Original publish date: June 15, 2018
Confederate General James Longstreet’s reputation was thrown under the bus by the widow of his former friend, General George Pickett. It was Longstreet who ordered Pickett forward at Gettysburg, in what has become known as “Pickett’s Charge.” The incident is widely acknowledged by historians as General Robert E. Lee’s biggest tactical mistake of the Civil War. Pickett’s widow, LaSalle, considered it her mission to resurrect the damaged career of her slighted husband. Sadly, she did it at the expense of James Longstreet.
LaSalle (aka “Sallie”) spent the decades following her husband’s 1875 death (by scarlet fever) writing, speaking and creating an idealized version of “her soldier” as the ideal Southern gentleman. Her campaign to sainthood for General Pickett began when she published the book “Pickett and His Men”, a history of her husband’s military campaigns in 1899. She also published 2 other books, The Heart of a Soldier, As Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Gen’l George E. Pickett (1913) and Soldier of the South: General Pickett’s War Letters to His Wife (1928). All 3 works projected Pickett as a figure cloaked in “Lost Cause” mythology.
Her efforts worked and today, Pickett is widely remembered as a tragic hero of the disastrous charge at Gettysburg that bears his name. Rather than place blame at the feet of the South’s “Marble Man”, Robert E. Lee, LaSalle shifted blame to James Longstreet. Her effort was well received by the purveyors of the Lost Cause and Pickett’s reputation was posthumously restored.
But General Longstreet had a secret weapon of his own: his young bride, Helen Dortch Longstreet. The General married her in 1897 in a ceremony at the governor’s mansion in Atlanta. She was 34 and he was 76. She would outlive her husband by 58 years, passing away in 1962 during the National Centennial Celebration of the Civil War. By the time of her death, she had accomplished more than most any other woman of her era and helped restore her husband’s legacy along the way. And I have the letters to prove it.
As detailed in part I of this series, Confederate General James Longstreet was an important figure in American military history. He was pivotal in every battle he participated in (which includes most of the important battles of the Civil War) and was one of the first to question the wisdom of strategies and leaders that shaped the course of the Great Rebellion. He was present when hostilities ceased at Appomattox and was one of the first of the Rebel leaders to reintegrate into the Union. While disappointed by the outcome, he was quick to recognize the results of the struggle. For his reluctance to embrace the “Lost Cause” and refusal to “wave the bloody shirt”, Longstreet paid a high price.
Longstreet served in a variety of government positions after the war, including ambassador to Turkey and as a Federal Marshall. He served as a railroad commissioner and spent his final years trying to refute continued attacks on his character raised by his former friends and brothers in arms who labeled him as a traitor to a failed ideal. His 1896 memoirs, a labor of five years titled “From Manassas to Appomattox”, he attempted to set the record straight.
Longstreet’s final years were marked by poor health and partial deafness. By 1902 he suffered from severe rheumatism and was unable to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. By January 1903, his weight dropped from 200 to 135 pounds, cancer developed in his right eye, and he underwent X-ray therapy in Chicago to treat it. He contracted pneumonia and died in Gainesville, Georgia on January 2, 1904, six days before his 83rd birthday. Longstreet outlived most of his contemporary detractors, and was one of only a handful of Civil War Generals to live into the 20th century.
For the next 58 years, Helen Longstreet worked tirelessly to rebuild the General’s tattered legacy. She wrote “Lee and Longstreet at High Tide” in which she stated that “the South was seditiously taught to believe that the Federal Victory was wholly the fortuitous outcome of the culpable disobedience of General Longstreet.” Regardless, white ex-Confederates could never forgive his postwar racial and political treason, so they trashed his wartime military record. Helen determined that her husband would not become a scapegoat for the Lost Cause. Widow Longstreet’s idea for the big “get even” was that the best revenge was success. Both the success of the General and that of her own.
Helen Dortch Longstreet earned the nickname of the “Fighting Lady” for being a champion of many causes including environmental preservation, physical fitness, women’s rights, civil rights and as a Confederate memorialist. She was the first woman to run for public office in the state of Georgia and was thereby instrumental in breaking down the prejudice against women holding high political positions. She was the driving force behind the creation of a state park at Tallulah Gorge. She opposed a plan by Georgia Power to build a series of hydroelectric dams along the Tallulah River. Although unsuccessful, her campaign was the first conservation movements in America championed by a woman.
Originally, my personal interest in the widow Longstreet was directly tied to her husband’s exploits at Gettysburg. That all changed several years ago when I came across a trio of letters written by Mrs. Longstreet. I was astonished to find these letters were dated 1949-51, nearly half a century after General James Longstreet died and 90 years after the Civil War began. How could this be? I began to research Helen Dortch Longstreet and discovered what an amazing woman she was. These letters were written just before and shortly after Mrs. Longstreet ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign for governor of the State of Georgia against Herman Talmadge in 1950. Her main complaint? Blacks were not allowed to vote in the primary.
The first letter, dated May 16, 1949, is on the ornate letterhead of the “Longstreet Memorial Association” that was “Organized on the Gettysburg field by Veterans of Longstreet’s command during the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of the battle” in 1938. Association member names are listed at the side and include 20 Governors (there were only 48 states at the time and Indiana’s Clifford Townsend is among them), College / University Presidents, Congressmen, Senators and military officers. The letter was written to Col. Carl W. Breihan of Lemay, Missouri. Breihan, a former St. Louis County Police Commissioner, was recognized as an authority on outlaws Frank and Jesse James and the Younger brothers and author of 12 books on Wild West anti-heroes including Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Quantrill’s Raiders.
Widow Longstreet writes, “I think of nothing during the day, but plans for raising money for the Longstreet Monument and I dream about it at night.” Mrs. Longstreet details her plan to raise funds for the monument by awarding a new 1949 Kaiser-Frazer automobile to the “prettiest girl in the County whose citizens make the largest contribution to the Longstreet Memorial Association in proportion to population.” Mrs. Longstreet states, “I thought this would cause the ordinaries to contribute and to appeal to their friends for contributions…I would risk my life on the bet that this plan will prove a glorious success.” Mrs. Longstreet’s ambitious plan included buying 48 Kaiser-Frazer cars (at $ 2,000 each) on credit to be awarded in all 48 states.
The letter continues, “The auto dealers will pay more attention to the plan if presented by a young, vigorous, intelligent gentleman like yourself, than by an old woman….I could never make them understand that behind the wrinkles and gray hairs the vigor and enthusiasm of youth still lives…When the monument stands finished on the field of glory, Carl W. Breihan, more than any other person in the world will deserve the credit.” She added the postscript, “I went on a little speaking trip to Cleveland, Ohio and received such an ovation, I may run for President.”
The next letter is in the form of a press release. Dated Feb. 26, 1951, it mentions the unveiling of a marker at General Longstreet’s South Carolina birthplace that likely includes excerpts from her planned speech at the ceremony. “I would send a message to Stalin’s Red Divisions wherever they march today-American soldiers wrote across the pathway of the stars, from ’61 to ’65, that Americans surrender only to Americans….Americans want PEACE and FREEDOM for ALL MEN. AMERICANS ABHOR WAR; but if war is forced upon us we have the power which will exercise to WHIP THE WORLD…At the birthplace of an American soldier whose grip never relaxed, whose guns never ceased to thunder, we strike a note which will reverberate against the stars.”
The third and final letter was written on New Years Eve of 1951. It is a typed letter on the ornate letterhead of the “Physical Culture Hotel” in Dansville, New York. Again written to Mr. Briehan, it reads in part, “My great loneliness and longing for ‘the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is stilled,’ seem greater than I can bear at Christmas.” The letter mentions the Longstreet Monument briefly but is mostly devoted to finding Briehan an editor for his first book (The Complete and Authentic Life of Jesse James 1953). In my opinion, the letterhead speaks more about the widow than does the text.
The Physical Culture Hotel, founded by former professional wrestler and magazine mogul Bernarr MacFadden, began life as the “Jackson Sanitorium” (founded in 1854), a health spa credited with inventing granola and launching the Kellogg cereal company. The Hotel was a pioneer in the use of hydrotherapy but also emphasized recreation and social activities such as swimming, sunbathing, tennis, and dancing. McFadden and his hotel were on the cutting edge of the physical fitness movement in America and at age 88, Helen Dortch Longstreet was right in the center of it. To me, this letter is emblematic of the widow Longstreet. She was ahead of her time, unpredictable and most of all, she never gave up.
Further research reveals that, during World War II, Mrs. Longstreet was a Rosie the Riveter assembling B-29 bombers at the Bell Aircraft plant in Atlanta. She explained, “I was at the head of my class in riveting school. In fact I was the only one in it.” She worked in the factory for two years, refused to join the union, never missed a day of work or showed up late for a shift. Widow Longstreet told Life magazine reporters, surprised to find a Civil War General’s widow alive and well and working for the war effort, “I just want to build bombers to bomb Hitler.”
Mrs. Longstreet had been a Progressive Party member who had supported Theodore Roosevelt for President as a delegate to the Progressive Party convention in 1912. With her spirit of progressive political activism reinvigorated, Longstreet spent the next 50 years trying to resuscitate her husband’s wartime reputation. Not only did she organize the Longstreet Memorial Association, she created both the Longstreet Memorial Exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco in 1940. In 1947, she became the first woman to have her portrait placed in the Georgia State Capitol. By 1956, Helen Longstreet was suffering from deteriorating mental health. She was placed in the Central State Mental Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia in 1957, where she remained until her death on May 3, 1962. She is buried in West View Cemetery in Atlanta.
And what became of her husband’s chief detractor, LaSalle Corbell Pickett, wife of General George Pickett? She died on March 22, 1931, having outlived her husband by more than 55 years. But she would not rest in peace. Richmond, Virginia’s Hollywood Cemetery declined to allow her to be buried next to her husband. That was until Pickett’s grandson, Lieutenant George E. Pickett III, threatened to have his grandfather disinterred and moved to Arlington National Cemetery where they could rest side-by-side. Hollywood Cemetery quickly agreed to permit LaSalle’s interment there, but for reasons unknown, the request went unfulfilled.
LaSalle’s remains were cremated and interred at Abbey Mausoleum in Arlington, Virginia. Originally a mausoleum for the wealthiest citizens of Washington, DC, it went bankrupt in 1968. The structure fell into disrepair and was vandalized many times and several graves desecrated. In 1976, vandals opened and desecrated 12 coffins and 10 urns. One crypt was completely opened and the coffin left opened. Vandals placed a copy of heavy metal magazine “Circus” on the chest of the skeleton. Additionally, ashes were poured on the floor and smiley faces drawn in them.
In 1979, 45 crypts were broken into, coffins removed, and the corpses decapitated. The skulls were left perched atop broomsticks and left upright around the tomb. In the late 1980s, vandals opened urns and poured the contents onto the floor, mixing remains together and again writing in the ashes. In 1994, police discovered bloody hand prints, candles, dead cats, pentagrams, and other signs of occult worship. Two crypts were opened, the coffins placed on the floor, and the remains exposed.
In 1998, the Military Order of the Stars and Bars and United Daughters of the Confederacy worked together to pay for LaSalle’s disinterment and reburial in front of the George E. Pickett Memorial in Hollywood Cemetery. Widow Pickett was buried on Saturday, March 21, 1998. She was the first woman interred in the Confederate military burial section. On July 3 of that same year, one of the last monuments was erected on the Gettysburg National Military Park. It was an equestrian statue of General James Longstreet on his horse “Hero” in Pitzer Woods on Confederate Avenue. Perhaps most astonishingly, 135 years after the battle, Jamie Longstreet Paterson, the 67-year-old granddaughter of General Longstreet was there to see it.
Next week-Part III
We’ve all heard the stories, legends and rumors surrounding that now legendary first event. It was sponsored by the Walt Disney company featuring costumed characters with a Disney based theme. The Disney folks gave away potentially priceless hand painted film production cels right here on the streets of old Irvington town. Walt Disney himself was seen walking down Audubon with Mickey Mouse at his side. It’s hard to separate fact from fiction nowadays.
A week later on May 5, 1942, every United States citizen received their much anticipated “War Ration Book Number One”, good for a 56-week supply of sugar. Initially, each stamp was good for one pound of sugar and could be redeemed over a specified two-week period. Later on, as other items such as coffee and shoes were rationed, each stamp became good for two pounds of sugar over a four-week period. The ration book bore the recipient’s name and could only be used by household members. Stamps had to be torn off in the presence of the grocer. If the book was lost, stolen, or destroyed, an application had to be submitted to the Ration Board for a new copy. If the ration book holder entered the hospital for greater than a 10-day stay, the ration book had to be brought along with them. Talk about your red tape!
To make matters worse, just because you had a sugar stamp didn’t mean sugar was available for purchase. Shortages occurred often throughout the war, and in early 1945 sugar became nearly impossible to find in any quantity. As Europe was liberated from the grip of Nazi Germany, the United States took on the main responsibility for providing food to those war ravaged countries. On May 1, 1945, the sugar ration for American families was slashed to 15 pounds per year for household use and 15 pounds per year for canning – roughly eight ounces per week per household. Sugar supplies remained scarce and, just as sugar had the distinction of being the first product rationed at the start of the war, sugar was the last product to be rationed after the war. Sugar rationing continued until June of 1947, over six months after the first Irvington Halloween festival in October of 1946.
An argument can be made that it was events like the First Irvington Halloween Festival that kicked off the tradition of trick-or-treating as we know it today. Although the Halloween holiday was certainly well known in America before that first Irvington celebration, it was predominantly a holiday for adult costume parties and a chance to cut loose with friends playing party games while consuming hard cider. Early national attention to trick-or-treating in popular culture really began a year later in October of 1947. That’s when the custom of passing out the playful “candy bribes” began to appear in issues of children’s magazines like Jack and Jill and Children’s Activities, and in Halloween episodes of network radio programs like The Baby Snooks Show, The Jack Benny Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Trick-or-treating was first depicted in a Peanuts comic strip in 1951, perhaps the image most identified with the children’s holiday in the hearts and minds of baby boomers today. The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney debuted his Donald Duck movie “Trick or Treat”, and again when Ozzie and Harriet were besieged by trick-or-treaters on an episode of their popular television show. In 1953, less than a decade after that first festival in Irvington, the tradition of Halloween as a children’s holiday was fully accepted when UNICEF conducted it’s first national children’s charity fund raising campaign centered around trick-or-treaters.
Most of this column’s readers are aware that part of my passion for history revolves around collecting, cataloging, displaying and observing antiques and collectibles. There exists in the collecting world a strong group of enthusiasts devoted to the pursuit and preservation of Halloween memorabilia of all types. Costumes, decorations, photographs, publications and postcards in particular. The origins of Halloween as we now know it might best be traced in the postcards issued to celebrate the tradition. The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show costumed children, but do not depict trick-or-treating. It is believed that the pranks associated with early Halloween were perpetrated by unattended children left to their own devices while their parents caroused and partied without them. Some have characterized Halloween trick-or-treating as an adult invention to curtail vandalism previously associated with the holiday. Halloween was not widely accepted and many adults, as reported in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s, typically saw it as a form of extortion, with reactions ranging from bemused indulgence to anger. Sometimes, even the children protested. As late as Halloween of 1948, members of the Madison Square Boys Club in New York City carried a parade banner that read “American Boys Don’t Beg.” Times have certainly changed since that first Halloween festival 65 years ago.
A 2005 study by the National Confectioners Association reported that 80 percent of American households gave out candy to trick-or-treaters, and that 93 percent of children, teenagers, and young adults planned to either venture out trick-or-treating or to participate in other Halloween associated activities. In 2008, Halloween candy, costumes and other related products accounted for $5.77 billion in revenue. An estimated $2 billion worth of candy will be passed out during this Halloween season and one study claims that “an average Jack-O-Lantern bucket carries about 250 pieces of candy amounting to about 9,000 calories and containing three pounds of sugar.” Yes, 65-years ago, Halloween looked quite different than it does today. Next week, doorbells all over Irvington will ring, doors will be opened and wide-eyed gaggles of eager children will unanimously cry out “Trick-or-Treat” from Oak Avenue to Pleasant Run Parkway.
Costumed kids will be rewarded for their efforts with all sorts of tribute in the form of coins, nuts, popcorn balls, fruit, cookies, cakes, and toys. As a casual observer born long after that first Irvington Halloween Festival and an active participant in the festivities that will begin next week, I’m glad that our Irvington forefathers skirted government regulations all those years ago. In fact, as a fan of all things Irvington, I’d go so far as to say that this community has played a big part in the Halloween holiday as we know it today. Because, grammar notwithstanding, nobody does Halloween like Irvington do.
My first thought, where the heck is Bloomfield, Indiana? Well, if you didn’t know, it is a small town of some 2,400 people located in Greene County not far from, and currently considered a part of, Bloomington. Its best known for having one of the most well preserved covered bridges in the state and for its long association with the Native American Indian tribes including the Miami, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, and Wesa tribes. That settled, I was on to the next question. What is this thing? I’m guessing some of you already know the answer, but it was unknown to me. It is a book, distributed by the electric company to their wartime, homefront customers to read their own meters and pay the fees associated with usage based on the honor system. That’s right, the honor system. With the electric company. An Oxymoron if you ever heard one right?
The customer would record the electricity their household used, pay the bill, and the electric company trusted them. Seriously? The electric company…trust you? Could that be possible? Can you imagine such a system? I gotta tell ya, when I see things like this I’m convinced that I was born in the wrong era. I must admit, I’m one of those people that believes that the World War II Generation was truly our greatest. Life was simpler, people were nicer, and businesses were staffed by friends and neighbors who were really rooting for our success. Whenever I see things like this I realize that back then, everyone pulled together to do their part. All for one and one for all. Corny, but true. I didn’t realize that this little booklet was a first generation relic of the rural electrification movement that began in 1935 as part of an effort to bring electricity, telephone and indoor plumbing to the rural communities all over the state. Something we take for granted today.
To be sure, Minnesota has given us very normal politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey and Jimmy Carter’s Vice-President Walter Mondale and Senator Eugene McCarthy. All 3 men ran for President (Humphrey and McCarthy against each other in 1968) and all 3 men lost. Although mainstream, all 3 were unconventional in their own ways. McCarthy was the grandfatherly looking darling of the Anti-Vietnam War Hippy protesters, most of whom were one third his age. Humphrey was a peace seeking dove who became the hawkish voice of the LBJ administration during the Vietnam War. And Mondale was the first to chose a woman as his running mate (Geraldine Ferraro 1984).
You may not realize just how prolific Minnesota has been in baby boomer’s collective national political conversation until you realize that Mondale, McCarthy or Hubert Humphrey were on the Democratic ticket as candidates for President or Vice President in the 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992 elections. Minnesota is known for a politically active citizenry, with populism being the driving force among the state’s political parties. Minnesota has consistently high voter turnout, in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, 77.8% of eligible Minnesotans voted – the highest percentage of any U.S. state or territory – versus the national average of 61.7%.
The history of Minnesota electing non-conventionals goes back to 1876 when the state elected John Pillsbury as their 8th Governor. Name sound familiar? Yes, he was the namesake of the Pillsbury doughboy and served from 1876 to 1882. He died in 1901. Following the food theme, Minesota also elected Frank B. Kellogg tot he Senate in 1916. No, he wasn’t the cereal guy, but he did become Secretary of State, British Ambassador and a Nobel Prize winner in 1929.
Then came (and came-and came-and came) Harold Stassen, Minnesota Governor (it’s youngest ever) from 1939 to 1943. Stassen was a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President nine times between 1944 and 1992 (1944, 1948, 1952, 1964, 1968, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992). He never won the Republican nomination, much less the presidency; in fact, after 1952, he never even came close, but continued to campaign actively and seriously for President until just a year before his death. When you add Stassen’s name alongside those of McCarthy, Mondale and Humphrey, a Minnesotan was on the ballot for every Presidential election for six decades.
Then came Jesse Ventura. The former navy seal turned pro wrestler known as “The Body” was born James George Janos in Minneapolis in 1951. In the Minnesota gubernatorial election of 1998 he was elected the 38th Governor of Minnesota and served from 1999 to 2003 but did not seek a second term. Ventura ran as a candidate for the Reform Party of Minnesota. Ventura went on to gain the highest approval rating of any governor in Minnesota history, with some polls ranking his public approval as high as the 73% in 1999. Ventura is widely regarded as one of the first candidates to effectively use the Internet in a national political campaign.
Franken then hosted a nationally syndicated, political radio talk show, The Al Franken Show, and authored six books, four of which are political satires critical of conservative politics. The success of his radio show and books led Franken to run for the U.S. Senate. Franken’s narrow victory was challenged but upheld. The most famous incident that emerged revolved around a ballot that would come to epitomize Franken’s victory. It was a ballot that had been marked twice, once for Franken and once for a write-in candidate known as “Lizard People.” This ballot gained infamy, not only for the absurd nature of a vote being cast for Lizard People but also for whether it should be counted for Franken or for lizard people. Eventually, the ballot was thrown out altogether. Franken was sworn into the Senate on July 7, 2009 (seven months after the congressional session had started) and was re-elected to a second term in office in 2014.
If the criteria were based solely on demography and topography, Indiana was the perfect test case for the larger National Eugenics movement. In 1920, the state’s population approached 3 million residents, 95% of whom were native-born and 97% of whom were White. The bulk of Indiana’s African American and immigrant communities lived in segregated communities within the cities of Indianapolis, Gary, and East Chicago. Unlike other more racially diverse, multilingual states such as New York, Illinois, and California, Indiana’ Eugenics project did not have to translate their message into foreign languages or tailor their “Americanization” campaigns to foreign speaking populations. Instead, the Hoosier project targeted poor and working-class Whites, especially impoverished farm dwellers living in undeveloped rural communities. (Keep in mind that most rural Hoosier farms and homes did not have indoor plumbing or electricity until the 1940s.)
As a Hoosier, although others may argue otherwise, the connection between Eugenics and the Ku Klux Klan cannot be denied. Implicit to be sure, both organizations shared undeniable common goals, the first being the assurance of racial purity and the second being the improved survival of the Anglo-Saxon race. Luckily for us, the fall from favor of the Eugenics movement in our state and nation coincides with the fall of the KKK.
