The Assassination

Abraham Lincoln mourning ribbon from the collection of the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia

It is virtually impossible to have any conversation about Abraham Lincoln without talking about the epic events surrounding his death. Countless books, exhibits, movies, and television documentaries have all failed to quench our thirst to know more about the murder of the 16th President. This endless fascination could itself be the subject of much research and debate. Why does it captivate us?

I think at least part of the answer is that it is America’s first great murder mystery. We want to know how it could have happened, who could do such a thing, and why. It is a case we feel compelled to try to solve. This is very understandable. Between the conspiracy theorists and the academic historians, there is plenty of material for everyone.

Putting aside the details for a moment, I think that one of the very interesting aspects of the assassination is the impact that it had on the country and its people. We live in an era of shocking news. Our generations have lived through Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination, and 9/11. In our digital, Internet world, news can reach us anywhere and at any time. Even in World War II, the reach of radio brought news right into the homes of most people. What is surprising to me about the assassination is that it reached people with almost the same immediacy as the news of Pearl Harbor or the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The telegraph had radically altered the way news was transmitted. It spread the word of the Lincoln assassination rapidly, and I believe contributed to the shock that the nation (but obviously mostly the North) experienced.

There is no doubt that the news of Lincoln’s murder was doubly shocking because it came so shortly after so much euphoric good news. The surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, was the beginning of the end of the war. Northerners celebrated the news with fireworks, parades, bands and speeches. After four dark years of war, it was like the sun had come out for the first time. The citizens of Philadelphia would have learned of Lincoln’s death on the morning of April 15, 1865. It was not much time for the city to enjoy the first fruits of victory before being plunged into mourning.

That the assassination of Abraham Lincoln still holds such fascination to us today is no great surprise. That there are still countless conspiracy theories and secret plots involving the Confederate government does surprise me somewhat, although it should not. Lincoln stands among the pantheon of American historical figures. It has always been difficult for Americans to accept that someone such as John Wilkes Booth could bring to an end someone like Lincoln. Booth was a man with delusions of grandeur, who had enough charisma to attract a group of ne'er-do-well followers. But he was bold enough in that era of low security to kill the President of the United States. That is as sinister as the plot gets. And in the end, that is all the rhyme and reason there was to Lincoln’s death.

So while today Lincoln’s assassination is largely a curiosity, at the time it was a national wound. It was a scar that took a long time to heal. Historians can debate the degree to which history was changed by Lincoln’s death, but there can be little argument that it made the painful work of Reconstruction all the more difficult. While it is appreciated as a tragedy, I do not think it is often enough understood for the watershed event it was. The assassination ended one era in American history, and began another. We still live today in the era it began.

Lincoln 200

Today is the first day of spring. After a long, cold, and windy winter here in Philadelphia, I feel really justified in repeating that… today is the first day of spring!

While the prospect of spring is very exciting to those of us here at the Civil War Museum, our thoughts have actually been turned to summer for some time. This summer a new and very unique event will take place on Independence Mall over the July 4th weekend. It is called Lincoln 200, and it is Philadelphia’s official celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The celebration will take the form of a festival, and there will be exhibits in tents, performing arts, living history presentations, music, video screenings, and food among many other things. The theme of the celebration is “Lincoln Then and Now,” and it will provide visitors with a fun, educational, and entertaining look at the 16th President, his importance in history, and his legacy today. It will also examine the world Lincoln lived in and how it relates to us today.

About a month ago, I was named Curator for the exhibit portion of the celebration, and have been scouring the city’s incredible abundance of museums, historical societies, and other collecting institutions looking for materials. The sites I have visited and the fantastic collections I have seen are one of the great treats of doing this job, and I wish everyone could get the behind the scenes experience that I have.

I would love to give everyone a preview of what Lincoln 200 will be offering, but I don’t want to give anything away just yet. We are still in the process of finalizing much of what is going into the exhibits, and there is still a great deal of work to be done. Here in the next few weeks, I hope to be able to provide more details on what we hope will be an exciting and unique event.

But I would like to say that the work that I have so far done for the Lincoln 200 event has only served to remind me once again of all the things that make the city of Philadelphia such a wonderful place. There are so many amazing things to see and discover. Showcasing the rich heritage of this city is something that Lincoln 200 is designed to do. In addition, it has always been a personal goal of mine to do whatever I could to return Philadelphia to its rightful place as the nation’s cultural and philosophical center. I hope that the Lincoln 200 festival will be the first step in accomplishing this goal.

Stay tuned!

Getting to Know Lincoln. Again.

Two faces of Lincoln.

Two images from the collection of the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia showing Lincoln as he appeared during the election of 1860 and within days of his death. It is a face we know well.

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2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and we are seeing the beginning of a year of celebration and commemoration. Americans often use the anniversary of someone’s birth or death to reflect on their lives and the impact they still have on us today. But with the gear up to celebrate the birth of Lincoln, it somehow seems different. I think it is because Lincoln is always with us in some capacity. We never truly stop thinking about him. The stream of books, articles, essays, and documentaries on Lincoln that come out every year is truly staggering.

So, what is it about Lincoln that captivates us? Why do we use his image, quote his words, and venerate his monuments so often and for so long? He holds a place unequaled by any other figure in American history. He is part of our subconscious. We are thinking about Lincoln even when we are not thinking about Lincoln.

But do we really know Lincoln? Or, conversely, do we know everything there is to know about Lincoln? Is he a mystery, or a dry well? He is in many ways both. As perhaps the most analyzed figure in our history, I doubt there are any more great revelations about Lincoln. We know all the "who, what, where and when" of his life. But the "why" is still subject to great conjecture and debate. The "why" is all that remains. The problem with "why," however, is that it is beyond our power to ever know for sure. Was Lincoln suffering from depression? Was he gay? Did he have cancer? These things are all speculative history now.

As we move through the year, there should be much interesting discussion on both the known and the speculative Lincoln. But what I think will be most interesting is how Lincoln will once again seem so extremely relevant to us today. Lincoln’s conduct of a war, his navigation of the nation’s most difficult social issue, and his interpretations of the Constitution and the power of the Presidency all seem very fresh today. Lincoln is perhaps second only to Franklin Roosevelt in shaping the government under which we currently live. Our feelings about Lincoln, good or bad, are often framed by our own political philosophies today. It seems to me that an individual who still defines the issues after two hundred years is someone with tremendous historical reach.

Lincoln’s reach far exceeded what he himself could have ever imagined.

Look for more on Lincoln here in the coming weeks.

Cold.

At left is a standard enlisted man's winter overcoat for the Museum's collection. It was all most Union soldiers had to protect them from the cold.

When I got in my car today to drive to the train station, the ever so informative dashboard indicator told me it was 12 degrees outside. Not that I needed that to know that it was cold, but somehow knowing the exact temperature outside made it seem all the colder. We have reached the heart of winter here in Philadelphia, and with it come some of these kinds of days. The temperature drops, the wind picks up, and a mind numbing cold sets in. It’s the kind of cold that penetrates no matter how much you bundle up, and after a few minutes out in it, you can’t think of anything else but how cold you are. Even the bright rays of the sun seem to offer no relief.

I was thinking, obviously, about cold as I went from my heated apartment to a heated train station, got on a heated train, and eventually made my way to a heated office to work. It made me think, as I sometimes do, how little we really live in the elements anymore, and how much our ancestors of the Civil War generation did. In the Civil War era, life and work went on, no matter how cold or inclement it got.

No matter whether you lived in a city, town, or on a farm, if you lived in that era, you would wake up on a morning like this to a freezing cold house. Even little chores would seem to us today to be extremely uncomfortable. Just going to the bathroom involved a trip outside to the frigid outhouse or undressing to use the chamber pot. If you had any intention to bathe, which you probably would not, even with water heated over the stove, it would be a very cold experience.

Life and work went on as usual in spite of the cold. If you were on a farm, the chores needed to be done and the animals needed tending. While there were no crops to bring in during the winter, the animals needed to be fed and watered, and stables needed to be cleaned out. Watering the animals were particularly important, as the water would freeze, subjecting them to dehydration and hypothermia. If you live and work in the towns or cities, going to work means, for the average person, going on foot. Work in mills and factories, never easy or comfortable work, was made excruciating in the bitter cold. The truth was that in the Civil War era, there was really little escape from brutal cold such as this. Coal and wood burning stoves and fireplaces were only so effective in the drafty homes and workplaces that people of the period inhabited.

It is very hard for us today to image how people of that era lived in the elements. For soldiers serving during the war, this was acutely the case. Winter for many soldiers was a period of inactivity. The cold, wet weather made winter campaigning in the Eastern Theater rare. Winter rains and sudden thaws meant mud up to the knees and swift immobilization of an army. So for men in the armies of the East winter meant long periods of boredom in log huts with canvass roofs. Hardly immune to the cold wind, these huts were all the shelter that was available.

In the Western theater, and operations in the Deep South, the war continued throughout the winter. The warmer climates there tended to divide the seasons into dry (summer) and wet (everything else). However, even the men of these armies experienced the cold unpleasantness of winter. But because they where frequently on the move, these soldiers more often experienced winter in the field. Soldiers often woke up wet, or covered in snow, or frozen to the ground, with only a blanket to protect them.

It is very hard to imagine being so exposed to the harsh elements. The Civil War generation must have been accustomed to being cold all the time. Such exposure helps explain, to a degree, their susceptibility to disease. That they were tough is no question; tougher by far than me. I’ll be thinking about that as I scurry back to my heated home to relax on my warm couch for the weekend.

Until next time, stay warm.

War in a time of Peace on Earth.

Since the very first settlers to the new world brought their holiday traditions with them, this has been a very special time of year for Americans. In the intervening centuries, these holiday traditions have grown and evolved in spite of wars, depressions, recessions, and natural disasters. Maintaining holiday traditions through difficult times is one of the ways that we maintain a sense of normalcy, and the Civil War was no different.

In the period of the Civil War, Christmas was probably second only to Easter as the most celebrated holiday of the year. The American holiday calendar looked a little different in the 1860’s. There was no official Thanksgiving Day until President Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving in 1863. July 4th was celebrated as a holiday, but again, not in any official capacity. The relatively small Jewish population of the time, about 100,000 out of a total 31.4 million, and the suppression of African traditions under slavery led to the predominance of the Christian religious holidays.

Of those holidays, Christmas most reflected America’s immigrant heritage. By the 1860’s, the American Christmas celebration was an amalgamation of several Christmas traditions from all over Europe. The Christmas tree had come over from Germany. St. Nicholas came from the Dutch. Mistletoe, Yule logs, greens, and the Christmas feast all came from the English. Most of the Christmas imagery that we are familiar with that pre-dates the Coca-Cola Santa and the TV specials dates from this period. By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, Christmas was a firmly established American tradition.

The first Christmas of the war, December 25th, 1861, came just about six months into the conflict. For most of the volunteer soldiers fighting in both armies, it was their first Christmas away from home. But, according the book We Were Marching Christmas Day by Kevin Rawlings, many of the soldiers were still caught up in the initial wave of war spirit and were full of vigor and enthusiasm. Letters to and from the front often had the tone of festive correspondence with distant relatives away for Christmas.

But by Christmas of 1862, the tone had changed. The previous year had been heavy with battle and loss. Shiloh, the Seven Days, Perryville, 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg had drained the enthusiasm from both the soldiers in the field and their family and friends back home. In dull winter camps or on ships at sea, the men in the service of their country had little to do but reflect on Christmases past and miss home desperately. At home, there was little to for which to be joyful. The war was no closer to over, and too many households had experienced loss.

But as is so often the case in our history, despair leads to action. Those who could not bring the soldiers and sailors home for Christmas sought ways to bring Christmas to those whom they could. Hospitals were decorated for the season, Christmas dinners were held (the bill of fare from one such dinner at the Broad Street Hospital in 1864 is pictured above), and care packages were prepared and sent to the front. For their part, the fighting men of the North and South sought to keep the Christmas spirit with dinners, dances, festivals, and decorations throughout the camp.

Christmas would pass twice more before the end of the war. Each came and went with a measure of the sorrow and homesickness of the year before. Slight changes in the locations where the holidays were observed marked the passing of the war. In 1864, William T. Sherman and the men of his army toasted each other Merry Christmas in Savannah, Georgia, having marched there from Atlanta over the summer and fall. That last Christmas of the war brought faint hope to some, and creeping dread to others that the war may soon be over.

In December of 1865, the Harper’s Weekly newspaper printed a holiday cover that was the first that did not portray some aspect of the war for the first time in four years. Everywhere, men and women, boys and girls, young and old, gathered round table and hearth to sing songs and raise glasses to peace. And even though the Civil War generation has long since passed away, it is still easy to imagine them, huddled in front of fires and candles, reading letters of Christmases past and present, dreaming of loved ones far away and hoping for the end of war.

Today, such scenes are repeated in far away places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where American men and women gather in tents and huts to dream of holidays and home. And here, those who love and miss them wish with all their might for a holiday season when all are home safe.

So, it is with a memory of those in the past and appreciation for their kindred spirits in the present that I and everyone here at the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia would like to wish all of you, and all of your loved ones the very Happiest of Holidays and the hope for peace on earth.

That document, continued.

Above is a 20th Century painting of the meeting between Grant and Lee at Appomattox Court House by Kieth Rocco. To the left, Colonel Charles Marshall and Colonel Eli Parker compare copies of the April 9th surrender agreement in Grant's manifold book.

When I last left you, we had just done an Associate Press story on a document from our archives we believed to be the Confederate copy of the terms of surrender signed at Appomattox Court House on April, 10th, 1865 (see last post)...

What we had not anticipated was the huge national interest that the story of the surrender document might generate. When the story hit the AP wire, it was picked up by newspapers and Internet sites all across the country. I was completely unaware that the story was growing and spreading until the day of our final open house when a friend of mine told me we were on the front page of Yahoo news. Within a few days, we were popping up everywhere. Newspapers from Miami to Montana, Washington, D.C. to Washington State were running the story with a pretty awful picture of me with my mouth open (never let yourself be photographed while you’re talking). Pretty soon, we were getting calls from local television stations and newspapers wanting to do stories on the document. I even got a call from a student who worked for a college newspaper in Virginia who wanted to do a story while he was home on break.

It was all very exciting for a while, but we were soon confronted with a couple of problems. First, we had begun the move of the artifact collection out of our old building in earnest, and all the media requests were becoming a distraction. After being accommodating for a few days, our CEO Sharon Smith and I decided to shut down access to the document. Second, we had never intended the story to be any kind of formal press announcement about the document. But the enormous media attention the story received became like a press announcement in spite of our intentions, and we were forced to defend our theories about the document before we were ready.

The first challenge to our conclusions came from the National Historic Park at Appomattox Court House. The historian there was interviewed for the original AP article on the document. At that time, he expressed doubt that we had an original copy, believing that what we had was more likely a Photostat copy or a souvenir copy. This was not unexpected, as we had considered those options ourselves when the document first surfaced. What I did not expect was that with a day of the AP story breaking nationwide, he emailed the reporter scans of the Maryland Historical Society copy of the surrender document and claimed that theirs and ours were exactly the same.

When the AP reporter called me with this particular revelation, my heart sank. It was one thing to be wrong about the document, but it’s a whole other thing to be wrong about it the day after the story went national. I certainly did not want the Museum to be embarrassed because I had failed to look at all the evidence. But even with this development, I did not think we were wrong.

I had talked to the historian at Appomattox about his concerns, but I had not seen the Maryland Historical Society scans, so I could nott comment on whether they looked exactly alike or not, but if they did it would create a huge problem with our theory. I was a little annoyed at the people at the Maryland Historical Society because I had spoken to them twice about the document and no one ever indicated to me that there were scans of it available. Had I known, I would have requested them at that time. So I had to see these scans.

It took several days to get a look at the scans due to the fact that the move was still going on and I was fairly out of touch. What I encountered when I finally did see them was worse than we had feared. The Maryland Historical Society copy did not just look like our copy, it looked exactly like our copy. We had to go back to square one a look at the document again.

The fact that the documents were exactly the same ruled out one of the possibilities first suggested by the historian at Appomattox, that it was a souvenir copy. It is impossible that two hand written and signed documents could be identical, even if they were written at the same time by the same people. So, the other option is that it is some kind of duplicate. I had very good reasons to believe that it was not a Photostat copy. For one thing, there were those pen marks on the paper. A Photostat would not leave pen marks of any kind. There was also the issue of access to the document to make a Photostat copy. Gibbon states in his memoirs that he gave his copy to the Maryland Historical Society. The memoirs were published posthumously in 1928, but Gibbon himself died in 1896. This means that the document was already at the Maryland Historical Society by 1896. Photostat technology did not exist at that time, so anyone making a Photostat copy would have had to do so at the Historical Society. Photostat copying was not common until World War II, and even then the machines were extremely large and ungainly. So a Photostat copy was not impossible, but unlikely.

Still, there was no question the documents were exactly the same. So we began to think that the most likely way that the documents could be exactly alike is that they were made at the same time. So we began to research the methods of document duplication that were available in 1865. I can safely say that in the process, I’ve learned more about the history of document duplication than I ever wanted to know. But the research led us to two duplication technologies that were available at the time; the polygraph and the manifold writer.

Most of us are familiar with the polygraph (though the name has been co-opted in modern times by the lie detector). The polygraph is a machine with two pens, the user writes a letter with one pen and the other pen copies it onto another paper. Thomas Jefferson is often credited as having invented it, but in truth Jefferson perfected one he ordered from Europe (it is on display at Monticello). The problem with a polygraph for our purposes is that it is fairly ungainly and we could find no evidence that they were carried in the field during the Civil War.

The manifold writer was simply a primitive form of carbon paper. The carbon paper was slipped in between two or more sheets of paper. The idea being that when you wrote on the top sheet, several copies could be made. Manifold writers were not uncommon in the Civil War, and were often used by staff officers who had to write multiple copies of orders frequently. The Museum has a manifold order book in its archival collections. A manifold order book had thin sheets of tissue like paper with carbon paper inserts. The user can slip several sheets of plain paper into the book with carbon paper in between. Using a stylus, the author writes the original order on a tissue sheet, making a permanent impression. The carbon produces two or more copies, and the tissue serves as the file copy in the book.

One of the difficulties of researching these copying devices is that the name manifold writer is sometimes used to describe a polygraph. As I said, we could find no indication that someone had lugged a delicate and awkward polygraph machine to Appomattox Court House and used it to make copies of important documents. But we did find evidence that at least one manifold writer was present and used for copying some of the most important documents of all.

The evidence comes to us through the memoirs of Horace Porter. Porter was aide-de-camp to General Ulysses Grant, and was in the McLean parlor went Grant and Lee had their historic meeting on April 9th. Porter recalls a key point in that historic meeting:

“’Very well,’ replied Grant, ‘I will write them out.’ And calling for his manifold order-book, he opened it, and laid it on a small oval wooden table which Colonel Parker brought to him from the rear of the room, and proceeded to write the terms. The leaves had been so prepared that three impressions of the writing were made.”

So we have proof that a manifold writer was at Appomattox Court House and was being used to make copies of important document pertaining to the surrender. This by no means proves our case that our document was produced on a manifold writer, but it certainly adds a great deal of credibility to the theory. If General Grant wrote the preliminary terms of surrender on a manifold writer, would it not make sense that the formal terms of surrender would be written on one as well?

So where are we now? Well, we have a great deal more to learn. We need to have the document analyzed to determine if it is the product of a manifold writer. It will be difficult to prove, but it would be a tremendous coup if we could prove that either General Gibbon or one of his staff officers had a manifold writer or used it at Appomattox Court House. We certainly need to know more about Bruce Ford and the provenance of the document.

The odyssey of our surrender document is not nearly over. As you read this I am probably doing more research in the Gibbon papers or some other such thing. But the effort has already been rewarding in the new insights and information it has made me gain. Its has also provided a health dose of the kind of mystery, that peering into the dark feeling, that draws all of us to history in the first place. We will certainly keep working until we solve the puzzle, and I’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

That Document You May Have Heard About, Part I.

It is a fundamental truth that all things come to an end. But it is how those things end which are often the most compelling stories. Wars are events of enormous upheaval. One of the reasons that scholars, students, and citizens have been studying warfare for a thousand years is because the subject is heavy with natural drama. The history of war is replete with life and death decisions, stunning success, tragic failure, and horrific loss all in the hands of the most human of beings.

Some of the most significant events in our history have taken place at the end of wars. It is often the end of war that does much to determine how the peace will be conducted. I have always been fascinated by the ends of wars, because the events of those final days are full of portent, move at a rapid pace, and take on a life of their own. If the American Civil War was a grand and terrible drama, then the final act was the most important.

The history of those early days in April, 1865, is well known. But it is difficult to imagine what it was like to be there. After the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was desperately scrambling to the west in order to get to a rail junction that could carry his men south to unite with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Nipping at their heals are Gen. U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. When the spring campaign of 1865 began, few of the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac doubted it would be the last of the war. The string of defeats suffered by the Southern Confederacy in the fall and winter had left it staggering like a wounded animal toward its death.

Though they marched west on the same roads, the two armies were, in fact, marching in different directions. For the Army of Northern Virginia, the end was near. Exhausted and starving, the Rebels were carried along by the frail hope that they could get to Johnston and carry on the war. For many, however, this hope was not enough, and thousands of Lee’s men chose to desert and make their way home. The Army of the Potomac was marching faster than it had ever marched before. Equally exhausted, but well feed and equipped, these men were motivated to greater effort by the knowledge that if they just marched a little faster, and a little farther, they could get in front of Lee’s army and end the four year struggle that had taken the lives of so many of their friends and comrades.

The end came at the little hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee discovered that the Union Cavalry Corps and the Fifth Infantry Corp under Gen. Phil Sheridan had gotten in front of him and closed the door. There was no where else to run. With an overwhelming sense of relief, both armies collapsed into rest, and themselves became spectators in the final act of the war in Virginia: the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

We have in our collection several relics that relate to the epic events of the last days of the war. Little did we know we may have one of the most significant artifacts of them all. Prior to moving the collection out of the building, we went through the archival collection in order to account for every item. In the process, we discovered what we believe to be a truly incredible piece of not only the end of the war, but of all of American history: a copy of the surrender document signed at Appomattox on April 10, 1865.

Needless to say, we were somewhat surprised.

The document was found by a former employee of ours, Herb Kaufman. He was going through all the boxes in the archives to make sure we knew exactly what was there before we packed it up. He came to me with a document that he had found at the bottom of a box of old, worthless prints of our old museum. The document consisted of two sheets of slightly yellow paper glued to a fragile heavy stock backing paper and brushed with some sort of lacquer on the surface. The sheets had handwriting and signatures. We had both recognized what it was right away; it was the protocol for the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. We both assumed it was a facsimile. The lacquer on the surface gave it a shiny, artificial appearance. But the shiny surface drew our eyes to one of the most important aspects of the document: pen marks on the paper.

The pen marks, slight indentations on the surface of the paper, were the first indication we had that the document in our hands may not be a facsimile. The indentations lined up exactly with the pen strokes on the page, indicating that the document was hand written. We were intrigued. So we had this document, and an idea what it might be, but we had no proof. We had to start somewhere, so the first step was to establish how many of these documents may exist in the world. It was time to solve a mystery!

I should take a moment here to provide a little historical background on the document we believe we have. On April 9, 1865, Generals Lee and Grant met in the McLean parlor to negotiate a preliminary agreement on the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of the Potomac. At that meeting, Lee and Grant agreed to appoint three commissioners each to meet the next day to create the formal terms of surrender. Grant appointed Generals John Gibbon, Wesley Merritt, and Charles Griffin, and Lee selected Generals James Longstreet, John B. Gordon, and William N. Pendleton. After an all day meeting on April 10, the terms were agreed to, and all six men signed the document. It is the April 10 document of which we believe we have a copy.

So my first step in unraveling the mystery was to call an archivist at the National Archives. Without saying what we thought we had, I asked him about the April 10 surrender document and where the existing copies might be located. Without having the benefit of looking into it, he told me that there was one copy, and it was in their possession. He indicated to me that not only did they have it, but that it was available to view on their website. This proved to be very helpful, because it was clear that the one we had was very different than theirs. The document in the National Archives was written on lined paper and had words added and other editing marks. Our copy was unlined, was not edited, and was in a different handwriting. At this time I described the document we had and asked for his help in tracking down the history. He told me he would get back to me.

He did so within the next couple days, and the information he had was not entirely clear. He told me that he had found a reference to there being another copy, that it was at the Maryland Historical Society and that it may have been donated by Col. Walter Taylor, who lived in Baltimore after the war. Taylor was Robert E. Lee’s aid during the war. This led us to believe that perhaps the answer was in the person of Gen. John Gibbon. Gibbon was the officer that presided over meeting that produced the surrender document and was, after the war, commander-in-chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the organization that founded our museum. It seemed to be a reasonable hypothesis that if he had a copy, he might have given it to M.O.L.L.U.S.

This theory led me to call the Maryland Historical Society to confirm that they had a surrender document. I spoke to a librarian down there who told me that they did in fact have a surrender document and that he believed it had been donated by Taylor. This seemed to confirm the information we received from the National Archives. Or at least it did, until I received another call from our man at the National Archives. He had managed to track down a magazine article written by Gibbon and published some years after his death in which he described the surrender meeting in some detail. Gibbon wrote that there were three copies of the surrender document made, and that he had kept one of them for his personal records. He then stated that he himself had donated that copy to the Maryland Historical Society.

So our theory that we had Gibbon’s copy went right out the window. I called the Maryland Historical Society back and talked to an archivist who was more familiar with the document. He confirmed Gibbon’s account, and told me that they had a letter from Gibbon documenting that their copy was the one from his collection. So we had to come up with a new theory. At the same time, we contacted a conservator from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts so that we could have someone look at the document at tell us something about what we had. While they could not comment on the historical aspects of the document, they could give us a condition report on its physical nature. One of the most important things they told us was that the document was a hand written original and not a facsimile. This was extremely important as we continued to investigate.

Where we went from there was a simple process of elimination. We knew from Gibbon that three copies were made. We could account for two of them. Gibbon’s personal copy was at the Maryland Historical Society. We knew that in any such written agreement as this, both parties would get a copy of the terms. It was logical enough to believe that the copy in the National Archives was the one that would have been forwarded to Grant’s headquarters and on to Washington. As an official document, it makes sense that it would end up in the National Archives. Therefore, the only copy unaccounted for would be the Confederate copy. If our document was authentic, then we must have the Confederate copy.

Having reached this conclusion, we were confronted with the next obvious question; why on Earth would we have the Confederate copy? In the history business, it is not enough that you think you have something of enormous historical significance; you must also be able to explain how you came to have the object. So I began to dig through our old records to find out what we had on the document. The first record of the objects in the Museum’s collections was an inventory of relics and framed items done in 1935. One of the very first projects I worked on when I was hired as a Project Assistant Curator four years ago was to help transcribe everything written in this inventory into an Excel spreadsheet. It was among the most mind-numbing things I ever had to do at the Museum, but I was sure glad it had been done on this occasion. It was so much easier to search the database than to go through the old book.

I found the document listed in the Catalogue of Pictures and Framed Relics section of the inventory. The citation read:

“Original Terms of Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Presented by Companion Bruce Ford.”

The transcription indicated that someone had handwritten the word “Photostat” next to the listing. I pulled out the box with the original inventory books and checked to see if there was anything else written in them that we may have missed when we originally transcribed them. The first two copies of the inventory had no handwritten note. The third did, so it must have been the one we transcribed from. Unfortunately, there was no additional clue to be found. However, in the box was another partial inventory of notable objects done in 1968. The inventory gave the same information as the 1935 inventory, and also said that the document was framed and hanging by the front door. It too had a handwritten note, this one saying “copy??”

As was true with every step in this mystery, every piece of information we found brought as many questions as it answered. We now knew that the document had been framed at on time, and that it had been on display. We knew it was in the collection in 1935, and was still on display in 1968. We also knew that a Mr. Bruce Ford gave the document to the Museum. Now we needed to find out about this Bruce Ford.

Herb took on the task of looking through the old M.O.L.L.U.S. application files and he found that Bruce Ford had joined M.O.L.L.U.S. in about 1917. He was eligible because his father had been an officer from New York during the War (though his father had never joined). Some digging around on the internet revealed that Bruce Ford had established a company that made batteries for U.S. Navy submarines, a company that later became Exide Batteries. Ford also married a woman named Sophia DuPont. Yes, of THOSE DuPonts. We looked up the service record of Bruce Ford’s father, and found no evidence that he was present at the surrender meeting. Mr. Ford certainly had the resources to buy the document, as did his wife and her family. A call down to the Hagley Library revealed no immediate evidence that the document came through the DuPunt side of the family.

So at this point there were some things we knew, and many more we did not. We knew that there were three copies made, and that we knew the location of two of them. We knew that the object had been framed when it was hanging in the museum, but had been removed from that frame sometime after 1968. We knew it had come to the Museum sometime between 1917 and 1935. We knew that Bruce Ford, a man of some means, had donated it sometime in those years. With the information we had, we could make some educated guesses. It seemed to me that the notations in the 1935 and 1968 inventories indicated that as time passed they had lost the provenance of the document and began to believe it was a Photostat copy even though the 1935 inventory entry firmly states that it is an “original copy.” I believe that sometime after 1968 the document was removed from its frame and placed in an obscure box in the archives because the individuals handling it at the time believed it was a worthless copy.

One of the things we could not account for was the time period from April 10, 1865 until 1935. Nor could we find any evidence of how Bruce Ford came into possession of the document. It did make sense that of the three copies, the Confederate surrender document would be the one most likely to end up in private hands. The Confederate government had fled Richmond and was on the run when the Confederate copy reached Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. There was no government to speak of when Lee and his staff finished the surrender procedures and left Appomattox Court House. Any official documents not turned over to the Federal government were likely carried off as souvenirs. It is not unlikely that someone at Lee’s headquarters simply pocketed the document and walked away.

At this point, we were making some progress toward solving the mystery when things got away from us a little. Due to the pending move, we had put the continuing investigation of the document on hold for a while. We had a full plate. In anticipation of the move, we had submitted some stories and images to our publicity people in order to generate some press coverage around our closing. We included an image of the document and a little summary of what we knew so far. Soon after, we got a call from an Associated Press reporter who wanted to do a story on the document. We agreed and the reporter stopped by, did the usual interviews, took some pictures and was gone. We didn’t give it any thought after that.

In our next installment, we’ll see how a little news story turns into a very big deal, and a curator has a moment of doubt.

Next time on History Mystery Theater!