What Happened to George Washington’s Home During the US Civil War?

Mount Vernon Today (MountVernon.org)

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Military pass signed by General Winfield Scott for Sarah Tracy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The document enables her to pass “through the United States lines” to get to Mount Vernon during the Civil War; dated October 2, 1861.

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The outbreak of the Civil War provided significant challenges to the preservation of George Wagington’s home at Mount Vernon, as the sectional crisis occurred during the infancy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The violent nature of the conflict could have destroyed Mount Vernon as a physical structure while also tearing up the personal threads that bound the nascent Association. Despite the challenges, the Association was able to keep the property protected and open to the public during the war.

An early image of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association—the group that singlehandedly saved the home of George Washington for posterity.

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The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association took over operation of the estate in 1860 in an effort to stabilize and restore the mansion. As restoration efforts progressed, the political situation in the United States deteriorated. Mount Vernon, as a result, was in a precarious position. At the same time, Ann Pamela Cunningham was forced to return to her family home in South Carolina in the fall of 1860 to help run the family plantation following her father’s death.

Above: George and Martha Washington’s bed chambers at Mount Vernon.

With the conflict making travel difficult for Cunningham, the estate was managed by two staff members during the Civil War; a Northerner and a Southerner. Cunningham’s secretary, Sarah C. Tracy and Upton H. Herbert, Mount Vernon’s first Resident Superintendent, managed the estate through the war years. There were also free African-American employees working at the estate, including Emily the cook, Priscilla the chambermaid, Frances, a maid, and George, the coachman and general assistant.1

Sarah Tracy, pictured above in an image taken in 1859, watched over the Mount Vernon estate during the six-year-long Civil War—her efforts ensured its safety as a piece of American history.

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Cunningham believed that it was imperative that no military outposts were placed within the borders of the estate in order to physically protect the property. After a visit from Tracy, on July 31, 1861 General Winfield Scott issued Order Number 13, declaring the estate’s status as non-partisan. A large proportion of the visitors during the war were still soldiers, though without military aims. Soldiers who visited the estate were requested to be neither armed nor dressed in military uniform. Such actions ensured that Mount Vernon remained neutral, respected grounds.

Above, left: Mount Vernon’s 8’1” high cupola; above, right: the Washington’s dining room.

The end of the conflict had an immediate positive impact on the preservation of Mount Vernon. In November 1866 Cunningham was able to travel to meet with her Vice Regents and staff for the first time in six years. The Ladies’ Association passed a resolution reflecting a new post-war optimism, expressing their “unqualified approval of the manner in which the Superintendent and the Secretary had discharged the arduous duties committed to their charge. . .under difficult circumstances, the Mansion and grounds under their charge have been so well preserved and protected.”2 Despite the challenges, Mount Vernon remained safe and open throughout the war.

The piazza at Mount Vernon faces the Potomac River.

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Notes

1. “Mollie ______ to Caroline L. Rees, 21 October 186[1-4],” Kirby Rees Collection, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia; typescript, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

2. Quoted in Dorothy Troth Muir, Presence of a Lady: Mount Vernon, 1861-1868 (Mount Vernon, Virginia: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 1975), 86.

Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/the-civil-war-years/

Read more, here:

https://www.mountvernon.org/preservation/mount-vernon-ladies-association/early-history-of-the-mount-vernon-ladies-association/#g-1160_m-everett2

https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/the-mansion/the-mansion-room-by-room/#-

https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/the-mansion/the-mansion-basement/

President Trump Just Called Himself a ‘Nationalist.’ Here’s What That Means—and Why It’s So Dangerous.

Nationalism is not patriotism. Just ask George Orwell.

Normally, there’s a kind of catharsis in watching someone finally admit to themselves and the world who they truly are. Not here. It has never been much of a secret that Donald Trump, American president, is a nationalist. The debate is more often over what adjective might go in front. And yet it was singularly unnerving on Tuesday—in the context of a midterm election campaign in which he and his Republican allies are appealing to racism and anti-immigrant sentiment and fear in a strategy so explicit that The New York Times felt comfortable calling it out—to hear him declare, loudly and proudly, that he is “a nationalist, OK?”

The juxtaposition here between “globalist” and “nationalist” is a Steve Bannon joint—a nice hat-tip to the guy on a day where he could be found playing a near-empty conference room on Staten Island. It’s the kind of binary nonsense that authoritarian types feed on, an us-or-them formulation where the United States can succeed, or the wider world can succeed, but you can’t have both. In the context of a globalized, entirely interconnected world—a development Trump is powerless to reverse—it is fantasy. But it gets the people going.

Now that the President of the United States has embraced it as his own, it’s worth digging into what the term “nationalist” actually means and the historical baggage it carries. For this, we can turn once again to George Orwell, the legendary British theorist who, more recently, has become a prop for diaper-wearing right-wing propagandists who looked him up on brainy quote dot com. The essential point, also made eloquently by Charles de Gaulle, is that not only are nationalism and patriotism not the same, the gap between them is not some difference of degree. They are often wholly contrasting emotional forces, as Orwell writes in his Notes on Nationalism:

Blue World—A Collection of Horror Stories by Robert R. McCammon (TOC + Intro + Link)

Table of Contents

Dear Readers (introduction to the preview of Mine) • essay by Robert R. McCammon
Mine (excerpt) • short fiction by Robert R. McCammon
ix • Introduction (Blue World and Other Stories) • (1989) • essay by Robert R. McCammon
1 • Yellowjacket Summer • (1986) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
25 • Makeup • (1981) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
49 • Doom City • (1987) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
65 • Nightcrawlers • (1984) • novelette by Robert R. McCammon
101 • Yellachile’s Cage • (1987) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
121 • I Scream Man! • (1984) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
131 • He’ll Come Knocking at Your Door • (1986) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
151 • Chico • (1989) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
163 • Night Calls the Green Falcon • (1988) • novelette by Robert R. McCammon
191 • Pin • (1989) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
215 • The Red House • (1985) • novelette by Robert R. McCammon
239 • Something Passed By • (1989) • short story by Robert R. McCammon
259 • Blue World • (1989) • novella by Robert R. McCammon

Introduction

Fast Cars, the sign said.

It was in front of a used-car lot in the neighborhood where I grew up. Fast Cars. My friends and I passed it every day on our way to school. Our bikes were the fast cars of our imagination, our Mustangs and Corvettes and Thunderbirds. We longed for four wheels, but we were confined to two and on them we hurtled into the future.

I’ve built my own fast cars. They’re in this book, and they’re eager for passengers.

“Beauty has no obvious use…and yet…”

‘Writing is the most solitary of arts. The very act of withdrawing from the world in order to create a counter-world that is “fictitious”—“metaphorical”—is so curious, it eludes comprehension. Why do we write? Why do we read? What can be the possible motive for metaphor? Why have some of us, writers and readers both, made of the “counter-world” a prevailing culture in which, sometimes to the exclusion of the actual world, we can live? These are questions I’ve considered for much of my life, and I’ve never arrived at any answers that seemed to me final, utterly persuasive. It must be enough to concede, with Sigmund Freud in his late, melancholy essay “Civilization and Its Discontents”, that “beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”’

– Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer

Tonight’s Read: Gaslight Gothic—An Anthology of Strange Stories of Sherlock Holmes, ed. by Charles Prepolec & J R Campbell (EDGE-Lite 2018)

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Note
Books in the Gaslight Series
Introduction
It Is Not the Cold Which Makes Me Shiver by Charles Prepolec
The Cuckoo’s Hour by Mark A. Latham
The Spirit of Death by David Stuart Davies
Father of the Man by Stephen Volk
The Strange Case of Dr. Sacker and Mr. Hope by James Lovegrove
The Ignoble Sportsmen by Josh Reynolds
The Strange Adventure of Mary Holder by Nancy Holder
The Lizard Lady of Pemberton Grange by Mark Morris
The Magic of Africa by Kevin P. Thornton
A Matter of Light by Angela Slatter
The Song of a Want b Lyndsay Faye
About the Editors
About the Cover Artist
Need something New to Read
Detail

Link

Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares: A Biography of Herbert Van Thal by Johnny Mains (Screaming Dreams 2012) + Link

Cover of the limited edition. Only 100 copies were printed and included bibliographical references.

Bertie Maurice van Thal (1904–1983), known as Herbert van Thal, was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist. Van Thal’s grandfather was a distiller (King’s Liqueur Whisky), and was a director of the theatre proprietors, Howard and Wyndham. Henry Irving and Harry Lauder were friends of the family. After the Second World War, he founded the short-lived publishing house of Home and van Thal, with his friends Margaret Douglas-Home and Gwylim Fielden Hughes. The house was known as a “mushroom” publisher, since it sprang up overnight after the war. Later he became a general editor of the Doughty Library published by Anthony Blond. Van Thal was a friend and publisher of the critic James Agate, whom he met in 1932. He had been impressed by Agate’s review of Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Agate once described him as looking like “a sleek, well-groomed dormouse” out of a John Tenniel illustration of Alice in Wonderland, due to Bertie’s tendency to dress in a dapper suit, bow tie, monocle, and black shiny shoes. He had deep familiarity with Victorian literature, opera, and Restoration dramatists. He was one of the first publishers to recognize the talent of Hermann Hesse, and reprinted novels by George Gissing and Theodore Hook. He also edited anthologies of detective and horror stories; the Pan Book of Horror Stories series ran to 24 volumes, from 1959 to 1983. He edited an anthology of Hilaire Belloc for Allen and Unwin in 1970, and edited the papers of famous music-critic Ernest Newman. (Source: Wikipedia)

Additional Information/Links

http://horrorworld.org/lest-you-should-suffer-nightmares-a-biography-of-herbert-van-thal/

https://gingernutsofhorror.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/lest-you-should-suffer-nightmares-a-biography-of-herbert-van-thal-by-johnny-mains/

 

A Suggestion of Ghosts, Supernatural Fiction by Women 1854 – 1900, ed. by A. J. Mains, from Black Schuck Books

Table of Contents

• A Veritable Ghost Story by Susanna Moodie
• The Spectral Rout by Frances Power Cobbe
• A Legend of All-Hallow Eve by Georgiana S. Hull
• The Ghost of the Nineteenth Century by Phoebe Pember
• The Ghost Room by Clara Merwin
• Miss Massereene’s Ghost by E.A. Henty
• Vindication of the Supernatural by Manda L. Crocker
• The Warneford Abbey Ghost by Ada Maria Jocelyn
• A Speakin’ Ghost by Annie Trumbull Slosson
• The Closed Cabinet by Lady Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil
• The Little Green Door by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
• The Death Spancel by Katharine Tynan
• The House That Wouldn’t Let by Mrs Hattie H. Howard
• At the Witching Hour by Elizabeth Gibert Cunningham-Terry
• The Oakleigh Ghost by Annie Armitt

About the Book

British Fantasy Award-winning editor J.A. Mains presents an all-female anthology of supernatural stories, first published between 1854 and 1900. Mains has trawled the archives to find fifteen tales which have not seen print since their original publications. Featuring cover art from multiple time British Fantasy Award-winner Les Edwards, and an introduction by Lynda Rucker, A Suggestion of Ghosts is an important volume for those interested in the Victorian era of supernatural tales.

Black Shuck is very proud to announce the first of two ghost story anthologies from Johnny (A J) Mains, an all-female anthology of ghost stories written from 1826 – 1897. Johnny has been deep in the cobwebbed archives of decaying periodicals, collections and newspapers and has found British, Irish, American and Australian stories that have never been anthologized since their original publication up to 190 years ago. Mains is thrilled that he can also attribute the correct authorship to ‘The Closed Cabinet’ to Lady Gwendolyn Gascoyne-Cecil, which has been continuously published under the by-line ‘Anon’ since its original appearance in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in January of 1895.

Mains feels that A Suggestion of Ghosts will be an invaluable book for those desperately seeking to read and research supernatural tales which have long faded away and have been forgotten about.

There will be a limited hardback edition of 100 numbered copies, with artwork by Edward Miller (Les Edwards) and Mike Mignola. The book will also be signed by Mains and Edwards. A Suggestion of Ghosts will also contain original publication dates of stories and biographies of the authors.

Two months after the publication of the hardback, there will be a simultaneous paperback and e-book release, this will contain two stories less than the hardback.

Read more: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6591/suggestion-ghosts-mains#ixzz5TjqFSWHV

Link to Buy the Paperback

https://blackshuck.greatbritishhorror.com/a-suggestion-of-ghosts/

An Obscurity of Ghosts, ed. by J. A. Mains Hardback Coming Late 2018! (TOC + Link)

Table of Contents

• The Pin Ghost by E T Corbett
• The Mysterious House by Mrs M C Despard
• Not Exactly a Ghost Story by Mary Louisa Molesworth
• A Bristol Ghost Story by Alice Horlor
• The American Ghost by Lucretia P Hale
• The Ghostly Lady by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford
• The Room with the Staircase by Mrs E Fitzmaurice
• Miss Tweed’s Ghost Story by Sarah Doudney
• A Night in a Haunted House by (Mattie) May Jordan
• The White Priest by Hélène Gingold
• Grannie’s Ghost Story by Lucy Hardy
• The Ghost of My Dead Friend by Wilhelmina Fitzclarence, Countess of Munster
• Playing the Ghost by Mrs Edith E Cuthell
• A Chestnutting Ghost by Margaret Barringer
• The Phantom Ride by Lyllian Huntley

About the Book

Following the success of A Suggestion of Ghosts, British Fantasy Award-winning editor J.A. Mains presents a second all-female anthology of ghost stories written between 1876 and 1902. Mains has once again been trawling the archives to find another fifteen tales, fourteen of which have not been anthologised since their original publications.

Featuring cover art from multiple time British Fantasy Award-winner Les Edwards, and an introduction by Melissa Edmundson, AN OBSCURITY OF GHOSTS will be another important volume for those interested in the Victorian era of supernatural tales.

This hardback edition of AN OBSCURITY OF GHOSTS will be limited to 50 numbered copies, each signed by editor J.A. Mains and artist Les Edwards.

Link to Preorder

https://blackshuckbooks.co.uk/obscurity/

 

Acquainted with the Night—A Horror Anthology, ed. by Barbara & Christopher Roden, Ash-Tree Press, 2004, TOC

Table of Contents

vii • Introduction (Acquainted with the Night) • essay by Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden
3 • Rope Trick • short story by Mark P. Henderson
19 • A Pace of Change • short story by Don Tumasonis
38 • Beneath the Sun • short story by Simon Bestwick
42 • The Old Tailor and the Gaunt Man • short story by Brian J. Showers (variant of The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man 2005) [as by Brian Showers]
54 • Vado Mori • short story by Joseph A. Ezzo
70 • Breaking Up • short story by Ramsey Campbell
80 • Northwest Passage • novelette by Barbara Roden
105 • Out on a Limb • short story by Gary McMahon
113 • Jenny Gray’s House • short story by Edward Pearce
130 • The Devil’s Number • short story by Reggie Oliver
136 • Visits • short story by Melanie Tem
149 • Weird Furka • novella by Adam Golaski
170 • The Weeping Manse • short story by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
176 • Salvage • [Captain Luis da Silva] • novella by Chico Kidd
199 • Beyond the River • short story by Joel Lane
209 • Only Sleeping • short story by Peter Bell
228 • You Should Have to Live with Yourself • short story by Cathy Sahu
242 • The Sunken Garden • short story by John Whitbourn
252 • Survivors • short story by Edward P. Crandall
266 • Inside William James • short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
272 • Someone Across the Way • short story by Steve Duffy
291 • The Cross Talk • short story by Rick Kennett
294 • The Belfries • novella by Paul Finch
318 • Crazy Little Thing Called Love • short story by John Pelan
326 • Three Fingers, One Thumb • short story by Stephen Volk
330 • Safety Clowns • novelette by Glen Hirshberg
351 • The Listener • short story by Christopher Harman

Silver Bullets—An Anthology if Werewolf Stories from 1831-1920, ed. by Eleanor Dobson (The British Library 2017) Excerpt + Intro + Link…

Excerpt from Story 1: “The Man-Wolf” by Leitch Ritchie…

Introduction by Eleanor Dobson…

(Click thumbnails to enlarge)

Buy the book here…

https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Bullets-Classic-Werewolf-Stories/dp/0712352201