX

Grant, Ulysses S., 153, 154, 155, 159 Graydon, Katharine Merrill, 186 Greenawalt, Bruce, 101, 133 Greene, Jacob, 177 Greenlawn Cemetery (Indianapolis), 184 Grisby, Andrew Jackson, 121 Guelzo, Allen C., 170 Hadley, John V., 1, 39 Hall, Perry, 39, 75, 78, 106, 128, 139 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 163 Hanger, James Edward, 185–86 Hanger Orthopedic, 185 Harper, Kenton, 127 Harpers Ferry: John Brown attacks, 52–53, 62; CSA troops ordered to, 115, 117–20; (illus), 117 Harris, Isham, 133 Harrison, T. C., 177 Harrison, William Henry, 10, 50, 64, 65 Harvey, Mary. See Noble, Mary Harvey Havrie, Lewis E., 51 Hawkins, Sarah, 181 Hayden, John, 64 Hayden, Marshall P., 139 Hayes, Rutherford B., 178 Hendricks, Thomas, 38, 84 Henley, Lela, 183 Henry, Judith Carter, 125 Heywood, Helen Davidson, 178, 184 Hodge, Charles, 77 Holliday, John H., 176, 183, 184, 187 Hoshour Guards (US), 116 Hoshour, Samuel: at NWCU, 38, 116; (illus.), 38 hospitals, 129, 131, 132, 149–50, 154–55 Hunter, David, 156–57, 174; (illus.), 156 Hunter, R. M. T., 51 Huston, Sam, 66, 85 Indiana Legion (US), 110 Indiana State Sentinel, 54, 58 Indianapolis: Disciples of Christ in, 1; and Presbyterianism, 18, 19; peace convention in, 82, 83; Preston returns to,

253

167; post-Civil War population of, 176; Preston leaves, 179–80; in antebellum era, 225 Irish Brigade, 148, 149 Is Slavery Sinful?, 145 Jackson, Andrew, 66 Jackson, Eleanor Junkin, 58 Jackson, Stonewall. See Jackson, Thomas Jackson, Thomas, 44, 46, 50, 58, 105, 114, 154, 156; leads troops at Harpers Ferry, 117–18, 119, 121, 122; Battle of Falling Waters, 122; First Manassas, 125, 126, 127; death, 131, 139, 140, 149; grave, 141, 157; (illus.), 118 Jameson, Patrick Henry, 144 Jefferson, Thomas, 13 Johnson, Adam R., 150 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 178 Johnston, Joseph E., 121–22, 123, 125, 129 Junkin, Eleanor. See Jackson, Eleanor Junkin Junkin, George Washington: heads Washington College, 50, 51; career of, 56–57, 58; and slavery, 57; Preston denounces, 91; opposes slavery, 93–94, 95; deals with student secessionists, 100; resigns, 103; leaves Virginia, 105 Junkin, Margaret. See Preston, Margaret Junkin Kansas-Nebraska Act, 62, 66 Keegan, John, 127 Keith, Squire Isham, 139 Kelly, Joseph, 33 Kentucky Confederates Home, 181, 182–83; (illus.), 182 Ketchum, John, 22 King, Edward, 177 Know Nothing Party: and sectionalism, 50, 61, 62, 63 Lane, Henry S., 35 Lee, Robert E., 153, 154, 159, 163, 165;

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chooses state over country, 104, 105; and Washington College, 173, 185; (illus.), 104, 172 LeMonde, Virginia (Jennie). See Davidson, Virginia (Jennie) LeMonde Letcher, John, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91, 98, 99, 103, 115, 133, 140, 157, 158, 172; creates army, 109; sends troops to Harpers Ferry, 117, 118; (illus.), 86 Letcher, Samuel Houston, 114, 130, 172 Levine, Bruce, 73, 81 Lewis, Francis, 129 Lexington, (VA): home of Davidson family, 5, 6, 43; unrest in, 99–100; supports secession, 102; Preston recuperates in, 133, 137, 146; war causalities from, 139–40; war comes to, 156–59; postwar, 170–73 Lexington Gazette, 115 Lexington Presbyterian Church: spiritual home of the Davidson family, 43, 44; and Second Great Awakening, 44; supports troops, 113 Libby Prison (Richmond, VA), 137 Liberty Hall Volunteers (CSA), 114, 128, 134, 136, 139, 146 Lightener, John, 94 Lincoln, Abraham: call for volunteers, 1, 100, 101, 102; election of, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 81, 164; and peace convention, 89, 90; and secession, 92, 97; Emancipation Proclamation, 140, 157 (illus.), 69, 142, 164 Lockwood, Charles, 39, 40 Lost Cause: and religion, 169, 170; origins of, 157–58 Lovejoy, Elijah P., 32 Lynchburg (VA), 159 Madison, James, 13 Magnificent Ambersons, The, 185 Magruder, Louisa, 184 Magruder, Sarah, 16 Magruder, Tom, 16, 36, 37, 184 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 72

Mahan, Dennis Hart, 72 Mammoth Internal Improvements Act, 10, 11–12 Mangum, Willie P., 66 Marsden, George, 143 Marten, James, 181 Mason, J. M. 51 Mason, James, 31 McCarthy, Carlton, 110 McCausland, John, 157 McClure, Asbury, 129 McCormick, Cyrus, 171 McCurry, Stephanie, 70, 161 McDonald, Cornelia, 131 McDowell, Irvin, 123, 124, 126, 127; (illus.), 124 McLean, John, 64, 66 McPherson, James, 2, 3 Merrill, Samuel, 20 Methodism: and politics, 20 Millennial Harbinger, 35 Miller, Catherine Davidson (Preston’s sister), 20, 22, 61, 176, 177, 184–85 Miller, Catherine Valette. See White, Catherine Valette Miller Miller, Eugna Preston, 178, 184 Miller, George Franklin, 177–78, 184 Miller, Oscar D., 162 Missouri Compromise, 83 Moody, Jonathan, 129 Moore, Edward, 94 Moore, Samuel McDowell, 91, 95 Morgan, John Hunt, 177; raid, 150–52, 158; (illus.), 150 Morrison, Henry R., 95 Morton, Lucinda, 139 Morton, Oliver P., 38, 139, 174; and peace convention, 89; calls for troops, 110, 151; (illus.), 111 Mosby, John Singleton, 162, 163; rangers, 162–64; (illus.), 163 Nashville, battle of, 137–38 National Guards (US), 110 Neff, Joel, 129

INDEX

New Market, battle of, 156 New York Times, 151 Newburgh (IN), 150 Ninth Indiana, 138 Noble, Catherine (Kate) Mary. See Davidson, Catherine (Kate) Mary Noble (Preston’s mother) Noble, Catherine (Kitty) Stull van Swearingen (Mrs. Noah, Preston’s maternal grandmother), 12, 184; and husband’s estate, 22, 176; Preston reconnects with, 177 Noble, James, 9 Noble, Mary Harvey, 177 Noble, Noah (former governor of Indiana, Preston’s maternal grandfather), 3, 5, 63; political career of, 9–10, 26; and internal improvements, 10, 11, 12; family life, 12; opposes nullification, 16; owns and frees slaves, 16; influence of on Preston, 17; and Presbyterianism, 19; career after politics, 20; death and burial, 21, 22, 184; estate of, 21, 176; (Illus.), 9 Noble, Winston (Preston’s uncle): birth, 12; and father’s estate, 22, 176; education of, 37; in army, 110, 170; marriage, 177 North Western Christian University (Indianapolis), 58; abolitionists leanings of, 1, 2; founded by Disciples of Christ, 1, 144; students serve in war, 1, 2, 4, 116, 135, 137–40, 158, 161, 183–84; Scot Butler president of, 2, 186; Preston Davidson attends, 2, 37, 38, 39, 186; nullification, 16; founding of, 27, 28–31; campus of, 29–30; represents antislavery North, 33, 35, 36; breaks with Bethany College, 35–36; Dorman attends, 37, 38, 39, 186; coed, 38; levels of instruction at 38, 39, 40; Scot Butler attends, 39; expels Preston, 137; attacked for antislavery and antisecession views, 144, 145; name change, 186; (illus.), 30

255

107th Indiana, 151 Palmer, Benjamin M., 76 Patterson, Robert, 122, 129 Paxton, Alexander S., 102, 136 Paxton, Elisha Franklin, 128, 130, 132, 139–40, 146; chooses state over country, 104–5; leads Rockbridge Rifles, 114 peace convention, 82, 87–91, 97 peculiar institution. See slavery Peele, Stanton J., 179 Petersburg (VA), 155 Philippi, battle of, 185 Piedmont, battle of 157 political parties: and slavery, 31, 61–62, 65, 66–67, 68; and religion, 20; and sectionalism, 67, 68 Presbyterians: divisions of, 6, 7, 142, 143, 144; and slavery, 14, 15, 44, 142, 143, 144, 169; as frontier religion, 19; founding of Disciples of Christ, 26; and secession, 76–77, 78 Preston, J. T. L. See Preston, John Preston, John, 58, 114, 139 Preston, Margaret Junkin, 37, 50, 51, 157 Preston, Thomas Lewis, 51, 55 Preston, William C. (Willy), 58, 99, 100, 139, 146 Princeton University. See College of New Jersey Prosser, Gabriel, 53 Protestantism: First and Second Great Awakening, 1, 6, 25–26, 44, 76, 78; and education, 26, 27; denominational divisions of over slavery, 30–31, 33, 34, 35; and colonization, 31 Radley, Kenneth, 148 Randolph, Edmund, 51 Ray, James, 28 Read, James G., 10 religion: and secession, 78–79, 102; sets tone to the Civil War, 142–43; and Lost Cause, 169, 170 Republican Party: and sectionalism, 50, 54, 58, 61, 62, 63; and 1860 election,

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67; and secessionists, 81, 90, 96, 99 Rhea, Gordon, 153 Richmond (VA), 109, 154, 155; (illus.), 168 Ritter, Eli, 39 Rives, William C., 97 Robbins, Irvin, 39 Rockbridge Rifles (CSA), 100, 113, 121, 146; ordered to Harpers Ferry, 115, 118 Rollins, Charley, Charley, 129 Rollins, Tom, 129 Ruffner, Henry, 57 Salem (IN), 151 Savannah (GA), 158 Scott, Robert, 99 secession, 68, 70, 71, 75; and slavery, 71, 72, 73, 87, 89, 95, 96, 101, 106; and religion, 76–78, 102; and Virginia, 78–80, 85–91, 91–106, 106–7 Second Great Awakening, 1, 25–26, 44, 76, 78 Second Manassas, battle of, 139 Second Presbyterian Church (Indianapolis), 17, 19; members join Union army, 116 Second Virginia, 121, 125 Sedam, Steven, 137 Seddon, James A., 51, 90 Seven Days, battle of, 148 Seventeenth Indiana, 111, 137, 139 Seventh Indiana, 139 Seventieth Indiana, 137 Seventy-Ninth Indiana 161 Seward, William, 70, 84 Sheridan, Philip, 159 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 126, 159 Shiloh, battle of, 138 Sigel, Franz, 156 Slaughter, Philip H., 162 Slavery: and causes of Civil War, 2, 3, 116; and sectionalism and sectional politics, 13–14, 28, 33, 34, 35, 50–51, 61, 62; and religion, 17, 19, 20, 30–31, 44, 52, 76, 77, 78, 143–44; and Indiana, 16; debate over, 31, 32; revolts, 32, 53; as source of wealth in the South, 48; and political parties, 65, 66–67, 68; and

Virginia, 78–79; and secession, 71, 72, 73, 87, 89, 93, 95, 96, 101, 104, 106; and compromise, 85, 88; constitutional amendment proposed, 90; effect of on troop mobilization, 136; end of, 140, 142; and advance of Union troops, 158; and end of Civil War, 167–68, 169; and postwar South, 171 Smith, Butler K., 144 Smith, Jerimiah, 144, 145 Smith, Philander, 135 Society of Friends, 26 South Carolina:and secession, 71–72, 75, 135; pushes for secession of Virginia, 92; fires on Fort Sumter, 99 Squier, George, 138 Squire, Platt J., 39, 40, 138 “The Star-Spangled Cross and the Pure White Field,” 143 Staunton Vindicator, 101 Stephens, Alexander H., 73 Stone, Barton, 26, 34 Stonewall Brigade, 120, 121, 127, 127, 142 Stowe, Harriet Beecher: and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 36–37, 78; (illus.), 36 Stuart, Alexander H. H., 97 Stuart, J. E. B., 154, 163 Sunwalt, Ed, 152 Tarkington, Booth, 185 Thirteenth U.S. Infantry, 178 Thirty-Seventh Indiana, 139 Thirty-Third Virginia, 121, 125, 128 Thomas, Emory M., 44 Thomas, George Henry, 105–6 Thompson, Richard W., 10, 20, 63, 64, 84 Thornwell, James H., 76, 77 Tilford, John H., 162 Tinsley, William, 29 Trudeau, Noah Andre, 153 Turner, Nat, 32, 53 Tutewiler, Henry, 39, 175–76 Twenty-Second U.S. Infantry, 178 Twenty-Second Indiana 139 Twenty-Seventh Virginia, 121, 125, 127, 128 Tyler, John, 50, 64, 89

INDEX

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 3, 36, 37, 78 United States Congress: and slavery, 32 Van Buren, Martin, 10 van Swearingen, Catherin (Kitty) Stull. See Noble, Catherine (Kitty) Stull van Swearingen (Mrs. Noah, Preston’s maternal grandmother) Versailles (IN), 151 Vicksburg, battle of, 151, 160, 178 Virginia: lack of opportunities in, 45; and antebellum era, 47–48; and slavery, 48, 49,50, 57–58, 78–79; sectional politics in, 50, 51; and secession, 71–72, 78–80, 81–82, 85–91, 91–106, 106–7; importance of to the Confederacy, 79; Richmond becomes capital of CSA, 109; effect of war on, 135–36, 153 Virginia Military Institute (Lexington, VA): Dorman attends, 41, 184; political environment at, 51–52; cadets guard John Brown, 55; ties to Washington College, 58; supports secession, 94, 95, 99; students from join army, 114, 115, 148, 156, 157; cadets train troops, 118; vandalized, 157 Wallace, George, 161–62 Wallace, Lew, 38 Washington, DC: and secession of Virginia, 106 Washington, George, 51 Washington College (Lexington, VA) See George Washington College (Lexington, VA) Webster, Daniel, 67 Weld, Theodore Dwight, 36, 44 Wert, Jeffery, 43, 130, 132 Westminster Shorter Confession, 7 Whig Party, 10; and sectionalism, 50, 61, 62, 66; and unionists, 93 White, Catherine Valette Miller, 178, 184 White, Hugh, 139 White, James Jones, 58, 134 White, Thomas, 178, 184 White, William Spotswood, 58, 102, 120, 139, 169

257

Whitefield, George, 6 Wilderness, battle of 139, 154–55 Wiley, Thomas, 145 Williams, Rusty, 182 Winder, Charles, S., 133 Wise, Henry, 50–51, 70, 85, 88, 95; and anti-North rhetoric, 53–54, 55 Witherspoon, John, 6 Wright, Joseph, 88