Category Archives: God

Civil War Christmas Days

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Thomas Nast was a cartoonist and magazine illustrator. In 1860, Nast created campaign posters for Abraham Lincoln during Lincoln’s bid for the presidency. In 1862, Thomas Nast was working for Harper’s Weekly magazine and he was given the task to draw the Harper’s Weekly Christmas cover. Supposedly, President Lincoln asked Nast to draw a picture of Union troops being visited by Santa Claus.

Nast met Lincoln’s Santa Claus magazine cover request. The January 3, 1863 Harper’s Weekly magazine cover has Santa Claus on his sleigh passing out presents to Union soldiers at a snowy United States Army camp.

Civil War Christmas

Civil War Christmas

The soldiers are happy to have Santa visit their camp and two of them sit in the snow behind Santa’s sleigh as they open and play with their presents. Other soldiers are gathered with Santa as he gives them their Christmas gifts. A soldier on the left of the illustration has received a present of socks, socks would have been a greatly appreciated gift for a soldier during the Civil War. A sign with the words “Welcome Santa Claus” is prominent in the background, and in the distance you can see other soldiers coming on their way to see Santa Claus. Santa’s suit has stars and stripes on it, and at the bottom the magazine illustration has the words; “Santa Claus In Camp.”

Nast’s Harper’s Weekly Civil War Santa Claus cover is a patriotic theme for the magazine. Before January 3, 1863 both Antietam and Fredericksburg had claimed many Union lives, and without much, or any, progress for the Union war effort. The mood of the Union at this time was gloomy, on both the battle and home fronts. The Harper’s Weekly Civil War Santa Claus cover was designed with hope that it might raise Union morale. Nast would go on to draw many more Santa Claus illustrations for many years.

In general, wintertime was a time of military inaction during the Civil War as the armies of both the North and South would hunker down in camp to wait out winter. The winter weather, with its resultant snow, rain, ice, sleet, mud and muck and the complications of moving troops in these conditions made campaigns mostly impractical in Civil War times.

Despite the entertaining story of Thomas Nast, Abraham Lincoln, and Santa Claus on the cover of Harper’s Weekly, on Christmas day during the Civil War, fighting and dying did not pause for celebration of the Savior’s birth. Mankind’s sinful nature was fully demonstrated on Christmas day as the Civil War was fought.

Events of Civil War Christmas Days:

1860 – A Tuesday.

  • This quote is actually from before the Civil War began, but these words written in a Camden, Arkansas diary reveal the concerns of people in December, 1860 as conflict between the North and South seemed inevitable. People were not at peace:
    “Another Christmas has come around in the circle of time but it is not a day of rejoicing. Some of the usual ceremonies are going on, but there is gloom on the thoughts and countenance of all the better portion of our people.“

1861 – A Wednesday.

  • In Washington, D.C., the Cabinet met to discuss Mason and Slidell, two Confederate commissioners to Britain who were being held in Boston after they were removed from a British ship by a Union warship.
  • President Lincoln and his family had a dinner at the White House for guests .
  • Confederate Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson celebrated Christmas with his wife in Winchester, Virginia. This would prove to be Jackson’s last Christmas spent with his wife. Jackson would learn in 1863 at Chancellorsville that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
  • The Confederate schooner William H. Northrup was captured by the U.S.S. Fernandina off Cape Fear, North Carolina.
  • Skirmishing took place at Cherry, in western Virginia, and there was a Union expedition in operation close to Danville, Missouri.

1862 – A Thursday.

  • President Lincoln spent Christmas day in Washington, D.C. hospitals visiting injured soldiers.
  • Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan and his men spent Christmas day continuing their Kentucky raid with fighting at Green’s Chapel and Bear Wallow.
  • William Tecumseh Sherman and his corps were on their way to Vicksburg, they were near Milliken’s Bend, north of Vicksburg.
  • A skirmish occurred near Warrenton, Virginia.
  • A Union reconnaissance took place from Martinsburg to Charles Town in western, Virginia.

1863 – A Friday.

  • Bear Inlet, North Carolina Confederate salt works were destroyed by Union troops.
  • Beverly, West Virginia was reached by Union cavalry (the State of West Virginia had now been made from western Virginia).
  • Union gunboats were busy in the Stono River, in South Carolina.
  • The U.S.S. Marblehead came under heavy fire from Confederate batteries located on John’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. The U.S.S. Marblehead was hit twenty times, and the U.S.S. Pawnee and the mortar schooner C.P. Williams returned fire on the Confederate island battery. After an hour the firing stopped and the Confederates left. Two eight-inch sea-coast howitzers were captured by the Yankees.

1864 – A Sunday.

  • The Federal bombardment of Fort Fisher, North Carolina continued with nearly sixty warships in action. The Yankees landed two miles north of the fort, took a battery, and moved close to Fort Fisher. As darkness came, Confederates came in from the north. The Federal fleet eventually wound up returning to Hampton Roads, and the last of their troops left Fort Fisher on December 27. At the entrance to the Cape Fear River, Fort Fisher remained under Rebel control, for now.
  • In Fort Valley, Georgia Private Jackman of “The Orphan Brigade” wrote of his Christmas day:
    “For breakfast had fresh pork, biscuit, sweet potatoes, etc. Cool disagreeable morning. At noon cold rain commenced falling. Bad prospect for a Christmas dinner — can’t cook in the rain. Slept all evening. Rain pouring down. Has been a most gloomy day — being the fourth birth day spent in the army. At night sat up late chatting around a smoky fire built under the sheds in the rain …“

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

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Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration was on March 4, 1865. Washington, D.C. had been experiencing poor weather with lots of rain, and its streets were in their muddiest and sloppiest condition. Fog hung over Washington on March 4, 1865. It was a miserable, gloomy day with wind, rain, and mud.

He Was Gawky And Awkward

His Clothes Often Did Not Fit

President Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was now fifty-six-years-old. At six-feet-four inches tall, Lincoln often wore clothes that did not quite fit right, he was described as being gawky or awkward. Lincoln had a tenor, falsetto-like voice, and he’d had only one year of formal education. Nothing about Abraham Lincoln would lead people to think this man was a powerful speaker.

Note: You may read about Andrew Johnson’s drunken behavior during Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural in this post.

With Malice Toward None

The horrible weather eased as Lincoln began his Second Inaugural Address. The wind stopped and the sun broke through the clouds to illuminate Lincoln at the podium. No one knew yet exactly when the the bloody Civil War would end, but it was now nearing an end. President Lincoln began to look ahead with hope to time without war. Included in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address are these memorable words:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

A Sacred Effort

Frederick Douglass, circa 1860s.

Frederick Douglass, circa 1860s.

In the gathered crowd listening to Lincoln was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was a former slave, an abolitionist, speaker, and newspaper editor. When Lincoln gave his First Inaugural Address, Douglass thought Lincoln was much too soft toward the South. Douglass twice met with Lincoln, once in 1863 and again in 1864. Douglass’ opinion of Lincoln ran hot or cold depending upon the current situation of the Civil War, and Lincoln’s leadership.

After Lincoln gave his Second Inaugural Address, he sought Frederick Douglass out at a following reception. Lincoln wanted to know what Douglass thought of the speech. Douglass said to Lincoln: “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.”

An Actor Listens

A photograph of that day shows a twenty-six-year-old actor in the crowd listening to Lincoln as he gives his Second Inaugural Address. The young actor’s name is John Wilkes Booth, and he hates Abraham Lincoln. Only forty-one days later, Abraham Lincoln would belong to the ages… assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

“Fellow-Countrymen:

“At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is one of his best speeches. Today, it is engraved on the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Undying Words Exhibit: The Second Inaugural Address

 

Learn Civil War History Podcasts

Andrew Johnson Drunk at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

Episode Two: Andrew Johnson Drunk at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

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