Let There Be Peace

Richmond, Virginia
1883

On October 15, 1883, one hundred and eighty-nine men, mostly Union veterans of the Civil War, boarded a train in Newark, New Jersey heading for Richmond. Shortly after their arrival the next day, they attended a banquet with veterans who had served in the armies of both sides. When I discovered a menu from the dinner, oddly printed on an old Confederate banknote, I became curious about the purpose of their visit to the former capital of the Confederacy.

The long and complicated process of reestablishing cordial relations between the North and South went through various phases. In March 1865, with the war nearing its completion and the Confederacy in shambles, President Abraham Lincoln set the tone for reuniting the country in his second inaugural address, counseling “malice toward none; with charity for all.” During his presidential campaign in 1868, General Ulysses S. Grant promoted the idea of reconciliation with the words “Let There Be Peace,” the slogan by which he would be most remembered. By the early 1880s, there was a growing awareness among northern veterans that there had been two sides in the conflict. An incident reflecting this change in perception came about in 1882 when the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (responsible for erecting monuments and preserving the site) came to the conclusion that it was meaningless to mark the Union lines without knowing the Rebel positions. Accordingly, they invited former Confederate officers to visit the field and show them where their troops had been positioned. In another gesture of reconciliation that year, the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the largest national organization of Union veterans, marched together with Confederate veterans in a commemorative parade.

These widely-reported events may have sparked the Union veterans of Lincoln Post No. 11 in Newark to embark on their goodwill mission to Richmond in 1883. As one of its members later recalled, “It had been eighteen years since the end of the war, yet, little had been done of a personal, practical character to heal up the old sores and make the body politic whole and healthy again.”1 Marching down Market Street amidst the cheers of well-wishers on the night of their departure, the so-called “brigade” (which included some invited guests) was guided to the Pennsylvania Railroad depot by a blaze of electric lights—a new technological development.2 The scene was further illuminated by Roman candles ignited from the rooftops and colorful bonfires radiating red, white, and blue. The hubbub continued until 9:20 PM when the train pulled out of the station, bringing the handshaking and god-speeds to an end. After months of preparation, they were finally on their way.3

Pennsylvania & Potomac Station

Early the next morning, after hurriedly devouring breakfast at the Pennsylvania & Potomac station in Washington, the men walked over to look at a small, brass star that marked the spot where President James Garfield had been shot and mortally wounded two years earlier. Although he had only been in office for two hundred days, the nation deeply mourned the loss of Garfield, a beloved public servant who had risen to the rank of major general during the war. Having paid their respects, the veterans continued on to visit the battlefield at Fredericksburg, before arriving in Richmond later that day. After being welcomed by the mayor, they were escorted to Ford’s Hotel, situated on the southeast corner of Broad and Eleventh Street, facing Capitol Square. However, as they were checking in, some of the “boys,” as the commander like to call the graying members of his brigade, grew increasingly agitated that there was no American flag flying over the hotel. Taking the matter in hand, the proprietor quickly located a flag and hoisted it over the hotel himself, much to the satisfaction of his newly-arrived guests. With the matter settled, the men finished checking into their rooms, word having been passed to eat lightly in order to be ready for their welcoming banquet that evening.

Ford's Hotel, ca. 1882

Two local veterans' organizations, one Union and the other Confederate, acted as the hosts for the visitors from New Jersey. It was surprising that there was a post of the G.A.R. in Richmond, and even more surprising that the former Confederates would participate as co-hosts for the visit. However, veterans of the Civil War typically harbored no feelings of animosity toward those who had fought on the other side. In fact, they would often go over to shake hands whenever they spotted their former enemies visiting a battlefield at the same time. Still in all, the “Jerseymen” were surprised to see how closely these two groups in Richmond worked together, even to the point of holding their meetings in the same place, a room randomly decorated with Confederate and Union flags and trophies.4

The banquet was to be held in Saenger Halle, a nearby meeting hall and saloon that was large enough to accommodate the three hundred diners. While they were resting and waiting for dinner, a quick look at the hotel’s bill of fare would have given the visitors a general idea of what they might expect that evening. Dating from the previous year, the menu below from Ford’s Hotel features several local foods like corned pork and turnips, barbecued shoat (weaned young pig), ox heart stuffed with barbecue sauce, small patties of veal brains, and turkey “pinons” (wings) with oyster sauce. The baked chub, possibly one of any number of unrelated fish, may have been a tautog, a blackfish found off the coast of southeast Virginia.

At 9:00 in the evening on October 16, 1883, the visiting brigade marched a few blocks over to the banquet hall where they found the entire room (including the stage at the end) filled with tables laden with food, and the unusual menus printed on old Confederate banknotes. Interestingly, the one shown below is printed on a ten-dollar bill, showing a unit of field artillery moving at full speed, the only Confederate note of the seventy-two different types of paper money printed during the war that depicted soldiers. In what may have been another surprise, their hosts waited on the tables themselves—the Union men from the Phil Kearney Post No. 11, working alongside the former Confederates from Robert E. Lee Camp No. 1, formed a corps of waiters, serving their guests with “royal munificence.” After about an hour, the clatter of Army knives and forks died down, the time having come for the speeches and presentations. One of the biggest hits of the evening was the return of a pair of saddlebags to their original owner, the trophy having been captured by Union forces at the Battle of Sayler's Creek in the final days of the war.5 After the formalities were completed, the “friends,” as they now called each other, finished the evening toasting one another with “bumpers of punch, lusty and toothsome,” while the band played “Dixie,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”

The bill of fare transcribed below features dishes that are more conventional than some of the ones on the menu at Ford’s Hotel in 1882, except for the shoat, the roasted young pigs perhaps being a local specialty.

Fish

Rockfish Boiled, Egg sauce

Oysters

Fried Virginia Style

Roast

Tenderloin of Beef

Chicken

Cold Dishes

Beef Tongue

Spiced Beef

Virginia Ham

Roast Shoat

Vegetables

Sliced Tomatoes

Relishes

Potato Salad

Cold Slaw

Cucumber Pickles

Beet Pickles

Dessert

Assorted Fancy Cakes

Cream Puffs

Apples

The menus printed on Confederate currency were not as unique as they may have appeared to the visiting Yankees. In the years following the war, local entrepreneurs discovered that the old notes were an attention-grabbing novelty, as shown by this ten-dollar bill with an advertisement for Ford’s Hotel, similar in appearance to the menu.

All the same, the old banknotes may have meant something more to the visiting veterans than just a mere souvenir. No longer legal tender (not that they ever were), the obsolete paper money was now ephemera—the minor historical documents of everyday life that provided tangible evidence of the rebellion and the desperate struggle in which they had been engaged. Even Abraham Lincoln seems to have found the currency strangely compelling. After he was assassinated in April 1865, a five-dollar Confederate bill was found in his pockets, perhaps a memento that he received during his trip to Richmond ten days earlier, immediately following the evacuation of the city by Confederate forces. (The saddlebags were picked up at Sayler's Creek the day after Lincoln’s visit.)

During their two-day visit, the men from New Jersey toured the local sights, such as the tobacco warehouses, St. John’s Church where Patrick Henry proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and the Allan mansion where Edgar Allan Poe was “reared.” They also walked around the former military prisons and battlefields, looking for “relics,” as they called the small objects still scattered on the battlegrounds. However, the veterans mostly visited the cemeteries that ringed the city, taking time to honor the dead of both sides, for the experience of the war had not stopped for these men when the shooting ended; they continued to live with their war.

Nevertheless, the men had grown disheartened by the time they were getting ready to leave Richmond, for they had seen no national flags during their visit (except for the one flying over their hotel), nor had the citizens come out to cheer their parades. Indeed, they came to believe that they were not really welcome in the city, even though the mayor tried to convince them otherwise when they first arrived, explaining in his welcoming speech that it was not the local custom to display flags, nor was it part of southern etiquette to witness parades. Even their commander attempted to alleviate such feelings, reassuring them that they would have won over the local people, if only they had been able to stay one more day. Yet, despite such well-intended explanations, it was true; in contrast to the warm reception they received from their fellow veterans, the visitors had been shunned by much of the white population, a group then representing about 58% of the 65,000 people who lived in the city. Despite their good intentions, the Union veterans wondered whether their trip had done any good; only time would tell whether they had helped, in some small way, to bring the country back together.

When President Grant died two years later, his widow Julia Grant did her part in the reconciliation effort, asking several Confederate generals to serve as pallbearers. Mrs. Jefferson Davis, wife of the former president of the Confederacy, and by then a friend of Julia Grant’s, did her part too, writing a touching eulogy to Grant that was reprinted in Northern papers. During the Memorial Day observances in New York the following year in 1886, over twenty thousand people visited Grant’s tomb, his burial site covered by a mountain of flowers sent from all over the country.6 Amidst the profusion of floral displays, one item attracted particular attention. Standing next to an arrangement of white and red roses, made by the pupils of the grammar school in Sacramento, California, was a large container with a small cypress tree surrounded by smaller plants. Decorated with blue and gray ribbons, the inscription on it read, “Let us have peace. From R. E. Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans, Richmond, Va.”

Notes
1. Henry Benson, “Yank” and “Reb”; a history of a fraternal visit paid by Lincoln Post, No. 11, G. A. R., of Newark, N. J. to Robt. E. Lee Camp, No. 1, Confederate Veterans and Phil. Kearney Post No. 10, G. A. R. of Richmond, Va., October 15th, to October 18th, inclusive, Newark, New Jersey, 1884.
2. Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark before moving his home and laboratory to Menlo Park, twenty miles south of the city. After patenting a system for electricity distribution in 1880, he founded the Edison Illuminating Company, switching on its first generating station on September 4, 1882 to serve fifty-nine customers in lower Manhattan.
3. On the same day in October 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. Signed into law by President Grant in 1875, the act guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to “the full and equal enjoyment” of public accommodations such as hotels, transportation, theaters, and other amusement places. It was rarely enforced, especially after the 1876 presidential election that resulted in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending the Reconstruction era.
4. Robert E. Lee Camp, No. 1, Confederate Veterans, was just getting started in 1883. Having met for the first time on April 18 of that year, the benevolent society was formed by veterans to aid their financially needy, often disabled, comrades. It was one of the first such veterans organizations formed in the South. After incorporating in 1884, they opened a soldiers’ home on an old farm in the west end of Richmond (now the corner of Grove Avenue and the Boulevard) on January 1, 1885.
5. The Battle of Sayler’s Creek (now also known as Sailor's Creek) was fought on April 6, 1865, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, three days before General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.
6. New York Times, 1 June 1886. See Dry Monopole by Half a Length (11 April 2011) for another reference to the Memorial Day observances in New York City in 1886.